[Simas Polchias]

Lost my patience while reading topics & finally registered for some comments! Actually, one comment for now, about "elju technology". I tried hard to stick to the explanation which also corresponds with ideas and themes already mentioned in both trilogies.

1. Guys and girls, there is no book without structure, without formal table of content, right? And every book appears rather through text destruction than it's creation. So we should be very careful with comprehending "book" as a blunt object and denying it all properties of a subtle process, otherwise we will blind ourselves to the certain ideas and guesses.
2. Incariol was kinda direct about nonman personal integrity — there is no such thing anymore. Also, "Four Revelations of Cinial'jin" shows us a river of images instead of a personal dialogue. So for me it always looked like nonman can (and will) memorize everything he experiences through the countless ages, but at the same time will gradually lose every control over both old and new memories. A dark undercellar of his mind is totally fine, it's large enough to keep all that heroical, dull an villanous deeds even for hundreds of thousands of years. But a candle of nonman's mind to light that enormous and growing dark space... Let's just say it's a dim one and it will never get brighter.
3. We already saw an example of a conditioned mind and I mean that awesome probability trance. Practically, it's a pocket analytical department with IT-grade tools but for a cheap price of a timely and proper education.

So, here's an idea (as an intersection of all these three paragraphs).

What if "elju" is just a conditioned passerby, who do not possesses even a bit of nonman's real and personal history, but who somehow can enchance nonman's cognitive process in a specific way through simple or complex technique? So the "book" (human, sranc, etc as a companion to nonman) appears when "text" (nonman's memory) is cut in a specific way by an editor (nonman and his companion). Of course, there remains a question about who defines that specific way...

I stand for "no one" as an answer. And that's why i have a sinister shivers here, lol. Just imagine a rotting, colossal, self-encumbered, unstable, dying something in an every nonman's psyche, which sometime conditions passerby humans or even srancs to recollect it as a something new and lesser, but stable and viable. Maybe after all the inchoroi and their circumspect creations are twice less ghastly then their accidental ones.

[Francis Buck]

Lost my patience while reading topics & finally registered for some comments! Actually, one comment for now, about "elju technology". I tried hard to stick to the explanation which also corresponds with ideas and themes already mentioned in both trilogies.

1. Guys and girls, there is no book without structure, without formal table of content, right? And every book appears rather through text destruction than it's creation. So we should be very careful with comprehending "book" as a blunt object and denying it all properties of a subtle process, otherwise we will blind ourselves to the certain ideas and guesses.
2. Incariol was kinda direct about nonman personal integrity — there is no such thing anymore. Also, "Four Revelations of Cinial'jin" shows us a river of images instead of a personal dialogue. So for me it always looked like nonman can (and will) memorize everything he experiences through the countless ages, but at the same time will gradually lose every control over both old and new memories. A dark undercellar of his mind is totally fine, it's large enough to keep all that heroical, dull an villanous deeds even for hundreds of thousands of years. But a candle of nonman's mind to light that enormous and growing dark space... Let's just say it's a dim one and it will never get brighter.
3. We already saw an example of a conditioned mind and I mean that awesome probability trance. Practically, it's a pocket analytical department with IT-grade tools but for a cheap price of a timely and proper education.

So, here's an idea (as an intersection of all these three paragraphs).

What if "elju" is just a conditioned passerby, who do not possesses even a bit of nonman's real and personal history, but who somehow can enchance nonman's cognitive process in a specific way through simple or complex technique? So the "book" (human, sranc, etc as a companion to nonman) appears when "text" (nonman's memory) is cut in a specific way by an editor (nonman and his companion). Of course, there remains a question about who defines that specific way...

I stand for "no one" as an answer. And that's why i have a sinister shivers here, lol. Just imagine a rotting, colossal, self-encumbered, unstable, dying something in an every nonman's psyche, which sometime conditions passerby humans or even srancs to recollect it as a something new and lesser, but stable and viable. Maybe after all the inchoroi and their circumspect creations are twice less ghastly then their accidental ones.

Excellent first post, and welcome! You've got interesting ideas there, but I particularly like the bolded. It brings me back around to wondering how the Inchoroi -- who are at least a little bit older than the Nonman, though they imply they're actually much older and that would make sense -- have managed to remain "intact" for so long. I suspect it is, like most things, through the Tekne. I'd also imagine whatever that capability was has long been lost, as otherwise it seems strange for Mekeritrig to be using a sranc (it must have been an Ursranc, neh?) as an elju, of all things. Unless he prefers it that way? I've always felt there was a masochistic streak to Mek, and I suppose all erratics.

[mrganondorf]

Hi Simas Polchias!  Awesome post, you really flesh it out.  I think you've got to be right about the 'book' being a way to sort of reframe the nonman as less fucked up.  I don't know if they're all like that though, I'm holding out a little hope that we may meet some intact in Ishterebinth.  I can't think of any specific evidence, but I had the impression that Incariol was recently (as in the last few decades) unravelled.  If only he could have held on longer?  Was there a specific event that pushed him over the edge?  I bet it was something old Moenghus did on his way south.  Incariol is out hunting and runs into Moe...

Shit, Moe probably toppled Ishterebinth way back when.  He could have been exploring the wild for a few years before heading south.  I'm losing my mind!!!  Get me an elju!

P.S. You and FB also got me thinking about if other people need eljus.  Do the gods need them?  Is that what Kellhus is?  The elju for War or Ajokli?  What about the Inchoroi, wouldn't they need some substantial eljus?  Maybe they have lesser nonmen for their eljus!  Would a dragon need one?  If Kosoter is really a ciphrang, maybe Incariol is his elju! 

[Simas Polchias]

Aw, thanks.
I suppose my third post should be about fourth.
It seems there is very few graphical arts about Earwa.
That will be remedied in this month.

[mrganondorf]

Quinthane and Somnambulist have put some awesome stuff in this thread and the ones like it:
http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=1334.195

[The Sharmat]

It brings me back around to wondering how the Inchoroi -- who are at least a little bit older than the Nonman, though they imply they're actually much older and that would make sense -- have managed to remain "intact" for so long. I suspect it is, like most things, through the Tekne.

Almost certainly. The problem of potentially infinite memory vs. finite storage capacity and read/write speed is something the Inchoroi would have encountered very soon after cracking the secret of clinical immortality. The Inchoroi must have been able to adjust for this with augments to their mental abilities. Their mastery of the Tekne was once very great indeed, and I'm sure Aurang and Aurax both have memory and intellect far superior to any human via mind enhancing grafts.

It should be interesting to see what Aurang or Aurax can do with the Gnosis with their power no longer restrained by a Synthese body. Can they do something akin to the meta-gnosis, even?

[mrganondorf]

Aurang's age bugs me because I think of him as like 100,000 years old but then there's this quote from Aurang's POV in TTT US paperback 224, referring to the Cuno-Inchoroi Wars:

"Ah, the raucous glory of that age!  He had been young then, before the accretions of graft after graft had sapped his monumental frame.  And such a contest!  But for Sil's impatience, he and his brothers, would have won, and all this--this world--would be moot."

I guess Aurang could have been born shortly before Arkfall?  Perhaps in TUC we'll get a nonman POV recollecting the time before "graft after graft had sapped his monumental frame."  Interested to see the details of what he looked like before The False Sun.

------------------

Concerning Seswatha, this passage from the JE stuck out to me

"Mandate Schoolmen claim to relive Seswatha's life, but this is only partially true.  In fact, we dream only portions, the long trauma of the First Apocalypse.  All we dream is the spectacle.  'Seswathat,' the old Mandate joke goes, 'does not shit.'  The banalities--the substance of his life--is missing ... The truth of his life is missing."

91-92 US paperback edition.

Seswatha kind of making Mandati into nonmen--only trauma and suffering remembered.  Not like Cleric, but like a long-lived member of the Intact?

[The Sharmat]

I guess Aurang could have been born shortly before Arkfall?

That's how I interpret it. I believe new Inchoroi were being born all the way up to the Arkfall, and the destruction of the (living parts of the) Ark was the very thing that removed their ability to procreate, because the machinery of the Ark was by this time what made new Inchoroi instead of sexual reproduction between individual.

Seswatha kind of making Mandati into nonmen--only trauma and suffering remembered.  Not like Cleric, but like a long-lived member of the Intact?

There's a big potential quandary there. The difficulties of the Nonmen regarding their memories, and the successes of the Tekne prior to the Inchoroi's arrival on Earwa, imply that the Tekne's assertion (in their world and ours) that life is fundamnetally mechanical is true in this universe. With drugs and genetic modifications it's possible to enhance intellect or memory by acting on the hardware of the brain.

Yet at the same time we know that souls exist. What is the determiner of your memory capacity and intellect when you're no longer bound to your brain? Is it altered? Destroyed? Preserved? Unholy Consult Spoiler:

(click to show/hide)

Shauriatas certainly seemed to be his old self despite now just being a soul flitting in a stable orbit between a bunch of different borrowed bodies.

But then there's the Wathi doll, which seemed to have become little more than an automoton after having its soul placed in that body. Also in many of the appearances of Aurang in his Synthese body there's repeated intimations that he is limited by the Synthese somehow, that both the power of his soul and the vastness of his intellect are bottlenecked by his body's hardware.

So...what's the relationship? All I can tell from these conflicting bits is that there is a relationship. I have no idea what way it goes.

[Wilshire]

On Elju, interesting thoughts Simas, especially the vast cellar and a dim candle. Brillant. Maybe, though, the Elju are other little candles the Nonmen can send out, or, since time is linear, leave behind for use later. A string of elju reaching into the past allow for a more vast recollection. When one dies, though the memories are not lost to the Nonman, he can no longer retrieve it.

Aurang's age bugs me because I think of him as like 100,000 years old but then there's this quote from Aurang's POV in TTT US paperback 224, referring to the Cuno-Inchoroi Wars:

"Ah, the raucous glory of that age!  He had been young then, before the accretions of graft after graft had sapped his monumental frame.  And such a contest!  But for Sil's impatience, he and his brothers, would have won, and all this--this world--would be moot."

That is a powerful quote, I think. A lot in there. Sil's impatience?
I think "young" could also be extremely relative. For a creature who lives thousands upon thousands of years, yongue could be 10,000 years old. I think that maybe he was born after the Inchoroi left the previous planet. He was young both(either) in years and in experience. He had not suffered the grafts of previous battles/wars/planets, and was "virgin" flesh when he survived the Earwa crash, and the battles with the Nonmen required a huge number of grafts to defeat.

Another possibility is that its more nostalgic than anything else. "He had been young", perhaps just musing that all the grafts aged him more profoundly than the accumulation of ages, or how war ages any man.

Intellect, soul, and body. Can any piece fully exist without the rest of the triumvirate?

[The Sharmat]

Wathi dolls seem to be souls without intellect, Skin-Spies, Sranc, Bashrag, and Wracu are intellects without souls, and Shauriatas is a soul and intellect without body.

[locke]

Lost my patience while reading topics & finally registered for some comments! Actually, one comment for now, about "elju technology". I tried hard to stick to the explanation which also corresponds with ideas and themes already mentioned in both trilogies.

1. Guys and girls, there is no book without structure, without formal table of content, right? And every book appears rather through text destruction than it's creation. So we should be very careful with comprehending "book" as a blunt object and denying it all properties of a subtle process, otherwise we will blind ourselves to the certain ideas and guesses.
2. Incariol was kinda direct about nonman personal integrity — there is no such thing anymore. Also, "Four Revelations of Cinial'jin" shows us a river of images instead of a personal dialogue. So for me it always looked like nonman can (and will) memorize everything he experiences through the countless ages, but at the same time will gradually lose every control over both old and new memories. A dark undercellar of his mind is totally fine, it's large enough to keep all that heroical, dull an villanous deeds even for hundreds of thousands of years. But a candle of nonman's mind to light that enormous and growing dark space... Let's just say it's a dim one and it will never get brighter.
3. We already saw an example of a conditioned mind and I mean that awesome probability trance. Practically, it's a pocket analytical department with IT-grade tools but for a cheap price of a timely and proper education.

So, here's an idea (as an intersection of all these three paragraphs).

What if "elju" is just a conditioned passerby, who do not possesses even a bit of nonman's real and personal history, but who somehow can enchance nonman's cognitive process in a specific way through simple or complex technique? So the "book" (human, sranc, etc as a companion to nonman) appears when "text" (nonman's memory) is cut in a specific way by an editor (nonman and his companion). Of course, there remains a question about who defines that specific way...

I stand for "no one" as an answer. And that's why i have a sinister shivers here, lol. Just imagine a rotting, colossal, self-encumbered, unstable, dying something in an every nonman's psyche, which sometime conditions passerby humans or even srancs to recollect it as a something new and lesser, but stable and viable. Maybe after all the inchoroi and their circumspect creations are twice less ghastly then their accidental ones.

Thanks for the explanation rsb, I hadn't thought about the structure of a book being key to unlocking the elju metaphor.

All typ0s courtesy of Samsung.

[Wilshire]

Wathi dolls seem to be souls without intellect, Skin-Spies, Sranc, Bashrag, and Wracu are intellects without souls, and Shauriatas is a soul and intellect without body.

Yeah but not exactly what I was driving at. Not sure I can explain it adequately, not your fault .

I will say though that the Wathi doll seemed to have intellect (setting a trap for the cat to ride it to Akka), and Shauriatas has 5 bodies.

[mrganondorf]

Wathi dolls seem to be souls without intellect, Skin-Spies, Sranc, Bashrag, and Wracu are intellects without souls, and Shauriatas is a soul and intellect without body.

Yeah but not exactly what I was driving at. Not sure I can explain it adequately, not your fault .

I will say though that the Wathi doll seemed to have intellect (setting a trap for the cat to ride it to Akka), and Shauriatas has 5 bodies.

at ishterebinth, maybe we'll see a gate made of proxies like what seswatha went through to get into the coffers ... quya sorcery, deeper than deep

[Wilshire]

I sincerely hope we get to see some more of that multi-soul mechanism magery.

[mrganondorf]

I want to know if Seswatha's creation of the Grasping ritual was entirely novel or not.  Could it be that the Sohonc had a grasping ritual before Seswatha?  This wouldn't be to remind the schoolman of past atrocities, just a really convenient way to pass on knowledge and safeguard secrets.  I wonder if the Mangaecca have looked into it?