Adrian Collins, founder of Grimdark Magazine, will be telling readers how to access an excerpt from Bakker's new story!  Check his twitter account (https://twitter.com/AdrianGdMag) on Tuesday, December 9th at 10:30 PM US eastern time.  If you sign up for Grimdark's mailing list, you will receive the excerpt next week!

Aurang, insofar as he is representative of the Inchoroi, doesn't seem to the nonman affliction of having self swallowed up by the ages.  Why is that?  Possibilities:

- Inchoroi have external brain drives
- Inchoroi psyche does not require memory in the same way
- Inchoroi are afflicted; Aurang is an exception or only apparently an exception
- Nonmen require atrocity to recall themselves, perhaps memory-via-atrocity is like a daily reflex for the Inchoroi?  Enough trauma equals semi-permanent selfhood?

The big revelations coming up in The Unholy Consult have got to map the limitations and differences of the the 3 races in the Consult and why they seem to function better as a team than as a individuals.  I think the Cuno-inchoroi memory difference will be key in all that...

EDIT: I'm interested in the species wide issue, but it will be cool to find out specifically about Mekeritrig.  Is Aurang Aurax his book? 

I don't know that memory should be an issue for Shae.  Perhaps the other 9 Mangaecca fused to him lose their memory-selves as his grows and dominates.  Or maybe he's maxing out too?  Would be neat if we see him updated from the TUC chapter 1 excerpt.  A 20-fused soul thing now? 

Idk, maybe he was more than 10 in the excerpt, just not all the parts were in physical proximity.  Skin-spies would be ideal for kidnapping the occasional sorcerer and abducting him to Golgotterath.  Could have been going on a while.  The 300 year gap where there Mandate can't find the Consult doesn't have to mark the advent of the skin-spies.  They could have been operating for centuries before.

GO WILD!

1) Seswatha learned the heart trick from someone else.  One of the few things he took with him from the Library was the recovered heart of Titirga!!!

2) Cnaiur is so special because he has dunyain blood in him from someone on his mom's side.

3) Golgotterath isn't even there.  Instead there's a mansion named Golgotterath full of nonmen distort by eons of sin, their own memories warped as well and rebuilt into delusion.

4) The space between the gods is Ajokli but he doesn't care who worships him.  He lets on that Yatwer an co. can change the course of Earwan history, but they are hanging from his puppet strings too.

5) Mimara is literally the daughter of Yatwer.

6) Kellhus already found the Heron Spear and broke it.

7) There are more nonman mansions south of Nilnamesh than north of it.

GO CRAZY!!!

Saw this and knew there have to be more humor for our demographic, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn discussing the LOTR films:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/unused-audio-commentary-by-howard-zinn-and-noam-chomsky-recorded-summer-2002-for-the-fellowship-of-the-ring-platinum-series-extended-edition-dvd-part-one

And just thought of this from Key and Peele!  The Power of Wings, fantasy/music video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUiA4blvQPQ

U prolly know about it, but i didn't until my a&p prof told me--here's this guy making art with dead bodies:

http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html

it's macabre and beautiful and really illuminating for all the diff kinds of stuff under the skin -- see he removes the skin but then he removes other bits or repositions them to make striking flesh sculptures

not for da squeemysh

Howzabout a 'what if' thread?  Do we have one of those already?  Any and all miscellaneous Earwan whatifs!  Here's a few that kick around my brain:

1) What if ... Martimus successfully assassinates Conphas?

Then ... Kellhus seizes power of the Holy War, but it is to no avail.  Without the circumfix, the troops are not super-inspired (unless the Cishaurim are responsible for their success whatever).  So Kellhus flees the vanquished holy war, laying plans to insinuate himself among the Kianene as a new prophet.  The only person he takes with him is Akka, as Kellhus is still determined to learn the Gnosis.  Perhaps Kellhus is slower to reveal his 'madness' to his father and does not kill him immediately since Kellhus will need Moenghus to climb the power ladder and unite all the 3 seas under the Warrior Prophet and Fane.

2) What if ... Sorweel doesn't force Eskeles to make a Bar of Heaven, signaling to the Army of the Middle North their peril?

Then ... the entire host is lost except for most of the Swayali.  Serwa & co carry Kayutas and Moenghus to safety, but few others survive.  Notable dead include Sorweel, Zsoronga, and Porsparian.  Yatwer has to find a new narindari.

Got some awesome what ifs?

From The Warrior Prophet, US paperback p323, Kellhus is recollecting his training with Pragma Uan:

"What do you see?" the old man finally asked, looking to the canopy above them.

There were many eager answers.  Leaves.  Branches.  Sun.

But Kellhus saw more.  He noticed the dead limbs, the scrum of competing branch and twig.  He saw slender trees, mere striplings, ailing in the shadow of giants.

"Conflict," he said.

"and how is that, young Kellhus?"

Terror and exultation--the passions of a child.  "The tr-trees, Pragma," he stammered.  "they war for ... for space."

"Indeed," Pragma Uan replied, his manner devoid of anything save confirmation.  "And this, children is what I shall teach you.  How to be a tree.  How to war for space ..."

"But trees don't move," another said.

"They move," the Pragma replied, "but they are slow.  A tree's hear beats but once every spring, so it must war in all directions at once.  It must branch and branch until it obscures the sky.  But you, your hearts beat many, many times, you need only war in one direction at a time.  This is how men seize space."

From the White Luck Warrior, US hardback p 67, Akka is thinking about the Mop:

"In the wild lore of witches--those scraps that Achamian had encountered, anyway--great trees were as much living souls as they were conduits of power.  One hundred years to awake, the maxim went.  One hundred years for the spark of sentience to catch and burn as a slow and often resentful flame.  Trees begrudged the quick, the old witches believed.  They hated as only the perpetually confused could hate.  And when they rooted across blooded ground, their slow-creaking souls took on the shape of the souls lost..."

I wonder what the trees around Ishual are thinkin???

We need an Earwar tree thread!  This is the place for all the cool trees in the Second Apocalypse!

P.S.  Surround Kellhus with dumber students to make him feel special!!!