HFQ Official Snippet #1

Hi EvilAuthor,

It'll be an even greater plot twist if Merlin's in love with her.

Nynian could probably come up with a way that she as a woman could run such a patriarchy, seeing how she did that would also be very entertaining, but too much of a digression from the storyline, so I'll have to pass on that.

L

evilauthor wrote:

AClone wrote:*quote="evilauthor"*

Wouldn't that be worth a few drama points?

Think it's time to fire that particular gun?

Doesn't matter, Aivah hates Cyntahn & Co enough that she isn't going to have a 'bad reaction". Indeed, she seems to be doing her absolute best to have a "good" one--whatever Merlin says next.*quote*

Possibly, but what happens AFTER Clyntahn is defeated? She could take his place as their most dangerous opponent.

Hmm... could make for an interesting sequel war. You know, the one where the Truth gets revealed to the war. And Aivah on the other side.

Hi EvilAuthor,

Given how important Nynian/Aivah is to Merlin, I'm quite confident he'd take her to to the cave for suspended animation until the secret was already revealed.

But I suspect she already knows part of the secret, and the fact she supports the CoC as well indicates where she personally leans.

We may yet have a scene where Merlin takes her on a tour of the cave, on their way or back from Zion.

She's looking for confirming truth, of what she already knows, which Merlin, the recon skimmer etc all provide; although the fact he's a PICA and doesn't need to breathe could be a shock.

So Merlin may be very careful of what he tells her until he knows exactly what she knows.

And what man ever knows that?

Even if Merlin is Nimue?

L

evilauthor wrote:
SNIPPED 4 BREVITY

That's another thing! It's been mentioned in almost every book the dangers of what would happen if the Inner Circle revealed the Truth to someone who reacts "badly" to it. It's a Checkov's Gun that's been sitting on the wall for almost the entire series, but so far Merlin and the Charisians have come up lucky every time.

So what if the one person who has the much feared "bad reaction" is the one person they can least afford to lose and the hardest to make "disappear"?

Especially since it was mentioned that if Nahrman had a bad reaction, he could have betrayed them to the Church (and likely sacrificed himself in the process). And from what we've seen, Aivah is better at the espionage game than Nahrman.

Wouldn't that be worth a few drama points?

Think it's time to fire that particular gun?

A very nice snippet, though in true RFC style it causes as many questions as it answers. There are times I think that someone should perform an information extraction (involuntary?, emergency?, alcoholic?) on RFC to get some answers.

The bits about Kohdy and the other seijins are interesting. We'll probably get some more information on them but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the 'Temple' seijins turn out to be something like a team of nano-augmented marines, part of the command crew but deliberately slumming so as to be able to do things without the 'overwhelming' event of angels intervening. Kohdy could be something else entirely but we don't know when he was active.

Aivah's information networks are interesting but could be covered as almost any merchant operation and are probably unaware of who they are ultimately working for. Imagine merchant factors posted to several cities and staying in touch with the head office. Their dispatches would contain commercially valuable information ('Raiyan Mychail has figured out a way to safely mass produce steel thistle silk.') and maybe things like local scandal, gossip and social items (all these can have commercial value). It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for factors to be told something like 'Tell me if you ever hear about something like a Seijin. the Kohdy stories are favorites of mine.'

lyonheart wrote:Hi EvilAuthor,

Given how important Nynian/Aivah is to Merlin, I'm quite confident he'd take her to to the cave for suspended animation until the secret was already revealed.

Given how Aivah seems to be the best espionage master in the world, it wouldn't surprise me if she had already taken precautions that would make it EXTREMELY inconvenient for Merlin to make her disappear like that.

Edit - Also, she could pull what Nahrmahn had been described as being capable of: hiding her bad reaction long enough to do some major damage to Merlin and Charis's operations. Help Clyntahn? Probably not. She's MUCH more subtle than that.

My only question is, how long RFC leaves us here on tenterhooks. I mean, it's not only "how long before he posts another snippet?", but also "Does he jump to a completely different scene, and leave us hanging?"

Sigh...

AClone wrote:My only question is, how long RFC leaves us here on tenterhooks. I mean, it's not only "how long before he posts another snippet?", but also "Does he jump to a completely different scene, and leave us hanging?"

Sigh...

Very likely, I should think. The next snippet may very well be in order, but the story jump to another plotline, one of the military fronts perhaps?

RFC has ruled out her being part of a group founded by Shan Wei. With out trying a "loophole" of it possibly being from someone else in the Alexandria Enclave. I can imagine 2 other options. 1) The Madame is a descendant of Kohdy on her mother's side or one of a group of descendants seeing as he got "around" to the ladies quite well. No one knew of the Wylsynn family connection to Schuler. One hole in this idea is that this family knowledge is past to daughters, unlikely given the social mores of Safehold. 2)There could be a group in hiding that originated from Kau-yung or his "group" of moderates. Kohdy could even have been associated with that faction. The war that followed the nuclear strike "eradicated" descendants of the Alexandria Enclave, which the moderates could have been part of as a way of distancing themselves from their leader's actions. After which the mental paranoia of the command staff could have turned on the moderates forcing them into hiding like St. Zherneau. You only need to examine Russian revolution history to see Stalin's paranoia against his compatriots.

Yes, RFC did rule out Nynian belonging to a group founded by Shanwei. However, that's not very informative since so far as we have textev, Shanwei didn't found any groups at all. The Brethern (and sistern, IIRC), were founded by Jeremiah and Evelyn Knowles, seedlings whom Shanwei reeducated using their neats. There is nothing RFC has said that would rule out other seedings from establising other groups one pf whom might have recruited Nynian. However, other possibilities are implied in the next snippet.

Don

n7axw wrote:Yes, RFC did rule out Nynian belonging to a group founded by Shanwei. However, that's not very informative since so far as we have textev, Shanwei didn't found any groups at all. The Brethern (and sistern, IIRC), were founded by Jeremiah and Evelyn Knowles, seedlings whom Shanwei reeducated using their neats. There is nothing RFC has said that would rule out other seedings from establising other groups one pf whom might have recruited Nynian. However, other possibilities are implied in the next snippet.

Don

For that matter, there's no reason that one of Langhorne's "Angels" might not have founded their own secret society and kept it secret from the others. Heck, the Wilson family is implied to be one such group.

This snippet opens up so many possibilities

pokermind wrote:
A real plot twist would be the Group was founded by the real Schuler of the memory stone, not the psychopath who wrote the Book of Schuler

Poker

And maybe Schuler = Khody, and being a mortal person, must sleep in stasis and come out every few decades/hundred of years to check on the state of Safehold (and whether the Safeholdians in general is ready for the truth).

During the times when he is awake and out, he takes on the persona of Khody which may explain why his stories are so spread out in the ages.

I was thinking he may have set the 1000 year awakening event to his descendants so that he himself have a hard deadline to work on revealing the truth to Safehold. I could imagine him waking up to find Seijin Merlin already done his work for him