Moenghus is a lying liar who lies

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« Reply #15 on: April 25, 2013, 06:42:48 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
ahh, but we don't know for certain that Moe did not excel at all the skillsets of the Psukhe.  That's just a Kellhus conjecture we take for fact.

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« Reply #16 on: April 25, 2013, 06:42:55 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
True, just speculating on his dream manipulation skill set. 

Seems unlikely that Moe would have great power in the Psukhe based on what we know of how it works and I don't see any profit or reason for Moe to hide his strength if it were greater than he presented.  If he had secretly mastered the other metaphysics despite being blind, he would bear the Mark, so that seems unlikely too.
I think it most likely that he could have deepened the arts that he could use (like dream walking) beyond what he admitted or we were shown.
Certainly Kellhus didn't risk a sorcerous showdown...

If you look at how Kellhus accessed Akka's inner Seswatha and how his dreams changed after that, we can't really rule out any level of dream manipulation imo. 
Dream communication + cants of compulsion + dunyain manipulation = endless manipulatitive possibilities.
Add to that the uncertain status of prophecy (predictions of the future born of darkness invisible to the consious mind) and how that might be connected to dreams and outside agencies and that really is an open question.

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« Reply #17 on: April 25, 2013, 06:43:01 pm »
Quote from: Sideris
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Sideris
Wouldn't that fit more under the feelings of the world conspires? I mean, you could use Moe as a boogeyman and have the Holy War start screaming, 'Moe wills it!' in their charges. :P
That's the question right? The book more or less tells us the world conspires.  The book also tells us that Moe had one project for twenty years, creating a holy war so that Kellhus could take over.

That makes me question, if Moe conditioned the ground such that The Entire World was primed for Kellhus ascension, why would he leave Kellhus' path to the Holy War Unconditioned?

Why go to all that effort at constructing the holy war, to leave the most important piece completely subject to chance?   Why leave Kellhus to the whims of "the world conspires" when he did not leave the world itself to conspire?

Because the author wills it!

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« Reply #18 on: April 25, 2013, 06:43:07 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Sideris
Because the author wills it!
Which I've always thought was one of the meta-concepts of the series, Bakker playing with the willful suspension of disbelief when engaging in an entirely fictive world.  The things we are willing to believe in a fiction universe are tools to exploit in showing us the deceptions we depend upon, right?

Our willingness to read Bakker's novels is proof of our complicity and guilt.

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« Reply #19 on: April 25, 2013, 06:43:13 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote
why would he leave Kellhus' path to the Holy War Unconditioned?

Why go to all that effort at constructing the holy war, to leave the most important piece completely subject to chance? Why leave Kellhus to the whims of "the world conspires" when he did not leave the world itself to conspire?
I don't really understand that last sentence?

And in terms of the path to the holy war, well, Moe screwed up on losing his eyes. Why can he just condition anything he wants.

Besides, if Kelhus fell, he could provoke others to leave (well, till he ran out of Dunyain he knew of).

It'd be funny if, secretly, some other Dunyain had left before, carked it and Moe has gone 'Ah screw it, I'll settle for my son then'. Or there's a pile of frozen dunyain under various tree's, that Lewith (right spelling), imperceptive oaf, didn't find!

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« Reply #20 on: April 25, 2013, 06:43:18 pm »
Quote from: Imparrhas
Quote from: lockesnow
(question was Conphas a prisoner of the Fanim at some point in childhood?)
He was a ward slash hostage.

Quote from: lockesnow
If Moenghus conditioned the holy war he absolutely must have conditioned every step of Kellhus path to get to the war.
I don't see any reason to think otherwise.

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« Reply #21 on: April 25, 2013, 06:43:31 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Imparrhas
Quote from: lockesnow
(question was Conphas a prisoner of the Fanim at some point in childhood?)
He was a ward slash hostage.

I thought so.  Doesn't that indicate then that Moe probably had access to Conphas as well as Fanayal?  The circumstances of the Scylvendi destruction as a result of Conphas' insights (insights implanted by Moe), are perfectly timed for Kellhus and for the holy war.

That even brings into question Cnaiur's survival, he was so well positioned, and heard so perfectly that it made him an absolutely perfectly forged tool for Kellhus to use.  Could Moe have been at Kiyuth, directing events from both sides as well as positioning Cnaiur for Kellhus?  Some of the ways Cnaiur is cut down in the council of war by the other chieftans now seem suspicious to me.

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« Reply #22 on: April 25, 2013, 06:43:35 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Imparrhas
Quote from: lockesnow
(question was Conphas a prisoner of the Fanim at some point in childhood?)
He was a ward slash hostage.

I thought so.  Doesn't that indicate then that Moe probably had access to Conphas as well as Fanayal?  The circumstances of the Scylvendi destruction as a result of Conphas' insights (insights implanted by Moe), are perfectly timed for Kellhus and for the holy war.

That even brings into question Cnaiur's survival, he was so well positioned, and heard so perfectly that it made him an absolutely perfectly forged tool for Kellhus to use.  Could Moe have been at Kiyuth, directing events from both sides as well as positioning Cnaiur for Kellhus?  Some of the ways Cnaiur is cut down in the council of war by the other chieftans now seem suspicious to me.

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« Reply #23 on: April 25, 2013, 06:43:41 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
Conphas was very likely conditioned by Moe as part of the TTT - don't forget he forged the holy war.  This is explicit by both Moe and Kellhus' admission.
This is a branch of speculation I have been down before.  Moe (as Mallahet) was present at the court of the Fanim lord that 'fostered' Conphas.

I don't really see why 'the world conspires' should neccesarily mean anything more than another way of saying that men are relatively powerless before the weight of history.  A conspiricy necesitates other conspiritors anyway, surely?

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« Reply #24 on: April 25, 2013, 06:43:47 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
perhaps, but isn't fate often conflated with 'the world' as well?  So to say The world conspires is similar to saying "fate conspires".  So I guess I'm saying that "fate" is legion and may not therefore need other conspirators.

Speaking of Conphas, isn't it fascinating that the two world born men who most effectively resisted Kellhus were men who were conditioned by Moe first?

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« Reply #25 on: April 25, 2013, 06:43:53 pm »
Quote from: Twooars
The destruction of the Scylvendi at Kiyuth was not essential for Kellhus to join and lead the holy war, IMO. My understanding was that Moenghus realized that he cannot possibly condition every step of the way for Kellhus. He depended on Kellhus being Dunyain enough to overcome circumstances as and when they arose. Kellhus gambles (or makes educated guesses) on quite a few things (choosing Cnaiur over Conphas, Saubon and the Shrial knights, revealing himself to the skin spies, the Carathay desert), which means Moenghus relied on him to improvise at many points during his journey. If Moenghus conditioned everything, Kellhus would have had to follow just one path, with no choices to speak of. Cnaiur was crucial to Kellhus in a lot of ways, but the point of Kellhus being Dunyain is that he would have found another way if for eg. Conphas ended up leading the holy war. And I don't see why Conphas needed to be conditioned, if anything he was the only one in the entire series who was completely resistant to conditioning by Kellhus, so how is it likely that he was conditioned by Moenghus?
Besides, the description of the probability trance implies that the Dunyain can't really plan the fine details, so there is no way Moenghus could have conditioned Cnaiur to chance upon a wounded Kellhus. The probability trance does not work like that, IMO.
But I quite like the 'world conspires' angle (which might mean 'fate' or the Gods influencing fate)...

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« Reply #26 on: April 25, 2013, 06:43:58 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Twooars
Moenghus could have conditioned Cnaiur to chance upon a wounded Kellhus. The probability trance does not work like that, IMO.
But I quite like the 'world conspires' angle (which might mean 'fate' or the Gods influencing fate)...

My assertion is that Moenghus shadowed Kellhus' entire journey from Ishual to the Utemot.  He was there at the Utemot, thus the dream to Cnaiur to visit his fathers grave.

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« Reply #27 on: April 25, 2013, 06:44:04 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
Didn't need to shadow Cnaiur if he had some meta-psukhe analogue of Kellhus' firewatching. 
I would speculate the ability to see what people are up to via extended dream manipulation, because that was one of his areas of greatest facility with the Psukhe.

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« Reply #28 on: April 25, 2013, 06:44:10 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
Quote from: Twooars
The destruction of the Scylvendi at Kiyuth was not essential for Kellhus to join and lead the holy war, IMO. My understanding was that Moenghus realized that he cannot possibly condition every step of the way for Kellhus.

Except Kiyuth was an essential part of the inception of the holy war.  The Nansur gambled their entire military strength in order to free their harrassed borders so that they could provision and lead the expedition to regain their lands from the Fanim.  If Conphas had failed, then so would the holy war.  Also note that Conphas' intel and insights that allowed him to defeat the Scylvendi came from his time with Kascamandi.


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« Reply #29 on: April 25, 2013, 06:44:47 pm »
Quote from: Imparrhas
Quote from: Twooars
My understanding was that Moenghus realized that he cannot possibly condition every step of the way for Kellhus.
Yeah, I think conditioning ground means building many contingency plans, not predicting how everything will play out exactly. We know from Kel's povs that the Probability Trance is still limited by how many variables play a part in deciding the outcome and how many of those are known to the Ment...Dunyain. I assume most of Moe's plans never happened because they were there to catch possibilities that never happened.