snare for Ben if they had tried." Maybe it's just K. using the idea of marriage and settling down with someone who also shares a love of ale as a good "trap." But what if it actually is a trap? What if someone set up Ben so he'd leave the troupe or what if Ben himself knew something was going to happen and chose to leave beforehand? For that matter, and maybe I'm WAY off-base, but what if Master Ash isn't Bredon, but Ben? And what if Master Ash is actually Selitos, who, maybe like Lanre/Haliax, can't die? I'm sorry if this has been mentioned before, but I was looking back through NotW and I'm starting to think the greystones, what Ben calls "waystones" actually lead the way to Myr Tariniel. Arliden recites a poem about them when Kvothe asks him why the Edema Ruh always stop and camp by them, but he can't recall the last line: "Greystone leads to something something 'ell." Myr Tariniel has the right number of syllables and definitely rhymes with 'ell... About sympathy in the frame - the shattering bottle seems to be sympathy all right (though apparently not consciously done) but I don't think Chronicler's attack on Bast was - he used the name of Iron. About Bast maybe being K's father, my first reaction was "no way!" but then I thought, more than one person has described Kvothe as "a little fae around the edges" (or something similar) so now I'm wondering....