[H]

I'm having trouble picturing Eleazarus cooking...

Now I'm having trouble to stop imaging Eleazarus & Iokus cooking chanv in Breaking Bad style.

Even more ridiculous if you think that chanv is debased quirri, so they would be cooking cooked Nonman.

[Wilshire]

and or boiling down sranc into a nice broth base

[H]

and or boiling down sranc into a nice broth base

I don't know, if eating Sranc had any benefits, wouldn't some scalpers have found that out a long time before?

[Wilshire]

I have my doubts. Its too close to cannibalism, like eating children, and there is such a sense of revulsion to sranc in battle, that I dont find it likely scalpers would have been driven to that extreme. Takes someone like Kellhus to tip the scales.

No one was restocking their meat stores within Cil'Aujas, or in the Mop, with sranc after battle. You'd think that given an unknown length of the journey within Cil', and no chance to forage, there would have been some mention or thought of skewer a few sranc for dinner to tide them over till the got out, if that was in fact a common, or even uncommon, practice.

[H]

I have my doubts. Its too close to cannibalism, like eating children, and there is such a sense of revulsion to sranc in battle, that I dont find it likely scalpers would have been driven to that extreme. Takes someone like Kellhus to tip the scales.

No one was restocking their meat stores within Cil'Aujas, or in the Mop, with sranc after battle. You'd think that given an unknown length of the journey within Cil', and no chance to forage, there would have been some mention or thought of skewer a few sranc for dinner to tide them over till the got out, if that was in fact a common, or even uncommon, practice.

While I agree with you, considering how long bands of Sranc have been out there for thousands of years, that simply no one has ever eaten Sranc before.  People on earth have resorted to canibalism, for one reason or another from time to time.  It just doesn't seem reasonable to me that it is totally unprecedented.   I can see it as rare, even once a thousand years maybe, but not never.

Maybe, more likely, no one has ever eaten Sranc and lived to tell about it though...

[Wilshire]

Lived to tell, or wanted to tell. Its not something you'd go around telling your friends about, especially considering how superstitious (some for good reason) the three seas are.

I probably has happened, yes, but no written accounts of it happening and its affects doesn't seem unreasonable.

Kellhus probably tested it. Forced/convinced prisoners or subjects to eat a diet of only sranc and see what it did to them. How much you needed to eat, for how long, for anything to happen, if anything at all. If effects, what they were and if they were permanent if you went to a normal diet, or only imbibed some minimum amount. And then, kill all the participants so no one (consult especially) knew what he was doing.

Quirri/chanv/sranc remind me of Limitless' "NZT". Maybe he found a way for himself to mitigate or eliminate any unwanted side effects. Not probably feasible or worth the effort to figure out how to keep the whole Ordeal alive, but maybe a select few... like say a school or two.

[H]

Lived to tell, or wanted to tell. Its not something you'd go around telling your friends about, especially considering how superstitious (some for good reason) the three seas are.

I probably has happened, yes, but no written accounts of it happening and its affects doesn't seem unreasonable.

Kellhus probably tested it. Forced/convinced prisoners or subjects to eat a diet of only sranc and see what it did to them. How much you needed to eat, for how long, for anything to happen, if anything at all. If effects, what they were and if they were permanent if you went to a normal diet, or only imbibed some minimum amount. And then, kill all the participants so no one (consult especially) knew what he was doing.

Quirri/chanv/sranc remind me of Limitless' "NZT". Maybe he found a way for himself to mitigate or eliminate any unwanted side effects. Not probably feasible or worth the effort to figure out how to keep the whole Ordeal alive, but maybe a select few... like say a school or two.

So, he presumes the benefits are at least neutral?  We kind of know that it isn't going to work out how he thinks it will though, from the blurb...

[Wilshire]

Not at all. It just needs to not have an acute and immediate affect on the TGO. They are just a meat shield for the sorcerers anyway.

Effects need to be mitigated or long-term enough to get Kellhus to where he needs to be. He only needs to have a better plan for the imporant few, or maybe just himself.

Could be as simple as using whatever forage is available to feed him and his inner ciricle, keeping them off the sranc and whatever effects it will have.

[Simas Polchias]

Speaking about revulsion for eating quite sentient being, hatred for srancs, srancs as a possible resource for chanv, I've just got this guess.

Part of being a nobility is a certain right/duty/ritual of breaking taboos (it's mostly math paradox than psychological one: to establish guidelines for others you have to erase some of yours). That way they could have invented chanv through some of their ivory-tower-&-behind-sealed-doors orgies, just by attempts to cook out sranc taste from sranc meat. Or maybe it was a cooking assistant, who charred a costly meat to a cinders, was pushed into them as a punishing jesture, but got high instead.

Considering other taboos (and the way people got syphilis & hiv from llamas & apes), human-nonman offsprings, nonman infertility theme, srancs being a perversion of cunuroi... It is possible to have sranc-human hybrid? Do they call it ur-sranc in Golgotherath? Kinda nice handwave to Tolkien & uruk-hais, if it is.

[H]

Considering other taboos (and the way people got syphilis & hiv from llamas & apes), human-nonman offsprings, nonman infertility theme, srancs being a perversion of cunuroi... It is possible to have sranc-human hybrid? Do they call it ur-sranc in Golgotherath? Kinda nice handwave to Tolkien & uruk-hais, if it is.

I think the parallel is deliberate.  In the books, we don't learn how Ursranc were (or are) made, but the implication that they have some "mannish" qualities is presented in the books:

Far more numerous were what Eskeles called Ursranc, a species bred for obedience.

The Scions could only guess at their numbers, since they not only crawled throughout the column whipping and beating their more wolfish kin, but also patrolled the surrounding plains in loose companies of a hundred or so—the way Men would.

[Wilshire]

That is just gross. Trying to imagine what would be less detrimental to the human donor, male or female. I'm guessing either way the human would end up dead after 1 union, given the voracity of the sranc.

[H]

That is just gross. Trying to imagine what would be less detrimental to the human donor, male or female. I'm guessing either way the human would end up dead after 1 union, given the voracity of the sranc.

I'm not sure they are half-breeds in that sense though.  My thinking would be more like they were bred with humans at some point in the past and selected for better obedience, which gradually lead them to have more "mannish" behavior.  In other words, tempered Sranc.

I'm not sure that a Sranc with a human would actually yield any viable result, besides death obviously...

[Wilshire]

Eugenics makes more sense, and could be accomplished without the Tekne. Just a bit of animal husbandry.

[H]

Eugenics makes more sense, and could be accomplished without the Tekne. Just a bit of animal husbandry.

Yeah, the word "bred" leads me in that direction.  Could be a part of the explaination of the hordes of men in the Ark that we've seen alluded to (and present in some of the Nau-Cayût dreams).

[mrganondorf]

From TTT 325-6

"Sohorat roared, and plaster rained throughout the forest of columns.  Flies burst from his maw.  Raving wolves bubbled from his palms, smashed the sheets of light, gorged on those cringing behind them.  Zioz swept burning threads into his fist, wrenched souls from their housing meat.  Setmahaga clawed aside flimsy defenses, struck heads from bodies, gloried in the blood that smoked across his limbs.  He squealed like a thousand pigs such was his exhultation."

So it seems that anagogically summoned demons themselves uses anagogic magic?  Maybe when Kellhus summons a demon it will use gnostic attacks?

Also, the Nilnameshi sorcerers favor wolves, I wonder if there's any connection?

Also, given the efficacy of the ciphrang attacks, I can only guess that the SS don't use it more because they can't or because there is a great risk involved.  Otherwise, why bother risking your neck against Seokti and co?