L and L close

7 ~ Unraveling 

The secrets of House Lockless are hidden within two riddle rhymes and seven things will likely take many more pages to unlock. Some like the door are pretty easy, others like the rings are less so. A few , such as candles, may be impossible to crack without a third book of clues to help us. Still, we can but try.

To differentiate between the two songs more easily it is common practice to name the first chant the girls song and the second chant the boys song. In the girls song the focus is upon the Lady Perial Lockless herself and it tells us something we didn't know before in that she has acquired a husband since we last saw her. She was unmarried when she gave birth to Menda and so any marriage must have taken place after her firstborn son had left home and probably happened after Tehlu Day. This union would have made her husband the new Lord Lockless by default which really ought to have given him a half share in the running of the Lockless family estates. That means that something like the Lockless door mentioned in both of our lyrics (which is obviously going to be the secret door which stands on the oldest part of their ancestral land) would effectively now belong to both of them at the same time. However, things like the 'secret she's been keeping' clearly belong to the lady alone since it is her secret. A candle mentioned in her lyrics is clearly labelled as being his candle but there may well be a second candle ascribed to her name as well if we are talking about 'his n hers'. Candles we will be dealt with in a Tomesπece called the chandlery at a time that must be right, which is not today. Seven pairs of items of oddly dual possession like the chancellor's socks cannot be ruled out but that path to solving is irrational mathematics more worthy of a diagram and can also wait until we have fleshed out the remaining pieces better.  The boys song is more ambiguous about ownership and I like to think this second song is actually more relevant to the husband than to the wife and so I shall upgrade the girls and boys monickers and henceforth refer to song #1 as the Lady's and song#2 as the Lords, and I intend to put a name to him before we get much further down this particular rabbit hole.

Lord of the Rings

Rings are the first piece of the puzzle given to us in the Lockless songs. 

"One of them a ring unworn: 

One a ring thats not for wearing "

Now that may appear to mean the same thing at first reading but ring lore is an obscure Vintish thing all by itself that has nothing to do with the rings within eyes, apparently.

We hear from Bredon about the tradition of exchanging courtly rings among Vintish society as a time honoured way of displaying your perceived importance. The three levels of ring rank are lowly Iron, Silver for parity and finally superior Gold. Whichever ring you give or receive displays your current rung on the social ladder where kings are at the top and peasants are at the bottom. Gods golden spectacles [NB Jax and tinker,,] will mark Lady Perial as being accorded a status far above any mortal kings in the true way of such things but even if they didn't acknowledge her eyes as having any bearing on ring matters, you must agree that any ring sent to her would always have been superior gold as no name could be held in higher regard than that of the mother of God. Not even her husband can claim that accolade as he was only Gods step-father and although we do not know his own ring status to properly compare their relationship, we can assume that he was likely regarded as a silver person in the three ring scale as you wouldn’t insult such a man with iron. If the eyes do indeed have it then I suppose sporting silver rings in your eyes would suggest the closest match there is to having grey eyes. Quite what colour eye would be a match with Iron is tricky but the non specific 'dark' eyes is the ubiquitous description for the iron loving Cealds so perhaps dark eyes of iron will just have to be used to cover 'everything else' for now...(except blue!)

Now if Perial's gold came via her touch from God, and everyone else in the world received a touch of iron instead then where did these silver people all come from and what's their backstory? The Adem is the obvious answer but they don't believe in Tehlu which is a bit of a spoke in that wheel and I prefer to follow a much deeper answer today.

I think that Silver eyes indicate eyes of Ergen origin and hence are now exclusive to the surviving Ruach.

Now that bit of tinfoil definitely deserves a chapter of it's own so let's just put it to one side for now.

Greenwood

 

Then we are told that there is a fourth ring to consider, an even lower rung of the ladder than iron which once appeared in the ring rankings long ago to mark a servant. We are told that the practice has now fallen out of use completely and is only remembered as a plot device in a number of old plays. A play which shows the origin of ring giving is exactly the sort of place to go dig for answers. Perhaps a good wooden ring colour might be green and it was used to suggest a touch of fae in your bloodline...

In a modern day comparison to our historical investigation, the difference in status between the top ring and bottom rung of the ladder is well depicted when the Gold tier Lady Meluan Alveron-Lockless gives a member of the Edema Ruh family a wooden ring with her own name freshly burned into if. This highborn Lady is giving a ring which shows to the whole world that she is taking the most extreme method of making her point by declaring the recipient to be considered as far beneath herself in every shape, way and form imaginable, that the ravel ruh are ranked in her eyes as the lowest of the low, that the Edema men are an excresence on the arse of world, or even that they are like the green discharge that drips from it. Compared to her own lofty golden station they aren’t even bracketed as being the same species as herself*. This gives us the two opposite ends of the social spectrum and it is the view of the Lackless family as a whole who famously disowned their own daughter for daring to side with such a despised family, the One family of the outcast Edema Ruh.

‘That means to her you aren’t even a person. You aren’t worth recognizing as a human being… It’s not the sort of ring you wear,’ Said Bredon uncomfortably, ‘It’s quite the other sort of ring actually.’

Stapes confirms this on the next page when he asserts that ‘You really shouldn’t wear it’ to which Kvothe replies ‘I’m not ashamed of what I am, If this is the ring of an Edema Ruh, I’ll wear it.’ Stapes sighed, ‘It’s more complicated than that.’

*If you count the Fae as being another species then suddenly my thought about a wooden ring being a faen ring suddenly starts to look a bit more promising as an answer.

Of course Faen Felurian asserted that were never any human Amyr either meaning wooden might also be their ring of choice, too. The Amyr were of course first formed out of Aleph's Ruach, and the Ruach were the survivors of Lanre day, who may or may not have silver eyes... We really need to go down that choice of the path soon. Stapes is right. It Is more complicated than that.

/So, let's begin with a table of wood then iron then silver then gold.

Fae/human/Ruach/gods

Green, dark grey gold

All of these words we can associate with our hero and his eyes will hint at four different bloodlines 

The four corners of civilization 

Husband/

Diagram eye chart pi chart

Unlke our Ladies line of 'a ring unworn' which I'm attributing solely to Pwrial since you don't really wear your eyes. A wooden ring fits better onto the Lords hand as being a ‘ring that’s not for wearing' which is verbatim what the learned Bredon and Stapes just said and I think that's going to turn out to be the end difference between the First Lord and the First Lady. Hers will always be a golden ring and her own summoning ring for him, which would once have been her silver ring of a partner is now a wooden one instead. Perhaps she caught him diddling the chambermaid. 

This is not a summoning ring at all, quite the opposite in fact, this is the ring of an outcast.

Meluan Lockless should know better than any the gravity of using this old family tradition when she let her true feelings about the Edema Ruh be known to Kvothe. It's entirely possible she once sent a wooden ring to Arliden and maybe even sent one for her sister Natalia, too. Kvothe's new ring he keeps as a memento of his own family reunion and it will end up sitting next to his other wooden ring which he was given by Auri for a completely different rrsson. His new ring is also really a male heirloom since it this is the ring of the original Lockless outcast then given his mothers bloodline this is also his birthright from his eternal grandfathers contribution the family gene pool. Now I bet you a jot that Meluan wasn't even the first Lockless to ever give out a wooden ring and the best way to tie up this ring cycle would be to discover if Lady Perial also once gave the outcast ring to her own mysterious husband. What a scandal that would have been,and strife and separation within house Lockless is just the sort of scandal that has dogged their family ever since. If my princess Ariel theory is to be believed then it's happening again right now. I wonder if Maer has gotten his own wooden ring yet?

"It's generally accepted that there was some sort of falling out that splintered the family. Each piece took on a separate name"

This sort of husband scandal (sorry) seems prevalent in house Lockless across time but it all had to start somewhere and a good story will always start at the beginning. We can assume that Lord and Lady Lockless must have had at least one child of their own in order for the family name to have continued on after them, which it obviously did, but their offsprings eyes could never equal the pure gold perfection of the mother as the fathers silver contribution would have muddied the waters so to speak. Even if there was nothing but inbreeding in the Lockless house thereafter they would none of them ever be the 24 carat Lockless that greatⁿ granny Perial was. 

I earlier proposed that to keep both of their noble houses supplied with heirs, the Maer and Meluan should agree to share out their offspring with house Vint raising the boys and house Lockless inheriting the girls and I still have no fairer answer than that. If this has been the standard arrangement down the ages, part of the Lockless plenary powers perhaps, then that means the Lockless is always going to be a purely female household. This answer will nicely explain why so many family members flew the nest and made their own names elsewhere in the world.

 " Lack-key, Laclith, Kaepcaen" 

These would be all the male children given over to their fathers houses to raise but were not considered deserving of the Lockless name. In the worlds oldest bloodline all of the boys are considered bastards and only the golden girls get to stay. 

So the first Lord Lockless was apparently banished from the Lockless lands and in those days these lands stretched far and wide meaning then he would have been doomed to wander four rather extreme corners in search of a new family to call his own, one who wouldn't turn him away because of his 'tainted blood'.

Kvothe as a male is a direct descendant of this union. From his mother’s side of the family he already has the Golden rings unworn of the Lockless family's ultimate grandmother and from his greatⁿ grandfathers side he has now received his very own 'ring that's not for wearing.' It is not the original of course but it is still a true Lockless male heir's ring, it’s even got their name burned into it so now he has the matching set.  Through him the originsl male/female bloodline remains unbroken and Kvothe the Bloodless is now the current favourite candidate to qualify as being a 'son that brings the blood.' 

He probably also gets his bright red hair from this union of the first Lord and Lady suggesting one of them was also a red head which if you put everything together pretty much wraps up the case for Perial's one time husband to have been called Illian, the first Lord of the the Edema Ruh. 

Auri say’s that a wooden ring holds your secrets, and Auri is very wise about such things. 

Mad Matty Tangle is not and so he sometimes has to just make stuff up and see where it goes hoping that it will all come out in the wash.

8 ~ Seven and Seven is…

Apocalypse in 7/8

Have you ever noticed that the 7 things lines appear on NotW p. 77?

Seven things has Lady Lockless

Keeps them underneath her block dress

One a ring that’s not for wearing

One a sharp word not for swearing

Right beside her husband’s candle

There’s a door without a handle

In a box, no lid or locks

Lockless keeps her husband’s rocks

There’s a secret she’s been keeping

She’s been dreaming and not sleeping

On a road that’s not for traveling

Lockless likes her riddle raveling

The Lockless box 

The first thing to point out is that whoever wrote this song clearly purports to know the contents of the box. For that to be true then the author must have been present when this box was last seen open which I'm pretty sure will also be the same date on when if was first closed. With this box being described as the root of the family name that makes this an equally ancient song and it must then be written about the original founding members of that house meaning this is truly a song about the Lady Perial.

The Ring Cycle.

If you have come fresh from my Lady Perial and her rings of gold theory to get here you will start to see how fiendish this riddle unravelling game can be. This next approach to translating the two Lockless songs into one set of answers is more algebraic than prosaic and involves reducing each line down to its most salient word and ignoring the prose for now as it is easier to work with smaller pieces at this level.

In the Lady's song Seven different things are apparently being described, and the first two items that Perial currently has about her person are a Ring (for which I shall assign letter O) and a Word. (W)

Then things start to get a bit funny. The Lords song lists all seven things more clearly in 1,2,3 order while the Lady version does not, it only really defines the first two of them as being hers before the next items are shared out equally between the husband and the wife. The riddle continues by naming a few of her husband’s one-time posessions. We have his candle (C) which stands outside their door (D) Being the Husband of the Lady Lockless would mean that half of this single door should be regarded as being in his possesion too.

Perial might physically have possession the Box (B) but without the means of opening it, she cannot in full hosnesty claim full ownership of the contents…his Rocks (R), The seventh and final thing that the lady keeps is a Secret (S) and this final item appears to be hers alone.

Using Algebraic lettering like this gives us the simple identifiers O,W,C,D,B,R,S.

Factoring in Lord Lockless as being an equal partner in their union implies that if 7 things has the Lady then 7 things also has (or had) the Lord… presuming all ownership to be oddly dual… just like the chancellors socks !

This line of thinking would obviously only work whilst they were still married and still alive and when they both died the  stewardship of this door and box, and their encumbent rocks and attendant candle, would naturally be passed down through the family tree as dual heirlooms to be held tight in keeping by the eldest remaining member of the next generation.

Now, if you have B in your hands then you would by default also have possession of R. You cannot really have one without the other and similarly if you are standing in the presence of D then you must at the same time be also in the presence of C! or in plainer English, the rhyme dictates that you cannot own the box without also owning the rocks, or be by the door without also being by the candle meaning that these 4 items are actually 2 pairs of 2, his n hers.

This leaves us with the W and S which do actually fit nicely enough together as Secret Words are the key to revealing secrets of the mouth, a thing much spoken of by Teccam in his Theophony.

‘There are two types of secrets, Secrets of the mouth and Secrets of the heart.’

Words are necessary devices for the revealing of Secrets of the mouth. The other kind of secret he explains is a secret of the heart and whilst we do not know quite what that means yet, this line of reasoning does provide another nice double link between the last two bits of our mad algebra putting a third pair in our triangular diagram. It would also be expected that half of each pairing would correctly be positioned under her husbands triad of possessions to make all three brackets neat and tidy Since the Lady has claimed posession of the S, his contribution must be the W by default.

This has now become a ring problem with the three superimposed triangle corners being placed within a circle of gold giving us

 (∆∆)¹ =  C/D, B/R and W/S as a more visual image of the Ladys song.

The Ring Cycle. part II

As I pointed out earlier, Lord Lockless would himself have been considered the joint custodian of both the Lockless door and Loeclos box. However the candle and rocks were definitely once his own personal belongings and are only in his wife’s current safe keeping duringvhis absence. There really ought to be a rhyme somewhere that lists the seven things that Lord Lackless owned too and that would double up our equation to fourteen things in total.

Seven things stand before the entrance to (Lord)Lockless’ door.

One of them a ring(O) unworn

Two a word(W) that is forsworn

Three a time(T) that must be right

Four a candle(C) without light

Five a son(S) who brings the blood

Six a door(D) that holds the flood

Seven a thing (T²) held tight in keeping ((R)ocks)

Then comes that (the answer) which comes with sleeping. (God child)

O,W,T,C,S,D,T²

Trying to compare the two riddles as one for alternate lines for his Lordship and her Ladyship is the correct way forward. 

His wooden ring then should encompass the other six letters, hopefully in three more pairs 

The Door and Candle should the same pairing as the ladies version and so Placing D/C in the first slot is a good start. 

the 'thing held tight in keeping' is going to match the contents of the Ladies Box  which makes T² = R. However song 2 does not mention any box which is a bit of a stumbling block and leaves us with W, T ,and S to choose from instead.

However, there is only one box, just like there is only one door and if she is holding the Lock, then perhaps he is holding the key. taking into consideration my reasoning that only the name of wood can open the box of wood suggests the Word on his list should pair best with the Rocks giving a tentative B/W as the second pair which leaves the Time and the Son T/S as his final binding.

His    (∆∆)² = C/D R/W T/S

Hers  (∆∆)¹ = C/D, B/R W/S

His n Hers conclusion.

If the box is the lock and the word is the key each person has one part each

If she has his rocks he should have her rocks

If she has his word, he should have her word

The door is singular but a door also has two sides. 

On her side of the door stands his candle (with light)

On his side of the door stands her candle (the one without light)

she has her own secret and so he should have his own secret

He has a secre son and a time to come in the future . son is his secret

Her Box is a combination  of word and woid

His key is a combo of word and wood

Her secret is sexual independence 

His secret is in his rocks an independent son.

Her golden ring contains CD BR SW

His wood ring contains CD RW ST

His Candle by the only Door v her (unlit) Candle his (other side of) the only Door

Her Box enclosed his Rocks v her (version of) Rocks opens with her Word 

Remembering that the original way into this mess was by closely examining a Vintish copper penny, I will hazard a guess that our puzzle is a lot like looking at a newly broken penny where each part is now a single and seperate thing. It would appear that for some unknown reason the happy couple are no longer together, their marriage has been reft apart like everything else in this part of the world has been, and while if is her duty  to remain by the door, he has gone into exile.  This separation might also seem to be a tragic event in her Ladyship’s eyes in that it was enough to make her afterwards be noted as wearing a black dress and black is the traditional colour of mourning.

note: this shouldn’t be confused with the name of the last day of the week, or that Mourning’s colour would likely be Tehlin grey! although i’m sure that the sentiment is the same. Or even mentioning that ‘blak’ meant ‘battle’ in the old tongue of Ergen…

All the indications and hints I am picking up from the various other songs we hear of in the world are that a mutually happy split doesn’t exist. The Lay of Sir Savien is a tragedy of love lost and this seperation is comparable in that it has also left our lady all alone. There is further musical indications of lonliness due to separation like the lady in the lyrics to Violet Bide perhaps, who waits for her lover to come back from the sea, or maybe like the woman called 'In the Village Smithy'  who’s husband has gone off to war. I would guess that if music is anything to go by, the Lockless seperation was almost certainly deemed to be a necessary one and that it has been imposed upon the lovers not by cruel fate, but by design. Since our Lady is also known to be the mother of God among her other titles, (pure of heart and above any reproach, saviour of the world, mother of dragons etc. etc.) and considering that her ex-husbands love tokens are all she has left to remember him by, and are the whole families most treasured possessions, then it really ought to be the case that nobody could ever have the authority to be able to tell her who she must or mustn’t be with, not the Emperor who couldn’t tell her to cross the road,, nor the King of Modeg who was more wicked than she, not even the Pontifex could make that decree, since she is the Queen of the world and outranks him. No, Only a higher authority than man could have been responsible, namely Aleph, the father of her first born son. Only He would dare have the right to demand any such a thing of her and her choice of husband. No mere mortal man could hope to dictate their will to be above that of God’s own mother which suggests that their parting must have been an essential part of God’s own plan, the sort of thing that was held to be a necessary sacrifice… possibly because it was for the greater good…

The bottom line is that the husband is clearly no longer on the scene and only his ex-wife knows the importance of his last remaining possessions, and she isn’t telling anyone what that is because it’s a secret of the heart, and the unhappy couple are both holding onto the answers very tightly.

Her Secret is sealed by his Word v her (necessary) Time reveals (another) baby boy. 

Translation. Tldr

The two rings represent separate sides of the door. Hers is the East, his is the West. Atur is the hub. Ball and cup

 The candles are the keys to the door. Sympathy Locked by order of God. * Complicated

If she wants another baby, she just needs to go ask God in a dream for one and she can have as many daughters as she likes. But all boys are bastards who should stay on their own side of the fold in the page.

A play on words 

Of course, we know that in Naming circles a wooden ring means that you know the name of wood and the Lockless box is a prime candidate for also being a shaped article that was once created for purpose by speaking the Name of wood to it. I imagine that wood will be more complex a name than stone to master because it will naturally have a higher level of vaevin than a stone. 

Since I don't exactly know what is inside the box any further credible investigation today would be a waste of ink and brain cells. We don't even know what kind of fruity smelling wood it is made of or even if the tree it came from has since gone extinct but if the Ladies song is to be believed then whoever wrote it's riddling words purports to know the answer. It's Lord Lockless' rocks apparently. Her husband then would be the proper man to ask but since his name is unknown and he has long since left the stage we need to turn back the pages of time to the date when the box was last open since whoever wrote the song must have been present at the time to know what nobody else does.

Imagine the scene then. The location of this act takes place on the oldest part of the Family estate where there is the mysterious stone door to act as a backdrop. It is currently unlocked and standing open, a single stone door in a frame that opens inwards into darkness. The stage lighting is provided by a pair of Lockless' candles. Standing in front of this door the Lord and Lady Lockless are performing the box closing ceremony. This is the very root of the family name and it is most certainly family members only. If there were no other witnesses and it is just him and her that tels us that one of them must have also written our song although the promise of a future child may be visibly present under Lady Perials maternity dress. In her hands she holds her husbands rocks which are likely what got her in the family way in the first place. The Lord, as a wooden ring wearer clearly knows the name of wood and wears this plot device upon his finger. [stone iron amber wood bone] and he is holding a suitable piece of wood that he is ready to shape anew. The name of wood is spoken (edro) and the wood becomes an open box. The Lady places his rocks inside and the Lord speaks another word that tells the box to close which it duly does. Naming and shaping adds a new condition on the boxwood to make it become unbreakable, like all shapen ware is, meaning it can never be opened by force, only the correct unlocking counter word will act as the invisible key. Ceremony over, he gives the box to his lady to look after, a secret to hold tight in keeping. She, not being a name Knower herself cannot open the box herself because she doesn't speak the language of wood which is the only key to unlocking a lockless box. 

*Tomes trailer. Now the best box in the world would be one which could be trusted to never open again and this is the best box you can get. But if it is now believed safe from opening then it is no longer dangerous, but nothing can ever be 100% perfect, not in a broken world it can't, and so while this box has a 99% chance of staying shut until the aleu fall nameless from the sky it still has a 1% chance of being opened again one day in the future. Moon numbers. That's how the all things operate. Tldr. You cannot have a light without a shadow because imperfection is part of life.

*That will turn up in a tome somewhere I expect .

Then the rock less lord says goodbye to his lady. The lord kisses the Lady farewell then poignantly kneels before her and sings a farewell message to his unborn child growing within her womb. 

Then focussing his alar he takes the flame from one candle and puts it in the other to be his light when all others go out, and marches boldly through the dark doorway closing the door behind him and locking it from the inside. The closing image is of this door of stone bearing the inscription SATIRALAV.

Toilet humour.

Sir savian sntl

9 ~ Secrets

'There's a secret she's been keeping'

The time has come to talk about man mothers. It's possibly the most challenging theory to explain to any degree of satisfaction so far without going on for ever or straying too far from the approved text and I'm sure it still won't convince everyone, but it's all I've got and it will tie a lot of loose ends together into the most satisfying knot available without any further input from Pat. Now I'm sure you will have differing opinions about this divisive topic, mostly based on your own understanding of human biology. But this is fantastic fiction and I've done my homework so I say that all humans need man mothers. Fact. 

Gold

Perial, however, was God's chosen vessel and is not to be considered human anymore and so she didn't need a Man mother because her son had a God father instead, and his name was Aleph.

Tehlin doctrine says that there is no god but Tehlu but Tehlu is actually just a demi-god. A half god, half human hybrid for which the proper name is a Titan. 

Now a true god is a noncorporeal being whilst Perial was born of flesh and blood. But whilst God's can do most anything they desire in their own realm they are like software programmers who work in a different field to the hardware engineers and thus cannot operate in the physical plane of existence, Gods can only affect things here remotely which in Pats world happened through dreams , or to put it another way, via 'that which comes with sleeping'. When Perial slept when Perial dreamt she could became pregnant again. All she had to do was ask. That which comes with dreaming is in her case, a pregnancy [Cthaeh].

If Aleph needed a more hands on approach to Temerant problem solving then he would need to have an avatar to work through, and that's where Perial came in. When she passed through the doors of sleep she entered the spiritual plane where Aleph could act. She offered her services, gave him the requisite permissions and He touched her heart and in doing so 'reprogrammed' her (so to speak) and raised her natural vaevin level to the gold standard necessary for her coming task and flipped her internal body clock into pure fertility mode. Her dream flesh was joined with his dream desire and between them they planted a seed that would grow into some new hardware, a titan which she named Mend-A.

That's about the best way I can put my thoughts into words today. I will go more into the nature of Gods in the next part but this computer analogy will I hope help to bridge the gap between ink and intention.

Now Perial was adamant that a man should only touch a woman with love, and being unmarried herself we know her to be a virgin at the time, and still would be afterwards come to think of it, but that would prove no obstacle to Aleph who knew the names of all things and 

When it comes to naming, the hardest part is the first time. But once you learn one name, you cannot really forget it again which also makes learning any future names that much easier. As far as shaping goes the difference is that shaping involves the renaming of two things, one of them being life itself, a much more complex subject. Shaped things by their very nature will never corrode and gods golden touch is an eternal touch that shaped what she was at a fundamental level into someone new fit for purpose and since his golden gift was never rescinded with the touch of iron which means that once her task was done. Perial whom he shaped to purpose should also now be immortal, and unchanging , and by rights she should still be alive today still be fertile , and might even be using the calling name of Aculeus if I really wanted to stretch this tinfoil to it's limit. 

The memory of Gods golden power is still with her, and gold does not rust , unlike iron does, so with god's name written in her heart she has remained pure gold ever since and forever fecund from that day forth. So, if she desired to, she could quite easily give birth again all by herself. No man mother necessary.

[Silver fruit?]

Everyone else

Iron

Trapis tells us that whilst the special advanced circumstances regarding Perial's gestation period was unheard of, other unmarried women giving birth in the usual time frame was not unusual. This might be a clue that before this time all women could create children alone, then there are demon births to consider but following that thought today is starting to stray too far from the path of this book. Perhaps later once the big stuff is done.

When Aleph first came to her Perial the good was worried about her wicked neighbours.

Perial asked her dream god if he was going to 'do something' for her neighbour Deborah and whether he was going to 'lay his hand on her husband Losel and make him a better man.' Which is rather prophetic of her since that is exactly what He did do.

Now laying his hand on people is gods way of changing them. I will deal with the science behind that practice in the next chapter but for now we just need it pointed out that this is exactly how he and his avatar acted to both reward the good and to punish the wicked. One with gold, the other with iron. And unlike gold, Iron rusts giving it's victims a shelf life.

In response to Perial's questions Aleph replied that 

"Man and wife were each others fitting punishment" and that "Mankind was wicked and the wicked should be punished. "

Meaning Tehlu's idea of the punishment sentence for being wicked was for man to be 'paired' to woman for life. The science behind this act probably involves magnetic attraction which will effectively lock their +/- iron parts together into a new shape This sentence is in essence the lock of god and meant each part would become dependent on the other for the mutual continuation of their species and these are the facts of life in Temerant as I understand them. Shaping them with his touch of iron, he made this so and renaming everyone afterwards locked in this change from whatever they might have been before. The result of this shaping was that from this day forward a woman would always need a man in order to make a baby. And thus god created man mothers as his punishment for all those who had strayed to the wrong side of his path.

Perial, of course , was already standing on the right side of the path and so is exempt from this iron lock and thus is fully deserving of the name Lockless. 

Silver

Now the Adem claim to be different. Making them a special case. Touched neither with base iron nor superior gold their eyes bear the silver mark of parity.

" Long ago " vashet said ' the Adem were upheaved from our rightful place. something we cannot remember drove us out. Someone stole our land or ruined it or made us flee in fear. We were forced to wander, endlessly.'

Rather convenient that they cannot remember but I say this forgetfulness was God's doing on or about Tehlu Day. Upheavel is a very good word to use alongside my cataclysm theory when describing exactly how 'the land broke and the sky changed.'

This is difficult area for answers but since all stories are one story the best answer I have ascertained makes this thing that the Adem conveniently cannot remember was how God dealt with the 'special cases.'

Let us Say that the adem were those citizens of the one city of Ergen who remembered the Lethani on Lanre day. This would mean that theirs was the one city that did not fall under shadow, that their race have always done the right thing and are therefore not deserving of the same fate as those who did the wrong thing.

Let us also say that the location of this last remaining city of hope was situated on the map where modern day Vintas is now, or more specifically, that it was sited on the very piece of land which is now at the bottom of the Broken sea. 

That makes the Adem the only citizens of Ergen who remembered the lethani, which explains why they are the only ones who still remember this word today, and they have never forgotten it. 

When starting the world again with new iron names for everyone , Aleph decreed that All evidence of the past events needs must be forgotten and so his choice of punishment for the Adem was to evict them from their traditional home. They also seem to have promised to protect all of their ancient Ergen artefacts including shapers swords That rather hasty darning ties up a lot of loose ends and is my conclusion. Deal with it.

 So despite the Adem having done nothing wrong, not even when the other 7/8 of Ergen fell to wickedness, they were still punished by eventually having their city taken away from them. Now if god is just, then they should receive compensation and it must be said that if everyone in the world was wicked for forgetting the lethani path, the Adem were much less wicked than the other Ergenites folk and should be accorded different punishment. 

And so, like Perial, this new homeless Adem generation also remained Lockless in the contraceptive department when everyone else got locked. 

I apologise for how messy that came across, I'll come back later and polish it a bit more, but I fear that this silver piece will always be tarnished. 

A-Pendix

. 

These last few pieces will focus on the Adem. They are the strangest of all the races of man or mutant that we encounter and this tinfoil sextet are equally strange to take at face value. Stillness and silence are the heart of Ademre, something no barbarian could understand. Still, we can but try.

A-Gender

 The Silver Adem of today might best be thought of as mutants compared to the iron bound barbarian races of mankind since the Adem method of making babies would clearly make them biologically different. If that is the case then this will be the best kept secret in the world and if this truth was ever to get out and become more widely known then whenever the two races interracted the casual racism shown to them in the 4Corners would be not so much a case of bloody foreigners but more like one of bloody mutants.

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, not least because he has been taught so by the masters at the university medica. He has also studied the collected works of the Duke of Gibea, and Gibea rather famously did his own human anatomical research very thoroughly indeed. But did he ever experiment on the Adem to investigate their reproduction technique? Well He almost certainly did but that’s is not a question any other serious achademic would consider necessary to ask and so it will always go unanswered. You can assume you know, but you can never actually know you know… at least not if you are a man you couldn’t!

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, secret mutants hiding in plain sight