[TGO Spoilers] Kelmomas Skills

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Wilshire

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« Reply #15 on: July 17, 2016, 01:08:47 pm »
1) We knows gods are blind to certain things: No-God existence, Consult plans etc. There is guess that Tekne makes borders of gods' blindspot and, more specifically, it's distinctive product -- intelligence, which lacks "proper" concience or "enough" complexity. Correct me if I wrong here, please.
Intelligence without a soul is what they cant see.

So at least I reckon Kelmomas is somehow hidden from Gods eyesight thanks to a combination of few factors listed above. At most -- his metaphysical position is symmetricaly opposed to WLW. Either way, boy can fuck up other's plans, especially if they are godly.

PS That can be a possible answer to a question why Kellhus didn't drowned him in the first place.
PPS Dunno now, if Ajokli is an actual trickster god or it's a placeholder name for a sum of gods' debility manifested in the world.
PPPS What have I done. -.-
I've thought down this path before ... never lead anywhere. Him being invisible in the same way the consult machinations are seems like a fairly likely situation, but I can't seem to make sense of it.

On that note however, the WLW does interact directly with Kelmomas at several points. If Kel was always invisible to the God, or Yatwer specifically, then we wouldn't have any scenes with Kel and WLW interacting. Based on that, I'd say there was something else special about what happened with Kel.

I was thinking Kelmomas being invisible to the WLW, and thus Yatwar, had to do with him having two souls. But then I read some good stuff on Kel being a nanidar for Ajolki. Bakker did go out of his way to remind us of Kel killing the beetle before Ajolki's altar which on the surface seems like just a way to show Kel's personality when introducing him, but now we are given hints that it is far more important, else why did Bakker bring it back up?
Indeed, Chekov's gun scenario here. You don't waste words writing extra scenes into the book that are unimportant. Ajokli interacts with Kelmomas in an important way.
He might not be a full narindar, or maybe he is, but the distinction at this junction isn't important. I think it stands to reason that if Ajokli can see things the other Gods can't, then he can create or influence events in a similar fashion - without the other Gods being able to see.

I think Kel is a defective. Most of his siblings appear defective in some ways. I don't think it has anything to do with Tekne. Kellhus would likely have noticed any of flaw in her potential and wouldn't have bred with her.
Maybe there is a closer nonman relative than Omindalea, someone in either Esminet's or the Anasurimbor line that procreated with one of their ancestors and passed along some Tekne markers.

I pitched a theory here in the ARC subforum that perhaps the Gods are actually blind to self-moving souls ... The idea I had was that since to Gods are essentially the Darkness the Comes Before, then they can see the whole chain of cause and effect that guides the world.  Kellhus is outside that though, as are other self-moving souls, because they are part the Darkness.

...

This doesn't preclude that Kel might be "God-entangled" with Ajolki though, but could just be supplemental.
Doesn't seem likely. As I said above, the Gods clearly see Kellhus and Kelmomas and how they interact with the world. The Gods can't be blind to them or they wouldn't seek their destruction - the same way they haven't gone after the consult.


If the gods are blind to Kellhus then how did the WLW predict Kellhus would be in the throne room at that moment? It was Kelmomas that changed the WLW vision of the future, not Kellhus.

I would imagine that if I am correct (and mind you, I am probably not) that "blind to" more probably means unable to see clearly, or properly read the chain of cause and effect and extrapolate that to fully predict the future.  Then again, perhaps you are right, that Yatwer had the right of it and only Kel saved him and so from there everything else is beyond what could have been anticipated.

I do wonder though, going all the way back, why are the Gods blind to the Consult?  The theory was an attempt to possibly reconcile that.


I had that same thought as I was responding - why are the Consult, but more specifically the Inchoroi, outside of the influence of the Gods. It might just be that the Nonmen have something going with their Holy Deep. It seemed like when Sorweel was descending into the abyss down in Ishterebinth, that at some point Yatwer's hold on him diminished or disappeared entirely. Could be that the Gods can't see the Consult because they are similarly hidden deep underground under/in a topos.

Or, generally speaking, they Consult themselves don't really do much. Their direct influence of the world is minimal - they have minions do everything. The Gods can't see the weapon races, so they can't see who manufactured them, and don't tie back their actions to the Consult. With this theory, the Consult aren't so much as free from scrutenty from the Gods, rather they just simly aren't worth their attention.


The gods are finite, therefore they have limits including to their perception.  The non-men attempt exploit this with the chamber of thresh-holds. The specific example is that they cannot see past the No-god's victory so no Unerring Grace, prophets, earthquakes etc.

At this point I hope everyone is on board with this idea. Yatwer's failing with the WLW shows so clearly that even the most powerful god has a finite view of the world.
The only way to avoid that thought is that if you assume that Yatwer intended to fail at that junction with Kel/Kell/WLW so that she could kill him at some later date... But that moves into the same kind of thought processes that puts Moenghus Sr. as the God of all things. Too much mental gymnastics to make it work.

Occam's Razor. The God's are finite.

There is no suggested connection between the Judgment and the hundred.  They collect the harvest of damnation - and they can intercede - rather than dictate it's terms.

I think Gods is largely a misnomer. Our general concept of "God" does not really encompass what the Gods are. Big Ciphrang seems a much better descriptor. They are not omnipotent or omnicient. They can't directly cause outcomes, as you say, only influence.

Now, I have long held the belief that Kelmomas was annointed by Ajokli, but we collect another intesting Ajokli tidbit in Akka's penultimate dream. The Celmoman Prophecy.  When Akka-as-Celmomas sees the four-horned mounted figure - Ajokli - in the vision. His descendant come to end the world?
I loved these scene. It totally subverts the Celmomas Prophecy in a way that seemed totally fair to me. Seswatha misinterpreted what Celmomas said, changing the prophesy entirely.

That the God there was Ajokli and not Gilgaol is something I hadn't considered.  It did have four horns...
Also, not just 'his descendant' but specifically Kellhus, and not "at the end of the world" but rather "to end the world". Not just the Harbinger, but the Reaper.

Khellus has been Outside and he has seen beyond the Thousandfold Thought. He knows he is irrevocably damned. He has had the same revelations as the Survivor.  But we also learn that strong souls can become demons. My thought is that Khellus will ascend and become Ajokli causing all the temporal nuttiness like his visions and the Celmoman prophecy to be enacted via the temporal powers of the hundred.
It's the only way he can avoid damnation without turning to the consult, imo.


I think Koringhus' reaction is basically one of the 2 things a true 'dunyain' would do given the information. Either they would join the Consult to avoid damnation, or I guess commit suicide because of whatever Koringhus does that for.

Kellhus is doing something that is anathema to the Dunyain. Him trying to become a God is a good guess, I'm not sure myself though.
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« Reply #16 on: July 17, 2016, 07:20:39 pm »
I had that same thought as I was responding - why are the Consult, but more specifically the Inchoroi, outside of the influence of the Gods. It might just be that the Nonmen have something going with their Holy Deep. It seemed like when Sorweel was descending into the abyss down in Ishterebinth, that at some point Yatwer's hold on him diminished or disappeared entirely. Could be that the Gods can't see the Consult because they are similarly hidden deep underground under/in a topos.

Now that is an interesting line of speculation to pursue. If going underground distances you in some way from the gods. But the abyss of Ishterebinth didn't strike me as a topos. Nothing...disturbingly unnatural happened (though a deeper read of the Great Ordeal is needed). No hellfire, no seeing your own corpse, no undead dragon thing. I agree he was distances from Yatwar, though he did manage to survive. It's hard to say if Kellhus interferred with Yatwar's plan by sending him to Ishterebinth or not.

Now I'm sure Golgotterah is Topos central.
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Cüréthañ

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« Reply #17 on: July 18, 2016, 02:13:46 am »
1) We knows gods are blind to certain things: No-God existence, Consult plans etc. There is guess that Tekne makes borders of gods' blindspot and, more specifically, it's distinctive product -- intelligence, which lacks "proper" concience or "enough" complexity. Correct me if I wrong here, please.
Intelligence without a soul is what they cant see.

Going to split hairs here. Storks certainly do track sranc. The gods do see them, but they can't fathom them. "Lies made flesh" is how they are described.
What the gods can't do is sample their experience, because it is the soul that transmits meaning to the outside by nature of existing in subjective reality. Certainly Topoi are going to interfere with what the gods see.

It's not the Tekne that causes the blind spots. It's more to do with how the gods are related to the world by meaning rather than physicality.

The Inchoroi come from another world, before the hundred were even a thing. So the gods can't see their origin. Let's presume that the No-God rises again and the hundred are banished from the physical world again - the gods can't see beyond that and the souls of the Consult are no longer hell-bound... so how could the gods be aware of them? If you see what I mean.
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Simas Polchias

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« Reply #18 on: July 18, 2016, 07:11:23 am »
Intelligence without a soul is what they cant see.
As I got it, in bakkerverse intelligence and soul (also, intelligence and ability to mess with onta) are tied together like factory and it's product, like cause and result. Though I'm having a big difficult of quantifying/qualifying things here.

Him being invisible in the same way the consult machinations are seems like a fairly likely situation, but I can't seem to make sense of it
I've remembered an old theory of mine, maybe we can use it here.

1) Gods are so beyond of mortals' entanglement with time. Every one of them is a sum of all possible timelines, divided by exact principle like fertility, conflict, fate etc. It's easy to visualize such thing as 3D-puzzle (∞D, actually) or as regulatory and coding regions of a DNA gene.
2) Having a way to be in every possible situation, gods actually have constant and different experiences of their own undoings due to uncountable reasons.
3) On the one hand, they are "accustomed" to such experience. To them it's just an everlasting border of their existence, just like field of view or memory threshold for human.
4) On the other hand, such experience is so overwhelming it "leaks back" onto it's critical reasons -- places, people, concepts, etc -- and makes exact details highly unrecognizable, if not insignificant.
5) Thus an intelligence without a soul & a little boy Kelmomas may share just one quality. Their phenomenon somehow directly leads to gods' undoing, probably through different and unrelated means. But it's not a big deal for gods, for they just lose interest in such timeline, focusing on possibilities where Arc never landed, Kelmomas was drowned for deformity, Kellhus is narindared.

Kellhaus Van Houten

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« Reply #19 on: July 18, 2016, 02:44:46 pm »

The Inchoroi come from another world, before the hundred were even a thing. So the gods can't see their origin. Let's presume that the No-God rises again and the hundred are banished from the physical world again - the gods can't see beyond that and the souls of the Consult are no longer hell-bound... so how could the gods be aware of them? If you see what I mean.
Can't the gods see the inchoroi? Since the whole reason behind their plan is to close the world off to them or otherwise be damned by them? If the gods couldn't see them how or why then are they damned? Plus I thought and maybe this isn't the case and I just assumed, but i thought only things with souls could perform sorcery. I know they could not perform sorcery until they grafted the second mannish faces.  Aurax, or Aurang I forget which definitely shows the mark as that is how Titirga’ knows he is hidden near in "The False Sun'

Wilshire

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« Reply #20 on: July 18, 2016, 04:19:28 pm »
Depends if being damned is the same as being seen/noticed by the gods. If they are the same, then the Gods are necessarily aware of the Inchoroi, assuming that the Inchoroi's own belief that they are damned is also true.

Yes, you need a soul to perform sorcery - that's what made the ensouled skin-spy that infiltrated the Mandate capable of performing sorcery.
But having a soul does not grant you the ability to use sorcery, you must also be able to see the Onta. The inchoroi did some unknown graft to their genome that allowed the ones that survived the ability to use sorcery. All living Inchoroi on Earwa thus have souls and the ability to see the Onta.

Intelligence without a soul is what they cant see.
As I got it, in bakkerverse intelligence and soul (also, intelligence and ability to mess with onta) are tied together like factory and it's product, like cause and result. Though I'm having a big difficult of quantifying/qualifying things here.

That can't be the case or an ensouled skin-spy would not be a unique thing, but required for it to exist.

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Simas Polchias

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« Reply #21 on: July 18, 2016, 05:36:47 pm »
But having a soul does not grant you the ability to use sorcery, you must also be able to see the Onta.

Exactly. Like, duniyains have advanced cognition, thus their souls are more complex and push the whole subspecie closer to ability to mess with onta. Or am I still missing something?

It seems like soul is something growing on the ground of intelligence. And there is a certain moment when it grows large enough to be able to dominate the environment of said intelligence, to become a medium between consciousness and reality, to make sorcery possible.
Btw, maybe that's the reason monks tried to forget all magic? They saw the whole anagogic-gnostic-metagnostic refinement as deceptive dead end, a distraction from breeding a truly gargantuan soul which is actually capable for permanent substitution/digestion/domination of reality.

That can't be the case or an ensouled skin-spy would not be a unique thing, but required for it to exist.

Speaking about that special skinspy, I see two mutually exclusive possibilities.

1) He is ur-skinspy, his soul is totally equal to both human & the Few. Gods can actually see him because of that, just as they saw guys like Shauritas. Or they sometimes cannot, for now we know about nonmen Threshholds (soggomantic cell similar to faraday's cage?).
2) It is common skinspy, and it's sorcery (the reason it is somehow supposed to be him) are not actually it's. Thing called Simas was desined as vehicle for remote operator akin to inchoroi Syntese, complete with the ability to manifest some lesser Cants on the thing's end. In this case, Gods are blind.

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« Reply #22 on: July 20, 2016, 03:57:54 pm »
...

Welcome to the Second Apocalypse, Kellhaus Van Houten (hereforth, I shall probably refer to you as KVH ;) ).

Also - I realize the topic has strayed but sign me up for the "Unerring Grace" of Ajokli's Narindar trumping the "White-Luck" of Yatwer's White-Luck Warrior theory, if it exists here. The whys and the wherefores of these seemingly self-evident phenomenon are clearly one of the biggest questions to emerge so far from different post-TGO discussions and I have nothing really to add yet.
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« Reply #23 on: July 24, 2016, 03:09:27 am »
Well, I seem to remember that the Inchoroi have been damned well before they even found Earwa, correct? So there damnation wouldn't seem to even be a judgment of the 100 then, no? What I'm saying is there is no way the 100 damned entities from another planet/universe, correct? Might be why the Inchoroi are invisible to the 100, their damnation has nothing to do with them.
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dragharrow

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« Reply #24 on: July 24, 2016, 07:54:59 am »
Curethan, Ignoring all the other interesting stuff you said (much of which I agree with) I just want to challenge this.

It's the only way he can avoid damnation without turning to the consult, imo.

Why would Kellhus ever care about damnation? Existential pain would have no effect on him. He is a place, not a person. I don't think avoiding damnation plays into his pursuits at all.

Quote
I think Koringhus' reaction is basically one of the 2 things a true 'dunyain' would do given the information. Either they would join the Consult to avoid damnation, or I guess commit suicide because of whatever Koringhus does that for.

Again, I don't think so. I think that ultimately a true dunyain shouldn't care. Meaning Koringhus was broken, and Meongus was weak.

Not to imply Kellhus isn't broken also but no true Dunyain would care, and I don't think Kellhus does.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2016, 08:22:32 am by dragharrow »

dragharrow

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« Reply #25 on: July 24, 2016, 08:13:55 am »
Now that is an interesting line of speculation to pursue. If going underground distances you in some way from the gods. But the abyss of Ishterebinth didn't strike me as a topos. Nothing...disturbingly unnatural happened (though a deeper read of the Great Ordeal is needed). No hellfire, no seeing your own corpse, no undead dragon thing. I agree he was distances from Yatwar, though he did manage to survive. It's hard to say if Kellhus interferred with Yatwar's plan by sending him to Ishterebinth or not.

Now I'm sure Golgotterah is Topos central.

It isn't going underground that distances you from the gods. It's going into the hollow cavities that already exist in the earth. My read was that digging a hole isn't enough. Only natural pockets in the rock are beyond the vision of the gods.

I would guess that this is because of the central ground theme thing. The ground is metaphysically central. Sorcerers don't fly they walk an echo of the ground. Shaman "command the ground". Yatwer has power over the ground with the earth quakes and the magic mud.

The ground is foundation. In Earwar this is not just a physical truth, it is a spiritual truth. And the ground belongs to the gods. Only those natural pockets in the earth allow you to hide from them.

At least that's what the non-men think. I don't know if they are right, but that is why they worship pockets in the crust.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2016, 08:16:57 am by dragharrow »

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« Reply #26 on: July 25, 2016, 01:09:03 pm »
It isn't going underground that distances you from the gods. It's going into the hollow cavities that already exist in the earth. My read was that digging a hole isn't enough. Only natural pockets in the rock are beyond the vision of the gods.

I would guess that this is because of the central ground theme thing. The ground is metaphysically central. Sorcerers don't fly they walk an echo of the ground. Shaman "command the ground". Yatwer has power over the ground with the earth quakes and the magic mud.

The ground is foundation. In Earwar this is not just a physical truth, it is a spiritual truth. And the ground belongs to the gods. Only those natural pockets in the earth allow you to hide from them.

At least that's what the non-men think. I don't know if they are right, but that is why they worship pockets in the crust.

I like that idea, it makes sense.  In a way, an abscess in the ground is something of a pocket of oblivion, an interesting parallel of their "religious" practice.
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« Reply #27 on: July 31, 2016, 02:01:24 am »
Well, when Sorweel is in the Holy Deep he remarks that he is outide the reach of Yatwer. So, is assume it's a matter of how deep you dig to escape the gazes of the Gods.
“No. I am your end. Before your eyes I will put your seed to the knife. I will quarter your carcass and feed it to the dogs. Your bones I will grind to dust and cast to the winds. I will strike down those who speak your name or the name of your fathers, until ‘Yursalka’ becomes as meaningless as infant babble. I will blot you out, hunt down your every trace! The track of your life has come to me,

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« Reply #28 on: July 31, 2016, 02:04:50 am »
I would wager that it is more of a function of quantity than depth. The lesser amount of souls, the less interested the Gods are. No Men, no crimes.
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« Reply #29 on: July 31, 2016, 04:22:53 pm »
Kellhus built that secret network to hide young Kel from the gods is a crackpot theory i have. Thresholds/gates or something.