(SPOILERS) Is Nynian to be trusted?

The monastery where the SSoK is based might be the new village south of Zion that now appears in the Safehold map.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... hold/338/0

Apart from the more detailed Dohlar map already mentioned in this forum, there's now a new range of mountains south of Zion called Wishbone and a village there called High Rayworth that is close enough to Zion and isolated enough to be the SSoK monastery....or not.

jmbm wrote:The monastery where the SSoK is based might be the new village south of Zion that now appears in the Safehold map.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... hold/338/0

Apart from the more detailed Dohlar map already mentioned in this forum, there's now a new range of mountains south of Zion called Wishbone and a village there called High Rayworth that is close enough to Zion and isolated enough to be the SSoK monastery....or not.

thats v interesting...

Does anyone know when that appeared, or is it just that no-one noticed before? BTW if you follow the road from High Rayworth down to the sea, you come to Fairstock. Fairstock Bay has a lot of detail...

[Edit] sigh! Fairstock/Rayworth/Wishbone is mentioned in some detail in earlier part of AMF - Earl Coris' landing port and route on his journey to Zion.

n7axw wrote:

keylime314 wrote:
I'd say less trusted. The sisterhood's suspicions don't seem to be against Langhorne and Bedard, but against Schueler and Chihiro. Their doubts about Shan-wei being evil seem to be if the Rakurai that destroyed Alexandria really done by Schueler and Chihiro as a cover for killing Langhorne and taking over themselves. Their doubts aren't about the actual divinity of the Archangels. That's a significant difference from the Brotherhood of St. Zhernau.

If the sisterhood's goal is to return the COGA to Langhorne's plan that they believe Schuler and Chihiro corrupted, then revealing that Shan-wei was in fact in rebellion to Langhorne and Langhorne did in fact order the Rakurai strike will probably convince them that Merlin is a demon.

To an extent, it really doesn't matter what the Spanish sections of Khody's diary say, the fact the sisterhood can't get any translator but Merlin is going to taint the translation he gives them. Even if the the diary supports everything Merlin says, how can the sisterhood know if the translation he gave them is accurate? For all they'll know he just made it all up because an actual translation would have blown all sorts of holes in Merlin's story.

I think that the key here is that Khody's journal has already punched a hole in the overall structure of the chuch's storyline. And if Nynian is an example, the sisters are critical thinkers who would be firmly capable of reasoning out that if there are holes in the story line that we know about, there could well be others...

Except it hasn't punched a single hole in the story of Langhorne's church. Let's look at the sections of the snippets that indicate what the sisterhood believes.

We know from the parts we can read that he’d met someone — someone fighting to the bitter end on the other side — who’d convinced him that what had happened to Armageddon Reef didn’t necessarily prove Shan-wei had fallen into evil. For that matter, after talking with him, Kohdy had come to question whether or not Langhorne himself had loosed the Rakurai on Armageddon Reef.

The ‘Español’ portions are brief, initially, interspersed with the ones we can still read, but its last eight months are recorded entirely in ‘Español.’ I suspect he switched to that language when he wrote down things that might have done serious damage to the cause of Chihiro and Schueler if it had fallen into someone else’s hands

“Even those of us who read it that way are divided about where that ‘somewhere else’ might have been. Most of us interpret it as evidence that not even an Archangel could create a soul — that God Himself must be the sole Creator in that sense — and that all those Adams and Eves were with Him while the Archangels prepared the world in which they would live. But a fair number of us think he might just as well have meant the Adams and Eves lived and breathed on an entirely different world and that God and the Archangels brought them here from that other world, rather than first giving them life on the Day of Creation.

From this, it's pretty indicative to me that the sisterhood's basic mental framework is that Langhorne's church was corrupted by Schueler and Chihiro, who framed Shan-wei for Langhorne's death so they could take over. Look at the last qoute, only a minority of a minority of the sisterhood subscribe to the idea that God and the Archangels moved humans to Safehold. They don't know anything about the Federation. Even the ones that believe humans existed elsewhere first don't seem to doubt Langhorne's divinity. Nowhere in there does Nynian express any doubt about Langhorne, only about Chihiro and Schueler.

n7axw wrote:I firmly agree that it would be far more desireable to let the sisters do the translating. But speaking as someone whose BA was in classical languages, I can assure you that it will take time. Not only is there is vocabulary, there is syntax, mastery of thought patterns and more... They won't have the rosetta stone software which means that even the basics are going to be done the hard way. Becoming competent to translate in proper nuance takes years of study.

The fact they can't get independent verification is my entire point. Anyone using critical thinking skills is going to recognize you can't use any translation Merlin gives the sisterhood as evidence for Merlin's truthfulness. It seems like the sisterhood is expecting to get a translation that says that Chihiro and Schueler killed Langhorne and framed Shan-wei for it so they could take over. If they get a translation that goes completely against what they're expecting, and goes against their basic belief structure, what will they do? Do they blindly accept it as true, or do they apply those critical thinking skills and wonder if the source of the translation is lying to them because a 'real' translation would have hurt Merlin's cause?

n7axw wrote:What it is all going to come down to is how much Nynian is willing to trust Merlin. As far as that goes, look how much she has trusted him with already. It would seem to me that it would be a stretch to assume that as far as she has gone already she wouldn't trust him to translate. As for the other sisters, look at how senior she must be in her order. If she's not the mother superior, she is certainly high enough up to be entrusted with critical decisions and when necessary to act independently without supervision on crucial matters. In short the other sisters are already trusting Nynian.

So, subject to verification, I think that the case for including Nynian, at least, in the inner circle has grown stronger.

Don

Of course, if things go wrong and she fails the verifier and the circle has to kill her, she'll have left instructions for the sisterhood to deal with Charis in the case of her having an 'accident'.

isaac_newton wrote:

jmbm wrote:The monastery where the SSoK is based might be the new village south of Zion that now appears in the Safehold map.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... hold/338/0

Apart from the more detailed Dohlar map already mentioned in this forum, there's now a new range of mountains south of Zion called Wishbone and a village there called High Rayworth that is close enough to Zion and isolated enough to be the SSoK monastery....or not.

thats v interesting...

Does anyone know when that appeared, or is it just that no-one noticed before? BTW if you follow the road from High Rayworth down to the sea, you come to Fairstock. Fairstock Bay has a lot of detail...

I have downloaded the map instead of using the online version. And there are no new places on the map.

If anyone notices new places, the operative words are "anyone" and "notices", not "new places".

I am sorry for this cold shower, but it helps concentrate on the valid wild speculations. (and dream about the long anticipated shower scenes)
The privacy of the bedroom of the most beautiful woman on Safehold is void.

PeterZ wrote:Corroborating Nynian's story is less important than verifying what Nynian believes. Merlin's access to the SSK historic documents might help him and the Inner Circle deduce what The Return is, but not really help recognize the true risks of attacking the Temple. The SSK might have institutional knowledge that would help get a tac team into the Temple and avoid triggering the OBS.

Bottom line is that so long as Merlin uses the Verifier, he can share information with Nynian and some select sisters. They have to recognize that if they tell other sisters that aren't likely to respond well, those sisters will suffer accidents. Exploding SNARCS would be used if need be. Nynian wouldn't have engaged Merlin in this discussion unless she had a solution to that risk. Not the risk of exploding SNARCS, but of poor reaction to difficult revelations.

Once Nynian has revealed her beliefs and had Merlin reveal his past under the Verifier or Stone of Scheuler, those two can work out the remaining tactics.

I agree that using the verifier would serve the purpose.

As far as what she believes, I would point out to you that everyone admitted to the inner circle so far has been a bona fide believer in the Writ and the doctrine of the COGA prior to being told the truth. The question has always been whether or not such candidates would be able to make the adjustment to being trustworthy members of the inner circle, particularly if they would be able to accept the truth.

Finally Peter, there is no way to completely avoid the risk of things going badly. Nynian is a better prepared candidate than we have seen so far, but even telling Nynian is not completely without risk.

Don

Agreed Don. My primary emphasis was to convince Nynian that nothing the the IC said was a lie. A close secondary benefit would be an honest reaction from Nynian. In any case there will be risk. I get that.

I don't see a problem with being cautious. Yes, risks will be run. They don't have to be courted. Given what the IC knows trusting Nynian and the SSK without setting in place as effective a series of safeguards as can be set.

Tanstaafl wrote:

n7axw wrote:Peter has it right on this one. If the decision is made to monitor Nynian, she will be monitored exhaustively. Nothing private will ne revealed beyond the necessary, but she will be monitored.

As for Merlin's difficulty in discovering how she is communicating, all that indicates is that she is practicing good tradecraft mking it more difficult to follow along with as was already mentioned upstream in this thread, it hasn't been a priority until now.

Don

And we know that Nynian is comfortable with entertaining guests in her bedroom. The one place OWL was forbidden to snoop.


I wonder if Merlin realizes he has a blind spot in that place. He was very clear when he placed those injunctions on OWL, and OWL was still a very literal minded tactical computer at that time.

Or Nynian may have some knowledge of the capabilities of advance monitoring technology. Kohdy's journal may not have any information on stuff like SNARCs and the tools itself but the fact that some parts are written in Spanish may indicate that Kohdy have some idea of the Archangel's advance monitoring capabilities and have some means to counteract them.

If he had written them down on his journal, Nynian may have employed them just in case the Mother Church did have the same capabilities to spy on her but unfortunately the same countermeasures may have been effective against the Merlin/OWL's SNARCs as well.

PeterZ wrote:Agreed Don. My primary emphasis was to convince Nynian that nothing the the IC said was a lie. A close secondary benefit would be an honest reaction from Nynian. In any case there will be risk. I get that.

The Verifier can't convince Nynian unless she trusts Merlin anyway, since it's his device, so it's redundant. See my post up-thread » Wed Sep 10, 2014 1:01 pm

Randomiser wrote:

PeterZ wrote:Agreed Don. My primary emphasis was to convince Nynian that nothing the the IC said was a lie. A close secondary benefit would be an honest reaction from Nynian. In any case there will be risk. I get that.

The Verifier can't convince Nynian unless she trusts Merlin anyway, since it's his device, so it's redundant. See my post up-thread » Wed Sep 10, 2014 1:01 pm

Hi Randomizer,

Good Point.

Unless she has prior knowledge of a verifier from something she has learned in the journals.

Don

It is probable that the 'Demon' told Kohdy the truth of Safehold. Either the Archangels provided Spanish as a battle language or the Demon did via his NEAT. At least one English sentence in the Diary must have suggested the Adams and Eves came from some place other than Safehold but, did not outright say so, thus differences in interpretation among the Sisters of Saint Kohdy. Likely the Spanish portions contain the Truth as presented by the 'Demon.'

I agree with the speculation Nynian is the head of the action/intelligence arm of SoSK. She has suspected Merlin was more than his public face, but did not confront him with this knowledge until she needed quick transportation to Zion and back.

So why? Could the Sisters of Saint Kohdy be so divided in the differences of interpenetration in the English of the line(s) that hinted the Adams and Eves came from somewhere other than Safehold that conformation might break the order? She may not want the 'Truth' as it might break her order. They may be too fragile to handle the full truth.

Kohdy trusted Schuler and the Stone of Schuler's message does not jive with the Book of Schuler showing he was probably worthy of trust. Were both killed by paranoid Langhorne followers leading to the Books of Schuler and Chiro. We await more revelations in future snippets.

Poker