Where's WalDo: The Kandra Worldhopper

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him]

I don't know how much this has been discussed, I haven't read this whole thread, but Mrall is looking like a pretty good candidate for the World Hopping Kandra.

There's this recent WoB from the Skyward release party which is highly suggestive:

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Mrall is the assistant to Taravangian. He's described as Thaylen but he's bald and no eyebrows. Does he lack hair everywhere else?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

He does not completely lack hair, but mostly.

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

His comments about how it's easy for him to turn off his emotions are a little bit eye raising.

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

They should be!

source

Hair is difficult for a Kandra to mimic, and the ability to shut off emotions sounds an awful lot like the Blessing of Stability (which endows the Kandra with emotional fortitude, resistance to emotional manipulation, and would imply by extension an ability to suppress/regulate emotions).

I honestly never considered that Mrall could be a kandra until I heard @RShara mention it in one of the numerous Felt threads, but this WoB ups the likelihood substantially that WaLDO is in fact BaLDO Mrall.

[Fezzik]

WooHoo! That was my WoB! I have had that theory for years, and it was nice to get maybe sorta kinda confirmation.

[RShara she/her]

1 hour ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

er considered that Mrall could be a kandra until I heard @RShara mention it in one of the numerous Felt threads, but this WoB ups the likelihood substantially that WaLDO is in fact BaLDO Mrall.

*cackles* Another convert!

[goody153]

Wait a minute. That sounds suspiciously like our Waldo

[Turtle]

But why would harmony's agent be part of the diagram? * starts looking for new wobs about this*

Edited August 17, 2020 by turtle

[Frustration he/him]

I'm convinced

[Karger he/him]

9 hours ago, turtle said:

But why would harmony's agent be part of the diagram? * starts looking for new jobs about this*

A number of reasons do spring to mind if you believe this theory(I don't but that is not relevent).

We know Saze is working with Hoid on his whole anti-odium quest in some capacity so keeping an eye on interested parties makes sense.  A kandra can maintain deep cover for years or decades and would find the environment of the diagram understandable(follow the contra- I mean the diagram) reporting to Harmony through their link.  Finally Mrall is the one who seems to interject a bit of common sense into their dastardly plots.  He reminds them of their goals and of the suffering they cause helping limit the fallout if only in minor ways.

Edited August 17, 2020 by Karger

[Brgst13]

What if Mrall is not Harmony's agent?  What if he is one of the Set's Faceless Immortals, serving Trell?  This might make more sense.  

[Karger he/him]

23 minutes ago, Brgst13 said:

What if Mrall is not Harmony's agent?  What if he is one of the Set's Faceless Immortals, serving Trell?  This might make more sense.  

That is more or less always a possibility but I don't think Mrall acts like that.  Of course we know practically nothing about Trell's group.

[RShara she/her]

10 hours ago, turtle said:

But why would harmony's agent be part of the diagram? * starts looking for new jobs about this*

He's in a great position to gather intel on everything that's happening on Roshar and in one of the major secret societies.

[+robardin he/him]

If Mrall is the kandra, then it also raises the question of when the switch happened. And how.

Presumably, to be in a position of great intimacy and trust with Taravangian, Mrall has been with him for a long time - since before That Day Of Brilliance, as with Adrotagia. And a kandra would have had to... Learn... A great deal about Mrall before being able to imitate him.

So did this kandra torture and kill the original Mrall, as TenSoon did with OreSeur (the First Contract being nullified after the Catacendre, given how freely MeLaan goes about killing people)? That's kind of dark.

If not, how did the kandra gain access both to Mrall's body - without Taravangian and Adrotagia realizing he'd died in between - and intimate details of Mrall's history with Mr. T, in order to pass convincingly as a longtime and close associate?

[RShara she/her]

33 minutes ago, robardin said:

If Mrall is the kandra, then it also raises the question of when the switch happened. And how.

Presumably, to be in a position of great intimacy and trust with Taravangian, Mrall has been with him for a long time - since before That Day Of Brilliance, as with Adrotagia. And a kandra would have had to... Learn... A great deal about Mrall before being able to imitate him.

So did this kandra torture and kill the original Mrall, as TenSoon did with OreSeur (the First Contract being nullified after the Catacendre, given how freely MeLaan goes about killing people)? That's kind of dark.

If not, how did the kandra gain access both to Mrall's body - without Taravangian and Adrotagia realizing he'd died in between - and intimate details of Mrall's history with Mr. T, in order to pass convincingly as a longtime and close associate?

Why couldn't he have been close to Taravangian before the Diagram occurred, and was chosen to be part of it? We don't know how long the kandra has been on Roshar. If it's been decades, he could have been working his way closer that whole time. Or he could have been recruited afterward?

[+robardin he/him]

14 hours ago, RShara said:

Why couldn't he have been close to Taravangian before the Diagram occurred, and was chosen to be part of it? We don't know how long the kandra has been on Roshar. If it's been decades, he could have been working his way closer that whole time. Or he could have been recruited afterward?

I kind of assumed for Mrall to be as close with Taravangian as Adrotagia is, that his history with Mr. T probably ran as far back - or at least, further than his conceiving of the Diagram, which as I recall (but I'm not entirely sure why, at the moment) happened right around, or just after, Gavilar's death, right?

Of course once he'd formed the Diagram as a "secret society" it's not impossible for The Shaven Thaylen to have come in through normal recruitment methods, and then risen in the organization to the position of trusted right-hand man who gets to pronounce the limits of Taravangian's authority on a daily basis. But my assumption was, and kind of still is (without basis either way in the text), that they must have already known each other for a while.

And Adrotagia seems fully comfortable with the two of them being separate but equally trusted adjutants to Taravangian. If Mrall was a Thaylen-come-lately of only a few years' acquaintance where she was a childhood friend and longtime head scribe/ardent, she might be kind of resentful.

As as for "when would the kandra insert him/herself as Mrall?", I would have thought only when it became apparent that Taravangian was someone to watch closely, which until his Day of Genius would not have been apparent.

So the way I assume things would go chronologically would be:

• Taravangian is close with Mrall, or at least knows him well
• Taravangian has his Diagram Day
• Taravangian begins assembling the Diagram as an organization
• This catches the eye of a kandra on Roshar ...
• ... who "becomes" Mrall and makes himself indispensable to Mr. T

And it's that last one that makes me wonder how the becoming happened, because it would require Mrall to be dead, for starters, without Taravangian knowing about it.

EDIT: for the record, I really like the connection here with the little cues in Mrall's behavior and appearance and targeting him in the Great Rosharan Kandra Hunt. Just wondering what other extended inferences could be made as a result. 

Edited August 19, 2020 by robardin

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him]

2 hours ago, robardin said:

I kind of assumed for Mrall to be as close with Taravangian as Adrotagia is, that his history with Mr. T probably ran as far back - or at least, further than his conceiving of the Diagram, which as I recall (but I'm not entirely sure why, at the moment) happened right around, or just after, Gavilar's death, right?

Of course once he'd formed the Diagram as a "secret society" it's not impossible for The Shaven Thaylen to have come in through normal recruitment methods, and then risen in the organization to the position of trusted right-hand man who gets to pronounce the limits of Taravangian's authority on a daily basis. But my assumption was, and kind of still is (without basis either way in the text), that they must have already known each other for a while.

Well, there is the fact that if Mrall is the world hopping Kandra he would be in direct communication with the most powerful shard in the Cosmere. Also, given that Preservation's futuresight was one of the best in the Cosmere, using intel from Harmony Mrall could easily make himself indispensable to the Diagramatists.

This is pure speculation, but it makes the most sense to me, that given his access to Cosmere wide knowledge, the Diagram itself could have instructed Taravangian to recruit Mrall. And further, if the Diagram is the 3 dimensional chess game being played by Cultivation that some of us believe, then drawing in and exerting control over the major active piece in an external Shard's game on Roshar likewise makes a lot of sense. By assigning Mrall a very specific and daily role, Cultivation is really limiting his ability to act independently, and his role of daily tester is very clearly spelled out in the diagram. Once again, if this is truly the case, Cultivation is brilliant.

[StanLemon]

An important thing to remember is that Kandra are masters of intel gathering and replacement. It's entirely possible the switch happened after The Diagram formed. He could have taken advantage of the dumb days to fill in missing information.

[Negative_Null]

3 hours ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

Well, there is the fact that if Mrall is the world hopping Kandra he would be in direct communication with the most powerful shard in the Cosmere. Also, given that Preservation's futuresight was one of the best in the Cosmere, using intel from Harmony Mrall could easily make himself indispensable to the Diagramatists.

This is pure speculation, but it makes the most sense to me, that given his access to Cosmere wide knowledge, the Diagram itself could have instructed Taravangian to recruit Mrall. And further, if the Diagram is the 3 dimensional chess game being played by Cultivation that some of us believe, then drawing in and exerting control over the major active piece in an external Shard's game on Roshar likewise makes a lot of sense. By assigning Mrall a very specific and daily role, Cultivation is really limiting his ability to act independently, and his role of daily tester is very clearly spelled out in the diagram. Once again, if this is truly the case, Cultivation is brilliant.

I wouldn't doubt this, honestly. Cultivation has proven herself to be very adept at taking other Shard's tools and using them herself. If this theory is true (still not completely convinced but getting there), I wonder if Mrall even knows he's been played

[StanLemon]

Or alternatively Sazed is using Taravangian through Mrall

[+robardin he/him]

On 8/19/2020 at 2:39 PM, StanLemon said:

An important thing to remember is that Kandra are masters of intel gathering and replacement. It's entirely possible the switch happened after The Diagram formed. He could have taken advantage of the dumb days to fill in missing information.

That's essentially what I'm assuming DID happen. Partly because there was no reason to be particularly interested in getting a kandra spy close to Taravangian until the Diagram was A Thing.

You can posit that Harmony had foresight about that and played a very long game in placing a kandra close to Mr. T from way back in preparation for The Day of Brilliance, as people have done, but that's going beyond the domain of Occam's Razor (which I realize doesn't really apply as a principle to fictional storytelling, of course, but still). Simplest surface explanation for "Mrall is a kandra" would be, he was targeted for impersonation once the Diagram made him attractive as a point of entry.

In which case, who killed Mrall to provide his body to the kandra? Is or was there a non-kandra agent of Harmony on Roshar as well, or was this kandra "at liberty" to kill on his/her own, the way that MeLaan is? And hey, maybe Mrall was killed with fire and his hair was singed off, and that's why the kandra had no way to replicate it, LOL.

And as for Harmony's Foresight being a factor - Odium's foresight got messed with by Cultivation's "pruning" of Dalinar, so Foreseeing what would happen with Taravangian's visit to the Nightwatcher seems like it would be similarly difficult. I'd imagine that  for a Shard to Foresee another Shard's interventions is probably the hardest thing for one of them to predict.

[Fezzik]

Is he there at the direction of Harmony? A kandra who wanted to continue under a TLR-like figure could do a lot worse than the diagram.

[Rhapsody she/her]

7 hours ago, Fezzik said:

Is he there at the direction of Harmony? A kandra who wanted to continue under a TLR-like figure could do a lot worse than the diagram.

I think there is a WOB that says the kandra worldhopper is one of Harmony's agents.

[Myuken]

18 hours ago, robardin said:

And as for Harmony's Foresight being a factor - Odium's foresight got messed with by Cultivation's "pruning" of Dalinar, so Foreseeing what would happen with Taravangian's visit to the Nightwatcher seems like it would be similarly difficult. I'd imagine that  for a Shard to Foresee another Shard's interventions is probably the hardest thing for one of them to predict.

Preservation and as such Harmony has the best Foresight we've seen. If Cultivation's interaction with the Diagram makes the future harder to predict that difficulty, to Harmony, would be proof that something is happening. It is the perfect situation to send a spy.

This would be very similar to Hoid's Fortune in that Harmony would know he needs a spy there but not why.

[+robardin he/him]

24 minutes ago, Myuken said:

Preservation and as such Harmony has the best Foresight we've seen. If Cultivation's interaction with the Diagram makes the future harder to predict that difficulty, to Harmony, would be proof that something is happening. It is the perfect situation to send a spy.

This would be very similar to Hoid's Fortune in that Harmony would know he needs a spy there but not why.

That's a very plausible take, I'll buy that.

But it's still curious how long ago Mrall was "swapped out". What's the longest term a kandra has impersonated someone? Paalm was "Lessie" to Wax for almost 15 years... But to impersonate someone from childhood or adolescence, or into middle age and beyond, with all the subtle changes that acrrue over time, it might well be unusual and require a very experienced kandra to do convincingly. "Wow, you look almost the same at 21 as when I last saw you at 16!" "Ha ha!" (one month later) "Well, you went and grew up in a hurry." "Growth spurt."

Edited August 21, 2020 by robardin

[StanLemon]

2 hours ago, robardin said:

That's a very plausible take, I'll buy that.

But it's still curious how long ago Mrall was "swapped out". What's the longest term a kandra has impersonated someone? Paalm was "Lessie" to Wax for almost 15 years... But to impersonate someone from childhood or adolescence, or into middle age and beyond, with all the subtle changes that acrrue over time, it might well be unusual and require a very experienced kandra to do convincingly. "Wow, you look almost the same at 21 as when I last saw you at 16!" "Ha ha!" (one month later) "Well, you went and grew up in a hurry." "Growth spurt."

Most likely sometime after Taravangian was given his boon and curse

[Necessary Eagle she/her]

The thing is, you guys latched on to Mrall because of his lack of hair. If he switched out with the real Mrall after Mrall had met T, then there's no reason real!Mrall to be bald. Unless you're saying that Mrall just showed up for work one day with a drastic haircut, which would rather defeat the purpose.

[StanLemon]

9 hours ago, Necessary Eagle said:

The thing is, you guys latched on to Mrall because of his lack of hair. If he switched out with the real Mrall after Mrall had met T, then there's no reason real!Mrall to be bald.

It's not just his lack of hair, as has been stated earlier in this thread there are aspects of his personality that are suspicions. The bald look would be easier to keep up over the years better than trying to cover up your hair not ever getting any longer. But there are any number of reasons that he could not have hair, maybe it was too damaged in whatever ended up killing the real Mrall for instance.

9 hours ago, Necessary Eagle said:

Unless you're saying that Mrall just showed up for work one day with a drastic haircut, which would rather defeat the purpose.

People do changes to their style, happens all the time. Would you see someone you knew suddenly not have hair and just assume they were an impostor?