The Ground, the Void and the Outside.

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Madness

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« Reply #30 on: June 05, 2013, 12:53:34 pm »
Perhaps Mengedda's Topoi was determined by intensity of the experience (Last Human Struggle, No-God's Passing) or by the frequency (Battle in TWP is the Fifth Battle of Mengedda, No-God's Passing being the Third, before Vulgar - I don't have my books on me? Nevermind, that's right, checked PON wiki. How handy is that, right in the top corner lol).

EDIT: Also, do Contest of Faiths make the Ground more or less susceptible to Topoi?
« Last Edit: June 05, 2013, 12:57:26 pm by Madness »
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Wilshire

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« Reply #31 on: June 05, 2013, 03:06:15 pm »
Lol handy indeed. I had forgotten how many battles were fought on those planes. Though it was some kind of topoi before the Vulgar Holy War so that couldn't have affected it, unless there is a question of magnitude (how deep the stain).

Though it would be difficult to determine, since you got the whole No-God death thing blocking any kind of causality.

Contests of faith? I guess that would depend on the faith and how 'valid' it was. 2 false faiths aren't going to change anything. But wars between the cults? Maybe that could affect something. I'd say... More susceptible. The clash of different beliefs rubbing against each other, if intense enough, could weaken or tear the barrier between the world and the outside.
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Wilshire

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« Reply #32 on: August 03, 2013, 01:27:22 am »
Was watching a TED talk today, learned that the "topos", in greek, means "place". Not a particularly enlightening experience, but I thought it was interesting :P
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Duskweaver

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« Reply #33 on: August 03, 2013, 12:50:10 pm »
Was watching a TED talk today, learned that the "topos", in greek, means "place". Not a particularly enlightening experience, but I thought it was interesting :P
Umm... yeah. See Reply #23 in this very thread. ;)
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Wilshire

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« Reply #34 on: August 03, 2013, 05:03:00 pm »
Damnit, I was too lazy to actually look through the comments so i just searched for the word "greek" in the search bar. Maybe it only shows 1 page worth or results, sigh. I guess thats the reason why it sounded familiar   :-[
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Madness

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« Reply #35 on: August 04, 2013, 02:45:56 pm »
You know, there are a couple threads featuring etymology with Duskweaver...

Maybe I will consolidate them in the future.
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Callan S.

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« Reply #36 on: August 07, 2013, 02:21:03 am »
Maybe the misery (helped by the no god) creates a place that is other than the outside, yet not Earwa either (perhaps this is why bones will show up - there's only so much space in this place and sometimes it disgorges itself onto Earwa.

The mountains the skin eaters go under are apparently a topoi because of the suffering of all the human slaves over milenia (under) there.

Wilshire

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« Reply #37 on: August 07, 2013, 07:32:36 pm »
But the whole mountain isn't a topoi, just the the depth, the pits where the suffering took place... and the gates, where the main part of the battles where.

I wonder, are dieing and suffering the same? Could the suffereing by the dead, at the hands of the hundred, somehow be "grounded" in the geographical place where they died, such that, when a lot of people die in one place, there is inherently a lot of suffering?
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« Reply #38 on: August 13, 2013, 01:29:55 pm »
But the whole mountain isn't a topoi, just the the depth, the pits where the suffering took place... and the gates, where the main part of the battles where.

Hmm... we've had versions of this discussion before - even this thread, likely. I sort of figured that it's a radiating gradient from the pits. It seemed analogous to the way grasslands give way to deserts, that shallows become depths, that they are the Topoi grows more intense towards its point of origin.

I've always wondered at the strangeness of the Gate scenes as well. Cleric wears his Erraticism, especially, at the various physical, yet seemingly metaphorical, Gates all through Cil-Aujas.

But I don't think we're talking about the same thing... Unless Sci and I are onto something with thinking that a portion of Nonman society was oriented around dealing with the manifestation of Topoi and they knew enough to guard the perimeters of Topoi. Gates of Hell or to the Outside metaphors and all that.

I wonder, are dieing and suffering the same? Could the suffereing by the dead, at the hands of the hundred, somehow be "grounded" in the geographical place where they died, such that, when a lot of people die in one place, there is inherently a lot of suffering?

I don't think so, Wilshire... though deaths seem essential to at least some of the metaphysical power plays in the series (Consult).
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Wilshire

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« Reply #39 on: August 13, 2013, 03:25:16 pm »
I don't know... I kind of like the idea for now, I'm going to think about it some more. I also need to figure out how to consistently  type were/where in their proper sentences.
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locke

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« Reply #40 on: August 13, 2013, 06:11:50 pm »
interesting that Moenghus suspends the skin spies over pits, pits the nonmen had carved hands into to hold something over the pits.  Gates?

Quote
Kellhus spoke a sorcerous word and a point of light appeared, sheeting low-vaulted walls in illumination. Though ornate by Inrithi standards, the chamber was more austere than any he’d encountered since plumbing the darkness beneath Kyudea. The friezes that panelled the walls did not screen deeper carvings. They seemed more reserved in theme and content as well, as if the product of an older, more stolid age—though Kellhus decided it had more to do with the room’s function. It had been some kind of access chamber for the mansion’s ancient sewers.

Workbenches and strange iron and wood mechanisms littered the walls with shadow. At the far end of the chamber, where the ceiling sloped so low a man would have to stoop, a cistern opened beneath converging chutes, as dust-dry as everything else in the room. Nearer, two wells or pits had been dropped into the floor, each possessing graven lips that, perversely, had been carved into the semblance of hands reaching out of the darkness to tear at four spread-eagled figures, one for each point of the compass. With heads bent back in soundless howls, each clutched at the ground with stationary desperation.

The two skin-spies hung suspended above these pits, their arms and legs shackled in chains of pitted iron.

also here's what Cnaiur feels inside the mansion:

Quote
Suddenly Cnaiür could feel it: the miles of earth heaped above them, the clawing inversion of ground. He had come too far. He had crawled too deep.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Thousandfold Thought: The Prince of Nothing, Book Three (Kindle Locations 7563-7564). Overlook TP. Kindle Edition.

In terms of Kellhus' conclusion, I'm not so sure that it's a sewer.  Also, more ancient nonman works can be found at the Wolf Gate in the judging Eye which is an area of Cil Aujus that is frought with excess meaning, perhaps this description ties into that one (the latter being explicitly a gate...)

And it's worth remembering this is the place where ajencis ascended to the Nail of heaven...

Madness

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« Reply #41 on: August 14, 2013, 04:50:13 pm »
Face palmage, sir.

Inri Sejenus allegedly ascended there.

I do wonder at the Nonmen [People's before the Womb Plague] believing Water/Bathing to be Holy.

And the whole Gates thing continually bothers me.

Lol, I've been imagining like an Alternate Universe Fringe team of Nonmen since yesterday...
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Wilshire

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« Reply #42 on: August 15, 2013, 03:30:48 pm »
You know, there are a couple threads featuring etymology with Duskweaver...

Maybe I will consolidate them in the future.

anyone mention that definition of a cant is Hypocritical and sanctimonious talk, typically of a moral, religious, or political nature.
and the Few's spells are known as Cants
bakker you sly bastard

maybe this was obvious to everyone but me though :P
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Madness

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« Reply #43 on: August 15, 2013, 03:41:21 pm »
I'm not sure that example was brought up specifically but the rabbit-hole continues, Wilshire. Start googling terms and you'll find no end to narrative corroboration :o!

Which is why it always becomes a question of just how much Bakker knows... how much of this he has intended o.O!?
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sciborg2

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« Reply #44 on: August 23, 2013, 06:04:43 am »
@Madness:

I'm trying to remember what we talked about regarding the Topos. Did we try to tie in the Aporetic (and possibly Daimotic) Quya?

I think the Nonmen at first were keeping slaves in terrible conditions and then slowly realized what a Topos was and what it meant.

Yet why were they so determined to worship between the gods, when bowing to the Hundred would have save many more of their [souls] trials.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2013, 02:26:58 pm by sciborg2 »