I wish I had something to contribute here, but I'm simply clueless on the whole Outside thing, just not enough information for me to conclude anything. Could be the apparent arbitrariness is a criticism of the concept of heaven/hell from bakker, that no "system" of salvation/damnation determination could ever be objective, so fuck it, abandon any semblance of a scheme to shine light on the "error" for such a "divine" approach on the subject. That's the best I got, Bakker is purposely making it a random jumble of shit ( which of course just confuses the shit out of us readers trying to make sense of it all ). You could be on to something - when I read it, I had the feeling "something" was "taking" them, but could be they were in process of becoming Ciphrang ( which I would like if it was - would be cool to see Ciphrang Proyas kick some ass, and that Kellhus' "preparation" of Proyas was more than lead the army to Golgotterath ).