HFQ Official Snippet #3 (sort of)

runsforcelery wrote:In honor of joat's emoticon, we have a small snippet for the day.

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“. . . so while I was at the convent, Sister Klairah recruited me,” Aivah said quietly, gazing down into Merlin’s fire while the wind roared and buffeted about the embassy. “I don’t know how much you know about the Convent of Saint Ahnzhelyk, but it’s the sort of place parents and families send young ladies with rebellious streaks. It has a reputation for turning them around, and a remarkable number of them end up as sisters of Saint Ahnzhelyk’s order. Of course, in my case there were several reasons for stashing me there, but I really didn’t object to the order’s austerity. I suppose I was young and impressionable — I’d just turned fifteen, for goodness’ sake! — but I believed I had a true vocation, and so did Sister Klairah.

“She was careful about sounding me out, especially given who my father was and who’d raised me, but that very rebelliousness in the girls entrusted to Saint Anzhelyk’s care had made the convent a good hunting ground for the Sisters of Saint Kohdy for many years. Not that most of Saint Anzhelyk’s sisters knew anything about their activities . . . or that they could afford to run any risks that might expose them or tell the Inquisition they existed. The Sisters of Saint Khody were never actually proscribed, but they certainly should have been when Saint Kohdy was purged from The Testimonies. In fact, if I had to guess, the only reason they weren’t proscribed long before that was that the surviving Angels were waiting for the last of the Adams and Eves to die before they acted. It wasn’t that difficult for them to edit The Testimonies, since all the originals were in the Temple’s Grand Library, but according to the Sisterhood’s journals, they’d waited to move against Saint Kohdy’s official memory until none of the people with actual memories of his life were around to question the approved version.”


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PeterZ wrote: Heck, I would buy a hard copy of the manuscript. Aaaaarrrrgghh!

PeterZ wrote:I was right about the convent too!?! If this convent was located in North-West Harchong, I would be almost totally right in my Nynian speculation.

runsforcelery wrote:In honor of joat's emoticon, we have a small snippet for the day.

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“. . . so while I was at the convent, Sister Klairah recruited me,” Aivah said quietly, gazing down into Merlin’s fire while the wind roared and buffeted about the embassy. “I don’t know how much you know about the Convent of Saint Ahnzhelyk, but it’s the sort of place parents and families send young ladies with rebellious streaks. It has a reputation for turning them around, and a remarkable number of them end up as sisters of Saint Ahnzhelyk’s order. Of course, in my case there were several reasons for stashing me there, but I really didn’t object to the order’s austerity. I suppose I was young and impressionable — I’d just turned fifteen, for goodness’ sake! — but I believed I had a true vocation, and so did Sister Klairah.

“She was careful about sounding me out, especially given who my father was and who’d raised me, but that very rebelliousness in the girls entrusted to Saint Anzhelyk’s care had made the convent a good hunting ground for the Sisters of Saint Kohdy for many years. Not that most of Saint Anzhelyk’s sisters knew anything about their activities . . . or that they could afford to run any risks that might expose them or tell the Inquisition they existed. The Sisters of Saint Khody were never actually proscribed, but they certainly should have been when Saint Kohdy was purged from The Testimonies. In fact, if I had to guess, the only reason they weren’t proscribed long before that was that the surviving Angels were waiting for the last of the Adams and Eves to die before they acted. It wasn’t that difficult for them to edit The Testimonies, since all the originals were in the Temple’s Grand Library, but according to the Sisterhood’s journals, they’d waited to move against Saint Kohdy’s official memory until none of the people with actual memories of his life were around to question the approved version.”


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cralkhi wrote:

PeterZ wrote:I was right about the convent too!?! If this convent was located in North-West Harchong, I would be almost totally right in my Nynian speculation.

A secret brotherhood (EDIT: or sisterhood) in Harchong - or anywhere near there - would be some support for my idea that gunpowder is not a natural Safeholdian development.

In our world, it was developed by Chinese alchemists -- they were trying for medicines, not explosives. But there isn't that kind of tradition with people trying all sorts of different things on Safehold, since all the good medicines and fertilizers etc. are right there for you in the Writ.

Also, as primitive as the guns are in OAR, they're actually better - I think - than what we had a comparable time after gunpowder was invented.

It just doesn't fit without some kind of outside intervention, IMO.

pokermind wrote:We can speculate that the Sisters of Saint Kohdy is either within the recruiting Convent of Saint Ahnzhelyk probably the librarians, or in another Convent of Saint Ahnzhelyk to hide in plain sight as members of that order, but a Sisters of Saint Kohdy. In either place are kept the papers of Saint Kohdy. We can speculate further that Saint Kohdy was a disaffected member of the command crew who knew the truth and passed on some of it in his writings. Cody ‘X’ was not Kau-Young’s spy among the command crew or Merlin would know of him, known not to be totally committed to Langhorne’s plan thus his purging after his death.
Poker