[TGO Spoilers] Moënghus' capture by Sranc

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MisterGuyMan

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« on: July 27, 2016, 04:24:40 pm »
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"He'd counted only sixteen summers the year his cousin Okyati had ridden into camp with Anasûrimbor Moënghus.  Okyati and his war party had taken the man from a band of Srance travelling across Suskara.  This in itself was enough to make the outlander an item of interest: few men survived such captivity. "

The first few times I read the book I never really gave it much thought.  But as we are exposed more and more to the Sranc the weirder it seems that Moënghus, Dunyain or not, would be walking around as a prisoner of the Sranc.  The impulses of the Sranc, as portrayed in 'The Judging Eye' and 'The Great Ordeal,' seem beyond merely unreasonable but almost elemental.  In the Great Ordeal one very smart individual stated that where the Dunyain reach for infinity the Sranc embrace zero.  They ARE their impulses.  How a Dunyain would be able to manipulate the darkness that comes before for a creature like the Srance, who simply were the darkness completely makes no sense to me.  Even if he could do so, the shortest path would seem to be to just kill them and be done with it entirely.  I'm starting to think that this was an early mistake of Bakker before he fully fleshed out how obscene the Sranc were.


H

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« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2016, 05:56:57 pm »
The first few times I read the book I never really gave it much thought.  But as we are exposed more and more to the Sranc the weirder it seems that Moënghus, Dunyain or not, would be walking around as a prisoner of the Sranc.  The impulses of the Sranc, as portrayed in 'The Judging Eye' and 'The Great Ordeal,' seem beyond merely unreasonable but almost elemental.  In the Great Ordeal one very smart individual stated that where the Dunyain reach for infinity the Sranc embrace zero.  They ARE their impulses.  How a Dunyain would be able to manipulate the darkness that comes before for a creature like the Srance, who simply were the darkness completely makes no sense to me.  Even if he could do so, the shortest path would seem to be to just kill them and be done with it entirely.  I'm starting to think that this was an early mistake of Bakker before he fully fleshed out how obscene the Sranc were.

Well the entire story of how and why Moe had to leave is rather spurious at best.  Without delving into too many spoilers here, because of the sub-forum, there are some things that don't add up about him having to leave.  I think that there is far more to why and how he was "polluted" than simply just seeing some Sranc.

Consider Kellhus journey out and who he met in the Prologue.  Consider now what Kellhus learned in that encounter.  If the same had happened to Moe, he may have learned of the same kind of things.  Would he really have returned to Ishual to stay?  He may have even deduced how to manipulate Sranc in the same manner that the Nonman (whose name we do know) controls them did.
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themerchant

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« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2016, 09:29:27 pm »
Koringhus comments he ran with the Sranc in TGO, he could imitate them and smelled almost human, setting them to attacking each other.

mrganondorf

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« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2016, 04:33:29 am »
Hi MisterGuyMan!  I tell you what, it's bugged me to about Moe getting captured by sranc.  A couple of possibilites: they were ursranc or they were ordinary stranc being controlled by ursranc/skin-spy/cuniroi.  There's always the possibility that the gods did it or that Bakker hadn't worked out his world completely yet.

It doesn't seem likely, but I suppose the report that Moe was found in the company of sranc could have been fabricated or just misinterpreted.  Like Moe finds a small band of sranc, kills them all, is wounded, hears approaching scylvendi, pretends like he's the only survivor of an attack by a rival clan of sranc, idk. 

Wonder how long Moe was wandering and if he had to eat sranc?

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« Reply #4 on: August 07, 2016, 11:07:12 pm »
I know that we have a thread addressing this somewhere - and in the Almanac chapters for TDTCB, when this comes up we tried to break it a bunch as well. I'll have to look for those more leisurely later.

The only thought I have to add to the thread to address MisterGuyMan directly is that perhaps there is a Sranc-rule that preserves certain kinds of individuals from the dead and penetrated treatment?
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