Drossen Tor sounds more like a draccus than a scrael.

 

Let's not discount the possibility that it's something we don't know the name of.

 

@Dovaekiin, Of course a draccus! But a new-and-improved draccus after Iax got finished with it, I bet.
At least I think this is a good guess, and I still think making armor from it instead of burning and burying it was probably a really bad idea.

 

Does any one think the Draccus was made to be a weapon against the fae? Its a giant iron predator that breathes fire, so it seems to be the perfect natural defense against them.

Kvothe is not that well liked by master Lorren, so he should build a device that neutralizes and inhibits flames so the archives would be safe from flames, so only the allowed source of light would work.

Does anyone else think that Kvothe will complete his father's last song, by creating a song that reveal all the secrets of the seven? SO those warnings and how to stay safe and deal with them. He would have to publish the song into many copies and distribute them to as many places as possible. Possibly published in his biography.

 

It's an interesting idea, and the iron is a good link.

However, if the Draccus was created it would have to have been by the Shapers, which would mean that it predates the Fae. So unlikely it was explicitly a weapon against them.

Of course, we don't know much about the original of the Fae - only that before the Creation War era there wasn't any such divide between Fae and human. So either the Fae didn't exist, or they did but were one and the same species with humans, and then some divide happened.

If the latter, then it's possible the weakness to iron existed before the Creation war and could explain the Draccus.

However, as strong as dragons are, I think it'd undermine much of the work done in the first book to normalise the dragon if it was given such a mythical background. Remember: it's just an animal. A giant cow. And that was a great fresh look at dragons. I hope it isn't undone.

 

I think Iax took an ordinary lizard and changed it into the draccus to fight the namers. But his draccus was much more aggressive - cows don't prey on men, the draccus Kvothe and Denna met was dangerous because of the denner resin. Kvothe says they are shy of people. I think Shapers change the name of something in order to shape something new. So their draccus may have had sharp teeth and ate meat and had deadly scales. Once Lanre defeated the one at Drossen Tor and they had a good look at it to see what had been done, when they met future ones the namers could likely restore the part of their essential nature that had been perverted - back to mild-mannered plant eaters, but couldn't or didn't mess with the increase in size. What seems possible if the beast's carcass was deadly, and Lanre made it into armor, possibly causing Lyra's death, then the Namers weren't aware, at least originally, how poisonous those draccus bodies were to men. Are the draccus scales Kvothe and Denna take as souveniers going to cause some tragic results?

Thoughts on the poet-king - Vaeshet served a poet-king in the Small kingdoms for years. and Geoffrey, the poet Denna befriended, was completely naive about living in the real world, as if he had been sheltered all his life. He also had to leave for home immediately upon learning his mother was very ill.
thoughts, anyone?

 

Vashet and Geoffrey almost certainly unrelated. If your just pursuing a poet + noble angle even Sim fits the bill.

As for Lyra's death it was explicitly stated to be due to treachery. While it is possible the armor played a role I doubt it was the central cause.

 

Is it settled that Bredon is most likely Denna's patron?

I just reread WMF about a week ago, and there seemed to be a few little hints pointing to Bredon being Ash; hints that I didn't really pick up on my first 2 read throughs.

 

Yeah. I think everybody is sold on Bredon being Denna's patron. The real question is who he ends up working for and how much Denna knows.

 

I'm not sold on it, if only because it's an obvious assumption to make, and there's plenty of people in the world or it to be someone else entirely.

Still, I'm very curious about how much of those rumors about him were true, and what his exact position is in the court.

 

Come on, it's got to be him! If Pat seriously put that many ploys in there just to trick us then I'll be less than impressed. Baring the greatest plot twist of all time then all the hints he drops are just unnecessary clutter, for at least that portion of the book.

 

I get where you're coming from, but it's just to obvious. Given everything else in these books, I get the feeling that whoever Denna's patron is, it's going to come with a bit of a twist.

In other words, I feel like Pat is more subtle then that. All the potential clues for it would feel like he's beating you over the head with the answer, instead of the clever riddles and wordplay he's used previously. I going to be dissapointed if it turns out to be that simple.

 

I'm not sold on it, because Pat mentioned that Bredon wasn't in the first draft of WMF.

Course, he could just be saying that to fuck with us.

 

Why are we assuming that the Beast of Drossen Tor's body was poisonous? Where does that even come from? I'd always assumed that said beast was some sort of Uber-Draccus as well. Ambrose is still the most likely target for the king/poet that Kvothe Kingkills. The foreshadowing has been too strong to reasonably make a case for anyone else yet.

 

Vaeshet mentioned her poet-king in the small kingdoms too many times to ignore it; I think we'll see her again, and if she's present when Kvothe does something not of the Lethani, that could explain why he no longer has Cesura.


Geoffrey is a separate matter - I don't know how he might fit in, but he is a poet, pretty obviously noble, and we don't know much else about him. But I think he's introduced for a reason. Ambrose is really bad at poetry, and still a long way from the throne, and I think he's too obvious. He also manipulates things from behind, so perhaps he will provoke Kvothe to remove someone standing in his way and get Kvothe wanted for murder too?

Rothfuss is definately going to put some twists in, he's put too much thought into these books to make everything obvious.

We are told a couple of times there are no demons, this was the church's explanation for the fae, at least the darker sort, the scrael, the skindancers, likely the shamblemen, etc. At some point, it was discovered these creatures were deadly to humans even after being killed - or could come back to life, being fae and immortal, like Haliax. In order to render them truly dead they had to burn them and bury them in a pit, like the Tehlin story Skarpi told of Incanis. I think any of the dark beasts made by shapers are pretty obviously deadly to humans. I just don't know if changing a meat-eating, fighting draccus back to a giant lizard would be enough to render the shapers toxic effects completely null. The original lizard the shapers changed likely was of normal size and coloration for a lizard.
The draccus, though restored to a plant-eater, is of enormous size, has iron scales, eats entire trees, breathes fire, etc. I think those are still fae traits, not common to any ordinary lizard, and the namers at the time either were unable to give it back it's true name, restoring it completely to what it had been, or felt simply changing it back to a meat-eater would render it harmless. I'm not so sure - it would make a nice circle of events if the draccus scales that brought down Lanre and Lyra have a hand in bringing down Kvothe and Denna - I think this is where PR is going. that said, there's lots of things I'm still completely in the dark about.

 

We see nowhere that the bodies of darker types of fae are dangerous or toxic in and of themselves. Shamblemen may well be skindancers though, capable of ignoring damage to the host body. The reason that you burn the corpse with those special woods is because leaving the body intact in any way draws more of its kind to it, not because its poisonous to humans. Hence why Kvothe in NotW kept a piece of the dead scrael to draw the others to him. Touching it didn't do anything. Its also a jump to assume that the Shapers created every bad thing that goes bump in the night.

 

But Bredon isn't all that obvious. I mean there are like two or three hints total. We just happen to have about a few dozen damn good therist that are going to sniff out some of the easier or more completed plots. I'm not saying its 100% certain but of all the unknowns that is the only one I'd put money on.

Honestly, the only thing I'm more confident about is Kvothe's mom being Lackless' sister.

 

Hmm, well, Kvothe made sure to obtain gloves before going after the scrael. And before he goes to hunt them, while a piece of the first scrael is in his possession, Graham the carpenter notes Kote looks rather sickly, hollow, wan. His eye were duller than a month ago, his voice wasn't as deep, his hair wasn't as bright. He compares him to a plant that has begun to wilt because it is lacking something vital. And Kote has had the thing for less than a month.


Lanre says Lyra's death was on his hands, but deceit and treachery brought him to it.
Lanre slew the uber-draccus, died, but was called back from death by Lyra - there have to be some consequences to this act, there is always a price for cheating death. Then, he wears the armor made from the beast - but it is Lyra who slowly sickens and dies. Lanre is a warrior, having slain the beast makes him victor, and the armor is trophy. He would view it as deceit and treachery if the beast, dead, still slays his wife. He is no longer the victor, Iax has mocked him and cost him the thing he loved best, and he did it counting on Lanre's fighting skills and his pride in them.

I do think the shamblemen =skinwalkers, and they, the Draugar (uber-draccus?), the demons of the Church, and the Vint's fear of magic have a common root in the past. After Myr Tariniel and the six cities fell, at least on moonlit nights all these dark, shaper- made Fae could roam at will the human world . It must have been terrifying - until the Iron Laws went into effect, meant to keep the fae to their world. But I think it was applied too harshly, against Namers as well as the rest.

My guesses, FWIW.

 

He also put on a blacksmith's apron. I took that to mean that he was trying to avoid cutting himself on the sharp-as-glass mushroom-spider as much as possible. The sickly bit I took to mean that Kvothe is dying, or is waiting to die, since he no longer has anything to live for, and after everything he's been, a mere innkeeper isn't very interesting. I didn't think it had anything to do with the scrael.

You seem to be making some rather large assumptions in this.

I'm confused. Are you saying that you think the armor is somehow responsible for her death, or that Lyra bringing him back ended up killing her? If the latter, then okay, but I don't see any treachery. If the former, then that makes very little sense.

Err... What? Unless it mentioned Skinwalkers somewhere, I think you've confused the Dresden Files. Beyond that, Shamblemen are, if I remember correctly, ghosts of people that died of starvation and eat people or something. And only certain areas even care about them, where as the Seven are feared pretty much worldwide.

I think folklore is just folklore on this one. Not EVERY legend has to be true just because it's a fantasy book, and a large part of the story has been about how rumors and legends get exaggerated and changed from the truth anyway.

Firstly, Draugar? The demons of the church I could see being related to the story as a whole, but... You're still making some fairly large assumptions.

Magic is pretty much universally scary, no common root needed. Vint just happens to STILL be superstitious. It's not really that unusual, even today in the real world there are more then a few places where the right gestures or words will have people shitting themselves. A couple years back, I tossed some chicken bones on a table in Louisiana a few times and saw a guy staring at me like he would piss himself if I looked at him.

Point is, as cultures go, your average person either fears magic or doesn't believe in it. I mean, wouldn't you be scared of a guy that could cut your throat from a mile away, if he had a single hair or a drop of blood? And that's the stuff that the people who 'aren't' magicians can do.

The Iron Law doesn't seem to have to do specifically with magic. Doesn't Kvothe mention it a few times in other contexts, like assault and murder? Given that this is an era where superstition is still alive and well pretty much everywhere, it seems more likely that the use of magic was just thrown on the books under everything else used to harm people.

 

I'll disagree with you about the sickly bit - WE already know he's waiting to die, and Bast worries enough about Kote we don't need additional confirmation. this is a specific mention of how he looks drawn and seriously unhealthy in a few weeks time - coiinciding with his possession of the piece of the scrael.

Iax, the first and greatest shapers, would have been behind creating the uber-draccus. When Lyra dies as a result of the armor, Lanre wouldhave been enraged and sought out Iax,, and whatever happens between them, results in Lanre gaining Iax's powers and becoming Haliax.

I think in this world, the truly dark things come from Fae, were created by the Shapers. They were the ones who won the Creation War - and the Iron Law is really all we're offered that would explain how eventually control was asserted over the Fae, aside from the Amyr and Singers, whom we still know little about.

Felurian: Many of the darker sort would love to use you for their sport. what keeps these from moonlight trespass, iron, fire, mirror-glass

Chronicler touches Bast with iron and it's incredibly painful for Bast. Kvothe touches the scrael with an iron drab and it sparks. The draccus' bones and scales were mainly of iron so it was probably immune to this effect. Some kind of flaw or weakness in the Shaper's creations that they've been able to use to detect them.

Where did you get that shamblemen were ghosts of starved people - and was it given as fact or spoken as speculation by a character?

I've said repeatedly these are theories or conjecture, but I've given my reasoning, which is fairly well thought out and follows the info we're given in the various stories in both books.

It's easy to dismiss other people's ideas, far harder to really examine if they are or aren't at least possible, and if not why not, and suggest alternatives. That's the kind of input I was hoping for.