RedBlue

If Moash’s Odium painkiller supply holds steady, I can’t think of a way out for him either. But if the new Odium changes things up, Moash is going to have to make changes in response. He can’t just live with himself — that’s why he cared so much about baiting Kaladin in RoW. If Moash can’t be a better person, that means he doesn’t have to try. Moash knew deep down that he was doing wrong and he hated it, which is why he needed Kaladin to ‘prove’ that Moash was in the right. So if Taravangian takes away Moash’s ability to hide from his demons, then he’s going to have to confront them properly, and I think that’s the starting point of his redemption arc.

I assume this is the WOB being referred to? It is notable that this is from 2014, Brandon was answering a question off the cuff, and what exactly constitutes a ‘secret society’ can be arguable in some cases. TLDR: I don’t think we should take the number nine as gospel.

Exactly how I feel. I love redemption arcs, and I would love to read a Moash redemption because Moash is so terrible. We’ve seen him dig himself into a hole. He has hit rock bottom and kept digging. He has made one dreadful choice after another for three books. He’s lost all sympathy. If he manages to turn it around and dig himself out again, after everything he’s done … that would be epic.

Generally enjoyed the book. Really loved the premise, the illustrations, and the ‘handbook’ pages. The main parts I was less sure about were the cartel plot and how the mystery of Runian’s backstory took up so much of the story. I was more interested in the medieval dimension, the Frugal Wizard company and inter-dimensional travel, and I felt the book was at its strongest when it was focusing on those things. I certainly would read more Frugal Wizard books if Brandon decided to turn it into a series. It would be interesting to follow characters who do more ‘normal’ wizard things in their dimensions — someone who tries to build a utopia or conquer the world, like the handbook suggests.

For sure, I’m not arguing that this isn’t a window into Hoid’s mindset. He definitely is acknowledging his own hubris (and the hubris of the 16 original vessels). I just think that extrapolating any further than that is iffy.

I don’t think we can read too much into Hoid’s ‘for your own good’ comments. It could mean that he regrets the Shattering and his decisions surrounding it. Or it could just mean that he recognises his own arrogance, but still thinks he did the right thing. And I don’t think it’s necessarily the case that the ‘for your own good’ line was spoken to Adonalsium. We still don’t know if Adonalsium was a person you could have a conversation with. Hoid +16 could have been speaking to a different faction of humans/dragons/others who wouldn’t have wanted the Shattering to happen.

When I said ‘cultural artefacts’, I don’t mean worldhoppers, I mean beliefs or practices taken from Scadrial. Lumar natives have their own religion, which involves worshipping the moons, and other than the one weirdly random Death reference, they don’t seem to have been influenced by Scadrian beliefs.

I mentioned it in another thread, but I don’t think Tress has actually heard of Marsh or Death. think the line about Death is an example of Hoid localising the story for his audience. Lumar doesn’t seem to have any other Scadrian cultural artefacts. Their religion involves worshipping the moons. So the random Ironeyes reference feels like it’s coming out of nowhere if we take it literally. That’s why I think Tress ‘really’ used some equivalent phrase in her language that the audience wouldn’t have understood, and Hoid ‘translated’ it into a Death reference to keep the effect.

I would find it very odd if Aviar’s usefulness in navigation weren’t widely known. Other cultures need to navigate dangerous areas too, and if Aviar are a major export of First of the Sun, you can bet it’s common for navigators everywhere to use Aviar. Besides, you could make this argument for Scadrial (Hoid namedrops Sazed) and Roshar (Nahel bonds) as much as for First of the Sun. Also, if he is telling the story to a bunch of First of the Sun natives, you have to explain why (other than the Aviar) he references Scadrian animals throughout the story instead of First of the Sun animals.

2) I’m pretty sure turning someone into a rat is really advanced, but technically possible for anyone with the ability to use Aons, access to enough Investiture, knowledge, and skill. From what we’ve seen of Elantrian abilities, they can use Aons as a kind of programming language. I assume Riina’s ‘curses’ were just really, really complex ‘programs’ written with Aons. I would be interested to find out where the Investiture was coming from. 8) I got the impression that Xisis let Tress go because she was both competent and determined to escape. Even if she didn’t stand a real chance, escape attempts would be a bother for him to deal with. Crow would be less disruptive to his work. (It’s unclear why he needed an ‘excuse’.) 9) I think the mention of Death was a ‘localisation’. Hoid is translating the characters’ dialogue into the language his audience speaks, and most translators will switch out culturally loaded phrases to equivalent phrases in the target audience’s culture. So here, Tress really made a reference to some local belief, but Hoid changed it to an Ironeyes reference so he wouldn’t have to stop and explain. That makes more sense to me than a fragment of Scadrian religion winding up on Lumar, stripped of all other context.

I gotta say, it’s really cool how Brandon was able to write a whole book unplanned, have it be fun and make sense as a self-contained story, and make it feel relevant to the wider cosmere, and experiment with a new narrative voice, all without making any part of the book feel strained or shoehorned. I was not expecting this book to be the story of how Hoid got Elantrian powers, and I’m still gobsmacked that it worked so well.

Given the spaceship and various other tech, I think most of us are assuming the story takes place in space age cosmere, after TLM and Stormlight.

Re: Xisis’ research — thinking about it, it’s probable that studying spore sea ecology and studying aethers/spores amount to the same thing. If there’s anything alive down there, it must interact closely with the spores. Studying the ecosystem could easily lead to breakthroughs about the spores, and vice versa. Maybe there’s some animal or plant down there that can control the spores in some way, and Xisis planned to learn to mimic it. Alternatively, controlling the aethers/spores might have been a subgoal, to enable him to better study the ecosystem.

They haven’t been explained in a published work yet. We expect them to be a thing in Dragonsteel (Hoid’s backstory novel).

I was suspicious when a talking rat turned up, because animals acting oddly is generally a sign of shenanigans in cosmere books. I suspected Huck wasn’t a rat in Chapter 12 when Tress was walking over the spores to the Crow’s Song, and Huck commented that the crew didn’t look like the king’s people. I thought it was an odd thing for a rat to know at a glance. Then, I paged back a bit to take another look at his meeting with Tress, and I thought … yeah, this rat is definitely Charlie.

Good catch, @StormingTexan. It does look like Foil is Xisis. It seems like he did manage to find a way to control the aethers, though how he’s doing it and the limitations are still anybody’s guess.

Traffic shouldn’t be an issue. Ships sail on top of the spores, while Xisis is a good distance under the surface. Keeping away from the Midnight Sea makes sense, but you’d think an ecology researcher would want to move around a bit more over 300+ years. I don’t remember a Foil being mentioned. Is this from White Sand?

Yeah, the dragon’s ability to move stuff around could well be a Yolish ability we don’t know about yet. I’m leaning towards the idea that Xisis is not that proficient at real combat. He seems like more of a scholar than a fighter. (He does use the word fear, which doesn’t sound like a ‘conflict would be inconvenient’ situation.) No, the text (chapter 51) specifically says that Xisis is researching the ecosystem at the bottom of the spore sea: The Aethers are more important to the cosmere, I am sure, but Xisis is here to research the planet. It seems he has very different priorities than everyone else. I left out the undersea spore palace and tunnel because honestly I do not know what to make of it. I’m not convinced that Xisis made or is actively maintaining it; we don’t see him interact with the spores the way we do with the cloth. My best guess for how it works is that maybe Xisis made some kind of deal with the Crimson Aether Moon to make the palace stay in place and the tunnel appear when he needs it. That would explain why he’s restricted to the Crimson Sea. If that’s the case, it doesn’t explain how he can move the cloth. Or there could be something completely different going on with the palace. For all we know, someone else built it or a device that maintains it, and Xisis bought or took it. If Xisis can move all that weight in spores at will and hold them in place continually, that’s crazy OP.

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).

The men of red and gold may well be constructs of some kind, but they seems much, much more advanced than what Riina is using. Riina’s metal men wouldn’t be an existential threat to Era 2 Scadrians, I don’t think. Also, it would surprise me greatly if Riina turned out to be working for Autonomy. Riina seems to be drifting through the cosmere, not achieving much, terrorising people who can’t fight back. Not the sort of person Autonomy chooses to work with.

Good catch. That must have been a fun letter. “Hey Ulaam, by the time this letter reaches you, I will have been cursed on purpose by a sadistic Elantrian as part of an elaborate scheme to get awesome glowy powers. Please come bail me out!” Good question. I think the timing is a coincidence, seeing how nonchalant Riina is about Hoid. She seriously underestimates him. As an aside: I don’t think the ‘war’ was ever really going to materialise. I think the king is blustering for political reasons. There’s no way he can fight the Sorceress with the level of tech available to his armies, he doesn’t have people like Tress on tap, and anyone actively governing can’t be stupid enough to pick a fight they will lose so badly.

Good point. It would imply that Xisis has a LOT of Breath, but there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. I can’t think of a more convincing explanation.

I don’t think you missed anything. And since there’s no evidence to go on, we can only speculate. I’ve seen some people who seem to think that Design must have died or something. IMO, that’s unlikely. It would feel weird, narratively, to introduce a cool and interesting new secondary character as a foil for a fan favourite recurring character, then have her be conspicuously absent, then to reveal that she gets killed off. She’s probably just doing her own thing somewhere else.

Xisis was the first good canonical look we’ve had at an actual dragon, Cultivation aside, so I thought I’d round up some of the things we know now. About Xisis specifically (unclear how much this is typical of dragons, and how much is just Xisis): Xisis keeps ‘servants’, though other characters refer to them as slaves. He likes his ‘servants’ to be well-mannered, preferably skilled to begin with, and easy to train. He doesn’t care if they came to him willingly, and they’re not allowed to leave, but he makes sure their physical and emotional needs are well met (within reason). Generally, Xisis seems short on empathy, but is interested and entertained by ‘mortals’. Xisis can make a cloth move ‘as if alive’ by waving a claw at it. The cloth then seems to react to Crow on its own. He can also reliably receive a message in a bottle dropped anywhere in his part of the sea. Xisis makes a point not to interfere with the human societies on the planet where he’s living, though it’s okay that people know he exists, and he has no issue interacting with individuals who come to find him. Xisis needs an ‘excuse’ for his decision to spare Tress. He does not explain why. Xisis implies that he fears Riina, and nobody else on Lumar. This suggests that a single, sufficiently skilled, Elantrian could realistically pose a threat to a dragon. Xisis is currently researching the ecosystem at the bottom of the spore seas, a backwater with little to no relevance to the cosmere at large. As of the events of Tress, he has been there for at least 300 years, possibly longer. About dragons generally: Dragons encourage ‘mortals’ to respect and fear them, as this may prove useful later. To that end, Dragons make an effort to seed stories and legends about themselves through societies around the cosmere. They often visit forming societies for this purpose. Dragons hoard ideas, but are uninterested in traditional forms of wealth or treasure. Dragons will not give or accept a free gift. If they take something, they need to trade something of value in exchange. (Ulaam implies that this is normal for dragons, not just Xisis.) Dragonsteel is a metal that grows on dragons’ bodies. It forms claws, horns and spines. Dragons are not always in their ‘natural forms’. Meeting a dragon is rare for most people, though they don’t dislike interacting with people. Questions I have: What is that thing Xisis does with the cloth? It looks like Awakening, but Xisis doesn’t speak to do it. Was the cloth ‘pre-programmed’ and just waiting to be turned on by a gesture? How does Xisis ‘watch’ the sea? How does he know when someone throws in a message? Where does he get his servants from? Are they all from people like Crow, who find him and bring him a new slave in return for something? Where did the objects he traded to Tress come from? How did he know Ann’s prescription? Or where Salary’s father was? Why does he need an ‘excuse’ to spare Tress? Is there some kind of enforced dragon code of conduct? Who would hold him to account? Why are dragons so weird about trades? Why is Xisis so interested in the ecosystem in the spore seas? Why is Xisis afraid to tangle with Riina? Why is it so rare to see a dragon, if they have no problem interacting, and like collecting information and trading? A few tentative conclusions I think it’s reasonable to draw: Dragons have access to powerful abilities, especially ones to do with gathering information, but are not necessarily that good in a fight (or Riina wouldn’t be a big deal). Dragon psychology is weird. Like, really weird. There are hard-and-fast rules they follow very strictly, to a point that does not make intuitive sense to humans. Dragons are relatively rare in the cosmere. Few people see them, either because few exist, or because most of them live somewhere inaccessible.

I agree that Hoid is referring to ships from a different system. Why would that rule out technologically advanced planets? Once the space age is underway, I would assume all planets have been landed on by ships from at least one other system. This information rules out nobody. Also, I see a lot of people latching on to the Aviar reference as a hint that the audience is from First of the Sun. I think that’s a bit of a leap. Lots of people know what an Aviar is; Aviar have been traded to other planets via Shadesmar for ages (Mraize had one way before the space age). Aviar are probably common knowledge by this point. And the ‘around the world’ vs ‘around their world’ phrasing is just how that phrase goes.