[Wilshire]

Which brings up something, potentially for a different topic though. If the Inchoroi were so afraid for their souls, what could have possibly driven them to grafing sorcery onto themselves, with the knowledge that if it failed, they would all die? Surely it would have been better to hide forever in the labyrinth of the Ark than to risk death.

[The Sharmat]

They were losing the war with the Nonmen at the time. They presumably all knew that if they didn't take that chance, they were probably all gonna die anyway.

And you can't really just hide forever in the Ark. Something's gonna kill you eventually. If you aren't actively working to undo your damnation, you're fucked. It's just a matter of time. And since Inchoroi are immortal, they take the long view.

[Wilshire]

Yeah maybe, but in the end thats what they did anyway, so I have trouble believing that as an explanation however likely it might be.

[The Sharmat]

Two of them managed to hide, when they had no other choice because the war was already lost. That doesn't seem to have been considered a viable proposition for a large population.

[mrganondorf]

Yeah maybe, but in the end thats what they did anyway, so I have trouble believing that as an explanation however likely it might be.

I feel the same way, the Inchoroi seem a bit too reckless to me for all their talk of avoiding damnation.  It makes me wonder if the No-God includes an ability to recall damned souls.  So, they didn't mind provoking a dangerous foe because they believed that they would eventually achieve their objective and all be free.

[mrganondorf]

I wonder if what you see when you look at the IF is someone seeing you?  Your gaze is met and overmatched by the gaze of someone impossibly greater than yourself.  You are so overwhelmed by the prosptect of being less than a mote in the eye of another, you see that no deed forbidden.  How could you ever mean anything to the thing that scrutinizes you by looking through you and discounting you in every instant.  You are consigned to damnation, yes, but in an arbitrary, careless way.

Also, what if that is Yatwer or Ajokli or something?

[H]

I wonder if what you see when you look at the IF is someone seeing you?  Your gaze is met and overmatched by the gaze of someone impossibly greater than yourself.  You are so overwhelmed by the prosptect of being less than a mote in the eye of another, you see that no deed forbidden.  How could you ever mean anything to the thing that scrutinizes you by looking through you and discounting you in every instant.  You are consigned to damnation, yes, but in an arbitrary, careless way.

Also, what if that is Yatwer or Ajokli or something?

I don't know, the Inverse Fire could be the "gaze of god" in a way, but I feel like it must be something more...practical I guess.  The name still gets me, Inverse Fire, what would inverted fire be?  It must be a clue, but to what I still haven't been about to puzzle out.

I don't think it would be a god we know though, either way, because I think the Inverse Fire long predates the Inchoroi arriving in Earwa.

[Bolivar]

I think they call it so because it's light coming from a projector, casting images like on a planetarium or domed IMAX theater. I noticed on the last few flashback sequences of The False Sun:

How? How could mere knowledge command such horror?

He will see for himself.

He walks into the golden gloom, squinting, staring. Dust puffs about his feet, particles blooming in the intrusive brilliance of the sun, then vanishing into the flanking darkness. He peers… notices a different luminance wavering across the interior, more fluid and sultry, webbed as though refracted through waters…

He hears it, a faraway wind, the groan of impossible multitudes–the collective shriek. His lungs become as stone. Horror makes pins of his skin. And he feels it, the burning vaults above, the smoldering glimpses...

Shaeönanra raises his eyes.

Edit: interesting to note, Shaeönanra's flashbacks are in the present tense, similar to Mimara's passages in TAE.

Imagine a parent explaining to a child that what they just saw was only a movie. Now transfer that to someone who has no concept of such things existing or, better yet, a sorcerer, who goes through their life cognizant of their scriptural damnation and now sees no mark on what they are now witnessing.

I like the line that Titirga suggests what the Mangeacca have seen is their goad, not their damnation, because it threatens to turn everything we think we know about the series on its head.

Is damnation merely the prodding stick the Inchoroi use to get sorcerers on their side? They created the Tusk and chose which traditions to collect, meaning they chose to include the scriptural damnation of sorcerers, despite there being Shamans in that age. Sorcery was what caused them to lose their wars with the Nonmen, it makes sense to nullify that advantage by bringing them to their side.

Also consider the Nonmen. I can't recall any mention of them fighting to forestall their damnation, despite being just as damned as sorcerers. It reinforces that this is just what the Inchoroi are telling men to get them on their side.

I think I was asked once, then what could the Inchoroi be doing all this for? And I look to Crash Space - they're bored. For a being whose likely lived thousands of years with no scruples before landing on Earwa, battling sorcerers and chariots in the sky is the only thing that could bring excitement at that point. I know the dragon at the end of WLW suggested it's true - they're reducing populations to 144,000 to avoid damnation but we also know he is fucking with Achamian.

I think it would go well with the themes certainty and damnation if all this were the case and would be interesting if the this whole time, the faithful of the Three Seas were working to seal the doom of mankind and the Fanim were right.

[H]

I think they call it so because it's light coming from a projector, casting images like on a planetarium or domed IMAX theater. I noticed on the last few flashback sequences of The False Sun:

How? How could mere knowledge command such horror?

He will see for himself.

He walks into the golden gloom, squinting, staring. Dust puffs about his feet, particles blooming in the intrusive brilliance of the sun, then vanishing into the flanking darkness. He peers… notices a different luminance wavering across the interior, more fluid and sultry, webbed as though refracted through waters…

He hears it, a faraway wind, the groan of impossible multitudes–the collective shriek. His lungs become as stone. Horror makes pins of his skin. And he feels it, the burning vaults above, the smoldering glimpses...

Shaeönanra raises his eyes.

Edit: interesting to note, Shaeönanra's flashbacks are in the present tense, similar to Mimara's passages in TAE.

Imagine a parent explaining to a child that what they just saw was only a movie. Now transfer that to someone who has no concept of such things existing or, better yet, a sorcerer, who goes through their life cognizant of their scriptural damnation and now sees no mark on what they are now witnessing.

I like the line that Titirga suggests what the Mangeacca have seen is their goad, not their damnation, because it threatens to turn everything we think we know about the series on its head.

Is damnation merely the prodding stick the Inchoroi use to get sorcerers on their side? They created the Tusk and chose which traditions to collect, meaning they chose to include the scriptural damnation of sorcerers, despite there being Shamans in that age. Sorcery was what caused them to lose their wars with the Nonmen, it makes sense to nullify that advantage by bringing them to their side.

Also consider the Nonmen. I can't recall any mention of them fighting to forestall their damnation, despite being just as damned as sorcerers. It reinforces that this is just what the Inchoroi are telling men to get them on their side.

Well, the Nonmen did have a way to stave off damnation, in the days before the Fall, before the Tusk, before the Womb-Plauge.  Their oblivion-worship was a way out, but my theory is that it only worked because the Gods had no eyes on them.  Once the Inchoroi adjusted the Tusk to place scrutiny on the Nonmen, they were damned, a priori, and simply avoiding the gods was no longer effective.

I don't think the Inverse Fire is false.  That is, false in the sense that it is showing something untrue.  No, I think it is true, true as far as "right now."  In other words, the Inverse Fire shows you the damnation you face as things are.  This knowledge leads most to essentially "double down" because the change needed to reverse it is much greater than the simpler act of embracing it and then living a depraved life (because what does it matter, you are damned).

That's kind of the whole point of what the Consult is after though, to rewrite the rules, undo their damnation not through repentance, but by changing the rules of damnation.  I don't think that the Inverse Fire being a tool of manipulation means that is has to be false.  Like the famous Star Wars quote, it can be true, "from a certain point of view."  In this sense, Titirga is probably right, it is a goad, but also probably wrong, it is damnation they see.

I think I was asked once, then what could the Inchoroi be doing all this for? And I look to Crash Space - they're bored. For a being whose likely lived thousands of years with no scruples before landing on Earwa, battling sorcerers and chariots in the sky is the only thing that could bring excitement at that point. I know the dragon at the end of WLW suggested it's true - they're reducing populations to 144,000 to avoid damnation but we also know he is fucking with Achamian.

I think it would go well with the themes certainty and damnation if all this were the case and would be interesting if the this whole time, the faithful of the Three Seas were working to seal the doom of mankind and the Fanim were right.

I don't think Wutteät lies to Akka.  We are presented something of the 144,000 prophecy in the opening of WLW chapter 12, "The Third Revelation of Ganus the Blind."  I don't think he is fucking with them, he is telling them as best he knows, which is probably only a fraction of the whole truth.

[Bolivar]

Yeah, it can definitely be both true and a goad at the same time. My point with the Nonmen though is that they never claim to have joined the Consult to save their souls. As Mekeretrig says:

  “These . . . these Sranc are our children now. But before! Before, you were our children. Our heart had been cut out and so we cradled yours. Companions to the ‘great’Norsirai kings.”
  The Nonman stepped nearer.
  “But no longer,”he continued. “As the ages waxed, some of us needed more than your childish squabbles to remember. Some of us needed a more exquisite brutality than any of your feuds could render. The great curse of our kind—do you know it? Of course you know it! What slave fails to exult in his master’s degradation."

Also, Wutteat mentions the 144,000 reductions as something they've done on other planets, suggesting that the Revelations of Ganus the Blind is another example of the Inchoroi engineering Three Seas culture. It also makes it sound legitimate, but it could also just be a part of the farce they play on planet to planet.

As always, great points H. This is just another one of my crackpots that I think would be fascinating if it upended everything we thought we knew about the series.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

[Wilshire]

I like the potential nod to Crash Space. Could be that's what drove them to planets initially, for some funs, but then they saw the IF and began doing it with a purpose.

[H]

Yeah, it can definitely be both true and a goad at the same time. My point with the Nonmen though is that they never claim to have joined the Consult to save their souls. As Mekeretrig says:

  “These . . . these Sranc are our children now. But before! Before, you were our children. Our heart had been cut out and so we cradled yours. Companions to the ‘great’Norsirai kings.”
  The Nonman stepped nearer.
  “But no longer,”he continued. “As the ages waxed, some of us needed more than your childish squabbles to remember. Some of us needed a more exquisite brutality than any of your feuds could render. The great curse of our kind—do you know it? Of course you know it! What slave fails to exult in his master’s degradation."

Also, Wutteat mentions the 144,000 reductions as something they've done on other planets, suggesting that the Revelations of Ganus the Blind is another example of the Inchoroi engineering Three Seas culture. It also makes it sound legitimate, but it could also just be a part of the farce they play on planet to planet.

As always, great points H. This is just another one of my crackpots that I think would be fascinating if it upended everything we thought we knew about the series.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

Well, one "problem" we have, so far, is that we really don't know much about the Nonmen that aren't Erratics.

While it isn't presented as such, the mystery of Ishterebinth is a pretty big one, since your question of why more Nonmen aren't in the Consult is a pretty good one.  My best guess is that the Siqu came up with something to keep them at least somewhat intact.  Perhaps because of this, because Ishterebinth remembers, they are poised between two hard choices: accept damnation or join those who damned them.  The envoy they send to Kellhus certainly seems rather intact.  He remembers Dagliash and more importantly remembers Hanalinqu.

This could explain why most of Ishterebinth isn't in league with the Consult, but we know from Aurang that they have spies there.  Perhaps the weaker willed among those Nonmen left do fear for their souls.  Perhaps those with weaker memories, or those that didn't lose wives or daughters to the Womb-plauge.

One thing I think is a linchpin of most of my theories is that I disbelieve that Aurang is an outright liar.  In fact, I think he is often rather truthful, in so far as he presents facts.  Why he is the "Angel of Deceit" though is because the facts are laced with incompleteness.  He didn't lie when he offered immortality, he simply didn't present to Cû'jara Cinmoi all the side-effect that would come with it.  Let's be real though, I'm sure Cû'jara Cinmoi didn't even bother to ask and even if he had, I'm sure Aurang would have spun something up to obfuscate the real implications.

[Wilshire]

Nothing deceives so completely as does truth.

[H]

Nothing deceives so completely as does truth.

Especially when the "truth" is brought to you as exactly what you want to hear.

No one wants damnation, but what the Inverse Fire shows, perhaps, is so factual, so seemingly determined, that it grants you escapism through the most extreme nihilism.  Damnation is insurmountable, salvation seemingly unobtainable, so hence why the Consult takes the alternative route of disabling damnation, not seeking salvation.

[geoffrobro]

im starting to think the IF is a consciousness giving device, an tekne operating system. a device that give flesh life from the scrane to the bashrag. But a creature that already has consciousness ie humans, nonman get a extra consciousness placed into them, similar to Ses heart and the mandate. a force that "drives" the flesh that is the body and the consciousness itself is driven by fear.