Listen three times

I've received a lot of reading recommendations from users here since I first started with the book theories awhile back, and my reactions to a few of them were.. less than cordial. I was an asshole. Specifically the Mesopotamian stuff comes to mind, I shouldn't have ignored that. It was a good recommend. I'm sorry I was an asshole.

So I've got a little peace offering for the theorycrafters, bumped into it tonight while indulging my latest waves / frequencies / RQM obsession and uhhh, somehow (wink wink), I ended up reading up on the significance of the number three. Lots of fun history there, a whole lot on "The Power of Three" in the context of oral tradition, fairy tales, and the bible. Goes way back, neat stuff.

Anyway there's seven magics in KKC, but we've only seen five so far.

Alchemy. Sympathy. Naming. Sygaldry. Glamourie.

So here's the web, maybe someone can make a proper theory from it. The occurrence of something happening three times in KKC "makes it real", consistent pattern.

Whether it's a lie / cover story being 'made real'

Kote spoke crisply and cleanly. “I was a city-licensed escort from Ralien. Wounded while successfully defending a caravan. Arrow in right knee. Three years ago. Summer. A grateful Cealdish merchant gave me money to start aninn. His name is Deolan. We were traveling from Purvis. Mention it casually. Do you have it?”

“I hear you three times, Reshi,” Bast replied formally.

or a Name, spoken with three separate cadences

“That is my name. Vashet. The Hammer. The Clay. The Spinning Wheel.” She pronounced her name three separate ways, each with its own cadence. “I am that which shapes and sharpens, or destroys.”

Three times "makes it real", but it needs to be heard / seen. The trick needs an audience to work

I also told them about my trip to the Adem. They didn’t believe a piece of it at first, but then I showed them the sword and threw their best wrestler three times. They showed me a different sort of respect after that, and a rougher, more honest sort of friendship.

Think of it as... needing perception to become an active force.

In the end, seven stayed on the other side of the line. Tehlu asked them three times if they would cross, and three times they refused. After the third asking Tehlu sprang across the line and he struck each of them a great blow, driving them to the ground.

But it's not as easy as just hitting ctrl-f and searching for 'three' or 'three times'. You've gotta read between the lines sometimes to catch the three "separate cadences"

“Who keeps you safe from the Amyr? The singers? The Sithe?

And other times it's something delivered one time, but by three separate voices. Sometimes you are being told something three times, but all three times come at once.

The music came easily out of me, my lute like a second voice. I flicked my fingers and the lute made a third voice as well. I sang in the proud powerful tones of Savien Traliard, greatest of the Amyr. The audience moved under the music like grass against the wind. I sang as Sir Savien, and I felt the audience begin to love and fear me.

In the silence I felt it all unraveling, the audience waking with the dream unfinished, all my work ruined, wasted. And all the while burning inside me was the song, the song. The song!

Sometimes it's a strange resonance that leaves no space left over for any other sound

His eyes were dark, and his voice had a strange resonance to it. It wasn’t loud, but when he spoke, it seemed to fill the entire hall. It left no space left over for any other sound. “Where does the moon go,” Elodin asked grimly, “when it is no longer in our sky?”

and when the resonance stops, it doesn't just fade away, or dissipate.

The room seemed unnaturally quiet when he stopped speaking. As if his voice had left a hole in the world.

It leaves a hole. It unravels.

The voice came from a man who sat apart from the rest, wrapped in shadow at the edge of the fire. Though the sky was still bright with sunset and nothing stood between the fire and where he sat, shadow pooled around him like thick oil. The fire snapped and danced, lively and warm, tinged with blue, but no flicker of its light came close to him. The shadow gathered thicker around his head. I could catch a glimpse of a deep cowl like some priests wear, but underneath the shadows were so deep it was like looking down a well at midnight.