How Long Does Hoid Stick Around?

[Teichert]

I've been really enjoying looking for Cosmere-related clues as I read through Brandon's work, and I thought of a question.

When Hoid visits a world, how long does he generally stay there before moving on? He appears in all 3 books from Mistborn Era 1, but was he there during all that time or did he leave and come back? He is/was also the King's Wit in Alethkar, the Imperial Fool of the Rose Empire, and a storyteller in Hallandren, positions that I assume took some time to get into. I'm not sure if there is any mention of these kinds of details in the books themselves (I haven't read them all yet) or if Brandon has revealed anything while answering questions. What do you all think?

Theories are welcome, but please don't spoil stuff for me. So far I've read Elantris, Hope of Elantris, Emperor's Soul, Warbreaker, Mistborn Era 1, Alloy of Law and Way of Kings.

Edited April 5, 2018 by Teichert

[RShara she/her]

There's no hard and fast answer to this, alas.  It's "however long it takes to accomplish his goals" is about all we can say.

[Yata he/him]

As our Wise Woman @RSharasaid there is not a fixed time.

For example, we know he remained in Elantris for 10 years. But mainly we don't know how long his visits took.

We know also he left Scadrial during TFE, he returned almost around WoA's ending and then he remained until the end of the book and quite beyond (as there were no ways to leave the planet)

[Weltall]

Yeah, what seems to happen is that his Hoid-sense starts tingling and tells him 'Hey, you need to be on this world!' so he goes there. Then his Hoid-sense (which is some means of manipulating Fortune) draws him to specific locations where he'll hang out untl he figures out what he's supposed to be doing there and does it. Repeat until either his Hoid-sense stops tingling or it tells him he needs to be on another planet and he leaves. Though he's clearly willing and able to visit places or hang around after the fact for reasons not related to his compulsion to be 'where he's needed', as in his visit to Scadrial during the events of Alloy of Law.

Quote

i_do_stuff

Hoid likes to be in interesting places. What was so interesting about the Yomen/Joshin wedding that he had to be there?

Brandon Sanderson

In that case, he went to congratulate friends. Not everything is about large-scale cosmere problems.

source

A couple of things of interest to the scholars of All Things Hoid. He has a base of operations somewhere in the Cosmere. Brandon has implied that it's only accessible via the Cognitive Realm and probably exists only there, a la Silverlight. It's implied that he spends a lot of his time there. Also, Hoid has sometimes shown up on worlds, waited around for a while and then left without doing much. Whether this is because he missed whatever opportunity his Hoid-sense was telling him about or never figured out what it was, we don't know. But Brandon has mentioned that Hoid is drawn to worlds because of what happens on them so it's unlikely that these 'Hoid shows up, no novel-worthy plot is happening' incidents are complete coincidences.

9 hours ago, Yata said:

For example, we know he remained in Elantris for 10 years. But mainly we don't know how long his visits took.

Does he? We see him enter the Perpendicularity at the end of Elantris (10A edition) so he probably didn't hang around the planet the whole time until unwritten Elantris sequels/The Emperor's Soul happened (whichever is first, IIRC it's the former) or between the two. But he does appear to spend years at a time on some worlds, as with Scadrial and Roshar. In the latter case, he seems to have spent at least one of those years in the stomach of a greatshell for... some reason that probably makes sense to him. Probably.

Edited April 4, 2018 by Weltall

[Zelly]

 

35 minutes ago, Weltall said:

. In the latter case, he seems to have spent at least one of those years in the stomach of a greatshell for... some reason that probably makes sense to him. Probably.

I can see his Hoid-sense/Fortune check  like, "Eh.  Nothing urgent going on for a year."

 

What to do?  Performance art.  Lift does say he shocked a watching crowd. 

[Windrunner2319]

Spoiler

We see him in Mistborn 1 and then when Kelsier is in the Well of Ascension we see him coming back through, so he can't have been off Scadrial that long.

 

[Landis963 he/him]

22 hours ago, Zellyia said:

I can see his Hoid-sense/Fortune check  like, "Eh.  Nothing urgent going on for a year."

 

What to do?  Performance art.  Lift does say he shocked a watching crowd. 

I can totally see Hoid doing this, too.  Especially when bored.