I always took the Mimara perspective as relating to her having TJE, and my personal assumption was that this was a way of signifying the divine perspective, in that everything to the Gods is effectively 'the present', and pointed (at least to me at the time) to TJE being a divine agency. Not sure how this fits in, if at all.

Like dark matter, we can't detect it but we observe it's effects...?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jLJhy73u5M

I listened to this during the battle around Golgotterath. It seemed fitting

I wonder if the Mutilated are like Shae's horcruxes. He split his soul between them making him harder to kill, and at the same time put them under Compulsion which, if memory serves, means that the subject of the Compulsion cannot tell the difference between his own thoughts and the things he is Compelled to do/say. So the Mutilated would believe that they had taken the Consult over, when actually it's the opposite, and they are there to sustain Shae until NG shuts the world...

Hello,

I've been reading the series for the past few years and this is the first time I've posted here, though I've lurked and read the many threads about here lots of times. It's such an amazing series that can provoke such discussion and musings as you good people have over the last few years. It need not be said how much i love this series - I'm here posting, right?

Anyway, a few things that just occurred to me as possibilities on this question, were: how do we know that the Consult were not aware, perhaps even had a hand in, the foundation of Ishual in the first place?

We know that the Anasurimbor are peculiarly predicated to provide the 'missing link' for the No-God to be initialised. The consult and the Inchoroi play the exceedingly long game. It seems clear that Nau Cayuti is the original 'circuit' for the No-God, and we are told through Achamian's Dreams that Celmomas set up Ishual as a stronghold for the preservation of the Anasurimbor. But how much stock should we put in Achamian's Dreams, when we are not even sure what their origin is?

Further, we learn in TUC from the Mutilated about the need for an Anasurimbor, how they think they have 'subsumed' the Consult, and that the Consult captured them to take them back to Golgotterath for their own ends. What if those ends are exactly what has happened, i.e. that the Consult realised the best possibility to ensure an Anasurimbor was available to resurrect the No-God was to capture some Dunyain and use them against Kellhus?

Kelmomas is named for Celmomas, the prophecy of the Return was his prophecy, surely there isn't a coincidence here. And we also know that Kelmomas is one of the Few. Also significant in this context, I think.

How did consult find and destroy Ishual so quickly? (20 years is not a long time in the scope of their 'long game') Or, did they already know it's whereabouts because they had a hand in it's foundation? It seems strange to me that the Dunyain in their own fortress should be so easily overcome, yet the captured Dunyain be so easily able to overcome the Consult in their own house.

Further to the above, the Logos and the Tekne are certainly related to each other - the Mutilated coming to the conclusion that the Tekne is equivalent to the Logos to me could suggest that this was the point all along - Ishual was for the Consult a kind of insurance policy, in case their own designs to bring about Resumption using the Tekne failed, they would also have a sect devoted to reaching the Absolute, essentially seeking a different path to the same end.


Anyway, I'm putting all this together sat at work without the books in front of me, so it may be missing important information that negates some of the above, but it seems to me that the thing we could be missing is that the long game of the Consult far outstrips even the Mandate mission against the Consult, and that with so much time to plan, perhaps everything has worked out as they originally intended.