The Lesser Proyas (the Worldly incarnation of Proyas) is weak, which makes the Greater Proyas (the Spiritual part) strong. This is reversed in the case Saubon. A massive, nearly all-encompassing theme/motif of the series is "inversion". Everything's flipped upside down and turned inside out. It permeates every aspect of the series, from metaphysics, to worldbuilding, even down to names (surname first, given name second).

Saubon's error is seeing Kellhus as the embodiment power. Saubon believes that strength while living is all-important, and further more, he is precisely described as being incapable of truly worshiping or submitting to another man. This makes Saubon strong on the outside, but weak on the inside.

Upon death, one is "turned inside out"...so in the Outside all that Worldly strength is useless, because the inner-self is what gets exposed.

Proyas is the opposite. Suffering, doubt, self-hatred, self-loathing -- these make you truly strong. Being broken to such an extent you cannot be broken anymore.

Of course, all of this inverting/subverting works specifically because the series is written with a traditional, Western, Judeo-Christian (ideally male and heterosexual) perspective in mind.

The comparison of Saubon with Proyas you just made is, in my opinion,valid.
I somehow started looking for such parallels-going-antithesis the moment I read Saubon's death at Dagliash. The hint of Saubon seeing himself at Mengedda is an obvious hint that all the pieces on the board are in place and that the final scheme has just been set into motion (almost litteraly by Kellhus pushing the typical "Red Button").
The nuke at Dagliash creates (or reïnforces? Although I don't think the death of the Nonmen and the Diurnal there created one) a topos, a link to the Outside. The way we see it through the eyes of Saubon, I read a connection between the topoi at Mengedda and the one at Dagliash.

At the same time, we have a few parallels of severe underground trauma during the whole series:
*The death of Moenghus at the hand of his son Kellhus: I found your analysis above, very interesting and it obviously got me thinking.
*The death of Oinaral at the hand of his father Oirunas
Both deaths happen at the bottom of a Nonman mansion, in both cases, Knowledge (capital K) is at stake... If I push that further, it might even be the recovery of Memory (capital M), or the grasping of the plan, or of what is at stake.

And:
*The wight under Cil-Aujas: The scene is that of a haunted Nonman, which ends in a big explosion of something at the bottom of the Great Medial Screw
*The detonation of the nuke at Dagliash: The detonation happens at the top of the Well of Viri, basically a chimney pipe into the mountain
The detonation in Cil-Aujas is described more as an echo than as a genuine explosion

I'm inclined to believe that these events, just like Dagliash and Mengedda, are connected through Kellhus and TTT.

Regarding your thoughts on the weapon races, I believe that is definitely the right track. I also think that the weapon races have been deliberately set up as a way of twisting the reader's expectations down the road, particularly regarding the Skin-Spies, but even Sranc and Bashrag. I have no clue how it will play out exactly of course, but I feel pretty strongly that idea of the Tekne creations being mere soulless husks will be flipped on its head and used as an example to show reader's that, functionally, there is no real difference between consciousness as experienced by a human and consciousness as experienced by a Skin-Spy, other than programming (and anatomy, I guess). Both are equally subject the Darkness that Comes Before, and humans possess no substantially greater level of "freedom" compared to the Skin-Spies. In fact, one could say the Skin-Spies are even more liberated than humans. Sure, they're yoked to the Inchoroi's commands by promise of sexual release, but then...look at Cnaiur and the Thing-Called-Serwe in TGO. Who seems more free in that dynamic? Who's playing who?

Same goes for Kellhus's dominion over just about everyone. He simply has more tools at his disposal. Swap Proyas's religious piety for sexual release, and he's just as much a puppet for Kellhus as the Skin-Spies are for Aurang...

I was thinking the same: Kellhus basically commands TGO as the No-God commands the Sranc.

Since the eyes as the window the the Soul was mentioned earlier, there is a passage in the Dagliash scene where Kellhus warns everybody to run away, in which the choice of words intrigued me:

Flee Dagliash! his voice boomed. Across the Erengaw and the root of the Urokkas, the combatants looked up and wondered.
Flee! Hide yourself from its sight!

It's specifically the last sentence, turned as if Dagliash could see/witness.
I know it's a relatively common turn of phrase, but still: It's not usually about a location.

Going back to the Ciphrang's POV from TTT, their description of the Cish's Water was very similar to the thread that connected humans' souls to the Outside.

It's probably already been discussed in another thread, but... Quote for this? I'm intrigued.

I remember the passage in TTT in which the power of the Water depends on the power of one's emotions. The Dunyain's emotions being so stumped because of their breeding, the last Cishaurim is basically an antithesis of Kellhus. It's not unlikely that emotional raw power is necessary in the TTT Scheme.

Also another theory: How about Kellhus seeing a picture, while he was hanging from the tree. A bit as if he were looking at some sort of vision-like Da Vinci's Last Supper, representing all the 'required' protagonists for the final showdown. Basically him seeing the last "leaf" (or one of the last leaves anyway) of the tree of possibilities offered by TTT.
This would mean he is setting the gears in motion (guiding reality) to ensure all the protagonists are at the right place for the final showdown. Do we know if Kellhus can see the final stage(s) of TTT and what the final result is to be?

Well, I have, in other spots, thrown out the theory that the Voice he hears and is referring to, is his own in fact, but from the future.  This would explain why he mention he listened "in his disorder," that is that he was so disoriented from the visions that he failed to realize that the Voice, his own voice, was in fact not actually from himself.

I was thinking more along the lines of the Voice being Korringhus, of whom we know has grasped the Absolute (or maybe the Boy, but I think he has different role to play). I have still not read Kellhus has.
We know Kellhus has seen beyond the Veil, which could very well mean he is not the one behind it.

A good point.  I had an inkling that he was attempting to dishearten, or sow disbelief in Proyas, but perhaps it is also to disorient them, in the sense that they would be so beyond what they could comprehend that they couldn't follow any path but the one Kellhus has put them on.  Not unlike what happened to Kellhus on the Circumfix, in the sense that he was then "open" to the Voice posing as his own, at a time when reason would be at an all time low and suggestibility at a high.

I mentioned it in the Aörsi thread, I think: I think Saubon was ready to fulfil his task, based on the descriptions we receive from the atrocities committed during the Unification Wars. Saubon was broken during TPN and sent on his path. Proyas still isn't because Kellhus didn't need him to be ready until the Dagliash aftermath.

Interesting food for thought.

Clearly!

Edit: Also remember a Harbinger is a messenger... The one that comes before.
I also mentioned in the 100 stones thread (I think) that Korringhus breaks the cycle of Before and After when he jumps.

My immediate associations were the Jaguar Warriors of the Aztec civilization.  I figured it was just the particular way of referring to the warrior caste of that region of Ainon or whatever. Knights/samurai/kshatriya/Jaguars, etc. etc.  But I don't believe they are mentioned at any other point in the books.

I had the same first association, but I expect them just to be the name of a military or mercenary company. In such large gatherings as the armies of TGO, people usually form smaller groups wirth the same cultural identity. Also note that we hadn't encountered any of the two soldiers in the first passage either.
I'm suspicious of any mention of animals in this book, but not in this instance. The passage appears to be mainly for illustrating the effect of the Sranc meat on nameless individuals, and the name of the company is part of the framework.

I understand what you mean, Wilshire. Though I've always read the PT as a "tree" of which the branches, twigs, etc. are the possible outcomes. The cuts are a way of trimming the possibilities to determine the Shortest Path.
Which is also why I find the speech of the Synthese to the Thing Called Soma about "respecting all the prophecies, even the false ones" (in the WLW) an interesting parallel.

For some reason, I think that 100th stone that he gave to the boy was a chorae, but have no real backup for that.

If it were a Chorae, wouldn't we have seen that confirmed through Achamian's POV? I expect he would have sensed it even before Mimara noticed Koringhus in the labor chambers (the term "laboratory" came to mind...  ).

*AWESOME* responses, folks!!!

Thinking back to how the Nonmen describe Yatwer as the "Fertility Principle", it might be that there are quite literally 100 discrete aspects to the fragmented God of Gods.  I'd always thought of The Hundred as a construct only.  But it might just be a fact.   

And it could be that Koringhus, in his brilliance (which I'm starting to believe surpasses even Kellhus) deduced this fact at some point, thus collecting the stones and killing the birds.

Since last night's realization, I'm thinking Koringhus is either the voice guiding Kellhus or the one guiding Kelmomas. At the top of page 406 he sees Achamian, Mimara and the boy watching him from the height from which he jumps 2 pages later. The moment he jumps, he becomes what has come before.
It's either that, or Koringhus is all of the incarnations of the Dunyain, which I still haven't discounted as a possibility.

So, in transitioning (or needing to transition) from simply a state of Being to a state of Doing is what lead to the fracture?  So, before the Siege of Ishual, Koringhus was whole, since he could simply Be.  However, when it came down to Doing and so needing all those different things, the scavenger, the hunter, etc, he was fractured into all the necessary parts.

I concur: Some specific forms of Action/Doing seem important due to the repetitive pattern of the sequence immediately after Koringhus sees Achamian, Mimara and the boy on the heights (p. 406 again).

--
Edit: Also, last night's realization was the importance of Cnaïur in the chapter which culminates in Koringhus jumping off the ledge. The repetitive Cuts and cuts and cuts... reminded me of Cnaïur's uncountable swazond. In TDTCB we are told of the importance of swazond for the Scylvendi and what they represent. The rest trickles down from there.

So eating sranc meat also gives humans much better eyesight in darkness. Proyas makes note of this in some of his POV sections.

So bear with me...

The Great Ordeal marching into to the tunnels in the Ring Mountains. Fighting the sranc in the tunnels, makes for plenty of natural choke points. Their new lowlight/dark vision means that they'll be able to see just fine and won't be ambushed. Blocking off the tunnels with piles of sranc corpses, retreating, rinse wash repeat.  Imagine pitch blackness and the Ordeal/sranc hordes fighting underground.

And then the Quya Erratics and Schoolman are fighting outside or something.

It would be an interesting parallel with the Battle of Ishual.
It's possible, but I believe it implausible: I expect there to be more sranc, bashrag, etc, in the Ark, but I don't think It and the Consult are going to let themselves be goaded like that.