HFQ Official Snippet #6 (oopsie!)

AClone wrote:It may have been addressed already, but what is the difference between an Abbess and a Mother Superior? Simply that one doesn't have an Abbey to oversee, or is there something more?

Why yes, I am Protestant, why do you ask?

An abbess is in charge of a facility, such as a Convent, a Mother Superior is charge of an order of Nuns, which would include all facilties supporting that order. A Mother Superior may also be an abbess.

I am also not a Catholic.

"You're probably right, Your Eminence, but I intend to do a great deal more to those bastards before I'm done." She turned back from the window, and the steel behind her eyes was plain to see. "Not immediately, because it's going to take time to put the pieces in place. But once they are, Zhaspahr Clyntahn may find wearing the Grand Inquisitor's cap a lot less comfortable than he does today."

How Firm a Foundation p. 107.

I'm now speculating that Aivah's need for a quick trip into and out of Zion deals with a massive attack on Clyntahn or his power.

~Tonto

Clearly I've been away too long - on the other hand, I had two chapters and a snippet to read, so that was a major plus.

I'm due a victory dance for actually predicting some aspects of RFC's sneakiness, although the fact that Nynian was sent to a CONVENT and then embarked on her career as a courtesan while building a business empire that required funding beyond her ability to earn SHOULD have tipped us off there was ANOTHER St. Zherneau’s. We've discussed it, but I don't know if we ever decided for sure (or if anyone did) that Nynian must have access to something similar. Clearly she doesn't know nearly as much as the inner circle, since her entire organization is based on the journal and sword of a "seijin" who was most likely an Adam, who died centuries before after switching sides in the War against the Fallen, and wrote the most crucial parts of his journal in Spanish.

I absolutely NAILED how Nynian figured out that Merlin and Ahbraim are two aspects of the same person, and probably how she managed to get into his room, although we aren't told.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5216&p=129977&hilit=+Nynian#p129968

As for how she sends messages to her organization, RFC already told us that, and for brevity's sake I'll just refer to my previous explanation.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5216&p=129977&hilit=+Nynian#p129977

While I'm continuing my victory dance, I just noticed that I predicted that Merlin would swipe Benjamin Franklin's quote "If we do not hang together, we will all surely hang separately" which happened in MTaT.

Note that Nynian is bluffing when she assumes Merlin can get her to Zion in a single day. She's basing it on how far away Ahbraim was from Siddar City when he contacted DE, for example. Doing the math and realizing there are only so many seijins out there, and that the ones she's met are both 6'2" with similar builds and personality traits made connecting the dots fairly easy once she started getting all the data as Siddarmark's spymaster. She has NO idea whether he can take a passenger along of course. And why does she need to get to Zion in one day at an unspecified date in the future? I'd LOVE to know the answer to THAT question!

Merlin gave away a LOT when he said he could probably help her with the parts of the journal written in Spanish. That basically told her that he has knowledge available only to the Archangels and Adam and Eves, which makes her guess that he came from wherever the Adam and Eves came from unfortunately accurate. Since seijins are often regarded as teachers, however, she may not realize just how much he revealed with that single statement - but this IS Nynian we're talking about and she's no idiot! I'm DYING to know what Kohdy had to say!

I expected Nynian to be the boss of whatever organization she's running, so the fact that she's the Mother Superior was no surprise. I merely wondered what her title would be. I just re-read the entire series, so it's all fresh in my mind, but doing so made it glaringly obvious that the organization (and especially the FUNDING) she needed to own so many businesses in Zion came from an outside source. Young "courtesans" don't make the sort of money she needed to establish her business empire. Even running Zion's most exclusive (and expensive) brothel wouldn't have funded the purchase or creation of her other businesses, so I've been waiting to find out where her funding came from, and I fully expected that her organization was in place long before she was born.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2847&p=71307&hilit=+Nynian#p71307

At first I wondered why she went to Siddarmark instead of Charis, but she already had extensive holdings there, which she expanded greatly once she'd divested herself of many of the holdings in Zion, so it was probably her escape destination of choice all along. Her organization seems to be centered in ZION however, and I'm willing to bet that Seijin Kohdy's body, sword, and tomb are very near to Zion, simply to eliminate the possibility of another Rakurai attack. Since the CoGA clearly does NOT have control of the Rakurai, and Nynian knows nothing (that we know of so far) about the Archangels returning within a couple of decades, relocating the Shrine of Seijin Kohdy to Zion isn't as necessary as it once was.

Having the CONVENT located near Zion to give them a steady supply of rebellious girls to recruit was an extremely good idea however. Since the Inquisition can find them wherever they're keeping seijin Kohdy's body and sword, using the "purloined letter" strategy of hiding it in plain sight in a convent near Zion is as good as any other. (And a LOT safer should whatever is under the temple wake up and decide to use the Rakurai again!)

Given the number of families she managed to extract from Zion, and the assassinations required to make that possible, especially in rescuing the Wylsynn's, it's clear that her organization has a number of men in it to do the wet work. That was proven in the recent failed assassination attempt of a vicar in Zion, where the assassins the Inquisition managed to corner committed suicide. I'm curious how her organization goes about recruiting and vetting those men.

In addition, since she's had a dozen would-be assassins quietly killed and dumped in Bedard Bay, she clearly has some very dedicated and skilled men to take care of the wet work in Siddar city. Which speaks volumes about how widespread her organization is - it was clearly in place in Siddarmark long before she relocated herself and the center of her operations there. The fact that she had the men to wield the rifles and the Charisians to train them so she could stop the attack on the Lord Protector during the Sword of Scheuler proves that.

So do they admit her to the inner circle? Not until they have a MUCH greater understanding of her intentions, her capabilities, and her mental flexibility. She HATES the Go4 and the corruption of the vicarage with a passion, but she's a believer - although she just admitted that she believes in the Church of Charis, not the CoGA.

She may need a personal chat with Staynair to gauge the flexibility of her beliefs, and to accept that there's nothing demonic about the technology for which Langhorne murdered Shan-wei, and for which the abbess of the Shrine of Kohdy was murdered in the last Rakurai attack as well. (Which I'd expect would mean Nynian wouldn't bat an eye at learning the truth!) Given that there's going to be a "Church of Siddarmark," I don't know how Staynair would rationalize a visit to Siddarmark, other than to rally the Reformists against the corrupt CoGA and the murderous Clyntahn. (Not that the Reformist movement in Siddarmark needs any encouragement in their fight to the death struggle with the armies and inquisitors of the CoGA.)

Maybe just telling her the truth and giving her the contact lenses and earpiece, then letting her talk with Staynair and everyone else would settle her mind. She'd be SO much more effective working with Nahrmahn and having direct access to the SNARCs - and her input on who to watch in Zion would be invaluable. But she has an agenda all her own and is head of an organization that goes back centuries and has its own desire for payback. That's the SCARY aspect of admitting her to the inner circle. Plus she too valuable to have an "accident."

Tough call, and they SERIOUSLY need to vet her more than anyone who has ever been admitted to the inner circle. Merlin may be the only person she's willing to share information about her organization with, (although everyone in the inner circle knows every word she's said to him by now)

It all comes down to building trust.

evilauthor wrote:

SCC wrote:Not as useful as you'd think, they wouldn't be able to produce the hard-copies needed to share those books without printers and I don't think that would end well.

Also we KNOW that the Inquisition was left behind magic wands to open doors in The Temple

Sure, but that's to operate stuff INSIDE the Temple.

Think about how a code breaking computer would work. It's unlikely that Inquisitors are just typing in copies of a message or running things through a scanner. To maintain the "mystical" charade, a code breaking computer would likely be presented as some kind of Oracle to be petitioned to translate some code or other. Which suggests some kind of limited AI system at the very least (like pre-Awake OWL).

But then what happens if you present such an Oracle with a One Time Pad encoded message that it can't crack? What happens to that charade of infallibility then?

Of course, the whole problem can be avoided simply by the Archangels NOT providing a magic code cracking computer.

Actually I can see stuff like that being left behind. Leaving it behind requires teaching the basics of both code making and code breaking, and by teaching those it short circuits them needing to be developed

Hi McGuiness,

Congratulations on your expert analyses, care to share your secret?

I concur Merlin revealed quite a bit when he said he could probably help translating it, but OTOH, it also reinforces his value to her and the SSK; they desperately want to know what it says.

They both realise they will be far stronger and know far more if they share what they know, so I expect it eventually will turn out well.

While they are ignorant of her organization, she is quite ignorant of the inner circle's full capabilities, which could provide an interesting and humorous revelation or two.

Vetting her will probably involve a DNA sample, which might lead Nahrmahn to do a genetic sample and genealogy of the temple land 'knights' to check the veracity of their official ones, so how many more are like Nynian?

The next snippet may clear up more of these grey mists.

L

McGuiness wrote:Clearly I've been away too long - on the other hand, I had two chapters and a snippet to read, so that was a major plus.

I'm due a victory dance for actually predicting some aspects of RFC's sneakiness, although the fact that Nynian was sent to a CONVENT and then embarked on her career as a courtesan while building a business empire that required funding beyond her ability to earn SHOULD have tipped us off there was ANOTHER St. Zherneau’s. We've discussed it, but I don't know if we ever decided for sure (or if anyone did) that Nynian must have access to something similar. Clearly she doesn't know nearly as much as the inner circle, since her entire organization is based on the journal and sword of a "seijin" who was most likely an Adam, who died centuries before after switching sides in the War against the Fallen, and wrote the most crucial parts of his journal in Spanish.

I absolutely NAILED how Nynian figured out that Merlin and Ahbraim are two aspects of the same person, and probably how she managed to get into his room, although we aren't told.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5216&p=129977&hilit=+Nynian#p129968

As for how she sends messages to her organization, RFC already told us that, and for brevity's sake I'll just refer to my previous explanation.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5216&p=129977&hilit=+Nynian#p129977

While I'm continuing my victory dance, I just noticed that I predicted that Merlin would swipe Benjamin Franklin's quote "If we do not hang together, we will all surely hang separately" which happened in MTaT.

Note that Nynian is bluffing when she assumes Merlin can get her to Zion in a single day. She's basing it on how far away Ahbraim was from Siddar City when he contacted DE, for example. Doing the math and realizing there are only so many seijins out there, and that the ones she's met are both 6'2" with similar builds and personality traits made connecting the dots fairly easy once she started getting all the data as Siddarmark's spymaster. She has NO idea whether he can take a passenger along of course. And why does she need to get to Zion in one day at an unspecified date in the future? I'd LOVE to know the answer to THAT question!

Merlin gave away a LOT when he said he could probably help her with the parts of the journal written in Spanish. That basically told her that he has knowledge available only to the Archangels and Adam and Eves, which makes her guess that he came from wherever the Adam and Eves came from unfortunately accurate. Since seijins are often regarded as teachers, however, she may not realize just how much he revealed with that single statement - but this IS Nynian we're talking about and she's no idiot! I'm DYING to know what Kohdy had to say!

I expected Nynian to be the boss of whatever organization she's running, so the fact that she's the Mother Superior was no surprise. I merely wondered what her title would be. I just re-read the entire series, so it's all fresh in my mind, but doing so made it glaringly obvious that the organization (and especially the FUNDING) she needed to own so many businesses in Zion came from an outside source. Young "courtesans" don't make the sort of money she needed to establish her business empire. Even running Zion's most exclusive (and expensive) brothel wouldn't have funded the purchase or creation of her other businesses, so I've been waiting to find out where her funding came from, and I fully expected that her organization was in place long before she was born.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2847&p=71307&hilit=+Nynian#p71307

At first I wondered why she went to Siddarmark instead of Charis, but she already had extensive holdings there, which she expanded greatly once she'd divested herself of many of the holdings in Zion, so it was probably her escape destination of choice all along. Her organization seems to be centered in ZION however, and I'm willing to bet that Seijin Kohdy's body, sword, and tomb are very near to Zion, simply to eliminate the possibility of another Rakurai attack. Since the CoGA clearly does NOT have control of the Rakurai, and Nynian knows nothing (that we know of so far) about the Archangels returning within a couple of decades, relocating the Shrine of Seijin Kohdy to Zion isn't as necessary as it once was.

Having the CONVENT located near Zion to give them a steady supply of rebellious girls to recruit was an extremely good idea however. Since the Inquisition can find them wherever they're keeping seijin Kohdy's body and sword, using the "purloined letter" strategy of hiding it in plain sight in a convent near Zion is as good as any other. (And a LOT safer should whatever is under the temple wake up and decide to use the Rakurai again!)

Given the number of families she managed to extract from Zion, and the assassinations required to make that possible, especially in rescuing the Wylsynn's, it's clear that her organization has a number of men in it to do the wet work. That was proven in the recent failed assassination attempt of a vicar in Zion, where the assassins the Inquisition managed to corner committed suicide. I'm curious how her organization goes about recruiting and vetting those men.

In addition, since she's had a dozen would-be assassins quietly killed and dumped in Bedard Bay, she clearly has some very dedicated and skilled men to take care of the wet work in Siddar city. Which speaks volumes about how widespread her organization is - it was clearly in place in Siddarmark long before she relocated herself and the center of her operations there. The fact that she had the men to wield the rifles and the Charisians to train them so she could stop the attack on the Lord Protector during the Sword of Scheuler proves that.

So do they admit her to the inner circle? Not until they have a MUCH greater understanding of her intentions, her capabilities, and her mental flexibility. She HATES the Go4 and the corruption of the vicarage with a passion, but she's a believer - although she just admitted that she believes in the Church of Charis, not the CoGA.

She may need a personal chat with Staynair to gauge the flexibility of her beliefs, and to accept that there's nothing demonic about the technology for which Langhorne murdered Shan-wei, and for which the abbess of the Shrine of Kohdy was murdered in the last Rakurai attack as well. (Which I'd expect would mean Nynian wouldn't bat an eye at learning the truth!) Given that there's going to be a "Church of Siddarmark," I don't know how Staynair would rationalize a visit to Siddarmark, other than to rally the Reformists against the corrupt CoGA and the murderous Clyntahn. (Not that the Reformist movement in Siddarmark needs any encouragement in their fight to the death struggle with the armies and inquisitors of the CoGA.)

Maybe just telling her the truth and giving her the contact lenses and earpiece, then letting her talk with Staynair and everyone else would settle her mind. She'd be SO much more effective working with Nahrmahn and having direct access to the SNARCs - and her input on who to watch in Zion would be invaluable. But she has an agenda all her own and is head of an organization that goes back centuries and has its own desire for payback. That's the SCARY aspect of admitting her to the inner circle. Plus she too valuable to have an "accident."

Tough call, and they SERIOUSLY need to vet her more than anyone who has ever been admitted to the inner circle. Merlin may be the only person she's willing to share information about her organization with, (although everyone in the inner circle knows every word she's said to him by now)

It all comes down to building trust.

Keith_w wrote:
An abbess is in charge of a facility, such as a Convent, a Mother Superior is charge of an order of Nuns, which would include all facilties supporting that order. A Mother Superior may also be an abbess.

I am also not a Catholic.

Thank you. I was wondering whether the "Mother Superior" role meant that her Order was larger or smaller than it had previously been. The answer, apparently, is, you can't tell--it may simply mean that the Order no longer has an Abbey.

AClone wrote:

Keith_w wrote:
An abbess is in charge of a facility, such as a Convent, a Mother Superior is charge of an order of Nuns, which would include all facilties supporting that order. A Mother Superior may also be an abbess.

I am also not a Catholic.

Thank you. I was wondering whether the "Mother Superior" role meant that her Order was larger or smaller than it had previously been. The answer, apparently, is, you can't tell--it may simply mean that the Order no longer has an Abbey.

Yeah, it would be difficult to be a secret order if the had an convent labeled "Order of St. Khody, please knock loudly"

The Sisters of Saint Khody would be much more effective with several hundred better weapons and better transport, such as the several hundred modern assault rifles and combat assault shuttle that just happen to have been left lying around from Book 1 in the Cave under the Mountains of Light.

What an interesting coincidence.

It can't possibly have anything to do with the plot.

phillies wrote:The Sisters of Saint Khody would be much more effective with several hundred better weapons and better transport, such as the several hundred modern assault rifles and combat assault shuttle that just happen to have been left lying around from Book 1 in the Cave under the Mountains of Light.

What an interesting coincidence.

It can't possibly have anything to do with the plot.

While I don't disagree with you at all that the assault shuttle will be used eventually, I'm afraid the Rakurai wouldn't classify it as "Archangel tech, ignore." Merlin will never even be tempted to use it until the Rakurai is shut down.

There really isn't a target of sufficiently high priority that would require the assault shuttle anyway. For example, the ICN could land troops and seize the temple using only its current technology. After all, pilgrims by the thousands visit the temple every day, and if a few hundred happen to be burly types with concealed ICA pistols, getting control of the interior of the temple is trivial. The difficult (and most important) part of such an operation would be gaining the ability to open and close the external doors. Once they can do that, they merely need to keep the external doors closed.

Then the fleet arrives, unloads its cargo of troops, and defeats the Temple guard forces attempting to rescue the temple, which is absolutely impossible while its battle
steel doors are closed.

An attack like this might wake up something underneath the temple, but that's a risk the inner circle is going to have to take eventually, and the temple is the only place on Safehold that the Rakurai will never fire upon.

Your suggestion that the SSK could use some modern weapons is a good one. Shipping them some sniper rifles could be quite useful, but Nynian has probably already done that... or soon will!

The days of torturing prisoners to death in the Plaza of Martyrs may be over! It will be quite entertaining to see the inquisitors mowed down by sniper fire as they go about their grisly, sadistic task.

Of course those wearing vivid orange "Shoot me!" outfits will be the first to die.

McGuiness wrote:The days of torturing prisoners to death in the Plaza of Martyrs may be over! It will be quite entertaining to see the inquisitors mowed down by sniper fire as they go about their grisly, sadistic task.

Of course those wearing vivid orange "Shoot me!" outfits will be the first to die.

Well, one would hope so. On the other hand, Merlin has already had at least one chance, probably more, to kill Clyntahn that way and declined to take it/them. (The executions of Gwyllym Mathyr etc, and of the Wylsynn Circle, which drew huge crowds and so we know they were advertised in advance. After Archbishop Dynnys execution it was obvious that Clyntahn did sometimes come out of the Temple, at completely predictable times; to gloat at such executions.) Even if Merlin was too worried about getting so close to the Temple there has been plenty of time to plant a sleeper cell or three of scout snipers in Zion. Might be a suicide mission for them but, given the target, I bet there would be volunteers.