Quote from: mrganondorf on October 06, 2015, 08:01:58 pm

the nonmen would certainly be inclined to write that out of their history

Judging by erraticism concept, large part of the cunuroi ended like inchoroi - rapist and murderers with "orange & blue morality". It's not uncommon when enemy figure transforms into a teacher- or sculpturor-like. So, actually, cunuroi could boast their atrocities, throwing vivid descriptions of them right into listeners ears just like Nil'Giccass did with his sermons.

But that's not true with their halaroi pupils, who would certainly want to lighten the image of teachers to a bearable degree.

Well, more evidence that perhaps my theory that started all this is in fact true?  The Inchoroi gave them a dose of exactly what they gave themselves, knowing the effect it would ultimately have.

I'm not drunk, but perhaps I should be?  Haha, here goes...

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OK, that makes sense.  God is a despot.  Lucifer is not, so there is definitely room to play with the concept of 'rule-gone-awry.'  I need to think more on grander implications.  I think a central theme here is freedom and it's costs.  At what cost does Lucifer's allowance of freedom come?  At what cost does his love come?

Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of angle I want to take with this. But exploring grand themes is tough lol

Another thing I’m wrestling with is Lucifer’s love for God. When I was first fleshing this out I planned on having God be a fairly unambiguous tyrant, and on casting Lucifer as a kind of promethean freedom fighter. But I’ve always really liked the idea that Lucifer’s love for God is unrivaled and I keep arguing with myself about how I can work that in. It wasn’t something I planned for and it doesn’t easily fit in with the mythology as I’ve set it up. Why would Lucifer love this tyrant God so much? I guess God could have just programmed that into Lucifer nature but that isn’t very interesting. Ideally, Lucifer’s love for God is something pure, not pathological. I’m not sure it’s a concept I’ll end up trying to include but it’s on my mind. Introducing some moral ambiguity to God is probably a good idea anyway. Thoughts on what that should look like?

Well, Lucifer's knowledge is finite.  So his understanding of God is finite.  Why would he love God, despite him being a despot?  Well, there is the love, so strong, that it can do nothing but overwhelm.  He loves God, not despite God being a contradiction, but because God is a contradiction.  It is all too much.  Love so strong it cannot exist.  Love so strong it makes you want to subsume yourself.  It's too pure, it's overwhelming, it threatens to devour.  Lucifer's love for God is so strong he believes that all things are violence to God.  Even Lucifer's own love is an affront, since he cannot even fathom God in his infinite manifest existence and yet the love blossoms of itself, on and on, a perfect positive feedback loop.  The world is imperfect and impure, a blight on God's (at least in Lucifer's eyes, since, remember, his knowledge is finite) perfect and pure divine corpus.

Lucifer's removal of God is not an act of imprisonment in his eyes, but a sheltering of God from the base and imperfect world that seeks only violence to God's very nature.  Lucifer would bear the failure of the world, the sins of the world, the base nature of the world, and the impure devotion of it's inhabitants to spare it from God.  God apart from the world, not as a punishment, but clemency.  A sacrifice on the part of Lucifer, to bear the sins of the world.

There’s also the question of what benefits that “elevated status” actually conferred. I can think of a few main things that the chosen people usually receive in myth. Possibly some divine assistance in the form of miracles. This is D&D so we can assume that this exists, probably in the form of paladins and priests with Saint-like abilities from God. Divine guidance is pretty ubiquitous, prophets and oracles. The big one though is entrance into heaven. Why did they give that up? And how does it work in this world? Now that God is overthrown, do you need to worship Lucifer to get into Heaven?

I hadn’t considered that God’s absence allows mages to manipulate the Word more freely. I’ll consider that. Regardless, I don’t think the forerunners rejected Christ because they were power hungry. I want to make it weirder than that if I can.

Maybe heroism is just in their nature. Different varieties of this are pretty standard for elves and elf-equivalents like the Nonmen. Elves are naturally good or wise or whatever. It’s almost an essential trope for elder fantasy species.

I especially like the way Bakker did this with the Nonmen. They aren’t fundamentally good obviously. As a society they’ve committed more than their fair share of atrocities, and the personalities of individual Nonmen seem to vary as much as human personalities do. But it seems like they are fundamentally “epic”. They’re sort of Nietzsche-ian. They have this ancient greek vibe, like they’re genetically predisposed to behave like characters from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Maybe they only come off that way because all we get as readers is historical accounts and folk stories but I doubt it.

So some variation of that is one possibility for why they rejected God. Something in their alien psychology put them at odds with him. The simplest form of this could be similar to the Nietzsche-ian heroism of Bakker’s Nonmen or the tragic sense of duty that the Tolkiens elves have. The Forerunners recognized that their God was a tyrant and so they stood against him.

The other possibility I see that relies on their culture alien psychology is something you mentioned. The Forerunner’s could value freedom more than God’s Grace, or despise servitude to such a degree that they couldn’t bear God’s dominion. It could be weirder than that too, like they despise peace so much that the idea of eternal tranquility in the bosom of God. Anyway, whatever explanation I go with, I want it to say interesting stuff about them. Whatever gives me the most meat to work with going forward I should probs pick. What exactly does it say about them if they venerate freedom so much they choose it over God.

I think that's a good way to explore it.  Also there is the idea, “Nothing is harder to bear than a succession of fair days.”  God's grace offers no end to the fair days.  Also, maybe they are like Bakker's Nonmen, in that their long lives mean memories are hard to come by.  Such fair days leave nothing, a smooth slate.  It is only through the trauma of stress, pain, etc that they can really experience life.  Maybe that's it then, that freedom offers the chance of life, rather than just the exalted state of being.

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I admit, I am partial to the idea of God having a confederate Angel 'on his side.'  My first thought goes to Michael, since it would have been him who had lead God's fight with Lucifer in those early days.  Now, he slowly attempts to covertly work to bring back God, by the resurrection of Christ, but his work is slow because he cannot be seen to be openly defying Lucifer.

I’m definitely into this. My plan right now for the overarching narrative is to have the players stumble into an angel’s scheme to open a gate to hell. It’ll be up to them whether they get played by the angel or start trying to unravel the conspiracy.

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The player characters can be pawns of Michael, perhaps he appears to them, presents something as a Holy quest, but really unwittingly aiding in the Resurrection, to perhaps find the tomb of Christ (or something similar) or sundering it, or perhaps something else. No doubt, the Nonmen would not be pleased about this, so there is a potential conflict there.

Ideally I’d like to draw them into it more subtly. The game is still in a kind of gritty noir western-y place, so direct contact with an angel would be out of place. I’m gonna try to bring in the epic powerhouses slowly. I want the players to feel me slowly turning the heat up as the angels plans proceed and the world approaches catastrophe.

Yeah, I don't see it working thematically or even sensically for Michael to arrive, blazing sword in hand, clad in robes, unveiling his plan.  More like in the cackling of the local madman, or the drunken musing of the town lush.  I kind of like the idea of Michael shepherding the downtrodden and disenfranchised of the so-called Kingdom of Lucifer.  He fancies that these would not be God's lost children (even if that it probably false).  The players can either buy in to these mechanations, as their so-called, "good deads" or be skeptical, as to what the real aim is here and who is behind it.  The guise of a noble quest, they can take the offer of such a noble cause at face-value, or be suspect of what is really going on.

Well, we kind of know that the IF probably predates the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars, because something made Sirwitta into a gibbering mess.  I also think that Nin’janjin sees it too, later, and this is what keeps him on the Inchoroi side.

I actually think the the IF indirectly corrupted Cu’jara Cinmoi, through Serwitta and Nin’janjin.

Great post H. I've read it se real times now and, at first, I really liked the idea but now I'm not so sure.

Seswatha was seemingly instrumental in stopping the first apocalypse, so why force the second?

One possible explication for that would be for him to be working with Shae, as an ally, rather than a mortal enemy, then, the mandate and the skin spy hate towards Chiara is all misdirection. They needed the 2nd apoc, but they needed everyone to belive in the struggle between the two sides, between good and evil, to truly bring it about.

Seems like a. It of a stretch, but there are enough hard truths in there for me to accept it.

Well, I'm not really throwing this down at as Factual.  Just more of a feeling I had.

The idea of why he would prevent the first and actively presue a second, is that the first was absolutely on the Consult's terms.  They dictated how it would happen and so were poised to reap the rewards (i.e. avoid damnation).  The way Seswatha (if he has in fact actually done this) is more to engineer a total loss, i.e. a total sundering of the system that allows even the possibility of a Consult victory.

This prevents there being a Thrid, Fourth, Fifth, etc. because otherwise, do you think the Consult would just give up, simply because it didn't work the second time?  What better way to make sure your opponent can't win the game, other than breaking the board?  It's scorched earth to another level entirely.  You win the game by not by out playing your opponent, when you opponent is immortal and insanely driven, but by making sure your opponent doesn't get to play.  The plan isn't victory, it's denying your opponent victory.

Keep in mind, this Second Apocalypse, who has brought it about?  Because it was not A&A, nor Shae as far as we can tell.

"Entire nations will be damned" iirc

Yeah, he did mention that, but I thought it would be more a case of, "they just backed the wrong horse," rather than "this was the One True Way the whole time."  In other words, maybe Kellhus really does succeed in becoming a god and possibly kills several along the way, leaving their worshipers to the whims of the Outside?

Quote from: H on October 02, 2015, 04:15:54 pm

Quote from: The Spaces Between on September 30, 2015, 09:50:55 am

So the mark doesn’t equate to damnation since chorae have a deep mark and are sorcerous items but going by the JE they are god’s own tears though this doesn’t actually tell us if sorcerers themselves are damned. Guess we have to wait and see whether mimara glimpses a socerer that isn’t damned.

Yes, I believe you are right in the sense that the Mark is not strictly equal to damnation.  Recall that the Tusk is what damned sorcerers, the Mark presumably predates that.

how did the nonmen know they were damned in the first place. Titirga tells shau that the nonmen taught them how to hide their voices to avoid damnation....but the nonmen worship darkness, not the thousand gods which are the purveyors of the whole hells...unless they are just ciphrang of more power like meppa says then its just generally ciphrang.

Well, let's not pretend that the Nonmen were really much of 'good guys' even before the Fall.  I think the Nonmen fell right into the same trap the Inchoroi did, although in a different way.  The Nonmen, as is often said, "dug too deep," that is, they went looking too far into the existential nature of the world.  In doing so, and mainly by doing so in a very amoral, almost depraved way, they actually damned themselves.  By the time the Tusk came along and damned them, the balance of them were no doubt already screwed, but that was just one more piece.

here you go 

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"But I do know," Achamian hastily adds, "that the Judging Eye involves pregnant women."
Mimara gawks at him through tears. A cold hand has reached into her abdomen and scooped away all warring sensation.
"Pregnant..." she hears herself say. "Why?"
"I don't know." He has flecks of dead leaf in his hair, and she squelches the urge to fuss over him. "Perhaps because of the profundity of childbirth. The Outside inhabits us in many ways, none so onerous as when a women brings a new soul into the world."
She sees her mother posing before a mirror, her belly broad and low with the twins, Kel and Sammi.
"So what is the curse?" she fairly cries at Achamian. "Tell me, old fool!" She rebukes herself immediately afterward, knowing that the Wizard's honesty would wither as her desperation waxed. People punish desperation as much out of compassion as petty malice.
Achamian gnaws his bottom lip. "As far as I know," he begins with obvious and infuriating care, "those with the Judging Eye give birth to dead children."
He shrugs as if to say, See? You have nothing to fear...
Cold falls through her in sheets.
"What?"
A scowl knits his brow. "The Judging Eye is the eye of the Unborn... The eye that watches from the God's own vantage."
A cleft has opened about their path: a runoff that delivers them to a shallow ravine. They follow the stream that gurgles along its creases—the water is clear but seems black given the gloom. Monstrous elms pillar the embankments, their roots like great fists clenched about earth. The stream has wedged the trees far enough apart for white to glare through seams in the canopy. Here and there the water's meandering course has gnawed hollows beneath various trees. The company ducks beneath those that had fallen across the ravine, trees like stone whales.
"But I've had... had this... for as long as I can remember."
"Which is my point exactly," Achamian says, sounding far too much like someone taking heart in invented reasons. He frowns, an expression Mimara finds horribly endearing on his shaggy old features. "But things are always tricky where the Outside is concerned. Things do not... happen... as they happen here..."
"Riddles! Why do you constantly torture me with riddles?"
"I'm just saying that in a sense your life has already been lived—for the God or the Gods, that is..."
"Which means?"
"Nothing," he says, scowling.
"Tell me what it means!"

I underlined a line there, because I think that is the explaination, although what it means exactly I don't know.  I think it is something similar to the White-Luck, in that what has happened has already happened.  Something like he running all through time, or something like that.  Maybe that is why she was prophesized?

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For the first time, it seemed, he noticed how much lighter her skin was than his or her mother's. For the first time he wondered about her real father, about the twist of caprice that had seen her born, rather than aborted by Esmenet's whore-shell.

I've tried to reason out the curious circumstances of her birth, but with only the couple lines, it's really hard to figure much.  On the one hand, it seems like a rather mundane story of, "man sleeps with prostitute, later returns with no remembrence of ever having been."  That is imminently plausible, yet, we know, because we know that Mimara is special, that this wasn't just some chance encounter.  Yet, what can we draw further?

Quote from: H on October 02, 2015, 04:15:54 pm

Quote from: The Spaces Between on September 30, 2015, 09:50:55 am

In chapt 1 of the UC akka talks about how when souls are trapped into objects like wathi dolls etc
“ The intricacies of identity are always sheared away. Memory. Faculty. Character. These are cast into the pit... Only the most base urges survive in proxies.”
Just like the nonman revenant created on the topoi under the mountain dreaming he was a god but with a hunger and speaking through the unconscious akka etc
Just like the no-god created in golgotterath (known topoi according to akkas dreams) speaking through scranc, wracu etc. asking who he is

i.e. is the no-god a big ol soul trap.

Also is wutteat a temporary storage bank for souls of the inchora if hell sustains him from within and he refuses to die until salvation is achieved. (I’ve read some theories already but thought I’d remention)

We've talked a lot about the No-God before.  I'm with you on the soul trap, because I think that the whole idea is for the Consult's soul to go somewhere, not just into the waiting clutches of gods on the Outside.

yeah the whole idea of the inchorai even waging war if they feared damnation so much doesnt make sense, let alone them crashing their ship into the planet. i imagine if i were fearful of the afterlife id be much more subtle about my tactics or just blow up the planets from afar...or always just use souless agents

Well, we really don't understand how or why they crashed.  We don't understand how or why they knew Earwa was special, yet they did.  We do know that Aurang hates how Sil wasn't patient enough, although, this could no doubt be hindsight being 20/20, of course.  It's very easy to say now that it was all a mistake, but I bet Aurang, considering how headstrong he is/was about his own strength was really all in favor of caution.

I don't think they had every really needed to create soulles things before Earwa though, or else they'd had had them ready and never needed to bother with the Nonman gnome.  The haphazard nature of the Bashrags kind of ratifies this for me, as it says to be that this was not what the Tekne was supposed to be used  to do, but they just made it work somehow (out of desperation).

We also don't know how or why Earwa was prophesized to them either.  I think a lot of their trouble comes from them simply not being humble and acquiescing to what is.  They feel they can always best anything, no matter what.

Quote from: profgrape on October 02, 2015, 05:16:04 pm

Excellent observation!  I'm kicking myself for not seeing the parallel between the Wathi Doll and the No-God.  But yes, the No-God seems to fit with Akka's description in TUC.

I agree that the No-God is a sort of soul-trap.  I've always figured that the line of prisoners that Akka dreams in WLW are "soul food" for the No-God and that it's brought to life when the number of souls consumed hits a critical mass.  Or maybe that the souls provide the energy it needs to fulfill it's greater purpose -- sealing the World from the Outside.

haha it seemed like a massive hint. yeah the line of prisoners does seem like food. an almagamated wathi doll. but bound to a sorcerous purpose

I've always maintained that the No-God is no real agent, it simply is just a thing, that does what it was made to do. 

Quote from: H on October 06, 2015, 08:34:05 pm

Quote from: mrganondorf on October 06, 2015, 08:26:23 pm

H you have to be right, but i don't know what to make of it???

perhaps this points to No-Gog is God ... God trapped in a coffin or God forced to stare into the Inverse Fire or God with his eyes gouged out by whatshis name, the king of Caraskand?  God as reconstituted?  i mean, the Carapace forces all the fragments of God back into a whole and that whole is not very nice?

I think part of it is Scott purposely puts in all these biblical parallels, that aren't really parallels at all.  I think in a lot of cases, they are a bunch of window dressings, a way to frame how we see things, not explain what we see, if that makes sense.

THE DECEIVER!  he's got so many false trails for the reader to follow.  i bet some of them will be meaningful parallels but we won't know until it's all over

Yeah, even better to bury the one parallel that is important in the 20 that aren't really.  The same probably goes for all of Akka's dreams, so much that we don't have time to analyze, yet some of it must shed light on something.

H you have to be right, but i don't know what to make of it???

perhaps this points to No-Gog is God ... God trapped in a coffin or God forced to stare into the Inverse Fire or God with his eyes gouged out by whatshis name, the king of Caraskand?  God as reconstituted?  i mean, the Carapace forces all the fragments of God back into a whole and that whole is not very nice?

I think part of it is Scott purposely puts in all these biblical parallels, that aren't really parallels at all.  I think in a lot of cases, they are a bunch of window dressings, a way to frame how we see things, not explain what we see, if that makes sense.