HFQ Official Snippet #1

PeterZ wrote: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 is sort of one of those things that could be argued either way, isn't it? In fact. Could Seijin Khody have been one of the seedlings, someone with access to TF tech? Hard to say and as speculation, this one sort of wanders off into never-never land. Could have been but with no real anchor in what we already know.

Don

Given that Kohdy seems to have been mentioned at least once a book, I'm going to take a wild guess that he was a real person.

And given how much infodumping we're getting on him now, I'm going to guess he was the founder (or at least important figure) of whatever group Aivah belongs to.

You know, stating the obvious.

I agree of course. I would add that often RFC actually uses Chekhov's Gun after his characters talk it up. He also leaves it on the wall upon occasion just to keep us honest.

evilauthor wrote:Given that Kohdy seems to have been mentioned at least once a book, I'm going to take a wild guess that he was a real person.

And given how much infodumping we're getting on him now, I'm going to guess he was the founder (or at least important figure) of whatever group Aivah belongs to.

You know, stating the obvious.

No, we already know that a bunch of people have clear memories proving Aivah is the daughter, and Langhorne and crew had memory adjustment technology of remarkable power, and a speed which is never actually specified.

Of course, that would require the author to be other than limpidly transparent, wouldn't it? Would he ever do that?

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

And she has been studying seijins for many years...a peculiar hobby.

phillies wrote:No, we already know that a bunch of people have clear memories proving Aivah is the daughter, and Langhorne and crew had memory adjustment technology of remarkable power, and a speed which is never actually specified.

Of course, that would require the author to be other than limpidly transparent, wouldn't it? Would he ever do that?

Doesn't that memory altering technology require a neural implant to give access to the brain? Implants that NO ONE other than the first gen Adams and Eves and the "Archangels" have? You know, kinda like the NEATs?

Even the Charis Inner Circle doesn't have these implants despite Merlin having every reason to give it to them if he could. I doubt whatever secret group that Aivah belongs to has some quick and easy way to give people implants... and then give them to the dozens of non-members of their group that need to have their memories modified in order to give Aivah a verifiable background, a background that Aivah had gone to extreme lengths to bury.

Not to mention I believe MWW said that the implants needed for NEATs and stuff need to be implanted when the child is very young.

It's just not possible. Aivah is not an immortal manipulator or whatever other crazy theory people have. There's way too much evidence that she is just who she says she is, a woman who was born of an affair by a churchman.

PeterZ wrote:I agree of course. I would add that often RFC actually uses Chekhov's Gun after his characters talk it up. He also leaves it on the wall upon occasion just to keep us honest.

evilauthor wrote:Given that Kohdy seems to have been mentioned at least once a book, I'm going to take a wild guess that he was a real person.

And given how much infodumping we're getting on him now, I'm going to guess he was the founder (or at least important figure) of whatever group Aivah belongs to.

You know, stating the obvious.

Sure, but in this case he's giving us the history and caliber of the gun. I don't think this one's going back on the wall.

And as others have pointed out, Aivah seems to know for a complete certainty that Kohdy *used* to be an official, church-sanctioned Seijin / saint, but that he isn't any more, indicating a deliberate campaign to erase him from all official testimony and leaving him purely in the realm of folklore. Why? And who did it? The church trying to erase an embarrassment, or Kohdy and his followers trying to keep a much lower profile? Or something different? I don't see any reason yet why the church would do such a thing, given that none of the folklore surrounding Kohdy that we know of has any heretical slant to it.

Deeper and deeper... based on this single snippet, I still don't see any evidence Aivah is anything other than a normal (though supremely capable) person with some inside knowledge about post WotF events. We'll see if that holds up.

May have to troll ebay harder this time for ARCs come the new year. That's sad... I wish Tor would come to their senses on this.

Don,

If one takes RFC's recent posts and read them as gentle hints of where the general direction of the story is headed, one might draw some conclusions. The original plan called for a few small, secluded high tech outposts to bootstrap the colony after low tech safety period expired. Langhorne altered those plans. Langhorne's original plan was changed as well as the Writ itself well after Creation. A nasty secession war was fought by people traumatized by the Gbaba war using low tech brainwashed proxies with the survival of the human race at stake.

From that rat's nest of high stakes conflict, I would be shocked if more than a few passionate factions didn't form with their own differing views of where Safehold's future lies. Those factions' leaders were chosen from the brightest of humanity to form the original command crew of Project Ark. That one of these passionate groups survived just as St. Zherneau did would not surprise me a bit. Furthermore, I find that a group begun by someone other than Shan-wei will have a better chance of surviving with their high tech toys, if any survived the wars.

runsforcelery wrote: “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.”

To me it's this last paragraph that's key. (Quite what's it's key too, I'm less sure about!) The rest of this revelation can be explained by Aivah being very observant, having a slightly strange hobby (seijin lore?), and a rather impressive covert organisation to connect everything together. All very impressive, but nothing more than could be explained by the actions of a lucky, intelligent and resourceful individual (particularly if they had help getting started).

But "where all of the Adams and Eves who awoke here ... truly came from"??? The Writ already tells us where they came from surely? By the will of God and the grace of the Holy Langhorne they where magically created at the very instance of creation! (Or words to that effect.) Given the Safehold-centered nature of the universe, there is and more importantly was nowhere else for them to have come from!

Of course us readers (and the inner circle) know that the Writ is in fact a complete lie on this point, amongst others. It would seem that Aivah knows this too, which inevitably leads me to wondering how? Hopefully Snippet #2 will reveal more, though equally probably it'll switch to some other characters in some other place ...