If you do have the book, there is nothing to say. I was speaking by memory.
A friend of mine borrowed it (and there is another waiting in line), so it will be a time until I can check it again.
EDIT: Anyway, when the horde flees, it means that Resumption took place, IMO. Second birth could have been just then.

Yeah, that sounds ok if Captain Hindsight, from South Park, says so. But they didn't know that, and they wanted the Celmomian prophecy to be fulfilled by an Anasurimbor. They needed Kellhus. Kellhus's death outside the Ark might be (without Kel) a defeat, unless they tried to find another Anasurimbor to start the Object (capture Kayutas). And they didn't know about Ajokli either. Things turned out very conviniently for the Dunsult, in th end. Superbly good to read, anyway, I don't complain about that.

I don't agree about Mimara's child. Or, I misunderstood the scene when the sarcophagus floats down, disguised by Kellhus hologram, before the Ordeal. Everyone is in silence. A baby wails. Then "the second birth was mercifully quick". Unless you mean that the Resumption was iniciated but not completed... but we don't have any piece of information to confirm that conjecture either, do we?
EDIT: yeah, I was always remembering that passage form TJE (Aurang telling the thing called Somanduta to protect Mimara in order to follow false and true prophecies).
RE EDIT: Or was it in TWLW?

Quote from: Sausuna on August 25, 2017, 03:50:26 pm

First, conventional use of the term hell/damnation and the associated smoke/fire as being bad would imply it is a place of suffering.

This isn't even an argument. You can call anything anything. The Fanim claim the 'Heavens' of the Hundred are really Hells.

Quote

Second being essentially all dogma of the Three-Seas validate this view that people are tortured there. Literal prophets of the Gods preach them as unpleasant places for those who go there.

Various prophets and religions in Earwa claim all kinds of things. At least some of them are very wrong. All we actually know on this particular point is what we've been directly shown by PoV characters (which is almost nothing) and what Bakker has said extra-textually, which is basically that Ajencis and Memgowa are somewhat close to being right and that Fane was mostly wrong. The Scylvendi don't believe they get an afterlife at all (and are implied to be dead wrong about this). The Nonmen told the High Norsirai they could find Oblivion merely by "hiding their Voices" (and it is implied that it's actually much harder, or maybe just more random than that). The Tusk claims whores are damned, but Esme and Mimara seem to prove that isn't automatically true. Proyas' father (and the Mutilated) claim that being a ruler inevitably leads to Damnation, but again Esme seems to disprove that.

Quote

Kellhus says it is a bad place (I can't find the scene where I think he is actually there, so one might quibble as to his experience, but it does point in agreement, especially for someone who has made a deal with the gods).

Because Kellhus always tells the absolute unvarnished truth, right?

Actually, Kellhus' visit to the Outside is probably the best evidence we have that you're right. But he still only sees what the Gods/Ciphrang appear to be doing to the souls of the dead from his own PoV. There's no evidence in those scenes that the souls are conscious.

Quote

The Progenitors thought it was bad (supposedly), it seems like they would be very capable in verifying such a view and would do their best to (given the extremes they've gone to now avoid it).

We're back to "these guys believed X, therefore X is objectively true". For all we know, the Progenitors might have been really prone to jumping to conclusions based on little actual evidence.

Quote

We have the dying moments of Saubon that seem pretty grim.

Could easily be his last impression of dying in a nuclear fireball. Or maybe souls retain consciousness for a few instants after death before being consumed. Still doesn't prove the suffering is eternal.

Quote

The language Cnaur/Ajokli and Kellhus/Ajokli use. But most telling, the PoV chapters from Kakaliol's view made it seem like it was aware enough as to what inflicting torture was.

All these characters had a vested interest in being scary. Of course they're going to promise eternal punishment.

Quote

As far as arbitrary not being the same as random/meaningless, it kind of does, not to get into semantics.

Nope. Especially not in the way Bakker seems to use it in this context. He says it depends on whether the God likes you and that he (Bakker) doesn't know what the rules are that determine whether the God likes you. He never claimed it was random. Just that even he doesn't know all the rules (because he wants it to seem unfair and arbitrary to the readers). Bakker does hint at some rules that seem to apply, though. Premeditation, for example.

Damnation also cannot be meaningless, because the whole point of the series is that Damnation is a result of things having meaning, and that stripping the World of meaning (via the No-God) makes Damnation go away.

For the record, I actually agree that Damnation is probably exactly what it looks like, and that the Consult are probably at least mostly right. My objection is to people claiming that the Consult are objectively the good-guys. You're making assumptions based on limited information and then using those assumptions to justify genocide.

Quote from: TaoHorror on August 25, 2017, 04:23:22 pm

I think you're point is since we don't really "know" what damnation will be like ( and in kind, neither The Consult/Mutilated ), then their approach HAS to be evil since their design is based on an assumption. Sounds like the logic of the "sane" to me 

No, I'm saying we the readers don't know enough yet to say whether the Consult are the good-guys or the bad-guys. I'm entirely open to the possibility that the Consult actually know more than we do.

I do find it slightly disturbing just how quick and eager people are to construct an interpretation that justifies genocide, though.

Quote from: tleilaxu on August 25, 2017, 11:19:24 am

I dunno, the Inverse Fire seems pretty clear on it. You soul is shredded and devoured forever.

Yes, but what does that actually feel like, when you're a disembodied soul? It sure looks horrible to a living person seeing their soul's fate through the Inverse Fire... but that's why it's the Goad. What the IF shows could be both 100% accurate and completely misleading.

To an extent, I'm playing Ajokli's advocate here. If it were me looking into the IF, I'd probably join the Consult in a heartbeat. But that's not the point. As a dispassionate outside observer (as opposed to an observer of the Outside ), I am not convinced of the moral rightness of the Consult's plan. As I said, there are a lot of ways they might be completely wrong, even assuming what the IF shows them (and what the JE shows Mimara) is accurate:

Souls might not be conscious, or might have no sense of self.
Damnation might not actually be painful. Being burned and eaten by Ciphrang might not hurt when you're a disembodied soul.
There might actually be good reasons why the Damned are Damned, even if we can't know what they are. 'Arbitrary' is not the same as 'random and meaningless'.
There might be other ways of preventing Damnation besides the global genocide one.
Finding Oblivion might be possible after all (bonus: we now know this one is true!)

Also, now that I think about it, Sorweel didn't really do anything that would damn him that I can think of. Seemed like a really decent fellow aside from his teen angst.

We assume almost everyone is damned, but we are only introduced to pretty scummy characters for the most part.

The most obvious explanation, from Yatwer's very limited PoV, is that Sorweel and Esmenet are responsible for killing Kellhus, for carrying out Yatwer's will. Even better, they did it filled with hatred towards Kellhus, but without any actual thought. That is the mark of the Righteous, after all, for there to be no interval of thought or reason between (Divine) Will and Action. (This is also why the Holca thane is Saved by Gilgaol, because he fights without thought, making the War God's Will manifest in the World without the filters of consciousness.)

So both Sorweel and Esme are Saved by Yatwer's Grace because Yatwer has convinced herself that they killed Kellhus. And indirectly, of course, they did. That's the hilarious thing: Yatwer is actually sort of right. Sorweel and Esmenet did set the chain of causality in motion that led to Kelmomas exorcising Ajokli, leaving Kellhus vulnerable to being salted in the Golden Room. Without Sorweel and Esmenet, Kellhus/Ajokli would almost certainly have succeeded in whatever he was planning.