Confusing Epilogue?

[Thelastshard]

Having read the epilogue there are few things that didn't make sense at first. I have found reasoning for most but am still confused about one thing regarding the engagement between Hoid and Todium.

The problem is WHEN and HOW exactly did Todium corrupt the memory. Because the conversation was still happening when Hoid was attacked(so the memory still must be in his head).

If that's the case, Todium would have to wait till Hoid actually keeps that in the vessel there inorder to corrupt it which gives Hoid an opening and a loophole.

If that's not the case then I can't understand how he will be having the conversation and still storing the memory in those vessels.

Anything that I am missing?

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

Unless I'm horribly mistaken, we know very very little about how breaths work in regard to memory.

My guess/theory is that Hoid is immediately storing what he witnesses to breaths, potentially to have a more vivid, sharp memory stored to investiture. (like a video recording rather than a vague impression of an event.)

[Kitch]

Hopefully there's a metal mind backup. But this could be a way to "depower" Hoid for future books. 

[Bri-Y]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Mistborn era 2 was after the first five Stormlight books? Hoid still seems to be his usual self doing his shenanigans with Wax in those books. He might have trouble in the next Stormlight book, but probably not after that.

It would be fun if the consequence of what T-Odium did caused a similar problem to Hoid as with the heralds. It might tie into finding a cure for the madness that is afflicting the heralds.

[Shob the Voidbringer]

i think that all that todium did was take some memories of minor and mostly ignored encounters with wit so that he could better understand how wit views odium. my main evidence for this is that he lost his perfect pitch, and todium mentioned that "It's all about giving you what you expect. Even a being of thousands of years can be tricked."

[Govir]

On 1/2/2021 at 2:51 PM, Bri-Y said:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Mistborn era 2 was after the first five Stormlight books? Hoid still seems to be his usual self doing his shenanigans with Wax in those books. He might have trouble in the next Stormlight book, but probably not after that.

The most recent WoB I could find (using this search) basically says that internally they have a timeline, but it's not publicly known, and is subject to change.
 

(I bolded the part of the response that is most relevant to your question)

Quote

Questioner

How long after Warbreaker do these events take place?

Brandon Sanderson

We have numbers in the wiki. We haven't canonized a lot of them in the books yet. Because my original plan for the cosmere involved more space between the series than I'm probably going to eventually do. What I've said is, that basically the books that have been released have all been chronological except for White Sand, which takes place before the other books chronologically. Wax and Wayne takes place after Stormlight Five, but before Stormlight Six. And that's all I'm saying about how far apart things are right now.

One thing you have to remember is, also, time dilation is a thing in the cosmere that comes up a lot more often than it does in our world, for various reasons, because of the way I am treating Investiture. So treat that how you will.

Tor Instagram Livestream (Nov. 25, 2020)

 

[Leuthie]

In the first version of the conversation, Taravangian gave away that Wit wasn't talking to Rayse. Taravangian wants everyone to believe him dead and Odium unchanged. So he removed the memory of that conversation and didn't give himself away in the second try.

That's it.

TOdium may have snooped at some other memories, but the major change he made was to redo the conversation. Wit knows Odium did something to him. There were too many clues shown in plain sight for him not to know (perfect pitch was gone, Design was supposed to be there but wasn't, there was no audience but he remembered one, his coin tricks weren't in the right places, etc.). However, he won't be certain that Rayse didn't do those things. So Taravangian's secret is still safe. Wit knew someone messed with his breaths, yet still concluded that everything went exactly as he expected.

Taravangian believes he pulled one over on Wit and discovered secret memories. Wit believes he pulled one over on Rayse by showing him something Wit wanted to show him in his memories. Everyone leaves happy. 

[+robardin he/him]

10 hours ago, Leuthie said:

In the first version of the conversation, Taravangian gave away that Wit wasn't talking to Rayse. Taravangian wants everyone to believe him dead and Odium unchanged. So he removed the memory of that conversation and didn't give himself away in the second try.

That's it.

TOdium may have snooped at some other memories, but the major change he made was to redo the conversation. Wit knows Odium did something to him. There were too many clues shown in plain sight for him not to know (perfect pitch was gone, Design was supposed to be there but wasn't, there was no audience but he remembered one, his coin tricks weren't in the right places, etc.). However, he won't be certain that Rayse didn't do those things. So Taravangian's secret is still safe. Wit knew someone messed with his breaths, yet still concluded that everything went exactly as he expected.

Taravangian believes he pulled one over on Wit and discovered secret memories. Wit believes he pulled one over on Rayse by showing him something Wit wanted to show him in his memories. Everyone leaves happy. 

This is the curious bit to me. Odium becoming far more subtle and crafty (due to the new Vessel), including thinking of messing with his Breath-stored memories, clearly caught Hoid by complete surprise; but then, what did Hoid intend to happen, "exactly as planned", in his encounter with Odium? Just a little beard-pulling of Rayse, "Ha ha you can't touch me now, nyah nyah?" For someone as long-lived and Shard-aware as Hoid is, that seems quite rash. Quite a risk for a bit of gloating. But apparently so.

I don't think Hoid intended Odium to look into his Breath memories - he never imagined Rayse coming up with that idea, of working around the definition of "cannot harm you" to exclude memory editing in an external store of Investiture, or perhaps indeed even to realize that "because you've lived longer than a mortal should, you need to put the excess memories somewhere".

[Leuthie]

3 minutes ago, robardin said:

This is the curious bit to me. Odium becoming far more subtle and crafty (due to the new Vessel), including thinking of messing with his Breath-stored memories, clearly caught Hoid by complete surprise; but then, what did Hoid intend to happen, "exactly as planned", in his encounter with Odium? Just a little beard-pulling of Rayse, "Ha ha you can't touch me now, nyah nyah?" For someone as long-lived and Shard-aware as Hoid is, that seems quite rash. Quite a risk for a bit of gloating. But apparently so.

Wit might choose some of his encounters. We aren't really sure of anything about him. However, most of his appearances have been set up by his Fortune ability. He ends up going where and when he needs to go. This encounter was either an opportunity for a bit of gloating by a ten thousand year old schemer, or something set up by his Fortune ability to accomplish something that even Wit isn't really certain of until it happens.

Your assumption also necessitates the assumption that Wit would assume that Rayse just wants to show up to tell Wit that he hates him. Basically, you think that two millennia old entities who can't actually harm each other showed up in the parking lot at 3 o'clock to go "nyah nyah nana nyah" and "I hate you!". Just childish nonsense? Wit spoke of nonsense, but his self-jibes are usually misdirection.

I think: Wit showed up because his Fortune told him to and because he knew Odium would seek information from him; Odium (whether Rayse or Taravangian) showed up looking for information from Wit. 

8 minutes ago, robardin said:

I don't think Hoid intended Odium to look into his Breath memories - he never imagined Rayse coming up with that idea, of working around the definition of "cannot harm you" to exclude memory editing in an external store of Investiture, or perhaps indeed even to realize that "because you've lived longer than a mortal should, you need to put the excess memories somewhere".

I don't think Wit intends much of what happens to him. I'm 100% sure he was surprised when Odium looked at his Breaths. I'm also 95% certain that the surprise and terror he felt had to do with Odium not being Rayse (and possibly not bound by something Rayse is bound by), since he had figured out that Odium was "wrong" by that time. I'm 90% certain that he knew his Breaths were messed with by Odium in the encounter afterward and was still confident that the exchange went as planned. Wit doesn't know that Odium's Vessel has changed (since Taravangian removed that knowledge), but he does know that Odium looked at and tampered with his breaths

It "worked" and "went exactly as he had imagined", all while something was wrong, his perfect pitch was off, his spren was mysteriously gone, there were obvious holes in his memory, etc. Imperfect narrator and all that, he could be misdirecting us. He could be lying in his internal monologue. However, I'm speculating that he isn't.

TOdium said he made a mistake by trying to get information from Wit by asking. Then he looked in Wit's breaths, removed the conversation, and probably got the information he was looking for: who Wit would choose as a champion if Wit were in Odium's position.

[Requiem17 she/her]

The fact we're all saying and thinking different proves this scene was confusing, at least.

I agree nearly completely with what @Leuthie says, except for the last paragraph. I'm not sold on Todium able to read the memories he excised. My opinion is Todium would have to (harmonize?) with Endowment's investiture to read the memory, and Odium wouldn't want to do that.

[AquaRegia he/him]

Brandon has confirmed that Odium could not READ Hoid's memories, only REMOVE them.

More recent info and conversation here:

 

[hskeeter]

I am thinking the memory loss is due to something else.  See the below WoB from Stuttgart signing:

Questioner (paraphrased)

Now that Hoid has bonded a spren, is he locked on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, that is a problem. Something will happen that is relevant. RAFO.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

Could the memory loss have more to do with Hoid losing his spren and now being able to worldhop again?

 

Edited March 11, 2021 by hskeeter
spelling mistake

[Romuless]

I don't understand how Wit could have and use perfect pitch all the time, then lose it and not immediately realize something is extremely wrong. Is there an explanation about this somewhere I'm not aware of?  It would seem if Wit is walking around with enough Breathes to have perfect pitch then all of a sudden doesn't have enough he would think something had gone wrong, and if he's as intelligent as he seems since he had just talked to Odium it wouldn't take a big stretch of reasoning to understand Odium had done something to him.

[Tglassy]

My assumption was that Hoid keeps just enough Breaths to HAVE perfect pitch, so that if someone messes with them, he will know.  However, at the moment, he just thinks something is messing with his perfect pitch.  There's a lot wrong about what's going on, but by the end of the epilogue, he hasn't caught on yet.  Something is messing with his perfect pitch.  Design is gone.  His audience is gone.  All that is weird.  

I think it'll be later, when his Perfect Pitch doesn't come back, when he examines how many Breaths he has, that he will realize that Odium must have taken his Breaths.  At the same time, he can deduce that Rayse wouldn't have thought of that, and wonder why Odium would do such a thing.  What happened in that original conversation that Odium didn't want to be known?  Particularly since the second conversation went exactly as expected...

[alder24]

Also remember that each Breath gives you a bit better pitch until you reach perfect pitch at 200 Breaths. So if Hoid has 199 Breaths now, he still has extremely great pitch, but noticeable not perfect. But the difference is not that big as if he had no Breaths at all. He already noticed he didn't have perfect pitch anymore. However Hoid was truly scared (he thought it was the first time he had felt so scared in a long time) when Todium saw his memories in Breaths, and it most likely was the first time it ever happened to him. I think there was a WoB saying that Hoid will figure it out at the beginning of SA5, but I can't find it.

[Frustration he/him]

34 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I think there was a WoB saying that Hoid will figure it out at the beginning of SA5, but I can't find it.

Here it is

Spoiler

Questioner

My friends and I have been endlessly debating whether Wit knew what happened to him at the end of Rhythm, when he said "that went exactly as I planned," if he knew he was gonna get duped? Or if he got hornswoggled?

Brandon Sanderson

He legitimately got hornswoggled. One of the opening chapters of the next book is going to be him realizing that. There's a little teaser for you.

FanX 2021 (Sept. 16, 2021)

 

[Letryx13]

On 1/2/2021 at 2:03 PM, Kitch said:

Hopefully there's a metal mind backup. But this could be a way to "depower" Hoid for future books. 

That could potentially be a good thing. The fact that he is able to get around even the shard's notice (without us understanding how) while gathering the powers all of the different shards has made me nervous for a long time.  Sometimes the most difficult opponent isn't the one with the most power, but the one who can adapt and respond to any situation.  Versatility is a strength.

On 1/2/2021 at 2:51 PM, Bri-Y said:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Mistborn era 2 was after the first five Stormlight books? Hoid still seems to be his usual self doing his shenanigans with Wax in those books. He might have trouble in the next Stormlight book, but probably not after that.

It would be fun if the consequence of what T-Odium did caused a similar problem to Hoid as with the heralds. It might tie into finding a cure for the madness that is afflicting the heralds.

Judging by the way the GhostBloods are described in each of the most recent StormLight and MistBorn books, I think the StormLight books take place after MistBorn Era 2. In TLM,

Spoiler

The GhostBloods are described, by Kelsier no less, as something of a fledgling organization. 

I don't remember the exact line, but he thought they weren't big enough yet to protect Scadrial from looming threats.

But in RoW, Mraise calls them the most powerful organization in the Cosmere.  That could be bravado, bias, or an exaggeration, but considering how they've been trying to exploit the desolation to their benefit, I think they've simply grown much stronger since the days of Wax and Wayne.  Which means StormLight Archives takes place after MistBorn Era 2.

On 1/23/2023 at 4:45 AM, Romuless said:

I don't understand how Wit could have and use perfect pitch all the time, then lose it and not immediately realize something is extremely wrong. Is there an explanation about this somewhere I'm not aware of?  It would seem if Wit is walking around with enough Breathes to have perfect pitch then all of a sudden doesn't have enough he would think something had gone wrong, and if he's as intelligent as he seems since he had just talked to Odium it wouldn't take a big stretch of reasoning to understand Odium had done something to him.

I thought that too.  If the difference is as dramatic as it seems, Hoid should have noticed. It would be like taking someone's glasses away or a hearing aid or something like that.  It seems very unrealistic for him not to notice.  

On 1/23/2023 at 8:02 AM, Tglassy said:

My assumption was that Hoid keeps just enough Breaths to HAVE perfect pitch, so that if someone messes with them, he will know.  However, at the moment, he just thinks something is messing with his perfect pitch.  There's a lot wrong about what's going on, but by the end of the epilogue, he hasn't caught on yet.  Something is messing with his perfect pitch.  Design is gone.  His audience is gone.  All that is weird.  

My guess is that either he'll notice the Breaths were destroyed, or some conversation with Design will tip him off that something happened.  

 

Honestly, the epilogue wasn't confusing to me. It was unsettling. What exactly was done to Hoid doesn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that there was someone who finally got the better of him.  And that the person who did just so happens to be in possession of the most dangerous power in the Cosmere.

Edited January 25, 2023 by Letryx13
Spoiler Box

[alder24]

2 hours ago, Letryx13 said:

Judging by the way the GhostBloods are described in each of the most recent StormLight and MistBorn books, I think the StormLight books take place after MistBorn Era 2. In TLM,

Spoiler

the GhostBloods are described, by their leader no less, as something of a fledgling organization.

  I don't remember the exact line, but he thought they weren't big enough yet to protect Scadrial from looming threats.

But in RoW, Mraise calls them the most powerful organization in the Cosmere.  That could be bravado, bias, or an exaggeration, but considering how they've been trying to exploit the desolation to their benefit, I think they've simply grown much stronger since the days of Wax and Wayne.  Which means StormLight Archives takes place after MistBorn Era 2.

Mistborn era 2 takes place after SA5, and before SA6. 

Edited January 25, 2023 by alder24

[offer]

47 minutes ago, Letryx13 said:

 

Please put the TLM refernce in a spoiler box.

[Letryx13]

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

Mistborn era 2 takes place after SA5, and before SA6. 

Do we have confirmation of that?

[alder24]

8 minutes ago, Letryx13 said:

Do we have confirmation of that?

Yes

Quote

Zachary

In reference to the events in Rhythm of War, what is the timeframe for Mistborn Era Three? Is it before? Or after?

Brandon Sanderson

After. Era Three is after. Era Three is gonna take place around fifty to seventy years after Era Two. And Era Two is happening in the ten years between Books Five and Six of Stormlight. Era Three will be happening in a post-all-ten-books-of-Stormlight world.

So I have to jump forward in time seventy years on Scadrial, and then jump backward in time and finish Roshar, and then jump back forward in time. I think it’s all gonna work in the jigsaw puzzle of my brain of how all of this is going. But Karen will tell me if it doesn’t work, and we will adjust appropriately. She keeps the timeline and keeps me honest.

Dragonmount Zoom Call (Dec. 10, 2020)

 

[Letryx13]

30 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Yes

 

Ok, the epilogue may not confuse me much, but this timeline sure does.  Thanks