Official Safehold Speculation Thread

Just as a guess, I'm expecting that Thirsk's going to end up leading his Screw Galleys against the first of the King Haahrald Ironclads; it seems like both a sensible way to handle the Dohlarian Navy and a suitably dramatic intro for the Haahralds.

Hooked wrote:How long do seijin live? Merlin has been with Caleb for several years. Seijin are supposed to have special abilities but they are human, so there must be some limit to their lifespan, even if it is several hundred years like the original Adams. How long can Merlin guard Caleb before he has to go away and be replaced by another, presumably Merlin in another form.

This is going to be an issue before long. By the time the Archangels return, Merlin will be attracting comment if he doesn't age, and if he does people will question his ability to be a bodyguard. If he sticks around then his relative immortality is going to provoke superstition.

I like your idea that Merlin goes back to the Mountains of Light and a younger I-never-said-I-was-a-seijin arrives, one remarkably well briefed about Merlin's friends and activities.

There is probably a certain amount Merlin can get away with because he's a seijin. It can be pointed out that they had legendary life spans. He can control his own appearance so that he ages gradually. Or he can use his ability to change his appearance to reappear as his own son. Poor fellow...he's probably been widowed...

So, as you can see, lots of ways for Merlin to cope with the issue.

Don

n7axw wrote:There is probably a certain amount Merlin can get away with because he's a seijin. It can be pointed out that they had legendary life spans. He can control his own appearance so that he ages gradually. Or he can use his ability to change his appearance to reappear as his own son. Poor fellow...he's probably been widowed...

So, as you can see, lots of ways for Merlin to cope with the issue.

Don

Snippet spoiler warning -







If seijins in the War Against the Fallen were re-educated Adams (dunno if any were Eves, at least on record), then they had lifespans of about 200 years. On that scale, visible aging in 25 years would be almost something to avoid to maintain the seijin reputation. At any rate, there shouldn't be much and it shouldn't leave anyone thinking he's getting too old for bodyguarding - or naked water polo - or extreme sports - or, really, whatever the heck seijins do.

n7axw wrote:

SWM wrote:
Because the book of St. Zhernau indicates that a lot more of the re-educated were supposed to join him in Charis, but they never made it. Their cover stories were set up for Charis. It is likely that they did not get out of Alexandria before the Rakurai struck.

Just for the heck of it, I went back into BSRA to that section where Merlin is introduced to the brethren and is shown the journal. This happens right after that scene as Merlin is examining the journal and confering with Owl,

"All of the anonalies fall into the same category as already known, Lieutenant Commander. They consist of colonists who appear to have been assigned to muliple enclaves. In all cases, the enclave listed in Dr. Pei's roster is Alexandria. In Administrator Lanhorne's roster, they are assigned to several different enclaves.. I have detected a total of two hundred and twelve such anomalies"

So we know that the re-educated Adams and Eves were placed in multiple enclaves.

There is another piece of textev on this inserted into Merlin's conversation with Archbishop Maikel a few pages later. It reads as follows,

"But we do not know where Dr. Pei may have placed others like us. We were never told for obvious reasons. We do know she intended others here with us in Tellesberg, but there was never time, and now she never will."

I would conclude from this that the 212 mentioned by Owl were indeed spread around to several enclaves. It really wouldn't have made any sense for Dr Pei to concentrate all of her eggs in the Tellesberg basket.

My second conclusion made on the basis of the second quote is that Dr. Pei had an ongoing program of re-education that did get caught in the OBS strike when Dr. Pei ran out time; those others she had planned to send to Tellesberg--and possibly other places--, and now she never will...

Finally, I would suggest that it wouldn't be unreasonable to speculate that there could be other journals surrounded by inner circles protecting the ancient witness of other re-educated colonists who could pop out of the woodwork at some point in the story. I find myself hoping so so that those stories might be told.

Don

Okay, that is a plausible interpretation of the text. My interpretation is different.

They way I interpret it, Shan-Wei set up fake backgrounds for 212 of her re-educated Adams and Eves. I don't think Shan-Wei was engaged in an ongoing process of re-educating people. The text seems to indicate that the re-educated Adams and Eves lived in Alexandria for some time, working with Shan-Wei. It was only at the end, when tensions ratcheted up with Zion, that Shan-Wei started making arrangements to hide the re-educated.

They to be sent to "several" enclaves, which implies to me that it is a small number of enclaves. Each of those enclaves--including Charis--was supposed to get multiple Adams and Eves. Some of them got out, like Zhernau and his wife. But most of the ones who were supposed to go to Charis never made it. "There was never time." The Rakurai struck first. If that is true in Charis, I assume it is also true for the other sites--most of the assigned people never made it.

So the difference in our opinions centers on the nature of the 212 anomalies. Is the list of anomalies only the people who made it out of Alexandria? Or is it a list of people who were supposed to get out of Alexandria, many of which never did? David has never given any other information about the 212 anomalies, so we can't tell.

One reason I believe it is the latter is because the anomalies are linked to only a small number of enclaves. Let us suppose that the anomalies are associated with 10 enclaves (a generous value for "several"). I find it hard to believe that there are only 2 anomalies in Charis, and 210 anomalies divided among 9 other enclaves. It is much more reasonable to assume that the anomalies are divided more evenly, with 21 anomalies in each of 10 enclaves, or something like that. That means that 19 of the people who should have gone to Charis never made it. And I doubt that Charis was unique among the hiding places of the re-educated. Which implies to me that most of the re-educated Adams and Eves never got out of Alexandria before time ran out.

So it all comes down to how you interpret the fact that 212 anomalies are divided among only a few enclaves, but only two re-educated people actually got to Charis. Do you believe that those were the only two anomalies that OWL found in Charis, and the other 210 anomalies are all in a few other enclaves? That seems like an odd distribution to me. We won't know until the text answers one question: does the list of 212 anomalies include people who did not actually make it out of Alexandria?

Ok. I think there were four anomalies, Knowles, his wife Evalyn and one other couple, relatives, IIRC... Thanks for the food for thought. As you say,, different but plausible.

Don

There is only 21, give or take a few years, from May 895, How Firm, to the 1000 year re-visit. Surely a PICA can grow a few gray hairs in that time frame.

But I don't see the series taking 21 subjective years to go. Something is going to happen to force everyone's hand.

Do you think the angelic return will be pre-empted by events?
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If the Langhorneites had not been such egoists, if they only wanted to reinforce orthodoxy, there would be an easy way to implement the return. Take some obedient priests with a record of not showing initiative, tell them they've been miraculously chosen to be the Archangels's mortal vessels to remind a wandering humanity, then give them a script to follow and an illuminated skimmer. "If you speak the truth of the Archangels word for word with a completely sincere heart, the spirit of the Archangels will fill you, and all near you will see Their radiance in you".

After their Grand Tour of the Faithful, those priests would become a liability. Well, who ever said that a mortal frame could long survive the intensity of an Archangel's spirit? They could all die shortly after.

Come to think of it, what happened to all the magical angelic chariots after the War Against the Fallen? It would have been tidy to destroy them, but someone must have had the thought "Never throw anything away that you might need later".

Expert snuggler wrote:Come to think of it, what happened to all the magical angelic chariots after the War Against the Fallen? It would have been tidy to destroy them, but someone must have had the thought "Never throw anything away that you might need later".

I don't have any particularly brilliant thought about the earlier stuff in the post. But for this last bit, my thought is, "if the Langhornites ever had that thought, they would never have destroyed the colony ships or the data archive at Alexandria."

That was exactly the point of Shan-Wei's resistance to Langhorne.

Didn't they scrap the colony ships for fear they could be detected by Gbaba scouts?