The Cleric Suicides...

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« on: May 07, 2013, 01:15:27 am »
Quote from: Wayward Ishroi
I think I had mentioned this at some point way back on Westeros, buried in one of the earlier WLW threads, but I felt Cleric pretty much threw the fight with Akka...

This quote from the Wracu thread jogged my memory:

Quote
"Walking between Wards is easy," a voice hummed, "when their author practises other arcana."

We see a similar event when Cleric pulls a creepy watching-you-while-you-sleep on Mimara:

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Even as she asks this, she realizes that only sorcery, subtle sorcery, could have made this visitation possible. She thinks she can even sense it, or at the very least
guess at its outlines, the warping of the Wizard's incipient Wards. It was as if he had simply bent the circumference of Achamian's conjuring, pressed into his arcane defences as if they were no more than a half-filled bladder.


So, at the very least, defeating Akka's wards when he is asleep is pretty much child's play for Akka. Presumably Cleric's Quyan sorcery is pretty badass all around. Akka clearly had difficulty doing more than fending Cleric off while they fight. I guess the key point comes with:

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And so they battled, the Gnostic Wizard uttering no Cants, the Quyan Mage speaking no Wards. Broken walls encircled them, surrounded in turn by the oily tumble
of smoke and trees wrapped in shining flame.

Does Cleric willfully avoid even any incipient wards, or is he too distracted by madness and trying to remember that he simply forgets to set his wards?

My suspicion is that it was a conscious choice... He finally gave up, and while perhaps not an active suicide, he at least didn't try very hard to prevent his own death when he probably could have...

Where has the glory gone, indeed?

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« Reply #1 on: May 07, 2013, 01:15:34 am »
Quote from: Callan S.
Much like death by cop, it's death by Akka.

Then the world conspires to put pointy rocks there when Akka just gives a shove...

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« Reply #2 on: May 07, 2013, 01:15:41 am »
Quote from: Wilshire
Seems unlikely to me. He just killed a badass dragon, so he was inevitably a bit tired, and I doubt he would have survived this long just to lay down and die.

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« Reply #3 on: May 07, 2013, 01:15:49 am »
Quote from: Wayward Ishroi
Wutteat wasn't killed during his Akka/Cleric fight. He flew away. He's some kind of undead thing right now. Dragon-Zombie-esque.

Cleric was pretty badass all-around. I can't see him accidentally forgetting to set incipient wards.

From tDtCB:

Quote
“This is what separates your kind from mine. Fear. The clawing, grubbing, impulse to survive. For us life is always a . . . decision. For you . . . Well, let us just say it decides.”

I think he finally chose, but wouldn't do it himself.

From t4RoCJ:

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He has wondered whether death would be beautiful. He has wondered how the end of memory would appear at memory’s end. He has wondered what it means to so outrun glory as to become blind to disgrace. It seems proper that these screeching animals show him.

I get the feeling that for some Nonmen, death by human is preferable to death by Min-Uroikas, or other Nonman.

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« Reply #4 on: May 07, 2013, 01:15:56 am »
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote
Wutteat wasn't killed during his Akka/Cleric fight.
It was totally a dragon kill! He just flies away so the next mmorpg raid can fight him and collect the phat purple loots next time!

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« Reply #5 on: May 07, 2013, 01:16:01 am »
Quote from: Madness
Lol, perhaps, if you'd like to consider this a fantasy campaign, it's one with longer reaching consequences than that.

Wutteat returns to his Masters. He's learned that Men live in the South and the World is not dead.

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« Reply #6 on: May 07, 2013, 01:16:11 am »
Quote from: Borque
He definitely suicided, in my mind. Makes a lot of sense.

One indication is that he emptied his Qirri pouch before the fight. It wouldn't make any sense to do that  if he planned on going back to business as usual after the fight.

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« Reply #7 on: May 07, 2013, 01:16:16 am »
Quote from: Borric
He actually said “this is where i die”, before the fight.

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« Reply #8 on: May 07, 2013, 01:16:22 am »
Quote from: Tony P
Quote from: Wayward Ishroi
Cleric was pretty badass all-around. I can't see him accidentally forgetting to set incipient wards.

From tDtCB:

Quote
“This is what separates your kind from mine. Fear. The clawing, grubbing, impulse to survive. For us life is always a . . . decision. For you . . . Well, let us just say it decides.”

I think he finally chose, but wouldn't do it himself.

I think he definitely didn't simply forget. He chose to take a risk (as the quote above indicates). He's also trying to create events that are so powerful/painful that he will be able to remember them, so he's not trying to come out of this unscathed. He wants an event so grand and/or traumatic that it will resonate. I think that's also why he doesn't set wards. No risk, no glory; or rather, no risk, no pain.

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« Reply #9 on: May 07, 2013, 01:16:30 am »
Quote from: Wilshire
Thought this was relevant or at least interesting.

"The young can never see life for what it is: a knife's edge, as thing as the breaths that measure it. What gives it depth isn't memory. I've memories enough for ten men, and yet my days are as thin and as shadowy as the greased linen the poor stretch over their windows. No, what gives life depth is the future. Without a future, without a horizon of promise or threat, our lives have no meaning. Only the future is real"
Skeaos, Page 240 (USA Paperback edition)

It seems to point out the difference between man and Nonman, or at least some misunderstanding.

Perhaps the future finally collapsed for our proud Nonman friend here. He could no longer distinguish past from present from future, and therefore felt no need to remain alive.

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« Reply #10 on: May 07, 2013, 01:16:37 am »
Quote from: Triskele
I'm still intrigued by the suggestion that Cleric could possibly be the only person really aware of the inverse fire who did not join the Consult.

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« Reply #11 on: May 07, 2013, 01:16:42 am »
Quote from: Madness
+1, Trisk... Noble.

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« Reply #12 on: May 07, 2013, 01:16:54 am »
Quote from: Duskweaver
Cleric outright tells us the reason he didn't join the Consult was just "Pride", not any sense of nobility or self-sacrifice.


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« Reply #13 on: May 07, 2013, 01:17:00 am »
Quote from: Wilshire
Many see pride as one of the penultimate traits of nobility. And he is noble, or at least was at some point.

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« Reply #14 on: May 07, 2013, 01:17:06 am »
Quote from: Madness
It's interesting, Duskweaver, isn't it? And thus, begins the beautiful spillover into life.

It seems to me that pride and nobility may be parts of the same sphere. Pride is indistinguishable from nobility aside context, how those who view it, define it. I mean, that is certainly the case and gamut with every perspectival mechanism we're highlighting, that person within and the one without and the creature that embodies that paradox in the world - come back to that latros.

We've weaved a certain narrative in the Bakker noosphere about Nil'giccas, that remains pretty unsubstantiated.

Quote from: The False Sun
(click to show/hide)

This is the main piece of evidence. Obviously, it fits with everything else we've been given on Nil'giccas at this point but it makes huge differences in our interpretation of ambiguity.

As the above stands, I think what Nil'giccas did was... a strength of some kind, whether it counts as nobility. However, Shaeonanra might as easily be spouting conjecture - perhaps, Nil'giccas just listened to the Quya he could trust and killed the two Ishroi, on Cet'ingira's word. Then it becomes Mekeritrig's heartbreaking dissonance, that he stomachs for... all of human history.

But the narrative seems to suggest that Nil'giccas killed the Ishroi on Cet'ingira's word but then later believed the Ishroi but continued Cet'ingira's lie with him.