The War Gods/WMG

The god with future plans for Brandark is Semkirk

• Of all the Gods of Light it makes the most sense. Aside from his musical aspirations one of his defining traits is his scholarship, being either a Genius Bruiser or a Badass Bookworm depending on your point of view and Semkirk is the god of wisdom and mental discipline which would seem to cover scholars as well. As Semkirk is a particularly fierce enemy of Carnadosa it would explain why her followers seem to have it in for him worse than Bahzell.
  • Following on this is the theory that Brandark is half-human and will become another White Wizard. Chesmira promised that Brandark's eventual destiny would be "worthy of a poet's soul." Wencit has often compared working magic to poetry.

The god with future plans for Brandark is Kothralas

• Brandark fell in love with the sea on just one short voyage with the halflings, despite not being able to swim, and expressed the desire to learn more about sailing and the sea. The reason he hasn't made any progress on his destiny is because Bazell's adventures have kept him a long way from the ocean and thus has prevented him from meeting his god.

The plan that the Voice shared with Kaeritha at the end of Wind Rider's Oath is not the real plan that the Dark has for the War Maids and Lorham.

It's not clear if the Voice was lying or if was being lied to, but there are several things about the plan she told Kaeritha that just don't add up in light of what we know about what the Dark has planned.

• Partha says, "Our plans always allowed for the possibility of us losing our foothold at Quaysar. Indeed, they depended on us losing it." The second sentence of that fits with what the Voice says, but not the first. The plan as outlined by the Voice pretty much requires that they be able to hang on to Quaysar until they are ready to let go of it and would be in serious trouble if they lost it early.
• The Dark is planning to kill Trisu; this is pretty certain, as we've heard the Dark agents discussing it amongst themselves. The Voice's plan, however, would be most effective if Trisu were alive. If he were dead, the matter of his guilt or innocence in the attack on Quaysar would be mostly academic. If he were alive, however, the matter becomes considerably more difficult. He becomes either the innocent victim of the Straw Feminists or a Complete Monster who murdered the representatives of a Goddess. No matter what the authorities do with him, they will set off a firestorm.
  • Actually, no. Trisu's death benefits the plan in two ways -- one, it allows for Trisu's much stupider and more bigoted cousin to be the person who commands the initial response against the war maids, as well as being the first investigator on the scene. But more importantly, it keeps Trisu from being available to testify to his own innocence while being examined by one of King Markhos' truth-detecting mages. Which would put a severe crimp in the plan.
• Varnaythus says that when the conflict between Lorham and the War Maids begins, the Baron "will have no choice but to take Trisu's side." To be fair, it's possible he is lying. If he's not, however, it is hard to square that with the Voice's plan under which the Baron (and every other person who doesn't know what's going on and has a sense of decency) will be with the War Maids. Varnaythus also said (to one of his fellow conspirators to whom he has no reason to lie) that the War Maids would be the ones to provide the provocation, again hard to square with the Voice's plan.
  • It's important to remember that Varnaythus is a master of the Xanatos Gambit and habitually sets his plans up so that he still comes out ahead if either one of a set of mutually exclusive alternatives happens.

Jolhanna, the War Maids' trade representative, is the assassin being sent after Trisu.

• We know that the assassin is a woman, already "in-position" to strike at Trisu but not actually in his household, and a follower of Sharna. This eliminates all of the known Dark agents among the Sothoii, so it must be someone either we don't know about or that we know about but don't know is Dark. Jolhanna fits the first two conditions and nothing we know about her eliminates the third.
• There were initially three major sources of conflict between the War Maid's and Trisu.
  • The location of the border. Trisu was 100 percent correct.
  • The question of the Voice at Quaysar. The War Maids believed Trisu was letting his hatred of them spill over into disrespect for the Voice of Lilinara, Trisu believed that the "Voice" was a crazy bitch and a conartist who didn't actually speak for Lilinara. Again, Trisu was 100 percent correct.
  • The issue of what's going on in the Lorham markets. Trisu's people say there is trouble between the local merchants and the War Maids because Jolhanna is going out of her way to pick quarrels with everyone. Given Trisu's track record so far, we can at least suspect that he's right again here. As the War Maids themselves have pointed out, "Jolhanna has no reason to be confrontational"--unless she's working for the Dark.
• The goal of the operation is to start a civil war between the War Maids and the more traditional Sothoii. Hard to see a better way of accomplishing this than having a Sothoii Lord assassinated by a War Maid official representative.

Wencit of Rum is really...

In the novella "Sword Brother," Wencit shows enough respect for the Dark Wizard he is fighting to let her see "beyond a glamour no Carnadosan had even suspected existed." Whatever she saw, she considered an explanation of why Wencit had been so effective in his war against the Dark. Ideas on what that glamour might have been concealing?

• Wencit is Semkirk.
• Wencit is Ottovar.
• "Wencit" is not a single wizard but actually a composite of all the White Wizards who gave their lives to hold back the Dark in Kontovar long enough for the evacuation to Norfressa.
• Well when she realized she looked at his sword implying that the sword was of particular importance to his true identity. That suggests a few possibilities:
  • Wencit is a Champion of Tomanāk. Tomanāk gifts his champions with magical swords and combining the powers of a champion (which include at least limited precognition) with his own wild magic would definitely make him a lot more effective, particularly if no one realized that he was a champion. It would also explain why he knows so much about what the gods are up to (he knows that Tomanāk is trying to recruit Behzell almost before Behzell does).
  • Wencit is a champion of one of the other gods, possibly Orr. While swords seem to be more Tomanāk's thing the rest of the argument for Wencit being a Champion still holds true and a champion of Orr in particular would seem to match his potential as the overall guardian of Norfressa.
  • Wencit's sword is the Sword of the South. Mentioned by Word of God as one of the major heirlooms of the House of Ottovar we have no clue what powers it has (if any) but it's entirely plausible that it could be granting Wencit additional powers beyond what he would naturally possess.
  • A time traveling son of Bazhell and Laena, whose come back from another future to try and make a branch of reality better. Hence why he knows when and where to be, and to place portal runes hundreds of years ahead of time. It's already suggested a human-hdrani hybrid is very dangerous if they have wizard blood. And Laena's family is old Sothari nobility, which are descended from the Sword Brothers, who included members of the Ottovar family. So Laena just so happens to be descended from the the legendary wizard founders of the old empire, and marries someone who if she has a wizard child with, will make a wild wizard. And Wencit has constant veils up, easily disguising his true appearance, and his ears.
• A data point to consider is that in the same short story Wencit is shown to have a vast precognition of events by seeing all possibilities simultaneously, but at the same time not knowing which vital choice of the several possible will be made until after it is made. What other entities do we know that have the same relationship with/perception of time? The gods.
  • Wencit's greatest feat of precognition is from War Maid's Choice, where he defeats Varnaythus by setting up a magical artifact in exactly the right place to penetrate Varnaythus' wards on his sanctum seven centuries in advance. While limited precognition has been shown by champions before, seeing the future this far in advance would be difficult even for a divine entity and would be essentially impossible for any mortal force.
• Two data points: Wencit is orders of magnitude more powerful than even a Champion of Tomanak... who are noted as being invested with the greatest amount of divine force a mortal can possibly tolerate hosting, short of outright possession of their body by a deity. Unless Weber chooses to cheat the established rules of his setting Wencit is at minimum a divine avatar.