Great dragons and their ilk have yet to accept that the world moves faster than them, and it has no regard for their plans. They may think long-term, but humans are unpredictable and a bit crazy. We’ve also been playing this game for millennia without end.
I think, out of all the A. Nonymous posts (so far), that is the most revealing quote. So much so, that even though this is in the Secret History section, I'm still going to throw a spoiler cloak around the rest of my thoughts...
The sheer level of "let's bring dragons down a notch" in nearly every post about dragons by this person heavily points towards an immortal elf. But specifically for the quote above, the use of "We've also" allows for the "we" being referenced to sever itself from the "humans" in the previous sentence. If the author had said "And we've" or "Who have" then it would clearly be a reference to the "humans." But with "We've also," "also" designates another set, another group; not humans and not dragons. And it points to "this game"...the game is "long-term" thinking. Who else thinks long-term like dragons...the immortal elves. "We, Immortal Elves, also play the game of long-term thinking for thousands of years." The use of the phrase "millennia without end" is, almost without a doubt---or with 95% certainty, a reference to the novel Worlds Without End...about immortal elves in general and Aina & Harlequin in particular. That quote is the core to my argument that it's Harlequin...below are how the other quotes fit with that hypothesis.
Aina's turned up dead. And Harlequin's always been a bit more outspoken than the rest of the IEs.
Next, with the poster being anonymous and for the past couple of years Anonymous using the Guy Fawkes mask, there's a Harlequin-esq image association there.
While the question;
Computers are optical now, right? How can they have a magnetic field?
Made me think of Leonardo, but if taken from the perspective of 2070s JackPoint posters it's quite sarcastic, which is right up Harlequin's posting MO.
Harlequin's always had an interest in Azt-lan/technology, especially since Mr. Darke was hanging out with them back in the day. And the War! quote (pg 83) about drug dealers and prostitutes fits in with his man-of-the-streets/shadows - not afraid to hang out at the bottom rung - style.
I've played around with the numbers in the "dose: numbers" quote and at this point, I think it's supposed to be gibberish, a kind of crazy response to Plan 9's rantings. Things I've tried; Can't be lat/long (terrestrial or astronomical), as it should only be two sets of 3 numbers (6 total) but there's 9 and also 250 and 905 rule that out. 905 also rules out them being atomic weights. 905 also rules out it there being some IP address hidden in there, like an Easter Egg website to check out. With 9 numbers they could correspond to the 9 letters in Harlequin's name, so I assumed each number counted up the English Alphabet and every time it reaches Z, then start back at the beginning, (so 27 = A, 28 = B, and so on). But that results in P, J, A, S, N, N, U, F, T and I thought of shifting the letters by some number X to try to match them up, but the double N's means there would always be two letters the same, which Harlequin doesn't have and his other common names, Har'lea'quinn, Caimbuel, or Quentin 'Quinn' Harlech have more or less than 9 letters. I tried just using the name of the language for each number; English, English, Spanish, Spanish, Italian, Italian, Norwegian, Norwegian, Italian, (Russian end) first letter of each gives EESSIINNI (R). Killing off the double's and you get (cutely) ESINI(R) which could mean E-sinner...but that's a stretch. The numbers themselves add up to 1473 and AD or BC doesn't ring any bells (other than Hatshepsut's rule starting in the BC, and Copernicus born in the AD...there may be something in Worlds Without End, but I don't think so as the middle ages portions of the book are mostly around Queen Elizabeth's era in the mid-to-late 1500s). None of the numbers share a common denominator. Multiplying them gives 3,598,630,416,000,000 which if you divide by seconds/min, minutes/hr, hours/day, and days/year gives 114,111,821.92. dividing that by years/magic cycle gives 22,265.72...again, not seeing anything which just leads me to think the poster is playing a joke on Plan 9's conspiracy-pattern mind, which I can see Harlequin doing. But, of course, I could be missing something.
The "Horizon is good for the soul" could be serious, but based off all other comments, the anti-media stuff, etc., it sounds sarcastic in that light.
The near insider knowledge on SK-Prime operatives and Dunk's watchers point to deep connections and insights...something Harlequin definitely has, especially if one wonders what he's been doing with his time since Crash 2.0.
Harlequin would also be very interested in the Horizon - Tír Tairngire - Hestaby dealings (as would other IEs). But again, the level of sarcasm and general attitude in the posts, leads one away from the "refined and snooty" attitude of most of the other IEs.
The Artifacts Unbound "Thirty-two" ... don't have the book yet, so I can comment yet as I don't know what it's in reply to.
So that's my argument for it being Harlequin using the quotes alone. Outside the quotes, in the real world, it's been a long time since Harlequin's shown himself to the shadow-public (though he's been mentioned in some fiction pieces, notably
Dusk's intro) and given there are rumors and hints among the developers and writers that Harlequin might show up more heavily I think this would also be a perfect way to seed Harlequin into the books without hitting the SR Universe over the head with him...it fits well with the "IEs need to take a backseat for a bit" idea and if anyone's going to be an outspoken backseat driver, it's Harlequin.
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