[TUC Spoilers] Nitpicks...

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Wilshire

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« Reply #30 on: July 17, 2017, 02:27:24 pm »
Also I think that intellect had nothing to do with breading Dûnyains at least not from the mothers prespective. After all don't forget the state of the Whale mothers at Ishaul.  ;) Hardly a picture of intelectual beings been chained for breeding purposes only...

I think intellect was necessary for worldborn partners as it made it more likely (somehow...these Dûnyain genetics are so strange) that they would produce viable children. It's stated in the text that Esmenet found women "of native intellect" (I haven't looked it up but I think that was the phrase used) to be Kellhus' concubines after she no longer wanted to have more of his children.

Whether or not that's true, that it actually worked that way, or that Kellhus just got lucky, is all up for debate I suppose.

Its mentioned many times, several by Kellhus himself, that he picked Esmenet as a likely breeding vessel due to her intellect. The 'native intellect' is also mentioned a few times.
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« Reply #31 on: July 17, 2017, 02:35:25 pm »
Its mentioned many times, several by Kellhus himself, that he picked Esmenet as a likely breeding vessel due to her intellect. The 'native intellect' is also mentioned a few times.

While I am sure that Kellhus believes that is a good way to discover breeding potential, I doubt if it is intellect at the foremost of why Esmenet can carry his children and none other can.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

Cuttlefish

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« Reply #32 on: July 17, 2017, 02:38:35 pm »
I thought the reasonn Esmenet could bear Kellhus's children was her intellect. Mimara isn't dumb, but I don't know if she has her mother's intellect. And why would Kellhus impregnate Mimara and just let her go?

It'd be somewhat hilarious, though, if Achamian ended up raising Kellhus's son as his own. And the relationship between these people would get rather soap opera-y.

Achmian and Esmenet are in love, but Kellhus ends up stealing Esmenet while Achamian has an affair with Esmenet's daughter Mimara, who is impregnated by Kellhus without him realizing that the child is not his

Also I think that intellect had nothing to do with breading Dûnyains at least not from the mothers prespective. After all don't forget the state of the Whale mothers at Ishaul.  ;) Hardly a picture of intelectual beings been chained for breeding purposes only...

I think the Mothers, the initial ones, were on equal terms with the male Dunyain, but over time, the Dunyain (women being willing too, I imagine) reduced them to their biggest use - to create the next generations, so the Mothers were turned into breeding tanks.

But yes, I think it's pretty clearly stated that Kellhus chose Esmenet for her intellect.

ThoughtsOfThelli

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« Reply #33 on: July 17, 2017, 02:43:19 pm »
Its mentioned many times, several by Kellhus himself, that he picked Esmenet as a likely breeding vessel due to her intellect. The 'native intellect' is also mentioned a few times.

While I am sure that Kellhus believes that is a good way to discover breeding potential, I doubt if it is intellect at the foremost of why Esmenet can carry his children and none other can.

I agree, I always thought that the intellect thing was one of the conditions required for a worldborn woman to be able to bear half-Dûnyain children. It makes them more likely to succeed than those without that "native intellect", but there's something more.
In another thread I mentioned Maithanet's mother and Cnaiür's mother, both of which were also able to give birth to non-deformed half-Dûnyain children (mostly guesswork on Cnaiür's mother here, but her child seems to have been killed just because she was Moënghus', there's nothing to make us think that she might have been deformed like the "nameless ones"). If we knew more about both of these women, maybe we could figure out something that both of them and Esmenet had in common?
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Wilshire

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« Reply #34 on: July 17, 2017, 03:54:49 pm »
Its mentioned many times, several by Kellhus himself, that he picked Esmenet as a likely breeding vessel due to her intellect. The 'native intellect' is also mentioned a few times.

While I am sure that Kellhus believes that is a good way to discover breeding potential, I doubt if it is intellect at the foremost of why Esmenet can carry his children and none other can.

I agree, I always thought that the intellect thing was one of the conditions required for a worldborn woman to be able to bear half-Dûnyain children. It makes them more likely to succeed than those without that "native intellect", but there's something more.
In another thread I mentioned Maithanet's mother and Cnaiür's mother, both of which were also able to give birth to non-deformed half-Dûnyain children (mostly guesswork on Cnaiür's mother here, but her child seems to have been killed just because she was Moënghus', there's nothing to make us think that she might have been deformed like the "nameless ones"). If we knew more about both of these women, maybe we could figure out something that both of them and Esmenet had in common?

Yup, that's probably the case, but we don't have any information, and at this point, anyone expecting some kind of future text revelations isn't paying attention.

I always suspected that something that creats the difficulty has to do with the Nonman blood, and that the dunyain genetics program was selecting for those genes. So to me, perhaps there's some nonman genetic stock in the at-large population that smooths conception for dunayin-worldborn hybrids.
No idea about Cnaiur's mother, but she gave birth to Cnaiur, and he's arguably one of, if not the, most intelligent worldborn to exist in recent history. So, one might expect his mother to have favorable 'native intelligence', or whatever, for good hybrind dunyain breeding stock.
As for Esmenet and Maithanet's mother, I would guess that they have, somewhere in their ancestory, the bastard child of an Anasurimbor, and therefore, that nonmen genetic stock. Often people describe those with interesting or different persectives than themselves as 'intelligent'. We know the Nonmen have an alien POV regarding many things, perhaps this is what gives the illusion and or vague descriptor of 'intelligence' when describing those exhibiting similar alien thought patterns.
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ThoughtsOfThelli

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« Reply #35 on: July 17, 2017, 04:06:35 pm »
Yup, that's probably the case, but we don't have any information, and at this point, anyone expecting some kind of future text revelations isn't paying attention.

I always suspected that something that creats the difficulty has to do with the Nonman blood, and that the dunyain genetics program was selecting for those genes. So to me, perhaps there's some nonman genetic stock in the at-large population that smooths conception for dunayin-worldborn hybrids.
No idea about Cnaiur's mother, but she gave birth to Cnaiur, and he's arguably one of, if not the, most intelligent worldborn to exist in recent history. So, one might expect his mother to have favorable 'native intelligence', or whatever, for good hybrind dunyain breeding stock.
As for Esmenet and Maithanet's mother, I would guess that they have, somewhere in their ancestory, the bastard child of an Anasurimbor, and therefore, that nonmen genetic stock. Often people describe those with interesting or different persectives than themselves as 'intelligent'. We know the Nonmen have an alien POV regarding many things, perhaps this is what gives the illusion and or vague descriptor of 'intelligence' when describing those exhibiting similar alien thought patterns.

That could be the case, but I keep thinking that, even if descended from several Nonman/Man hybrid lines, those genes would be very diluted by this point. Then again, this is a fantasy world we're talking about, and it may not matter how many generations removed they are from one or more Nonman ancestors, that blood will always have an effect. (Couldn't Harapior sense the Nonman ancestry of Serwa, too? And that would - as far as we know - come only from Omindalea's son, who lived some 3000+ years prior...)
It definitely would explain why these women are apparently so rare in the general population, and why Kellhus could only find Esmenet despite being able to pick any woman he wanted as one of his concubines.
"But you’ve simply made the discovery that Thelli made—only without the benefit of her unerring sense of fashion."
-Anasûrimbor Kayûtas (The Great Ordeal, chapter 13)

"You prefer to believe women victims to their passions, but we can be at least as calculating as you. Love does not make us weak, but strong."
-Ykoriana of the Masks (The Third God, chapter 27)

Wilshire

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« Reply #36 on: July 17, 2017, 04:19:59 pm »
Its by no means bulletproof. I start hand-waiving at about this point, and justify that Bakker is not a geneticist, but a philosopher. Beyond about this point you have to start making a lot of assumptions about, yes, genetics, heritability, dominance, there are also some really interesting genes that do little else but kill the offspring if not expressed properly in the offspring making it essentially impossible to remove it form the gene pool. Or we could go down the path of 'alien genetics' and who knows where we'd end up lol.
I'm happy to speculate more :) but I think the in-text worldbuilding/backup ends at about this point. And, perhaps, best to make another topic for it.
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Cuttlefish

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« Reply #37 on: July 17, 2017, 04:24:15 pm »
Genetics in this series works the same way incest does for Targaryens in ASOIAF. There is a mechanic there, but it's not a realistic one; just hush and let the fantasy genre flow over you.

ThoughtsOfThelli

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« Reply #38 on: July 17, 2017, 04:26:23 pm »
Its by no means bulletproof. I start hand-waiving at about this point, and justify that Bakker is not a geneticist, but a philosopher. Beyond about this point you have to start making a lot of assumptions about, yes, genetics, heritability, dominance, there are also some really interesting genes that do little else but kill the offspring if not expressed properly in the offspring making it essentially impossible to remove it form the gene pool. Or we could go down the path of 'alien genetics' and who knows where we'd end up lol.
I'm happy to speculate more :) but I think the in-text worldbuilding/backup ends at about this point. And, perhaps, best to make another topic for it.

I might just go and create a brand new thread, those strange Dûnyain genetics can be really intriguing, even if we can't expect to behave like real life human genetics. ;) (I've always wondered if there's some meaning behind the deformed child of Kellhus and Esmenet having eight arms, not really a common thing in real life, but I might just be falling into the fallacy of applying real life genetics to this again).


Genetics in this series works the same way incest does for Targaryens in ASOIAF. There is a mechanic there, but it's not a realistic one; just hush and let the fantasy genre flow over you.

I know, I really shouldn't be trying to make sense of this using a real life perspective, but it's easy to fall into this trap be it with "Martin genetics" or "Bakker genetics".
"But you’ve simply made the discovery that Thelli made—only without the benefit of her unerring sense of fashion."
-Anasûrimbor Kayûtas (The Great Ordeal, chapter 13)

"You prefer to believe women victims to their passions, but we can be at least as calculating as you. Love does not make us weak, but strong."
-Ykoriana of the Masks (The Third God, chapter 27)

themerchant

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« Reply #39 on: July 18, 2017, 10:21:41 am »
Yeah no-one questions speaking and thinking two other things at once can make you teleport.


Quintus

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« Reply #40 on: July 18, 2017, 10:29:29 am »
That could be the case, but I keep thinking that, even if descended from several Nonman/Man hybrid lines, those genes would be very diluted by this point. Then again, this is a fantasy world we're talking about, and it may not matter how many generations removed they are from one or more Nonman ancestors, that blood will always have an effect. (Couldn't Harapior sense the Nonman ancestry of Serwa, too? And that would - as far as we know - come only from Omindalea's son, who lived some 3000+ years prior...)
It definitely would explain why these women are apparently so rare in the general population, and why Kellhus could only find Esmenet despite being able to pick any woman he wanted as one of his concubines.

It might be genetic, though it's quite far-fetched, since women carry mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed unchanged (save some random mutation now and then) from mother to daughter, never from the father. So it might be that some mtDNA strains are more compatible with Dunyain seed. It would be even better if we had any knowledge of a Nonman woman (^^) ever bearing a daughter conceived with a Man man.

Wilshire

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« Reply #41 on: July 18, 2017, 11:05:02 am »
Thoughtsofthelli moved the genetics conversaiton to a new topic :)
http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=2233.0
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