Agenda

1 ~ A-Gender

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Welcome back, we have now pretty much mapped out the first Corner , but our storylines are starting to pull apart now, we have our roots in Newarre and our trunk in Vintas but now the choice of paths before us want to branch off in different directions at once, but we can only follow one path at a time and the wise student will follow The path of the Book before them.

That is of the Lethani.

This 2corner will begin with the Adem. They are probably the strangest of all the races of man that we encounter and hold their secrets tightly. Stillness and silence are the heart of Ademre, something no barbarian could understand. Still, we can but try.

Man Mothers

When approaching a puzzle that goes against the grain, it is natural to adopt a guilty until proven innocent stance. But you must always remember that this is Fantasy Fiction, not Fantasy Fact. That's a whole different ball game.

Therefore I have a rule. Since this is Not Planet Earth, nothing from our unique Terran culture should be relied upon as a tool to crack open Temerant. Pat can do what he wants in his world. If you don't believe in God, that's fine, If Pat wants sex faeries in his stories, that's fine too, and if the story calls for one race of mankind to be a biologically different species from all the others that is absolutely fine with me. It might even be the silver key we need to unlock a bigger secret...

However, this is High fantasy fiction, a broad subject which includes Science fiction and the unique science aspect of Temerant is a tool in our hands than can be used if needed. So we shall put the plans of Gods aside for a few chapters while and focus on the actions of humans and rhinta instead. There will be a biology lesson at π time from guest speaker Snail. The rest of this anthology of all things Temerant is all of my own creation. And I am Not a robot.  The branching ink before you might seem a bit harder to hold together sometimes but as your alar reaches for this secondary binding, your inner eyes will open wider and you should see further and you will soon begin to juggle my ideas in your own head. I will suggest that if my observations from corner one were considered to be Elir level thinking, some of corner two might require Relar thinking. 

Good luck, and don't stray from too far from the path!

A-Women

Given that Kvothe has studied plenty of four corners medicine and has lived long enough to think he knows better than they do and since he has also never found any rumour of this strange 'A-Women employ parthenogenetic reproduction' phenomenon occurring anywhere else in the entire archives to make him doubt his barbarian belief, then we can be pretty sure that this Adem secret is just that, a secret . A-women are then a brand new discovery to his knowledge making them exclusive throughout Temerant in their ability to reproduce asexually, (House Lockless excepted)

Since they believe that they can make babies without the need for a man mother, why would an A-women ever bother to give birth to any A-men babies at all? What use are they if they have no part in advancing Adem ? Why don’t they just become a race of self replicating A-women instead? A more complete half race without the need or desire for any male input whatsoever. 

Well that would shout very loudly to the other races that the Adem are a mutant race of women warriors and to a barbarian that means there is something wrong with them and that usually means they are probably demons. Having men along for the ride will naturally help all Ademre to blend in better with civilization. Furthermore, while the A-Women may, or might not, be able to flower alone no woman can conciously pre-order the sex of their next baby and then nine (6*) months later simply ‘make it so’ any more than any other woman could. Its called natural selection and life simply doesn’t work that way. You put in your penny and you get what you are given in this world and God alone knows the real reasons behind such things.

A-Men

As far as their part in making babies goes, all the A-men in the world are an empty branch on the family tree, pretty to look at but essentially rather useless. A fact which in a lesser society might act like a wedge splitting the whole race into two distinct categories: The A-women, who are necessary and the A-men who are not!

However, because they are a civilized peoples the women do not slaughter male children in the crib but raise them alongside the girls , even though they are considered inferior stock. Both adem sexes have been bought up with some level of understanding of the lethani and so it is that all of A-men are raised to know their allotted place in life and to accept it.

 At one point on their travels to Haert Tempi makes a fist to indicate the whole of Ademre, five fingers in concert of which, in his mind, he represents only the littlest finger. His other three (more superior) fingers he nominates as ‘friend, brother and mother. Sheyehn is the thumb to complete the fist but at no point in his description does he use the word ‘father’ because there is no Ademic concept of fatherhood and he knows that man-mothers simply do not exist. Tempi further reveals that he understands the lowly position of A-men in his society in relation to the more superior  A-women when he reveals to Kvothe that

‘Barbarians have no women to teach them civilization.’

a statement which implies that the civilized A-men do have women teachers and this is the accepted hierarchy arrangement of women on top that leads to full M/W co-operation in a society where nobody shits in the well. 

/Kvothe did note that there were more women and children than he expected and this could indicate an unequel gender distribution to this mainly female society with the occasional manchild being the odd exception among all the young girls. I noted that it was always the young boys we saw being used as goatherds, an essential but undemanding task./

 When it comes to fighting, A-Women are always superior and everyone knows that. Why? Might have something to do with balance I suppose, or testicles, but it really ought to be something genetic for all A-men to never to be ranked as good as the A-women are despite the exact same opportunities and training they have to be considered their equals, not to mention their greater strength and reach. The closest get to a written answer is that men naturally have more 'anger' inside them than they know what to do with which leads to more rash decisions which are made with less self control compared to the A-women who are naturally more balanced. Unbalanced males are not deemed to be anywhere near as important to Ademre society although A-Men do have their uses, not least when it comes to sex where the female’s milking of a fine male anger (Vaevin) is a mutually desirable thing, and sex is a healthy and pleasurable pastime when both halves of the union know that a heart is not a penis and that man mothers simply don't apply in Ademre.  At worst these A-men are on a par with the largely useless and likely diseased barbarian men with all of their own strange sex customs, except that the A-men have all had better teachers.

A-Lar

Kvothe and Penthe cover the whole man mother argument about as far as it can go and digging any further will descend into someone trying to prove a negative, and that's faulty logic. I think the main difference between an A-Women and an A-Man ultimately comes down to control, something that their women simply have more of than men do. And a woman in perfect control can achieve Anything. Kvothe might know that he is right but Penthe believes that she is correct and belief will win that argument every time. Kvothe's own powerful Alar is built upon his ability to believe that any given contradictory possibilities can be exactly as he desires them to be and he holds , at best ,a 99% control over his binding thoughts.  But in this argument simply by not being a woman himself he can never definitely believe his own answer in this final 1% for sure. Thus a tiny seed of doubt naturally exists to be exploited in his argument and 1% belief can make all the difference in a fight. Just ask Tarsus.  If you always hold to the lethani, you can never lose a fight.

Now it could well be that Tempi, who showed sexual interest in a barbarian barmaid at the Pennysworth Inn, might well be biologically capable of obliviously putting a grey eyed baby inside her in the usual barbarian manner, just because an A-Woman doesn't require his seed doesn't make him automatically sterile. So is it possible that Penthe's first child might be born with Kvothe's distinctive and decidedly non-adem colouring? Well in her mind Penthe believes 100% not, and so I'm inclined to agree with her since she always exhibits perfect control. I wonder if A-Women have periods?

Did Kvothe ever consider that in all of his frolicking he might have gotten Felurian pregnant? No, I very much doubt he did, but would Felurian need a man mother in order to create a new Bastard? Who can say?

The only way anyone might ever answer this man-mother question to any educated level of satisfaction would be through medical disection to see whether the A-Women are actually built differently insides. 

Fortunately we are given the foremost authority in Anatomy Temeranti to investigate in the form of the Duke of Gibea who wrote 24 volumes detailing his findings.

So, question #1 should be 'Did Gibea ever experiment on the Adem?' and I'm pretty sure the answer is Yes.

During his first admissions, Kvothe gives us a brief history of the collapse of the Aturan Empire and one thing he considered a well known fact was that Atur did indeed  'antagonise the Adem.' and given Tempi's beliefs concerning the touching of dead people I think that would most certainly qualify. At the time the Empire were fighting wars of conquest on three fronts against unnamed peoples but the Adem are singled out specifically here and so it appears to me that this was more of a pogrom than a land grab and that there was something more personal going on between the Empire, or rather their strong right arm that was the Amyr, and the race of the Adem than simply seizing posession of their land. Antagonise is a word my dictionary defines as 'To struggle violently against' which is then exactly what we assume went on between them, but it also means 'To counteract the actions of.' and that secondary meaning sounds an awful lot like 'confound the plots of' to me,  a phrase used by the the Lord of the Amyr when speaking about what he wanted to do to Lanre and 'any who follow him'. Which might mean that the Amyr's own justification for this Adem antagonism then was that it was considered to be all 'for the greater good.'

Our own (Terran) understanding of the science behind human reproduction follows the same Woman + Man = Baby equation (WoMB) that is practiced across the four corners and this method of reproduction is believed wholeheartedly by Kvothe as being the only sort because he has been taught so by the masters at the University medica. He has also studied the works of the Duke of Gibea, who lay down the foundations of modern physic and who rather famously did his own human anatomical research very thoroughly indeed and Simmon says that 20.000 bodies bear witness to this fact. But did he ever experiment on the Adem to investigate their reproduction technique? Well probability factoring will say that he certainly did but there is clearly no record of any unusual Adem exception findings in his surviving journals. 

A-myr

Of course, as a secret member of Selitos’ Amyr, a group of men which Felurian avers never had any human members themselves , Gibea should have already known the real truth that the Adem were in fact, like him and his colleagues, a secret race of rhinta mutants hiding in plain sight among the barbarian multitudes of Temerant and this would be exactly the sort of secret thing that a non human Amyr would be very keen to keep quiet about for the greater good of preserving their own secret genetic background. To keep this knowledge from any future human students Gibea would certainly not have written it down anywhere since any such rumours would of course soon lead to bigger rumours followed by scenes of angry villagers with pitch forks and flaming torches storming the castle. Secrets have a habit of sneaking out and that may lead to uncomfortable rumours further down the line of there ever being any ‘alternative species’ to mankind living within the 4Corners. This inconvenient truth would, then, needs must be supressed at source to better protect both Gibea's skin and his fellow Amyr mutants own genetic secrets from ever reaching the general population.  I don't imagine the Tehlin church would be too pleased either if Tehlu's immaculate conception was known to be common practice among mutants so if Gibea had discovered that it was true that A-Women were reproductively especial and reported this fact to his Amyr masters then I would think their preferred reaction would probably lean towards an Ademic genocide. 

Of the Amyr's actions in pursuit of their ideal we are specifically told that it was deemed 'for the greater good' if they strangled a pregnant woman but were they after the mother or the child I wonder?  Everyone seems to agree that 'they did some pretty terrible things near the end. ' and genocide would fit that bill all too well.

The Aturan Empire collapsed over 300 years ago which would finally put an end to its Adem antagonistic behaviour and so that is probably a good enough pin in the ground to suggest for being founders day to the modern Adem, when the antagonism was over and they could finally stop wandering and put down some roots. 

This would also be the day when they planted their holy Latantha tree since this unique and special tree being exactly where it was just waiting for them to find it and populate it's valley clearly wasn't just a coincidence. The surviving Adem carried their swords by their sides and kept their Atas in their heads but someone among them must have also carried the special seed of their past that would be necessary for growing a special tree. Perhaps it was Magwyn...

Ae-the and Re-the.

This tale I would place as being somewhere soon after this Ademic Founders day. We hear that the Adem were still being 'much set upon by our enemies ' but they had clearly not yet reached the Ademre united stage that they are today and this is the story then of their unification. In the tale we are told that these Adem often fought between themselves out of pride or from an argument which is very un-lethani behaviour, and the root of the argument seems to have been about who was best equipped to lead all of Ademre into the future. Aethe was the finest archer they had since he could read the name of the wind. But Rethe was his best student. They were a man and a woman who each thought they knew the best path to follow. Aethe has founded a school which , although 'long years and distant miles' from where they eventually ended up, was still the first time we hear of this wandering Adem nation putting down any sort of roots implying that their Amyr antagonism had now run it's course and they were free to be themselves again suggesting a date to their take of some 300 years ago. When they first met the man though men made better archers because of their greater reach and strength, but Rethe showed him the error in his thinking. In Aethe's defence, he didn't really mean to set himself up as king, he just happened to be the best of the Adem men when the opportunity first arose to stop running in fear and to build their first real base for the nation. And he clearly liked Rethe who gave him a bowstring woven from her own hair which to me hints at them being lovers.

  But men and women will always have different ideas about how to do things and Rethe, who was regarded as being the best of the A-Women thought that she was best qualified to lead their way. One day the two spoke, disagreed, argued, shouted, and finally challenged each other to a duel. Very barbarian behaviour indeed. 

It was agreed that whichever of them won the duel would be given control over this important first school and therefore the leadership of all the A-Men and A-Women combined. And the man won.

'I won the only duel I ever lost'

This is the sad part.

Aethe was first to the blade and that is Not of the lethani. 

If Aethe knew the name of the Wind, then Rethe knew the shape of it. 

She won by losing because she who holds to the lethani in all things can never lose.

Her choice of path for the Adem would therefore have been the correct one and so she should have led the school, and Aethe only realised that now that it's too late. Aethe's anger led to his rash actions but Rethe had the greater control of the duel because She fought without excess anger, because she was an A-woman and so wasn't as influenced by an excess of Vaevin as all the A-Men are and so her balance was better. Therefore her stance was better and her overall position was better. 

'First you must have control of yourself. Then you can gain control of your surroundings. Then you gain control of whoever stands against you. That is the Lethani.'

Not 'of the' lethani...

This is the Lethani. Capital L.

The  true path that all Ademre now aspire to following.

Aethe gave the decision making prize over to the A-Women because he understood that this was the right thing to do. But the wise women did not rule as queens, but instead created an inclusive nation where all Adem are One Adem. And that is of the lethani.

In the end, the nation did not settle at this first schools location. The disbanded Amyr might be no longer a threat to them but by now all of the other 4-Corners nations had become established and desired all of the land for themselves and so eventually a unified Adem chose to leave the 4Corners behind them in order to find a peacful home on which to establish and grow their own little nation of grey eyed mutant ninja sex freaks. 

A-pendix

When Kvothe travelled to Haert he covered 300 miles in fifteen days of fast going. However, after he leaves Haert the next chapter begins

 'Five days later I was walking through... The low hills of eastern Vintas'

Now that maths is clearly not possible and his orientation is also way off which means there is a hole in our books here which will need packing out with a bit of Tinfoil. One thought is that he hugged the west of the mountains heading south on a journey that would have taken him through the Lackless estates, stopping for a gawk at their infamous door along the way no doubt.  Something serious must have happened before he reached Tinüe to make him to end up in the place that he did 'five days later.'

There is a more direct path to Eastern Vintas from Haert however which  would involve him exploring down the Eastern side of the mountains, and having his own unwritten Tahl adventure before crossing the Stormwal again far to the south, emerging into Eastern Vintas again... Five days later!

Regarding the Adem own association with the mysterious Tahl one further image that I can conjour in my tinfoil imagination, tho obviously without a lick of corroboration from the books, adds another act to our House Lockless play. Now what if, some of the wandering Adem turned up at Perial's door seeking, and being granted, sanctuary from their Amyr antagonists. That's a nice thought.

Saint Perial and her Husband kindly takingb them to their special door where, Swords in hand and ever burning candles lit, they went underground into the darkness and made their way beneath the stormwal mountains onwards to the desert lands of the Tahl, where the hope of future Ademre would remain until it was deemed safe to return. Illian led them there and they gave him a candle to bear or maybe just re-lit his own candle in thanks so that he could bear a light suitable for making his  way back again through such a dark and dangerous place . Second chance Illian. Officially when Perial said she had cast him out and had no Adem refugees on her lands, well the Amyr had to believe her. A pontifex always ranks under a queen. 

To make that lie a truth , however, it was necessary for Illien to go. So he did. He went and joined the Amyr.

Art

2 ~ Tongue Twister

So children of both Adem sexes are born and grew up to become Adem-re. Which probably means something like 'All Adem are one Adem .' As the nation grew into their new home they branched out and founded other towns which may have held different interpretations of the lethani path but at heart they are all one tightly knit race. We shall leave them up in their corner of the world now and shall doubtless cross their path again later but first we need to ask more about where they originated from and that means searching for their ancestors since the Adem of today are actually a second incarnation of Ergen.

"Once there was a great realm peopled by great people. They were not Ademre. They were what Ademre was before we became ourselves."

Now the Cthaeh mentioned that Lanre hasn't slept in 5000 years which is a pretty good indicator as to the rough date of Lanre Day when Ergen fell to his actions and likely as not that day marked the beginning of the end for this first generation Adem of which Sheyehn speaks. These Adem ancestors , some of whom fought at the Drossen Tor, must then be considered as being the original inhabitants of one the the 7 great cities of the realm of Ergen and the theme of these next few chapters will be to work out which city that actually was.

Polyglots

Given that we have as many languages today as there were once cities makes the case for the next revelation that each seperate group of Ergen citizens also had their own primary language a very strong one. The best evidence that all of today’s different nations of man once each abided in their own seperate cities instead of exhibiting the cosmopolitan atmosphere that we see at the University today is through the evolution of language. Today, everyone speaks Aturan and Pat expands upon it’s origins nicely in the appendices of the 10Æ by explaining how Aturan is a modern language, invented as a tool to subdue a fractured nation into a new empire under one universal tongue. However, the older languages still persist to this day across the 4Corners and so for many people, such as Wilem, this newfangled universal language is only really a second language, deemed unnescessary for Cealds to learn in their homeland until it was considered practical to do so. Whilst it may be possible that the eight peoples who populated the eight cities all spoke every one of these eight languages when they dealt with other this was never going to be the case. Some of them, such as Lord Selitos and his ilk may have been able ‘to read the hearts of men like heavy lettered books’ which would qualify them to be properly considered as multi-lingual, but this will not have been the Ergen norm. Kvothe may have learned to speak Tema in a day but he is far cleverer than Wilem is and language is fundamentally a complex creature which takes a long time to master to any degree and so, as Pat concurs, it will have taken many generations for Aturan to become the dominant force in linguistics that it is today. But the wiping out any rival language in the process is an impossible task to achieve and even a dead language will still persist somewhere in the far flung corners of mankind. Even the eldest of our known written languages, Yllish, has survived (albeit in a much diminished form) despite all the attentions of the Aturan empire's might and desire to eradicate it. A written language as opposed to a spoken one might survive the passing centuries in a book form, or on a clay tablet, or perhaps even preserved in stories on a knotted string (and what stories could they tell?). The very presence of these languages in history makes it obvious to me that the empire of Ergen could never have operated as one peoples all speaking one tongue but rather must be seen as an eightfold union of diverse peoples and languages who all shared one common foe.

‘they gathered armies and made the cities recognise the need for allegiance.’

This single line in the books seems to back up this statement as it clearly indicates that up until Lanre and Lyra united them all together under one banner such allegiance was not common Ergen policy. Unifying the eight pieces into one point was therefore a crucial turning point in the battle against the enemy, a policy which perhaps should have been innovated by wise lord Selitos long before the thought came to Lanre and Lyra, but then Selitos was not really a soldier and obviously did not consider this radical approach to have any merit to the defence of his own beloved city.

If anyone could see into the hearts of all men and understand their thoughts and words then it was him, although his own first choice of language was apparently Temic, as he later reveals to us when he coined the phrase Ivare Enim Euge to be the motto of his own personal Amyr army. But this does not make Temic the go-to language of Ergen, Ademic was obviously also present at Drossen Tor since it’s events have been recorded in Magwyn’s books and so clearly it will also have had its own place in both worlds which opens the door for Tema, Modegan, Siaru, Eld Vintic, Yllish and even perhaps the language of the fae to be regarded in the same light. The overly coincidental numbering across these emergent groups becomes a powerful indicator that these were all languages whose roots can be traced back to match the cultural make up of old Ergen leading us to the conclusion that each city was actually a seperate nation unto itself, with its own capital city where it’s own unique language was spoken.

Seven Nation Army

But after God and Encanis had left the scene on Tehlu Day, did all of the ‘ruach’ survivors all then just agree to work together, forget their lingual inequalities and xenophobia? happily proceed to assimilate themselves into a new collective? One nation under one flag with a shared desire to ‘build back better’? Accepting all racial stereotypes as equally valid in their society in order to build one great new multicoloured interracial utopia? One for all and all for one? with liberty and fraternity for all? Well selitos and his Tema speaking Aturans tried the heavy Empire approach to enforcing such a unity upon the world but that plan ultimately failed leaving us to a four corners viewpoint today which is still a much divided land. The era of empire has affected all of the races in it’s path towards today’s more tolerant society a bit moreso than the four-quartering inference that the name might suggest, in fact doubly so with as many different races of man around today as Ergen once had cities. Love thy neighbour is not always considered the norm, as witnessed by such derogatory terms as ‘filfthy shim bastards’ and ‘ravel ruh’ the general antagonising of the Adem and not to mention the eternal strife which is the default setting in the Small Kingdoms.

All of Temerant’s peoples and their exagerated sterotypes are caught in a snapshot in Kvothe’s Faeriniel story and the one thing which holds the story together is the assorted levels of casual Xenophobia shown by each race towards outsiders. If you remove the possibility of Sceop being a polyglot then we must assume that everyone in that tale must have by then been speaking the one uniting language of modern Aturan and that will place the setting in the early days of the 4Corners era. This is a mirror image of how things must have once also been back in the last days of Ergen with each campfire acting as a miniature outpost from each citynation for the night.

/Compiling a full head count of all the various kinds of 4Corner peoples and then comparing that to the number of Ergen cities gives us some rather too coincidental numbers to be ignored, and that line of thinking will further suggest that the situation that we see today will mirror that of what will have came before with two similarly populated landscapes where each seperate race has its own defining physical features or traits, speak their own unique languages, and are still to be found sheltering within their own clearly defined borders, just like their ancestors before them./

So the question now becomes can we prove beyond reasonable doubt that each of these diverse races of man that we witness today, or have heard about at faeriniel, would likewise have each ruled their own specific city back in ancient Ergen? No, we cannot. Easy to say, much, much harder to convince to everyone’s satisfaction. But that’s just the way our world works, not everyone will need such things proven to the Nth degree for to them to be convinced because some things are just more obvious to some minds than to others, and it’s not something most folk will have even bothered to think about that much anyway because it’s surely not going to be all that much of an important detail compared to the myriad of more exciting things to be considered in the rest of Pat’s rich tapestry.

But it is important, because if were  the case for each particular city of Ergen to be claimed by a different race of man, one each for all of their descendants in the modern day four corners, (the city of the Cealds, the city of the Yllish, the city of the Adem etc…etc…) then That line of thinking would mean that each ancient city was acting more like an island with each one housing a separate nation of people all unto itself, safely ensconced behind their own walls. This then was the situation which Lanre and Lyra did face before they successfully united the armies of Ergen together under one flag into a Seven nation army to better take the fight to the common enemy. This is the shape of the world of Ergen that Pat has built for us with all of his clever hints and clues which just need to be gathered together in one place in order to see the bigger picture. I think I am all argued out on this point now and so to take the next steps you will need to Believe this to be the case for yourself and then we can move this thing onwards.

Reflections

And so, with that unifying thought being firmly accepted by our collective alar, we can now take a look at the next logical step and mix this new knowledge together with the memories that we gain from the Adem. The stories we hear inform us that each ancient city also housed it’s own ‘rhinta to be’ somewhere in their midst who personally betrayed their city to the common enemy, meaning that it was clearly someone who was once held to be trustworthy, someone like Lanre who was ‘considered beyond reproach’ and who must also have held the rank and power necessary for them to have been able to achieve any such betrayal in the first place marking them all as one of their people’s top brass. So, if each city was populated by a different race, and each city had it’s own betrayer hidden in it’s midst, then it must be true to say that each of these ‘rhinta to be’ will have hailed from a different city, and therefore each one of them will have been born into a different culture. Collectively the seven chandrain who are still abroad today must then, on inspection, mirror the surviving races from these seven cities of old which will also mean that the7 which Kvothe encountered will, of course, also have sported such an international make-up of having one representative from each of these self-same races of man, too! (all races except one, that is!)

3 ~ Twins 

A Tale of Twin Cities

Twins is a interesting concept to consider in these books and there is no good reason to assume that they don’t exist in Pat’s work… But if I were to ask you to name any instance of twins occurring, then I bet that you would fail. However, they do exist, which is nice to know as that’s enough proof to validate investigation, although I only found one pair mentioned specifically: the twin sisters who made candles and taught strange dance steps in Haert. Most of you should have come up with another clear use of the word though and point out that Skarpi in his tale of the Ergen empire spoke of the twin-cities of Murilla and Murella. But cities are not siblings and so they probably don’t share the same maternal root. So what exactly makes them twin-cities? well we simply don’t know. 'History books that might have mentioned Ergen as an unlikely myth have long since crumbled into dust' meaning that’s about it as far as we can go on our quest for ancient written knowledge. However, these twin-cities do continue to live in the memories of some few truly ancient folk that we encounter who actually spent some time in them, such as Felurian.

‘Was Murella in the Fae?’

‘No. I have said. This was before. there was but one sky. one moon. one world. and in it was murella. and the fruit. and myself. eating it. eyes shining in the dark.’

She also tells us that murella (no capital, of course) was a walled city, a wall on which she sat and ate of the shaper’s fruit from their silver tree, under the light of the eternal moon which was always round and full every night in those days. MurElla was also one of the last seven great cities that were still holding out against the enemy of Ergen and although Felurian never mentions it, Skarpi states that Murella had a twin-city whose name was Murilla which shares a virtually identical spelling to underline their closeness to each other. We can confidently assume that both of these cities would have always united together against the common enemy which assaulted their respective city walls, not just in the wake of Lanre and Lyra’s unifying actions, and worked as a team implying that the two of them were not completely cut off from each other…yet. Perhaps their link was geographical and each piece controlled one side of a bridge, like the one that spans the Omethi river? Perhaps they were like Severen high and Sevren low, two distinct halfs with a cliff-edge relationship? We can only speculate on this but any such guesswork, whilst entertaining, is not really that necessary because we already know enough to proceed. Perhaps both places might best be regarded like two single half-pennies might be but they are also in other ways deemed still connected like a whole penny would be. Their names mean that they have always shared a unique bond of some sort that still unites them and marks them as perennial allies against the common foe and neither of them had fallen to the enemy at the gate…yet.

Fixed Odds

One thing that we can say for sure is at least one of our twin-cities definitely fell as part of Lanre’s betrayal. Myr T (no relation) also burned that night and six further pyres of smoke marked the fate of the fallen.

‘Selitos looked out over the land below and felt a small spark of hope. Six plumes of smoke rose from the land below. Myr Tariniel was gone and six cities destroyed. But that meant all was not lost. One city still remained.’

Pooling together all our vast knowledge of the great betrayal tells us… not a lot. We start off, luckily enough, with Seven cities to choose from. There was also the One city but we can strike Myr Tariniel off the list as even the Adem concur that the ‘one city’, (however it was named), did fall. We can put a cross through Belen, too as when Skarpi#2 speaks of Fair Geisa he mentions Belen’s fallen city walls, but that’s about as much as we can state as being fact. Mixing our various stories up together, however, provides us with one possible tinfoil connection. Skarpi lists the cities for us in a specific ordering of his own odd reasoning and in his list these twin-cities are the last two to be named. If we line this up next to Trapis tale, he tells us that the cities fell one per day and it was only the final city which was saved by Tehlu on the seventh day, which would equate in Skarpi’s list as being MurElla. Since the other six would have already fallen, this would also indicate MurIlla as being the final casualty. Tying seperate stories together to prove a point is, I agree, rather thin foil to rely too heavily upon but one more line of thinking might give it some added strength because Trapis also said that although Encanis succeeded with his task on the first six days, on the final day Tehlu ‘drew near’ before the demon lord could bring his power to bear and so the seventh city was saved. My reasoning here is that given the Empire being described as vast, many miles should lie between any two given cities for Tehlu to walk each day. Except, that is, for the distance between our twin-cities which must surely count as being ‘near’ to each other. If relative distance was an influencing issue in Tehlu’s walking journey then our twin-cities would share an obvious closeness and that factor may well have denied Encanis the necessary time that he may have required in order to summon enough power for him to bring down the walls of this second twin. All told it’s definitely starting to look quite promising for Murella.

With Myr T a definite goner, Seven cities will now remain in the game. The fall of Belen has reduced the field further but still only one of the remaining six will get to see the new dawn. This makes our in-play scenario currently look a lot like a game of Russian roulette where each city will now share the same 6/1 odds of it being the last man standing. But Team M’s twin connection means that between them they cover two chances and are, for betting purposes, to be viewed as the 3/1 co-favourites for one half of their dual domain to outlast all the others. Luck seems to be on our side as just like MurElla’s original winning chances of one in seven, so does it’s new odds of one in three also contain a lucky number, too. Factoring in Skarpi’s unreasonable counting system means that the smart money is now being placed on MurElla as being the mystery last city of hope.

If it was the worst of times, both MurIlla and MurElla have already fallen to betrayal which makes any further investigations into them seem rather pointless, but that gloomy thought can wait in the wings for now.

If it was the very best of times, however, One of our lucky numbers has come in, meaning that one of our twin-cities still stands… Huzzah! but that is as good as it ever gets because the other twin, by default, cannot also survive since there can be Only One! Whichever way things may have fallen out, one thing is for certain. Any historical link that ever existed between the twin-cities has most definitely now been severed because the one remaining city of hope must stand alone.

We can imagine the nameless lethani remembering ruler of this last undefeated place of Ergen standing on their own city walls as they watched the dawn break and, just as Selitos was doing far away on his mountain, they were looking out to see the seven self same plumes of smoke rising. One for Myr T, high in it’s mountain fastness. Five for the other diverse cities that formed Ergen’s other powers, and finally, nearest of all the ruins, and in their eyes by far the worst sight of all to them personally lay their own fallen twin. These smoking ruins represented the other half of what once made them a whole. On the plus side help and safety would have been close by for aid to be given to the refugees more swiftly than could be offered to any other city since first come is first served. Twins have a special relationship that goes far beyond what my ink can describe, but that link is broken now and for the first time since these twin-cities were co-founded, one twin will find itself alone as all that remains of Ergen following the fall of empire.

Myrillian

Putting a name to this rulers other half might just be possible thanks to the Adem’s rhinta story. 

‘Six of them betrayed the cities that trusted them. Six cities fell. One of them remembered the Lethani and did not betray a city. That city did not fall

This clearly puts the chandrian down as being six influential and important people in Ergen, Lords and Ladies whom each city once trusted with their security. It is not unreasonable to imagine that when the enemy ‘moved like a worm through fruit’ it would have aimed at subverting these topmost eight rulers of the empire, people who who were in a suitable position to betray the Empire and this enemy would have fully intended for all eight lords and Ladies to forget the lethani on that fateful night and to cross over to the dark side. One of them, however, stayed true to their lethani path.

If the last hope for Ergen was indeed once one of our twin rulers, then in our best of times scenario they would now also know that their original and staunchest ally will now be counted among the chandrian. Alternatively, if this rule were now applied to the worst case scenario this would mean that among the chandrian’s ranks would now be found both of our original pair of twin city rulers, both of them now united in their new service to Lord Haliax. That one rather notable situation of there being two 'twin-linked' Chandrian is not even remotely hinted anywhere as being true. Not through obviously related signs, not as unfounded folk rumour or in the silliest of our children’s songs or stories making it almost certainly not going to be the case in point and so all but confirm the survival of one twin-city. Besides, if the puzzle Pat has given us can be solved, then this is the only answer with any traction. The single fallen member of their twin relationship will however be found among those listed in the Adem story and will also have been painted onto the Mauthern pot which gives us an opportunity to line up some names and faces with our seven other cities the better to work out exactly Who’s Who.

 

π ~ Flora Temeranti...

4 ~ Who’s Who?

Who are the Chandrian?

‘Nobody knows, though every half wit claims he knows.’

Putting all the names to faces and signs is one of Pat’s trickier puzzle problems and you have probably tried to work them out yourself. If so, you may have come to the conclusion that we don’t have enough information to work with, but actually, we have too much. Ben gives us his list list of Seven signs, namely blue flame, one having eyes like a goat, or no eyes, or black eyes. Plants die, metal rusts, brick crumbles, fires dim, they are also, apparently cold to the touch, and one is yoked to shadow or shadow hamed, or maybe it is all their shadows that all point the wrong way…he doesn’t know.

Arliden doesn’t let on much about his own research but he does give us a big piece of the puzzle when he twice mentions reports of animals going crazy or mad around them.

Our author of Vintish Folke Tales has also gathered a list of seven signs blue flame, wine goes sour, blindness, crops withering, unseasonable storms, miscarriage and the sun going dark in the sky.

The Adem list, which ought to be definitive… isn’t because it doesn’t mention anything about their sexes and the words used for descriptions are…confusing but then this is an ancient story translated into Aturan from an archaic language by Sheyen. Isolating the women among them is an important step. We know there are some because when Kvothe actually sees them himself he tells us that they were ‘several unfamiliar men and women’. He doesn’t tell us the exact split although both of these words are plurals. The Cthaeh sticks his oar in too, when it also tells us that they have a lot of experience in hiding those tell-tale signs, which is therefore going to be true but the images on the Mauthern pot won’t be fooled by that and it will, we can be sure, represent them and their signs accurately in their proper form.

 So we have seven assorted men and women, each with a specific sign, a tree is in the distance representing the Cthaeh’s involvement and to cap it off we have an eighth figure in the shape of an Amyr getting in the way, too. Sorting out just the names and signs isn’t enough we need to be adding a description of them which will give us a chance as the puzzle then becomes merely tricky, but not impossible. Getting all the pieces to triangulate correctly into seven piles of three can best be achieved by using logic and rhetoric.

Logic and Rhetoric

1/2 Wits

There are Eight pictures on the Mauthern pot and the first half of the puzzle is quite easy going. Since we are dealing with the chandrian here, the Amyr can sit this game out and instantly we bring the Eight of them down to a lucky Seven. We can just as easily remove Lord Haliax from the equation, too, so that we can focus on his six chandrian proper. This is quite a simple step to take since he is pretty easy to spot and we know the most about him from our stories.

Sex > Male. Sign > No face and Shadow cloak. Adem story line > Alaxel bears the Shadow’s Hame. I think we can all agree on that part and this firm answer will cut through a lot of un-necessary ink and also eliminate many of the ‘double-up’ possibilities that occur in the words which Pat purposefully chose when he wrote our clues. They exist, lots of them, and are put there to trip you in your quest. They raise questions such as ‘are no face and no eyes and black eyes and blindness all the same thing?’ and, well, I suppose that they could be… but they are not. No face is always Lanre and the one with the funny eyes is called Cinder.

Black-Eyed Peas

We have met Cinder up close and personal and his appearance is hard to miss. His eyes have no whites to them, like those of the un-glamoured fae, but his are famously a solid black like a goat’s, or a crow’s. Kvothe is now suspecting for the first time that all of these painted people may be representations of the seven chandrian themselves and so he asks her for guaranteed confirmation by drawing on his own scant knowledge of the 7’s physical appearance and asks specifically if one of these pot people had white hair and black eyes. As the urn will clearly show, these are his stand out features, and are exactly what Nina would have picked up on herself, his eyes are the most important sign and the water and snow are something to do with his also being described as ‘chill.’ Kvothe having any knowledge of her secret at all makes Nina go wide eyed at the thought but she confirms this mans presence with a nod adding that Cinder’s portrait ‘gave me the all-overs’. This is a true depiction, and it is also accurately captured on the Mauthern pot along with a drift of snow to portray the word ‘chill’ which gives provenance to the urn as a reliable source of information and putting it on a par with the Adem story for accuracy. The appearance of snow has nothing to do with one of the7 being described as ‘pale as snow’, that’s another little pat-fall to avoid. Using the reliable Adem story as our key will reveal his true name. And Kvothe’s own eyes can confirm his sex giving him a finished pattern of Name > Ferule. Sex > Male. Sign > Chill and dark of eye. He might also carry a sword with him, but that detail is not a part of his actual sign.

We have now removed an awful lot of cluttering from our lists of possible signs and avoided a few overlaps which makes what is left a bit more manageable. These three were also the ones which Nina painted in detail on Kvothes picture and so we can assume that the unseen images would be of a similar quality. The five people that remain should each have their own sign just as prominantly displayed to leave no doubt as to that pictures most salient point. These other images are now only to be found in Nina’s memory and we are going to be now working blindfolded, a lot like the young girl from Newarre is when she acts along to the childrens chant that in the game that they play beside the tinker at the Waystone Inn, and so our game becomes harder, too.

Flambe

‘When your hearthfire turns to blue, What to do? What to do? Run outside, Run and hide.’

Our next target is to identify the blue flames as this is the most famous of all the signs reported, indeed it’s line in the kid’s song is the first one that Kvothe comes up with when he is with Denna at the Mauthern farm. The Adem Key is clear and tells us that Cyphus bears the blue flame. Now, Old Cob’s version of Taborlin the Great also tells us of blue flames burning and this has a three way link to Martens version where he speaks of ‘Syphus the sorcerer-king’ which is rather difficult evidence to argue with once you have seen it, and so I won’t. I will simply suggest that the spelling is a Vintish dialect used to describe quainte olde folke legends and it is still a nicely placed Pat shaped clue for the sharp eyed to notice and is also the correct answer. But this is clearly now becoming a progressively harder puzzle to solve, the clues are getting smaller and the steps are becoming trickier to climb. Marten’s story also gives us a sex for Scyphus to tick the last piece of his triangle as King Scyphus is revealed as our third man. Name : Cyphus. Sex : Male. Sign : Blue Flame.

1/4 Wits

‘Think now, what does or story need?what is it lacking?

‘Women, Reshi. There is a real paucity of women.’

So four names to go and given kvothe’s earlier plurals we can say that at least half of these should be women. We have less clues in our pile to work with now and we need to rely heavily upon Nina’s memories of what she only briefly saw just once. She describes those that she didn’t paint and brings them to light in trios.

‘People, mostly people. There was a woman holding a broken sword, and a man next to a dead tree, and another man with a dog biting his leg.

Three specific people depicting their three unique signs and we finally have our first woman in sight but also two more men and which only leaves one space to fill and we really need it to be another female just to make them plural, too. A bit more gentle pressing from Kvothe and she remembers ‘one with no face, just a hood with nothing inside it.’ This image is rather striking, too and confirms that these paintings are definitely what Kvothe suspected but one last image is then remembered and she gives us what we were hoping for with her final blushing recall that ‘there was a woman with some of her clothes off ‘ giving us seven different descriptions of five men and two women.

When she later arrives at the University she is asked again what she recalls of the Urn’s backsides and she tidies up a few things for us with her final triad of clues.

‘There was a woman with no clothes on, and a broken sword , and a fire.’

So we have a list of names and a gallery of pictures, We just need a song to go with them now.

‘They formed a circle with a boy in the middle and started to clap, keeping the beat with a children’s song that had been ages old when their grandparents had chanted it.’

The kids of Newarre play their games whilst the tinker… tinkers. Their communal game has a specific song with specific words that they all know and the song also has a specific beat, much like the Lady Lackless hop-skip song does. The meter of that song keeps up a steady beat of Eight counts to the line which is apparently good for skipping practice. The Chandrian song differs in that it’s syllable count is 7/3/3. with an occasional doubling up of the refrain to make it 7/7/3/3, lucky numbers everywhere Again!. Rhythm is more than just lucky, it is also important as it teaches small children how to count and so every syllable is equally important. Songs also hold their shape better as they spread and so you can be sure that the same words have been remembered perfectly down through untold generations.

We hear six verses in total, three during the Inn-terludes and three more in the story proper when Kvothe and Denna are up at the Mauthern farm. One verse is repeated in both scenes just so that we know this is still the exact same song. I have refrained from brining it up so far because we simply didn’t need it, we already know enough about a man whose eyes are ‘black as crow’ or ‘a man without a face’ from personal experiences without any need for a song, too but these verses further confirm this songs veracity. Our repeated line is the one about flames turning blue and that is another sign that we have already dealt with. It also tallies up with Nina’s second memories of there being ‘a fire’ on the Mauthern pot artwork. By-passing these three leaves us with a pair of verses that give us two new pieces of trustworthy information to add to our mix.

Red Oxide

‘When your bright sword turns to rust’ is a perfect line for tying together Nina’s memories of ‘a broken sword’ and ‘a woman holding a broken sword ‘. There is some justification for possibly thinking of the sign decay here instead but that is ultimately going to be a losing argument and so following it further would be folly. We could also spend a while disecting the ‘in thrall of’ part as well but the fact is that the sword can only really be seen as the sign for Stercus who we are informed is in thrall of ‘iron’ which lets us know the pictured sword is not forged of copper or silver but of the same stuff that the fae dread. The sign is not about the blade itself which is simply symbolic of it’s iron content. That ticks all the necessary boxes for our fourth chandrian and also gives us our first woman. Name > Stercus. Sign > In thrall of Iron. Sex > Female.

The Froth

On madness being a possible sign we have only one voice. Arliden’s who talks of animals going crazy though later he uses the term mad instead. He even paints us a picture to explain his point featuring Black eyes, Blue flame and Mad dog. Rather conveniently for us this scene is repeated in the flesh exactly. Black eyes is there, as must be Blue flame so sitting besides the fire really should be Mad dog. The Man at the fire had a bald head and a grey beard. He chuckles and says

‘looks like we missesd a little rabbit Cinder, be careful, his teeth may be sharp.’

which just reeks of being a signpost to his sign somehow involving animals and teeth, just like the picture on the Mauthern Pot. Most importantly we hear him speak which means that whilst his beard may be grey his Adem name is not Grey Dalcenti.

But going back to the subject of crazy/mad animals being a sign makes me think of rabies. Now rabies is a thing in Temerant, Kvothe worries that the draccus may have it and calls it ‘The Froth’ which sounds like a colloquialism. This makes me suspect that a more antiquated version of this might be ‘The Blight’ purely so that this would tally with the Adem Key and it sounds a lot better than ‘Pale Alenta brings the froth!’ In our world the word rabies comes from the latin for madness. This thinking puts grey beard in sync with dog man and therefore both as being Pale Alenta. This also allows us to remove any thoughs of her being pale as snow. That is still to come. We hear no verse in the song for DogMan, Rabies is not a nice image and also a difficult rhyme, but there really ought to be one so I will offer up my own.

‘When your Dog has Caught the Froth jus Blame it All on Patrick Roth fus.’

Name > Pale Alenta. Sex > Male. Sign > brings the blight (Rabies)

Nude Not Naked

Our puzzle pieces are now down to two and we are left with a boy/girl situation. In the childrens game we also see a boy and a girl at play when they were both currently ‘it’ but there appear to be two kinds of rules to the game. First we have the boy who is trying to escape the circle but is being pushed back inwards by the others as they chant the lines about the blue flames. When the girl takes her turn in the middle she covers her eyes with her hand and then tries to catch the others by the sounds they make as they run away chanting the lines about cinder and his crow eyes. Both Cinder and Cyphus are male but Denna also remembers a verse for us, one which the children don’t perform that speaks of our one remaining woman. Curiously, it’s 7/7/3/3 meter matches that of Lord No Face’s verse with a doubling up of the refrain.

‘See a woman pale as snow, silent come and silent go.

What’s their plan? what’s their plan? Chandrian Chandrian.’

Nina also has two goes at remembering the unpainted sides of the pot and on both occasions the image of a nude/naked woman makes her blush a bit. If you want to argue the differnces between being naked and being nude then I suggest that you go and speak to Elodin. At the end of the day these two lines are both talking about Grey Dalcenti who never speaks and so always comes and goes silently. Like Felurian, she apparently also doesn’t much care for clothes.

Name > Grey Dalcenti. Sex > Female. Sign > Uncertain, but silent and naked are part of it.

DeadWood

The most important reason why pale must equal grey comes from the other image on the Mauthern pot, the man by the dead tree. By a process of elimination we arrive at this being Usnea, a man, who lives in nothing but decay. The wood that rots at the farm was new and the troupe’s wagons were all in good condition as recently as Harrowfell. Decay is another classic sign that might also cover a wide range of assorted chandrian sign rumours, brick crumbles (I wonder if these bricks were mixed with iron?) metal rusts (only iron actually rusts) … these are all forms of decay, yes, but Usnea’s sign is most likely specifically aimed towards wood just as Stercus’ sign is aimed only towards iron. The bottom line though is this is the only chandrian we have left and so must be therefore fill the last space. Name >Usnea, Sex > Male. Sign > Decay (Wood Rot’s)

Tree-Angles

‘I wish that you creatures had the wit to appreciate me’

But Usnea’s image is not the only one that contains a tree. There is one on Nina’s painting, too. Behind Haliax there is an image of another tree that is described as ‘bare’, and bare does not mean dead.

Placing such an image in the background is a plot device used in faen plays to warn the audience that things will not end well. This Faen custom dictates that the artist, and therefore the person who actually created this urn, was influenced by the Faen traditions and was more than likely a fae themselves suggesting this urn will be a work of grammarie. I believe that this tree is the real reason why the pot is so important in the first place. The oracle is meant to be a secret. The Sithe are nothing Kvothe had heard of before, he had no reason to have any knowledge of faen phenomena. Their task is to prevent anyone from gaining access to this secret oracle, which means that they only ever deal with faen trespassers and mortals are not even supposed to know of it’s existence. Kvothe found nothing in his library search to warn him exactly what he might be facing except for possibly one obscure reference to an oracle. Stories of a winning a leaf from a magical singing wishing tree over the stormwal in the Tahl might offer a hint but really they would only deflect any idle curiosity about this most secret of secrets… although of course all stories Do have a grain of truth in them. Our Vintish historian may have mentioned this tree oracle rumour in his book, Three chapters on faeries he wrote, one of them all about Felurian. We also have songs about white riders and that means the Sithe, and songs of grey ladies could possibly be about Grey Dalcenti, yes, but there was clearly no explicit mention of any talking trees. Nobody in fae talks about it, ever! It would be like someone spitting poison in your ear. So Kvothe’s picture of the Mauthern pot is probably the only image of it in existance, and some important folk would want to keep any such things a secret. The only thing left to add is that this urn could just possibly be a funeral urn and so contain someones ancient ashes which could provide a sympathetic link to some past persons power, but that's just an idle thought so I shall wind this piece up instead with a rundown of our completed and definitive Chandrian list.

Haliax-Alaxel > Shadow hamed > Male

Cinder-Ferule > Chill and dark of eye > Male

Cyphus > Blue flames > Male

Stercus > In thrall of iron > Female

Pale Alenta > Brings the blight > Male

Grey Dalcenti > Never speaks > Female

Usnea > Lives in nothing but Decay > Male

5 ~ Angels

Murillish Knots

The tale of Skarpi#2 concerns Lord Aleph and the survivors of the fall of Ergen who are now collectively called the Ruach.

With Seven cities falling, we can assume that these Ruach were similarly divided by their city of origin. It should also be noted that the city which was saved will make up the clear majority of Ruach since that city lost no-one to the fighting and was quite probably hosting this great event as it was the only safe place left to them after Lanre Day. 

Aleph clearly had a masterplan and it called for Ruach volunteers to become angels to watch over the land as his justice department. We know from the Adem that each of the individual chandrian betrayed one city each. Now If there was a city of Cealdish ancestry, that city would naturally be betrayed by one of their own, likewise for a city of red heads, or for a city of the grey eyed etc etc. making the Chandrian a truly cosmopolitan septet. So if each of the7 had their own unique citylink to cover the 7 races of Ergen then it might very well be the case that in order for Aleph’s Angel plan to work properly in opposition to them then having a direct genetic blood line to each of the old cities might be deemed a requirement to becoming an angel rather than an affectation. Taking that thought further might also suggest that the Amyr could follow this one Ciridae per fallen city maths, too, but we are dealing with the angels today. 

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Clue#1 ~ Ordal’s Ordeals

The Ruach were all survivors of the fall of Ergen. Those Ruach who chose to follow Selitos all remembered the burning of Myr T and those who chose to follow Tehlu appear to have had similar experiences in their own cities.

Skarpi gives us a few brief lines about each of these ruach who stepped forwards to become angels in much the same way as the Adem recorded each sword bearer in Caesura’s atas. Of course on the Adem list the owners had all died in nasty ways making it read more like a very long winded obituary whilst all of those Ruach that we hear about were, against all odds, still alive for Skarpi to tell us of their life changing tales.  Eight of them are featured in Skarpi’s angelic pen portraits and, Tehlu excepted, he paints a picture of them all as stubborn survivors and refugees from assorted backgrounds who had just emerged from a great ordeal of death and destruction as all of their cities fell. All except for Ordal that is.

‘Ordal, the youngest of them all who had never seen a thing die, stood bravely before Aleph, her golden hair bright with ribbon.

This is not a description of someone who has just lived through an exodus from a fallen city, this is a tale of youth and innocence showing bravery above her years. The fact that we are specifically told that she had never seen a thing die can only mean that Ordal could not have born witness to any of the recent destruction that has just visited the rest of Ergen. This means, as closely as Pat will admit, that the city from which Ordal hailed must then have been the one city which did Not fall and therefore had no deaths for her to witness in the first place.

Clue#2 ~ Andan other thing

With this first clue as our starting point means that sorting out which of the remaining angels might be paired with which city now becomes pretty immaterial since by default they were all among those which fell, however the last name on the list provides a hidden clue

‘…And beside her came Andan whose face was a mask with burning eyes whose name meant anger.’

Andan certainly seems to have seen his fair share of woes but that is not the key observation to make here. It isn’t obvious unless you are looking for it but Pat writes it down in black and white for all to see and then ignore. ‘Beside’ her means exactly that and nothing else, Ordal and Andan both stood together before Aleph, side by side. Now according to Skarpi’s list, Tehlu , being the son of God, was the greatest of them all and so it is to be expected that he came forward, first and foremost as the leader and orchestrator and after that his followers… followed, in one to eight format, just like Skarpi tells us. But despite being the last name on the list Andan was not spoken of, as might be expected as being ‘the last to come forwards…’ or ‘finally came…’ or perhaps even ‘the Eight among them was…’ but instead he was quite deliberately placed in a position which elevates him up from that ultimate 8th position to a universally recognized joint 7th place instead. Meaning that nobody came plum last, not in this game.

That Skarpi even mentions the words ‘beside her’ at all suggests to everyone reading between the lines that Pat wanted us to imagine them stepping forwards together before Aleph as one, equal before his eyes, and in doing so he is deliberately showing us that there was no order of prescedence in placing either one of them above the other, regardless of age or sex. In the eyes of the world they are marked as equal for a specific reason, as if he was telling us that they are always meant to be though of as a pair. Pat, like Trip, has just thrown us a pair of lucky 7’s.

‘Praise Tehlu and all his angels’ is a line from Ambrose which implies that as far as the 4Corners is concerned, other angels are indeed accepted as available, but it must be noted that these two particular angels are the only names from Skarpi’s list which ever crop up in our books again. Denna, when under the influence of denner resin, cries 'Sweet angel Ordal above' in her delirium. The Aturan church doesn’t hold at all with some part of Skarpi’s heretical tale of the holy angels being the last survivors from some other empire which preceded their’s, and yet as far as names go, this pair of self-same angels are definitely acknowledged since they appear written in their own version of the beginnings of all things religous. These two names in particular are shown to us as being written down in the ‘The Book of the Path’, a page of which Nina stole to draw the image of the Mauthern pot upon. She took great care never to erase Tehlu’s name, or that of any of the other angels, and the convenient proof of this is that Pat draws our attention to the fact that the names Andan and Ordal are found written next to each other, one on each of the Amyr’s shoulders which tells us about their physical proximity to each on the written page meaning that even in the eyes of the Aturan Church their names are expected to be found together, although it is also worth noting that in this instance, the boy’s name comes before the girl’s!

Vintish Marten, who clearly knows this holy Aturan book quite well also prefer’s to go with Skarpi's lead and names Ordal before Andan when he was praying for divine intervention to guide his arrow at the bandits camp. We hear him praying to every holy name that he knows and out of all the angels to choose from, Pat uses this opportunity to hammer home the point that these two names, the most famous and popular pair of angels in all of Temerant, should always be kept together.

The unknown yet deliberate relationship which Pat is emphasizing here might suggest many ways to connect them, husband and wife might be an answer although given Ordal’s young age the idea of them being a married couple is highly unlikely. A more plausible line of thinking is that they might well have been siblings, where a younger sister and her elder brother are being shown to still have a bond to share together whatever happens. But that thought would surely mean that they came from the same city when clearly they did not. Therefore the only plausible answer is that these two would-be angels  are the representatives of the twin cities of Murilla and Murella and that they are still exhibiting this special link between them. They might even be twins themselves.

If we take another glance at the Adem and then factor in Skarpi’s lines about Ordal and Andan we will have an opportunity to identify their racial origins. 

'There were fifty sandy heads in the room, a few darker, a few lighter or grey with age…'

This is Kvothe telling us how all Adem are blondes and so Skarpi’s description of the angel Ordal's  golden hair colour tells us that whilst Ordal most certainly wasn’t a Ceald child she did at least have the correct colouring for her to pass the basic profile test for her being a young Adem girl since she has a very similar appearance to Celean. We aren’t told the colour of Ordal's eyes but my Jot says that they were going to be Adem grey.

‘And beside her came Andan whose face was a mask with burning eyes, who’s name meant anger.’

Every part of Andan’s Pat portrait also has an Adem element to it. His face being described as a mask is another classic Adem trait which can be compared to Pat’s general description of all Adem. His name meaning anger also tallies up nicely since all Adem names mean something deep and meaningful and part of Tempi’s name is said to mean Angry which is a pretty good match to Anger being a word used for describing all Adem boys middle names. Whilst that is only the least of these coincidences it is true that and so we can put on the table to support the theory of Andan the Adem.

Obviously Andan didn’t really wear a mask, that is just descriptive of a deadpan expression. He was in fact acting just like the modern Adem do to keep their feelings from their faces and modern Adem keep their faces as blank as if they were wearing a mask. Andan didn’t really have actual burning eyes either but they were the only part of the man beneath that this facial mask allowed him to show. Nor did he have eyes actually made of fire (yet) he is just extremely angry at the world but with enough restraint not to let it show upon his face. This is another tick in the box to show that in my opinion Andan’s eyes were also grey, just like Carceret’s really are.

‘ Then I saw her eyes. I’d thought she’d been angry before, but it was nothing compared to now…Those angers were like pale candles compared to the forge fires burning in Carceret’s eyes.’

Every tiny clue we have been given  implied that whilst each race of Ergen supplied one volunteer to Alephs plan the Ademic ancestors sent a pair of them and my conclusion is that their boy represented the stock of fallen Murilla whilst their girl hailed from Murella, the city which survived. 

Now, It seems increasingly likely to me then that sex was going to be the real difference between the two half-cities and it is my theory that one half was the city where all the A-Men lived and the other half was the city of the A-Women and between them was the wall upon which a female Felurian once sat eating the silver fruit that made your eyes glow like silver.

If this theoryline is correct that will mean that whichever of the Chandrian betrayed Murilla should also sport grey eyes and sandy hair and they will most definitely be an Adem male because in my plan it was the female of their species who remembered the lethani and thus saved Ergen. And that's the real reason why the Adem women are correctly regarded as being better than their menfolk neighbours.

That scrubs both Stercus and Grey Dalcenti out of the running for the Murilla Chandrian as that field is reduced to four. Ferule, Cyphus, Pale Alenta and Usnea. My money is on Pale Alenta brings the froth, if for no other reason than his name appears in the same 6th position in the Adem roll-call as Murilla was in Skarpi's list of Ergen cities.

6 ~ Skarpi.

We have been relying on stories quite heavily on our path forwards and since this is a story about stories, it's probably time to investigate the master storyteller himself. This is not Kvothe, or Kote or even The Chronicler, but rather the one link that binds all these three together. Skarpi, who professes to know the one true great story of the world.

Skarpi is an old man who tells stories to children in The Half-Mast pub in Dockside, Tarbean. Every day at sixth bell, every day except mourning. Why not mourning? This would appear to be a religious thing. The days of the week are named from the time of the tehlin church’s founding. Mourning commemorates the final day of Tehlu’s victory over Encanis and is remembered as a holy day, like our Sunday, and we are told that ‘folk are a little more generous on Mourning.’ The church frowns upon many things, including strong drink. Trapis talks of a man who drank ‘even on Mourning’ and Kvothe avoids a Tehlin priest because he recently drank a pint of strong beer on Mourning, a pint he obtained from the back door of an inn which sounds a bit surreptitious and could mean that inns are not meant to be open on Mourning because of a church edict? Perhaps, perhaps not, but it is quite a plausible theory and a good example of what can be deduced from minimal clues.

What we do know is that Skarpi tells stories on all the other days and if he didn’t know the story that you asked for, he would give you a whole silver talent. Kvothe asks about Lanre and Skarpi obliges. But not only does he tell us the story of Lanre, a story which Arliden would have loved, but in doing so goes into huge detail where Arliden struggled to find many hard facts in two years of searching. Denna also encountered similar troubles with ancient names in her version of Lanre. Unlike Skarpi who reveals much more besides, talking about names and places from points that could be described generously as being the edges of the world.

‘I only know one story, but oftentimes small pieces seem to be stories themselves. It is growing all around us. In the manor houses of the Cealdim and in the workshops of the Cealdar, over the Stormwal in the great sand sea. In the low stone houses of the Adem, full of silent conversation.’ ‘And sometimes’ he smiled, ‘Sometimes the story is growing in squalid backstreet bars, Dockside in Tarbean.’

Basically, Skarpi is saying that he knows all the history of the world which is why there is no story he doesn’t know.

Firstly, we must remember that he is currently speaking from... a backstreet bar, Dockside bar in Tarbean, which the original map shows us this is in the Commonwealth, a part of The Four Corners of Civilization and once part of the Aturan Empire. Skarpi is telling us that everything is part of the bigger story, even Kvothe is a part of this one story just by being there. He mentions the Cealds in two different ways, Cealdar and Cealdim, differentiating between artisans and moneylenders. The capital of Ceald is Ralien and this is where the manor houses and workshops are, deep in the Shalda mountains in their own corner of the world. The Cealds are different from the other nations. They have their own language, their own religion, their own customs, and they have a profoundly unique appearance. If anyone can be said to be a wholly different peoples from the norm then it is the Cealds. They are also wary of outsiders and simply treat them as customers. Skarpi may have been there but Kvothe says that his troupe never went that far North.

Skarpi also speaks of the far side of the Stormwal being a great sea of sand. We know little else about it, but we know where its is meant to be… It is off the edge of the map! Has Skarpi travelled there himself ? maybe, anything is possible I suppose. There are rumours of a nomadic race of singers and healers living there, but we know little more about it than that. It seems likely that Skarpi knows more stories about it and has told them on earlier occasions. The other children are obviously treated to stories about this inhospitable place, one young girl in particular, who couldn’t possibly have any other source of information asks for specific stories about things from the dry lands over the Stormwal. He also speaks of the Adem, another race who live outside of the four corners, secretive and aloof all sharing the same grey eyes. They are a race apart who don’t welcome barbarians. Despite them being such a secretive people, Skarpi knows, accurately, about their ‘low stone houses full of silent conversation’. How? Even if he had also traveled there to see for himself, these are the inner parts of their school and the Adem are a secret people who would not have allowed him inside their low stone houses or taught him of their silent language . Emphatic Absolute Denial. Yet he is somehow exact and correct in his description. Skarpi is not one of the grey eyed Adem, his eyes are diamond blue, yet he certainly knows what he is talking about.

Looking at the 10th anniversary maps also reveals something else about Skarpi’s words. The Cealds were Not part of the Aturan empire, they never were having always remained independent of its influence. The same is true of the Ademre and of everything beyond the Stormwal. Only Tarbean, where he is currently sitting can be said to be within the four corners of civilization and subject to the language, law and religion of the Aturan Empire, which he is about to fall foul of when he tells his next story.

So Skarpi is worldly wise and knowledgeable about secretive things. He is Not a simple storyteller.

Kvothe asks Skarpi if his story of Lanre was true and he is told that…

‘All stories are true, 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.’

That is quite a lot to take in, and raises the question how do we know Skarpi isn’t lying about everything? The answer to that question is hidden within his own words. Arliden was also trying to find the story of Lanre. We know that he found something, a historical basis for his song, but nothing like the information Skarpi gives us. To give his story credence we have to pick a few important words out. Skarpi gives names to seven cities and the one city, and also speaks of the Blak of Drossen Tor. The Adem have written records painstakingly copied and accurately recorded in all their swords atas, and kvothe’s sword was recorded as being carried at Drossen Tor, corroborating the name. However a story of this time names Tariniel as the one city, (missing out Skarpi’s ‘Myr’ part) and admits the other names of the cities have been forgotten for they fell ‘long ago, before the land was broken and the sky changed.’ If any of the Adem fought and died in any of these cities, it would be recorded in their swords atas and being could cross referenced to their story, but it is not implying they had their own city to defend. Skarpi tells us that ‘even books that recorded the war as doubtful rumour have long since crumbled into dust.’ however he not only names Myr Tariniel in full but also rattles off seven other names. Belen, Antus, Vaeret, Tinusa, Emlen, and the twin cities of Murilla & Murella.

Felurian herself talks of Murella not being in the fae and of and herself sitting upon its walls eating a fruit. She says this was long ago. ‘before. there was but one sky, one moon, one world, and in it was murella. and the fruit. and myself…’

This is all we need to corroborate accuracy in Skarpi’s tale, an eye witness whose word we cannot deny.

And talking of eyes, Kvothe tells us during his conversation with Skarpi

‘His bright eyes looked deep into me, as if I were a book that he could read.’

This line is very similar to his description of how Magwyn and Elodin could look at him. And, to a lesser degree, Cinder and Puppet! Skarpi’s own description of Selitos in his tale also tells us that…

‘Just by looking at a thing Selitos could see its hidden name and understand it. In those days there were many who could do such things, but Selitos was the most powerful namer of anyone alive in that age… Such was the power of his sight that he could read the hearts of men like heavy lettered books.’

When Felurian and kvothe clash in a struggle of wills. Each trying to dominate the other, Kvothe emerges the stronger and Elodin believes that he actually spoke the true name of Felurian. During their battle…

‘Felurian reached up to touch my face, her eyes intent as if trying to read something written deep inside of me.’

Felurian was attempting to read Kvothe’s true name and thus have power over him. This is a repeated description of how namers use their power, they literally read you like a book. Selitos was a namer and is described doing exactly this, but he wasn't the only one which means that Skarpi could well be one too and that he is also reading the name of Kvothe, so to speak, using the power of his own sight. Is Skarpi like the ‘many who could do such things’? he certainly knows about the due process of naming. Skarpi being a namer would also neatly answer the oft asked question of how Skarpi learnt Kvothe’s name without it being mentioned. Answer: He read it.

From the other examples we are shown of actual naming, Elxa Dal gives us the best when he says the name of ‘fire’ and that is what Kvothe hears although the master says that is not what he actually said and that he is surprised Kvothe heard anything at all. In another example Elodin whispers the name ‘aerlevsedi’ to Kvothe but Simmon only hears the word ‘wind’.

Chronicler’s transcription process is approved by Kote as faithful and is therefore beyond reproach.

My point here is we are told what young Kvothe heard in Tarbean verbatim. ‘Silanxi, Aeruh, and Selitos’ Are these just random words made up by an old storyteller for dramatic effect? Or is that what was actually said on the mountain 5000 years ago?, the names of stone and air, phonetically reproduced (with a capital letter) If so, this would mean that Skarpi either knows the shape of these Names himself, or that he has been told them personally at some point by someone who did.

Since he was not present on the mountain to hear them spoken, and it is unlikely that Haliax told him afterwards, this leaves the only plausible answer being that Selitos told him the details of this story personally. Somehow their life spans have crossed which means that at least one of these two people is also over five thousand years old. I would suggest that if one definitly is, then both most probably are. Incidently, whilst Skarpi did not actually call and wind or stone during his story, he knew the sound that their names make. Furthermore it could be argued that by naming Selitos he could also have spoken his true name which might have made an ancient, but still active and powerful Amyr, aware that someone, somewhere, was speaking his true name. And two days later, someone came looking for him to find out who?

Haliax is still abroad in the world, we have met him, so it is not unthinkable to accept Selitos still knocking around as well in order to continue his sworn mission of confounding him.

In Skarpi’s dealings with Erlus he makes statements that imply he actually knew Tehlu personally. He has just insulted the Tehlin Justice before Erlus strikes him, orders him not to speak in his presence and that he ‘know’s nothing’, Skarpi ignores his command and replies ‘I suppose that could be true, Tehlu always said—‘ where no matter what came next, the next words are a recollection of Skarpi being in a conversation with Tehlu. This angered the justice greatly to have an obvious heretic blaspheming before him but in his next line Skarpi chides Erlus by name, implying that he must either of had dealings with him before or that he has just read him ‘like a heavy lettered book.' He goes as far as to state that ‘Tehlu hates you even more than the rest of the world does, which is quite a bit.’ A very personal opinion which could only be true from personal knowledge. Skarpi laughs hysterically through his ensuing beating at the thought of ‘these sort of men’ calling on Tehlu like the name of God himself.

Is Skarpi just a simple storyteller, fond of a drink and unaware of the trouble he is in? He seems to think that he will be alright because he has ‘friends in the church’. If he knew Tehlu himself then that would be true, a personal friend of a powerful angel would have powerful connections, or maybe he knows some eqivalent of ‘the hempen verse’ which he thinks will get him off the hook. But his stories are not the ravings of a drunken madman, all of his words and actions indicate his veracity.

Could Skarpi have spoken with Tehlu recently? No, because according to his own story, Tehlu left this world and cannot be seen by mortal sight. In order to know what ‘Tehlu always said…’ he would have to have known him from before he left, in fact Skarpi would have had to be among the Ruach present at the scene in order to accurately record his own second story? This would make the most sense, for him to be actually remembering his own first hand experiences which would allow him to provide us with such accurate information.

This not a tale he once heard told to him, but a memory. His stories are in fact history, an inconvenient truth which contradicts the official Tehlin version which is written down in the  Church’s ‘Book of the Path’.

Thus the conclusion we reach then  is that Skarpi and Selitos were both in attendance when Tehlu was last seen at Alephs great meeting and therefore reveals that Skarpi is a very long lived being with very powerful connections.

7 ~ Sithe and singers

We have a few pieces on the Aleph game board now. He created an avatar with Perial in order to rid the world of demons and The 8 angels under Tehlu's control are now the good guys who agreed to follow His plan. The Amyr under Selitos are a rogue quantity. Selitos one-eye acknowledged Lord Aleph as being his superior but still disagreed with him over his plan for the future. Clearly Chandrian foes but not exactly doing gods angel work which they deemed insufficient to their cause and Aleph allowed them their indulgence.

Their personal beef with the Chandrian is actually a side quest to that of dealing with Encanis but other anti Chandrian factions exist in this eternal power struggle and before we gatecrash the meeting fully we should take a moment to consider some other pieces on the game board who also oppose the7.

"Who protects you from the Amyr, the singers and the Sithe?"

The Sithe

This one shouldn’t take long because we know bugger all about them, that’s the theory anyway. Young Kvothe has never heard of them and focuses his search more upon the now famous Amyr. But elder Kote has since learnt that the Sithe are 'a faction among the Fae. Powerful, with good intentions' but Bast seems to know the most about the the Sithe.

‘You don’t understand them if you use the term ‘good intentions.’ But if any of the Fae can be said to work for the good, it’s them. Their oldest and most important charge is to keep the Cthaeh from contact with anyone. With Anyone.’

Obviously that 'anyone' remit includes the7 but it is not an exclusive statement. Bast is only 150 years old and only knows what he has been taught. This 'oldest and most important charge' was given to them before his time… but by whom? Someone very important no doubt and I'm pretty sure that also means Aleph but before we get onto that mystery there is one other Bast mention of them too, and a very important one as well. When he is making his holly crown defence against any future skin dancer attack, he also talks once again of the Sithe.

‘I’m running dark on this myself, Reshi. I know the Sithe used to ride out wearing holly crowns when they hunted the skin dancers…’

If you factor in the similarity in their bows we can clearly see the links between the Sithe and a group called the White Riders forming that will make them one and the same thing. Kote also knows of an old Faen song called the White Riders Hunt.

"Rode they horses white as snow. Silver blade and white horn bow,

Wore they fresh and supple boughs, Red and green upon their brows."

Where has he heard this from? We might suspect that Felurian taught it to him, it was originally a faen song after all. It might have been something he picked up as a child listening to faerie stories around the campfire but young Kvothe originally say’s that he has never heard of the Sithe to connect those dots. Maybe Illien wrote it, he wrote everything else it seems but we can actually glean that teenage Kvothe must have remembered it from the old Vintish book he found in the archives, A Quainte Compendium of Folke Belief, in which the author recorded ‘songs about the grey ladies and the white riders’. Now this is very interesting because this book was written two hundred years ago and thus predates Bast but it is by it’s very name a book of mortal folk belief. Since every mortal who ever tumbles into and returns from the Fae (a very small number) is usually mad and mostly dead very soon after and we must assume the songs and stories did not come from them. Yet these songs did come to mortal attention long ago, possibly from as far back as the demon days, when these faen white riders must have visited mortal lands themselves and done so regularly enough for this song to become known here, hinting that there might have been some mortal/fae collusion going on but this forgotten folk song of Temerant is definitely an original faen song written about one of their own faen factions favourite pastimes…hunting down skin dancers. It is a song about the Sithe and their enemies, and these enemies are not really the actual mortal skin owners themselves but are rather the faen powers in posession of the poor mortal puppets in question, and this other faen faction Bast calls the Mahael-Uret.

"It seemed like one of the Mahael-uret , a skin dancer' but also adds that "It was not  'My kind'" he said indignantly. "The Mael doesn't even share a border with us. It's as far as anywhere can be in the Fae."

That snippet of information will be useful later when it's time to nap out the Fae but for now there is no reason to assume that the Mael mob have anything to do whatsoever with the chandrian, but the fact they do share a common enemy with the Sithe cannot be overlooked since the enemy of my enemy must be my friend.

Small crumbs, yes, but I work with what I’m given. The Sithe once came into mortal specifically to hunt down skin dancers. This actually makes perfect sense as a powerful faen entity is likely the only thing capable of controlling a Mael skin dancing puppet properly. The language this puppet was forced to speak in, which I’ve christened Eld Faen, was the language spoken in the land of it’s ancient Mael master and is therefore all it had to work with. Since there aren’t any mortals in the fae to posess, these dancers masters must be historically and directly linked to the mortal realm by default to gain the raw material necessary to create one. 

We have another account of them doing just this in Trapis’ tale where he talks explicitly about a rank among the demons who 'stole the skins of men and wore them like clothes’. This class of rhinta is one level below Encanis in the demonic list of perceived badness which gives them another vague chandrian link.

Taken all together this makes for a rather interesting triangle since we are told that it was actually Tehlu who ousted these particular demons all by himself, but the pieces of the puzzle fitting now has Tehlu doing the same job as the white riders did and therefore this will also link this ‘good’ faen faction called the Sithe to the real demon slayer that was Tehlu and The enemy of my enemy…

Tehlu anyways

Confused? I’m not surprised, but that is what is written and that is what we have to work with.

Singers

Putting Tehlu in the same camp as the Sithe ideology would provide a link to another of the chandrian’s triad of enemies, the Order Amyr. According to Skarpi, the Order were formed at the same meeting that Tehlu and his angels were  and the Amyr’s number one purpose is clearly stated as being to confound Lanre and all who follow him, ie. the chandrian. That is why the Amyr exist. ‘nothing will prevent us from attaining the greater good’ said Selitos which are very similar to the words that Bast spoke earlier about the Sithe sort of working for ‘the good’. In my opinion this ‘good’ spoken of here really ought to be the same good and is all shades of the overall good decreed by Aleph’s plan to bring an end to the demon days once first and foremost and to deal with the secondary existential threat of the  chandrian. That would mean that the Seven’s enemies, namely the Amyr , the singers and the Sithe really should have all been present in the same room for the same reason at the same time to sign up for their allotted part in God's master demon ridding program. All the Ruach have all made their future intentions known by their own personal choices and Aleph is there too to protect them.

If this is true tinfoil, then we are going to need some of Pat's own ink to make it work together and Skarpi doesn’t disappoint, you might not think so but it’s all clearly written there for those with eyes to see. Whilst there is no actual mention of any future Sithe being in the room, we don’t get to hear hear the whole of the story. Not only is the ending cut short abruptly by the actions of justice Erlus, but Kvothe also arrives too late to hear the children request the theme of this day’s tale, and at six bells one of them must have asked for this exact story to be told in Skarpi’s talent contest. Kvothe overslept (damn that kid!) and thus valuable first hand knowledge is now lost to us… damn that kid. Now I don’t think the 'Sithe to be' are still among the remaining Ruach who were too scared to get involved in great matters since being a Sithe is a great responsibility. Rather I think that they have already played their part and that some earlier Ruach made their Sithe decisions some small time before Kvothe finally arrived. This bit of tinfoil is sort of confirmed by Skarpi who, before he makes his own exit, gives Kvothe a little half-smile when he managed to catch his eye.

‘but at the same time, deep inside me, something selfish was saying, if you’d come earlier and found out what you needed to know, it wouldn’t be so bad now, would it?‘

a bit more mind reading, name knowing stuff going on here maybe? it’s shaky, yes, but it is strongly hinted that what we need to know, the whole tale about what happened was the story spoken aloud for everyone who turned up on time to hear. The children, the barman, and Erlus & co. had it all neatly explained by Skarpi in the earlier part of this story, a part Kvothe missed because he was late for class…damn that kid.

Every single word used in these books is far too important to be ignored as mere filler, some moreso than others, and as well as this, (in addition, also) we know from our reading that Pat Doesn’t Waste Ink! which only goes to highlight one small but very important word in Skarpi#2 that is easily overlooked in such a large book but has been bugging at me for years now… the word 'Too.'

Too, tōō adv. as well. in addition. also.

‘Most of the Ruach hung back from Selitos, too. They were afraid and did not wish to become involved in great matters. But Tehlu stepped forward…

So this means that before the Ruach were offered the chance to join Selitos, they had Already turned down an earlier option. That is written as clear as day. Some of them who could not just forget Lanre’s destructive actions so easily decided to sign up to the Order Amyr, and some would go on to sign up for Gods angel program but ‘most of the Ruach’ refused Selitos too which can only mean that they had already refused another option before his at this meeting, that of becoming a Sithe. The combined findings of this meeting would be that they were offered at least three choices that they could have signed up for depending on their willingness to get involved in progressive plans. One option was becoming an extension of Lord Aleph’s judicial plan which would involve volunteering to join his justice Angels. This was an option already offered to and indeed turned down by Selitos as being 'not good enough' and who instead decided that it was necessary to form another group with a different tactic of confounding Lanre and all who follow him, and a few of these braver Ruach agreed and decided that this group was much more their cup of tea. But the most logical extension to our options list would thus be for some of them to have already signed up to do the work of Aleph best in a plan which would allow them to act in a third Aleph granted shape and form by joining the faen branch of operations and become a Sithe. The Sithe were charged by Aleph as being full time guardsman to something equally important in the grand scheme of things whos number one task was to stop anyone (chandrian included) from gaining access to the even more evil entity that is called the Cthaeh.

The Singers

Since everything is getting knotted nicely together now I might as well correlate the name of the third mysterious chandrian danger ‘the singers‘ to this Aleph meeting just to really stir matters up further. The singers are neither the Amyr nor the Sithe but must have been present here too by default to be recognised as a third important threat by the Chandrian since this story is where and when Aleph's volunteers were allocated their necessary new powers once and for all. I will suggest that we have already met these singers when I point out that Tehlu’s angels were given their wings at this very same meeting in order to carry out a specific task, one which was considered less extreme than that of the Amyr when they were touched by God and had their long names changed by him.

‘They came to Aleph, and he touched them. The touched their hands and eyes and hearts. The last time he touched them there was pain, and wings tore from their backs that they might go where they wished… Then Aleph spoke their long names and they were wreathed in a white fire. The fire danced along their wings and they became swift. The fire flickered in their eyes and they saw into the deepest hearts of men. The fire filled their mouths and they spoke songs of power.'

And I will bet you a jot that Alephdid the same sort of thing to the Amyr and the Sithe in the full unabridged version of Skarpi#2

This is very reminiscent to when Kvothe learned his own true name from the Adem Magwyn, the salient points being the hands and eyes and hearts which she inspected most carefully three times. Tehlu also struck everyone three time when he was giving everyone a new name revealing how this is how the long-naming of all mankind is all spun together, through these three parts that form everyones three part names. Hands, eyes and hearts. Amyr hands. Angels hearts. Sithe eyes.

However, The part we require to solve our latest puzzle is the final line ‘The fire filled their mouths and they sang songs of power.’ which would clearly mark them as being powerful singers (no capital required). 'The singers' then is just a descriptive name for the Angels, they sing songs of power, and either name fits perfectly as being the third threat to the chandrian wellbeing along with the Amyr and the Sithe, One group to guard against then, one group to confound them and one group to punish them. Its as easy as 1,2,3 really.

So the gathering of the ruach before Aleph on which Skarpi chronicles in his second tale would look something like this. 

Aleph

Ruach

Amyr

Angels

Sithe

Chandrian on trial

No Lanre. 

/ but on the other side are those who refused to cross.

‘(The chandrian )were the first six people to refuse Tehlu’s choice of the path, and he cursed them to wander the corners—‘/

 Summoning 

This would also mean that it can only have been the powerful singing Angels which interrupted the chandrian when we see them last, since they are the only ones which have the necessary job descriptions and holy remit to do so, tidying up after the event. They have wings and powers so that they might go where they wished invisible in their righteousness, which would be rather necessary if your threat is described as an invisible presence coming late to the scene from a certain corner of the sky ! even young Kvothe says that he could sense a tenseness, a subtle change in the texture of the air, a feeling of being watched perhat and Cinder uses the word watcher when he compares Haliax to being ‘as good as a watcher’ which might well be a vague response comparing him to watching like a singer does just before he receives Lord Haliax’ own brand of punishment.

We get a few hints on how to summon an angel from Trapis, he quotes the Lead angel saying

‘If I am needed and called in the proper ways then I will come again to judge and punish.

The correct way to summon Lord Tehlu during the classic recreations of high mourning is to say Tehlu’s name in it’s classical Temic form ‘ Tehus! Tehus! Tehus antausa eha’ which according Kote is how you traditionally banish demons. And as Trapis adds…

And that is how we know Tehlu cares for us, and watches us, and keeps us safe from—‘

‘—the chandrian’ is what really fits best here to finish the line , although it has probably been sanitised into harm or some other soft nondescript wording by the Tehlin church, it matters not. Perhaps using true names is how Tehlu is called in the proper way? Marten is praying to Tehlu like crazy when Kvothe is battling Cinder in the Eld.

‘Tehlu whose eyes are true, Watch over me. Tehlu son of yourself, watch over me. Tehlu who was Menda who you were, watch over me. In Menda’s name, In Perial’s name, In Ordal’s name, In Andan’s name. Watch over me.’

This is probably the church version of praying from the Book of the Path and therefore unreliable for accurate references to the real shape of things, but they do have the names correct, Andan and Ordal are still written on the page of the holy book Nina used for her picture and appear to be watching over her when she had repetitive dreams. They came to her in the aftermath of the latest chandrian attack of their own volition,almost as if they were watching over her. this is their task, they watch, they punish or they reward and they don’t always need summoning to do it. the Amyr and the Sithe may have their own special powers but are both depicted as horse riders, not winged beings and these groups have a more preventative bent to their modus operandi. And so it is therefore left to the watching Angels whose task it is to watch and to mete out justice to the world on behalf of Aleph in response to any chandrian related actions and ‘to punish or reward only what you yourselves witness from this day forth.’ # Sod everyone else, the singers only act in the aftermath of attack, these are the only crimes deemed important to them like the Amyr only known task is to deal with confounding the chandrian menace too. The singers are up there… somewhere, everywhere, newarre, whatever… watching for the chandrian next attack, and whilst# they cannot interfere in advance by Aleph’s decree, they are now allowed to act and are swiftly on their winged way to punish or reward and to sing their songs of power, possibly a similar sort of song to the one that Kvothe saw and sung and thus tamed the mighty Felurian… The chandrain choose to flee any such punishment leaving Kvothe alone in the ashes of his despair to receive these singers full attention.

If any of this is making any sense at all then come please see me after class and explain it back to me…slowly. I sm deliberately leaving some things alone for now so as to not clog things up too soon, this is an extrapolation in π parts at the moment and looks less like a story knot and more like like a hairy ball of string or the Chancellors sock drawer to the untrained eye. But as sceptical as you should be you should hopefully agree that this theory does quite nicely put all three of the groups that Haliax protects his chandrian from all together into one convenient location at the same time…. and the same place. The place in question is where Aleph held court to the Ruach in our trusted account from Skarpi#2. And it becomes quite apparent that entire point of this meeting was to shape the world anew ‘from this day forth’ as Aleph said. Everything was decided here and and now.

All of this makes it pretty clear now to me that this meeting was the most important meeting ever to take place in the history of Temerant. Ergen is now officially no more and great changes were made to the whole world on this day without a date. Tehlu Day: the day the threat of the Demons was ended. The only threat that was left will come from the Chandrian. Three factions of the Ruach were charged with three different tasks on the same day to uphold Aleph’s edict. And all three tasks are designed to somehow answer the unsnswerable question ‘How do we deal with Lanre? the eternal man who cannot die?’

8 ~ Gods

9 ~ Dream Time

Fin

Tehlu cannot himself be one of the Sithe because he has no adverse reaction to iron, unlike all of the other faen folk, neither is he seen wearing a holly crown or riding a horse, he was actually called the walking god and he walked the land ‘destroying’ these demons when he caught them.

Tehlu was a tool of Aleph’s justice and there are even hints that this is actually his own true long name means, like Selitos was bound by the true name of Selitos in Skarpi#1. Tehlu being the long name written in his own heart may well translate into justice in the language of such things but such translation is a chapter in itself (Teh means lock in our sygaldry alphabet and lu is one part of the moon’s true name…) Tehlu also announced before his master Aleph ‘I hold justice foremost in my heart’ and that could be read to indicate that justice is exactly what his name actually means. But he has another name too, his calling name was Menda, and Menda is a different story all together since he was born under very special circumstances. He was rushed into being born in one third of the usual time and in mortal form, in mortal lands, as the result of a holy union between God and Mortal, a union which is correctly called a Titan in the ancient greek myths of our world, a sort of demi-god. Aleph created the world but desired a more earthly form to be his instrument of justice, and Menda was the result of the union between an omnipotent Aleph who came to the important Lady that was called Perial in a dream and left her imaculately pregnant, exactly like so many greek myths have Zeus doing. (Perial’s story is equally baffling and should be coming along in due course, very soon now I think…)