Fae bits

Sithe and singers

We have a few pieces on the great black and white tak board in the sky now. The Black God has put his finger on eight black tiles, setting them on the Temerant board to symbolise assorted Chandriana. And then there is his Black Capstone denoting his fist. His avatar is the big bad end level boss who is currently being called Encanis. In response, The White God has created an avatar with Perial in order to rid the world of demons. This piece is Tehlu who is the right hand of god and occupies the White Capstone. The 8 white pieces are the angels who will soon come under Capstone Tehlu's direct control. The Amyr contingent under minor piece Selitos are a rogue quantity for black. Selitos one-eye acknowledged Lord Aleph as being his superior but still disagreed with him over his plans for the future.

Saying No to your Gods plan means that Selitos has left Aleph to play his own games and found a loophole in the rules that allows him to create his own white capstone with it's attendant Amyr white pieces. He intends to add his own moves to Gods end game.  Clearly Chandrian foes but not exactly doing gods angel work either, which they deemed insufficient to their own desire, and Lord Aleph apparently allowed them their indulgence.

The Amyr's personal beef with the Chandrian is then actually a 7v7 side quest to that of Aleph dealing with the demonic threat of Encanis. It will start playing the day after God has moved Capstone Tehlu into place and whilst it complements the 8 angels it was not deemed a necessary part of God's overall design. Other anti Chandrian factions also exist besides angels and Amyr in this eternal power struggle and before we gatecrash the tak game fully we should take a moment to consider some other possible pieces on the game board who also play in endgame opposition to the7.

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

The Sithe

The second black Capstone. Board 8x8

Lose a city , lose a file

Rules quote.

God snapped the edge off the board. Now it's 6X6.

 Young Kvothe has never heard of them and focuses his search more upon the infamous Amyr. But elder Kote has since learnt that the Sithe are 'a faction among the Fae. Powerful, with good intentions'. Bast knows the most about the the mysterious Sithe.

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

Obviously that 'anyone' remit includes the7 but it is a blanket statement and Bast is only 150 years old and only knows what he has been taught. This 'oldest and most important charge' was given to them long before his time… but by whom? Someone very important no doubt and I'm pretty sure that also means Aleph but before we get onto that mystery there is one other Bast mention of them too, and a very important one as well. When he is making his holly crown defence against any future skin dancer attack, Bast talks once again of the Sithe.

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

We can see a link between the Sithe and a group called the White Riders forming now that will make them one and the same thing. Kote also knows of an old Faen song called the White Riders Hunt.

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

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

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

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

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

Small crumbs, yes, but I work with what I’m given. The Sithe once came into mortal lands specifically to hunt down skin dancers. This actually makes perfect sense as a powerful faen entity is likely the only thing capable of controlling a Mael skin dancing puppet properly.

In chapter 4 I started to explain how to shape a Rhinta.  The language this Rob the Rhinta puppet was forced to speak in, which I christened Eld Faen, was the same language spoken in the land of it’s ancient Mael master and is therefore all it had to work with. Since there aren’t any mortal bodies in the fae to posess, these skin dancers masters must have historically had their own direct waystone links into the mortal realm by default to be able to first gain the raw materials necessary to create any new Rhinta.

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

Taken all together this makes for a rather interesting triangle since we are told that it was actually Tehlu who ousted these particular skin dancing demons all by himself, but the pieces of the puzzle fitting right now has Tehlu doing the same job as these white riders did and therefore this will imply a link between this ‘good’ faen faction called the Sithe and the good mortal faction called Tehlu. They shared a common enemy and the enemy of my enemy…

Tehlu anyways

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

Singers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Singers

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

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

And I will bet you a jot that we would hear about how Aleph did the same sort of thing to the Amyr Ruach and the Sithe Ruach in the full unabridged version of Skarpi#2

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

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

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

Aleph

Ruach

Amyr

Angels

Sithe

Chandrian on trial

No Lanre. 

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

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

 Summoning 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 ~ Track Record

Track Record

Day and Night

Now that we finally have one foot in the Fae, some form of map may be rather useful before continuing. Half a page or so of hints is not much to go on but it should be enough as life in the Fae is governed by two things, dark and light, and the further out from the centre you go, the darker it gets. To gather the materials for Kvothe’s shaed took an expedition out into the outer limits where strange and dangerous things live. The sky darkened and the stars dwindled but there were still trees in this part of Fae, vast trunks and dark branches like a cathedral towered all around them. One unseen but terrifying presence was attracted by foolish Kvothe when he decided to make some light to see by, stupid boy. Now it may very well have been the light itself that attracted it, that is the most likely explaination, however it should be noted that he didn’t use something as mundane as a tinderbox, oh no, he used sympathy in a motion-to-light binding (Capacatorial Kinetic Luminosity?) and since he was stark naked and had no piece of metal to focus on, I can only assume his power source was his own red mortal blood which might be part of an answer too. Whatever he did, something came to investigate and Felurian had to act swiftly with the rebuke ‘ciar nalias’ which may well mean ‘Stop That!’ or ‘Put That Light Out’ but it could equally translate as ‘No Sympathy.’ which I prefer because Pat’s a funny guy. Kvothe broke the binding but the damage was done and their presence was now known to this other presence.

Felurian acted swiftly again to hide them and this time had to speak a word or name of power of her own, softer than a whisper it was gentle and edgeless, but then so are most of her words. This may have been to hide them beneath a web of stillness but a second word was necessary too, one that stilled Kvothe from total movement. Even this was not enough and thirdly, Felurian breathed in the air from his mortal lungs and replaced it with her own honeysuckle silence. ‘For an endless moment my heart ceased beating in my chest’ and then the danger was gone, the disturbance ripple that Kvothe had caused in this part of the fae was calm again since there was nothing now left of him for anything to notice, not even a heart beat to pump his ruh blood about. Kvothe was completely still and silent and technically ought to be dead too but it did the trick, the presence departed, and his heart thumped again. For that moment he was completely controlled by the eternal breath of Felurian, first lady of twilight who relaxed and then laughed wildly as if she had played the most marvelous joke…probably upon death itself.

Of course that doesn’t help with our maps but it needed saying anyway. Back in the darkness they continued further out into the stillness where sound is soft and darkness absolute. This is the limit of their faen journey and even the starlight has left them. In theory, continuing through the dark could have bought them full circle back into the light once again but I’m glad we don’t have to go the long way around, three dimensions are enough to struggle through without dawn bringing more trouble.

There was something sentient and light beyond the darkness though, things that live out the deep of the night and when they came to Kvothe he thought of them as Tom Sparks, Will o Wisps, or Dennerlings with lanterns full of corpse light. Anything is possible in the fae after all, but they were actually moths of some sort, which shone a pale and silvery light which lit their path onwards.

‘We walked a long while after that. Felurian leading between the trunks of ancient trees. Once I felt grass soft beneath my bare feet instead of moss, then there was soft soil, as if we were crossing a farmer’s fresh-tilled soil.For a time we followed a twisting path of smooth paved stone that led us over the arch of a high bridge. All the while the moths followed us, giving me only the dimmest impression of our surroundings. Eventually Felurian stopped. By now the darkness was so thick I could almost feel it like a warm blanket around me. I could tell by the sound of the wind in the trees and the motion of the moths that we were standing in an open space.

There were no stars above us.

Grimward and Grinning

We are told that there are no compass points in Fae, but we can navigate by the stars if you know all their stories. The shapers who built the fae also made a star each ‘to light their new and empty sky’ 

Fae spotlights as cloaks ? and so the further from their light that you get, the further into the outer dark you go. Conversely the brighter it gets, the nearer to the centre you are. I imagine this would make Fae look like an LP record with Shaed Land being track one, Moth World making up track two, and The Twilit Pool being track three. Later on, Kvothe walked inwards through the trees of track four towards the brightening light of the horizon until all the trees finally ended their faen song… all bar one.

‘The trees gave way to a grassy plain. All the parts of the Fae Felurian had shown me had been forested. So this seemed a clear sign I was well outside of the bounds where I ought to be.

So imagining our record scenario again means that if the trees are what make up all the song grooves and track listings then this grassy plain would be the bit where the label is stuck and the run off groove disappears, and in the middle of that is the hole where the whole album spins around and around on a spindle. And nobody ever goes here on pain of death… Well, that’s the theory anyway.

This centre, a deceptively large area which is at least half a mile from the the central lone tree in all directions which is a good bowshot for all of the Sithe archers to shoot crows over, is therefore the pin that marks the absolute centre of the Faen realm and is the area subjected to the most brighness since it is permanantly bathed in the source of all fae light. An eternal daylight to match Felurians eternal twilight and this is almost certainly what makes it a perfect prison for an unseen oracle. The Cthaeh cannot leave it’s tree because it is elementally a creature of darkness and therefore cannot stand the touch of any exposure to the faen light in much the same way as it doesn’t like the smell of iron on Kvothe and moves further away from that too. Fire and Iron in any form are anathema and the light burns him like the iron bites him. This means that this entity called Cthaeh will now have to spend it’s entire eternal existence imprisoned on a dark island in a white field and only protected by the shaed of it’s own tree, which would I suppose make it officially ‘yoked to shadow…’ just like Lanre is back in Mortal.

Mael

"Upon him I will visit famine and a fire. 

Till all around him desolation rings 

And all the demons in the outer darkness 

Look on amazed and recognise 

That vengeance is the business of a man."

8 ~ Gods

9 ~ Dream Time

Fin

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

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