The Slog TWP - Part Two: The Second March [Spoilers]

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MSJ

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« Reply #15 on: January 15, 2016, 07:41:25 pm »
So, 3 for 1, but you obviously got what I meant. And, I think your right, it seems to be proof that Kellhus thought past the Circumfix. Which I was thinking along the lines of profgrape, I thought that revelation was proof that he didn't see past the Circumfix. Good point, H.
“No. I am your end. Before your eyes I will put your seed to the knife. I will quarter your carcass and feed it to the dogs. Your bones I will grind to dust and cast to the winds. I will strike down those who speak your name or the name of your fathers, until ‘Yursalka’ becomes as meaningless as infant babble. I will blot you out, hunt down your every trace! The track of your life has come to me,

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« Reply #16 on: January 18, 2016, 12:31:24 pm »


So, 3 for 1, but you obviously got what I meant. And, I think your right, it seems to be proof that Kellhus thought past the Circumfix. Which I was thinking along the lines of profgrape, I thought that revelation was proof that he didn't see past the Circumfix. Good point, H.

Well, in that moment, I think he sees up to it.  Perhaps not yet past it, but he is actively plying the Gnosis from Akka:

Quote
The Mandate couldn’t be involved, Kellhus knew, not until he possessed power enough to parley with them as equals.
...
He must feel shame.
“Something troubles you?” Achamian asked, leaning against his knees. He turned to spit over the summit’s edge.
“Serwë …” Kellhus said with an air of admission. “Tell me, would you think her capable of being …” He feigned a nervous swallow.
Achamian looked away to the hazy landscape, but not before Kellhus glimpsed a fleeting expression of terror. Palms turning upward, nervous stroke of his beard, flaring heart rate …
“Being what?” the sorcerer asked with sham disinterest.
Of all the souls Kellhus had mastered, few had proven as useful as Serwë. Lust and shame were ever the shortest paths to the hearts of world-born men. Ever since he’d sent her to Achamian the sorcerer had compensated for his half-remembered trespass in innumerable subtle ways. The old Conriyan proverb was true: no friend was more generous than the one who has seduced your wife …

Is the rumor of the Gnostic texts Kellhus doing?  I don't believe he realized that the Scarlet Spires would capture him, but I do think he sent him, in order to separate him from Esmenet.

Chapter 14:

Quote
“What have I done?” she bawled. “What have I done to displease you?”
A haloed hand struck her, and she slammed against the carpets.

So, she sees the haloed hands even on the skin-spy, which pretty much confirms that they are, in a sense, "user-generated."
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

MSJ

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« Reply #17 on: January 18, 2016, 04:09:43 pm »


So, 3 for 1, but you obviously got what I meant. And, I think your right, it seems to be proof that Kellhus thought past the Circumfix. Which I was thinking along the lines of profgrape, I thought that revelation was proof that he didn't see past the Circumfix. Good point, H.

Well, in that moment, I think he sees up to it.  Perhaps not yet past it, but he is actively plying the Gnosis from Akka:

Quote
The Mandate couldn’t be involved, Kellhus knew, not until he possessed power enough to parley with them as equals.
...
He must feel shame.
“Something troubles you?” Achamian asked, leaning against his knees. He turned to spit over the summit’s edge.
“Serwë …” Kellhus said with an air of admission. “Tell me, would you think her capable of being …” He feigned a nervous swallow.
Achamian looked away to the hazy landscape, but not before Kellhus glimpsed a fleeting expression of terror. Palms turning upward, nervous stroke of his beard, flaring heart rate …
“Being what?” the sorcerer asked with sham disinterest.
Of all the souls Kellhus had mastered, few had proven as useful as Serwë. Lust and shame were ever the shortest paths to the hearts of world-born men. Ever since he’d sent her to Achamian the sorcerer had compensated for his half-remembered trespass in innumerable subtle ways. The old Conriyan proverb was true: no friend was more generous than the one who has seduced your wife …

Is the rumor of the Gnostic texts Kellhus doing?  I don't believe he realized that the Scarlet Spires would capture him, but I do think he sent him, in order to separate him from Esmenet.

Chapter 14:

Quote
“What have I done?” she bawled. “What have I done to displease you?”
A haloed hand struck her, and she slammed against the carpets.

So, she sees the haloed hands even on the skin-spy, which pretty much confirms that they are, in a sense, "user-generated."

The Scarlet Spires sent someone to Xinemus with rumor of the Gnostic texts. Xinemus told Akka about them so he could be rid of him for awhile because Akka was testing Xin's faith, so to say. I don't believe Kellhus had anything to do with it actually. Who else would he learn the Gnosis from?
“No. I am your end. Before your eyes I will put your seed to the knife. I will quarter your carcass and feed it to the dogs. Your bones I will grind to dust and cast to the winds. I will strike down those who speak your name or the name of your fathers, until ‘Yursalka’ becomes as meaningless as infant babble. I will blot you out, hunt down your every trace! The track of your life has come to me,

H

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« Reply #18 on: January 18, 2016, 05:53:25 pm »
The Scarlet Spires sent someone to Xinemus with rumor of the Gnostic texts. Xinemus told Akka about them so he could be rid of him for awhile because Akka was testing Xin's faith, so to say. I don't believe Kellhus had anything to do with it actually. Who else would he learn the Gnosis from?

OK, I went too far down the rabbit hole and missed that, haha.
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

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« Reply #19 on: January 19, 2016, 12:28:31 pm »
Chapter 15:

Quote
A bird the size of a raven alighted upon his knee—a bird like any raven save for its white head.

For some reason, I always pictured the synthese as much bigger.  I seem to have missed this line before.

Chapter 16:

Quote
Without the guidance of the Nonmen Quya, the Anagogic Schools of the Three Seas had never learned how to surpass what were called the Analogies. All their sorcery, no matter how powerful or ingenious, arose through the power of arcane associations, through the resonances between words and concrete events. They required detours—dragons, lightnings, suns—to burn the world. They could not, like Achamian, conjure the essence of these things, the Burning itself. They knew nothing of the Abstractions.
Where they were poets, he was a philosopher. They were mere bronze to his iron, and he would show them.

Probably the most straight-forward explanation of sorcery in the series.

Quote
If Serwë said she cried for Achamian, Esmenet would wonder why. Had they been lovers for more than one night?

More proof, Esmenet did see Akka with Serwë that night they lay together, meaning Akka did in fact see her.

Quote
Why did you lie with Akka? Why?

I had entertained, momentarily, that Esmenet was told by Kellhus perhaps, or mislead by him, in allowing Serwë to be with Akka.  This line proves that this is not the case.

Chapter 17:

Quote
“Exemplary defectives … Specimens. We retain them for purposes of education.” The Pragma simulated a smile. “For students such as you, Kellhus.”

If the Consult (well, wait, lets go back further, the Incoroi) are damned, at least in part for their amoral "scientific" pursuits (read: the Tekne) then it would stand to reason that the Dunyain (and so Kellhus) would suffer a similar fate for reasons such as the above.

How interesting, in a way, that the chapter then ends with the revelation of Mimara's being sold by Esmenet.  Perhaps a coincidence, or perhaps not that we would be shown the damnation of the Dunyain and told of what may be the savior of this, Mimara.
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

nicodante

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« Reply #20 on: February 23, 2016, 12:55:06 pm »

Chapter 9, at the very end Kellhus enters the probability trance and this is his revelation. Seems to me he has predicted how to seize control of the Holy War by going on the Circumfix.

Quote
Possible worlds blew through him, fanning and branching into a canopy of glimpses … Nameless Schoolmen climbing a steep, gravelly beach. A nipple pinched between fingers. A gasping climax. A severed head thrust against the burning sun. Apparitions marching out of morning mist. A dead wife. Kellhus exhaled, then breathed deep the bittersweet pinch of cedar, earth, and war. There was revelation.

Even this assumes Cnaüir will kill Sarcellus, and Serwe's death.

Ha you already picked this passage out too :)


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Wilshire

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« Reply #21 on: February 23, 2016, 01:29:17 pm »
Yeah it really sticks out when you know whats happening. It's a 'prediction' wrought from the probability trance.
Schoolmen and a rocky beach is still unclear to me. Maybe the spires walking from the rubble of the library?
The climax, esmi, the head is Sarcellus, apparations are the holy war, dead wife is serwe.

He might not see how dire his situation might be on the circumfix, but hes at least planning for much of what we end up seeing.
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Wilshire

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« Reply #22 on: February 23, 2016, 01:34:04 pm »
This might have been in the first march, but Akka sees the no god in his dreams, mentions that the sarcaphagus is sheathed in choric scipt.

Also, Somnabulist, the scene with Akka and esmi overlooking the holy war from afar. I think it would make a great subject for one of your zoomed out panorama pieces ;)
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« Reply #23 on: February 23, 2016, 01:35:39 pm »
We collectively figured that the Schoolmen are the Spires at the Battle of Anwurat, where they lay a trap on the beaches.
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

Wilshire

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« Reply #24 on: February 25, 2016, 04:46:02 am »
Akka's reflections walking to the Library, mentions he and his male cell mate were lovers for a time.
Is this the only direct mention of Akka taking male partners?
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locke

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« Reply #25 on: February 25, 2016, 07:42:06 am »
It's in the appendix as well. I think it's part of an aborted effort on bakkers part to have male sexual desire be plastic in his world, but he may have been editorially talked off a ledge that monumentally stupid just as he was talked off the ledge of implementing racial spiritual inferiority.

Making male sexual desire plastic akin to female sexual desire is stupid within the context of the series content because if male sexual desire is plastic then cnaiurs sexual desire for moenghus is immediately assumed by readers to be manufactured rather than originating from cnaiur being homosexual. 

This is a profoundly bad approach because there is such a history of discrimination against homosexuals based on the belief that homosexuals are created when they are abused and groomed by an older male. Basically such an approach is stepping into a fucking nightmare land mine and would undermine one of Scott's best creations by turning cnaiur into a martyr/cause/protest point for readers.


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« Last Edit: February 25, 2016, 07:49:28 am by locke »

Wilshire

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« Reply #26 on: February 25, 2016, 02:48:04 pm »
The entry in the glossary is under the name of that guy, and just says they were lovers for a time, so in my mind is basically the same entry.

I did get that vibe a bit seeing that entry, which j had forgotten completely, and thinking about the series as a whole. Plenty of sexual tension and encounters between males that make sense through the lens you've described.
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Wilshire

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« Reply #27 on: February 25, 2016, 02:53:26 pm »
Ah, The Library. What a great scene. It's too bad we never see a concert of mandati. Clearly when welded together, the combined song is stronger than the sum of its parts. It's why before the singing begins, Akka obliterates one, and during the SS concert he only manages 1 more.

I think it strange the SS went through the trouble to capture akka. They want to ply him for information about the skin spy... that doesn't seem worth burning the library to ash and losing, presumably, two high ranking schoolmen .
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« Reply #28 on: February 25, 2016, 03:02:41 pm »
Ah, The Library. What a great scene. It's too bad we never see a concert of mandati. Clearly when welded together, the combined song is stronger than the sum of its parts. It's why before the singing begins, Akka obliterates one, and during the SS concert he only manages 1 more.

I think it strange the SS went through the trouble to capture akka. They want to ply him for information about the skin spy... that doesn't seem worth burning the library to ash and losing, presumably, two high ranking schoolmen .

Like most people though, I think they severely underestimate Akka.  In their defense though, I don't think they could have anticipated the wrathi doll.  Still, underestimate him they do and so I'm sure they felt the risk was pretty minimal.  I doubt if any of them really considered just how overwhelmingly strong the Gnosis is.  I think they knew intellectually, but experiancing it is far different.  Like being told a boiling pot is hot and placing your hand on it.

I do wonder, having typed this out, if the wrathi doll trick is how Seswatha escaped the Wall at Dagliash?

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

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« Reply #29 on: February 25, 2016, 04:27:51 pm »
Iyokus sees the risk of trying to take a Mandate Schoolman.  Eleazaras overrules him, however, partially for the opportunity (as stated above) to interrogate him about the skin-spy, but also because he sees an opportunity to steal the Gnosis -- to Eleazaras, it was a risk worth taking.

Still, what ended up happening at the Library was far worse than even Iyokus expected.  When he realizes that Akka has escaped, he thinks:

Quote
...Eleazaras had left him only six Schoolmen, three of them sorcerors of rank, and some two hundred and fifty Javreh.  Worse yet, they were scattered throughout the compound.  Once he might have thought this would be more than enough to manage a Mandate sorcerer, but after the fury of the Sareotic Library he was no longer sure... Even had they been prepared."

Shit, I didn't expect Akka to be as badass as he turned out to be.  And that continues on in future books.