KKC Theory Wiki

Auri Fixing the Leaking Pipe Is Why the Bone-Tar Containers Froze and Cracked

plausible connection · popularity 69 · 1 source thread

Auri repairing a leaking cooling pipe in the Underthing causes the bone-tar containers to over-cool and crack.

About: Auri

Also involves: The Underthing, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, The Fishery, Master Kilvin, Fela

The theory§

This theory links Auri's repair of a leaking black-iron pipe in The Slow Regard of Silent Things to the bone-tar accident in the Fishery. In Slow Regard, Auri senses something amiss in the Underthing, traces a broken black-iron pipe, and worries that with its water shut off something vital above is starved, naming Crucible and 'some experiment left to calmly calcinate' undergoing 'unintended exothermic full cascade.' The reasoning treats the pipe like Kilvin's iceless device: water running through it carries heat away from the sealed bone-tar containers. While the pipe leaked, cooling was insufficient; once Auri seals it, the pipe draws away too much heat, chilling a metal canister until it shatters like glass rather than denting, the very failure that nearly swallows Fela in the Fishery. This frames Auri's panic and the looming Black Door as her sensing the disaster she set in motion. The chief objection is timing: Slow Regard spans six days at the start of The Wise Man's Fear, whereas the bone-tar incident occurs earlier, in The Name of the Wind.

Evidence§

  • In Slow Regard Auri gets a sense that something is wrong in the Underthing, and she finds this leaking pipe.
    OP's premise: Auri senses trouble and discovers the leaking pipe. — u/Sketheteretaavan
  • with the water to this piece of pipe turned off entire, there was every chance that something vital up above was all alack.
    Sealing the pipe starves something above of water it relied on. — u/Sketheteretaavan
  • What if it led to Crucible, and some experiment left to calmly calcinate was instead undergoing unintended exothermic full cascade?
    OP-quoted book text naming the experiment overheating into a cascade. — u/Sketheteretaavan
  • I'm thinking it's the same as the iceless, just basic heat transfer. Water runs through the pipe, transferring heat away from the containers where the bone-tar is held.
    Core mechanism: pipe cools the bone-tar containers like Kilvin's iceless. — u/Sketheteretaavan
  • the pipe was leaking when Kilvin set it up, so after Auri fixes the leak, now it transfers *too much* heat away from the containers, so eventually they get too cold and they crack.
    The fix over-cools the containers, causing them to crack. — u/Sketheteretaavan
  • Which is why Auri has a panic attack even though she can't find anything wrong after she fixed it. … she could *feel* that it would lead to the bone-tar breaking.
    Explains Auri's panic and Black Door as sensing the disaster she caused. — u/Sketheteretaavan
  • she uses the term exothermic cascade, which is what Kilvin calls the reaction (IIRC) … So shows she has experience either with Kilvin or artificing in general.
    Supporting refinement: Auri's vocabulary implies artificing knowledge. — u/Gatechap
  • I have trouble reconciling the timing. I believe SROST takes place across the first few chapters of WMF, and the bone tar incident is prior to that
    CounterMain counter: timing fails, since the bone-tar incident predates Slow Regard. — u/czechancestry

Book refs: SRoST, NOTW

Tier reasoning§

plausible confirmed: strong textual cross-reference, timeline caveat noted

Contributors§

Source threads§