HFQ Official Snippet #1

dwileye13 wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:
SNIP

“I don’t know,” she told him very quietly, her eyes deep and dark in the fire-spangled bedchamber’s dimness, “but I’ve come to suspect that wherever you truly come from is also where all of the Adams and Eves who awoke here on Safehold on the Day of Creation truly came from, as well.”

Now doesn't that inject some space for a wide variety of speculation.

Thank you RFC and best wishes to Sharon.

It looks like she might as well mbe admitted to the inner circle - seeing as how she's figured out far more than is otherwise safe otherwise.

Heh, it seems a lot of her conclusions are based on the fact that there appears to only be one seijin.

Which begs the question, how will she react when she hears of Seijin Nimue

Chyort wrote:...
Which begs the question, how will she react when she hears of Seijin Nimue

I wonder if she'll see the "family resemblance" between Merlin and Nimue?

I am SO going to buy this book the day it comes out.

=2014/08/08=
Now that's a very bright lady

Thank you Mr Weber !!

R
.

=2014/08/09=
?? The CURRENT Grand Vicar ??

Where's the text evidence for that ??

Could it not be the PREVIOUS Grand Vicar ??

R
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DrakBibliophile wrote:We already know that Aivah is the daughter of the current Grand Vicar.

BobG wrote:I'm suddenly curious if Nimue is close to Aivah in size and shape. Could she go to Zion for her?

I'm also curious if Aivah (or her assistant) is the thousand year visitor? It could be that they could be as limited as Merlin in capabilities, unless they were willing to unleash the Rakurai.

-- Bob G

I was in a thread a couple of months ago in which I speculated that along with her obvious intelligence and talent that there was the institutional training of a well established covert group.

I think this snippet thrusts us in that direction. Her statement that the original Adams and Eves had to have come from elsewhere is evidence of carefully preserved institutional knowledge. It wouldn't have had to come from Jeremiah Knowles. Pei Shanwei reeducated over 200 of the original Adams and Eves. My speculation is that we have another group with carefully guarded secrets that originated with one or more of those original Adams and Eves.

My own first thought here would be that the front for that group would be the nunnery where Aivah was raised operating in a manner similar to the Brethren of St. Zhearnau. Aivah is a member of another inner circle.

Don

I don't think Aivah is associated with Shan-wei's seedlings. I believe she brings up Seijin Khody because hers is a group that did nor win the War of the Fallen. Did not win but neither did they lose. Her group pulled in its horns before they totally lost and the winners did not feel obligated to root them out. I wouldn't be surprised if Seijin Khody was an operative that might have been a PICA or not.

I sort of doubt it. His well documented skill of solving problems without using force suggested his physical skills were not overwhelming like Merlin's. He might be an archangel as Drak suggested. I doubt he was a PICA.

If Khody was one of the early directors of Aivah's organization, that would explain her wealth of information regarding Adams and Eves. It would also explain her connection to the vice trade.

n7axw wrote:I was in a thread a couple of months ago in which I speculated that along with her obvious intelligence and talent that there was the institutional training of a well established covert group.

I think this snippet thrusts us in that direction. Her statement that the original Adams and Eves had to have come from elsewhere is evidence of carefully preserved institutional knowledge. It wouldn't have had to come from Jeremiah Knowles. Pei Shanwei reeducated over 200 of the original Adams and Eves. My speculation is that we have another group with carefully guarded secrets that originated with one or more of those original Adams and Eves.

My own first thought here would be that the front for that group would be the nunnery where Aivah was raised operating in a manner similar to the Brethren of St. Zhearnau. Aivah is a member of another inner circle.

Don

It appears that you may be correct but in case she is the foster sister of Adorai Dynnys (the wife of the late Archbishop of Charis).

So Aivah can't be a thousand year old "visitor".

Note, we get Aivah/Nynian's "back story" in By Heresies Distressed.

kbus888 wrote:=2014/08/09=
?? The CURRENT Grand Vicar ??

Where's the text evidence for that ??

Could it not be the PREVIOUS Grand Vicar ??

R
.

DrakBibliophile wrote:We already know that Aivah is the daughter of the current Grand Vicar.

So far, nothing in what Aivah has said indicates the influence of another Jeremy Knowles. She reached her conclusions about Merlin solely upon preexisting suspicion about his fortuitous arrival to a backwater such as Charis and her own perceptiveness - Especially on noticing things about the men she needed to do "business" with.

By the same token, her last statement - her question of where Merlin came from and her suspicion that it was the same place the Adams and Eves came from - could be the result of a skeptical and questioning mind. Having studied in a religious school myself growing up and being discouraged from asking the difficult questions or being given inadequate answers to them when I did ask I think I can see where Aivah is coming from.

Her father was a Grand Vicar who fooled around and abandoned her because acknowledging her would have been politically inconvenient. She was sent to convent for her education in the hopes she might decide to become a nun and disappear entirely. She is a member of the high class forced to live in a lower class and could therefore see the inequities in her society. As was mentioned before, these factors had come together to make her apt for rebellion. And rebellion against an established order would seek to find cracks in the legitimacy of it's authority. That legitimacy is conferred by the Holy Writ, without which they have no right to rule. It is any wonder therefore, that she herself is skeptical of the story of creation itself?

To question it is to question the authority of the church and God himself (our herself) and how could one question the might and majesty of God after seeing the temple and all it's wonders? Yet she is not an uneducated bumpkin from the boonies, credulous enough to look at it in awe and believe that it's magical - She is a highly educated and intelligent woman who is already apt to question established wisdom. Ergo, she could have reached these conclusions by herself.

One of the finest and most intriguing Safehold snippets I ever read. Thank you very much!

runsforcelery wrote:Guys — I have now finished and turned in Hell's Foundations Quiver. In fact, I just finished sending off the updated character list and the list of sub-maps I hope we can get into this volume about's 20 minutes ago.

[snip]

I don't really recall how much of this first official snippet I already posted. There's been some revision to it, anyway (not a lot, but some), so I figure it makes a pretty good starting point.

Hope you enjoy it.

[snip]