Who is the stranger with the hat in "Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell"?

Question

In this story, there are a couple references to a stranger with a hat:

Men like these, though ... they’d probably take less than an hour to violate one of the Simple Rules and bring the shades upon them. Daggon put the idiots out of his mind. That fellow in the corner, though ... dressed all in brown, still wearing his hat despite being indoors. That fellow looked truly dangerous. I wonder if it’s him, Daggon thought. So far as he knew, nobody had ever seen the White Fox and lived.

 

“It’s the man with the long neck, isn’t it?” William Ann asked. “I remember his face from one of the bounties.” “That’s just Lamentation Winebare, a petty horse thief. He’s barely worth two measures of silver.” “Who, then? The man in the back, with the hat?” Silence shook her head, finding a sequence of pages at the bottom of her pile.

I'm guessing this could be a Cosmere world-hopper. Has there been any mention by Sanderson or educated guesses as to who this might be? Hoid is kindof the go-to guess. I know he disguises himself, but this description doesn't sound to me like Hoid. At a glance it doesn't have some of the Hoid-like themes (story-telling, jestering, beggars, travelers, etc). But all we really get here is a brief glance. Perhaps Nazh, since he is a Threnodite? I'm not sure if a description of him has been offered anywhere.

Answer 1

Unless there's a new Worldhopper with a distinction for hats, it's likely not anybody important.

In another setting, Silence's waystop might rightly be called a wretched hive of scum and villany. Not a single character we're shown has a clean conscience. Silence relates that most common folk stay in the forts; those who travel the forests do so at great need, because they have no where else to go, or because they're merchants and the risk is worth it (or they're idiots, but those don't last long around here). Those who live there, like Silence, do so because they're too bloody stubborn or independent to live in a fort.

So a man in a hat is not anyone at all, it's just someone who'd rather you notice his hat than his face, which covers over half of Silence's customers.

It's also noted in Arcanum Unbounded that Threnody has no stable perpendicularity, although it does have something which goes unsaid (just "morbid"). So while it's possible to get there, it's also difficult, so unless there was great need or some great event to study, it's unlikely.

But just in case, lets run down the possibilities...

• Hoid - in the ebook release of this story on its own, Sanderson goes on record and states that Hoid is busy elsewhere in the Cosmere at this point. He's not around (although as has been pointed out to me, Peter Ahlstrom, whose job is to keep track of details for Brandon, has joked he's not convinced by this).
• Khriss - distinctive appearance, with dark skin and light hair, unlikely
• Nazh - the most possible out of all of Worldhoppers, seeing he's supposed to be from Threnody... but considering Khriss has him risking his neck mapping other worlds most of the time, still not likely, unless this is from before he left.
• Hoid's Hunters from Roshar (which is supposed to include Galladon and Demoux) - Galladon would stand out anywhere. Demoux or the other one might be it, the hat could be hiding Demoux's scar... except he's never been shy about that before.
• Anyone else - see above regarding unstable access to the world, and besides, we'd have no way of knowing if it was someone new.