The Second Apocalypse

Earwa => Atrocity Tales => Topic started by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:53:56 am

Title: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:53:56 am
Quote from: Madness
The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin (http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/stories/the-four-revelations-of-cinialjin/)[/u]

A tale concerning the memories and death of a Nonman Erratic.

Low Spoiler Rating for the Second Apocalypse
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:54:02 am
Quote from: Brother_Jacob
Right the concept that Nonmen never cease growing, and somehow their growth being tied with heroic deeds (see Ciogli).  But then Cleric, while large, should be absolutely vast?  Or does it depend on the type of deed?  Not sure I like this concept.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:54:08 am
Quote from: Swense
Somebody had a theory that under extreme stress, Nonmen release growth hormone in addition to adrenaline and whatnot. It wouldn't be much, and you'd have to be constantly stressed to see any serious growth (i.e. constantly in battle) but perhaps that would give those who had been fighting for a couple hundred years an extra couple inches or so? Ciogli could further be a defective Nonman who has far more growth hormone released per amount of stress, hence why he's the enormous nonguy he is.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:54:18 am
Quote from: The Sharmat
I'm guessing there's simply an uncommon but stable population of a benign gigantism allele in the original Cunuroi population. Either that or they had physical castes like social insects. Which would be weird.

The trait being assigned specifically to Cunuroi heroes seems to me to just be the resolt of a huge guy being simultaneously tougher to kill and more noticeable in a melee, producing a number of very distinct veterans to write ballads of.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:54:22 am
Quote from: Madness
Swense's interpretation actually made some sense to me. Though this whole "Nonmen heroes never stop growing thing" has bothered me since its inception.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:54:28 am
Quote from: Swense
At least it so far plays no role in the story beyond making Ciogli badass.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:54:33 am
Quote from: Borque
Maybe they shrink when they do non-heroic stuff. Like betraying someone. Or just taking a walk in the sun, or brushing their teeth. So in the end it balances out, except for a select few with poor dental hygiene.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:54:38 am
Quote from: Sideris
I dunno, they all have that 'perfectly clean' thing most fantasy elves have going on. They DO consider bathing holy, which puts them far above their human slaves already. :P

And back on the story itself, I think I prized this one for Conphas's eerie questioning, the dangling of the knife, etc. I'd long wondered since reading the books what'd it have been like for him to meet a Nonman. And Bakker delivered! Horrifically (in the best way).
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:54:43 am
Quote from: lockesnow
The stress thing makes sense the more you think about it.  Consider elite bodybuilders or Olympic Weightlifters.  Once you reach a certain point, the response curve of the human musculoskeletal system more or less flattens and makes it INCREDIBLY difficult to 'grow' to increase a maximum number (this is why everyone resorted to steroids when chemistry let us enhance the human body).  A nonman may not have those limitations and would be able to continue growing in proportion to the physical stress.  A lot of muscle (male) and fat (female) growth in adolescence is primarily controlled by hormone release, whether it's developing muscles or filling out thighs/breasts, hormones primarily dictate what will happen to a growing body.  it's easy to see a small difference between our species and another species--in the chemical system--that would result in radically different outcomes. 

Male humans respond to musculoskeletal stress  by 'growing' more muscle and becoming stronger (to grossly oversimplify).  Is it so huge a leap to think that Cunoroi might undergo musculoskeletal stress by literally growing more proportionally, rather than just growing muscle?
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:54:49 am
Quote from: Curethan
Actually their maximum size is determined by the relative size of their existential balls.  Obviously you need balls like watermelons to break a dragon's neck wit yo bare hands.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:54:55 am
Quote from: Ciogli
I took it as simply a storytelling mechanism, a metaphorical way for a storyteller to highlight the hero by making them larger than there compatriots phyically and in deed. Not that they never stopped growing.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:55:00 am
Quote from: Wilshire
Quote from: Madness
Swense's interpretation actually made some sense to me. Though this whole "Nonmen heroes never stop growing thing" has bothered me since its inception.

I didnt read through everything, and I only had a faint grasp on this work as it is, but still, could it be possible that the Heroes keep growing could just be a simple  literally idea that stories past down the ages, generation after generation,  and good deeds become great, bad becomes evil, large becomes gigantic? Seems that a race of people losing their memories could simply forget how the real story went, but they recall that the hero was great, so he must have been 2x the size of a normal nonman, 3x as strong and much faster. Thats just how things go isnt it?

Though like I said I dont remember the actual context of the quote so I could be way off.

EDIT:
Looks like I should have read all the comments before posting. I basically said exactly what was said directly above my post. Oops
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:55:13 am
Quote from: The Sharmat
I never got the impression that Nonman memory loss involved the insertion of new, entirely false information.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:55:18 am
Quote from: Callan S.
Maybe they can deny their growth - think themselves unworthy of it, like a timelord can deny thier regeneration?

*ooh, did I cross genres there...*
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:55:23 am
Quote from: Truth Shines
Psalms to Oblivion -- gorgeous, gorgeous, so so sooooo beautiful.

Heartbreak melancholy.  Fuck it's mindblowing.  As you can tell I'm just speechless with amazement.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:55:29 am
Quote from: SATXZ
Where is it said nonmen grow forever?  where?

About this story, it was horrible.  If you had not read thru at least the entire PON trilogy, you're hopelessly lost if you read this thing.
False Sun great, four revelations?  What revelations?  Its the same whining character portrayal used throughout every POV in these series.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: What Came Before on May 07, 2013, 01:55:35 am
Quote from: Madness
I believe it was a small line of description that ended up being removed - Bakker reposted multiple iterations of those Atrocity Tales as feedback appeared in the comments.

Also, the Four Revelations, in my opinion, were the memories of the deaths of Cinial'jin's his wife, two sons, and daughter that he remembers throughout the course of his capture, burning, and torture at the hands of humankind.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: Borque on November 17, 2013, 08:00:40 pm
Something I don't understand - what is meant by "C n" here?

Quote
“This is why I saved you… You are my map. My chart.” Cu’jara Cinmoi leaps upon the altar, gloating, displaying the mad extent of his arrogance, openly, outrageously, knowing that his own would celebrate his impiety as strength, and that his enemies would cry out for heartbreak and fury. “I’m curious…” He smiles in the sad way of mothers seeing mediocrity in their children. “Do you feel it? Or is it a thoughtless assumption, the fact that Men shrink in your presence?” There is a breath that belongs to the first glimpse of madness in some beloved soul, a hook and a pang, a consciousness of the tunnels that branch into caverns within you–a place where breath should be. What Siöl requests Siöl compels! The C n is a code of tyrants. When I stretch forth my hand, you shall be its shadow. “What is the sensation of immortality? I’m sure I… know it… But without any to-to compare…” The Man leans over him, his knife unnatural for its gleaming proximity to his face, something monolithic tapering to a shining prick, the point where earthly edges intersect, then cross over into death.
My bold.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: Madness on November 17, 2013, 08:09:43 pm
Bakker said the û kept dropping out when he posted it to TPB: Cûn.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: Borque on November 17, 2013, 09:17:35 pm
"Cûn"? Ok. He didn't say what that was, did he?
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: Madness on November 17, 2013, 10:33:46 pm
Quote from: Bakker's comment (http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/stories/the-four-revelations-of-cinialjin/#comment-4037)

The circumflexed ‘u’ keeps dropping out. Though I now think it would be cool to give the Cunuroi an unwritable, unpronouncable, ‘meta-vowel.’
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: H on March 19, 2015, 02:13:16 pm
I think we have criminally under-looked this story, mainly because it's stream-of-consciousness narrative makes it difficult to follow.

I think there are hints at the true nature of the "Womb-Plague," something of a dark revelation about Cu’jara Cinmoi, the questions of who are the Man that is there with Skafra and Par’sigiccas, and who is the cherished daughter?
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: Simas Polchias on March 19, 2015, 02:32:47 pm
I think we have criminally under-looked this story, mainly because it's stream-of-consciousness narrative makes it difficult to follow.
Especially difficult for some non-native english speakers like me. :C
And that's atop of the fact that Bakker's language is quite complex by itself.
Maybe we should map these revelations, structurize them somehow?
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: Wilshire on March 19, 2015, 05:01:28 pm
Quote from: Bakker's comment (http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/stories/the-four-revelations-of-cinialjin/#comment-4037)

The circumflexed ‘u’ keeps dropping out. Though I now think it would be cool to give the Cunuroi an unwritable, unpronouncable, ‘meta-vowel.’
This is a brilliant quote.

I think we have criminally under-looked this story,
Hmm yes, i agree. I don't think i even read it more than once.

I think we have criminally under-looked this story, mainly because it's stream-of-consciousness narrative makes it difficult to follow.
Maybe we should map these revelations, structurize them somehow?

I'll see if i can dissect it sometime "soon". Chop it up into paragraphs and inspect each one. Maybe try to tie them back together per story or something.

Wonder if Bakker initially just wrote a normal story, then printed it out, cut up the paper, shuffled it, and then wrote it again in the new random order....
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: The Sharmat on March 19, 2015, 08:56:25 pm
I think we have criminally under-looked this story, mainly because it's stream-of-consciousness narrative makes it difficult to follow.
Especially difficult for some non-native english speakers like me. :C
And that's atop of the fact that Bakker's language is quite complex by itself.
Maybe we should map these revelations, structurize them somehow?
Even for a native speaker, this is an extremely difficult story. I'm a native English speaker and I test extremely high in verbal and linguistic ability, and I can't tell what the fuck is going on in it most of the time.

Wonder if Bakker initially just wrote a normal story, then printed it out, cut up the paper, shuffled it, and then wrote it again in the new random order....
That's actually probably the best way to write someone suffering from extreme dementia. Time does not exist. Cause and effect are weak and spottily present at best.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: H on April 20, 2015, 08:14:37 pm
The Four Revelations of Cinial’jin
You drink of the River and it is clear. You drink of the River and it is foul. You breath of the Sky and it never empties. You weep, and the Sea stings your lips. Rejoice, and mourn, for you belong to this World.
Heaven does not know you.

–Nin’hilarjal, Psalms to Oblivion

The World is a glare when you are helpless.

The Men had bound him, pierced his flesh with nails, but their terror so overmatched their hatred, they were gentle, and so left no memory of their indignity. They shout and laugh. Papa… A walnut tree stands upon the rising pasture beyond them, great with age and solitude, dark with interior shadow. Please, Papa…

Aisralu!

A woman who has outlived her teeth scourges him with thistles. Her arms are frantic with hatred and heartbreak, her knobbed knuckles shake, but her eyes remain slack with incredulity… eyes that were once daring and mercurial, grown stagnant at the bottom of crinkled pockets. For the first time he realizes he has never understood Men, the way they toil against the yoke of dwindling years. The way they do not so much fail as are betrayed.

The Horns rear golden, so high as to hook the woolen sky. The Host of the Nine Mansions groans.

They raise him upon a pole, pile sheaves of bracken about his feet. He has wondered whether death would be beautiful. He has wondered how the end of memory would appear at memory’s end. He has wondered what it means to so outrun glory as to become blind to disgrace. It seems proper that these screeching animals show him.

He watches them tip the amphorae, sees the oil pulse white in the sun. They are all there, Tinnirin, Rama, Par’sigiccas, sheeted in the blood of obscenities, their warcries cracked into gasps of effort, grunts of desperation.  As the Men stand milling in the sunlight, filthy, bestial for hair, their brows dark so their eyes seem fires in angry caves. Rama’s head tips back like a bust on an unbalanced pedestal, painting witless shoulders in blood, as a plummeting shadow blots him, an Inchoroi monstrosity, decked in the corpse of some luckier brother. And he sorts them with his gaze, his frail captors, glimpsing dog-teeth, gloating for all the faces he will remember, for shame if not for torment. As Quya Chariots soar like polished stones cast against the sky. Rama! Rama! And a torch is brought forth, little more than a smoking blur in the open sunlight; a wave of exclamation peaks in a raw little cheer. As Ciogli makes a bastion of the Father of Dragons, his shouts ringing from his cauldron helm, Bashrag slumping from the arc of his hammer.  A sobbing boy-child takes the torch. He and his brothers cry, Lord Mountain! Bullied forward, he turns to him, sobbing, the torch held like a poisonous snake. The Horns rise as golden haze through pitched skies, distant Quya drifting like sparks from the evening fire, dragons like twirling soot, making deep a World crabbed with violence. So like his dead sister in the dove-breasted beauty of his cheek (though she had hated fear more). Great Ciogli teeters, and the hacking floor drops into watery insignificance….

“Papa hates that he is my image,” she says, laughing, squinting as if about to sneeze at the sunlight.

How could… How could…

Great Ciogli teeters, his head turning as if to catch some uncommon sound from a drowse, and they see it: the lone arrow pricking from the slot of his helm.  The boy is thrust forward, a push like a blow, so that his stride is caught on a thrown shoulder, and he stumbles, flinches from kissing the unseen flame. “No.” A flicker hooks his gaze, and out of the thousand pockets of tumult, he is cursed with seeing… seeing… The same mouth slung about indecision, the same tipping look (though she hated fear more). Nin’janjin leaps crisp from the tumult, his spear poised high, his shield a burnished coin.  The boy grimaces, cries out to the rag-garbed women–

What is your name?

She crinkles her nose. “Are you dying?”

Can a moment be caught? clapped like fly in the palm of the heart that needed it, a memory, painting deep the illumination of life. Can a moment be caught by a moment? a heart within a heart within a heart, versions receding, a pit that sound the very fathom of oblivion, life drawn into a spear. And he realizes he has never understood Men, not even when he loved them. Cu’jara Cinmoi turns into the nimil point, cramps about the rod of ash, so that he crouches, every bit as crisp, his hands hooked, sinking to his knees on the chest of the Host of Nine Mansions. His chin against his breast, the boy lowers the torch like something that might break of its own weight. The Copper Tree of Siöl staggers, then falls. He lets it slip into the heaped bracken, the boy. He runs intent, shield raised against raining pots of fire, sprinting from the roar of barking massacre behind him into dismay. Dead! And the flames take shallow root, spinning outward across the oil-soaked regions, smokeless lines which beget incendiary blooms, until all the fuel heaped about his bound feet is skinned in frantic orange and gold, the fire sinking in, sparking deeper and deeper, unlocking curlicues of smoke, threads that become ribbons that become streaming plumes, hanging like ink, misting like fog, raising a shroud across the hollow sky, smearing the sun into a blinding stain. Our Beloved King is dead! And a cool falls across his scalp and shoulders, the gift of rolling fronds of smoke-shadow, even as the heat begins chewing his feet, biting and biting with dog’s teeth. Fire is the youngest thing, the most ancient. They draw up his youngest, sweet Enpiralas, on an Inchoroi shield, his face flattened where the skull was missing.  He rolls his gaze across the world, peers through the hazy screens, to the huddled knots of Men, and sees the demented grins of mortals inflicting their horror of death upon another, hands outstretched in wild gesture, fists beating his image, and the horsemen in gleaming cuirasses beyond, banners tipping as they yank short their galloping rush. And she grows still in his arms, Aisarinqu, at once kindling light, and a stone, such a heavy stone, and he weeps for holding her so punishing is her weight, his life unwinding for her density, the gravity of her stationary heart, her mouth hung about emptiness. He shrieks for the finality, for the relief, the sobbing knowledge that her suffering has ended, that he cradles oblivion in his arms. He begins choking, coughing up the convulsions that wrack his bound flesh, flap him like a blanket, for the fire was upon him, and he could see it, laving the white lines of his feet, the searing, the blistering, the charring–his feet, which had been with him since… since… now writhing and kicking of their own volition, and he throws his eyes skyward and he screams and he laughs, knowing that this… this he would remember, that his burning would not pass through him, would not fall away into the black-of-black, but would dwell forever as another horror, so welding him to who he had been. The boy throws his hands to his eyes, only to have his father wrench them aside, shake him, point at the place that shrieks, writhes, burns. And he stands in the blackness, the eternal dank that rules the guttural foundations of Siöl, his hand upon the neck and shoulder of his daughter, Aisralu, who even now clutches her belly, her womb, groaning against her headstrong pride, whispering, Please… Father… Please… You… Must… again and again, searching for his eyes, her face a summit, a beauty he worships, bent into a pageant of strangers by anguish. He screams and he laughs and through smoke and undulating air he sees worry unbalance the beasts that caper about his perimeter. Aisarinqu screams and Aisarinqu screams, again and again, not so much words as a storm of occasions, her delicate face crushed into instants and flayed across an age, for theirs had not been a happy union. And it seems he should be a thing of wax, that the roaring phosphor should melt and consume him, not cook. That is the sole curse of the Ishroi, she hisses. He is sack, a net bound about furious, ice-cold fish, each part of him thrashing, fleeing, and he howls realizing, for the first time in ten thousand years comprehending, that he is a thing of meat, that he is of the self-same flesh, the very thing that nourishes him, boar-squealing, bloody and alive. To only hope they had fathered their sons! His eyes are pinched and pricked by the effluence of the encircling furnace–no longer his own. The blackness falls away from her sagging face, and for an instant he gazes upon her, beloved Aisarinqu. A second, shrieking revelation. The white spark of some faraway light refracts in her tears, so that her contrition seems holy, and his embittered and profane.  Fire is a thing that eats. A wondering instant, before the wrath seizes his fists anew.

He slumps into his corporeal anguish; burning seems… proper.

A wind laves him, drawn in from the smoke-wreathed world, the radial distances, and blown upward through glittering rags of flame. He understands he is the base of an invisible pillar, a roiling column of heat, fluted and fanning into the shrouded sky, and he wonders whether a falcon might ride the updraft, the heat of his burning. The fish are warm now–sluggish. He glimpses armoured Men raising scabbarded swords, dropping them like clubs.

Please… Father…

Aisralu!

A glimpse of water, like a silver coin wobbling beneath the lip of an upraised pail, and it seems the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, a trophy scalped from the very sun. The little human girl, the one who found him where he cannot remember, the girl who was whipped by her father for stealing food out of pity, who sings songs in her queer, manling language, laughing for the way the stream tickles her feet, her face purpling above his grip, kicking and flailing like a woodland beast, as he sobs and explains to her, professing his love, his adoration. I must… I must remember. Even before the coming of the Flesh Angels, the Inchoroi, they live lives long enough for children to become strangers. The torment has been a peculiar, more like a casting of liquid than a form of retribution. He ponders the way life bloats upon the threshold of dying.

Thinks it proper.

What is this hunger? Lights diminish, sputtering before kicked into smoke by shadows. What is this need to strike meaning into the heart of stones? A different kind of nudity, chill and wet and horrifically amphibian. This blindness to surface–what is it? Voices. Something too absurd to be agony. His limbs vague and distant, twitches sensed only at the sockets. Hazy black bubbles clot the sky. Heaven tipping. Something… his body… jerking–shivering. Darkness, a shadow looming out from every corner of his vision, bricking him in. A Man leans over him, elbows out, hands on his thighs, and he sees a face that could belong to a brother, such is its beauty–and eyes that see only a blessed reprieve from boredom. “You smell of lamb…” he says, bent across the spiking corona of the sun. Parasols of smoke float behind his head, drifted…

“My kind cooks like pig.”

And he is not dead.

He lies unbound, sprawled naked beneath the sprawling canopy of a tree. Everything tingles, and he understands he has been stripped of his skin, or a good part of it. He experiences another revelation, that agony is the root, the very truth of sensation, for the blades of the grasses had become knives, and the clicking legs of the spider had become needles, and the wind burns with a perpetual fire. They stand there, at the blackest heart of their dying Mansion, the deepest, the mountain above and about them groaning with the chorus of ten thousand lamentations–all the heart-cracking losses. “I confess, I did not believe it.” There they stand, the famed father and the cherished daughter, their names no longer remembered, their sandalled feet upon the abyssal lip, so that emptiness yawns like a slow waking dragon.  A single Man sits beside him, clotted with shining insignia he has never seen before, saying, “They claim you killed a man’s daughter.” And it sickens him, the obscenity of the vision, the faces of his brothers–his race!–nailed like pelts to the abominations that loped across the scourged plains, pale save for the clotting of blood and excrement, screaming like girlish beasts, their members curved across their abdomens, running, shrieking. The Man’s black hair trembles in the breeze, as fine as hummingbird feathers. An old yearning comes upon him–or the memory of one–his Ishroi brothers wading into the mobs of Halaroi, starved mothers clutching starved babes.  “No matter…” the Man says. “One must be criminal to commit a crime.” He witnesses the magic that is brutality, the way cries become piteous silence and a jerking mandala of crimson. “One must be something small…” A cold look of satisfaction. “And you, my False friend, smack of immensity.”

His cousin, Pil’kmiras, curls like a dog on the dust, coughing about some unseen catastrophe. Show me! Where?

The Man’s gaze searches the encircling World, squints for the glare. “We are alike in this regard.” He raises a thumb to pick at his teeth. “When I was a child, my grandmother would raise me on her knee and tell me that I was indistinguishable from justice.” He snorts. “‘The Gods,’ she would drawl–Grandmother split her passion between drinking and oblivion, you see. ‘The Gods say that the goodness of our acts, my darling dear, resides in our rank. Do you know what this means, hmm?’ She always liked to lean her forehead against mine. ‘It means you cannot sin against your lessersssss!’” The Man breaks into a winning grin, one that should be remembered for it’s resemblance to vertigo. “Can you believe it? What grandmother says such things to a child?” The Wracu fall like barks of iron upon them. Bodies stick-whipping. Geysers of brilliance crossing like swords.  “She’s mad, my grandmother… Mad with cunning.” Yes… This was what they suffered, the ones they dragged clear the fiery vomit, the way shrieking had delivered them to someplace calm, where they could swallow without taste. “Is beauty a sign, do you know?” the Man asks. “A mark of who defines justice? These are the kinds of questions I need to ask you…” Skafra uncoils his shining bulk and reveals Par’sigiccas, half of him white flesh, half of him black charcoal. What grieves thee, Son of Siöl?  “I used to think my grandmother was wise because she was old. Now I think she is simply… savage, I guess. Savage with fear…” The Man pauses to work his jaw about an involuntary snarl. “But you… You have seen things… times… You have witnessed what Men can scarce dream, let alone imagine!” All great things, the saurian maw croaks, are round, Cinial’jin.  “Enough to rot you from the inside, they say… Like a melon.” Par’sigiccas gazes with one eye from a half-husked skull.  “You see, I look at you, and I see…” A sly, mortal wink. ”Me.”

The Wracu seems skinned in flame. Someday thou shalt tip over the edge of thine world.

“This is why I saved you… You are my map. My chart.” Cu’jara Cinmoi leaps upon the altar, gloating, displaying the mad extent of his arrogance, openly, outrageously, knowing that his own would celebrate his impiety as strength, and that his enemies would cry out for heartbreak and fury.  “I’m curious…” He smiles in the sad way of mothers seeing mediocrity in their children. “Do you feel it? Or is it a thoughtless assumption, the fact that Men shrink in your presence?” There is a breath that belongs to the first glimpse of madness in some beloved soul, a hook and a pang, a consciousness of the tunnels that branch into caverns within you–a place where breath should be. What Siöl requests Siöl compels! The Cûn is a code of tyrants. When I stretch forth my hand, you shall be its shadow.  “What is the sensation of immortality? I’m sure I… know it… But without any to-to compare…” The Man leans over him, his knife unnatural for its gleaming proximity to his face, something monolithic tapering to a shining prick, the point where earthly edges intersect, then cross over into death.

The humour was peeled from his eyes, revealing the dead dark look beneath. “I fear that I require that you speak.”

Cu’jara Cinmoi’s glare somehow slips the uproar and picks him from the confusion. Yes. You know.

Is he shaking?

He dandles the knife with the mock clumsiness of an elder brother teasing a younger. “You must have something to tell me. Surely the Whore delivered you for a reason.” And they approach the northern entrance, the Way of Upright Kings, where the peach trees forever bloom out of season, finding naught but a great black rope of smoke hanging heavenward from the Mansion’s shattered maw, inking the clouds.  “Shh… Shh… Just tell me…” The knife pricks across his cheek. “Tell me…” And Lord Mountain turns as if from between worries, and they see it, the black shaft jutting from their hearts.  And he watches, his spirit cringing, flinching, warding, even though he cannot move; the point’s lazy swing, the hanging heartbeat above his pupil, then the drop, as though everything seen were the skin of a grape. Someone grimaces and screams. How does one love in such times? Aisarinqu whispers, cupping his head against her, so that his tears make a cheek of her breast.  A laugh with the reed timbre of mortality. His face clenched as if about some splintered outrage. A mouth hung about emptiness. Something. Something in the meat. And it dawns that he does not comprehend these beasts.

A man reclines in the grasses that wreath his head, stares down at him with uncommon familiarity. And he just… pushes… her… Aisralu… A motion too banal to be anything but murderous and insane, opening a door, perhaps, or closing one, and he feels it, the kiss of skin forming to skin, the hand of the father across the nape of the daughter, the cherished daughter; a push and nothing more, an effort slight enough to slip the nets of awareness, to be no effort at all, and still, miraculously, impossibly, violent with excess, savage, a crime unlike any other; the bare palm against the nape of her neck, her shoulders hunched about a ravaged womb, his arm extending, the gentle insistence of nudging a younger brother toward a maid, and an entire life tipping, a cherished life, an engulfing presence, tipping, how? how? the push floating into slipping, plummet… The wind barges through the walnut tree, a groaning susurrus. Tipping, the beloved voice crimped high, a kicking intake of breath, a sound that should strike sparks. No… And a life slips into the abyss, dropping like water, lines sprawling across the plummet, shrinking into something small enough to swallowed… Shrieking. No…

“You make me… curious…”

A man dangles from the glare of blood and sun. There is even envy in his gaze.

Please, Papa…

A final revelation. Sunlight cracking through spanning limbs. The whole mountain wheezes for the weeping of thousands, the wreckage of… The breeze burning, eating. The world tipping.

No.

A bare palm against a cherished back–
 
[EDIT: Inflections added, a couple lines colored where I felt I had missed something. More edits, some lines changed to the present.]
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: H on April 20, 2015, 08:19:10 pm
So, the above is my attempt to disentangle the story.

As far as I can tell, the story breaks down into the following parts:

Black: The "now" his burning and tourture.
Red: The murder (killing?) of his daughter and wife(?).
Blue: The Battle at Inniür-Shigogli, the “Black Furnace Plain.”.
Purple: A visit from Skafra (?).
Orange: his memory of the murder of a little girl, in his attempt to remember his daughter. A visit with Cu’jara Cinmoi (?).
Green: A visit with Cu’jara Cinmoi at the apparent ruins of some mansion.

I have no doubt missed something, but perhaps this can begin to help us understand the story better.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: Wilshire on April 21, 2015, 01:14:43 pm
Thanks for that H. I might go through and cut/paste each part into a continuous unit, wonder if that will help or make it worse... I'm sure the context of the memory is important, so maybe keeping them combined buy flowing in different colors like you have is the best way.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: H on April 21, 2015, 01:51:03 pm
Thanks for that H. I might go through and cut/paste each part into a continuous unit, wonder if that will help or make it worse... I'm sure the context of the memory is important, so maybe keeping them combined buy flowing in different colors like you have is the best way.

My first thought was the same, to cut it apart, but it think your realization is the same as I had too, that the context of the "now" must have some bearing on the "then."  Then again, maybe that's the trap.

Things I noticed in doing this was, first, that it seems he beats his wife to death, "Aisarinqu screams and Aisarinqu screams, again and again, not so much words as a storm of occasions, her delicate face crushed into instants and flayed across an age, for theirs had not been a happy union." and "The white spark of some faraway light refracts in her tears, so that her contrition seems holy, and his embittered and profane. A wondering instant, before the wrath seizes his fists anew."  Does she goad him into it maybe?

Also, there is this very odd seeming scene: "“This is why I saved you… You are my map. My chart.” Cu’jara Cinmoi leaps upon the altar, gloating, displaying the mad extent of his arrogance, openly, outrageously, knowing that his own would celebrate his impiety as strength, and that his enemies would cry out for heartbreak and fury. What Siöl requests Siöl compels! The Cun is a code of tyrants. When I stretch forth my hand, you shall be its shadow."
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: Wilshire on April 21, 2015, 02:31:52 pm
Things I noticed in doing this was, first, that it seems he beats his wife to death, "Aisarinqu screams and Aisarinqu screams, again and again, not so much words as a storm of occasions, her delicate face crushed into instants and flayed across an age, for theirs had not been a happy union." and "The white spark of some faraway light refracts in her tears, so that her contrition seems holy, and his embittered and profane. A wondering instant, before the wrath seizes his fists anew."  Does she goad him into it maybe?
Yeah he definitely murdered her.

Also, there is this very odd seeming scene: "“This is why I saved you… You are my map. My chart.” Cu’jara Cinmoi leaps upon the altar, gloating, displaying the mad extent of his arrogance, openly, outrageously, knowing that his own would celebrate his impiety as strength, and that his enemies would cry out for heartbreak and fury. What Siöl requests Siöl compels! The Cun is a code of tyrants. When I stretch forth my hand, you shall be its shadow."
I think "you are my map. My chart" is implying something about her death allowing him to recall, and likely further cement, his memory of killing is daughter/wife. A map for navigating memory lane. Seems they need to repeat atrocities to remember old ones.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: H on April 21, 2015, 02:40:57 pm
I think "you are my map. My chart" is implying something about her death allowing him to recall, and likely further cement, his memory of killing is daughter/wife. A map for navigating memory lane. Seems they need to repeat atrocities to remember old ones.

Indeed, it does seem that way, yet it is Cu’jara Cinmoi who seems to be saying it, meaning he too murdered his own wife and daughter?

I think the parallel between Conphas and Cu’jara Cinmoi is clear, I'd guess perhaps the former saving him from burning now is clearly drawn to frame something like the latter saving him from the "burning" of the Inverse Fire?
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: Wic on April 22, 2015, 05:11:37 am
Huh...how long did it take the nonmen to realize that atrocity and horror were the surest way to retain memory?
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: H on April 22, 2015, 10:14:27 am
There seems to be anecdotal evidence that perhaps they realized that from the earliest of days.  It seems memory has always been an issue, even before they were made immortal, in this story we're told, "I must… I must remember. Even before the coming of the Flesh Angels, the Inchoroi, they [the Non-Men] live lives long enough for children to become strangers."

I would guess that in those days, it was a sort of "dirty secret" but one that could probably be swept under the rug to an extent.  Immortality multiplied that problem near infinitely.

Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: H on April 22, 2015, 03:32:32 pm
In thinking more, I think there is a definite limit on what we can mine from this story.  So far, what I have gleaned is:

Cinial'jin kills his wife and doughter, seemingly over the womb-plague, leading credence to idea that the Womb-Plague did not kill explicitly.

There is an issue of Ishriol parentage, but I can't tell if this is something general, or something Aisarinqu says to goad him, or just an overall fact of Ishriol life (or life post-Womb-Plague).

There is the the theme of burning as a punishment.  This raises the question of what it means to be "half-burned" as Par’sigiccas appears.  Leading us not just to the question of who that is, but why does he appear with Skafra?

From there, we are presented a parallel between Conphas rescuing Cinial'jin and Cu’jara Cinmoi having done so in the past.  Saved him from who's punishment though?  I think the parallel sets us up to believe the both have saved him from the punishment for his daughter's murder.  Perhaps the crowd here is the general populace of Non-men then?  Perhaps this is what it means that Cu'jara Cinmoi is a tyrantm that he opposed popular will in order to "end" the Womb-Plague?

There are some themes I can't really figure though, like what the Way of the Upright Kings is or who is Lord Mountain.  Additionally, the involvement of Cinial'jin's sister's repeated manta, "she hated fear more" and the line "papa hates that he is my image" I don't really have an understanding of.

I don't know that there are answers in the text though...
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: locke on April 23, 2015, 01:15:06 am
I thought conphas said the map thing
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: H on April 23, 2015, 10:14:11 am
I thought conphas said the map thing

Indeed, I think you are right.  At points I found myself attempting to "read backwards" in order to reconstruct parts and I think I fell in to that trap there.  Time for some edits...
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: SilentRoamer on April 23, 2015, 11:31:10 am
H - I think Lord Mountain is moniker for Ciogli. He was after all Ciogli the mountain due to him in fact being huge enough to break Wutteats neck with his physical strength.

I know Nonman size and growth patterns is questioned but I would love if it were a literal.

Still confused on Clerics actuall height, Akka coming to his elbow indicates he is very large.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: H on April 23, 2015, 11:51:17 am
That does seem plausible, but what does the scene allude to?  "The black shaft jutting from their hearts," an allusion to the smoke from the ruined Mansion?  Perhaps a forecast of the doom at Pir-Pahal?
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: geoffrobro on August 02, 2015, 02:21:14 am
i Found a mention of Pir-Pahal in CHapter 14 of TJE
 "Pir-Pahal, Achamian realized. The entire hall was dedicated to it, a great and ancient battle fought between Nonmen and Inchoroi. He could even recognize the principals: The traitor, Nin'Janjin, and his soverign, Cu'jara Cinmoi, the Nonman Emperor. The mighty hero, Gin'gurima, with arms like a man's thighs. And the Inchoroi King, Sil, armoured in courpses, flanked by his inhuman kinsmen, winged monstrosities with wicked limbs, pendulous phalli, and skulls grafted into skulls.

although not mentioned Cinial'jin was there at the battle and maybe sculpted into the wall, He's not a Nonman Akka knows.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: Wilshire on August 03, 2015, 12:52:27 pm
Interesting find. Akka's history lessons should be paid attention too.
Title: Re: The Four Revelations of Cinial'jin
Post by: H on August 03, 2015, 04:30:41 pm
In today's reread, I realize I am totally wrong, the battle in the blue text is Inniür-Shigogli, the “Black Furnace Plain.”  It is where Nin’janjin kills Cû’jara-Cinmoi, not Pir-Pahal.  I also needed to clean up some of the text, it had a good deal of Cinial'jin's 'present' burning in blue, mistakenly.

Also, Par’sigiccas, who is mentioned in the purple text as being half-burned, is mentioned as one of the first three we are told of at Inniür-Shigogli, in the blue text.  Perhaps the purple is the haunting vision he sees, after surviving Inniür-Shigogli?