BoM/TWS Message Forum

>> I've never really seen much of Kenandandra in his personality if I'm being honest.

In terms of real-world chronology, Will first became a Stellae in the branch that followed on "Change of Address" . I think that "Joe Tells the Truth"  was the first time he was linked to Sulva, but I steered clear of giving him a second ousiarch because none of the others fit him nearly as well. He's not particularly smart (Arbol); or fleet of foot, mind or tongue (Viritrilbia); or creative (Perelandra); or combative (Malacandra); or contemplative (Lurga). He has no leadership qualities (Glundandra), and it's true he doesn't show much of a proclivity for engineering (Kenandandra). For awhile I flirted with making him a Catilindrian, for he does tend to be rather random, but that is also a Sulvan trait, and he's not random or destructive enough to be both Sulvan and Catilindrian. That left Eldibria for awhile as the unchosen default, but Eldibria is itself the least defined of the planets, and that felt like a cop out.

So for the longest time I simply let him be undefined, and let the Stellae be puzzled about what his other ousiarch might be. Eventually, I decided to make it that he had that ousiarch "amputated" when he passed through the book in "Change of Address," though that introduced another mystery that is still unanswered: Why was it amputated?

IIRC (which maybe I don't), I finally settled on Kenandandra as the ousiarch in order to solve another and unrelated puzzle.

In one of the earliest-composed chapters, I had Will copy out a sigil when executing the first spell. That was back when I thought the magic resided in the ingredients. Eventually it dawned on me that if that was true, it would be possible, even despite the book's best efforts to interfere, to copy the book's recipes, and it would cease to be a specially important and sinister object. So I made the sigils the source of the magic. But that was just as bad: Why couldn't you copy the sigils? And if the book didn't like people copying its ingredients and instructions, why did it let Will copy the sigils, which is the real magic?

Eventually, the separate puzzles—why can he copy sigils, and what is his other ousiarch—sort of oozed together and solved each other in my imagination. Will could copy sigils when no one else could because he was special. Okay, right, he was special because he was a Stellae. So was it because of what kind of Stellae he was? His being a Sulva didn't seem relevant. The only one that seemed relevant was Kenandandra, the engineering ousiarch. So I decided that's what explained it, and made him a Kenandandran. The combination of Kenandandran skill and Sulvan stealth let him unwittingly slip past the book's defenses. **

As for his not seeming like a Kenandandran: Well, if you look at his classes and interests, he isn't taking anything that would reveal the proclivity. The closest he comes is in some off-hand comments about his taking apart his bicycle and his constructing a potato gun when he was younger. But after I made him a Kenandandran, I kept it in mind, and there are branches in TWS where his nature manifests as a skill at computer science when he becomes a university student. Also, there are certain spots in BoM, as when he's studying or has studied with Blackwell, where he shows special skill at engineering, particularly with sigils. Even his first meeting with Blackwell, in "The Magician's House" , when he accidentally fashions a fetish doll of the professor, can be retconned as Kenandandra coming thru.

If you want an in-universe explanation of why Kenandandra doesn't manifest, you could try rationalizing it as the action of Sulva: It puts Kenandandra mostly in eclipse.

** Although recently I've begun forming a different hypothesis of what's behind the Libra's willingness to let him copy its sigils.