HFQ Official Snippet #1

::a Naughty Moose suggests::
... her mother?

Naughty Moose

DrakBibliophile wrote:[snip]
It seems obvious that nobody but her father was responsible for her birth and "adoption" by her foster parents.
[snip]

Very Very Naughty of you to comment on my mistake.

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:::a Naughty Moose suggests::
... her mother?

Naughty Moose

DrakBibliophile wrote:[snip]
It seems obvious that nobody but her father was responsible for her birth and "adoption" by her foster parents.
[snip]

Humm, Your comment to Naughty Moose reminds me of the old books and author's joke I heard in Junior High, many, many moons go: Antlers In The Trees by Who Goosed Demoose.

Poker

Do we have a time-line for when Kohdy appears on the stage? Maybe I missed something, but I can't remember him being mentioned together with the other seijins and the war. (edit: well, as mentioned earlier it seemed he was officially recognized earlier but then censored from the church books).

Could he have appeared later, after the original crew was gone?

Not sure.

Quoting from the snippet.

Despite himself, Merlin blinked at her chosen comparison. Seijin Kohdy was deeply embedded in Safeholdian folklore, but unlike the double handful of “attested” seijins recorded in The Testimonies left by the Adams and Eves who’d survived Shan-Wei’s Rebellion and the War Against the Fallen, there was no historical record of him at all. Not only that, but while the seijins of The Testimonies were all sober, focused, intensely disciplined warriors for God, Archangels, and Church, Seijin Kohdy swirled through the tales about him like some sort of traveling conjurer or laughing vagabond. Or an Odysseus, perhaps. His times had been anything but humorous, yet the vast majority of those tales related as much to his craftiness, his ability to gain his objectives by guile and subterfuge as much as by the deadliness of Helm Cleaver, his magic sword . . . and to his humor, his weakness for attractive women, and his fondness for a glass of good whisky.

End Quote

The "His times had been anything but humorous" could imply during the War Against The Fallen but may also imply periods after the War that were almost as bad.

Joat42 wrote:Do we have a time-line for when Kohdy appears on the stage? Maybe I missed something, but I can't remember him being mentioned together with the other seijins and the war. (edit: well, as mentioned earlier it seemed he was officially recognized earlier but then censored from the church books).

Could he have appeared later, after the original crew was gone?

I will snip heavily to keep things shorts

DrakBibliophile wrote:IMO this snippet shows that Charis was not involved in the War of the Archangels so nobody in Charis would have had first hand knowledge of the actions of the Seijins.

So St Zherneau would only have rumors and the official records of what happened.

But she imply that history was rewritten and Kody removed from the official accounts at a later date (the "now" bit), and that would have been evident to St Zherneau.

It is the same way as officials could disappear in Russia pictures for Russians but the West noticed each time it happened, because they had access to each version unlike Russians.

If Kody was known enough to have a lot of tales written about him, he was part of the news feed, remember Safehold has both an active press and efficient communications via the semaphore network.

As for the plausibility of Aivah's assassins being "unknown" to the Inquisition, IMO it's not as implausible as you may think.
...
Aivah's intelligence gathering organization would use methods that have worked for centuries and would be just one of many such organizations.

If the Inquisition got hints of her operations, there could be nothing to tell it that this organization is anyway different than the other intelligence gathering operations on Safehold.

The first rule of intelligence ops is to know the other players.

Sooner or Later, some operatives are identified (the trick is to keep that number low and not too damaging, it cannot be null if you are active). Then the very high priority is to identify who they belong to and it happens that inquisition has a very major advantage as they have the inside track of everyone. A small passive cell gathering only open documents could be completly concealed. A major organisation dealing with closed sources, rather unlikely, even if brothels are a good place to operate.

As for her assassins, her assassination operations appear to be very recent perhaps only starting after Clyntahn's purge of the Circle.

Her assassins likely aren't part of her intelligence gathering organizations although obviously they make use of information from her spies.

The problem is that they show very good institutional wisdom, that you cannot get from books but only experience. They are consumate professionals leaving absolutely no clue. Where did they learn ?

If you ever read about resistance movements in WWII, outside the maquis, about 2/3 of the losses were in the first 18 months because they needed to get the experience, despite a much lower operational tempo.

First, you may be confusing current day Safehold and Safehold during the War.

During the War, Charis was a "back water" island and while officially connected to the Mainland likely didn't get "official" information (never mind what's official in a Civil War) concerning what was happening.

Nobody involved in the fighting would see the need to keep people who can't get involved informed about what's happening.

Second, concerning "know the other players" and "the Inquisition having a major advantage", yes there would be efforts at identifying Aivah's network but I'm thinking that you may be falling into the idea that the "Inquistition Is All Knowing".

The Inquisition's intelligence network may have been the largest on Safehold and in Zion but it might not be as good as you think.

There could be hundreds of intelligence networks just in Zion itself. The various Vicars could have intelligent networks. The various Bishops and Archbishops could have intelligence networks. The various Church families could have intelligence networks. Business owners (like Aivah) likely had intelligence networks and so forth.

Keeping track of the players may be harder than you think for the Inquisition.

The Inquisition's major advantage over the clergy's networks would have been how easy it was for them to plant a spy (possessing as a non-Inquistition member of the clergy) into the offices of the other important clergy and non-clergy.

So the Inquisition may have depended on spying on others rather than identifying who controlled the other intelligent networks.

Aivah's advantage could be that she wasn't seen as important enough for the Inquisition to plant an agent in her places of business.

Oh, please remember that Clyntahn was apparently a part owner of one of her businesses. The lower members of the Inquisition wouldn't spy on one of their boss's business. They may not have even checked to see if he actually was a part owner.

Of course, there may be another possible advantage for Aivah.

While we're talking about her network, it might not be a single network.

She may have had several smaller networks that never connected with each other.

They all reported to her but that was the only connection and even there each network reported to a different persona of Aivah.

If somebody managed to follow one of her networks up to one of her personas, he may have a hard time linking that persona to her other personas.

When Merlin met one of her other personas, he amazed at how little she seemed like the persona he first met.

As for her assassins, you may have a point.

Still, Zion seems to be the sort of place where successful assassins would always find purchasers of their services.

With Aivah's connections, she may have located one of them, especially a retired one, and paid him to train her assassination teams.

As always, Your Mileage May Vary.

alj_sf wrote:I will snip heavily to keep things shorts

DrakBibliophile wrote:IMO this snippet shows that Charis was not involved in the War of the Archangels so nobody in Charis would have had first hand knowledge of the actions of the Seijins.

So St Zherneau would only have rumors and the official records of what happened.

But she imply that history was rewritten and Kody removed from the official accounts at a later date (the "now" bit), and that would have been evident to St Zherneau.

It is the same way as officials could disappear in Russia pictures for Russians but the West noticed each time it happened, because they had access to each version unlike Russians.

If Kody was known enough to have a lot of tales written about him, he was part of the news feed, remember Safehold has both an active press and efficient communications via the semaphore network.

As for the plausibility of Aivah's assassins being "unknown" to the Inquisition, IMO it's not as implausible as you may think.
...
Aivah's intelligence gathering organization would use methods that have worked for centuries and would be just one of many such organizations.

If the Inquisition got hints of her operations, there could be nothing to tell it that this organization is anyway different than the other intelligence gathering operations on Safehold.

The first rule of intelligence ops is to know the other players.

Sooner or Later, some operatives are identified (the trick is to keep that number low and not too damaging, it cannot be null if you are active). Then the very high priority is to identify who they belong to and it happens that inquisition has a very major advantage as they have the inside track of everyone. A small passive cell gathering only open documents could be completly concealed. A major organisation dealing with closed sources, rather unlikely, even if brothels are a good place to operate.

As for her assassins, her assassination operations appear to be very recent perhaps only starting after Clyntahn's purge of the Circle.

Her assassins likely aren't part of her intelligence gathering organizations although obviously they make use of information from her spies.

The problem is that they show very good institutional wisdom, that you cannot get from books but only experience. They are consumate professionals leaving absolutely no clue. Where did they learn ?

If you ever read about resistance movements in WWII, outside the maquis, about 2/3 of the losses were in the first 18 months because they needed to get the experience, despite a much lower operational tempo.

One might propose that Aivah is preparing to learn more by exerting her feminine wiles on the seijin. there were certainly enough clues supporting this.

Readers should consider the possibility that the author wills tart posting one word at a time. Actually one letter at a time, the letter being chosen at random from the word. The three letter word TTT reflects interesting luck with the dice.

Really? He can borrow mine... I have a couple.

Family's favorite gift for me to remind the classic procrastinator to stop procrastinating.

DrakBibliophile wrote:David Weber will post snippets when he gets "a round tuit".

bitslizer wrote:Do we have an official snippet schedule? MWF? once a week? random junkie feeding?

Thanks

Her comments about "Ahbraim" here does make it appear that she found him very attractive.

Of course, her first meeting with Merlin (main persona) had her asking about Ahbraim in a way that made me think then that she attracted to Ahbraim.

Mind you, I'm pleased at one thing.

I had suspected that David Weber would have started HFQ with Aivah leaving Merlin's room in the *morning* with Merlin thinking "that was an interesting night in more than one way". IE they did more than talking.

phillies wrote:One might propose that Aivah is preparing to learn more by exerting her feminine wiles on the seijin. there were certainly enough clues supporting this.

Readers should consider the possibility that the author wills tart posting one word at a time. Actually one letter at a time, the letter being chosen at random from the word. The three letter word TTT reflects interesting luck with the dice.