A Collection of Hoid WoBs and Speculations

[Confused]

There have been several recent threads discussing Hoid and his motivations. This led me to wade through the almost 200 WoBs on the Theoryland site to see what Brandon had to say about his “favorite” character (as of 2009, according to # 38 of the linked page). Here’s a collection of some of the more provocative WoBs by listed number on the linked page. Use this post as a resource for your own theorizing. If you’re aware of more recent Hoid WoBs, please add them to the list. Below I try to weave these WoBs into some semi-coherent speculations…I wouldn’t glorify my maunderings by calling them a “theory.”

 

Hoid WoBs

 

23: “Hoid, so far, has only moved forward in time. He has not 'lived' all of those years, but has used some time dilation techniques. That said, he is far older (both in relative and real time) than a normal person can live.”

 

25: “[A]rt is a magical thing in the world of Warbreaker. When an artist creates a work of art, part of the artist's soul ends up in the artwork… As Lightsong has a splinter of divine nature inside him, he is able to interpret the paintings—to foresee, using them, and to see into the soul of the person who made them.” Doesn’t pertain to Hoid, but interesting nonetheless.

 

31: Hoid “may be capable of a little bit of foreseeing of certain events, not what’s going to happen, but he may need to be in a certain place in a certain time.”

 

32: "Hoid as a major part of things doesn’t really show up till the third Mistborn trilogy, which is the outer space Mistborn, the sci-fi Mistborn."

 

34: “There's just the one system in Warbreaker, and it's also a world with only one Shard on it.” Again, interesting for its own sake, especially given our speculation about Nalt and Trell. At the January 6, 2015 Firelight signing, Brandon said “There was at least one relationship” like “brother and sister or child/parent” among the original Vessels. Nalt and Trell may be the brothers if they turn out to be Vessels. Alternatively, maybe Skai was Aona’s parent, explaining his control over access to the Dor. What a terrible pun that would be (keeping a child away from the “door”) …

 

66: Confirming Hoid uses Feruchemy to know where to be at any given time.

 

78: A pre-M:SH acknowledgement that “Hoid and Kelsier do not get along. At all.” [As of April 2013.]

 

85: Hoid has a “home base.” I've not seen anything that suggests where it is.

 

91: Hoid is familiar with “very many [magic systems], and lots that you haven't seen yet” as of November 2012.

 

95: Hoid has “been alive since Dragonsteel. However, he may not have spent all of that time awake and alert.”

 

112: Question: “If Hoid were tempted by a Shard, which one would it be?” Brandon: “Endowment.”

 

124: Frost is a male dragon who is “[f]unctionally [immortal], meaning he doesn't age but can be killed.”

 

127: Khriss is the most Cosmere-aware person “by a long shot,” though Hoid is marginally more knowledgeable than Nazh. I would have guessed that Frost would be more Cosmere-aware than Khriss, based on the Second Letter, unless Brandon forgot about Frost when he answered this (in March 2014).

 

128: If beheaded, Hoid can grow a new head. “[W]hat Hoid does heals the soul.”

 

142: “Frost is almost certainly the oldest [Cosmere character] by a small amount. After that, Hoid.” This statement does give new meaning to Hoid’s and Frost’s mutually applied appellation, “old friend.”

 

149: “Hoid was human a long time ago. Now... It's complicated. We would call him human, and so will pretty much everyone else, but he is not exactly that.”

 

151: Hoid was on Roshar before WoK. This may not mean much, since he was the King’s Wit to Elokhar since before the book begins.

 

157: Duralumin helps with using local magic systems by changing user’s Connections to that planet.

 

160: Hoid was once friends with Odium.
 

161: The famous “sing-song” “biggest RAFO” to the question whether Hoid ever visited Braize.

 

162: Hoid asked Dalinar about Adonalsium to test whether Dalinar was a member of some secret society like Gavilar had been; Dalinar seemed to know so much. Hoid apparently thought that Gavilar had “confided” this knowledge to Dalinar, based on what Gavilar had learned from those societies. Since Brandon used the plural “secret societies,” the statement implies that several of the societies – and not just the Ghostbloods – have back-story knowledge.

 

163: Hoid shows up in so many books because he’s searching for “something.”

 

166: Hoid is “really scared of Odium” and many other things.
 

167: The Moon Sceptre is important to Hoid for unknown reasons.

 

168: Hoid doesn't “yet” have the abilities of each world he visits.
 

173: Question: “Hoid said [in Warbreaker] that he learned stories from a place where gods have died. Is that Roshar?” Brandon: “RAFO. I will say this. A god has died on Roshar. Only one, that we know. So, ‘gods’ would not be plural.”

 

174: The Seventeenth Shard has goals that Hoid may interfere with – which is why they hunt him. Hoid’s actions are at “cross-purposes” with their goals. But the Seventeenth Shard has other goals too, “something grander than that.” There are others whom the Seventeenth Shard is worried about.
 

179: Hoid stole the lerasium bead to gain “certain powers,” but Brandon is unclear whether Hoid has ingested it yet. Forum consensus is that Hoid used emotional Allomancy on Shallan during one of her WoR interludes. That suggests Hoid did use the lerasium bead sometime before that scene.
 

190: Hoid has “powers that predate the Shattering of Adonalsium. Not all of his powers predate, but he does have powers that predate.” We know about Lightweaving, but this statement makes clear Hoid had other powers pre-Shattering as well.
 

193: Question: “Worldbringers and Worldsingers - similar mission?”

Brandon: “The similarity of the names is intentional.”

Question: “Similar origin?”

Brandon: “Yes.”

Question: “Did Hoid start them?”

Brandon: “That’s a RAFO. That’s a RAFO, but definitely they have a similar origin.”

 

Speculations

 

1. Hoid’s Feruchemy. Hoid became a Feruchemist at birth or by some other means while still on Yolen. When Ruin and Preservation created humans on Scadrial, IMO they also created Feruchemists based on the Yolen model. Adonalsium certainly would have had the same ability as the two Shards to create a “push-pull” magic system. Perhaps Worldsingers was the name for Feruchemists on Yolen. Hoid might even have given the name “Worldbringers” to the Scadrial version. Given Hoid’s remarkable ability to use the Fortune attribute (we speculate) and to live as long as he apparently has, the Scadrian version may be considerably watered down from the original Yolish version.

 

Questioner: How is a new Feruchemist made?

Brandon: Other than through birth? ... That’s a RAFO … Right now, as far as anyone knows, it’s by birth only. But – Well, we’ll leave it there.

[From the 2/25/16 Austin Calamity signing.]

 

This would explain Hoid’s moving forward in time (“so far”), though he was not always “alert and awake” his entire lifetime. He did not “live all of those years,” instead using “time dilation techniques.” During his quiescent periods, he might have been accumulating health and time attributes to use for both healing and his time jumps.

 

2. Is Hoid a Feruchemical Savant? Hoid appears human, once was human, but now isn’t. “It’s complicated.” One possibility is that Hoid may be a Feruchemical Savant who has overused Feruchemy. “eing a Savant is when you burn so much it alters your spirit.” [March 29, 2014 SLC Signing Report, # 4.] Much like a Surgebinder or Elantrian is no longer completely human, a Feruchemical Savant may not be either. This might partly explain Hoid’s exceptional longevity, even as he “zones out” from time to time.

 

Brandon confirms Savantism is possible in other magic systems than Allomancy, in the following exchange from the March 20, 2014 McLean, Virginia Signing Report, #2:

 

IronCaf: In what ways is the process of becoming an allomantic savant like body building or other exercise?

Brandon: [Paraphrasing] That is not an inapt metaphor for it. It's like a wedge gets in the soul and cracks it, and investiture can fill it up.

IronCaf: And using allomancy breaks it further?

Brandon: Yes.

IronCaf: Do other magic systems in the Cosmere function in a similar way?

Brandon: Yes.

IronCaf: Which ones? Will we see them soon?

Brandon: I'm going to have to RAFO that.

 

This may be the reason that Hoid, like twinborn Miles in AoL, can lose his head but immediately regrow it. He can heal soul damage. (Hoid is like Miles in the sense that he can survive severe head injuries if he has adequate available investiture.)

 

Hoid also may use his some of his acquired magical abilities to fill his metalminds (or their Yolish equivalents – I don’t recall seeing Hoid with metal bands or rings on his body) in much the same way twinborns do through compounding. That might explain how Hoid became a Savant, putting vast amounts of investiture into his storage device which he then flares.

 

3. Hoid’s Age. One gets the sense that the “old friends” Frost and Hoid were childhood pals, since Frost is older than Hoid only “by a small amount.” They are both older than any other “character,” which presumably includes the Vessels. That gives perspective to both Frost’s desire for non-intervention (as stated in the Second Letter) – he has a VERY long view – and Hoid’s “interfering” attitude toward the Shattering (as stated by Leras in M:SH).

 

ASIDE: In M:SH, Khriss describes the Vessels’ “diverse motives” for “kill[ing] Adonalsium, ripping it apart and dividing its essence between them…” [Ed. Note: shouldn’t it be “among” them, since there are more than two Vessels?] “Some wished for the power; others saw killing Adonalsium as the only good option left to them.” What does this latter motive mean? Was it personal to some individual Vessels, perhaps because their lives had turned out badly? Or does this phrase refer to something more generic, more terrible, as if a catastrophe was about to befall Yolen or their race, and Adonalsium intended to do nothing about it? A ripe area for further speculation…

 

4. Cosmere-Awareness. Why should Khriss be more Cosmere-aware “by a long shot” than either the long-lived Frost or Hoid? Because she is a scholar, she has learned more than these two “people” who actually lived the events she’s chronicling? This seems odd, especially since Frost has so much knowledge about current happenings in the Cosmere.

 

5. Where Gods Died. Hoid learned stories in a place where “gods have died.” We know Hoid learned storytelling on Yolen. Either more than one “god” died on Yolen or Hoid learned “stories” on Sel. When does The Emperor’s Soul take place relative to Warbreaker? Was Hoid on Sel multiple times (a possibility) or just when he stole the Moon Sceptre?

 

6. The “Biggest Speculation” - Hoid’s Search. Hoid is searching for “someTHING” – singular. IOW, it’s not just magical powers he’s after. This may or may not be the same “thing” the Seventeenth Shard is after.

 

              a. I see two possibilities. The more obvious is that he’s looking for something to defeat Odium with. Perhaps the “something” is the vestige of the “weapon” used to Shatter Adonalsium. Hoid may want to repair the weapon or model a new one on the old and splinter Odium with it.

 

              b. The second possibility is more intriguing. Assuming Brandon wasn’t trolling, to me the single most striking WoB on the list is that Hoid would choose Endowment as his Shard if he were “tempted.” Endowment – the Shard that raises the dead and Awakens inanimate objects. Many have speculated about Hoid’s purported desire to resurrect Adonalsium. They cite Hoid’s accumulation of magical abilities as if he wants to fuse them together into a new holistic Adonalsium. They find support in the following WoB from the 2/25/16 Austin signing (emphasis added):

 

Q: If someone goes to every planet and get invested from every Shard, if he was invested enough would he become a new Shard?

A: That’s an excellent question that I’m not going to answer…That's too deeply related to things that are happening in the Cosmere and I don’t want to dig into for a little while yet.

 

I haven’t agreed with this speculation because, even if you could fuse together diverse magical abilities into the original one that Adonalsium exercised, that wouldn’t necessarily bring him back. IMO the foregoing WoB describes the Seventeenth Shard’s “grand” purpose, which Hoid is meddling with, not Hoid’s own purpose. It may even be the purpose of some of the other Worldhopping groups. (Other posters have already made this point.)

 

BUT – Hoid is looking for someTHING, presumably something that will defeat and/or end his former friend Rayse/Odium. I’ve long maintained that killing a god means killing its mind, depriving the power of a mind to direct it, so it seeks new minds. What if Hoid seeks some remnant of Adonalsium’s mind – in one of Shadesmar’s glass beads - that Hoid can use his magical abilities to rebuild?

 

We have the following WoB from the 2/25/16 Austin signing (emphasis added):

 

Questioner: It feels like Roshar is-- has an essence, where it’s like a prism, you can see all the rest of them, due to the nature of the Cognitive Realm and the spren’s ideas, Cognitive things coming to light.  Have I spent too much time looking at the Shard?

Brandon: No, you are on the right path.  Of all the things you noted, that one is the one that is perhaps the most important.

Questioner: The prism idea.

Brandon: The idea that Roshar is special and a key on Shadesmar.

 

Brandon’s comment that Roshar is “special and a key on Shadesmar” may simply mean it is located between the Cognitive Realms of so many planets. The various “Expanses” seem to match up with other Shardworlds. Roshar’s Shadesmar is like the Grand Central Station of the Cognitive Realm.

 

But he may mean something deeper. Shadesmar seems unique in one important respect: no single idea or object is represented there in anything resembling its Physical Realm counterpart. This is unlike the mist objects we’ve seen in Scadrial‘s Cognitive Realm. Instead, each glass bead in Shadesmar carries the blueprint of its object, rather than its shape. With the addition of Stormlight, each bead snaps onto other beads to form that object according to the blueprint. The WoR prologue gives examples.

 

We know Adonalsium invested Roshar. Brandon tells us that Roshar is “heavily invested,” though we’ve seen little evidence to date of any more investment than anywhere else. Brandon also says that Adonalsium intentionally left bits of his power on Roshar that became self-aware splinters.

 

What if Adonalsium also left a piece of his mind, stranded somewhere in a glass bead, waiting for the right magic to unlock and rebuild the Cognitive version of his body? With his mind recovered, Adonalsium could then begin to call his power back to him, stripping each of the Vessels of their Shard. Adonalsium could re-create himself.

 

As wild, rampant, and almost totally unfounded speculation, this ranks right up there, even for me. But, hey, isn’t that the purpose of this Forum?

 

Conclusion

 

Enjoy the list of WoBs. Again, if you have any to add, please do so. Regards to all!

Edited March 17, 2016 by Confused

[+Authweight]

I have nothing to add right now. Great collection of important WoBs though. I think I've seen all of these, but seeing them gathered in one place, along with bits of relevant speculation, is great to get my theorizing juices flowing. Thank you!

[Stormgate he/him]

I'm personally interested in the gaining Feruchemy bit. As far as anyone knows, you can only get it by birth. But he was shaky on that, effectively RAFOing anything else. So, maybe Hoid got it the second way.

[Argel he/him]

Regarding "5. Where Gods Died"...   Given:

Liar of Partinel

Back then, just after the Gods died and nearly took the world with them....

and

“And then, the Gods died,” he said, softening his voice as Hoid had taught him, his illusion showed a tempest in the sky, followed by a wave of creeping white covering the landscape.  “And with their death was born the Skullmoss, crawling from their corpses, slinking across the land.

 

While not canon, it seems much more likely that "where gods died" refers to where LoP takes place (presuambly Yolan?) than Sel.

[PallonianFire he/him]

Hah, you posted about Liar of Partinel while I was typing up my post about it.

 

I do want to know what the "gods" in LoP are/were, since it supposedly takes place before the Shattering. There's clearly something cataclysmic that went on before that story begins.

[Nashan’Elin he/him]

Regarding "5. Where Gods Died"...   Given:

Liar of Partinel

and

 

While not canon, it seems much more likely that "where gods died" refers to where LoP takes place (presuambly Yolan?) than Sel.

Liar does take place on Yolen, but I don't think it's still canon. AFAIK the current iteration of Dragonsteel is pre-Shattering

[Argel he/him]

Sorry, and that was my first post here as well!  Maybe it ties into the motives for killing Adonalsium (no doubt a RAFO).

[Nashan’Elin he/him]

EDIT: Sorry, accidentally double-posted the same thing

Edited March 17, 2016 by Nashan'Elin

[Argel he/him]

Do we know if the LoP sample chapters are pre or post shattering? Edit: I assumed it was pre-shattering.

Edited March 17, 2016 by Argel

[Shadowfax]

 

What if Adonalsium also left a piece of his mind, stranded somewhere in a glass bead, waiting for the right magic to unlock and rebuild the Cognitive version of his body? With his mind recovered, Adonalsium could then begin to call his power back to him, stripping each of the Vessels of their Shard. Adonalsium could re-create himself.

 

 

I could get on board with this... if we can speculate that Adolnasium knew of the Shattering in advance. Was it aware of its impending demise? Did Hoid warn Adolnasium of plans to Shatter it? Rayse and Hoid used to be friends, was Hoid part of the planning to Shatter, and then turned away from this path and now hates Rayse for his part in it? Is the Moon Sceptre needed to find the beads in Shadesmar (to find the right bit(s)) and use them on some other planet or through a different application of magic than is available on Roshar?

 

I will have to read more to find if there are already WoBs or answers to my questions but with the info I currently have, these are good questions for me.

[The Invested Beard]

Yeah I'm still pretty convinced that there was a precursor to Feruchemy, if not Feruchemy itself, pre-shattering and that's what Hoid has. I also think that the most of our Cosmere history reveals will be from Roshar.

[the.fulgid he/him]

Do we know if the LoP sample chapters are pre or post shattering? Edit: I assumed it was pre-shattering.

 

Yes, Liar of Partinel and Lightweaver of Rens (currently only working titles) both pre-date the Dragonsteel series, which will be about the shattering of Adonalsium.

[Lurky McLurkerson he/him]

I don't know that proto-feruchemy would have the same focus (metal), as focus appears to be a function of the planet it is on. 

[Ari he/him]

I always thought the reference to Hoid not living all of those years might have been related either to some Cognitive shenanigans, or simply to using Temporal Metal Allomancy when his Feruchemy tells him he needs to wait a long time.

 

 

I don't know that proto-feruchemy would have the same focus (metal), as focus appears to be a function of the planet it is on. 

 

Indeed, if Yolen had some sort of proto-feruchemy, I'd expect there wouldn't be any metalminds involved, but rather the Yolish focus would be required instead.

[KSub]

Hoid likes bacon.