Whats curious is that they didn't storm the SS compound. Imagine if they walked in with the might of their school? There would have been no SS left. Their grandmaster, and most of their highest ranked members, would have died immediately in that room, and they wouldn't have had time to organize concerts. So much chaos, and at the center a cadre of  Cishaurim. They could have done so much more and probably lost even fewer.

The point kind of being that if they were really just looking for revenge of some sort against the SS for the skin-spy, why do so little? Must have been some other machinations - it must have been Moenghus.

My guess is that is the most they could teleport (or walk the Shadow Way) or whatever.

The other idea could be that they weren't sure what the response would be.  If they had everyone pop out and something disastrous happened, like, some kind of Ward they didn't anticipate, they'd have lost everyone.  The loss they took was big, but not devastatingly so.  Losing all their Primaries would probably have been the literal end.

Mimara tells Galian it's not too late to change, as he's about to do some nasty stuff to her.  Difficult to say if she's just saying that, trying to appeal to whatever spark of humanity he might have left, or if she knows it based on her experience with the JE.  Implications.

Indeed, that is a good question.  Also, she might actually believe it's true when it really isn't.

That being said, I do think one could be redeemed from damnation, but only if one completely devoted themselves to a god and venerated them with some overwhelming fidelity.

Kellhus teleported the knife into moe he didn't stab him.

"The rise of anasurimbor moenghus to take his place"

If kellhus was thwarted when he attempted to teleport out of moenghus' inversion of ground, as I've speculated before, then the truth of this quote becomes more apparent, remember, they are described as exactly identical in this chapter, save one is shaved and one is not, it should be a paltry thing for moenghus to take the place of kellhus as we see from the appearance of a figure match in the description of kellhus in the shimeh battle and in the aspect emperor series, crucially, kellhus povs are absent from all moments past his teleportation, possibly confirming this theory.

Given that everything in the context of the quote except "the rise of anasurimbor moenghus to take his place" has been shown to be apparently correct, we must also consider the possibility that this single line is co equally correct with all the other correct predictions it is entwined within.

Too deep Locke, too deep for my blood.  I don't think I can follow that all the way down, although it is pretty interesting to think about, because you are right, seemingly everything that was "prophesized" there seems to have come true.  There is the alternative though, that this is exactly  what Scott wants us to think, that this is what Kellhus is after, setting us up for a surprise at the end...

Chapter 17:

“Because I couldn’t succeed,” Achamian said. “Not alone. Because what we do here is more important than truth or love.”

No … this can’t be …
The No-God advanced across the Mengedda Plain, sweeping up legions of Sranc, tossing them about its thunderhead base like dolls knitted of cheap flesh. And in its winding heart Seswatha glimpsed it, the glint of the Carapace, hanging like a black jewel … He turned back to the Kyranean High King.
WHAT AM I?
“What am I?” the dark and regal face said, frowning. His oiled braids thrashed like snakes about his shoulders. The last of the light glimmered across the lions wrought into his bronze armour.
“The World, Anaxophus! The very World!”
This isn’t how it happens!

Consider the previous dream though.  Seswatha admitting he lied because the mission was greater than the truth.  And here, a dream presented different.  A lie Akka needed to hear?  Is this Seswatha telling Akka that Kellhus sides with the No-God?  I admit that often, before, I took the changed dreams as the truth.  Some may be, but here, coupled with the previous dream, perhaps not?

Kellhus nodded to him, his frown amiable and perplexed. “This is what I decree, Akka. The old world is dead.”
Leaning against his staff, Achamian glanced across the astonished assembly. “So you speak,” he said without urgency or rancour, “of an apocalypse.”
“It’s not so simple. You know that …” His voice, his expression—everything about him—beamed indulgent good humour. He raised a welcoming hand, gestured to the space to his right. “Come … take your place at my side.”

Hmm, this is interesting, possibly Kellhus admiting that the Second Apocalypse is what he is trying to bring?  A semantic one though?

I don't think it was teleportation. Probably something more akin to walking the shadow way, like akka/xin did in TWP.  If they really thought it was teleportation, i doubt they would have bothered training dogs to smell saffron if they really thought that the Cish could just blink in whenever they wanted.

This also begs the questions, why, if they could teleport in, couldn't they teleport out after they kill the grandmaster? Teleportation that only works one way is much less useful.

Yeah, you are probably right.  Here, I was thinking it was akin to Kellhus' meta-Gnostic teleporting, but that is really improbable.

Thing I could think of is that however they did it takes intense concetration or something similar.  No doubt that once they actually killed him there wouldn't be time before all sorts of Wards and Cants were being lobed around, leaving no time to walk back out.

I doubt they even intended to, it was probably a suicide mission from the get-go.

Quote from: Blackstone on March 01, 2016, 03:52:07 pm

If this has been brought up before, I apologize

Don't do that. Its been half a decade. Its probably been a long time since truly new ground has been covered, and we've accumulated, and subsequently forgotten, most things, so don't worry about  it.

Yeah, chances are really good that I have no original ideas of my own, but just recycled memories of theories other people came up with years and years ago that I don't consciously recall.  Such is our fate with no new content to scrutinize.

Yeah, the most probable culprit is Kellhus himself.  If the Consult couldn't find it in 2000 years, I have doubts they'd find it in 20.

Why he would have destroyed it is a whole different issue.  To deny Akka questioning the ones left there?  Then why let Akka find the map?  Then again, it could be something deeper, like Kellhus setting up what Akka will find.  Could all be drawing out what Seswatha is guiding Akka towards...

It also made me wonder about the Dreams and Seswatha's escape from the wall. The Cants of Calling collapse space into a point, but what of time? The more akka concentrates, the more he feels like he is actually there, in that place of the dreams. Maybe if one concentrates hard enough, or, say, adds another  layer to the Cant, you might physically exist in the past for a brief moment. Long enough to pull the stakes from the arms and legs of the grandmaster of the Sohonc and free him ... yup, timetravel saved Seswatha .

I still wonder if perhaps it was something like Akka did with the Wrathi doll to escape though.  No way it is an accident that Akka meets Nautzera in that Dream of all dreams.

It took thousand and thousands of years of working sorcery to have this small reaction (salting at  about 3 feet [or about 1.5 meters] from a chorae). Its doubtful that any human sorcerer would ever achieve this kind of expanded reaction to chorae.
However its still fascinating to me that there is an increase effect at all. Like somehow the bruise permeates far beyond your own body, if deep enough. The fringe edges of your existence, or your soul, actually gets larger with use of sorcery somehow.

I think in some place Akka remarks at how he can "feel" a Chorae being near.  I would guess that with such a deep Mark, the tiny undoing that is Akka's feeling is much more dramatic, leading to salting at a distance.

Chapter 16:

“When did you realize you didn’t possess the strength,” Kellhus asked, “that more was needed to avert the No-God’s second coming?”
“From the very first I recognized that it was probable,” Moënghus said. “But I spent years assessing the possibilities, gathering knowledge. When the first of the Thought came to me, I was quite unprepared.”

“In this world,” Moënghus said, “there’s nothing more precious than our blood—as you have no doubt surmised. But the children we bear by worldborn women lack the breadth of our abilities. Maithanet is not Dûnyain. He could do no more than prepare the way.”

Indeed, I think here we learn something very important.  It isn't just the training that makes Kellhus what he is, they specifically bred the Anisurimbor blood.  The Nonman blood.  This is why Kellhus is more.

“You speak as though the Thought were a living thing.”
He could see nothing in the eyeless face.
“Because it is.” Moënghus stepped between the two hanging skin-spies. Though blind, he unerringly reached out to run a finger down one of the many hanging chains. “Have you heard of a game played in southern Nilnamesh, a game called viramsata, or ‘many-breaths’?”

This is the lesson.  This is the whole purpose of the encounter.  Kellhus learns that he makes the lies true.  Is is the living lie, the new lie to overtake Moe.

Let him think I waver.

This is where the honesty ends.  Before this, I think the Kellhus is proving to Moe that he really has grasped TTT.  After this he plays at attempting to deceive Moe.

“Set aside your conviction,” Moënghus said, “for the feeling of certainty is no more a marker of truth than the feeling of will is a marker of freedom. Deceived men always think themselves certain, just as they always think themselves free. This is simply what it means to be deceived.”
Kellhus looked to the haloes about his hands, wondered that they could be light and yet cast no light, throw no shadow … The light of delusion.

Again, Kellhus learning that he is living a lie, but that it doesn't matter.  It's a lie, but a lie he will make true.

For the Dûnyain, it was axiomatic: what was compliant had to be isolated from what was unruly and intractable. Kellhus had seen it many times, wandering the labyrinth of possibilities that was the Thousandfold Thought: The Warrior-Prophet’s assassination. The rise of Anasûrimbor Moënghus to take his place. The apocalyptic conspiracies. The counterfeit war against Golgotterath. The accumulation of premeditated disasters. The sacrifice of whole nations to the gluttony of the Sranc. The Three Seas crashing into char and ruin.
The Gods baying like wolves at a silent gate.
Perhaps his father had yet to apprehend this. Perhaps he simply couldn’t see past the arrival of his son. Or perhaps all this—the accusations of madness, the concern over his unanticipated turn—was simply a ruse. Either way, it was irrelevant.

This part is very interesting for the future implications, because it's a theory floated often as to what Kellhus is really after in The Aspect Emperor.  Here, he imagines what he cannot allow to happen, what a Dunyain would do, the implication being, of course, what he won't do.  Or is it?  Is it rather that he won't allow Moe to exact this.

The latter part seems to speak more to the truth.  Kellhus even admits at the very beginning of this encounter that he knows he walks on Conditioned ground.  Yet, now he doubts Moe could have considered the possibility of his father having anticipated all this?

I find only one way to reconcile all this, in my mind.  It is that the entirety of the encounter is premeditated by Moe simply to remove any doubt from Kellhus.  Kellhus muses how he has "labyrinth of possibilities that was the Thousandfold Thought" and I think Moe would have known this.  What he does now, in allowing Kellhus to seemingly master the situation is lock in the path of this new Thousandfold Thought.

Cycling back around, this is the whole purpose of the Holy War, the whole purpose of it all, to train up Kellhus to be the new Thousandfold Thought, to take it where Moe was simply unable to.

Serwë assailed him first, her limbs and blade a whirring blur. But he stopped her with blue-flashing hands, swatted aside her slender figure …
Just as her brother descended, slashing at impossible palms, spinning and kicking, lunging and probing—only to be seized about the throat, to gape and thrash as the blind man lifted him off his feet, to blister and burn as blue light consumed his head, made a candle of his body. The thing’s face cramped open and the blind man threw him slack to the ground.

Consider how easily, even having been stabbed, he dispatches the skin-spies.  Yet, we're to believe he couldn't do a thing to prevent Kellhus stabbing him?

“I am dying, Nayu.” Hot whispers in his ear. “I need your strength …”

And what might be the most cryptic quote in the whole series.

He needs his strength for what?  If it isn't for a soul transfer, then for what?  Could he have foreseen their arrival?  Or did Moe have something else planned, but took the opportunity when it presented itself?