Honestly not a lot new here, just a deeper dive / resynthesis of some stuff, with a little of the French edition thrown in.

I'm working on another post that builds on this, and in the middle of switching web hosts so there's no point in putting it on my website at the moment. Thought I'd post it here.

This post is an idea that I touched on during some of my signs musings, but has taken a deeper root in my mind and I thought was worth exploring more thoroughly.

It begins with this curse from Selitos (upon Lanre) in chapter 26 of NOTW:

"This is my doom upon you. Your own name will be turned against you*, that you have no peace. This is my doom upon you and all who follow you."*

What does that really mean, that Lanre’s name was turned against him, and for that matter that it was turned against all who followed him (ie presumably the Chandrian)?

As I observed in those previous musings, what pretty much happened to Haliax is that the darkness within him manifested externally and became his sign.

This makes sense to me in two ways. Firstly, a name is the essence of a thing. That idea is repeated throughout the book to the point that I don’t think I need to provide a specific quote. So turning an individual’s name against them is like turning the essence of what they are against them. Secondly, it makes me think a lot of Bast’s description of grammarie from The Lightning Tree: “It’s about making something into more of what it already is.”

Right, so, Lanre picked up the mantle of dark power, his new name is Haliax, and now that darkness shrouds him and is his sign. Check. Chapter 26 practically says as much:

“This is my doom upon you. May your face be always held in shadow, black as the toppled towers of my beloved Myr Tariniel.

“This is my doom upon you. Your own name will be turned against you, that you shall have no peace.

Selitos watched as a darkness gathered about Lanre. Soon nothing could be seen of his handsome features, only a vague impression of nose and mouth and eyes. All the rest was shadow, black and seamless.

“This is my doom upon you and all who follow you. May it last until the world ends and the Aleu fall nameless from the sky.”

But what about Cinder?

What can we see from firsthand narrative about Cinder, when he appears in Chapter 16?

"Everything about him was cold and sharp and white." He moved “with unnatural, sinuous speed.”  His voice was “like a chill wind." It was "sharp and cold."  He has “quicksilver grace.”

"His sword was pale and elegant. When it moved, it cut the air with the brittle sound. It reminded me of the quiet that settles on the coldest days in winter when it hurts to breathe and everything is still."

His eyes “were black like a goat’s but with no iris. His eyes were like his sword, and neither one reflected the light of the fire or the setting sun."  I find that phrase particularly interesting: his eyes were like his sword. His "sword like winter ice."

So, he is inhumanly graceful. He is winter cold. He has black eyes like winter ice. (In short, he’s “chill and dark of eye.”)

But back to his eyes being like his sword. What would it mean if his eyes being dark directly related to the cold?

Well, it supports the idea that he is something like the Fae.

We have seen two Fae characters up close, and they both have solid-colored eyes with no whites (at least while not under a glamour). And I think the colors are important too.

Felurian: ... a sort of twilight blue. They were fascinating. In fact ... there wasn’t any white to them at all.... Dedan lists “Lady of Twilight” as one of Felurian’s titles in WMF Chapter 81, and the fact that her glade is under a twilight sky is well-established.

Bast: The eyes that watched Chronicler were still a striking ocean blue, but now they showed themselves to be all one color, like gems or deep forest pools In chapter 13, one of Bast’s titles (or possibly his father’s) is stated to be the “Prince of Twilight.” Bast’s eyes are described as a “striking ocean blue.” While an ocean could actually be a wide variety of colors, I personally always pictured them much the shade that Echo Chernik drew them in this illustration.  

***

In NOTW Chapter 92, after Bast grabs Chronicler’s iron disc, his eyes are “solid blue, the color of deep water or the darkening sky.” And they “grew paler, until they were the pure blue of a clear noontime sky.”  This establishes that the baseline color of his eyes is something of at least a late afternoon hue. Not twilight, but perhaps a color between Twilight and Dayward. It certainly can’t be denied that both their eyes are colors that the sky can be.

Cinder’s black eyes are also a color that the sky can be- the night sky. So if there is some correlation between his eyes and his nature, what could we glean from this?

“Felurian described those two points of the Fae compass as Day and Night. The other two points she referred to at different times as Dark and Light, Summer and Winter, or Forward and Backward.”

In WMF, Kvothe and Felurian cross into the Night-side of the Fae. It's inhabited by things that Felurian doesn't want to draw the attention of.

She says of the fae at one point “many of the darker sort would love to use you for their sport,” and I don't think “darker” was metaphorical.

And of course there is the Shadow Fae from the Moongate Maze, which notably did Cold damage.

The coldness of Cinder is emphasized again in the Trebon vase. There is a bare tree, like winter. He is standing on water– not in it, but “on it,” like it is frozen, and there are drifts of snow.

Ben says about the Chandrian: "They're supposed to be cold to the touch" 

His coldness goes beyond normal for a fae.  In WMF Chapter 96 Felurian is described as,  "she was nothing like cold stone. She was warm..."

In the English NOTW, Selitos says “Your own name will be turned against you.” In French he says, “Ton propre nom sera retourné contre toi,” which is pretty much a word-for-word match to the English. The most basic translation of the verb “to turn” in French is tourner; retourner has a connotation of “being turned back” vs. just turned, but it’s the sensible thing to use in this sentence.

Now let’s look at what Haliax says in Chapter 16:

Ch 16: "Who knows the inner turnings of your name, Cinder?" French: Qui connaît les détours de ton nom, Cendre ? More or less literally: Who knows the twists and turns of your name, Cinder?

That is not the most straight-forward translation of the English. Instead, care has been taken to use détours, calling back to the “retourner” (turn) root of “retourner.” 

I talked before about how I believe “Ferule” is not Cinder’s name, but a binding of iron. (Remember, “fehr” = iron and “ule” = binding in NOTW Ch. 51.) Cinder’s reaction to it in Chapter 16 seems like a more severe version of Bast’s reaction to an iron binding.  (You know what it doesn’t seem like at all? When Kvothe sings Felurian’s true name in WMF Chapter 97. )

So, I posit that Cinder is colder and more vulnerable to iron, and has those dark eyes because his name/nature was turned against him.

Furthermore I think these are not 3 random things. They are connected. They are all rooted in the nature he shares with the fae, and that is why they all manifest together.

Tried a new avenue of attack on Denna's letter. Parts of it make sense, not entirely though, so I don't think this is it. But, maybe I've missed something, and someone else taking a similar attack might land on the right answer. Could be nothing - probably nothing.

Method was to take the keyword and count backwards. Keyword counts as 1, the output word is the 13th word.

Kvothe,
Received abroad opportunity
Am pass lungs, my small a
between all meet, I may have to
Furtherinse letter I mention,
Been traveling
Long road back

In order to not bog down the sub, I'm only posting once I have 7-8 more chapters. So far I've had a new one every morning prior to 8am EST (except this morning, late night). Broad category here if you want to check it before the next 8 are live. Let me know if you still think I should keep going. CH15 has an analysis of Ben's name, CH16 a couple big questions about the Chandrian attack.

• Name of the Wind analysis — Prologue
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 1
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 2
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 3
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 4
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 5
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 6
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 7
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 8
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 9
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 10
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 11
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 12
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 13
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 14
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 15
• Name of the Wind analysis — Chapter 16

I've been wanting to form a cohesive theory around this topic for some time, but I'm just not in a good position to do so right now. It's been way too long since I've reread the books and even when they were more fresh, I had trouble getting all my thoughts in order. But I'm wondering if anyone else has gone down this road already...

Basically, the most powerful form of Alar would come about not by convincing yourself that something is true, but by convincing many others. Songs and stories would be the preferred tools to cultivate this sort of Alar, and this is a story about stories, after all. Plus it could explain why the Chandrian care so much about what sort of songs are being sung about them, and why Denna was commissioned to make her Lanre song.

I also admit I get hung up on how Pat created such a nice, tidy magic system in sympathy, but Alar, the cornerstone of the system, is itself left a mystery. What is it about this world that gives beliefs such power? Or are we supposed to just accept that hey, this is fantasy, at some point magic is just magic?

So basically I'm looking for theories that go into the real nitty gritty of WHY Alar is a thing, or theories about my proposed "collective" Alar and how it could be harnessed.

Also interested in theories about the origin of sympathetic bindings. Personally, I believe there is one "natural" language of the world. Names (with a capital N) make up the nouns and adjectives of the language, and sympathetic bindings make up the rest of the grammar (verbs, most importantly). All magic boils down to communicating in this language. Sympathists need to use Alar as a stand-in for Names, and are thus limited by the strength of their own Alar. Namers gain control of the things they can name, but without using verbs they can't get REAL creative. Shapers Speak (or Sing) in complete sentences, with both Names and bindings.

Hey friends — 

Edit: here's the category for quick access to all chapters.

After feedback from u/TheLastSock, I’ve tried my best to stitch thoughts together more so that it’s not mere shorthand for the handful of us sharing several assumptions. This will still be a bit more stream-of-consciousness than I prefer because I’m going chapter by chapter and dealing with things as they arise, but that's the nature of it — having your text on hand will help. That said:

I’ve always thought we needed a place to chronologically cite and embed potentially relevant reddit theories as they crop up while throwing my own in the mix. I’ve included my own assumptions and a note on the Ptolemaic system in every post, but the table of contents will let you jump ahead to the chapter in focus.

Some disliked me mentioning my own novel, so I deleted those mentions. Sorry about that. There's always my about page, I suppose.

Here are the links so far:

Edit: for those that read the first two on the other sub there is SIGNIFICANT editing on Prologue and Ch 1 to explain more broadly my perspective. Worth double checking those, especially for the relevant reddit thread links:

• Name of the Wind reread — Prologue
• Name of the Wind reread — Chapter 1
• Name of the Wind reread — Chapter 2
• Name of the Wind reread — Chapter 3
• Name of the Wind reread — Chapter 4
• Name of the Wind reread — Chapter 5
• Name of the Wind reread — Chapter 6
• Name of the Wind reread — Chapter 7
• Name of the Wind reread — Chapter 8

Most importantly: please let me know if you'd like me to continue. If this is less useful to folks than it is to me or is only recycling stuff instead of moving the conversation forwards, I'll need to reevaluate if I only want to do it for myself. But if you all like it and want it to continue, I'm happy to carry on as I am able.

If not, I'm grateful for everyone here and will return to lurking. All the best and thanks for making these years of fandom fun.

Lancelot

POST SCIYRLOET:

EDIT #2 — After u/Katter's feedback:

...that there is too much text before the chapter analysis. It's hard to get to the info I'm looking for, and the table of contents doesn't really get you there since there is so much text before the actual chapter info... The link on the one table of contents does jump ahead. But the chapter table of contents for the chapters still includes all of that extra text.

1. I moved the Table of Contents all the way up to the spoiler header. This should give us a bigger buffer for the spoiler alert AND make it possible to immediately jump to the chapter.
2. I included a chapter navigation at the end of each chapter. This should make it easy to jump forwards from here on out.
3. I deleted the repeat of the assumptions from the prologue post. This should streamline the reading experience and make sure we're only getting new substance with each chapter.

Keep an eye out for chapter 9. I'm only going to post updates every 8 or so blog posts.

just food for thought about an iron key (maybe a magnet?) and a copper lock mechanism.

why might it not be working?? if it had ever been under water for any significant period of time, then the copper would corrode the iron with the water working as the solution. think green copper, like the giant metalworks in the underthing.

might kvothe have been too clever for his own good? perhaps. it wouldn't be the first time.

hope you are all well. i saw this video just now and couldn't resist posting it

https://youtu.be/KQzMfMLsm18?si=T8x610cfmfC3_G_b

A post in Tomes the other day was asking about the map of the eld and why it was actually in the lockbox. A good question which made me dig out one of my old maps to refresh my memory and to show my working. Sorry about the quality.

'What's that?' Dedan asked It was a careful map of the surrounding area, featuring not only an accurate depiction of the curving highway, but the locations of nearby farms and streams. Crosson, Fenhill, and the Pennysworth Inn were marked and labelled on the western road.'

In the discussion about the X where they think it is the camp, we hear

'If this is right we are closer to Crosson than I thought. We could just head southeast from here and save ourselves more than a days walking.' 'I didn't think we had come that far south. We'd save at least two dozen miles going that way.'

So by thinking the X marked the bandit camp, the team appeared to be further south than they had thought. From here, it would be a shorter hike southeast to the forest's Southern edge than it was going westwards to Crosson and ultimately to the Pennysworth Inn. This would put them closer to Severen 'by about a dozen miles' and thus closer to home.

Of course X wasn't the bandit camp , that was further north. Getting back to the maer would be less walking for Hespe but the lure of a night at the Pennysworth Inn to recover fully won the day, so they went west from the X and found them selves in uncharted territory.

So this corner of my map needs a little tidying up. I think it's pretty much there but I did it a long time ago and my homework needs proving or disproving before I draw it up in ink. Any questions ?

I was rereading for the billionth time and I noticed that Trapis's Robe is described as being all patched up, so that Kvothe couldn't tell its original color: "He wore a long robe, patched and mended to such a degree that I couldn’t really guess at its original color or shape." (NOTW)

In Wise man's Fear, Kvothe is describing what he thinks Taborlin's Cloak looked like, and he says the very same thing: “Sometimes I think of it like a quilt,” I said. “Made entirely out of patchwork, a bunch of different colored rags and scraps." (WMF).

While obviously I doubt Trapis is secretly Taborlin, I think its sweet Kvothe seems to connect the two.

I haven't seen this idea before, it's a small thing and not all the pieces fit, but I figured that it could be worth some thought.

The ranks among the arcanum are E'lir, Re'lar, and El'the. Reversing those words from the apostrophe, gives lir'e, lar're, the'el.

That's the whole idea, everything else is tinfoil and speculation on what it could mean, if it means anything at all.

The first two are very similar to Lyra (Lir'e) and Lanre (Lar're), but the last one doesn't link to anyone as far as I can tell. Is the University's ranking system potentially named or inspired by historic figures? It would not make sense to put Lanre above Lyra in terms of magic and naming, unless you're working backwards and know that Lanre becomes a better namer than Selitos (who considers Lyra to be his equal) before he turns. If we assume the'el is a peer/contemporary of Lyra and Lanre, then maybe E'lir, Re'lar, and El'the are a way of referring to those namers without drawing their attention, similar to pig-latin, taking the last bits of their name and moving them to the front, possibly even adding or removing letters. I'm not interested in trying to deduce the exact nuances on how this system could work, with only two potential data points, and an unknown third, so I won't, but there might be more here.

Assuming this is a way of referring to powerful namers without drawing their attention, and that whatever text/source/tradition resulted in the University using these names/titles was from a time after Lanre turned, and seems to rank them according to ability. Who could The'el be, assuming these things? Selitos, Aleph, Tehlu (although one would assume that would be lu'teh, like Luten, is that another example?), other angels, iax/jax/the 'enemy', and more, are all possible answers.

To summarize another theory I've read (but can't find) Iax might not be a name, rather a title or word meaning sower/weaver (Haliax would then be salt - sower). Whether or not one accepts this theory (Haliax translating to 'breath of Iax' is my preferred one), I think it is rather well known.

So, if Iax is not a name, but a placeholder, an epithet, title, or word being used as a stand-in for the real name of the "enemy", as using the real name of the greatest namer/shaper would be a bad idea. Can we find anything to support their name being some flavour/variation on The'el, things pronounced like: Thu-el, The'el, The L, Thael, Theel, Thell, Thall (there's too many possible varitaions, but I think you get the idea). If Iax really is an epithet, and their real name is close to The'el, then they would be The'el Iax. Which is almost Haliax, but that's probably because I decided, somewhat abitraily to add iax at the end, plus we know that Haliax is Lanre, so would they really be listed twice. But if Iax /is/ an epithet, then that's where it would go, at the end of the "enemy's" name, The'el Iax.

That last paragraph is so tenuous and too much tinfoil for me to honestly stand by it. Am I trying too hard to fit a square peg in a round hole? Maybe, but it feels like there's something here, it seems too unlikely that e'lir and re'lar are so close to Lyra and Lanre just by accident or coincidence. Any and all thought's welcome.

Goal: Someone on the main sub asked about the various eye colors we knew of. I searched my ebook on "eyes" and still had to spot check, so could have missed some.  Interestingly, "dark" eyes is used for brown, green, and blue eyes. But for the green and blue, the dark only comes with people who's eye color changes (Kvothe, Bast, Felurian, Elodin - Fae/Iax connection?). Many characters are simply said to have "dark" eyes without a color ever stated.  I also included other descriptors besides color in some cases, where it seemed particularly descriptive.  

Kvothe:

• his eyes a shocking, vibrant green

• Then he saw Kvothe’s eyes. They had deepened to a green so dark they were nearly black.

• “It suits you,” she said. “The color brings out your eyes. Not that they need it. They’re the greenest thing I’ve seen today. Like a piece of spring.”

• But your eyes really do change color. Normally they’re bright green with a ring of gold around the inside. . . .” “I got them from my mother,” I said. “But I’ve been watching. When you broke the pump handle yesterday they went dull green, muddy. And when the swineherd made that comment about the Ruh they went dark for just a moment. I thought it was just the light, but now I can see it’s not.” “I’m surprised you noticed,” I said. “The only other person to ever point it out was an old teacher of mine. And he was an arcanist, which means it’s pretty much his job to notice things.” “Well, it’s my job to notice things about you.” She cocked her head a bit. “People probably are distracted by your hair. It’s so bright. It’s pretty . . . pretty distracting. And your face is really expressive. You’re always in control of it, even the way your eyes behave. But not the color.” She gave a faint smile. “They’re pale now. Like green frost. You must be terribly afraid.”

• Kote - There was a rhythm to it, but no music, and the innkeeper’s eyes were distant and joyless, so pale a green they almost could have passed for grey.

• His eyes were sharp and bright, green as a blade of grass.

• Mola looked at me. “They’re dark,” she said, sounding surprised. “Dark green. Like a pine bough.” Wil continued. “Don’t argue with him when his eyes go dark like that. No good comes of it.” “It’s like the noise a rattlesnake makes,” Sim said. “More like hackles on a dog,” Wilem corrected. “It shows when he’s ready to bite.” “All of you can go straight to hell,” I said. “Or you can give me a mirror so I can see what you’re talking about. I don’t care which.”

Bast: 

• striking blue eyes

• The eyes that watched Chronicler were still a striking ocean blue, but now they showed themselves to be all one color, like gems or deep forest pools

• Bast’s eyes were now the pale blue-white of lightning, his voice tight and fierce.

• Bast leaned closer until their faces were mere inches apart, his eyes gone white as opal, white as a full-bellied moon.

• Bast’s dark eyes were hollow and hopeless.

Laurian:

• Her eyes were green with a ring of gold around the pupil.

Cinder:

• Except his eyes. They were black like a goat’s but with no iris. His eyes were like his sword, and neither one reflected the light of the fire or the setting sun.

• matte-black eyes

• hollow eyes

• black eyes

• nightmare eyes

• empty eyes

• His eyes, black as beads of ink.

• pure black

• coal-black eyes

Orphan baby:

• Trapis said as he put down one of the babies and picked up the other. It looked around owlishly with wide, dark eyes, but seemed unable to support its own head.

Menda:

• He stood proud and tall, with coal-black hair and eyes.

Tehlu:

• “Try no tricks, dark one. Speak no lies,” Tehlu said sternly, his eyes as dark and hard as the iron of the wheel.

Skarpi:

• an old man with eyes like diamonds

• “Did I,” his voice rolled out slowly, like dark honey, “hear someone say Lanre?” He looked directly at me, his blue eyes clear and sharp.

• diamond-blue eyes

• bright eyes dancing

• sparkling eyes

Lanre/Haliax:

• Selitos saw nothing but emptiness behind his eyes.

• “Will you kill me to cure me, old friend?” Lanre laughed again, terrible and wild. Then he looked at Selitos with sudden, desperate hope in his hollow eyes.

Selitos:

• Selitos, his eyes unveiled, looked at his friend.

Andan:

• burning eyes

Justice Priest Erlus who arrests Skarpi:

• He was lean, with sunken eyes that smoldered like half hidden coals.

Wil:

• characteristic ruddy complexion and dark hair and eyes.

Elxa Dal:

• Severe dark eyes, lean face, short black beard.

Elodin:

• Elodin was younger than the others by at least a dozen years. Clean-shaven with deep eyes.

• dark eyes

• Then Elodin’s eyes changed. He stopped looking toward me and looked into me. That is the only way I can describe it. He looked deep into me, not into my eyes, but through my eyes. His gaze went into me and settled solidly in my chest, as if he had both his hands inside me, feeling the shape of my lungs, the movement of my heart, the heat of my anger, the pattern of the storm that thundered inside me.

• But that was nothing compared to when he met my eyes. For a heartbeat it was simply unsettling. Then it almost felt like the light on the stairway grew dim. Or that I was suddenly being thrust deep underwater and the pressure was keeping me from drawing a full breath.

• Elodin’s eyes were green, sharp, and mocking.

Fela:

• She was strikingly beautiful with long, dark hair and clear, bright eyes.

Jamison:

• A man with the body of a sparrow and the eyes of a hawk.

Arwyl:

• half-lidded eyes

Mola:

• She had green eyes that stood out in her pale face.

• striking green eyes

Kilvin:

• but a grin shone in his dark eyes

Marea (Girl who doesn't win talent pipes):

• I could see the clear blue of her eyes from where I sat some thirty feet away.

• the soft blue of her gown was a reflection of the deep blue of her eyes.

Denna:

• Her eyes were dark. Dark as chocolate, dark as coffee, dark as the polished wood of my father’s lute.

• dark eyes

• I’d remembered the shape of her eyes, but not the weight of them. Their darkness, but not their depth.

• All except her eyes. They were dark and deep, the color of coffee and chocolate. Her eyes were dancing with amusement, full of laughter.

• deep brown of her eyes

• I looked deeply into her eyes. They were like dark pools.

Draccus:

• It stopped just inside the circle of firelight. Its dark eyes shone red, and there was red on its scales. [Note: the red appears to be from the reflected fire]

Nina:

• Her eyes were hollow and dark, as if she had been crying, or missing sleep, or both.

Mercenary/"skindancer":

• His eyes were dark and sunken, as if he hadn’t slept in days.

Geoffrey:

• She was talking to a young man who was…the best word I can think of is pretty. He had a sweet, clean-shaven face with wide, dark eyes.

Devi:

• Her lips were wet, her pale blue eyes intense.

Inyssa:

• young woman with bright blue eyes and honey-colored hair

Sleat:

• dark eyes

Sceop:

• bright blue eyes

Adem Mercenary in Denna's letter:

• remarkable grey eyes

Maer Alveron:

• His eyes too, seemed to belie his age. They were clear grey, clever and piercing. They were not the eyes of an old man.

• sharp grey eyes

• eyes were hard as flint 

Lady Hesua:

• The woman was perhaps thirty, with dark eyes and an elegant, wicked mouth

Bredon:

• As he sat there, peering at me with his lively brown eyes, he reminded me of an owl.

• curious brown

• dark eyes crinkling with amusement.

Meluan:

• My eyes wandered over maddeningly familiar features. Might I have met her at the Eolian? That didn’t seem likely. I would have remembered. She was strikingly lovely, with a strong jaw and dark brown eyes.

• Her dark brown eyes were gravely serious.

Tempi:

• He was fair-skinned with light hair and pale grey eyes.

Losi:

• Her eyes a bright, dangerous green.

• bright emerald eyes

Ludis:

• Her eyes were dark and wise, her smile was full and knowing.

Felurian:

• Her closed eyelids were patterned like a butterfly’s wings, swept in whorls of deep purple and black with traceries of pale gold that blended to the color of her skin. As her eyes moved gently in sleep, the pattern shifted, as if the butterfly fanned its wings.

• Felurian slowly relaxed out of her stretch and looked at me with ancient eyes. Eyes unlike anything I had ever seen. They were a striking color … The summer dusk was in her eyes … a sort of twilight blue. They were fascinating. In fact … With lids of winged butterflies … there wasn’t any white to them at all….

• Flashing moon silver, midnight blue her eyes The lids were subtle-colored butterflies.

- Her eyes were of the bluest black Like night sky with the clouds blown back

• dark eyes

• Felurian’s eyes were black in the dim light.

• her eyes began to brighten from their customary twilight purple to a deep-water blue.

• Her eyes were still changing, brightening to a bluish-white.

Iax:

• “this shaper of the dark and changing eye stretched out his hand against the pure black sky. he pulled the moon, but could not make her stay. so now she moves ’twixt mortal and the fae.

Fae brown birds:

• leaf-green eyes

Woman in Pennysworth (after Kvothe returns from the Fae):

• She had a sweet face and clear blue eyes.

Shehyn:

• I turned to see an older woman with the characteristic pale grey eyes of the Adem.

Vashet:

• along with the pale, creamy complexion and grey eyes. Her hair was lighter than Tempi’s by a fine shade, and she wore it pulled back into a horsetail.

Celean:

• Her grey eyes were huge in her tiny face.

Penthe:

• They were huge in her small face, slightly darker grey than usual. They were so bright and clear that when she smiled, the sight of it almost broke my heart.

Magwyn:

• Her eyes were like Elodin’s. Not in any of the details. Elodin’s eyes were green, sharp, and mocking. Magwyn’s were the familiar Adem grey, slightly watery and red around the edges. No, the similarity was in how she looked at me. Elodin was the only other person I had met who could look at you like that, as if you were a book he was idly thumbing through. When Magwyn met my eyes for the first time, I felt like all the air had been sucked out of me. For the barest of moments I thought she might be startled by what she saw, but that was probably just my anxiety. I had come to the edge of disaster too often lately, and despite how well my recent test had gone, part of me was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Carceret:

• Her eyes were like knives.

• Those angers were pale candles compared to the forge fire burning in Carceret’s eyes.

Ellie:

• but her blue eyes were wide and vacant.

Krin:

• To my surprise, she opened her eyes and stared at me. Not the marble stare she had given me before, she looked at me with the dark eyes of a young Denna.

• Her eyes had gone to flint as she watched Alleg.

• serious dark eyes

Not sure how much I believe it yet, but I want to entertain a possibility here.

The Ancient Cities were Destroyed Twice

It's a common theory that the Underthing is the destroyed city of Belen. I myself believe this. If we accept that to be true, how do we make sense of this piece of SROST:

It was a tiny figurine carved from a piece of pale, retiring stone.

It was a tiny Ciridae. Of course.

Auri is in Wains, deep in the Underthing, when she finds this figurine in the newly discovered sitting room Annulet. A figurine of a Ciridae, the elite group of Amyr. Wait..? The Amyr, who didn't exist until *after* the seven cities were destroyed? If the Underthing was Belen, and contains a figure that could not have existed until long after the destruction... Is it possible the city was destroyed twice? Possibly thrice?

If so, it may be that Trapis' story of Encanis is not a Creation War story at all. It may truly have come some time later. Let's suppose for a moment that Trapis' story is instead a story from the dark days of humanity, some time after the destruction of the seven cities. There's a great deal of focus on trying to make this a Creation War story, but maybe it is not.

In Trapis' story, humans exist. Whereas in the other Creation War stories, humans do *not* exist yet. (I personally have been thinking that Creation War has a double meaning involving the creation of humanity, marking the beginning of biogenetic reproduction, and the end of mysterious, enigmatic Ruach reproduction)

In Trapis' story, demons exist concurrent with humans. If Trapis' story takes place some years after the fall of the Ergen Empire, this still makes sense. There could still be some of the Shapers shaped creatures around.

In Trapis' story, Tehlu is a god who has no corporeal form until the supposed birth of Menda. If Trapis' story takes place some years after the summit at Myr Tariniel, this certainly tracks, since Tehlu gave up his body to gain the powers bestowed by Aleph.

I *do* still believe the Tehlu/Menda story has been churchified into propaganda. But maybe not to the extent we've been thinking.

Rough, approximate, alternate timeline?

• Creation of the Fae realm -and- of humans
• Stealing of the moon. Start of Creation War
• Events of Drossen Tor, death of Lanre, sealing of enemy, etc.
• Lanre revived, end of war approaching, etc.
• Lanre deceived, seeks power where it was better left alone, etc.
• Death of Lyra. Poisoning of the leaders of the seven cities
• Lanre’s armies rise. Fall of Myr Tariniel
• Great Summit at Myr Tariniel -- Creation of Amyr and Angels
• 1st era of humanity begins. Third group of Ruach become Edema Ruh, Adem, and Tahl
• Refugees head toward Tinue, “How is the road to Tinue?”
• Less war, but more culture clashes -- humans vs. those who knew magic
• Humans and/or Angels cast old magic users out of the four corners
• Humans rise and repopulate the ruined cities of Ergen Empire
• In this era, humans are aware of the angels and Amyr. During these dark/middle ages, the stone Ciridae figurine is created
• Humans learn to use magic, rebuilding the University, discovering naming and its derived arts
• Tehlu decides to intervene in the world, making himself known, destroying some lingering shaped creatures
• Some combination of Amyr, Watchers, and/or "En canis"/"the seven", destroy those cities where magic has been rising, including New Belen (Underthing). Auri’s Ciridae figurine is sealed away
• 2nd era of humans begins. Founding of Tehlinism
• Lacklesses control Tinue
• Magic again begins again to rise among humans
• Some combination of Amyr, Watchers, and/or "En canis"/"the seven", again intervene in the world
• Caluptena burns for this reason. Lacklesses lose control of Tinue
• Aturan Empire rises, partly due to the desire to stop or slow the next resurgence of magic -- which will invariably lead again to great forces intervening and destroying things

Still in the early stages of thinking on this. Thank you <3

all credit goes to Khaleesi75 -- reposting their comment from a post a while back:

It is my understanding that Ambrose used the dried blood to create the mommet. Whatever he did to the mommet resulted in Kvothes core temperature to drop causing the same symptoms as binder's chills. It seems reasonable that to achieve this Ambrose just needs to reduce the temperature of the mommet by putting it into an ice box. This is essentially creating a heateater similar to what Kvothe did in Trebon to help put the fires out. The mommet, bring sympatheticly linked to kvothe's blood, will siphon away heat towards the cooler temperature.

It is interesting that you bring Cinder into this. It is already an established theory I think that Cinder could be a living heateater. He essentially draws heat from everything around him. Let's use the 'kvothe- mommet- icebox' analogy with Cinder. Kvothe is the environment from which the heat is drawn. Is Cinder the mommet? If so, then where does the heat go? Is Cinder the icebox? Let's look at the other analogy of the heateater in Trebon. Kvothe used a broken wood shingle that was burning.

Elxa Dal had always said that all fires are one fire, and all fires are the sympathist’s to command. Very well then, all fires were one fire. This fire. This piece of burning shingle. I murmured a binding and focused my Alar. I used my thumbnail to scratch a hasty ule rune onto the wood, then doch, then pesin. In the brief moment it took to do that the entire shingle was smoldering and smoking, hot in my hand.

I hooked my foot around the ladder rung and leaned deep into the cistern, quenching the shingle in the water. For a brief moment I felt the cool water surround my hand, then it quickly warmed. Even though the shingle was under water, I could see the faint line of red ember still smoldering along its edge.

I pulled out my pocketknife with my other hand and drove it through the shingle into the wooden wall of the cistern, pinning my makeshift piece of sygaldry under the water. I have no doubt it was the quickest, most slapdash heat-eater ever created.*

Trebon here is analogous to the Cinder's environment.

The burning wooden shingle which draws the heat is Cinder.

And this is a classic example of why I love these books. Because according to the dictionary,

cinder - .

a small piece of partly burnt coal or wood that has stopped giving off flames but still has combustible matter in it.

Kvothe used a cinder to create a heateater. Rothfuss is actually telling us that Cinder has been bound to the world. He draws heat away towards a metaphorical cistern. The million dollar question is what is the cistern?

Can we revisit an old post from a while ago? I've been lurking in the sub archives and there are a couple posts that might be connected.

https://old.reddit.com/r/kkcwhiteboard/comments/9efwox/he_stole_the_moon_and_with_it_came_the_war_vs/

I was thinking about the similarities between Jax/Kvothe:

They both (allegedly) cause wars.

(Jax) stole the moon and with it came the war.

Kvothe:

• Kvothe gave his student a long, weary look. "You know better than that, Bast. All of this is my fault. The scrael, the war. All my fault."

• "I'm responsible for everyone who dies in this stupid war. I was just hoping to save one. Apparently even that is beyond me."

They both don't listen.

Jax:

“Are you sure you won’t consider staying for a month or two?” the old man said. “You could learn to listen just a bit more closely. Useful thing, listening.”

“You’ve given me some things to think about,” Jax said. “And I think you’re right, I shouldn’t be chasing the moon. I should make the moon come to me.”

“That’s not what I actually said,” the old man murmured. But he did so in a resigned way.

Kvothe:

• Sim let out a sigh, brushing his sandy hair out of his eyes. “Am I your touchstone or not? This is going to get tedious if I have to tell you everything three times before you listen.”

• “But, if you’re teaching other students, why not me?” “Because you are too eager to be properly patient,” he said flippantly. “You’re too proud to listen properly. And you’re too clever by half. That’s the worst of it.”

• “Okay,” Sim said, exasperated. “You need to shut up and listen. This is alchemy. You know nothing about alchemy.”

• Manet set his cards down with profound calm. “Kvothe. You’re a clever boy, but you have a world of trouble listening to things you don’t want to hear.” He looked left then right at Wilem and Simmon. “Can you try telling him?”

• “There isn’t anything worse than the Cthaeh!” Bast shouted, bringing his clenched fist down on the table top again. [...] “Reshi, shut up and listen. Really listen."

(source: the other post I came across: https://old.reddit.com/r/kkcwhiteboard/comments/ka5f0y/listening/)

They both live(d) at one end of a broken road.

Back to the post linked above: what's the key similarity?

• They both stole something?

• They both did (stole?) something related to the moon?

• They both did something related to Haliax, who is somehow connected to the moon?

It seems likely that Kvothe did something related to the moon.

What are your thoughts?

Today is thirteenth birthday of Wise Man's Fear. It's time to share this :)

I believe Narrow Road is our roadmap for how phrase-length magic works. (Narrow Road spoilers warning)

Have you ever wondered about the seven and ten words? What's their deal? They can't possibly just exist in a vacuum -- all alone, all by themselves. What's the bigger picture?

Why is the title, "The Narrow Road Between Desires" a perfect anagram for "Thirteen Words Bend, Ease, or Wear"?

These questions and more are explored!

Thirteen Words Theory

Excerpt:

I’ll cut straight to it. I believe Narrow Road is meant in part to be our guide on how the KKC phraseology magic works. This may be the clearest tell:

“Say it then,” Bast said.

Rike said, “I want to make a deal.”

Bast gave the barest shake of his head. “Say: ‘Bast, I want you to make a deal with me.’ ”

Rike drew a breath before he continued. “Bast,” he said, with such deadly earnest solemnity that a priest would envy it. “Please make a deal with me.”

Bast asks for ten words, but Rike gives seven. We already know those phrase lengths have significance to people who know naming and/or desire-based magics. On top of that, the fae magic of obligation looms large here – phraseology counts extra. However, it’s unlikely that Rike wants Bast to fall in love with him, and (kind of) unlikely that Bast wants to break Rike’s will.

So, I’ll first make the claim that seven words aren't so much about "making someone fall in love with you”, nor are the ten words aren't about "breaking someone's will". Those are specific use cases. By acknowledging only those uses, we’ve lost the general use case.

I posit that on a baser level, the seven words align generally with making and ten with breaking. As in:

"Three slow circles deasil. The proper way for making."

"He walked widdershins, turning against the world. The way of breaking. Three times."

If we can accept that the seven and ten words aren't confined to manipulating love and will, we can start to guess at the general use. Let’s pull it back. Seven words of making seem to impart some positive impression. Ten words of breaking seem to take away (And, well, if you can’t accept that there’s a wider view to be had… take a ride here anyway; see if your mind changes).

Now, back to Bast and Rike’s exchange. Bast wants those ten words, phrased that particular way, to generate a debt – Bast wants Rike to ask for a favor. When you do a favor for someone, they owe you something in return – a main theme of the novella. By Rike’s use of seven words, those particular seven words, no debt is incurred. It’s “Please do this” – it becomes a benevolence, an effort of goodwill on Bast’s part. Rike isn’t giving seven words to make Bast love him, rather, it’s about generating this goodwill.

Much more in the link!

Short version

When it's time to tell Felurian's story in Pennysworth Inn, Kvothe mirrors what Skarpi did with Lanre's story.

If there’s a parallel, maybe there's also a pattern to discover what Skarpi was hiding.

Let's see.

-Useful chapters: NOTW 26 (Skarpi), WMF 73 (Denna), WMF 107 (Kvothe).

-Here’s the whiteboard's take on the reliability of KKC’s inner stories, maybe it can be useful.

-Music, if you're bored and this post is too long.

“Pulling a Skarpi”

AKA “telling the truth, but omitting/modifying a couple of details for narrative reasons”.

Let’s start with Kvothe’s story of Felurian…

Then I moved to the front of the room, sat on the heart, and told them the story. Or rather, I told them a story. If I’d told them the entire truth they wouldn’t have believed it. (…) So what I told them was closer to the story they expected to hear. All in all, it was a good story. And if it wasn’t entirely true… well, at least it had some truth mixed in. (…) Lies are simpler, and most of the times they make better sense.

…and then let’s continue with Skarpi’s version of Lanre.

“All stories are true,” Skarpi said. “But this one really happened, if that’s what you mean. (…) More or less.”

“You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.”

Same methodology: sometimes, the truth is not what the story requires.

The problem is that, unlike with Kvothe, we have zero insight into Skarpi's mind. We don't know what he wants, what moves his heart, or why he's telling those stories. It's pretty clear he has a personal agenda, but besides that I don't think we have much info.

In Kvothe's case we know exactly why he's telling the tale, and same for Denna's rendition of Lanre's story (basically, it's a commissioned work for Master Ash).

With Skarpi? Who knows.

By the way, >!I just pulled a Skarpi myself.!<

Given the nature of this post, it was almost mandatory. In case you haven’t spotted my intentional (but irrelevant) trickery, don’t worry: we’ll come back to it before this post ends.

Kvothe - Felurian's story

Let’s start by checking what are all the “mistakes”, the omissions, or the embellishments in Kvothe’s story of Felurian.

Then, well look at Skarpi’s version of... Lanre? Selitos? Both?

What info remained secret?

-1 Well, no mentions of the Cthaeh or Naming, for example.

The rest of the info can be conveniently omitted because Kvothe had his own particular narrative reasons. But since I told you that Kvothe pulled a Skarpi, let me add that Skarpi conveniently skipped the Cthaeh as well... but the Cthaeh IS part of the story, as WMF 105 proves!

Even better: WMF 105 tells us that Lanre speaking with the Cthaeh is what happens right before Skarpi’s version of Myr Tariniel’s story!

Lanre spoke to the Cthaeh before he orchestrated the betrayal of Myr Tariniel.

If Skarpi knows how it really went, omitting that info speaks volumes. By the way, Skarpi mentions the Creation War without telling us what started it. Surprise surprise, the Cthaeh is involved once again.

-2 Technically, Kvothe is also excluding that in WMF 106 Felurian gave him a lot of other little gifts that he didn’t bring back into the human side. I don’t think it’s meaningful at all, I'm just pointing out that if Kvothe wanted to include other gifts from Felurian, he had the possibility of doing so without lying.

-3 Felurian’s reasons for not letting Kvothe go away.

Without knowing the truth, Felurian seems a way better ‘person’ than the fae predator she actually is. Remember: the only reason Kvothe manage to run away was because he was keeping a song hostage. Not even the shaed is a gift of gratitude. It’s more a keepsake to remind Kvothe about his promise.

Stripped away of the motive, the public is left only with means and occasion.

And so, if I were a client at Pennysworth Inn, I’d probably leave the inn thinking “man, I really wish I could stumble on Felurian right now. I’m definitely a better lover than this teenage bard, so what’s the worst that could happen to me?” and… I would die.

As easily as it takes for you to say “Ambrose” three times.

Even assuming I was a musician and could maybe save myself by holding a song hostage, I’d lack info.

Had Kvothe been a bit more truthful, people would admit that searching for Felurian is NOT worth it. That finding Felurian is a disgrace, rather than anything else.

The lack of real motives hugely changes the story. And keep in mind this is Kvothe we’re talking about: besides impressing some clients and a waitress, he has no personal agenda on the subject. Basically we were in the best possible position for a truthful story, but a coplue of omissions changed everything.

Not the story, mind. The story is proper. But it's not exactly true anymore.

-4 Basically, all the fight/powers/magic scenes were either removed or changed.

And so Kvothe’s story becomes a classic fairytale adventure, spiced with sexual elements.

But it should be a cautionary tale rather than an adventurous story. Because in reality it was about serious danger, followed by guile, unknown horrors and the Cthaeh.

But as Kvothe says,

Lies are simpler, and most of the times they make better sense.

And we'll see that both Denna and Skarpi make good use of this advice. However, unlike in Denna's case, Skarpi's motive remains unknown.

Skarpi - Selitos/Lanre's story

Let's start by NOT assuming that Skarpi is simply telling a story without any personal agenda.

I find particularly interesting that while young Kvothe asked for a story about Lanre, Skarpi started with:

“Did I, (…) hear someone say Lanre?” (…) “Who would like to hear the story of a man who lost his eye and gained a better sight?”

Lanre’s not the subject! Selitos is!

And right after, Skarpi briefly mentions Lanre, but then immediately starts with Selitos’ city, and then Selitos himself.

“So, Lanre and the Creation war. An old, old story. (…) Sit and listen for I will speaking of the shining city as it once was, years and miles away…”

While we're at it, let's also notice that in NOTW 28 it's still more about Selitos than Aleph or the Ruach.

We know, thanks to WMF 105, that

Lanre spoke to the Cthaeh before he orchestrated the betrayal of Myr Taryniel

Are we supposed to believe that Skarpi, storyteller, seer, and whoever else he may be, doesn't know about the Cthaeh?

If you want to skip the three sections below and check Denna's version first, feel free to do so.

I'll spoil it a bit and say that Denna's version wants Selitos to be a tyrant, and if we reread NOTW 26 we immediately notice three things.

1 How the characters are introduced

Because curiously Lanre is tied with the word “trust” often-times. Elsewhere Lanre is called “fair”, be it his face or his values. And in Skarpi's story Lanre protects, defends, is first in line to fight... a textbook hero.

The first adjectives to decribe Lyra? Terrible and wise.

Now, Lanre may love her and we associate positive connotation to the word love, but what an interesting choice of terms from Rothfuss.

By the way, Selitos is well loved by the people he protected.

Now: by themselves, all these terms don't have additional meaning. But if you add Denna's version things change a bit, and you start asking yourself some questions like:

1 Everyone and their mothers put their trust in Lanre. Not Selitos. Why?

2 Where is Selitos everytime Lanre and Lyra are in the middle of the fight?

3 Why does Selitos protect only his city? I mean, the immediate answer is obvious, but put it in context: the world is burning.

4 Where was Selitos during the Blac of Drossen Tor? Because it's clear he wasn't there. Or where was he during the several years that passed between Drossen Tor and Myr Tariniel's razing?

Or better:

Why does Lanre's steamrolling of Myr Tariniel warrant Selitos direct intervention, while all the other cities had to make up for themselves? What makes Haliax worth preventing, but not the Ergen Empire's enemy?

Long story short: either Selitos isn't wise like Skarpi's story wants us to believe, or we should suspect some malice.

2 Lyra and deceit

Are we sure Lyra did resurrect Lanre?

Because she calls him thrice (and this time, the third time doesn't seem to pay for all), but he comes back only later. Are we sure Lyra was able to do anything?

By the end of Drossen Tor, we don't 100% know if Lanre is already Haliax, although we can reasonably suspect.

Because Skarpi's story doesn't bring up the term sleepless, but the exchange between Selitos and Haliax tells us the latter is now hated, hopeless and sane.

But deathless? Lanre was that already, way before Myr Tariniel. It happens right after Drossen Tor. It's the same place where he gets his new shadow-like armor, btw.

From beyond the doors of death Lanre returned.

Riddle me this: the newfound Haliax is now more powerful than Selitos (and thus Lyra), finds new powers and still cannot bring Lyra back to life?

While it's true we don't know the circumstances of Lyra, it seems inconsistent that Haliax cannot save her, given he's now one of the most powerful people in the world. Why shouldn't he at least be equal to his beloved?

Unless Lyra wasn't the reason he came back from the dead, of course.

Skarpi's story insists on the power of love, and yadda yadda. But once we think about it, we realize that we don't know absolutely anything about Lyra. Sure, she's powerful. She loves Lanre. And Lanre loved her.

That's it.

I don't see any difference between Kvothe glossing over Felurian's nature and Skarpi glossing over Lyra and Selitos.

Also, Skarpi conveniently mentions:

My wife is dead. Deceit and treachery brought me to it, but her death is on my hands.

but in his story nobody wishes Lanre ill.

I mean, Lanre is people's only hope!

He's the reason why the Creation War can still be won! You know when people start losing hope again? Only when the war's almost done but Lanre disappears (ps Selitos where are you, once again).

The question isn't just "why would someone betray Lanre", but "who" is stupid enough to do it? Because without Lanre, the war is almost lost!

3 A particular exchange

It's even worse when you reread Skarpi's story and consider that most of Lanre's words can be sarcastic.

You have given me enough, old friend.

These are the very last words Lanre says before turning on Selitos. And right before, Selitos was offering help.

But thing is, I don't see him offering that much help during the war! Years have passed since Drossen Tor, and Selitos doesn't even know what happened to Lyra!

Lyra isn't just Lanre's beloved: she arguably the reason why the war is almost over!

And again, Skarpi's version gives us a little insight on how Selitos reasons:

Selitos had heard the rumors, and he was worried. He feared for Lyra's health, but more he feared for Lanre. Selitos was wise. He understood how grief can twist a heart, how passions drive good men to folly.

Well, he may be worried indeed, but he is compassionate only up to a certain point. Maybe it's me projecting, but to me it looks like he's more worried about what Lanre could do, rather than how Lanre is doing.

More than fearing for Lyra's health, he seems to fear for Lanre's grief and eventual consequences. Btw he doesn't know how Lyra's health is, but immediately jumps to "grief" when considering Lanre's condition. Heh.

Now that I've suggested that Selitos may not be the saint that Skarpi's story makes him to be, let's see Denna's counterpoint.

I mean, the fact that she calls her song the Song of Seven Sorrows is telling already, taken without context it could even insinuate the Chandrian are victims!

Important: Skarpi's story is 100% suspicious and we have reasons to doubt. Denna's story, instead isn't suspicious: we know for a fact her story features manipulation. It can't be otherwise: it's a commissioned work, and most likely it will be used to ingratiate the Maer.

Denna - Selitos/Lanre's story

First of all, Denna believes everything is just a story. Second, she was helped by her patron. But also third, like Skarpi and Kvothe she prioritizes narrative over truthfulness.

It wouldn’t make any sense. The whole story falls apart if Lanre isn’t the hero.

Clear mistakes:

The city’s name wasn’t Mirinitel

Enough said.

Lanre wasn’t a hero. (…) Lanre was a monster. A traitor. You need to change it.

Lanre’s figure is too ambiguous to blindly trust Skarpi or Denna’s version above the other.

Consideration: Lanre is called many times as “betrayed”, here instead Kvothe calls him traitor.

The two things aren’t mutually exclusive of course, but I’d say “Lanre wasn’t a hero” is false, “Lanre was a monster” is correct given what he did, and I’m really unsure about “Lanre was a traitor”.

“In the version of the story I heard, (…) Lanre became one of the Chandrian.”

This is not necessarily true! I guess Kvothe should have read Rhetoric and logic :(

I half suspect the song is for Alveron himself.

If there’s conflict of interests, Denna’s (and Master Ash’s) song can’t be 100% trusted.

Lanre was cursed by Selitos. It was the perfect ending for a tragedy.

Which means that, according to both Skarpi and Kvothe, here’s some foul play at work. Remember Kvothe's words: “lies are simpler, and most of the time they make better sense.”

And this particular one... makes too much sense. Especially since NOTW 28 will prove that Selitos is still not done with Lanre.

To close it all

More than likely, Selitos is a bastard. But we don't know why.

Lyra is unknown. Simply an enigma. It could even be the reason why Selitos pulled some vile shit, given how she's described.

Lanre's the victim. After his losses he decided to sow salt, and for that he can probably be blamed. But it's not on him whatsoever.

The Cthaeh is involved, its extent unknown.

“Deceit and treachery brought Lanre/Haliax to this.” By a mere logic of character economy, either deceit, treachery or both come from Lyra or Selitos. We could add the enemy sealed behind the doors of stone, maybe, but only for the deceit part. The enemy couldn't betray for sure, given they were on the opposing side. The Cthaeh doesn't betray anybody. It doesn't need to, nor it pretends otherwise.

I guess I could add something more, but I think the bones for the soup are already here.

Let's notice that Kvothe's story of Felurian skips on characters' motivations, adds a couple of details for narrative purposes and omits relevant magic info (for good reasons, we could say).

Skarpi's story of Selitos/Lanre skips on one character's motivations (Selitos), almost ignores Lyra as if she were a fourth rate character while she's actually a big mover of the events. It omits relevant info (I'd say humans don't need to know about the Cthaeh? But here I'm just speculating) and I don't know if it's adding new details.

Our friend Denna says it clearly: “I need to expand the battles and his relationship with Lyra”, and while I think she's just talking about metrics, overall I think she got to the core of the issue. We know nothing about Lyra.

The obvious litmus test with Denna is that the Song of Seven Sorrow because famous. Apparently this is not Arliden material, and can be sung at leisure.

And with this, I'll leave you to your eventual considerations. At the beginning of the post I told you I was "pulling a Skarpi" myself, and I've just given you a hint to see where I was cheating. If cheating it is. of course: I didn't lie, I just excluded a little thing.

Like Skarpi, I guess.

Solution: in WMF 107 Kvothe is not pulling a Skarpi, >!he is pulling an Arliden!<.

This post is about KKC, I swear.

Just give me few minutes.

So.

Close your eyes (although, since you still have to read this post, you should probably close them later) and imagine a sort-of rural, middle-aged world. A world where social classes are quite distinct, a world where some particular races are widely considered lower than the others, a world where archaic social constructs rule how people think and act.

In short… a world like the vast majority of Temerant.

Because if you don’t think the KKC setting to have some intentional society flaws, you should ask yourself why Rothfuss decided the University Masters to be an all-male cast, for example. He regrets not giving the Waystone Inn some female clients before WMF, but the masters had to be all male. ^^^guess ^^^why:)

Temerant IS sexist, Temerant IS classist and Temerant IS judgemental.

For good narrative reasons.

In narrative boredom is the devil, and conflict holy water. Can you imagine a Temerant where everyone is accepting towards Ruh? I did, and it would be a disaster: think of how many good narrative scenes we would lose!

Another good reason for inherent prejudices is they allow a character like Kvothe to shine and prove stereotypes to be wrong, both in good and in bad.

This way, the reader gets both message and irony: when Kvothe says that Ruh aren’t thieves, contrarily to what the majority thinks, he’s absolutely right. At the same time, Kvothe, who considers himself Ruh to the bone, steals almost every day of the year.

Anyways, back on track: let’s picture a middle-ages, sexist, classist, secluded world like I asked you few moments ago.

It's rural too, because we're not talking about illuminated places like Imre.

Ann, Al… oh, gee

There's five characters total, and no need to learn their names. I decided to number them for no particular reason.

One day, in a secluded monastery between the mountains, a novice^[1] comes back to his peers bringing a prostitute^[2] with himself.

A filthy whore, why not. This is a sexist society, like I said, and a certain gender is lower than the other due to particular reasons that we won’t care about. As long as we keep in mind that they exist. What really matters is, those reasons deem that socially, morally and physiologically, the whore is lower than the monks.

But the novice dares to disagree, and has a proposal.

“Brothers, you can see” he says, “ that she’s a good person. We shouldn’t judge her. All she needs, is some guidance that she never got in her unlucky life. Lately she’s been interested in the Holy Book – I’ve seen her trying to read it, although she doesn’t know how. Why shouldn’t we teach her the Scriptures and our Ways? There’s potential in this person!”

The monastery feels conflicted. Brother Prison^[3] thinks this is a terrible decision: “my father would have never wanted a woman here, it will bring discomfort between us. She doesn’t know our ways, our vows, our aims. She’s here just because she fooled you, novice. She’s going to take the Scriptures and pervert them to her own dirty biddings.”

The novice and other monks reply: “the Scriptures say to help those in need and eventually show them the Proper Way. There’s no way we can abandon her.”

Despite the conflict among the community, after having listened to both sides, the High Priest^[4] (an optagenuarian dude who rules the abbey both by merit and age) decides the prostitute deserves a chance.

He gives her to Brother Amentis^[5] to be taught and eventually judged.

Everything clear, insofar?

But more importantly: you already seeing where I’m going and why in KKC Carceret has a point, right?

Because insofar, the prostitute/Kvothe has done nothing wrong.

Maybe this prostitute is bah-buh-babbling some pages of the Scriptures, but it’s not her fault. It’s the novice who taught her how to sort-of read before even reaching the monastery.

Objectively, the girl has done nothing wrong. Because being a prostitute/musician in a male/female oriented society, by itself and common sense, it’s not wrong whatsoever.

However…

Xenophobia aside, Brother PrisonCarceret is onto something indeed. Because if we continue with the analogy we’ll see that Kvothethis particular prostitute, despite not really being at fault of anything, is… heh…

But let’s continue.

The High Priest decides the girl will stay in the monastery. Some people are complaining, but it's not up to them to decide. The High Priest decided the girl stays, that Brother Amentis will take care of her and eventually judge her, and that's it.

Brother Amentis starts the training. And he immediately starts on hard mode: difficult introductions (and the girl passes), difficult tests (and the girls smashes them), difficult teachings (and the girl, with some difficulties, progresses).

In few weeks, the prostitute is learning to read the Scriptures, although aloud and by pointing at words with her finger.

By monk standards? Clumsy.

By outsider standards? Outstanding.

…but it’s soon going to be evident that this girl is a problem.

Because she’s not here to become a nun, and... never claimed otherwise! She’s also not here to stop being a prostitute, by the way.

Unlike the monks, she has zero issues about prostitution.

Plain and simply, this girl is just here to learn to read!

This is quite a problem, right? And it’s not like Brother Amentis doesn’t get it!

Point is, the girl isn’t going to learn to read in order to appreciate the Scriptures. She’s going to learn to read because she wants to learn to read, full stop. And she may also read the Scriptures for reasons that directly contrast with the monks’ beliefs.

Let’s make it clear: Brother AmentisVashet isn’t just an idiot. Vashet is a gigantic idiot.

Because one thing is giving a chimpanzee a machinegun, another is teaching it how to use it, and another is doing both fully knowing your new monkey is the happiest trigger in the forest.

Of course it gets worse: let’s go back to our fictitious monastery.

The girl has been living in the monastery for some months.

Notice I’ve been using “girl” instead of “prostitute”, because slowly but steadily she’s been winning the brothers on her side. Except for Brother’s Prison’s faction, but some people simply cannot change their mind. Their loss.

Did you know there’s been a brawl in the refectory because one monk punched another one in the eye due to their differences concerning their new guest?

It doesn’t matter: now Brother Amentis, teacher extraordinaire, is also making another novice named Celean read the Scriptures with the new girl, and it’s clear she’s winning Celean’s mind and even his young heart.

How could it not be? The girl is smart, and charming, and cheerful, and… well, different.

But she’s not here to learn the Scriptures: she’s here to learn how to read!

Vashet is an imbecile and Shehyn is jeopardizing the collectivity’s wellbeing for a newcomer without really knowing how he reasons.

Or the fact that he's already killed many people. Except she knows, and Tempi told her what Kvothe can do!

…you’re really teaching kung fu and gifting a sacred Adem sword to the guy who does voodoo with corpses?

You’re really teaching secret moves, language code, secret traditions, forbidden names et cetera to the travelling bard?

I swear it on my username, on my posts, on the ever-moving moon: there’s no bigger idiot in KKC than Shehyn. Kvothe and Iax included.

Anyways, let’s go back to our analogy, because once more things are going to get worse.

The prostitute learns that the monastery has weak defenses in certain wall structures. The prostitute learns that the monks’ dresses exist for particular theatrical reasons. The prostitute learns the monks’ secret religious language. This is the same prostitute who used to get drunk in taverns and chat about whatever was on her mind just few weeks ago.

Oh, and she keeps learning how to read. She’s becoming very good at it.

Except, once again, she’s not going to learn the Scriptures. She doesn’t get the Scriptures. She’s just learning to read. How could it go, otherwise? We’re talking about few months of training at best, compared to the lifetime an average monk should do!

Plus, there's her attitude: this girl’s own nature is impulsive, mercurial, shortcut-seeking.

One of KvotheThe girl’s flaws is that she always go for the fast and easy way. That’s the exact opposite of what the LethaniSacred Scriptures say.

And ~~Vashet~~Brother Amentis knows that.

Brother Amentis has known that since quite a long time, now.

And that’s why...

...he has sex with the prostitute and then he forgives her and keeps teaching her how to read the Scriptures!!!

Because that’s exactly what music is like for the Adem. The whole after-sparring-sex with the Adem teacher doesn’t count. The whole “let’s take the Adem teacher somewhere afar, then make a curtain and play music while nobody’s listening”, instead, counts a lot.

There’s more than a reason why they had to sneak away in the middle of the night.

For Adem standards, that’s wrong.

Both Kvothe and Vashet know it. And she falls for it, she falls for it hard.

Anyways:

After blowing Brother Amentis in the garden, the girl resumes her learning.

Once again, in her mind there’s nothing about the Scriptures. Not to say she's ultimately malicious: like, she sort-of wonders about them.

But ultimately it’s all about her long-gone pimp (a dude with a crooked nose named Denna) and how she can use reading to avenge some previous wrongdoing.

Make no mistake: if the prostitute would get what the Scriptures really mean, it would be cool. But that’s not her goal. It has never been, beside some boredom-induced curiosity.

That’s not on Kvothe.

I mean, “that’s my nature” said the scorpion to the frog.

You can’t blame Kvothe for being himself: 1 he never said he wanted to learn the Lethani for moral improvement. 2 He never made secret that he’d rather study swordplay than unarmed combat, since more effective (brrr! That’s cold…). 3 He never pretended that he wasn’t just bluffing to impress the visiting Adem after his Lathanta test.

Kvothe has been extremely coherent through all of it. He’s there to grab whatever he can for his revenge, and has no trouble lying for it.

And he even admitted it all in his exit interview! How could anybody blame him for his Adem adventures?

That’s all on Shehyn, idiot supreme, and Vashet, who was present, awake and supposedly with a brain all those months. Both know they’ve trained a loudmouth, lying killer after few months of bible studies. And those studies, he passed by parroting what the elders wanted to ear.

He… he even admitted it after the Sword Tree test...

And here’s reason number 127 of why I hate the Adem arc. Those people are too stupid to be plausible. The only smart person in Ademre? Magwyn. Who most likely never leaves her hut because it’s clear that in this village stupidity is contagious.

Carceret could be considered smart too, if only she wasn’t right exclusively for the wrong reasons. Because regardless of her blatant xenophobia, she got who Kvothe is down to a science, in less than few seconds.

“As for this.” Carceret gestured at me. Dismissal. “He is not of Ademre. At best he is a fool. At worst a liar and a thief.”

That sentence tailors, dresses and fits Kvothe like a suit.

Tldr - the Adem's neurons are like the planets in our solar system: collectively, there’s nine of them at best. But experts would say the number is even lower.

Before we start, a huge thanks to u/turnedabout and u/IslandIsACork , whose exchanges prompted my curiosity.

Here’s some NOTW 46 details I don’t recall seeing anyone discuss.

->NOTE: normally I don't post on the main subreddit, but this time I had inspiration from other users so I decided to do differently. Of course, here I can also post the paragraphs I cut out from the post in the main sub.<-

edit: nevermind my post was removed already HAHAHAHA

Elodin’s reasons

“Why don’t you want to teach me?” “For the same reason I don’t want a puppy!” Elodin shouted, waving his arms in the air like a farmer trying to startle crows out of a field. “Because you’re too short to be a namer. Your eyes are too green. You have the wrong number of fingers. Come back when you’re taller and you’ve found a decent pair of eyes.”

Elodin will start teaching Kvothe in real depth only after he goes chasing the wind in WMF. Only then Kvothe will call the wind multiple times, and with success. Before that, Elodin’s naming classes were a success mostly for Fela and no one else.

What happened during that almost-year off? Well, Kvothe did exactly what Elodin wanted:

-he came back

-taller (confirmed by Devi in WMF 143)

-and with a decent pair of eyes (Losi and Penny check out his eyes and find he now has a “fae” edge on him in WMF 107)

Not asking questions

When Elodin agrees to answer three questions and then fucks off north to watch the wind and trees, Kvothe wisely decides to avoid wasting his two remaining questions.

But I kept the tip of my tongue firmly between my teeth. I didn’t ask, “Where are we going?” or “What are you looking at?” I knew a hundred stories about young boys who squandered questions or wishes by chatting them away.

I’m pretty sure most of you are noticing something familiar, but I’ll spell it out loud anyways: this is from One Thousand and One Nights, of Arabian Nights, or whatever it’s called in your country. The one with Scheherazade, you know the one.

Now: to be really fair, there have been countless stories about fucking up your three wishes by speaking before thinking. Every country has its own version, be someone turning their beloved’s nose into a sausage or the classic joke about two employees and their boss on a deserted island.

But I think Rothfuss was nodding to one of the most classic of the classics.

!But what if it’s not One thousand and one nights, but its older inspiration, the Panchatantra? Remember when people go 'Rothfuss took the term “Chandrian” from some Indian lore'? Well, the Panchatantra may be that lore. I mean, it’s a collection of stories within a frame… if that’s not as KKC as it gets, I don’t know how to convince you LOL!<

Play on words

“Do you know why they call this place the Rookery? (…) Because it’s where you go if you’re a-ravin’.”

This has been my most difficult line to understand in the entirety of KKC. Because I thought that “Crockery” was derogatory to the patients’ mental state (as in “place of crazies”) while “Rookery” was derogatory to their high numbers (a Rookery, in English, is the slums).

It turns out that rookery is also a colony of birds.

As often Rothfuss plays with phonetics , so a-ravin’ means “a raven”.

Auri and Haven

Today we're talking about NOTW 46, but allow me a detour.

In WMF 11 the subject of Haven shows up once more, and Kvothe is quite clear: if Elodin won’t keep his mouth shut about Auri, he’ll do something really stupid.

Now, while this isn’t a threat but rather Kvothe’s lifetime condition (when does he NOT do something stupid, guys?), it also highlights a couple of things I want to point out.

Here’s what I don’t get: why wouldn’t the two characters (three, if we include Mola, but hers is a very different case that today we won't touch) want Auri to be in Haven?

In WMF 11 we see their reasoning, but NOTW 46 painted up a slightly different picture.

Let's start with Kvothe.

• Kvothe’s side feature a lot of assumptions, mostly incorrect

“They’ll stick her in Haven, “ I said. “You of all people…” I trailed off, my throat growing dry. Elodin stared down at me, his face little more than a shadow, but I could sense him scowling. “Of all the people I what, Re’lar Kvothe? Do you presume to know my feelings toward Haven?”

Elodin tells it like it is: Kvothe presumes too much.

What he saw in Haven wasn’t that bad. Nor the structure, not the people. More on that later.

Funny thing is, right after Kvothe will presume once again!

They knew each other. Of course.

I mean: come on, Kvothe! Why hasn't Auri run away yet? :)

And once more, other assumptions that may not be true:

I thought about the time I had gone to Haven with Elodin to visit his giller, Alder Whin. I thought about Auri there. Tiny Auri, strapped to a bed with thick leather belts so she couldn’t hurt herself or thrash around while she was being fed.

But… why?

Why on Earth would they do that? Especially with Elodin knowing her, and how he defends other patients like Alder Whin.

There’s nothing suggesting Haven’s workers are ill-intended. Whin was not sedated, nor restrained. They “just” locked Alder Whin's door. Just being a bit ironic of course, but it’s plain to see that Alder is not in a proper mind state to interact with anyone.

Why would Auri hurt herself, while we're at it?

My bet is that Kvothe, rather than thinking about Auri, is also thinking about himself.

“Please,” I said to him. “Please, Master Elodin, if they chase her she’ll hide, and I won’t be able to find her. She isn’t quite right in the head, but she’s happy here. And I can take care of her. Not much, but little. If they catch her that would be even worse. Haven would kill her. Please Master Elodin, I’ll do whatever you like. Just don’t tell anyone.”

“She isn’t quite right in the head, but she’s happy here” doesn’t seem a good argument to me. By that logic, you shouldn’t call an ambulance if you find a meth addict running through the woods. I mean, look at him being happy! And he’s not hurting anyone!

My example being extreme, but what I want to tell you is that when Auri’s involved, Kvothe IS NOT objective. You can search for the reasons in NOTW 24 (Shadows themselves, one of the most important chapters in the series), WMF 97 and obviously WMF 130-131 .

Thing is, unlike with anyone else in the entire series, Kvothe considers Auri her equal. That's not true with Denna, Simmon, nor the Adem. And in proper Kvothe fashion, when considering Auri he thinks as he would think about himself.

Since Kvothe survived Tarbean, why shouldn’t Auri survive the Underthing? Why would Haven kill her? Because it would kill Kvothe. Check out his reactions when he’s confined in the Maer’s estate, or when Felurian forces herself on Kvothe.

There’s also a bit of egoistic side of Kvothe, emerging in this scene.

if they chase her she’ll hide, and I won’t be able to find her. She isn’t quite right in the head, but she’s happy here. And I can take care of her. Not much, but little. If they catch her that would be even worse.

It’s not a surprise that he never mentions Denna to Auri and vice versa.

No matter how good care Kvothe takes of Auri, remember than he abandons her for more than half of WMF, and if you’ve read TSROST you know how important he is to her. Nice caretaking, Kvothe.

The only consolation is that Elodin is no better whatsoever.

• Elodin’s “help”

“I’m not going to send anyone to take her in,” he said at last. “Haven is the proper place for some folk. It’s the only place for a lot of them. But I wouldn’t wish a mad dog locked there if there were a better option.”

His reasoning makes sense until we start thinking about what that better option is supposed to be.

Leaving her alone in the Underthing? No shoes and no clothes? Acid gets poured in, food is scarce and when she wants to move around she goes by rooftops. Human interaction close to zero.

Let's get real for a second: the moment Auri breaks a leg, the moment she gets stuck somewhere, the moment something bad happens down there... she is gone.

But hey, that’s a better option than Haven, right Elodin?

I’ve left things out for her. She won’t touch them.”

OH WOW, that's the sign of a stable person! Let’s leave her be >_>

Now: in Elodin’s defense it must be said that Auri runs away most of the times, and it’s not like he can organize some manhunting sessions on the rooftops. Circumstances are against him, and it's not like Auri asked for help. Still, I’m not sure Auri’s matter is being treated properly. Anyway, if we go back to NOTW 46, Haven doesn’t seem that bad.

• Haven in NOTW 46

(…) vast lawn to a huge manor house. Bigger than the Artificery, it had elegant lines, a red tile roof, high windows, arched doorways and pillars. There were fountains, flowers, hedges…

(…)

The entryway was huge, with stained glass windows and vaulted ceilings. The floor was marble polished to a mirror sheen.

(…)

Wide marble staircase (…) long, white hallway lined with wooden doors. For the first time I could hear the sounds I had expected in a place like this. Moans, weeping, incessant chattering, screaming, all very faint.

This place is likely the best asylum in the Four Corners.

The Reftview Asylum in Tarbean was only a fraction of this place, and it sounded like a brothel full of angry cats. You could hear it from a mile away over the din of the city.

Notice that unlike in Tarbean, here the asylum is kept in the nature, afar from the continuous noises from the University or Imre. But that’s just one of his features. The patients can hang around in the gardens. Also, the patients don’t probably hear the others’ cries unless multiple doors are open. As Kvothe points out, this place is expensive.

What about the rooms?

The room wasn’t what I’d expected. Tall windows let the daylight in, revealing a sizable bed and a table with chairs. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all padded with thick white cloth, muffing even the faint noises from the hallway.

Even better, this place has specific permits for each patient! Is there a more modern place than Haven?

“Alder Whin is not to be confined. He may come and go as he pleases. Nothing is to be put in his food unless he specifically asks for it.

Even better: attendants are hold responsible for their patient’s wellbeing!!! This is even more modern than many places irl!

“I am holding you responsible for this, Timothy Generoy” [full name, unsurprisingly. I wouldn’t expect nothing less from a Master Namer’s threat] (…) “If I find out that Whin has been sedated or restrained I’ll ride you naked through the streets of Imre like a little pink pony.”

Some numbers and some questions

”how many guests do we have today?” “The desk could give you a count, sir,” he said uncomfortably. “Take a wild guess,” Elodin said. “We are all friends here.” “Three-twenty?” the man said with a shrug. “Three-fifty?” (…) “How many more could we fit if we needed?” Elodin asked him. “Another hundred-fifty easy” Jeremy said, tugging the huge door open. “More in a pinch, I suppose.” “See, Kvothe?” Elodin winked at me “We’re ready.”

Question number one: ready for what, exactly? I mean, can it be an event where you are required to lock up 150 people in a hurry?

By the way the University has under fifteen hundred students, and about 100 of them leave the Arcanum each year (NOTW 52).

Question number two: an asylum with enough space for about a third of the entirety of the student body?

Question number three, although Kvothe didn’t voice it as a question:

“It seems like the University goes to an awful lot of expense here,”

And also:

“I’d think the masters would find other, more academic uses for the University’s funds.”

Why?

Linking Whin's condition, Puppet's presence in the Archives and multiple people witholding info about the four-plated door seems very tempting.

Note: according to Sim, roughly “a couple of students go crazy every term” (NOTW 44).

Rote

When Elodin insults Kvothe after the pinecones scene, he uses a peculiar word:

“Why don’t you want to teach me?

“Because the Edema Ruh make exceptionally poor students,” he said brusquely “They are fine for rote learning, but the study of naming requires a level of dedication that ravel such as yourself rarely possess.”

Despite Elodin’s harsh words, this is technically correct.

“Rote learning” is studying by mindless repetition, but a “rote” is also a medieval instrument (although some sites call it a hybrid lute, I strongly disagree. It’s a bowed lyre).

And given that in NOTW 51 Kvothe learns sygaldry rune by making and playing a song… well, you can say Kvothe is “rote learning” indeed!

Possible inconsistency

Haven has vaulted ceilings. But once we consider that Elodin’s room is on 1st floor (or second, if you are American) and that Kvothe jumps from ~20 feet… well, these supposedly immense asylum floors are as tall as your apartment >_>

Let’s put it this way: assuming the same number of floors, there’s very high chances your nearest hospital is taller than Haven.

Unrelated, but since I have the chance to talk about it: there’s more description about Haven in ~10 pages of NOTW than the Maer’s estate in about 20 WMF chapters.

Those who follow my rereads may remember when I was talking about KKC environments being contextual to KKC important info :)

And since we’re here…

…some foreshadowing instances, and Haven’s possible purpose

“don’t bring thunder”

Says Alder Whin, and as many pointed out, that could refer to Kvothe, given his Ademic name.

But the next patient says something as interesting, imo. Let’s look at the context.

“Whin knew what he was getting into when he became my giller.” He turned and began to walk down the hall. “You don’t. You don’t know anything about the University. About the risks involved. You think this place is a faerie land, a playground. It’s not.”

Insofar, We’re already suspecting. Especially during rereads, given today nobody’s in the garden, due to the moon getting full. Kvothe still doesn’t get it, so Elodin asks another question.

Why does a University with under fifteen hundred students need an asylum the size of a royal palace?” My mind raced. “Most students are from well-to-do families,” I said. “They’ve led easy lives. When forced to…” “Wrong,” Elodin said dismissively turning to walk down the hall. “It is because of what we study. (…) “THEY’RE IN ME! THEY’RE IN ME! THEY’RE IN ME!”

Possible nod towards skindancers?

Wise man's fear, foolish man's fear

A wise man fears a night without the moon.

Haven's residents fear getting outside because

”The moon’s getting full, too. You know how it gets.”

Thanks for reading.

I could find tons of different speculations on the character of Puppet, but no mentions of the stuff here below.

I suspect that's because people are focusing (and rightfully so!) on the candles or the marionettes show. And because Puppet's ambiguousness really jumps to the eye, overshadowing the rest.

So, here's something a bit different.

1 Puppet's room is connected with the Underthing or something similar

Why? There's air current. Puppet's room is underground: where does the air come from?

Aren't you overreaching a bit?

I'd think the same if I didn't know how Rothfuss operates when it's time to plant some little seeds for the future.

Why on Earth should he tell us that there's air current when Puppet's door is open? I mean, we're talking about three times out of three! This is twice as suspicious given Rothfuss' proverbial word economy.

He has no problem repeating the same words over and over, as his entire production proves... but as far as adding scenes "just because"... no, that's not classic Rothfuss.

Notice how he disguises the info: first he presents the event, but in a way that makes Puppet look strange/quirky/whatever adjective you can think of that character.

The door opened a crack, then was thrown wide. Puppet stood framed in the doorway, taller than any of us. The sleeves of his black robe billowed strikingly in the breeze of the opening door.

Insofar, just a curious introduction. You're not paying attention to the sleeves, but to Puppet. After all, he still hasn't spoken a word.

Then Rothfuss throws another distraction by mentioning lit candles and Lorren (and this distraction works wonders, because it is a meaningful tidbit).

But hey, the air current shows up again when the door's opened for the second time.

Simmon opened his mouth to answer when the door was thrown wide again. Puppet filled the doorway, his dark robe striking against the warm candlelight behind him He was hooded now, with his arms upraised. The long sleeves of his robes caught the inrush of air and billowed impressively. The same rush of air caught his hood and blew it partway off his head.

"Impressively"? That's air current. But hey, Puppet is wearing a silly hood and candlelight has been mentioned once again! Keep your attention to that, reader! Heh >_>

And then guess what? It happens once more, and it ain't even that subtle anymore.

Obediently, Wilem stepped back up to the doorand knocked. Once, twice, then the door swung open and we were confronted with a looming figure in a dark robe. His cowled hood shadowed his face, and the long sleeves of his robe stirred in the wind.

Notice how it starts as a funny scene, so you don't think about it that much.

Abstute.

By the way: remember NOTW 90, when Kvothe finds a passage to the Archives? Do you remember from where exactly in the Underthing he comes from?

!Billows, of course.!<

!It goes without saying that the bolded verb concerning Puppet’s robe isn’t casual: “The long sleeves of his robes caught the inrush of air and billowed impressively.”!<

Thematic recurrence?

2 History tidbit

Puppet sets it straight to Kvothe & friends: the Amyr don’t bend to emperors.

[the Amyr] “The church disbanded them of course. Only an edict from the pontifex had the ability to affect them.” (…) Nalto couldn’t have told them to cross to the other side of the street.”

And many chapters later, the maer Alveron corroborates:

”I was enamored with them as a child (…) Men and women with all the power of the church behind them. And that was a time when all the power of Atur stood behind the church.” He smiled. “Brave, fierce, and answerable to no one save themselves and God.”

“And other Amyr,” I added.

“And, ultimately, the pontifex,” he finished.

Thing is, Nat Ally Ah Loch Ness taught something different to young Kvothe.

My mother made rhymes to help me remember the more nonsensical elements of etiquette. And together we wrote a dirty little song called “The Pontifex Always Ranks Under A Queen.” We laughed over it for a solid month, and she strictly forbade me to sing it to my father, lest he play it in front of the wrong people someday and get us all into serious trouble.

And well… that’s the opposite of what Puppet says. Of course it’s intentional, and I’ll let you draw your own interpretation.

Here’s my possibilities:

1 Both Puppet/maer and Not All Ya are right. The two guys are talking about a remote past, while Kvothe’s mom is talking about the current etiquette for the current society.

But mind: the Lockless family is ancient, if there’s someone who could have direct history info in their estates, it’s these people.

2 Regardless of who’s right about the Pontifex, notice the irony of “Laurian” talking about how Arliden songs could cause trouble.

3 I'd ask myself who these “wrong people” are. Because it could be interpreted as “pious people who don’t like the pontifex to be insulted” or “the Amyr themselves”. If it’s the latter, the song’s offensive indeed.

4 Any other interpretation you got in your mind.

3 Seeing and Naming

-Puppet doesn’t give his name.

Also: it’s “They call me Puppet”, not “I am Puppet” or “call me Puppet”.

As far as expressions and curious questions (cough cough Socratic method cough) go, it seems Puppet took a couple of pages from Elodin’s book… if you excuse the play on words.

The two are... very similar.

Strange attitude, both joking and creepy, common rules don't really apply to them... possibly both are in charge of protecting something? I mean, Haven is Elodin's responsibility right?

And again: seeing eyes, both have a robe, both have incredible knowledge concerning the books in the Archives, both want to dissuade Kvothe from talking about the four-plate door...

I offer multiple interpretations:

1 Elodin and Puppet are just similar

2 Could they be allies?

3 A possibility that doesn't really convince me, but I keep it all the same: Puppet used to be a Master

4 Whatever's on your mind

It’s up to you. Today I only care about pointing out similarities, rather than explaining them. Especially in Puppet’s case, given he has less screentime than Hannibal Lecter in the Silence of the Lambs movie.

Is my analogy casual, in your opinion?

Little bonus since I had to reread NOTW 16

Kvothe says he got his green eyes from his mother (AKA: Arliden has no green eyes). Therefore Arliden either has blue or brown eyes, conveniently ignoring the Martin–Schultz scale.

However, I'm inclined to think we can rule blue out.

In general, blue eyes are mentioned out loud, to the detriment of narrative sometimes (see my opinions on WMF 2 in the Frame reread). But they are mentioned.

I mean: I can see why Rothfuss should bring up Skarpi or Bast (glamourie, tho). Or Sceop, if you think that name pairs well with Skarpi.

Devi and Ellie? I can still understand.

But people like Inyssa or an unnamed client at Pennysworth?

I think Rothfuss/Kvothe does it because they are relatively uncommon eyes (same goes for grey eyes in Ademre iirc). By consequence, I think it's relatively safe to say that every other character has brown/dark eyes.

And unless they are exceptional like Denna, there's no need to explicitly mention the color.

So both of Kvothe's parents are dark of hair and one has green eyes. Kvothe's genetic lottery favors recessive traits.

But here's the little thing: given that Meluan Lackless has dark eyes, chances are that the grandparents on Kvothe's maternal side didn't have blue eyes.

Thanks for reading.

Edits: fixed the last sentence concerning Kvothe's grandparents, also u/turnedabout points something interesting

When I was three days old, my mother hung me in a basket from a rowan tree by the light of the full moon. That night a faerie laid a powerful charm on me to always keep me safe. It turned my eyes from blue to leafy green.

Hi everyone, I’ve been waiting ‘till the January 15 spoiler deadline hoping we’d get some new posts on whiteboard!! Does anyone have reactions they’d like to share or what they thought was a particularly interesting change/update from LT??

So I guess this is a question more than a theory (sorry if that's not allowed), but a discussion of KKC lead to another redditor giving me a brief overview of the many echoes of Rorden's work Rothrick's posesses.

I'm sorta enjoying the read in its own right, aside from the weirdly omnipresent threat of spanking, but it's less weird than Gurm's incest focus.

But I'm also curious what other inspirations Patfuss took from WoT and if we think they might be relevant to the arc or lore of Temerant.

Parallels i've had pointed out:

Chandrian/forsaken

Aiel:tinker/Aedemreuh

Kvothe/Rand

Breaking of the world:creation war

Tar Valon/imre

For context i'm slowly working my way through book eight, i'm not really concerned about spoilers.

What do you all think? What are the references/inspirations? How do you think reading RJ influenced Pat's writing choices?

Bonus points for your thoughts on the series, themes presented, writing styles.

I'm not denigrating Pat or in any way less fond of the KKC, I just find it really interesting to read things my favorite authors are influenced by to get a context for the statements they were trying to make in the context of their reading experiences.

Any insights?

This header is before dawn & after midnight. Since this then falls outside the text of Narrow Road, I suspect the embrils may pertain to Kote. The tree appears to be a weeping willow, however note that I am no arborist. Willow is associated with Kvothe. If so, this will be fun fodder for speculation once individual embrils are better described

Who wants to play a game?

Here is a slightly more up-to-date version of the map I am making. On it , ( using clues that I gathered ONLY from Tlt and NOT from Tnrbd, yet!) I have selected 16 boxes which I have chosen as likely locations for certain local places of interest including farms, businesses, and houses.

Which number would YOU assign to each location on the following list?

A) the Bakery. B) the Benton's farm. C) the Blacksmith's. D) the Boggan's farm. E) The Church. F) Crazy Martin's house. G) Crazy Martin's still. H) the widow Creel I) Emberlee' bath. J) Jessom's traplines. K) mayor Lant's house. L) the Lightning tree. M) the Millhouse. N) Old Cob's house. O) Shep's farm. P) the William's farm.

X) marks the Waystone Inn.

Enjoy. Matty Tangle

I've finished my Newarre re-read now and am looking forward to the new book content due out this week. This may or may not include a new map for us to ponder but before we find that out, I thought I'd review what we know so far and reckon I have managed to cobble together enough clues to try drawing up a local map of my own. Here are the instructions I have gleaned if you wanted to draw your own version.

Carter is attacked by the scrael two miles north of town, out by the Oldstone bridge. Half a mile further North of here is where Emberlee takes her bath in the waters of Little Creek, whilst even further Northwards we're told that the ground gets very hilly. This is rough land, good for trapping or hiding Martin's still but useless for farming. It is here we find Little Cliff, where Little Creek makes a waterfall. Little Creek is also the river which runs through the town of Newarre where it has enough power to turn a waterwheel and passes just a stone's throw from the lightning tree. We are also told that the Bentley's South field has flooded out for two years running which could quite possibly be blamed on this creek's overflowing and all this knowledge gives us confidence to draw a nice blue Little Creek line from North to South.

This river is then clearly the reason why Oldstone bridge was built in the first place, so that folk using the main road can get safely cross the running water from one side to the other. And that means that the road they are travelling along will run from East to West.

When Chronicler was robbed he was almost at a place called Abbot's Ford, which means nothing very much to us, but the next day he passed through Rannish and that is a town mentioned as being less than 30 miles from Newarre. He still hoped to buy a house in Baedn-Bryt and from there to ride onwards to Treya which gives us a nice linear view of his overall road journey AF>R>BB>T with his stop at Newarre planned for somewhere near the middle. I am using his remark that 'he wasn't heading to Tinuë' to suggest that he must, then, have been heading away from it instead! which given the position of Tinuë' is going to mean Westwards on any four corners map. Carter also tells us that the road travel of the round trip to Baedn is 'more than 40 miles' so 20 odd miles each way, but we also learn that a trip to Treya and back will take two days.

Newarre itself is Not to be found on the Oldstone bridge road but is located some two miles to the South on a smaller side road which likely follows the riverbank. It may run past the door of the Waystone Inn as it goes through the town but doesn't appear to go anywhere further if Kote is to be believed. The road to Newarre is a dead end. Specifics in the town are vaguer still. The smithy is across from the Inn and there is also a church somewhere but it is mostly all farmland and that means fields. One last orientation I can give is that the front of the Waystone Inn faces East towards the rising sun and behind the Inn are some woodlands.

So, I'm back rereading, but only the frame story this time, only the bits about the good townsfolk as research for my Winter projekt. I've made a full set of notes on everyone and everything and even made some connections between them but a couple of assumptions I'd like to make are... A) Although never specifically mentioned, Newarre has a church of some description. And B) If they thought about him at all, the locals would naturally assume that Kote came from Yll, because of his red hair. Does that sound reasonable?

As some of you may know, on 14.11.2023 the novella "The Narrow Road Between Desires" will be out, and that calls for a momentary revision of Kkcwb rule n° 6:

Spoilers allowed. Please do not use spoiler tags. Be forewarned and read at your own risk.

Long story short: let's respect those who want to wait for the paperback edition.

Then we get back to normal.

Until January the 15th (pending unforeseen events, of course), if you want to analyze/discuss whatever concerns "The Narrow Road Between Desires" please don't put spoilers in your titles.

Also, if there are spoilers inside of your new posts, put in the title something like [TNRBD spoiler], or [Spoilers TNRBD].

Cheers

I have been mulling this over for some time now but I'm getting nowhere so I thought I would get some feedback from you guys and maybe together we can determine if it is indeed something.

It started a while back when I read Phillip Pullman's The Secret Commonwealth. In that there is a phrase in Arabic : Madinat al Qamar which means City of the Moon. I thought that was interesting especially with the phonetic similarity of Qamar to Cammar. Out of curiosity I googled "moon" in other languages and I was floored with what I found.

There are several languages including Czech and Swedish with "mane" meaning moon. In Dutch it's Maan. Very similar to MANET?

In Korean the word for moon is DAL.

Now isn't that interesting? Three characters whose names can be translated as MOON. Now I would have dismissed this as coincidence except we know how significant the moon is to the story. And thinking about THREE MOONS I couldn't help but think of the Mauthen pot which literally has THREE MOONS depicted on one of its images.

There was a second man, or rather the shape of a man in a great hooded robe. Inside the cowl of the robe was nothing but blackness. Over his head were three moons, a full moon, a half moon, and one that was just a crescent. Next to him were two candles. One was yellow with a bright orange flame. The other candle sat underneath his outstretched hand: it was grey with a black flame, and the space around it was smudged and darkened. -Chapter 35, WMF.

So three characters whose names mean moon and three moon depicted on the pot.

I think it's safe to say that the image of a man in a great hooded robe. Inside the cowl of the robe was nothing but blackness refers to Haliax. And he has SIX objects surrounding him. There are SEVEN Chandrian, and incidentally Chaand means moon in both Hindi and Urdu. So we have a direct association of the Chandrian and the moon and an image of Haliax depicted with three moons and three characters whose names can be translated to mean moon.

This begs the question: Are Cammar, Manet and Elxa Dal Chandrian ?????

Lets take a moment to consider the implications of such an idea.

Each of these characters are in mentor roles to Kvothe. Are they training him deliberately to suit their purpose?

It would be definitive evidence that the Chandrian have infiltrated the University and hiding in plain sight.

If the moons above Haliax on the pot refers to three of the Chandrain, then the candles and the mirror could conceivably refer to the others as well.

So this is where I get stuck. How to determine which characters can be linked to the candles and the mirror.

One was yellow with a bright orange flame

it was grey with a black flame

WHAT IF.. and this is a BIG WHAT IF...

WHAT IF the candles describe the physical appearance of two characters who are Chandrian???

Could yellow with orange flame mean light coloured skin with orange/red hair? Kvothe? Devi? Sleat?

Could grey with black flame mean dark skin and black hair? Cealdish? Kilvin? Will?

The mirror completely stumps me.

We know that the someone wanted the pot to remain unseen. The accepted theory is because the pot gives away the signs of the Chandrian. BUT that is already common knowledge. What if the pot is valuable because it reveals characteristics of the Chandrian or their disguises that can help identify them.

If you need any further evidence that The Chandrian is associated with the moon you can have a look at these posts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/kkcwhiteboard/s/cR9vjtV79D

https://www.reddit.com/r/kkcwhiteboard/s/SinpvwFj5e

Tagging u/IslandIsACork who helped fleshed this out.

Edit:

Elxa Dal could be Cyphus?

Ch 22 K 's convo with Dal. K asks him which names he knows and Dal explains why this is an inappropriate question.

"There's no reason for you to know. It's a holdover from older times, I think. Back when we had more to fear from our fellow arcanists. If you knew what names your enemy knew, you could guess his strengths, his weaknesses."

Now this just rings weird to me. He's talking about a time that is thousands of years ago. Either Elodin was negligent in teaching them this little etiquette or it is no longer practised. And Dal actually has a physical response. "He stiffened slightly."

So we have 1. Dal still holds to an archaic practice that even the current Namer has dismissed. (Think back to Elodin listing the name that each student has called successfully. He had no qualms about them knowing the names the others knew.)

Then Dal admits he doesn't know what the sleeping mind is. So is it possible that Dal did not study naming at the same place where Elodin studied it? Possibly he studied naming at an entirely different TIME, like a different ERA where the terminology used was different. As he clearly doesn't know the current jargon.

2. He is not familiar with current jargon regarding naming.

Then he says,

"Names reflect true understanding of a thing, and when you truly understand a thing you have power over it."

Dal is the Master Sympathist though but is skilled in Naming. He knows 2 names. And he is actively teaching his students to fight with Sympathy.\

3. In a time where Malfeasance is a serious charge, he is teaching them to fight? Why?

4. And of course the repeated comparisons to the archetypal magician or sorcerer in bad Aturan plays.

Could he be much older than we think? Could he be one of the Amyr? Chandrian? Someone who can control fire could technically change its colour and make it appear whenever he liked?

Is Elxa Dal ... Cyphus??

'my mother was on a noble before she was a trouper. She told me my father had lured her away from 'a miserable dreary hell with sweet music and sweeter words. I could only assume she meant Three Crossings, where we went to meet relatives when I was very young. Once.'

This passage tells us quite a lot about Laurian and her mindset but it is that last word, Once, which tells us this was also the last word, the final cut, and was therefore when and where she actually severed all her ties with her family and her Lackless heritage, changed her name, and disappeared off of the map with her new family. kvothe being 'very young' suggests a workable timeline but the real clue might well be the location given... although Three Crossings doesn't appear on any of Pats maps... perhaps...

Three Crossings may deserve the capital letters but its name is surely also going to be descriptive of its location. My primary thought on three crossings is one of three bridges, which implies three rivers. Now down in the Southern Eld there is indeed a place where three major rivers meet, and this is where I am placing my 3 Crossings jot as the location for the sundering of the Lackless.

Caudicus tells us that 'pieces of what are now Vintas, Model, and a large portion of the small kingdoms were all Lackless lands at one point'
If we can safely assume that the dotted lines on our map mark international borders then the juncture of these three rivers becomes geographically very important indeed as the point where many nations also meet. Moreover, however you draw the lines or interpret Caudicus statement, looking at our map makes it clear that he must be talking about the lands surrounding these self same Three Crossings.

Just because Pat didn't actually write 3C on the map doesn't mean it isn't there as it is far too important a location for a community Not to exist, however it would needs must actually be a three part city, one part governed by Modeg, One part small kingdoms and one part run by Vintas. All linked together as one multiracial hub by three bridges or rather three crossings. I might also suggest that Denna passed through 3crossings on her way from the small kingdoms to Tinuë and that it was also a part of Kvothes intended journey from Junpai to Severen (a statement which would also name one or the rivers as being the Arrand.) The Lackless estates should also still feature (in some reduced format) somewhere in 3crossings but their enclave in this city must also have been the most Westerly of their holdings, the traditional border of their estates and the outside world and therefore acceptably neutral territory for Laurian and her family to decide their collective futures upon.

Has anyone compiled a file on everything we know about Fenton? I'm sure one of you must have. Can I borrow your homework?