Another Hoid Theory

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

I bet everyone here wonders how Hoid has lived for as long as he has (considering we have seen (read?) him in Mistborn era one and Mistborn era two. I've seen how people think there are two Hoids, Hoid the Elder and Hoid the Younger (Always makes me think of Pliny), but what if Hoid the Younger was a Kandra?

It should be possible, a world-hopping Kandra, and also Kandra are immortal. We've seen how a kandra can take out one of it's spike and thus hide themselves from Harmony/Ruin(era1), so what if this Hoid took out 1 spike just before going into the Cognitive Realm and returning the spike afterwards to regain sentience? I don't think Harmony would be able to sense a kandra a shardworld away. 

Perhaps Hoid the elder, straight outta Yolen, came to Scadrial and met a young Kandra lad and somehow they became friends, but Hoid the elder dies after some world hopping adventures, and Hoid the younger consumes Hoid the elder and takes on Hoid's mantle, continuing his legacy? This Hoid must have went to Roshar, and then returned for Mistborn era 2 where we see him occasionally.

What do you guys think?

[kenod]

It seems to convoluted, we already have convermation that Hoid uses a combination of time dilation and some other immortality trick (IIRC the shattering took place a couple of thousand years before TLR ascension), so this is adding extra complexity to something that is already finished and worked out.

[goody153]

3 hours ago, Darkness Ascendant said:

 We've seen how a kandra can take out one of it's spike and thus hide themselves from Harmony/Ruin(era1), so what if this Hoid took out 1 spike just before going into the Cognitive Realm and returning the spike afterwards to regain sentience? I don't think Harmony would be able to sense a kandra a shardworld away. 

 

Actually Lessie is the only one who managed to hide from Harmony and it's not because they only spiked themselves with 1 spike but rather the spike she used was of different make-up something that is not from Ruin/Preservation. But even so Harmony could figure out her location from time to time and talk to her.

Even 1 spike is enough for Harmony/Ruin to keep track of anybody 

Ruin was aware of all the Kandra during the original trilogy, Rashek just did a super good job in organizing everybody under him to hide the Atium information.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

eh, I knew this was far fetched from the moment I created this. I just did so to see what everyone else thought. Guess we will all just have to wait for Dragonsteel

[DeTess she/her]

I think there is a commonly known semi-immortality trick among Worldhoppers. After all, Hoid isn't the only character to pop up in both mistborn era's 1 and 2 . Kriss is there as well, and Demoux turns up in WoK. It could just be that all of them swing by Nalthis to stock up on breath, but I suspect it is something different.

[kenod]

2 minutes ago, randuir said:

I think there is a commonly known semi-immortality trick among Worldhoppers. After all, Hoid isn't the only character to pop up in both mistborn era's 1 and 2 . Kriss is there as well, and Demoux turns up in WoK. It could just be that all of them swing by Nalthis to stock up on breath, but I suspect it is something different.

Perhaps they are doing something weird with their Connection. This would also explain why they can always speak the local language.

[Sam Script he/him]

Just add some stories we've known about the "Two Hoid" fact:

The Hoid we know now is not the original Hoid. His name was Midius in Yolen, Hoid is his mentor's name. Then his mentor died, so Midius took teacher's name and become the new Hoid we see in every books now.

Yes there are two Hoids but it's not like the things that the original Hoid appeared in ELANTRIS or MB era 1 and died sometime in the Cosmere time axis and then, boom, someone popped out to replace the Hoid blah blah. So far we know, if Dragonsteel in the future still contains the plot of Midius becoming the new Hoid, then the Hoid we see, Midius, is always the same person.

Hoid still uses Lightweaving in the books, it would be fine to believe that he's still the one all along so far. But we're of Cosmere, everything might finally blow us away in the end XD.

Interesting theory, though. Upvote for you.

[Eki]

10 hours ago, kenod said:

It seems to convoluted, we already have convermation that Hoid uses a combination of time dilation and some other immortality trick (IIRC the shattering took place a couple of thousand years before TLR ascension), so this is adding extra complexity to something that is already finished and worked out.

It might be over 9000 years (yes, yes, the meme and everything) before TLR's ascension. The Coppermind says probably 11000 years before WoK, which should be around 1300 years after that event.

[Assassin in Burgundy he/him]

Maybe Hoid has enough Breath to shut off his aging? That would be 2,000 Breaths. He already has at least 200 because in WoR he said "This is so much easier with perfect pitch," while playing for Kaladin in the dungeon, and I wouldn't put it past him to harvest/buy more Breaths.

Edited July 20, 2016 by Assassin in Burgundy
Forgot a period

[Argel he/him]

We know Hoid was alive before the shattering of Adonalsium (and was somehow involved in the plot but was not one of the 16). Kandra were createred by TLR, which was much later than the creation of Scadrial, and Scadrial was created by Ruin and Preservation after the shattering. So unless a Kandra assassinated Hoid, which would be very difficult and not make sense given what Brandon is doing with the character, it is impossible for Hoid to be a Kandra. Note also that we also know from a WoB that he is avoiding Hemalurgy.

The run of Hoid theories we've had of late all fail to account for soem knowledge in the books (the letters between Hoid and Frost in SA being the most obvious) and the vast body of WoBs out there. For newcomers it is probably not as obvious and those of us that have been here a while (including lurking) we probably take it for granted. 

It's worth noting that Hoid is one of Brandon's favorite characters. As in one he likes to have fun with. The kind that a writer has to be careful not to have too much fun with. 

Also, try and track down Liars of Partinel. It's an unpublished work that is not canon, but is Hoid's origin story, and aspects of it have become canon, such as his real name and taking the name of his master. It's canon "in spirit" but not in all of the details, if that makes sense. 

Good effort though!

 

[CaptainRyan he/him]

16 minutes ago, Argel said:

Also, try and track down Liars of Partinel

To anyone who is interested, this is a sticky'd thread in the "General Brandon Discussion" forum that tries to keep track of the various interesting unpublished works/ available online goodies: 

 

[Ari he/him]

On 12/07/2016 at 9:40 PM, randuir said:

I think there is a commonly known semi-immortality trick among Worldhoppers. After all, Hoid isn't the only character to pop up in both mistborn era's 1 and 2 . Kriss is there as well, and Demoux turns up in WoK. It could just be that all of them swing by Nalthis to stock up on breath, but I suspect it is something different.

We know you don't actually need Breaths to maintain the Returned immortality, but it does also seem that Initiation into being a Returned is a bit tricky to pull off, not least of which because testing if you've gotten it right requires you to die.

There's counter-evidence against all of the known immortality tricks so far for Hoid, as he's lived too long for Atium compounding, he's been seen failing to become an Elantrian, and it's highly unlikely that he would risk dying to become a Returned without solid evidence on how to make sure Endowment selects you. He probably has some other full- or lesser-immortality trick from a Shardworld we haven't seen yet, although I suppose he could be combining some form of time dilation with Atium compounding, we haven't seen conspicuously omnipresent use of metalminds from him yet.

I expect to be honest that he got his immortality on Yolen. It would be a good first step to becoming a Worldhopper.

[Argel he/him]

3 hours ago, Ari said:

I expect to be honest that he got his immortality on Yolen.

The way Frost mentions it n the letter made me think Hoid became immortal after the shattering, which would Yolen less likely but not impossible. Also, he has Yolish Lightweaving, though I don't know if that helps or hurts the theory.

 

[CaptainRyan he/him]

3 hours ago, Ari said:

We know you don't actually need Breaths to maintain the Returned immortality, but it does also seem that Initiation into being a Returned is a bit tricky to pull off, not least of which because testing if you've gotten it right requires you to die.

I think randuir was referring to the 5th Heightening. 

http://coppermind.net/wiki/Heightening

 

[Ari he/him]

4 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

I think randuir was referring to the 5th Heightening. 

http://coppermind.net/wiki/Heightening

 

Aaah. I see where you're going with that, although are we sure you wouldn't need to hack some magic to become an awakener to benefit from the heightenings? IIRC all we have confirmed is that people not native to Nalthis can receive the breaths but can't Awaken with them. I can see it making sense either way tbh.

[Eki]

Awakening wasn't known for the majority of time Hoid has been alive, so it's unlikely that Breaths are his primary way of being immortal. Also, when he commented on having perfect pitch, it seemed like a fairly new thing to him. I'm guessing he picked them up around the time of Warbreaker. Mostly for narrative reasons, but still.

Of course, there's time dilation and other things to mess up Hoid's timeline. I still wonder if Hoid is much more active now than he used to be in the few thousand years after the Shattering.