[Francis Buck]

So the Consult created a 'pocket-universe,' which is apparently fictive fashion right now...

Damn, when did I miss that memo?

[Madness]

Lol - I wasn't referencing you, fool.

Fringe, Ex-series by Peter Clines... I had a couple more this morning. There was an article not so long ago about physics-wizards proving the possibility of 'pocket-universes' and then the inevitable speculation about using them as Vaults .

[dragharrow]

I wish I had the emotional depth to bear the water.

You do, dragharrow... you have only to pluck thine gaze from this world and you shall feel the water swell within you .

Woah, Madness, you can't promise that. Careful with throwing around advice like that! Look what happened to Moengus.

I'm no Dunyain. I'm just saying, not everyone's cut out for Indara's water.

[Cüréthañ]

Had an intricate nerdanel about the No-god as a quantum reality overwrite/pocket universe via soul eating, mega-topos over on Westeros a couple years ago.
Damned if I can find it for you though.
So yeh, I'll go with that.

[mrganondorf]

Don't know if the is the right place, it's not about what the NG is, but how you get one.  I'm wondering if the only way to get a NG is to have lots of fresh corpses.  So the first ordeal actually enabled the NG and the new ordeal will do the same.  Kellhus is in the meat delivery business.  Problem: what would stop the consult from just harvesting humans for the last 2000 years.  I don't know, maybe they don't know that this is the secret ingredient (and Kellhus does) or maybe not just any souls will do?

[Borric]

It’s harvesting souls not corpses?
But you hit on a point there.

Time line.

1123 - Shaeönanra, Grandvizier of the Mangaecca, claims to have rediscovered a means of saving the souls of those damned by sorcery. Mangaecca was promptly outlawed for impiety. Mangaecca abandon Sauglish and flee to Golgotterath

2143 - In spring the No-God is summoned. Across the world, Sranc, Bashrag, and Wracu, all the obscene progeny of the Inchoroi, hearkened to his call. Sag-Marmau and the greater glory of Kûniüri are annihilated. All Men could sense his dread presence on the horizon, and all infants were born dead. The 11 years when all infants were still born comes to be known as the Years of the Crib. Anasûrimbor Celmomas II had little difficulty gathering support for his Second Ordeal. Nil’giccas and Celmomas were reconciled. Across Eärwa, hosts of Men began marching toward Kûniüri

So it took 1000 years, ish to summon the NG the first time.
And 2000 years have passed since.
Why would it take twice the time?

[Madness]

1123 - Shaeönanra, Grandvizier of the Mangaecca, claims to have rediscovered a means of saving the souls of those damned by sorcery. Mangaecca was promptly outlawed for impiety. Mangaecca abandon Sauglish and flee to Golgotterath.

What to the bold?! Impiety?!

So it took 1000 years, ish to summon the NG the first time.
And 2000 years have passed since.
Why would it take twice the time?

Allegedly, the first time around Aurang/Aurax had more working knowledge of the Tekne. The second time Shauriatas has had to go it mostly alone, prolly. Think it took them 1000 years to create a shitload more Sranc and the No-God... then 1700 years to make something "new" - the skin-spies.

Surely this reflects Shauriatas individual learning curve?

[mrganondorf]

Those timelines seem so long, I'm wondering if there's been any infighting that would have slowed things.  We've been led to believe that the Consult are bound by a common fanaticism, but who knows?  Dunyain are Mekeritrig's pet project to revenge his people on the Consult!

Side-note:

(click to show/hide)

really looking forward to Kellhus vs Shauriatas.  Kellhus is awesome because of dunyain intellect + gnosis; Shauriatas is a good match--10 mangaecca level cunning minds + gnosis + whatever else he's picked up over the ages

[Borric]

It usually takes a hell of a lot less time to construct something a second time around, so id hazard it’s the substance required that is the crucial factor here.
They also salvaged the remains of the NG from the fields of Menggeda, giving them a head start?

[mrganondorf]

I was wondering about this.  What if they are missing a part?  Like Seswatha managed to make off with an important piece so they can't rebuild the orginal and they haven't been able to find a substitute.  What is it?  Well, if it's Nau-Cayuti in the NG, maybe Seswatha snatched the heart!  Then he had his own bound up with it, mumified, and used in the grasping.  The memories of NC lie dormant until just the right time.  That time is approaching because Kellhus is bringing the heart north.

:S

[Garet Jax]

As long as we are nerdaneling away, what if Kellhus snatched Seswatha's heart out of his own breast during the circumfix!?

[mrganondorf]

As far as all those corpses go, this from TJE, 'What Has Come Before...'

"They relearned the principles of the material, the Tekne.  They mastered the manipulations of the flesh.  And after generations of study and searching, after filling the pits of Min-Uroikas with innumerable corpses, they realized the most catastrophic of the Inchoroi's untold depravities: Mog-Pharau, the No-God."

[The Sharmat]

I took that more as them brute-forcing their way back to a comprehensive understanding of Biotech via horrific and lethal experimentation, but if they need a shitload of dead people to get the No-God to work, perhaps the reason it took so long this time is that, well...the Sranc killed all the people that were anywhere near Golgotterath. They have to cross a continent to find a stable population of people with souls.

[oneeyed]

Anyway, the No God begging to know what people see makes me think his vision is too good. Plus it's a cool parallel to the blind gods.

You say that the No God is either blind or "his vision is too good"... But actually I think it's neither.
What do you see ?
What am I ?

The No God can't see himself. Only from others can he know what he is. This reminds me of the Kellus-Akka dialog where Kellus asks Akka what he sees from a mirror... Not himself. Only his eyes. Only through others can he see himself. I think the No God questions are the same, he's trying to define himself through others.

That fits with his name too. Until he gets the answer to his questions he still remains the no god, a god of nothing or an incomplete god.

[Meyna]

Anyway, the No God begging to know what people see makes me think his vision is too good. Plus it's a cool parallel to the blind gods.

You say that the No God is either blind or "his vision is too good"... But actually I think it's neither.
What do you see ?
What am I ?

The No God can't see himself. Only from others can he know what he is. This reminds me of the Kellus-Akka dialog where Kellus asks Akka what he sees from a mirror... Not himself. Only his eyes. Only through others can he see himself. I think the No God questions are the same, he's trying to define himself through others.

That fits with his name too. Until he gets the answer to his questions he still remains the no god, a god of nothing or an incomplete god.

Excellent. Remember when Esmenet muses about her lessons with Kellhus, where he discusses the half of someone that sees, and the half of someone who is seen? Here is the full quotation:

Men, Kellhus had once told her, were like coins: they had two sides. Where one side of them saw, the other side of them was seen, and though all men were both at once, men could only truly know the side of themselves that saw and the side of others that was seen—they could only truly know the inner half of themselves and the outer half of others.
At first Esmenet thought this foolish. Was not the inner half the whole, what was only imperfectly apprehended by others? But Kellhus bid her to think of everything she’d witnessed in others. How many unwitting mistakes? How many flaws of character? Conceits couched in passing remarks. Fears posed as judgements …
The shortcomings of men—their limits—were written in the eyes of those who watched them. And this was why everyone seemed so desperate to secure the good opinion of others—why everyone played the mummer. They knew without knowing that what they saw of themselves was only half of who they were. And they were desperate to be whole.
The measure of wisdom, Kellhus had said, was found in the distance between these two selves.
Only afterward had she thought of Kellhus in these terms. With a kind of surpriseless shock, she realized that not once—not once!—had she glimpsed shortcomings in his words or actions. And this, she understood, was why he seemed limitless, like the ground, which extended from the small circle about her feet to the great circle about the sky. He had become her horizon.
For Kellhus, there was no distance between seeing and being seen. He alone was whole. And what was more, he somehow stood from without and saw from within. He made whole …

Could Kellhus's ultimate goal to be to help the No-God? What would it mean for the No-God to reconcile its two selves?