The Second Apocalypse

Earwa => General Earwa => Topic started by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:55:50 pm

Title: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:55:50 pm
Quote from: Wilshire
This question came up in a different discussion and I thought that it could use its own board.
Is the information in the What Has Come Before sections true, partially true, or false?

If false, can you provide in text examples of contradictions?
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:55:59 pm
Quote from: Jorge
I've always wondered myself, but never bothered to cross-reference.

The line that always made me wonder is the one that says Kellhus went insane after being hung on the circumfix. That is one possible interpretation of events, but it's not entirely clear to me. Did you spot any others?
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:56:08 pm
Quote from: lockesnow
Many of the truths we cling to depend upon a certain point of view.
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:56:15 pm
Quote from: Wilshire
I am in the same boat as you Jorge, Im curious, but never took the time to do the work. I just happened to run into several posts around the boards about this kind of thing and I was hoping that this would have made a place to people to discuss it outright rather than off-topic somewhere else.

Obviously this never happened. Oh well.
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:56:22 pm
Quote from: Amun
I've always assumed that Kellhus's madness was madness in the Earwan sense. Achamian describes at one point how madness is the opening up of the soul to allow more of the Outside to leak in. (sorry, I don't have the exact quote.) Whether that's what the WHCB section intended or not, we know that Kellhus's soul has definitely opened up the Outside, at least since the circumfixion.We see the No-God speaking from Kellhus's point of view, so...

Maybe not as interesting as debating whether Kellhus has gone insane in the more modern sense of the term, but it's what I lean toward.

With that said, I think there is a contradiction between the TWLW's section and the glossary. In the glossary in the back of TTT there is a mention that Anaxophus's men recovered the Heron Spear and brought it south where it was hidden until it needed to be used. There was even a discussion about how Anaxophus hid the Spear while the competing nations around him were destroyed and only used it when Kyraneas was attacked. Some called it worst betrayal in human history, etc.

In TWLW's what has come before section, I think it mentions Seswatha bringing the Spear south. These seem to be contradictory, so either the glossary or the WHCB section is wrong.

But to be honest, when I read TWLW for the first time I thought it was just a mistake that wasn't caught by Scott or the editors
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:56:29 pm
Quote from: Imparrhas
Quote from: Amun
I've always assumed that Kellhus's madness was madness in the Earwan sense. Achamian describes at one point how madness is the opening up of the soul to allow more of the Outside to leak in. (sorry, I don't have the exact quote.) Whether that's what the WHCB section intended or not, we know that Kellhus's soul has definitely opened up the Outside, at least since the circumfixion.We see the No-God speaking from Kellhus's point of view, so...
I think he is mad for a Dunyain ie doing anything but seeking the Shortest Path to a Self Moving Soul.

Quote from: Amun
In TWLW's what has come before section, I think it mentions Seswatha bringing the Spear south. These seem to be contradictory, so either the glossary or the WHCB section is wrong.
Seswatha and Nau-Cayuti first steal the Spear from the Ark, then it disappears after Eleneot Fields and then it turns up again in Kyraneas. I assume the WHCB refers to the first incident and the Glossary to whatever happened after Eleneot.
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:56:36 pm
Quote from: Amun
This is the passage that throws me.

     "But his Ordeal foundered, and the might of the norsirai perished. Seswatha fled south to the Ketyai nations of the Three Seas, bearing the greatest of the legendary Inchoroi weapons, the Heron Spear." (from page 3 of The White-Luck Warrior, Overlook trade paperback edition).

Though I can't find anything about Ses and Nau's journey into the Ark in the WHCB, so maybe it was just kind of thrown in there to cover both the finding of the Spear and its journey to Kyraneas. Still seems contradictory, but who knows?
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:56:43 pm
Quote from: Imparrhas
You're right. Either that's an oversight or a really confusing way of describing how the Spear ended up with Anaxophus.
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:56:50 pm
Quote from: KRST IS
True AND false. My philosophy is to raise the scales of judgment to suspension. ;)
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:56:57 pm
Quote from: Triskele
The madness of Kellhus has always been one of the great mysteries to me.  I mostly take these "what has come before" sections as mostly true, or at least as close to the truth as the reader is supposed to perceive things up to this point. 

Moe tells Kellhus that he's gone made.  Perhaps he does mean it in the Dunyain way.  Moe states that he has never found an example of anything contradicting the principle of what comes before determining what comes after.  Is Kellhus starting to believe that the principle is fallible?  And is that why he's gone mad?  That could make sense, but the way it's stated in the "What has come before" section doesn't quite fit with that.  At least not in my reading.  It seems to be saying something more like "Kellhus went insane." 

But the Kellhus we've seen on screen in The Aspect Emperor books seems to be the Conditioned badass nearly flawless Kellhus we've seen all along...owning every encounter and all that.  So I'm still puzzled by what we're supposed to take away from the "went mad" part of the "What has come before" section.
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: What Came Before on June 04, 2013, 05:57:04 pm
Quote from: Ajokli
I don't believe a word of it.
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: Madness on October 22, 2013, 12:24:48 pm
Quote from: Madness
Quote from: Cu'jara Cinmoi, 2005
We do get an interior glimpse into the Fanim world in The Aspect-Emperor, Tattooed Hand. Like I say, in the historical narrative sections, I resort to quasi-racist cliches and types, both heroic and otherwise, trying to mix up assumptions, and to indirectly show how arbitrary and self-serving they actually are, even if they seem 'fair and balanced' to those sharing the selfsame prejudices.

Thought I'd port this here. It had relevance elsewhere until now.
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: locke on October 22, 2013, 06:15:36 pm
need a poll.
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: Quinthane on October 22, 2013, 07:57:53 pm
poll


http://princeofnothing.wikia.com/wiki/File:Poll.png (http://princeofnothing.wikia.com/wiki/File:Poll.png)
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: Quinthane on October 22, 2013, 09:20:09 pm
it's possible that i might need a nap.
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: Madness on October 23, 2013, 04:01:35 pm
I laughed.
Title: Re: What Has Come Before. True or false
Post by: Wilshire on October 23, 2013, 07:04:25 pm
poll


http://princeofnothing.wikia.com/wiki/File:Poll.png (http://princeofnothing.wikia.com/wiki/File:Poll.png)
lol Earwa's Santa Clause is an Inchoroi