Wencit Spoiler Guess

So I've been thinking for a long time how Wencit knows everything that he does before it happens. I used to think he was a hidden champion of the War God...he has the sword skills for it and maybe the War God tells him more then what he says to the big B.

But I have a different idea now. Wencit somehow had his magical device in the perfect place in a previous book to beat another wizard and he had put the device there hundreds of years ago. In Sword of the South he made a hidden path hundreds of years before he needed to use it to get to his enemies castle. Now unless Wencit is being told by a god or is a dragon in human form he should not know what he knows to prepare for fights hundreds of years in the futures.

To me that leaves only one possibility...Wencit is a time traveller. Wencit has said that Wizards can travel to the past. My bet is he knows how to beat his opponents because when he first came to his wild magic he travelled 1300 years into the past. He knows what sorrows and pain everyone will face because it is all history to him and even with the personal cost to him...he knows he must make all the sacrifices that he makes to make sure that the light wins.

Personally, I think Wencit was the first mage.

Wencit speaking in Chapter 14 of War God's Own, "As for halflings, they are obviously a true fifth race, but I have to admit that I'm not entirely certain what constitutes their 'cleft point.' I'm inclined to think it was simply the amount of raw wizardry their ancestors were exposed to. People too close to unshielded workings of the art xanbe... changed, and the Carnadosian often ignored their responsibility to shield others from the emanations of their spells. My best guess is that halflings are descended from the servants and slaves of dark wizards who were sloppy about shielding... and I'd guess that's where the magi come from as well."

The strafing was the greatest single act of wizardry since the days of Ottovar, possibly the greatest in the history of Norfressa and Wencit was the focus of all that power. It seems possible this had an effect even on a wild wizard.

This supposition was triggered by the discussions between Mage Masters Trayn and Lentos in Chapter 10 and 11 of Sword of the South. Discussions about what Wencit did to save Gwynna during her mage crisis, how that conflicted with what Wencit had allowed the mage academies to believe about combining mage powers and wizardry, and about the differences between Prophecy and Pre-cognition.

It looks like I was mistaken.

About 60% of the way through Chapter 11 of SotS, and immediately after the 2nd conversation between the mages that I referenced in my previous post, Gwynna is pondering her situation.

"...The one thing she did know was that Wencit hadn’t shown her how to do it. He was no mage, and he hadn’t taught her to be one, either."

I don't know what the answer is. He definitely has some source of knowledge about the future that is much more precise than the usual prophecy, and much less ambiguous than a dragon's ability to see all possible futures. It has some similarities to the pre-cognition ability some mages have, but he is not a mage. He could still be a champion of one of the Gods of Light (my bet would be on Semkirk) but even that doesn't seem like the whole explanation.

I seriously doubt Wencit is a time traveler. His knowledge of key events is too precise and too many of the events he has anticipated would have been altered by his previous actions for that to explain it. And while his discussions of the dangers of time travel haven't included any statement that definitively rule out him having done so, he has been emphatic enough about those dangers that the only way I could see him risking it would be if the universe had irrevocably fallen to The Dark and he was somehow still alive. Finally, Wencit was the leader of the Council of Ottovar for hundreds of years; there is no way he could have worked so closely with a group like that and kept such a secret.

The discussion on wizards and time travel between Wencit and Kenhodan is certainly intriguing. It's either a trailer for something very important or it's one of you know who's nasty red-herrings. All of Wecit's 'I know but it would be far too dangerous to tell you' kind of statements, together with exceptionally precise plans laid hundreds of years before certainly fit a time-traveller scenario, as does Wecit's "If I had to make all those decisions again, I would" anguish. Wencit in some kind of subjective time replay would certainly fit. But RFC is very bright and devious and so I doubt it will be as simple as that!

To my mind, there are only a couple possible options:

1. Wencit has the mage precognition talent, suggesting that he does - in fact - combine the powers of a wild wizard with those of a mage. Granted my memory isn't what it used to be, but I believe that in the textev he's always been rather evasive on this topic, and when others discuss it, they just assume that it can't be done and he never corrects them.

2. Wencit can, in fact, time travel. Given some of the "difficulties" he talks about, I'm convinced that he's well aware of the potential dangers. But if memory serves and if I remember the textev right, the only things he has done from an "I know what might happen in the future so I should do something about it now" perspective are to put inanimate things in place so they would be available if he needed them in a future timeline. For example, in War Maid's Choice (chapter 42) where he battles Varnaythus, he activates the kairsalhain that he emplaced 700 years previously. The kairsalhain was there, but inert and not impacting anything whatsoever, for 700 years and (IMHO) would have continued to lay there dormant if the actual events of the time flow did not demand that Wencit use it. Because there's no impact on past events to emplace something that will simply be dormant there's no danger of affecting future ones (if that makes sense!).

3. Wencit has some other means of learning future events. IMHO there are several possibilities here. Tomanak alluded to parallel universes that were the same, but time shifted. If this is true, and if Wencit can travel between them, he could see for himself what's going on in the future in one of the parallel universes and could then plan for events in the original universe that has an earlier timeline. My brain locks up when I think of this! Alternatively, Wencit could be a true "parallel universe traveler" who is influencing events in multiple universes. I first started thinking about this notion when reading Sword Brother and Wencit was summoning people and equipment from a different universe...

Of the three ideas, I personally think #2 is most plausible. But only RFC knows for sure I guess. I hope he eventually shares the "right answer" with us, because I'm DYING to know!

WeberFan wrote:To my mind, there are only a couple possible options:

2. Wencit can, in fact, time travel. Given some of the "difficulties" he talks about, I'm convinced that he's well aware of the potential dangers. But if memory serves and if I remember the textev right, the only things he has done from an "I know what might happen in the future so I should do something about it now" perspective are to put inanimate things in place so they would be available if he needed them in a future timeline. For example, in War Maid's Choice (chapter 42) where he battles Varnaythus, he activates the kairsalhain that he emplaced 700 years previously. The kairsalhain was there, but inert and not impacting anything whatsoever, for 700 years and (IMHO) would have continued to lay there dormant if the actual events of the time flow did not demand that Wencit use it. Because there's no impact on past events to emplace something that will simply be dormant there's no danger of affecting future ones (if that makes

How hard is it to make a kairsalhain? If I recall correctly, in sword brother, Wencit somehow knew exactly how to smother the lighting in an underground evil temple, and the enemy sorceress was astonished because the only way he could do that was to know their precise locations ahead of time. She was convinced that he hadn't penetrated her shields, but a karsalhein's point is that they do get around shields.

So... What's to stop Wencit from having every square meter of Norfressa seeded with a karsalhein? Even if it took awhile, he's had centuries to do it...

Here is an idea, maybe Wencit's secret is that he makes arrangements, not plans, because he had access to both dragons and prophetcy, when he made the dragon ward. He does not know what exactly is going to happen, but he knows, in some detail what the important points are, since that time he has become very good at finding minutia regarding the cusp points. A fork happened when the Solothii decide to attack the proto Horse Stealers, resulting in Wencit figuring where Varnathus might build his lab.
Consider the possible forks with regards to the sword of the south.
1 the council of carnadosa never finds it: Wencit can retrieve it whenever he like, alternative, Wencit must ensure they don't realize he put it there, while insuring that he can retieve it, by being able to reach it faster than they realize, from an unexpected direction. Hello Son of Fire and secret highway, and back door into a deep part of the maze away from the sword and the known enterence.
2 Wizard living on top of it. I suspect that Wencit was manipulating bloodlines. That or the wards were timed to degrade at the right moment.
3 Wulfra, chooses the Dark, well we have seen the results. If she had chosen to follow the strictures, either Wencit helps her, or the carnadosans kill her. She goes gray, Wencit offers her a chance, or the carnadosans kill her.

For one, Wencit wasn't leader of the white council for hundreds of years, because cletus only appointed him to that position 5 years before the rebellion started. For two, I'm taking Gwynna's word for it that he's not a mage, because she had access to his innermost plans, and if she knows he's not a mage, that seems pretty reliable. Personally, I like the time traveler theory, both because of what WeberFan said about only placing inert objects that wouldn't affect anything until he needed them, and because of what Wencit said about making the same choices if he did it again. Also, Wencit says many millenia's worth of plans rest on kenhodan, and its only been 1200 years since the Fall. It sort of seems to me that Wencit knew that Kontovar would fall, but he had to let it happen in order for the light to triumph in the long run. By let it fall, I mean not preparing 800 years earlier for the Fall so that the carnadosans get crushed the moment that they try anything.

quark wrote:For one, Wencit wasn't leader of the white council for hundreds of years, because cletus only appointed him to that position 5 years before the rebellion started. For two, I'm taking Gwynna's word for it that he's not a mage, because she had access to his innermost plans, and if she knows he's not a mage, that seems pretty reliable. Personally, I like the time traveler theory, both because of what WeberFan said about only placing inert objects that wouldn't affect anything until he needed them, and because of what Wencit said about making the same choices if he did it again. Also, Wencit says many millenia's worth of plans rest on kenhodan, and its only been 1200 years since the Fall. It sort of seems to me that Wencit knew that Kontovar would fall, but he had to let it happen in order for the light to triumph in the long run. By let it fall, I mean not preparing 800 years earlier for the Fall so that the carnadosans get crushed the moment that they try anything.

What Wencit tells a Kenhodan is "“You’re a key I’ve waited fourteen hundred years to turn.” His voice was deadly flat. “You’re the one man who can touch that sword with a chance of living, and too much is at stake for you to refuse. Of course it may kill you! But that’s a risk I—we—have to take!”"

A few minutes later, the narrator (not Wencit) reports, "No one could have guessed from the ancient wizard’s expression how many thousands of years depended upon that hand’s movement, or that he’d deliberately goaded Kenhodan into fury."

While that second excerpt could be referring to plans made thousands of years ago, it could also refer to thousands of years of the future being at stake, or to this being a/the critical moment in a struggle going back to Ottovar's time (or earlier).

On the other hand, even the first excerpt would seem to indicate plans made before the fall, when Wencit was 100 years old, more or less.

Edit: or maybe not, once the sword is restored, Kenhodan awakens with Toren's memories and asks "how long?" to which Wencit replies 1,400 years. Either this is an error by mww, or previous reports of the fall being over 1,200 years ago actually meant almost 1,300. Add in almost 80 more years since Oath of Swords and you could be close to 1,400 years.

Either way it appears Wencit's specific plan to restore the Sword of the South was made at the same time as or shortly after the time when Toren broke it.

Either way it appears Wencit's specific plan to restore the Sword of the South was made at the same time as or shortly after the time when Toren broke it.

It seems like Wencit had foreknowledge of all 1400 years. When he first talks to Kenhodan and they are going back and forth Wencit says,

"No one wishes to know all[i] the truth." The wizards voice went grey and old. "Believe that, young sir."

I really believe Wencit as a very young wild wizard was from a future where either 1. the fight was loss and a dragon or the War God told him he would have to go to the past and make sure critical things happened to change the outcome or 2. he was from a future where the fight was won only because he was told by his older self the sacrifices he would have to make sure for the outcome to come true before he went to the bast...ie a timeloop

The biggest problem I have is I would think it would be impossible to resist trying to change what happened and make it better. To sit and watch friends die and not do anything different would be nearly impossible. For instance if he was from the Future why not kill Toren's brother before he becomes a traitor? Unless he was specifically told that would also lead to a dark victory.[/i]