The Fifth Season Trivia Quiz

Answer: Kinetic energy

At some point in time, a man with the power to shift the land and split the planet apart breaks the Stillness, splitting the continent's largest city, Yumenes, in two.

Elsewhere, in the city of Tirimo, a woman by the name of Essun finds her son, Uche, dead in her home-- her husband, it seems, has killed the boy and absconded with their daughter, Nassun, fleeing. Essun is taken in by a local doctor to recuperate from her grief but she knows why her son was killed; Uche, like her, is an orogene, a person who can control kinetic and thermal energies to create seismic events. While many use this for good, they are regulated by guardians. Those who aren't remain hidden, and she passed on this secret gift (or curse) to her only boy.

Near Tirimo, a large, smoothed stone-- a chalcedony geode-- cracks open and a boy is formed from it.

And the world begins to end for the last time.

Answer: White skin

As Essun prepares to leave Tirimo, she visits the leader of the city, and explains her plan to depart, knowing that her husband, Jija, has killed Uche and kidnapped Nassun. Rask, also discovering her orogene secret, takes her to city gate and grants her access to depart but his own forces attempt to seize the opportunity to strike her down, firing a crossbow bolt with the intent to kill. The action sets Essun off and she uses her powers to level a portion of the city and, to their lack of knowledge, destroy their groundwater supplies. She escapes out into the wilds and spends her first night outside of Tirimo sleeping in the darkness.

It's shortly after when Essun meets a young boy named Hoa who, when she first encounters him, is covered in dirt. It isn't until he washes in a pond that he reveals his white skin and hair (to match his ice-white eyes). She believes he may have some form of albinism since he clearly wouldn't be part Sanzed otherwise. They proceed to travel together if only because he can sense where Nassun is, quite a while away on horseback. And so they set out.

Answer: Guardian

A young orogene by the name of Damaya, who senses tremors, is located by who she initially believes to be a child buyer but is actually a Guardian sent from the Fulcrum in Yumenes. He is easily able to take her away from her home (and away from her parents) for the lengthy journey, insisting she can be used to help maintain the Stillness, training her to hone her powers for good. Damaya and her Guardian, Schaffa, ride off to Brevard en route to Yumenes, and it's on this ride that she claims she may be able to control her own power without the need for Schaffa or any Guardian whatsoever.

In an effort to quell such ideas, Schaffa teaches her a lesson with a frightening story about power, control, and fear while breaking her hand, pushing her to the brink to show what she can really do and reeling her back to drive his point home.

Answer: Alabaster

Tasked with heading to Allia to attend to their coral reefs, Syenite, a four-ring orogene from Yumenes, is paired with a ten-ring orogene to accomplish the goal and, additionally, become pregnant with his child. The two travel with one another despite their initial distaste though it becomes quickly clear that Alabaster is occupied through the trip, quelling microtremors with his abilities to alleviate stress on outlying nodes in the orogene network. When Syenite claims to have never been to a node, he insist that they visit one-- a two day trip away.

And that's where a coincidence occurs. That evening, Alabaster exerts his (and Syenite's power) to stop a massive, unnatural eruption beneath the town of Mehiby. They theorize that it could only have been done by a node maintainer and, the next morning, they race onward to uncover the truth. They arrive two days later, in record time, to find a silent compound, the guards dead inside. In a seat in the center of the node is a sedated, feral orogene child, surgically affected to do only his base job, quelling tremors for the greater good of the nation. There's nothing to do but forget what they saw.

Answer: An obelisk

Syenite and Alabaster arrive in Allia a week later, staying at a local inn and receiving a relatively inhospitable welcome. Alabaster, it seems, is poisoned in the night and Syenite must proceed with business while he recovers in their lodgings. She speaks to Asael, their city's contact, alone, and it leads to a bit of a diplomatic strife before she's met and welcomed by the city's lieutenant governor and ushered to the harbour. It's there that Syenite discovers that Allia's problem isn't coral in the water, but what's underneath it. It's with great effort that she uses here orogeny to raise the substance from the sea-- an obelisk, deep in the water...and it seems like someone is inside it.

Essun continues her travels with Hoa and when the two need to stop for water, they return to an earlier pumphouse to collect it. Their arrival is met by a woman already using it and she later reveals her name to be Tonkee. But before she gives them any real information, the trio are attacked by a kirkhusa. The situation only grows more complicated when Hoa turns it to crystal upon being attacked.

Answer: Pirates

A telegram is sent to Allia suggesting that she and Alabaster remain there and while she and Alabaster believe it to be a weird choice, politically at least, they stay. The obelisk that Syen removed from the water seems to have an odd pull to her and, from its spot out in the lake, seems to pulse, but only for them. They fear that Guardians may be listening for them, and their suspicions are quickly made true when one appears and attacks them both, snuffing out their powers. It seems that the Guardian is able to get the upper hand, but only until Syen reaches out and connects with the Obelisk, shattering the city.

Syenite awakens a short time after to discover that she and Alabaster survived the attack, but they'd been removed from Allia by a Stone Eater Alabaster had named Antimony. The Guardians, they realize, were there to stop them, but they'd been placed into the care of an offshore community of pirates known as Meov. The situation effectively trapped them, but with Allia destroyed, the Fulcrum could assume they'd died in the event. Alabaster is thrilled by this development; Syenite is not, sensing her oncoming restlessness. Nonetheless, they remain there in Meov, both finding peace and happiness in a relationship with Innon, the captain of a Meov ship known as the Clalsu, and a short time into their lives there, Syen becomes pregnant.

Answer: Underground

Essun, Tonkee, and Hoa continue onward together, heading in the direction Hoa believes will lead them to Nassun, but what they find is that cities and nodes have been falling and people have been displaced en masse. They dodge several locations they know people have been gathering, but they don't seem to get any closer to finding what they're looking for. Two months into this journey, they arrive at the community of Castrima to find a croup of twenty-two orogenes and many others and they're encouraged to join. What they find there is a vast underground ruin built into a geode down within the town mines, and the mechanisms that allow it to run seem to run on orogeny.

They settle in, but soon realize that they may be forced into staying.

Answer: A socket

Damaya continues her life at the Fulcrum exploring unused wings of the buildings, and it's during this time in her training that she meets a young student who slips in unnoticed by others. Named Binof, this girl claims to be from outside, but is there on a mission to determine what room is hidden off the plans of the Fulcrum's main building, an apparent empty space in the architecture. Curious, Damaya helps her locate the room, sneaking into a secret passage they locate in a Guardian's office, and they find an ornate, faceted, needled pit in the cavern inside.

The two are caught and found by a Guardian, Timay, and Binof reveals herself to be a of the Leader caste, managing to leave scot-free, but Damaya is kept back to discuss what she saw.

It leads to a situation in which Schaffa must arrive and subdue his fellow Guardian, and he is forced to kill her in front of his charge. Schaffa barely explains the situation before comforting Damaya and insisting that she take her First Ring Test. Before she commences, she chooses a new name for herself-- Syenite.

Answer: Seals a volcano

Syenite has her baby in Meov, naming it Corundum, and two years pass before her restlessness gets the better of her. She forces Innon to bring her along on one of the Clalsu's raids, and together they sink trade ships and pillage the contents. Syen, rarely proving her mettle as an orogene, sinks both ships to protect her people. Because of this, she asks Innon to take her along to Allia to see what occurred there for the first time. When they arrive, all they find is the wreckage; in the city's place is an active volcano, and everyone who was there either fled or died. To make things right, Syen uses her powers to seal the volcano and its vents deep beneath the Earth, and as they depart, she almost thinks she sees a figure on the shore, dressed in burgundy and watching them leave.

Despite life continuing as normal for a short time in Meov, the Guardians soon arrive with their ships. Although Alabaster starts to mount a defense from the top of the island, Syenite watches as he's claimed by the Stone Eaters and pulled into the mountain. She returns to the Clalsu and, with Innon, charges out of the harbour to mount an attack, but the Guardians get the upper hand. Innon is killed by a Guardian and Syenite is found by Schaffa in the hold of the ship. Fearing the future that lay ahead for herself and her son, she uses her powers to pull the amethyst Obelisk towards the ship.

Meov is destroyed in the events that occur on this day, and while Syenite is pulled from the waters on the shore nearby, Corundum is killed. She wanders the lands for two years before arriving in Tirimo. And there she stays for ten years before her new son is killed and her daughter is taken away.

Answer: Binof

In Castrima, realizing how coincidental and unsafe her situation is, Essun reveals to Tonkee that she is aware that she is actually Binof, even though they hadn't crossed paths since that day in the Fulcrum. Tonkee, as it seems, has been following her for thirty years, sometimes losing her in the observation, but she needed her because what they discovered that day was the socket where the Obelisks were made. When she investigated further, she found that all of the Obelisks in the sky were moving in patterns, and those patterns were leading directly to Tirimo over the past several years.

To add to the coincidence, Essun finds Lerna amongst the people in Castrima, having fled from Tirimo after her attack on the city. They speak to one another before Essun is given the news: someone has arrived to speak to her, and they claim to have been responsible for the destruction of Yumenes, plunging the world into its Fifth Season.

Sure enough, Essun finds Alabaster, severely injured and being watched by Antimony, in Castrima. He admits the truth: he destroyed Yumenes and released the Node Protectors to damage the planet and he did it on purpose. He asks her if she's able to hone her powers to control the obelisks and urges her to help him do yet more damage before posing one final question-- Has she ever heard of something called a moon?