The Second Apocalypse
Earwa => The Great Ordeal => The Aspect-Emperor => TGO ARC Discussion => Topic started by: profgrape on June 01, 2016, 03:28:07 pm
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... not Moenghus, not Cnaiur or some soul mash-up of the two. He was, as he states, a survivor of the sorcerous battle in Shimeh and took the name of the cant that led to his family's death.
Madness has convinced me that he is "the boy" from the end of TTT. And if so, it seems pretty likely that he's also a tool of the Consult. Perhaps unwittingly, but a tool just the same.
Given that he seems to be alive after the confrontation in Fanayal's tent, it seems likely that Kellhus has a use for him. But what is it/
My crackpot is that Kellhus will somehow use him as a tool against the no-God. Maybe he'll mind-fuck Meppa into a emotional tornado, line him up in front of the Sarcophagus and let him unleash the Water?
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Meppa is described as being old. His Ketyai hair is described as gray in WLW. The boy would be like 28 years old or so. I don't think they can be the same person.
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Isn't he described as having snowy-white hair in WLW?—before he shaves obviously. If he was the boy in TTT that would put him at about 32-36 in TAE. Not old enough to have complete loss of hair pigmentation.
Edit: Exactly Blackstone! Thank you. Took the words right out of my mouth.
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I don't know, it's plausible that he had prematurely graying hair. Sure, that would seem to be a strike against the theory, but I don't think it proves it wrong, per se.
Here's a question though, Meppa tells Fanayal that he doesn't remember who he was or where he came from. But he tells Kellhus who he is, so he clearly lied to Fanayal. Why?
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Well... I always read that exchange with Malowebi as about more metaphorical/abstract identity rather than personal identity.
"The people call him Stonebreaker, they say that he was sent to us by the Solitary God."
"What do you say?"
"I say he was sent to me! I am the Solitary God's gift to his people."
"And what does he say?"
"Meppa? He does not know who he is."
Less about who he was in the past and more about what his role in the metaphysical chess game will be going forward. But please, tinfoil away.
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He's described as:
His hair was as white as the peaks of the Atkondras, his skin nut brown.
We don't ever get evidence of his being "old". Only that he has white hair.
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I don't know, it's plausible that he had prematurely graying hair. Sure, that would seem to be a strike against the theory, but I don't think it proves it wrong, per se.
No, it doesn't prove it wrong, but if there is evidence against and none for, then it seems like the most likely explanation is that he isn't the boy. And if all the Cishaurim were destroyed at Shimeh, then no one would be left to teach the boy the Psukhe. The most likely explanation is that Meppa, as a full fledged Cishaurim, somehow escaped.
Here's a question though, Meppa tells Fanayal that he doesn't remember who he was or where he came from. But he tells Kellhus who he is, so he clearly lied to Fanayal. Why?
That is an interesting question. I see what Hirtius/Pansa is saying, but it seems like the most basic interpretation is that Meppa lied to Fanayal.
Another question: Are we missing an obvious point? What cant is "Meppa?"
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He's described as:
His hair was as white as the peaks of the Atkondras, his skin nut brown.
We don't ever get evidence of his being "old". Only that he has white hair.
Generally, white hair in a Mediterranean man (which the Ketyai are meant to reflect) means they are old. This is still more like evidence against than evidence for Meppa being the boy.
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Less about who he was in the past and more about what his role in the metaphysical chess game will be going forward. But please, tinfoil away.
Good point.
He's described as:
His hair was as white as the peaks of the Atkondras, his skin nut brown.
We don't ever get evidence of his being "old". Only that he has white hair.
True. To me there is a difference between gray and white hair. White would seem to indicate it wasn't age that caused it in my mind.
No, it doesn't prove it wrong, but if there is evidence against and none for, then it seems like the most likely explanation is that he isn't the boy. And if all the Cishaurim were destroyed at Shimeh, then no one would be left to teach the boy the Psukhe. The most likely explanation is that Meppa, as a full fledged Cishaurim, somehow escaped.
Yeah, I see that as highly plausible too.
Another question: Are we missing an obvious point? What cant is "Meppa?"
The air-sucking whoosh of the Meppa Cataract. Dozens of lesser Cishaurim vanished in gold-boiling torrents.
Some kind of heat vortex?
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He's described as:
His hair was as white as the peaks of the Atkondras, his skin nut brown.
We don't ever get evidence of his being "old". Only that he has white hair.
True. To me there is a difference between gray and white hair. White would seem to indicate it wasn't age that caused it in my mind.
I had to look it up to be sure, but IRL, white hair indicates greater age than gray hair. As people age their hair follicles stop producing pigment.
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I had to look it up to be sure, but IRL, white hair indicates greater age than gray hair. As people age their hair follicles stop producing pigment.
Fair enough. I still never got the sense that he was that old, so stress induced depigmentation was what I felt was more likely.
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No, it doesn't prove it wrong, but if there is evidence against and none for, then it seems like the most likely explanation is that he isn't the boy. And if all the Cishaurim were destroyed at Shimeh, then no one would be left to teach the boy the Psukhe. The most likely explanation is that Meppa, as a full fledged Cishaurim, somehow escaped.
I had a similar thought regarding the training; how could he learn the Psukhe without being taught by one of the Cishaurium?
The only thing I could come with (and it's thin, no doubt) is that he's an autodidact. Consider this snippet from one of Scott's old interviews:
Prior to Fane, the Psukhe as an arcane art was unknown, though there are legendary hints and mythic innuendos of certain sightless individuals harnessing inexplicable powers in moments of extraordinary anguish.
Compared with Gnostic or Anagoic sorcery, the Psukhe seems more like the sort of thing someone can just stumble upon. And Meppa's use of the Psukhe seems to be more as a blunt instrument than what Moenghus describes as "those aspects requiring subtlety."
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Yeah, I can definitely see the plausibility in him having "awoken" the Water in him in the anguish of his family dying. Indeed this could be what Aurang's "secret" to tell him was? That he was one of the Few?
I don't know, we have such little information. The better question might be about what happens to him now?
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No, it doesn't prove it wrong, but if there is evidence against and none for, then it seems like the most likely explanation is that he isn't the boy. And if all the Cishaurim were destroyed at Shimeh, then no one would be left to teach the boy the Psukhe. The most likely explanation is that Meppa, as a full fledged Cishaurim, somehow escaped.
I had a similar thought regarding the training; how could he learn the Psukhe without being taught by one of the Cishaurium?
The only thing I could come with (and it's thin, no doubt) is that he's an autodidact. Consider this snippet from one of Scott's old interviews:
Prior to Fane, the Psukhe as an arcane art was unknown, though there are legendary hints and mythic innuendos of certain sightless individuals harnessing inexplicable powers in moments of extraordinary anguish.
Compared with Gnostic or Anagoic sorcery, the Psukhe seems more like the sort of thing someone can just stumble upon. And Meppa's use of the Psukhe seems to be more as a blunt instrument than what Moenghus describes as "those aspects requiring subtlety."
I'll admit that it's possible, and that it's possible that he's ~30 years old and went prematurely white, I'm just saying the most probable scenario is that Meppa is not the kid from the end of TTT and that he is quite old. Simply put, the last Cishaurim with a passion for revenge so deep that his Water seems boundless.
Yeah, I can definitely see the plausibility in him having "awoken" the Water in him in the anguish of his family dying. Indeed this could be what Aurang's "secret" to tell him was? That he was one of the Few?
I don't know, we have such little information. The better question might be about what happens to him now?
I do agree that this is the better question ;)
Edit - Aurang wanted to destroy the Cishaurim, so I don't think he'd help engineer the Last Cish.
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Edit - Aurang wanted to destroy the Cishaurim, so I don't think he'd help engineer the Last Cish.
Cribbing from Madness, the Consult wanted to destroy the Cish because they mistakenly thought the Water-bearers were unmasking the skin-spikes. Once they discovered it was the Dunyain (and that Kellhus' father was among the Fanim), they might have changed their tune on eradicating the Cish.
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Edit - Aurang wanted to destroy the Cishaurim, so I don't think he'd help engineer the Last Cish.
Cribbing from Madness, the Consult wanted to destroy the Cish because they mistakenly thought the Water-bearers were unmasking the skin-spikes. Once they discovered it was the Dunyain (and that Kellhus' father was among the Fanim), they might have changed their tune on eradicating the Cish.
Possible, yes.
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Edit - Aurang wanted to destroy the Cishaurim, so I don't think he'd help engineer the Last Cish.
Cribbing from Madness, the Consult wanted to destroy the Cish because they mistakenly thought the Water-bearers were unmasking the skin-spikes. Once they discovered it was the Dunyain (and that Kellhus' father was among the Fanim), they might have changed their tune on eradicating the Cish.
Possible, yes.
It would be a pretty Aurang thing to do, make an enemy for your enemy...
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Edit - Aurang wanted to destroy the Cishaurim, so I don't think he'd help engineer the Last Cish.
Cribbing from Madness, the Consult wanted to destroy the Cish because they mistakenly thought the Water-bearers were unmasking the skin-spikes. Once they discovered it was the Dunyain (and that Kellhus' father was among the Fanim), they might have changed their tune on eradicating the Cish.
Possible, yes.
It would be a pretty Aurang thing to do, make an enemy for your enemy...
It would! I just don't think any of the evidence points to it being the boy, and there is evidence of it not being the boy.
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Well, it wouldn't be a proper TSA novel if we didn't have anything to debate! :-)
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Well, it wouldn't be a proper TSA novel if we didn't have anything to debate! :-)
Ha ha ha. Indeed!
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Cribbing from Madness, the Consult wanted to destroy the Cish because they mistakenly thought the Water-bearers were unmasking the skin-spikes. Once they discovered it was the Dunyain (and that Kellhus' father was among the Fanim), they might have changed their tune on eradicating the Cish.
Indeed. Lol - thank you, profgrape :).
Something so simple as white hair is not going to deter me :P. I've known people in their early twenties to go randomly white.
The better question might be about what happens to him now?
Yeah. I haven't really put much thought into this as Meppa's living was very much something I glossed over and Som only pointed it out to me a couple months ago.
profgrape and I were talking earlier - these thoughts were from that conversation - but I have to believe that Meppa is important because he is the Last Cishaurim and I am convinced that we're still going to get Fanimry elucidated for us in later volumes. We then got into nerdanels regarding using Meppa to create a new No-God or short-circuit it from within, etc, etc.
But I've never been an avid theorist regarding the use of souls to create the No-God (which seems to be explicitly born out in that last dream so I'll have to start) so I just don't know...
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But I've never been an avid theorist regarding the use of souls to create the No-God (which seems to be explicitly born out in that last dream so I'll have to start) so I just don't know...
I had once thought that there was some kind of "critical mass" of souls that they were working toward, but thinking more about it, that really doesn't make sense. Instead, in light of the dream as it's presented in TGO, I think instead they are looking for a particular type of soul, perhaps a self-moving one. This would explain, perhaps, why Nau-Cayûti was needed, or why the person in Akka's dream is of some importance.
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Lol - even more opinion to bolster my random profgrape inspired conjecture that the Last Cishaurim has a "particular type of soul."
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Lol - even more opinion to bolster my random profgrape inspired conjecture that the Last Cishaurim has a "particular type of soul."
Plausible, but I am thinking that the significance of the dream is that the person he is seeing through is of particular relevance.
I would speculate that Meppa's role has more to do with Water than it does with his soul, even if those two are really related.
Of course, this is totally baseless though.
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Of course, this is totally baseless though.
Nerdanels for the win.
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So he is not a mashup of Moe and Cnaüir...:hangs head:! :( It was a reach anyway, fun, but a huuuge reach.
I do like how it turned out though. As far as who he actually is, well, I don't think we'll ever find that out, or that it matters. I didn't notice that he was alive at the end, I'll have to go back and read that. That leaves some very interesting possibilities, indeed.
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My whole thought that Meppa would play a crucial role was based on the fact that the Consult wanted the Cishaurim destroyed in the PoN. As was pointed out, though, they wanted the Cish destroyed because they (Moe) were ghosting skin spies, not because the Psukhe was in some way more dangerous for the Consult.
SO from the point of view of the narrative, I am not sure there is a reason for Meppa's existence other than raising the stakes in Momemn. Fanayal wouldn't be much of a threat without at least one Cishaurim. I can't imagine Meppa wields more power than a metagnostic sorcerer. But I could be wrong.
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Maybe it's not about sheer power. Maybe it's about the fact their sorcery creates no Mark. I think Kellhus has some need for Meppa, otherwise why not just shred him with the metagnosis? Why leave him alive? He's important for some reason. But that begs the question, why did he exterminate the Cishaurim in the first place if they held some kind of importance to his own goals? Could be Meppa was a plant, either by Moenghus (I can hear Wilshire groaning already) or by Kellhus himself. If he was 'programmed' to behave in a certain way, to give Fanayal false hope of toppling the New Empire, that may have been worth it just to bring Fanayal out of hiding. He could very well be a Dunyain 'agent' of sorts. Would explain the whole 'he doesn't know who he is' comment (whelming and all that). If he was Moe's agent (stop it, Wilshire) it could have been as a retributive strike against Kellhus (not very likely, to be sure), or as a piece to the whole metaphysical predicament of Earwa. Something Moe figured out that maybe he thought Kel would need.
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Maybe it's not about sheer power. Maybe it's about the fact their sorcery creates no Mark. I think Kellhus has some need for Meppa, otherwise why not just shred him with the metagnosis? Why leave him alive? He's important for some reason. But that begs the question, why did he exterminate the Cishaurim in the first place if they held some kind of importance to his own goals? Could be Meppa was a plant, either by Moenghus (I can hear Wilshire groaning already) or by Kellhus himself. If he was 'programmed' to behave in a certain way, to give Fanayal false hope of toppling the New Empire, that may have been worth it just to bring Fanayal out of hiding. He could very well be a Dunyain 'agent' of sorts. Would explain the whole 'he doesn't know who he is' comment (whelming and all that). If he was Moe's agent (stop it, Wilshire) it could have been as a retributive strike against Kellhus (not very likely, to be sure), or as a piece to the whole metaphysical predicament of Earwa. Something Moe figured out that maybe he thought Kel would need.
You may be right, I just can't see what it would be. I have, however, been fooled many times before :)
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Oh, if Meppa is still alive, then it's because Kellhus has a use for him. I'd find it hilarious, that if in TUC, we find out that Moe had a hand in him. I seriously doubt it though. I believe @Wilshire has had his day in the sun, and there is No Mo' Moe!
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Just spitballing here a little off of Som's musings. I have no doubt that Meppa was kept alive by Kellhus for a purpose. I've been thinking all evening what that might be.
1. Just for giggles (and hope that my Moe=Meppa might still come true), what if Kellhus recognized Moe had a hand in Meppa?
2. Kept him alive for studying the Psûkhe, and what about it that leaves no Mark.
3.He has another head to attach to him, a là Malowebi.
4.Try and make Meppa see the light, that they are indeed on the same side and persuade him to join him in the fight against the Consult and 100.
5. Som's take, that he was an instrument of Kellhus all along and was whelmed. Will reveal to him a là Proyas, he was instrument being used, and still has a purpose. Hell, he'll probably even bugger him just to get the point across. Seemed to work with Proyas.
My guess would be #4. That Meppa is such a potent weapon and Kellhus feels he can convince him to take his fight to the Consult. We know that Meppa realizes what the 100 are, and I assume he has deduced their role in damnation. I agree, that his story isn't done yet and will play some role in TUC.
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I can wrap all my missing Moenghus up with Kellhus admitting to Proyas that he erred in killing his father. Though, I still don't discount that Moenghus could have had a hand in creating him, if Meppa was already Cishaurim ere the fall of Shimeh (I really am partial to my "Meppa is the Consult Kid," though).
But that begs the question, why did he exterminate the Cishaurim in the first place if they held some kind of importance to his own goals?
Probably because he didn't know enough then, right?
I'm still digging the Cishaurim as being critically misunderstood and misrepresented so far.
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Probably because he didn't know enough then, right?
Not sure that's the case, though. He didn't initiate his pogrom to destroy the Fanim/Cichaurim until after he was declared Aspect-Emperor. If Moe and Kel's encounter implied anything, it was that (supposedly) Kellhus had already plumbed the depths of the Thousandfold Thought, more-so than Moenghus had. At least enough to have made the assumption he knew it better/could see further than his father. If the importance of the Cish was something that Moe had deduced, then Kel surely should have seen it before he hunted them all down.
UNLESS he did see it, all the remaining Cish were in Shimeh when the Inrithi took it over, and Kel had one saved... Meppa.
Now it's just getting silly... Rationalizations!
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Well, I was a huge fan of the possibility that Meppa was Moe or Moe-inspired, so that looks unlikely at this point. But I had continued throughout the story to think he must have some greater purpose and nearly lost it when I thought for a second Kellhus had killed him at the end. I'm relieved to see that people seem to agree that he was not shown to be killed, so like y'all I still think there's something to the character though maybe the man isn't so important and he's just the vector for something metaphysically important in the larger picture.
But I have to mention that i the seen where Meppa as Fanayal parlayed with Esmenet actually bolstered my thoughts about a Moe connection. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the technique to superimpose a face has only been done on screen by Moe-as-Mallahet skyping in Skaurus and now Meppa skyping in Fanayal? Curious...