Apr 10., 2021   /   Everything

The Trebon Vase

In the last couple years there has been a bunch of new material to include in our analysis, particularly the new playing card decks by Echo Chernick, and the Call to Adventure game cards.

Far and away, the most exciting thing to me is ‘official’ art of the Chandrian vase from Trebon.

This piece appears on the Brotherwise Games page for the Call to Adventure expansion. It is official, and like everything official, Pat was involved with the specifications.

But even more interesting, this art was not included in the final game. Anyone’s guess as to why. However, I will note that it’s a far more realistic and detailed art style than any of the other cards in the game, and the artist did not do any other art for the NOTW expansion.

You can see here the original design for the card it went with:

It seems like for whatever reason, this art/card was replaced with this one:

So, here are some close ups of Cinder and the bare tree (associated with Cinder on the Trebon vase) from this artwork. It’s a bit strange that there is no snow or dead/bare tree by him in Dangerous Truth. Meanwhile, if we zoom in on the page from Lost Knowledge, we can see someone standing in front of the dead tree. White hair? blond hair? And he has something meaningful in front of him. Maybe a box?

Nina’s description from WMF: “His eyes were pure black. In the background there was a bare tree, and he was standing on a circle of blue with a few wavy lines on it. ‘That’s supposed to be water,’ And he’s supposed to be standing on it. There were drifts of snow around him too, and his hair was white.“

Next up, our old friend Haliax. He’s pretty much exactly as Nina described him, with one tiny addition: the mirror is broken!

Nina’s verbal description from NOTW: “‘There was one with no face, just a hood with nothing inside. There was a mirror by his feet and there was a bunch of moons over him. You know, full moon, half moon, sliver moon.'”

Wise Man’s Fear and what Nina painted: “the shape of a man in a great hooded robe. Inside the cowl of the robe was nothing but blackness. Over his head were three moons, a full moon, a half moon, and one that was just a crescent. Next to him were two candles. One was yellow with a bright orange flame. The other candle sat underneath his outstretched hand: it was grey with a black flame, and the space around it was smudged and darkened. ‘That’s supposed to be shadow, I think.'”

But the third image… oh the third image! This is clearly not the Amyr. However… it is a woman with a broken sword. Not only that, but she is wearing a stitched covering over her mouth. She also has pale hair like Cinder.

Nina’s description from NOTW: “There was a woman holding a broken sword.”

So if we go back to the grid from this post (which itself builds on a bunch of sources), we have someone who is pale and never speaks. White hair like Cinder. Mouth covered. Sounds like a match.

I have to say. this is certainly beginning to stack things in favor of the people who have theorized in the past that Dalcenti was a forerunner to the Adem.

Just for completeness, here is the enlarged view of the other half of the Forbidden Knowledge card. However I don’t think the 7-pointed star and flame really tell us anything new.

So what is left on the vase (according to the text) that is not covered by this card art?

• The Amyr
• Another man with a dog biting his leg
• There was a woman with no clothes on / “with some of her clothes off”
• A fire

So this got me thinking… Kvothe *assumes* that the vase is seven Chandrian and one Amyr, but he could be wrong. This vase could very well be telling the story of something that not all seven Chandrian were involved in. If you accept that the woman with the broken sword is Dalcenti, then we only know for sure about four of them: Haliax, Dalcenti, Cinder, and the Amyr. Given that Nina didn’t specify the fire was blue, even that fire may not be a Chandrian sign. At this point we have four other people who may or may not be Chandrian at all.

So just to see what it looks like, below is a grid if we do not assume any of the other 4 people from the vase must be Chandrian. Thanks to the Hebrew edition and a helpful translator, we now have genders for all of the Chandrian. (Capitalized words indicate phonetics may be important per this post.)

One reason I find this compelling is that at this point we have seen several official illustrations of all the Chandrian together, and none of them are naked. (Also, if one of the women had been naked, Kvothe probably would have mentioned it. Yes he was in shock, but he noted the beard and all.)

We know one naked person in particular who dates back to before the breaking of the word.
WMF pg 669: Felurian frowned. “no. I have said. this was before. there was but one sky. one moon. one world, and in it was murella. and the fruit. and myself, eating it, eyes shining in the dark.”

However, to be fair, the fae in general don’t seem to be much for clothes, as seen in the Faen pairs deck.

The above is the theory I prefer. However, if you do want to assume that the other 7 people were Chandrian, then you can also infer some either/or statements about the naked woman and the man being bit.

If you lean that way, I’d assume the naked woman is Usnea, since I doubt clothes hold up very well to her collapse curse.