#cr speculation

Liam quoted Shakespeare’s King Lear for the Schemers’ art, which is fitting for Halandil

(Act 1, Scene 1, Line 280)

Time will reveal deceit essentially.

Bolaire saying to Hal the first opportunity he gets, three times like a fucking fairytale, "I'll be gone in the morning."

Bolaire completely dropping the Curator's accent and personality, because the role is at an end.

Bolaire saying twice that he had been mistaken in his dream about having a family, once for the Panto and maybe once for Hal and the Schemers.

Bolaire giving Misha the mental theatre experience he had been planning for Hal, with all his architecture books, paper models and talks with Demodus, because he is out of time and gone in the morning, and Misha *is* part of Hal's family, so it was kind of like giving the gift to Hal by proxy, and also maybe Misha would tell him the story of it.

Realising that Bolaire was so angry (frightened?) about Thimble leaving town way back when because he was like a dog left chained up in the backyard when everyone else had moved out, there was no one there to let him go.

Realising that Bolaire's relationship with Hal might have been the first equal relationship he'd had, right up until Thjazi took hold of Bolaire and made Hal part of his line of ownership.

Hal's immediate reaction to seeing Bolaire and Misha - full bardic voice, "this is Not A Thing" - demonstrating that despite everything he still doesn't really trust Bolaire, how it felt like a test imposed not by Bolaire but by the narrative and Hal *failed* and maybe that's when Bolaire knew he didn't have a family here either.

Hal watching how all these other people reacted to learning what Bolaire is for the first time, realising that Tyranny had known Bolaire for less than a day total but still put on the mask and was willing to vouch for him, how Mara's reaction to the revelation of Bolaire's identity was an apology and a promise that she'll protect him, how Azune immediately agreed when Bolaire asked if he would wear him to his apartment (and the pain on Hal's face when that offer wasn't made to him), how Misha talked about his lovely conversation with Bolaire.

Bolaire looking at Mara and recognising parts of himself, especially when she said that she was a soldier, and *then* seeing her keep pushing back loudly and assertively when people around her tried to attribute all of Thjazi's sins to her.

Thjazi never looked at Bolaire because he didn't *want* to see him as a person, because if he did then what he was doing was unconscionable.

Wait

The realm of death is overflowing with souls that can’t go anywhere since the gods died and all of their celestials, psychopomps included, went feral.

Occtis is the eighth son, way down in the succession line. No innate sorcerous magic. Not super important… But he’s been able to make Pin.

And they’re opening him up to put the elven death-rock inside of him that was supposed to help elves skip the underworld and move on to the afterlife.

the sundered houses think of sorcery in terms of bloodlines/direct familial heritage, but to me azune's sorcery is less of a bloodline in the human nobility sense and more like "people" as in a culture. brennan is very particular to says "azune's people" not his family. the people who spoke navika'an, like the dragon of vrosh.

while i would say there's a chance there was also a house that rose to nobility in the obridimian empire associated with dragonkind (as is the case with einfasen and giants and royce and the fae and cormoray and elementals), i don't necessarily think there's a direct line to azune from that specific family, if they existed.

the word azune used, inxolotle, is pulled/modified from nahuatl. nahuatl is an indigenous language family from mexico pre-spanish conquest that is still spoken today though populations using it are in decline. languages that risk being forgotten. this is a very thoughtful thing for luis to do, and it absolutely hints at what the people azune came from represent within this narrative where conquerors from far away broke the world.

the people who spoke navika'an, descended from dragons who have been driven into hiding or killed (likely by the shapers), were probably an indigenous mortal race of aramán. they could have been a tribe (or multiple tribes, more likely, as unique as individual dragons that may have been part of their communities) that existed in aramán long before the shapers and before the empire coalesced humans into a society based around the feudal system the sundered houses operate on and cultures that diverge slightly but are mostly all compatible with each other. (the way a royce lives is not fundamentally different from an einfasen)

azune's experience, where only scattered remnants of their people still exist and they don't quite understand the depth of their heritage because it has been suppressed and driven out of existence by colonizers interested in homogenizing the people they've claimed, is definitely deeply tied into the world being built by this campaign. it feels like it's in conversation with the orcish experience and the druidic experience and the echoes of the real world both of these ideas carried.

Olgud opened the Coffin of Olbalad

Bolaire has Mask of Many Faces

Termina/Cormoray could be anywhere and look like anyone

It sure looks like maybe Thjazi was planning to go on a quest to the afterlife. He needed the coffin to open the door, and the Stone of Nightsong to help him navigate.