[Wilshire]

I'm a bit fuzzy on the facts that we know about the original Dunyain, but I think thats a pretty good idea.
It reminds me of Asimov's Foundation/Second-Foundation if you've read those books....

The more I think about it, the more I like it . Seswatha knew about Ishual and knew that there should be a surviving Anasurimbor bloodline, so he sent his second foundation of cultivate the Prophecy and to secretly train an army. They would only show up when the world was in dire need of a savior, basically forcing the prophecy to be true.

The Mandate think that they are the bulwark against the world's end but it was really supposed to be the Dunyain.

[Madness]

I think that whatever Ishual is, it is something Seswatha cooked up way back when.  He needed multiple strategies to defeat the Consult in the fullness of time so he created the Dunyain and the Mandate (and other groups?) to eventually get it done.

I'm a bit fuzzy on the facts that we know about the original Dunyain, but I think thats a pretty good idea.
It reminds me of Asimov's Foundation/Second-Foundation if you've read those books....

The more I think about it, the more I like it . Seswatha knew about Ishual and knew that there should be a surviving Anasurimbor bloodline, so he sent his second foundation of cultivate the Prophecy and to secretly train an army. They would only show up when the world was in dire need of a savior, basically forcing the prophecy to be true.

Well, the Dreams suggest that Seswatha did know about Ishual from Celmomas.

Also, mrganondorf, I think others have echoed your Heron Spear in the Thousand Thousand Halls commentary - I don't think generations of defectives equals generations of Emwama slaves.

+1 Second Foundation, Wilshire.

Blah, forgot to say--what if the dunyain are in Atrithau and have been for a long long time?  There is so much silence about Atrithau I'm suspecting something.

I like it - though Kellhus would likely have noticed this passing through.

But I have suggested it completely possible that a Dunyain has conditioned Ishterebinth.

[Wilshire]

Blah, forgot to say--what if the dunyain are in Atrithau and have been for a long long time?  There is so much silence about Atrithau I'm suspecting something.

Missed this in my earlier post.

Certainly something is going to happen with Atrithau at some point. I don't think it has to do with the Dunyain though. However, as far as we know, it is the only place in Earwa that is Anarcane ground, so certainly this means it must be important. With the importance of magic in Earwa, something like that can't be insignificant.

[mrganondorf]

Madness, having ready through maybe 10% of the stuff up here, I don't think I'll ever have an original contribution.    But all of everyone else's insights are candy for me!  Glad for this forum

[Madness]

Pssh. I'll have none of that .

Yes, I too enjoy the mind candy.

[mrganondorf]

Madness, I hadn't really thought about the ratio of deaths in Ishual and the Bakker-Moria.  The dunyain would have to work overtime to catch up with that and I don't know what purpose it would serve to characterize Ishual as a topoi-lite.  I don't know if Kellhus would have noticed dunyain in atrithau because I think they would be the ones with the puppet strings in that set up - remain hidden while he's in town, play on some blindness they've conditioned him to have. 

I can't shake the idea that Moe could have been in contact with Ishual all along, everything Kellhus reminices is deception on their part, he's the only one who got the dream, none of the old dunyain died for impurities, he was set in a group of young-uns where he would already start to feel a little special (answers the tree/war question right), manipulated by psuhke ALL ALONG.  Nother Ishual revelation: the entire breeding stock is descended from the the Anasurimbor line!  Kellhus is the only one told that his surname is Anasurimbor to give him that special, chosen feeling.

Atrithau has got to be something good, but I have no idea why it's status as 'anarcane' would have saved it in the first apocalypse.  Isn't the NG supposed to be unsorcery in some sense?  Must have been a weird place for a Mandate mission.

EDIT: breaking up the text

[Madness]

Lol... as I mentioned elsewhere - there's a fanfic rendition of the Mandate in Atrithau on Bakker's blog. You might read it. Give me feedback .

[mrganondorf]

Will do!

[mrganondorf]

I feel so slow for posting this--Ishual could be topoi independent of the Dunyain.  Not the top castle, but the deep mansion.  This would matter because...the dunyain could use it as another filter to sift out the weaker?

[Wilshire]

If Ishual was built on top of a Mansion, and if Cil' Aujas is a standard Mansion, then yeah its possible. Though it would have been really difficult to hide sorcery and such if the whole place was a topos.

[Kosoter]

If some of the Dunyain are the Few then surely some of them must have figured out it was a topos? I can't imagine being one on top of a topos is fun even if you're not a real sorcerer. If I recall correctly, Akka has a killer trip and sees the Onta for the first time when he's really young. Even a conditioned Dunyain must wonder what the hell that is. If they're all just removed then how could Big Moe and Kellhus become proper monks?

Connected to a Mansion? Maybe. Built on the ruins of one? Maybe. Those are good examples as to why the castle was built there in the first place and how the Dunyain found it. They also explain the Thousand Thousand Halls. But a topos because of either of these or because of the creepy shit Dunyain do? I doubt it. They'd get too weirded out by it, conditioning or not. The Few get bent out of shape by a topos no matter how much they don't want to believe magic exists.

[mrganondorf]

Kosoter, reading what you say, it makes me think that the Dunyain would be intentionally breeding the Few out of their stock--which would be a strange turn of events.

[locke]

the dunyain are not breeding the few out of their stock, it selects for it.  We know this because their training is designed to give a person control over the subconscious faculties of perceiving the onta.  Here is Achamian's memory of the first time he saw the onta, it was random and uncontrolled.  Compare that with Kellhus' memory of the first time he saw the onta, which was deliberately induced by specific training in a controlled environment:

An image struck Achamian: himself as a boy, climbing on the big rocks, the ones his father had used to dry the nets, pausing every few breathless instants simply to look around him. Something had happened. It was as though he’d opened different eyelids, ones beneath those he normally opened each morning. Everything was so agonizingly tight, as though the flesh of the world had been dried taut across the gaps between bone: the net against stone, the grid of shadows cast over the hollows, the watery beads cupped between the flex of tendons on his hands—so clear! And within this tightness, the sensation of inner blooming, of the collapse of seeing into being, as though his eyes had been wrung into the very heart of things. From the surface of the stone, he could see himself, a dark child towering across the disc of the sun.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (pp. 77-78). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Then the sun broke from the glacier, and he was dumbstruck by its beauty. Smouldering orange cresting cold planes of shining snow and ice.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 515). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

A moving soul chained to the brink, to the exquisite moment before something, anything. The tree, the heart, the everything transformed into nothing by repetition, by the endless accumulation of the same refusal to name.

A corona of gold across the high slopes of the glacier.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 520). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

In the recoil of his trance, it seemed all he could hear were the twigs arching and bobbing in the wind, pulled by leaves like a million sails no bigger than his hand.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 527). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

If you read it straight through you'll be struck by all the natural world imagry--particularly of the sun--and references to beauty that I more or less left out.  and of course Kellhus ends with the thought, "I have been legion." :-p

fun math riff: The first derivative of seeing is being. the first derivative of being is place. :-p

[mrganondorf]

Sure, sure, but I don't know if Kellhus is one in a line or an anomaly.  I had supposed that the ability to see the onta was somewhat hereditary, but could show up out of the blue like most other traits.  My grandma was tall, but none of the other women in the family are--like that.

I think it's unlikely that the dunyain are breeding for any kind of onta perception, but that having the power of the few makes you 'better' in Earwe, is more likely to go with other successful traits.  Then Kosoter's post got me musing if it was the opposite.  I can't predict Bakker, other than I know he'll surprise us!

[Madness]

There is definitely a quote from Cu'jara Cinmoi where he says what they breed for that also happens to be the biological requirements for the Few.

But Moenghus the Elder, Kellhus, Maithanet, Serwa, Kelmomas.