I think that’s the lock-crab — presumably you unlock it and the shell opens, revealing delicious crabmeat, and you don’t even have to use one of those fiddly little fork things to eat it. I agree with Teim that it seems to be Sera continuing her action from the first two panels.
All modern witches are pretty much on their own and have to muddle through the process of learning to handle and develop their power pretty much in isolation. The Crestfallens had a community, they could learn from and support each other, collaborate in ways most modern witches can’t. It is similar to how modern scientists can learn from each other and pool knowledge and thus accelerate the rate at which technology and understanding grows. If each person had to start from scratch each time they started studying the world around them, nothing would ever advance. Maybe what the modern witches need is the equivalent of the School of Athens.
Has there been any thought about a fancy “Complete Serenity Rose Hardcover Edition”, once this final volume is complete? I don’t know about anyone else, but I would buy that up in a heartbeat.
I speculate that the Crestfallen Coven is still around. All these conjured things have lasted this long because the witches that conjured them have lasted this long. In 1661, they moved to/founded Crestfallen, apparently in order to get away from interacting with civilization. In 1857, there was a “spectacular light show in the sky seen as far south as San Francisco” and they were never seen again. I think of them as being somewhere between Russian River and Mendocino California – naturally beautiful but a darned inhospitable coast for navigation and a difficult place to put any but the most winding, narrow, and twisty of roads.
If their desire to get away from interacting with civilization remained intact, as witches they had lots of options. They could shapeshift into tiny forms and put Crestfallen II inside a tree stump out in Inconsolable Wood. They could put it in a cavern somewhere near the peak of Kilimanjaro or Everest or in Antarctica or one of those places where climbers can’t even live without oxygen and people freeze to death in minutes if not protected. I see a lot of sea life motifs in their art and architecture in Crestfallen I; they could have built Crestfallen II out on the ocean floor. They could still be in Crestfallen itself, in some kind of folded-space inaccessible to non-witches or in hidden underground construction. They could shapeshift into convincing stray cats or goblins or comics-nerds or whatever – you know, the sort of lower lifeforms that nobody pays attention to – and wander around keeping an eye on things without anybody being the wiser.
As witches, I gather they don’t reproduce themselves, but “Witching families” sort of implies the existence of husbands, wives, siblings, nieces, nephews, etc. If they still have non-witch families that they want to keep with them, then that’s really the only limitation on where they could be. And, really, it’s not much of a limitation given their ability to modify local environments in harsh places so that non-witches could be safe there. And possibly, though not very likely, the willingness of families to accept a very strange environment or a fairly drastic shapeshift in order to stay together.
And some of them may have modern “aliases” not known to be the same people as the Crestfallen Coven. Speculation has already been raised about Valentine being Charles-Without-End. Nobody knows where Valentine lives; I suppose it could be because he lives in the super-secret location of Crestfallen II. There could be others.
At the end of book 1, Vicious says she’s met all the other witches in the world — excluding Serenity, 52 of them. At the end of book 2, Valentine (strongly hinted to be Charles-without-End) says the witch population is constant at 57.
52 + V + Sera
+ Valentine/CWE (assuming Vicious hasn’t met him — has she?)
= at least two more witches unaccounted for. Assuming Valentine is correct, although who knows where he’s getting his information from or how reliable that info is.
(Did Vicious meet Stiletta? I’m thinking not. So she may be one of the two uncounted, which leaves only one other adult mystery-witch — still assuming that Vicious was not counting Valentine and that Valentine is correct about the total.)
Totally willing to buy your suggestion that this might be the Crestfallen Coven, still out there somewhere, either unreachable or just very well hidden from human society. But this coven of 2-3 (if CWE is still part of it, which I would guess he is) is very diminished from its earlier days; most of the witches who started the coven must have died, their witching powers passed on to a newborn in some other part of the world. Perhaps the persistence of the casting is tied to the survival of the coven rather than the survival of the individual caster? Interesting……
If Charles-without-End has been watching his coven die around him for the past three-hundred-odd years, knowing that when the last member dies — or perhaps the second-to-last, if the magic is based on group dynamics somehow — all their castings will disintegrate too, it would go some way to explaining his fervor to recruit Serenity to join him: young, fresh blood…
Thanks for bringing this up. I’m making my own head spin with assumptions and suppositions 😀
Oh. I just connected something in the archive. The original Crestfallen Coven may still exist, but it is NOT in the town of Crestfallen.
The crow clock which stopped when the witches left in 1857, started again on or very close to the same day that more than one witch (in the current era, Vicious and Sera) were in residence again. The implication, if this clock only runs when there is witchy “community” around, is that the Crestfallen Coven themselves, if they still exist, have been elsewhere.
Hmm, but now that the clock is running again, it may attract their attention…
Not trying to comment-stalk you, but about the clock —
At the very end of book two the news reports that the clock started ticking again “last Tuesday at 12:45 pm.” Not entirely easy to parse when that is in the story (given Sera’s bizarre sleeping schedule) but I think that it’s when Sera tells Valentine to “get out of my town.” Claiming ownership, or official residence, rather than living there uncomfortably as she had been doing. Certainly Stiletta had been active in the area for quite a while before the clock started up again, and Valentine has been somewhere nearby at least intermittently, so I don’t think it has to do just with proximity of more than one witch. Granted, “community” might be a more complicated concept than just “lives in the area”, but Vicious doesn’t show up until four days after the battle at the end of book 2, so I’m not convinced that her arrival is the catalyst for the clock’s reawakening.
The clock is shown to be damaged in the battle — presumably someone fixed it? Perhaps Sera intentionally set it running again, & that detail was just left out of the press report? I don’t know, just a thought.
oh boy, whose hand is on that key, and is that 5 fingered object trying to get out or is it just part of the menu.can we wait till next week………………
Sera’s
I think that’s the lock-crab — presumably you unlock it and the shell opens, revealing delicious crabmeat, and you don’t even have to use one of those fiddly little fork things to eat it. I agree with Teim that it seems to be Sera continuing her action from the first two panels.
All modern witches are pretty much on their own and have to muddle through the process of learning to handle and develop their power pretty much in isolation. The Crestfallens had a community, they could learn from and support each other, collaborate in ways most modern witches can’t. It is similar to how modern scientists can learn from each other and pool knowledge and thus accelerate the rate at which technology and understanding grows. If each person had to start from scratch each time they started studying the world around them, nothing would ever advance. Maybe what the modern witches need is the equivalent of the School of Athens.
Has there been any thought about a fancy “Complete Serenity Rose Hardcover Edition”, once this final volume is complete? I don’t know about anyone else, but I would buy that up in a heartbeat.
I speculate that the Crestfallen Coven is still around. All these conjured things have lasted this long because the witches that conjured them have lasted this long. In 1661, they moved to/founded Crestfallen, apparently in order to get away from interacting with civilization. In 1857, there was a “spectacular light show in the sky seen as far south as San Francisco” and they were never seen again. I think of them as being somewhere between Russian River and Mendocino California – naturally beautiful but a darned inhospitable coast for navigation and a difficult place to put any but the most winding, narrow, and twisty of roads.
If their desire to get away from interacting with civilization remained intact, as witches they had lots of options. They could shapeshift into tiny forms and put Crestfallen II inside a tree stump out in Inconsolable Wood. They could put it in a cavern somewhere near the peak of Kilimanjaro or Everest or in Antarctica or one of those places where climbers can’t even live without oxygen and people freeze to death in minutes if not protected. I see a lot of sea life motifs in their art and architecture in Crestfallen I; they could have built Crestfallen II out on the ocean floor. They could still be in Crestfallen itself, in some kind of folded-space inaccessible to non-witches or in hidden underground construction. They could shapeshift into convincing stray cats or goblins or comics-nerds or whatever – you know, the sort of lower lifeforms that nobody pays attention to – and wander around keeping an eye on things without anybody being the wiser.
As witches, I gather they don’t reproduce themselves, but “Witching families” sort of implies the existence of husbands, wives, siblings, nieces, nephews, etc. If they still have non-witch families that they want to keep with them, then that’s really the only limitation on where they could be. And, really, it’s not much of a limitation given their ability to modify local environments in harsh places so that non-witches could be safe there. And possibly, though not very likely, the willingness of families to accept a very strange environment or a fairly drastic shapeshift in order to stay together.
And some of them may have modern “aliases” not known to be the same people as the Crestfallen Coven. Speculation has already been raised about Valentine being Charles-Without-End. Nobody knows where Valentine lives; I suppose it could be because he lives in the super-secret location of Crestfallen II. There could be others.
Ray
At the end of book 1, Vicious says she’s met all the other witches in the world — excluding Serenity, 52 of them. At the end of book 2, Valentine (strongly hinted to be Charles-without-End) says the witch population is constant at 57.
52 + V + Sera
+ Valentine/CWE (assuming Vicious hasn’t met him — has she?)
= at least two more witches unaccounted for. Assuming Valentine is correct, although who knows where he’s getting his information from or how reliable that info is.
(Did Vicious meet Stiletta? I’m thinking not. So she may be one of the two uncounted, which leaves only one other adult mystery-witch — still assuming that Vicious was not counting Valentine and that Valentine is correct about the total.)
Totally willing to buy your suggestion that this might be the Crestfallen Coven, still out there somewhere, either unreachable or just very well hidden from human society. But this coven of 2-3 (if CWE is still part of it, which I would guess he is) is very diminished from its earlier days; most of the witches who started the coven must have died, their witching powers passed on to a newborn in some other part of the world. Perhaps the persistence of the casting is tied to the survival of the coven rather than the survival of the individual caster? Interesting……
If Charles-without-End has been watching his coven die around him for the past three-hundred-odd years, knowing that when the last member dies — or perhaps the second-to-last, if the magic is based on group dynamics somehow — all their castings will disintegrate too, it would go some way to explaining his fervor to recruit Serenity to join him: young, fresh blood…
Thanks for bringing this up. I’m making my own head spin with assumptions and suppositions 😀
Oh. I just connected something in the archive. The original Crestfallen Coven may still exist, but it is NOT in the town of Crestfallen.
The crow clock which stopped when the witches left in 1857, started again on or very close to the same day that more than one witch (in the current era, Vicious and Sera) were in residence again. The implication, if this clock only runs when there is witchy “community” around, is that the Crestfallen Coven themselves, if they still exist, have been elsewhere.
Hmm, but now that the clock is running again, it may attract their attention…
Ray
Not trying to comment-stalk you, but about the clock —
At the very end of book two the news reports that the clock started ticking again “last Tuesday at 12:45 pm.” Not entirely easy to parse when that is in the story (given Sera’s bizarre sleeping schedule) but I think that it’s when Sera tells Valentine to “get out of my town.” Claiming ownership, or official residence, rather than living there uncomfortably as she had been doing. Certainly Stiletta had been active in the area for quite a while before the clock started up again, and Valentine has been somewhere nearby at least intermittently, so I don’t think it has to do just with proximity of more than one witch. Granted, “community” might be a more complicated concept than just “lives in the area”, but Vicious doesn’t show up until four days after the battle at the end of book 2, so I’m not convinced that her arrival is the catalyst for the clock’s reawakening.
The clock is shown to be damaged in the battle — presumably someone fixed it? Perhaps Sera intentionally set it running again, & that detail was just left out of the press report? I don’t know, just a thought.