[mrganondorf]

We don't even know if moe was exiled to begin with.

we don't even know if it was an exile!  or anything much about them at all!  kellhus lies with his mouth and could inadvertently be deceiving the reader with his inner monologue if he has been lied to by the Dunyain -- i know it would be a dumb story if nothing about it is reliable, but i think it would be quite interesting revelation if kellhus, the Great Manipulator, finds out that his most basic assumptions are flawed

[Wilshire]

Agreed, but perhaps a conversation to continue in MiaLLWL thread .
http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=406.msg1519#msg1519

[mrganondorf]

Agreed, but perhaps a conversation to continue in MiaLLWL thread .

abpactcimt?

[Wilshire]

I figured MiaLLWL would be parseable to those involved in the conversation. abpctcimt might have been a stretch

[mrganondorf]

ifmwbpttiitcamhbas - totally agree

[Seökti]

In suggesting that the Dunyain were conceived of to create someone capable of fulfilling the Kelmomian Prophecies I'm attempting to pull together some loose ends and several narrative threads. 

First, why did the Dunyain lie to their antecedants about sorcery when they surely knew it was around and not a lie? It goes well against their teachings to hide this knowledge, although it is unlikely the forgetting of sorcery by the Dunyain was not deliberate.  Perhaps it was necessary that the Harbinger discover sorcery for himself. 

Second, why did Moenghus leave or get exiled or whatever? Certainly we know he sends for not just another Dunyain but his son is specific, an Anasurimbor, in order to help him solve the riddle of the skin spies, but Kellhus knows truths Moenghus has yet to accept: the reality of damnation and the true goals of the Consult. 

Third, the glossary from TTT offers a definition of Dunyain that suggests their goal is the creation of a 'self-moving soul' through generations of training and breeding.  This already suggests they already had a reason to want to create this person, so it is possible that their desire to create this person would not have been coincidental to the Kelmomian prophecies but driven by it.  The Kelmomian Prophecies as the Dunyain attempt to move beyond 'the circle of before and after'. 

Finally, their fastness being in Ishual suggests a knowledge of the High Kings secrets, secrets which likely only a handful of souls knew.  Perhaps Ishual was built for the Dunyain, or the Dunyain were concieved of by Seswatha or someone close to him in hopes of one day creating someone capable of ridding the world of the consult.  Perhaps the prophecy itself was based on this plan to create the Dunyain.

Just an idea anyway.

[Simas Polchias]

First, why did the Dunyain lie to their antecedants about sorcery when they surely knew it was around and not a lie?

1) If there are any Cants to detect Marks on a long-range distance, using sorcery is a dangerous thing for a cult, trying to hide from the world gone mad. Risk of detection can outweight the powers of the sorcery.
2) Using Plato's "Republic" as a hint, before his quest Kellhus was not of the pragmas (philosophers-kings), but of the guardians of the good city. I bet they had a pragma of Gnosis, skulking somewhere in the Thousand Thousand Halls.
3) Dunyain could be quite right in discarding the sorcery. They wanted to hack reality with a nice and elegant move, but not to mutilate it, producing insane amount of T.D.T.C.B. Who knows, may be they even had sorcerer followers before First Apocalypse and found sorcery totally irrelevant and useless for their purpose?
4) Dunyain are people even with their nurtured skills of governing their nature. They simply forgot. Even if they had sorcerers in their refuging crowd, they had no proper school to pursue it's reproduction or population large enough to have a steady supply of the Few to reproduce skills from lonely master to lonely pupil. Remember, how Akka taught Kellhus thing dunyain didn't happen to use because of their peculiar lifestyle? Also, two thousand years ago they were... much more human-like, for they hadn't fully elaborated their ideas. That why they could make a mistake here.
5) Deus ex machina. Let it be Cet'Ingira and cants of compulsion, for I love them so badly. Yep, simple is that. Cunuroi, who opened the Arc, now cultivates a human garden, growing a twisted social culture in Ishual. Or, maybe, he's making people to shut it again, who knows. He's a insane erratic after all.

[mrganondorf]

"Deus ex machina. Let it be Cet'Ingira and cants of compulsion, for I love them so badly. Yep, simple is that. Cunuroi, who opened the Arc, now cultivates a human garden, growing a twisted social culture in Ishual. Or, maybe, he's making people to shut it again, who knows. He's a insane erratic after all."

woah that's cool -- so Mek was strolling about his garden when he ran into Kellhus?  i could see something like this happening, he would be able to spy on them from a distance, perhaps direct a clan of sranc to the right place whenever he wanted them to send one of their own into the world

[Simas Polchias]

woah that's cool -- so Mek was strolling about his garden when he ran into Kellhus?  i could see something like this happening, he would be able to spy on them from a distance, perhaps direct a clan of sranc to the right place whenever he wanted them to send one of their own into the world

He's a Quya, so there is always a possibility for consealment cants and a very close touch. Also Ishual bastion may be a backdoor of a cunuroi mansionette and thus from cunuroi perspective - a nice roof garden.

[Seökti]

@Simas:

All of the possibilities you lay out for explaining the Dunyain omission of the reality of Sorcery suggests a sort of carelessness I'm unlikely to attribute to the Dunyain.  When Kellhus discovers Sorcery he begins to question everything the Dunyain have taught him, because the Dunyain teach a way of thinking which endlessly revises metaphysical and core truths such as the reality of sin and damnation, the simple existence of hell and 'the Mark', the hidden nature of the onta.

It seems far more likely that the Dunyain were created to produce a single event that would change the course of the world: the creation of the event that is Anasurimbor Kellhus, "a soul utterly transparent to the Logos", a soul which lay outside of the cycle of causation like the Logos which could account for all that preceeded. 

Like Kellhus is also a White-Luck Warrior.

[Simas Polchias]

All of the possibilities you lay out for explaining the Dunyain omission of the reality of Sorcery suggests a sort of carelessness I'm unlikely to attribute to the Dunyain.

Not carelessness, just fallibility. I doubt they are error-free people even with their 2000-yeas gym of social and physical exercises. Btw, it's a most cruel problem of every fallible culture, who recognized such drawback and are trying to perfect itself. Before, it's limited only by ignorance. After, the new limit is about sacrificing a great deal for the sake of awareness. Total fallibility hardly changes, but the price of conclusive error is rising.

because the Dunyain teach a way of thinking which endlessly revises metaphysical and core truths such as the reality of sin and damnation, the simple existence of hell and 'the Mark', the hidden nature of the onta..

These monks will be lucky if sorcery is closer to the root of reality than to reality's redundance.

[Wilshire]

Seökti, remember that the Dunyain from the first apocalypse where far more human the the Dunyain we know of now. They were no less likely to succumb  to shortsightedness and error than you or I.

The Dunyain today could be as ignorant of the Darkness that came before them, even as they were the ones that created it.

[Seökti]

The Dunyain today could be as ignorant of the Darkness that came before them, even as they were the ones that created it.

This is why I believe the Celmomian Prophecy could be a Dunyain plot, the beginning of an attempt to reach beyond the Empirical Priority Principle and produce a "self-moving soul".  This explains how the Dunyain came to find Ishual - the hidden fastness of the Anasurimbor line - as either Celmomas or Seswatha or both would have been involved.

The proximity of the establishing of the Dunyain and the first apocalypse also makes it unlikely that they simply didn't know about sorcery, and their founding principles suggest that they would only omit the existence of sorcery intentionally, an omission which on the surface seems to contradict their mission of grasping all that comes before.

[The Sharmat]

The modern Dunyain eschew history as much as their ancestors eschew sorcery.

They don't seek to grasp what comes before so much as to be removed from it entirely.

[Wilshire]

They don't seek to grasp what comes before so much as to be removed from it entirely.

I disagree. In order to come before all, they must grasp all that came before them.

The Dunyain today could be as ignorant of the Darkness that came before them, even as they were the ones that created it.

This is why I believe the Celmomian Prophecy could be a Dunyain plot, the beginning of an attempt to reach beyond the Empirical Priority Principle and produce a "self-moving soul".  This explains how the Dunyain came to find Ishual - the hidden fastness of the Anasurimbor line - as either Celmomas or Seswatha or both would have been involved.

This makes more sense to me. I could accept this as a possibility.

The proximity of the establishing of the Dunyain and the first apocalypse also makes it unlikely that they simply didn't know about sorcery, and their founding principles suggest that they would only omit the existence of sorcery intentionally, an omission which on the surface seems to contradict their mission of grasping all that comes before.

They certainly knew of sorcery, but destroyed all records of it. Perhaps, yes, they planned to rediscover it later when the other, more mundane principles had been conquered.
If you look at 'becoming a self-moving soul' as a complex equation with many, many variables, in order to solve it they would need to make some assumptions and remove some variables. The gambit to get rid of history and sorcery, I believe, was just a starting point. A way to come up with solutions to their equations before adding in more variables that, initially, would have made it unsolvable.