The Sorceress - Enigma [Discuss]

[RedBlue she/her]

Good analysis, @robardin. One correction: it wasn’t Fort’s idea to get Hoid.

Chapter 24:

Quote

“How do you know so much about it [the curses]?” Tress asked.
Captain told me, Fort explained. When she had me trade to get Hoid on our ship. 
“The captain specifically wanted Hoid on the ship?” Tress asked. “Why?” 
Don’t know. She heard about his curse and his trip to the Sorceress. Getting him was a poor deal, since his former shipmates were happy to be rid of him. Captain insisted though.
Fort shook his head, considering the damage to his reputation once people found out how much he’d traded to get a lunatic to be their cabin boy.

It was Captain Crow’s idea to get Hoid on the ship.

My guess is: Crow has been doing research into cosmere stuff for a while, as we know, looking for a cure. At some point, she dug up some info about Hoid — now she has at least a little idea who and what he is. She thinks he’ll be a valuable resource in getting to the dragon. Maybe she even thinks she might trade him to the dragon.

So, Crow asks Fort to strike a bargain with the crew of the Whistlebow to take Hoid as a cabin boy. The Whistlebow crew notices that Crow is oddly keen, and drive a hard bargain, even though Hoid is objectively not worth much as a cabin boy. When Crow realises that the ‘madness’ is neither feigned nor fixable, she keeps him around anyway, just in case. Having a worldhopper with you can come in handy.

I don’t think Fort traded anything notable to get Hoid; it was just that he perceived Hoid’s value as a cabin boy to be very low (for the obvious reasons).

[+Oltux72 he/him]

7 hours ago, robardin said:

• Hoid strikes the deal with Riina (curse him, but where that undoing the curse does something that grants him access to AonDor) 
• Mad Hoid becomes a "cabin boy" on the Whistlebow
  • I suppose he might have done this before being cursed, but that doesn't seem likely? ...
  • He wouldn't have been sailing on the Whistlebow to reach The Sorceress' stronghold. They wouldn't sail it. He got there some other way.
• The Whistlebow presumably makes a visit to The Rock while Tress is there, waiting for Charlie's cups.

That sequence would have required Charles to entrust a letter and a cup, which meant a lot to him, to a madman. That seems unlikely to me.

If you really want to resolve it without introducing the problem of the Whistleblow sailing to the sorceress I think you will need to introduce a third ship between it and Crow's Song. In that scenario Hoid was cursed after delivering the first cup and before Ulaam arriving, which means that the rest of the attempts to find a bride and Charlie's subsequent adventures took about a year. That is reasonable.

 

 

[+robardin he/him]

2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

That sequence would have required Charles to entrust a letter and a cup, which meant a lot to him, to a madman. That seems unlikely to me.

If you really want to resolve it without introducing the problem of the Whistleblow sailing to the sorceress I think you will need to introduce a third ship between it and Crow's Song. In that scenario Hoid was cursed after delivering the first cup and before Ulaam arriving, which means that the rest of the attempts to find a bride and Charlie's subsequent adventures took about a year. That is reasonable.

That’s a pretty good point, and is reinforced by another one I just thought of: if Hoid had been nutty the first time she’d met him a year or so prior, she wouldn’t have been startled by his odd behavior, she’d have thought “that’s just how he acts”.

Which really tightens up the timeline for everything. Hoid and Ulaam haven’t been on Lumar all that long.

[+robardin he/him]

8 hours ago, RedBlue said:

Good analysis, @robardin. One correction: it wasn’t Fort’s idea to get Hoid.

Chapter 24:

It was Captain Crow’s idea to get Hoid on the ship.

My guess is: Crow has been doing research into cosmere stuff for a while, as we know, looking for a cure. At some point, she dug up some info about Hoid — now she has at least a little idea who and what he is. She thinks he’ll be a valuable resource in getting to the dragon. Maybe she even thinks she might trade him to the dragon.

So, Crow asks Fort to strike a bargain with the crew of the Whistlebow to take Hoid as a cabin boy. The Whistlebow crew notices that Crow is oddly keen, and drive a hard bargain, even though Hoid is objectively not worth much as a cabin boy. When Crow realises that the ‘madness’ is neither feigned nor fixable, she keeps him around anyway, just in case. Having a worldhopper with you can come in handy.

I don’t think Fort traded anything notable to get Hoid; it was just that he perceived Hoid’s value as a cabin boy to be very low (for the obvious reasons).

Ah, good catch as well! Fort executed the “trade” but it was at his captain’s prompting to do so.

As for trading Hoid to the dragon - it’s probably true that Mad Hoid has no fear of spores, but I’d be a little leery of passing off an obvious lunatic to a dragon as a useful servant. Though in this case, should that have happened, Xisis would actually have recognized Hoid and laughed and laughed and laughed. (And would have done who-knows-what!)

I guess I’ll go back and edit that timeline later for these two corrections (plus any others that come up).

I’d like to add this reply into my prior post but can’t figure out how to do that, so, oh well.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

There are a few points. We do not know when Hoid arrived on Lumar. That may indeed have been decades ago. In fact, if this was not a long time, why go through the effort of writing a letter to get help? He could have just asked for company right away. And how did Huck get on the right ship? Do we have to invoke Fortune?

[Rainier]

Thanks for putting together the timeline, it's quite useful.

Riina's presence in this backwater planet makes perfect sense to me, in the same way that you hear of billionaires making bunker compounds in New Zealand. It's someone with wealth and power looking for a safe place to hide out when SHTF. Riina is pretty clearly selfish, she doesn't seem to have much in the way of large goals, she just wants to keep living in relative peace away from the realmatic threats that abound on larger shardworlds. Hence, why she's so upset with the dragon, and why she leaves when Hoid's curse is broken.

All she wanted to do was retire to the proverbial countryside in peace.

[StormingTexan he/him]

4 hours ago, Rainier said:

All she wanted to do was retire to the proverbial countryside in peace.

Yes and I know the counter argument would be that she could have gone somewhere completely un-inhabited but how many people really want to do that? Especially if you are as powerful as she is. Being that powerful is pointless if you do not have someone to project that power on. You still want some people around (in her case to curse). I think it is as simple as what you stated. This planet is backwater enough that she thought she would be the most powerful entity there and has some fun stuff to play with helping her create her fortress of solitude. She seemed to be in a pseudo cold war with Xisis and thought she had taken the fangs out of Hoid until she didn't and she takes off which is kind of funny since Hoid was essentially bluffing. 

Edited January 4, 2023 by StormingTexan

[StanLemon]

She's also a cowardly petty bully. Having a planet of backwater people she could lord over seems like right up her alley 

[AquaRegia he/him]

On 1/3/2023 at 2:37 AM, RedBlue said:

Lumar ... sporadic visitors

I see what you did there  

[lacrossedeamon]

On 1/3/2023 at 9:52 PM, robardin said:

Well, let's list the key known events in a relative timeline and see if we can figure this out.

[NOTE: I've edited/updated this with text in blue following observations/corrections made by @RedBlue and @Oltux72 after my original post.]

After being cursed, Mad Hoid became the "cabin boy" on the Crow's Song - Captain Crow made Fort "trade for him", and in the same conversation, told him about the Sorceress' curses: She heard about his curse and his trip to the Sorceress. Getting him was a poor deal, since his former shipmates were happy to be rid of him. Captain insisted though.

When Tress first spotted him after being allowed to stay on the Crow's Song, of all the strangers to her - the captain and its crew - she recognized Hoid as the "cabin boy of the Whistlebow" - evidently the name a ship that had pulled in at The Rock, for her to be familiar with their cabin boy and "his gangly figure and his pure white head of hair".

In fact, yes, he was named as the one who gave her the first of the five cups that Charlie sent back to her before being sent off to the Midnight Sea: "a beautiful porcelain cup, without even a single chip in it." At which point he'd still been sane (hadn't yet been cursed), inferred both from the fact that Mad Hoid probably wouldn't be trusted with delivering precious cargo, and that "his former shipmates" on the Whistlebow only wanted to be rid of him after he was cursed. Plus, Tress wouldn't have thought Hoid was acting weirdly if that was how she'd met him in the first place.

Ulaam says he came to Lumar and "found him like this [cursed] after I arrived in response to his letter". After which he convinced Captain Crow to take him on as the ship's surgeon after she shot him a few times, to no effect, except for him to say he found it "invigorating". So Hoid was already on the Crow's Song.

So I would say the order of events is:

• Hoid goes to Lumar, intending to upgrade to accessing AonDor via Riina...
  • Apparently, an Elantrian "inviting" or "formally adopting" someone else in a specific way, can transitively extend the necessary Connection to AonDor
  • He had sought her out because he knew her sadistic pastime was Creative Cursing, and would relish the idea of cursing him in particular
• Hoid writes/sends a letter to Ulaam telling him this, asking Ulaam to come to him (I guess to help him deal with the curse, whatever it is)
• [Sane] Hoid becomes a "cabin boy" on the Whistlebow
• The Whistlebow makes a visit to The Rock while Tress is there, waiting for Charlie's cups.
• Hoid strikes the deal with Riina (curse him, but where undoing the curse results in Connecting him to AonDor) 
  • How he gets there is unknown - I doubt he traveled through the Crimson and Midnight Seas on the Whistlebow!
  • But, he does return to the Whistlebow after being cursed.
• When Capt. Crow hears of the Whistlebow's cabin boy having been cursed by the Sorceress, she makes an effort to acquire him on board.
  • Not sure what the point of that was - her goal was to visit Xisis in the Crimson Sea, and not the Sorceress beyond it?
• Ulaam (finally) arrives on Lumar, joins Hoid on the Crow's Song, and mostly just watches Hoid with amusement.
  • "That's the problem with immortals - they get used to sitting around waiting for problems to work themselves out."
• Tress ends up on the Crow's Song, and you know the rest.

This means the timeline for Hoid arriving on Lumar and wandering around cursed is pretty tight: it happened after Charlie had already been gone long enough to send back the first cup, and for it to reach Tress (by his own, sane hand).

Charlie must have been on a ship to go to the Sorceress to begin with. What if Hoid was part of the same ship's crew at the time? Charlie seems familiar with Hoid having been cursed moreso than Tress was.

[Chana]

On 2.01.2023 at 9:00 PM, robardin said:

 

According to Fort, she set up in the Midnight Sea because it's accessible only from the one side (behind the dangerous Crimson Sea), and thereby "controls trade through the passage that connects the planet". Which must mean trade with off-planet partners (through a Perpendicularity on the Midnight Moon, or its Lunagree on Lumar, perhaps

The conversation moved on but I’m pretty sure in the text it was said that midnight sea is at a choke point between two mountain ranges and the Sorceress blocks trade between two sides of the mountains. At some point it was mentioned that there is another way to the midnight sea but it requires going around half the planet to get around the mountain range. So I don’t think anything in text supports idea of trade off-planet

[Mason Wheeler]

55 minutes ago, Chana said:

The conversation moved on but I’m pretty sure in the text it was said that midnight sea is at a choke point between two mountain ranges and the Sorceress blocks trade between two sides of the mountains. At some point it was mentioned that there is another way to the midnight sea but it requires going around half the planet to get around the mountain range. So I don’t think anything in text supports idea of trade off-planet

Yeah, that's how I read it too.

[cometaryorbit]

Yeah, I think it's purely on-Lumar trade being discussed.

I think Riina is there specifically because Lumar is one of the most backwater/least cosmere-politics important worlds out there. She wanted a place where she could do whatever she wanted - not a totally uninhabited place, just a place where the local people couldn't resist. She could play her games with real people. That's why she was unhappy to learn Xisis was there.

[Leuthie]

There's nothing in Tress to suggest Riina was there for anything but her own amusement. She's simply surviving and using her powers to mess with people. She's probably magically insane ala the Heralds and Fused and incapable of determining a mode of living beyond this simple set of goals. Her actions are directly in line with what someone being kept alive with the power of Dominion would do: controlling others who enter her chosen space through direct means (midnight aethers) or indirect means (AonDor fueled curses). One would think Devotion would play a part, as well. She does seem pretty devoted to her curses...until she runs away.

Anyway, she's a minor character who was there to provide an antagonist for this story. I can't imagine there's a greater reasoning for her being there. She's the Elantrian version of the modern witch archetype.

[lacrossedeamon]

On 2/22/2023 at 4:20 PM, Leuthie said:

There's nothing in Tress to suggest Riina was there for anything but her own amusement. She's simply surviving and using her powers to mess with people. She's probably magically insane ala the Heralds and Fused and incapable of determining a mode of living beyond this simple set of goals. Her actions are directly in line with what someone being kept alive with the power of Dominion would do: controlling others who enter her chosen space through direct means (midnight aethers) or indirect means (AonDor fueled curses). One would think Devotion would play a part, as well. She does seem pretty devoted to her curses...until she runs away.

Anyway, she's a minor character who was there to provide an antagonist for this story. I can't imagine there's a greater reasoning for her being there. She's the Elantrian version of the modern witch archetype.

This does beg the question of will she show up again.