scrap

8 ~ Three pennies for wishing

Kvothe deals with a traditional tinker on his way to the Eld and regardless of reading tinker tangle the deal was sealed in the traditional way of doing deals.

‘I’ll give you a an iron penny, a copper penny and a silver penny.’

It was a pittance but that’s what tinkers in stories ask for when they trade some fabulous piece of magic to an unsuspecting widow’s son.

This tradition is as old as the hills, even Taborlin used this method of payment for his magic amulet. Judging from the notes on currency that we have, the only place where such a transaction could be covered by pennies of just one country of origin is the Commonwealth, which seems odd since they are a relatively new addition to the ancient shape of the world and many long years after the events of Atur where Taborlin began his own new tale. Perhaps the word ‘penny’ is just a general folk translation and we are talking about folk bartering three metal shims here, different pieces of three basic metals, Iron, Copper and Silver given to traditional tinkers in order to strike a deal. That’s for later, but for now we shall just look at how Kvothe paid his traditional tinker more closely.

‘…an iron drab, two Vintish half pennies, and an Aturan hard penny.’

Three currancies are going on here, Ceald, Vintas and Atur and Kvothe did rather well on the exchange rates for silver coinage. The copper is therefore the Vintish contribution to the mix, something confirmed by Dedan when he laughs at the though of Taborlin having a copper sword joking that it would be like hitting someone with a big penny. Now! Vintish whole pennies come with a deep groove across them so that they can deliberately be broken into two halfs as they are meant to be, which is a very symbolic way of designing something. This coin is meant to be broken, that is it’s fate in life, to become two seperate pieces of the same thing, and once divided unlikely to ever find their other half again. There is even an old Vintish custon that states that whover cuts the coin offers the choice of pieces to the other. We get to see a picture of one in the 10AE and whilst the design stamped on a whole penny is hard to identify at first, when broken along the groove it is much more obvious that here is actually a picture of a sailing ship, giving us a whole penny design of two ships sailing back to back, one on either side of the line of division. This image is nicely summed up by a line from the play Felwards Falling, which, much like Daeonica, is an old play that not many people know, but then Denna is not many people.

‘So, we were ill-lit ships at night…’ I quothed

‘Passing close but all unknown to one another.’ Denna finished.

“Felward’s Falling” I said with something that touched the outwards boundary of respect (*amazed respect* in ademic)

Not many people know that play.

‘I am not many people.’

Given pat’s approval of all these images tells us that we can trust them. This coin is a truth, it nods at an old truth about how important things that were once whole but being broken in twain was part of the deal, part of the answer to the problem, truth has been buried by changes in language and by force of conquest, true ancient history has been split and seperated from the mysteries of the past, becoming itself a newer history of more secondary change but still, perhaps, harking back to the earlier days when Vintas was a broken land ripe for settling by the strongest survivers. Indeed there is one line in which Vintas was described as ‘little more than a bunch of squabbling sea kings’ which nods nicely at our sailing boats theme too. Words and images cannot be trusted to tell the whole story alone but geography is far harder to hide. The shape of the world is much changed since the time of Ergen, and the recording of anything related to that time, such as maps of the seven cities locations, has been actively removed by important folk over all the long ages since.

‘Even history books which mentioned them as doubtful rumour have long since crumbled into dust.’

Any recorded knowledge would only be possible if such were once woven into the earliest form of writing, the Yllish knots and the secret stories which they told, but the Aturans have done a good job in silencing Yll, I wonder why?. This was a time when common folk were less civilized and far more barbarian in their nature. Some nomadic peoples like Cealdim flexed their blacksmiths muscles to take advantage of the new lands bounty , they forged a new life among the iron hills and took their old secrets with them. The Adem also became wanderers with deep secrets of their own to keep hidden away from the world. They were outcast wherever they settled, which also fitted in with the theme we are seeing of a plan to bury the past. The Edema Ruh roamed the land freely learning and eternally re-telling all the oldest stories and performing the old plays, subconciously depicting subtle clues and hidden twists in the plot which are some small ways of them giving voice to preserved secret information, dressed up portrayals of events from the forgotten past are dangerous to the wrong ears, no wonder the Ruh are on the list of folk who deserve to be silenced ‘for the greater good’. Over time, things are just accepted as being like the old church records told you they were, and even that story is usually taken with a pinch of salt, and so it was that over time the past was quietly buried and some things were just stories and obviously never really happened as far as the man in the street cared, life’s too short to worry about faerie tales.

So nobody ever looks at some things in life and puts two and two together any more to ask why broken things were customarily designed to be broken in the first place. What is the tale behind this divisive practice instead of using individual minting like the Cealds do is a proper tinfoil question which involves poking about down in the depths of local custom where the clues lie hidden by those who understand the shape of the world. The old buried underneath the weight of the new.

Grey Area

Vintas is full of clues if you look carefully. The Cealdish ingots are unadorned and all the Aturan money looks very Tehlin Church inspired to me but Vintish coinage has it’s own stories stamped upon it. All money spends though, even in Adem where the mercenaries are hired from. They don’t mint their own coins but earn their pay abroad and send back their earnings in both gold and silver but Vintish copper half-pennies make a very strange appearnace in one of their holiest rites, which probably means it’s a rather bloody important clue. Under the sword tree are many important and symbolic pieces of Adem culture including, for a very strange reason, a tarnished Vintish halfpenny.

There really is no good reason for it to be there. The valuable but awkward block of gold is well considered as to it’s inclusion in this sacred ceremony but not the insignificant little piece of foreign copper coinage, a broken piece too, one deliberate part of the whole, something that has been deliberately broken as is it’s fate. That must be symbolic of something important. It is unlikely to be another personal dig at Kvothe in addition to his lute’s presence, the musical clue is more than enough to insult him on it’s own, so what could this foreign coin mean?

Worthless? Possibly, but not strictly true, it’s worth 6 ½ iron shims which will still buy a man a beer or two in the Waystone Inn.

Smallest denomination? True. in that it has been already broken down into it’s smallest size,hmmm

Tarnished? Yes, and copper tarnishes with a colourful display of Verdigris which is implying that age and decay are important to the shape of this clue. One part of a whole, designed to be broken in two, Two half-coins split from one whole penny, one to be kept tight in keeping and one to be given away, one to thrive and one to decay? some classical allusion to Four Corners history seems likely, but would that be Vintish history or Ademic Mystery? Or both! It’s all going to be guess work from here but it’s fun to speculate.

Magical Hystery Tour

I can think of something else in Vintas which is definitely broken, the Broken Sea, and then there is Severen, broken into Upper and Lower, just like our broken penny. In other coinage, Eight bits can be broken from a royal, and royalty is divided up much like the whole of fractious Vintish society in general. Renere is called the three part city. The bloodless rebellion cut the free city of Tinuë free from it’s control by the Lackless earldom. The Loeclos family name has been broken into various disparate parts and scattered to the four corners, All through Vintish society is evidence of breaking things apart, even the broken road led us to Tinuë before the moon broke…everything is broken.

The Adem have an old and secret tale that tells us of the moon and the fall of the Ergen Empire

‘and since that time the land has broken and the sky has changed.’ and also that ‘Seven names have been carried through the crumbling of empire,through the broken land and changing sky.’

This is a forbidden fact that is hard to cover up, it affected everyone and everywhere so records and rumours still persist no matter how small and obscure. We are told some of these secrets about something that changed the sky, that’s almost certainly going to be the moon being once always full and round but then stolen away for a while and now back again but doing her waxing and waning thing, but what about the land? The moon influences the tides and the tides dictate the shoreline so if we are looking for physical evidence of lunar change then The Broken Sea is the biggest clue on the map, although The Reft might have it’s own story to tell about possible rising or falling sea levels, but while all wise men fear a sea in storm, as far as land shaping went I think that central Vintas took the brunt of it. Don’t ask me exactly what happened to break the land, it could be anything, asteroids, aliens, the wrath of God! Who knows? So let’s ignore that part for a while as there are some bigger broken things in modern Vintas which support the broken land theory a little bit. In Piracy we worked out a tinfoil map of Severen High and Sevren Low. It is a two part city, much like Pat mentions that Renere is also know as the three-part city, but in Severen the break is as obviously marked as the dividing line on a copper penny is. There is a bloody great cliff between the two half-cities stopping them from being one. Something long ago caused the sheer to exist, something earth shattering in it’s action but also very clean cut and likely very quick. This was clearly a very long time ago as only since that time has an entire twin city arisen around this physical Sever in the land, whether one side rose or the other side fell is anyone’s guess, but most things fall down easier than fall up so I’m going with that.

Of course the broken sea would be regarded as sea-level in vintish topograhy but there is a chance that the whole thing is actually a newly filled basin, an area of land lower than the Centhe sea-level which flows down into it via the deepen falls and the strange backwards nature of a certain river to the south of the land. If the weight of water is anything to go by, a sudden rebalancing of the oceans in response to cosmic changes in the gravitational pulling power of the moon physically changing, literally, overnight would suggest a very likely cause and effect for reciprocal action between land and sky. This is all speculation of course but it makes some kind of sense when we are scratching around for elementary ideas.

If the sky changed and the land broke both the same time then that would imply a connection between them. The moon does indeed have a physical connection to the broken sea as it is the moon that creates it’s tides which is a line of investigation that may give the Lunar ticks something to think about. But the time would sound about right for this to have all occurred during the great upheaval that caused the fall of the Ergen Empire, and with the fall of the old came the rise of the new. It all points at the day the world changed according to Aleph’s edict ‘from this day forth’

Luckless

Modern Vintas didn’t even exist on that day and the eld-est records of such things were lost when Caluptena burnt, but this doesn’t detract the most recent records showing that the Lackless family (under various names) were always the big names in this part of the world and that everyone else came along later. Indeed the Lackless lands once covered much of Vintas and also stretched (at least) all the way to the small kingdoms, Modeg and the Eld, in fact it would be a good line of thinking to suggest that Southern Vintas was where the land was physically broken asunder by some unknown catastrophe which swept clean the old land but for some lucky reason spared the Lackless ancestral lands. Which rather goes against their detractors calling them the luckless.

One line of thinking would be that this was the day of Aleph’s Edict (1AE) and the burial of everything Ergen from the face of the world, which was also to be our starting point for when the moon was reset in the sky with her new broken image now featuring a new half moon phase to match a broken penny perhaps. Consequently, any lunar change would mean that the tides were all now pulled differently from before and so drowning the land into a new shape as it rose or fell in response. Bit of a bummer for all those that Tehlu had just saved who lived down south, bloody great tsunami coming down on you. Fortunately for the Northern folk, mountainous Tinuë is a long way from any sea and is also classically speaking the oldest city in the world and the place where all roads lead, old roads, safe roads… roads to safe places. Perhaps everyone Tehlu saved as he walked the world offering his choice of path travelled to the safety of Tinuë to survive the coming flood. After the upheaval, or downheaval, or moonheaval or whatever and when the dust had settled on a new age, Tinuë was where everything will have started from again and now all the old roads become new roads into the new land which led from Tinuë instead as the Four Corners was quartered up by new nomadic pioneers setting out to claim their fortune. Many would have stayed safe where they were under the aegis of gods mother and this would be my suggestion for the site of Caluptena, the first repository of ancient knowledge and the most egalitarian place in the world, until the church burned to the ground to hide whatever was recorded within its walls and would likely be near Tinüe . The Cealdish nomads went off to corner the market in the iron mountains. The Modegans sought the quiet corners of the Eld forests. Yll seemed to quarter the wind to the newly made islands and the rest of the new Ruach grabbed what they could hold onto out of what was left. Up in Atur a new Order was making plans for world domination, a future with them at the wheel since Tehlu had left the new world in their bloody hands. But on this day of new beginnings when Lord Tehlu defeated Encanis and Menda burned to ash, we have to ask the question ‘what happened to their Mum?’   

4 ~ Mind Your Language

Perial then, and despite the fame and fortune that goes with being the Mother of God, there are only a few tiny scraps available for us to work with when it comes to tracking her down. Trapis' rambling story must be taken as a vaguely accurate truth which does align Perial's name into the accepted Tehlin faith version of things somewhat. Marten calls upon Menda and Perial when he is praying to everything that is holy along with the holy Aturan names of Ordal and Andan, two of the angels we see written about in Nina's copy of the book of the path. And then there is that one curious line from a play about our infamous Lady Perial and her hat.

Calling on the Holy Name of God (Tehus antausa eha... Tehlu hold and overroll me?) is the classical thing to do if you ever find yourself having trouble with demons. Perhaps one has, say, stolen your hat during the Seven Days of High Mourning and you were calling upon some divine intervention from above although Bast just laughs off this traditional quote from the Old Tema language when Kote tried this demon banishing spell upon him. The focus of folk who have faith in such prayer extends to Tehlu, His angels or even His mother to come aid them in their time of danger.

But there is a time and a place for quoting scripture and more common is hearing the unremarkable 'Tehlu Anyway' which is good enough for everyday occurrences in Pat's world, it's not really blasphemy, or swearing as such, just a shocked expletive that everyone uses depending on the cause. There are a lot of different ways of getting your emotions across which vary from mouth to mouth, occasion to occasion, and from place to place. There is definitely some kind of sliding ettiquette scale on what to say and when, and why, and to whom depending upon whether you are showing mild surprise or shocking behaviour, whether in praise as a blessing or in anger as a curse there is a different, usually religion based approach for covering every conceivable level of outburst.

Once upon a time I wondered if there might be anything to be gleaned in noting down who swears, by what name, and in which location, and to see if might conform to Teccams Theory of Narrative Septagy... nerd stuff, but being a nerd with nothing better to do, I decided to check up exactly how different people swear, and so I got the books out again and made copious notes and lists during yet another Rothfuss re-read and ended up with a league table of expletives. [Insert table here]

Tehlu's name is the most commonly used for swearing, as in Tehlu Anyway, Great Tehlu, Merciful Tehlu, Tehlu hold and over-roll us...Tehlu's tits and teeth! Then there are all the occasions when he is implied more generally as in Holy God, God above , (or gods below), God's body, God's ball's, etc. It is easy to add further nuance with the very common Blackened (or burnt) Body of God, which takes us down the path to the rather extreme Black hands, although that one may be more aimed at Encanis rather than at Tehlu. 

All these 'curse words' and more are used in many shapes and forms by all sorts of folk sounding off about many different things across all of the lands to get their own feelings to circumstance across. But then we have just a couple of very minor references to one rather specific person in one specific location when the common folk of Vintas are heard swearing by God's Mother, and that can only mean Lady Perial. Penny, the landlady from the Penny'sworth inn uses this term in shock horror at seeing a faerie tale coming true before her eyes and a boy in Levenshir turns it into Mother of God in a different kind of shock horror after Kvothe casually broke his arm. Over Analyzing these instances suggests that they were both so stunned at what they have just witnessed that they automatically used those curses that came most naturally, likely these are the oldest outbursts in their repertoire, the ones that they have grown up with, the ones their parents used when they were younger, and their parents parents too. The ones that deep down inside they know the best, and believe in the most, namely a reference not to the more recently arrived Tehlu oaths based upon the arrival of The Book of The Path and authourised by the Tehlin church, but in homage to a far older and probably more local folk heroine and holy woman, the Lady Perial.

This small anomaly appears quite specific here since these are the only times this connection is heard anywhere in the known world and both occasions happen in rural Vintas, giving a spot of local colour to their colourful language. That the local tracker Marten, who appears to be Vintish himself, also uses her name specifically in this part of the world gives us a small triangle made of small clues to reinforce the larger theory that Perial was a local Vintish legend and is reversed most within it's borders. This is how common folk speak, local things for local people. Before the church arrived on the scene some four hundred years ago with their book of the path and their iron law, Lady Perial already was the focus of some authentic Vintish prayers going back for mamy centuries. A small crumb perhaps, but if someone is following a breadcrumb trail then we must asssume that since it is DungeonMaster Pat laying the way as carefully as ever then ancient Vintas is where our trail is meant to lead us. This would also tally up with our suppositions on Perial's faith stemming from her mothers teachings of this last remaining (lethani remembering) corner of Ergen, long before her son Menda's exploits happened in far off Atur. 

Kote himself uses both 'Mother of God' and 'God's Mother' during the Waystone interludes which makes her his favoured deity too although he might just be following local custom here and cleverly blending his own language into what the other Newarre locals would use. 

Lords and Ladies

So what did I glean from all this incessive note making? Well The most prevalent of all 'swear words' usage is actually Lord and Lady, a phrase uttered by no less that Ten different characters across both books, which is twice as much voice as it's nearest rival gets. This group can further be split into three subsets as it is also found to be the single most used 'swearphrase' at the Waystone Inn where it is used by Aaron, Graham[twice], and Old Cob for everything from Cob's comlimenting good whiskey to Aaron complimenting Mr Kote's ability as a liar, although, perhaps surprisingly, it is not used by modern day Kote himself. At the university, however, young Kvothe does indeed call upon the Lord and Lady, as do a trio of other very powerful folk who know all sorts of secret and important things, 'Demon' Devi and the multiple name knowers, the masters Elxa Dal and Elodin.

The final triad are the most interesting as they are all part of the Severen nobility, the trio of Alveron, Stapes and Bredon, which gives this 'Lord and Lady' a bit of class.

'Lord and Lady' he swore under his breath, 'I hate to be seen doddering about'

'It's good to have you back. Lord and Lady but I've been worried about you.'

'Lord and Lady' he said, 'Tell me you got this from some old fashioned farmer?.'

All these men have the blood of assorted historical Vintish Lords and Ladies running through their own veins. Stapes is a manservant and he is undoubtedly common but has the highest standards of etiquette. The refined nobility of Alveron and Bredon should never be expected to resort to any kind of swearing anymore than master Lorren would, but Kvothe seems to have an effect on all these people and in his presence, they do all swear just once each, and it is always this exact same 'Lord and Lady' phrase that is the only instance of all if these these lords ever letting their mask slip and uttering any such vocabulary aloud. The mysterious Bredon's response might be the most useful of the three in pinpointing a possible source to this enigmatic phrase since we are also told that Bredon's estates are found to the North of Severen making them part of ancestral Vint. The North is also where we find the Lackless family estates, which starts to focus our  search a little more closely. I should also point out that the Southern Vintish raised Ambrose Jakis also only deigns to 'swear' once, and that is a very refined 'Praise Tehlu and all his Angels' a sentence that is unique to just him... and Denna.

So who are these mysterious Lord and his Lady? After all, they must be a specific couple to excite such a general homage, and one so prevalent across all levels of Vintish society. It is true that in Skarpi's tale, Lanre and Lyra were once proclained as Our Lord and Our Lady respectively, but that is an ancient, forbidden and long forgotten folk tale. A story set years and miles from here and also harking into the unremembered days of Ergen and they cannot in any seriousness be considered as candidates for this Vintish husband and wife. The current ruling monarch and his new queen might fit nicely, but the phrase turns up on the Maer's lips long before his own wedding day, and this is clearly a very old saying concerning very old events. I suppose he might have meant Roderick? Perhaps... But Maer thinks that the king is a bastard which cocks that idea up quite a lot. Stapes family name is quite old, but lacks any pedigree to go on but given that our search is focussing upon Vintas then the most likely scenario imho is that they are actually talking about Lady Perial and her son the Lord Tehlu. These are the two most universally acknowledged Important names from Vintas and Atur both, and they share a pedigree that is as old as the four corners, 

On the minus side these two were mother and son, not husband and wife. Of course, Tehlu spent most of his life walking the world and he only spent seven span in his mother's house but Lady Perial with her ancient roots and Holy reputation is clearly still a renowned local Vintish figurehead who's name would also be quite an acceptable blasphemy to use in front of the Tehlin Church and the invading Aturan Empire both.

5 ~ The Edge of the Map

There is now only one part of Vintas left to explore but before we dive into that can of worms we should draw ourselves another map.

‘Maps don’t just have outside edges. They have inside edges. Holes’

When our crew of bandit hunters are sent into the Eld, they have at least seen a map of the place. Pat is nothing but precise in all things though, and he has again left us with just enough clues to work out the crew’s movements with some confidence, and the results can be used to construct a map of our own which may help to patch a few holes in the text and also fill in some holes in our Temerant history. The numbering is a bit tricky at times but overall, it does come nicely together. For best results use a sheet of A4 squared paper.

The Pennysworth Inn is the beginning and end point of our journey and is going to define two edges of our latest map. This Inn is located at the last major crossroads south of the Eld and this is where our crew first begin their journey proper under the trees.We shall begin all of our Eld-time counting from here and our mileage too, so we should use the crossroads to it’s fullest extent and double it up as a compass rose by placing it right down in the bottom left corner of our landscape paper. Severen is four days walk to the South and there is some talk of a lady Chalker living two days west whilst the opposite arm of the CrossRoads will point you towards Tinuë and the East.

Although the kings road where the bandits operate is also called the north road, all of the indications we have been given show it to be a curving road which actually veers off through the trees towards the east. This is shown by Kvothe who draws his dirt map in a curve and Marten backs this clue up with his prepared story of being a poacher from the village of Crosson which is ‘a day to the West’. This implies that the north road has changed course somewhat and is actually pointing north-easterly. This is further corroborated by the knowledge that the 20 mile stretch of road that they are here to search has a north side and a south side, therefore it is clearly indicating more of a diagonal slant at this point which is useful as it means our map is using our graph paper to it’s fullest extent. The crew also have Kvothe to thank for the decision to begin on the North side and to head East before a different sort of ‘cross-on the map’ occurs as they head over to the southside and start their search back westwards again. This was actually a rather unfortunate choice as I estimate that starting on the South side would have yielded a bandit encounter within a day or three, rather than on day twenty-nine.

So starting at the X-roads, the crew begin to head north into the forest until the trees start to get ‘good and thick’ at Crosson. On the first day, from an early start, they cover 15 miles, 14 by good road and one more off into the forest on the north side where they make base camp, which means that if we split the total mileage in two it puts the nearest village at a nice lucky number of Seven road miles away from our first milepost. We can also assume that they bought their supplies at Penny’s so as not to alert Crosson’s local populace too much as they passed on through. So plans are made and we can make a copy of Kvothes dirt map by marking out the next twenty mile posts along our road as it winds and curves its way off to the top corner of our map and out of our domain. Finally add two parallel lines, one mile to either side, to indicate the path that Marten will scout.

The crew actually stay at camp #1 for the next two days as they learn to perfect their new tracking skills in pairs and then on Eld-day IV, Dedan and Hespe walk the seven miles back to Crosson from Base camp whilst camp #2 is constructed further to the east. I place the most sensible place to be by the 4-mile post because that will make it nice and central to the first eight mile long patch of proper bandit searching. It is not until the fifth day in the Eld that Kvothe & Tempi head back to the old camp where they begin the initial two miles of the search. Alternating with D&H will allow them all to work most effectively around a central point and is the best pattern to follow when covering four days of the ground up to the 8-mile marker.

Repeating their five day move and supply cycle will add up to 16 miles of completed search with camp#3 located at the 12 mile post. The next walk to Crosson by D&H will be a very long one, as they will have to return to a point four more miles from where they began, but it should also be the longest journey they have to make if K&T are sensible and only build camp #4 at the 16 mile post. This will allow the north side of the road to be completed in two more days and the following two searches will bring us back to this same 16-mile post, only now over on the South side of the road. The numbers get a little confusing here and it may help to factor in a bonus day of rest for everyone as they swap camp the short hop over to the south side of the road. This hop-step camp moving process will ensure that all of those searching the woods are never more than four miles away from help at any given moment. It should also be noted that it was on the final day searching on the North side where we find the An’s blade growing, so deeply hidden is it in the Eld forest that it is nearly off the edge of the map itself.

The return journey westwards will use camps at the self same mile-posts as before, (16, 12 & 4) and all of this ought to mean that they are actually as good as done with their bandit hunt when Tempi finds their scouts on Eld-day IXXX, about a mile from the original starting point and only 8mile from Crosson in my opinion, only on the Southern side of the road, not the North. Still, they did get to have a bigger adventure by doing things the long way and also had a chance to hear many stories.

A Cross-on the Map

If your paper looks anything like mine does now then it will likely resemble a graph plotting out some obscure equation (x=2y[+/- l/lu??). The action now focuses on the bandit’s own permanent camp which is found an unknown distance due South of the first mile post marker making it quite close to Crosson and the Laughing Moon pub which might provide somewhere for the Bandits to relax between robberies and also give them a local watchpost of their own where they might gather news of the various travellers passing. The targetting of tax collectors heading north gives weight to the Maer’s statement that the bandit’s ‘might be the local populace,’ Perhaps one of the bandits was even called Tam? I might add that the pub might also grant a place for goat eyed Cinder to buy a drink of an evening, if he so too desired, and could somehow disguise his tell-tale sign, something that the Cthaeh mentioned he might well do… The distance of the encampment from the road was guessed at by Dedan who said that he would want at least four miles grace if he were a bandit and so we can draw a new cross-on the map out among the trees somewhere around about there. I might also suggest that one other place mentioned on the bandit’s map is Fenhill, a very descriptive name which might well be a hill near a fen. This could even be the source of a forest stream which may be found to wend its way eastwards through the forest to supply water to, collectively, a pool, a swamp and a fortified encampment.

‘If this is right then we are closer to Crosson than I thought. We could just head Southeast from here and save more than a day’s walking. Does that seem right to you?

No! It does NOT! But we can now see these words that were used by the map reading crew now show some better sense as it is quite obvious now that continuing southeast would quite quickly lead them out of the Eld at the shortest point, somewhere along the east/west road road that forms our lower axis and therefore take them much more directly towards Severen which would save them a days walking by effectively cutting the corner off and so be the fastest route back to the Maer and to their reward. However, instead of going by this quicker route, they consider Hespe’s leg and decide instead to trust the map in a different way and to travel back to the kings road by the easiest route and so hope to soonest reach the Pennysworth Inn again for a well earned bed and the chance to spread the word about the bandit’s demise.

This route involves heading due west through the thinning trees and they expected to strike the road again after ten miles or so. This plan, however, appears flawed in that the cross-on the bandit’s map was clearly not marking their fortified camp as they assumed, but a specific location some miles further away beyond the unknown swamp that lies in between. I suggest that it is actually a mark denoting the exact location of Felurian’s pool, or rather her greystone, which will stand where it has always stood since her last visit a score of years ago. That this map was kept secure in the locked box makes it Cinders personal propertyvand so clearly this X is important to his real mission.

Here be Dragons

We already have some knowledge of Felurian and her pool from Dedan’s story about her which he told us at first basecamp. He states that it was in this exact same stretch of woods where she was last seen by any of the Pennyworth’s locals, when some of their own attempted to take the same short cut home through the trees, with the same resulting encounter. If Cinder had read my earlier notes on Faen time in Luna Ticks, or maybe just worked it out for himself, or got someone else to do his research for him, then it is possible that he had a very good reason to be found where he was. One theory may suggest that he was actively expecting Felurian to appear, on the night of the fast approaching full moon, and that he was hoping for a moonlight tryst… just him and his army of fighing men. This may have been the real reason for one of the Seven to be messing about out in the woods, far beyond the machinations of the court politics of Vintas, suggesting Felurian could even be a vital part of their plan. This faen conjunction only occurs every twenty mortal years or so, but that is only a rough estimate, and even if you found the greystone you will need a tinfoil compass to pinpoint the exact time and space to find her there, but one of the chandrian being present for this exact full moon when she chooses to visit mortal again seems far too much of coincidence to me for it not to be relevant.

Alternatively, and knowing the same knowledge, perhaps this it is highlighting a known faen danger and therefore an area to avoid, a warning from Lord Haliax that danger lies here and it would not be good for one of his tools to fall under the power of her immortal song. Maybe this greystone even acts as a watch tower outpost of the faen Sithe, situated at this fully functional greystone crossing point? IDK but these two ideas would tally up a singer and Sithe, so perhaps the Waystones are also Amyr related too?

But if you don’t like those theories then we must assume that the 7 simply want to rob people, specifically, the Maer’s tax collectors. The box with the map inside had Alveron’s crest upon it, this was the original case issued by Maer and was obviously returning to Severen along this road because it is the kings highway and it leads back to Severen. Yet it must also go somewhere else in the other direction too, all roads lead to Tinuë perhaps?, but that is clearly an Eastern location which is nowhere near the Eld forest. Maybe it leads to Northern Kershaen instead? A kings highway connecting the King of Vint with the King of Modeg? This would mark it as an old road indeed as these two powers are among the oldest in the world and the straight road to connect them makes a lot of sense as is also remarked that

‘It was a long stretch of the kings highway running through a piece of the eld had been old when Vintas was nothing more than a handful of squabbling sea kings.

But an alternative piece of insight that we might gain from seeing this map drawn before us is by zooming out and trying to align our page of trees with a map of the world. Doing that will show that this northern road through the Eld is clearly heading off towards the North-East instead, and that just happens to be towards the seat of that other ancient power in the world, the Lackless lands.

‘A thousand years ago the Lackless family enjoyed a power at least as great as Alveron’s. Pieces of what are now Vintas, Modeg, and a large portion of what are now the small kingdoms were all Lackless lands at one point’

Any way that you wish to draw those lines onto any of our maps see will tell us that The Lackless Lands must by default have always covered much of the ancient Eld, the Southern edge of which forms a natural border with Northern Vint. Our Pennysworth Crossroads is clearly going to be of very significant importance then as the forest road is a rare route that leads north into the trees. The East/West road will also be an important road as it runs in the straightest and most tree-free line between Tinuë and the sea. Anything north of that road would traditionally be the lackless lands so it could be said that Felurian’s pool is pretty much on the borderline between them both. The road being robbed is clearly the road that takes you most directly between Severen to the Lackless ancestral seat which would appear to be found at the juncture of the Old stone road and the mountains as this shall also place them just to the north of The Free City of Tinuë which the family used to have historic control over, until the Bloodless rebellion that is.

The kings forest road was the chosen route of the Maer’s tax collectors, which means that the tax payers themselves would have lived at its far end so perhaps the gold in the box was actually the tax paid out by the Lackless family themselves, no wonder Maer was anxious for a solution to his problem, the stolen money was once paid over by his fiance, and he had to send his bleeders around again and make her pay up twice! Bad luck has followed the Lackless family around throughout history and that suggests ho a suspicious mind that it may not all just be ill fortune… It might all  be more targeted than that. Could it be possible that instead of hunting for Felurian, or specifically avoiding her, Cinder and co. were actually lying in wait specifically to ambush the Lackless Tax returns and cause the family yet another slice of lucklessness? maybe he was well aware that Meluan was coming to Severen and that she would be using this very road herself!

That may well have something to do with the Chandrian’s secret plan, they do have form when it comes to attacking the Lackless heirs after all, and if they weren’t after the latest heir herself, then maybe they just wanted to get their hands on her baggage train. The Loeclos Box did after all at some point pass south probably along this very stretch of road and if the chandrian ever suspected that this mysterious and ancient heirloom might be leaving the safety of the Lackless estates, possibly for the first time in it’s long and secret history, well that might just be something that would pique the interest of the equally ancient, mysterious and secret chandrian very much indeed.

6 ~  Tripod

Lady Lackless Hat

Proving that last bit might be a little bit tricky, but I’ve had worse. It all comes down to triangles. Back when I was new at this game the very first ‘bell ringing, penny dropping moment was when I thought about Kvothe’s mum, who we are specifically told was once a noble woman. That one clue to the past fits very nicely in many small ways elsewhere in the text, such as among her own skills is a glimpse of a noblewoman’s education, knowing all about court etiquette and protocol in high circles. She also has a good ear for classical languages and is an accoplished writer of lyrics. So we have a woman of noble birth who was suduced by cords of chorded song, fell in love, and ran away with, an Edema Ruh trouper. By an amazing coincidence, this exact same thing also happened to the previous Lackless heir who we discover was called Netalia, who also ran away with the travelling ravel. Could it be possible that Netalia had simply changed her name to Laurian for the usual reasons and that in all actuality these two people were one and the same person? Possibly even like Kote has changed his name from Kvothe only that was for a few unusual ones too. Unsolved mystery concerning re-naming names does seem to run riot in the Lackless family.

The more I thought about it, the better it sounded and I was convinced I was onto something big… I later found out that I wasn’t actually the first to think that, just the latest in a long line of newcomers to the game who have spotted this easy clue first of all and this was the common theory that most people who were reading the books closely had arrived at. But we all have to begin somewhere, so this part takes me right back to a time when I didn’t even have a proper kkc notebook to scribble my mad ideas in. This is a Triangle problem and it goes something like this.

We are trying to establish a three way link between ‘Dark Laurian, Arliden’s wife’, the classical character ‘Lady Perial’ from For All His Waiting, and Meluan Lackless, the heir to the Lackless Family name.

Linking them all together correctly will allow us to arrange them more permanantly in a block of three things with all the other bricks in our wall, a bit like sygaldy only with triangles. The three points are to be called P .L. and M. for obvious reasons (so if this was alchemy it probably would be a plum bob instead! but you know nothing about alchemy.) Firstly, we are trying to justify that L=M until we are over a third convinced in our heads that it is true. If this was sympathy you would be focussing upon your Alar. OK? Then off we go.

Laurian {Lackless} Meluan

Sister Piece

Meluan hates all of the ruh with a passion for their part in her sisters’s infamy, although what she thinks of her sister herself is not known, Shame? Anger? Respect? The truth is well hidden but the story is well rumoured. Even history books tell of the eldest heir abandoning responsibility which means that if this is a recent publication and not talking about a previous member of the family from years ago, then the story of Netalia Lackless eloping with a Ruh trouper is pretty widespread news and not just a hushed up family secret. Court gossip and rumour might even put the name Arliden the Bard as the other half of the equation, who knows? Scandal does seem to happen rather frequently in this family’s long history. Perhaps Meluan wants to believe that her sister was tricked, or lied to, or kidnapped even, or perhaps underneath she really just hates her wayward sister not for breaking free from her chains of duty but for dumping all the eldest childs responsibilies onto her own shoulders instead. After all, in a parallel universe it might well be Netalia who would go on to court the Maer. But Kvothe’s mum is called Laurian, even the Cthaeh calls her that, so where did Netalia go to?

The clue here comes in the aforementioned song that Arliden wrote about his wife which got him into her bad books enough for her to throw him out of their wagon and to go sleep by the fire instead, as a lesson to mind his tongue in future no doubt. It seems likely that she prefers the life of an anonymous trouper, not a lady to be identified as noble to any casual, or even unfriendly, ears. She certainly didn’t appreciate the remarked upon appalling meter that Arliden had used to force the the words natural sounds to fit badly into a poor word pattern.

In the song, Kvothe’s father refer’s to his wife as ‘My sweet Tally’ which is clearly a private and personal thing between them but which doesn’t fit with the name being Laurian by any stretch of the imagination. Yet this nickname is later compounded with the line that he made his wife ‘Not Tally a lot less’ a very forced line which clearly plays on words sounding suspiciously like the names Netalia and Lockless both. This is enough to convince most people of her true past.

Many other clues exist, not least when Kvothe causes affront to Laurian when he sings another song about the Lackless family women, one which can be taken in all sorts of lewd ways if you disect it enough, and begins with the line ‘Seven things has Lady Lackless.’

This also shows the infamy of the Lackless family since this song, and it’s sister piece which turns up in book two, are both ascribed to kids chanting it all the way from Vintas to to The Commonwealth. No wonder she was upset to hear her family name being mocked in rhyme by her own, ignorant son. Or perhaps she knew more about it’s meaning and import than she lets on, If she is Netalia Lackless then Kvothe is obliviously chanting a song whilst insulting his own mother too.

There is also the moment when Kvothe meets Meluan for the first time and is absolutely convinced that he has seen her before although such a meeting was declared nigh impossible. The best answer to that would be a subliminal family resemblance that just needs pointing out for you to go ‘Oh, YEAH!, I get it now,they could be sisters’ in which case it might be possible that the once remarked upon visit to ‘relatives at three- rivers’ was actually a meeting of the two sisters. Baby Kvothe could well have been present at a time when he could remember faces without understanding details like names so clearly. That’s about as far as most folk need to go as far as the Lackless link is concerned, enough to convine them that Yes, L=M is a solid link. It cannot ever be 100% proof, but we only want it to be 33 1/3% to do it’s job.

Perial (Lady) Lackless

Relativity

Introducing P to the equation is much less obvious. But if we are to have three legs to stand upon…

When we get to the family fall out from the ‘Seven things’ song, young Kvothe, rather conveniently for us, compares the allusions the songs words make as being no different from those in the play ‘For All His Waiting’ when Fain asks ‘Lady’ Perial about her hat.

‘I heard about if from so many men I wished to see it for myself and try the fit.’

It’s pretty obvious what he’s really talking about.’

‘The difference is’… explaination given was beautifully, and probably deliberately, interrupted whilst Laurian sent Kvothe to go and get the Tripod!!! HA!!! she then reitterrated that ‘The difference is…’ that it is all about being rude directly to someone’s face or from out of earshot , and Kvothe had unwittingly just done both! Which can be properly read as meaning that as far as Laurian in concerned at least one of these two people is actually there in the present company. Almost certainly confirming her as being Lady (Laurian) Lackless. She bangs this nail further on the head by giving another difference (which means that Laurian was officially telling Kvothe three times!) that one is a real person and the other is a character. But sometimes, two people can be the same person, rather like Laurian once telling Kvothe that she knew a man having two titles and by a quirk of fate finding that actually owed fealty to himself. Bredon confirms that this happens more than you would think, especially among the old families, and you don’t get much older than the Lackless family. That small and otherwise innocuous inclusion in our text could imply that a title may be a useful legal ‘hat’ which may be donned at need.

I suggest that you could make it up to both lady lackless and myself if you found some sweet nettle for the pot tonight.

This last line puts Laurian herself firmly into the cauldron of this tripod shaped equation straight from her own mouth as if this answer implies that she is currently the injured party whilst wearing her Perial ‘hat’ so to be speak instead of that of her role as the current Lady Lackless. If Laurian was not involved in any way then she would not personally feel insulted and nor would she have any need for the sweet nettle as an apology. Yet she has clearly placed herself within this three legged tripod of names as being one of the injured parties. It appears that Laurian believes that she can wear either ladies costume with ease since she has equal experience and entitlement of being both.

The question of who is Laurian really is quite like a costume drama where she used to be Lady Lackless the current heir to the family name, but now she is more like lady Perial, who is The Historical heir to the same family name, meaning that she is both and neither, it really depends which hat she chooses to wear today putting another small link into making P=L=M.

Trying to correlate The church Perial more closely with Lady Perial is also tricky work, but Pat is nothing but consistent across all of his writing in that his characters do not share names, each one is a clearly defined and individual name tag for one person only because Names are important. However, Perial is one of the exceptions to this rule and that is a pretty good indicator that as far as he is concerned ‘All Perial is One Perial.’

I’ll be the first to admit that the veracity of these latest ‘P’-links are not nearly as strong as that of L=M, yet if it was that obvious a theory then it would likely be common knowledge among fans and like L=M be considered as ‘old hat’ by now as well. The last argument is that it would be folly to insist that any such link was definitely Not possible as that would enter the territory of faulty logic since you can’t prove non-existence. Do you want to crack this thing or don’t you?

Depending on how much faith you have in each link, that Perial was the original founding Lackless, that Larurian was the previous heir to this house’s legacy and that Meluan is the current encumbent of Holy Perial’s historic position will dictate your Lackless triangles strength. It may be perfectly Equilateral, or it may be unwieldly and Scalene or maybe part-skewed into an Isosceles shape by over reliance upon only one part. In order to shore it up into a more solid building block we need to dig a bit deeper and stand a bit further back as we move into what exactly is the ‘Secret she’s been keeping’ line in the 7 things song is all about, and that’s an even bigger tincan of tin-foil worms.

We hear from Bredon about the tradition of exchanging courtly rings among Vintish society as a way of displaying your rank and power and that the three levels of power are lowly Iron, Silver for parity and finally superior Gold. On that basis, Lady Perials own golden ring marks her as being accorded a status far above all others in the way of such things and the most important O that there can ever possibly be. None is held in higher regard than she, not even her husband can claim that accolade and although we do not know his own ring status to properly compare them, we can assume that at best he was most likely regarded as silver for parity in the three ring scale as you wouldn’t insult such a man with iron. but then we are told that there is a fourth ring to consider, a lower rung of the ladder than iron which once used to appear in the rankings long ago to mark a servant but the practice has now fallen out of use completely and is only remembered as a plot device in a number of old plays…

In a modern comparison to our historical investigation, the difference between the top ring and bottom rung of the status symbols would be best depicted by when Lady Meluan Lackless gives the Edema Ruh Kvothe a wooden ring with her own name freshly burned into if. Such is the depth of division displayed to all here by the Lady Lackless giving anyone a wooden ring shows to the whole world that she is taking the most extreme method of making her point, telling the recipient that he is to be considered as far beneath her in every shape, way and form imaginable, and that the ravel ruh are ranked in her eyes as the lowest of the low, that the Edema are an excresence on the arse of world, or even that they are like the discharge that drips from it. Compared to her own lofty golden station they are lower than the shit on her horses shoes and that they aren’t even bracketed as being the same species as herself. This is her own opinion of someone in the know as to the two opposite ends of the social spectrum and is the view of the Lackless family as a whole who even disowned their daughter for joining with a different family, the One family of the 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, who understands her accompanying letter, 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.’

It doesn’t look that complicated to me, it is twice clearly stated that a wooden ring is a ring that’s not for wearing and is therefore a match the ring of the original Lord Loeclos and of the Edema Ruh both. Lord Lockless is then considered as deserving the same rank as Kvothe does, and Lady Lackless is dismissing Kvothe Utterly. His rejection has further comparisons to the Adem’s act of ‘cutting away’, which is the ultimate in exile from their own silent family for breaking the unbreakable rules. The implication is that the whole Lackless family, their song, their history of misfortune and scandal and the origins of the old Vintish tradition the giving of ‘a ring that’s not for wearing’ is the same method the original family used to deliver the ultimate message to any that they consider the Edema Ruh men that the all Lackless ladies never want to ever even think of again.