[What Came Before]

Just freestyling some thoughts here.

“The ruins of Viri.”

“The very same,” Shaeönanra replied.

“A lesson,” Titirga said, “to those who would dig too deep.”

... but Viri was destroyed by the Fall?  So how does digging pertain?
We know the Non-men were burrowers. 
The Thousand Halls under Ishual.
Cil-Aujis was a mansion - a holy city, not a mine.

He described a hate-rotted soul, forever falling into hell, forever deflected by ancient and arcane magicks, caught in the sackcloth of souls too near death to resist his clutching tumble, too devoid of animating passion.

A pit bent into a circle, the most perfect of the Conserving Forms...

Always with damnation and the demonic are terms like falling and pit.

The Inchies came from the Void.  And emptiness and void are often used in conjunction with revelations throughout, with the Ground spinning or wheeling about etc.

(***Digression***
And only the boundary, the Ground divides them, and only it can be Conditioned.

He ran. Not once did he stumble, nor slow to determine his bearings.  This ground was his .... Conditioned.

)

My intial thoughts were sparked by the idea of Hell below the earth, a classic meme of Christian theology iirc.

The nonmen and inchies both seem obsessed with digging deep.
In TJE we get the term 'kneeling deep' from Cleric.
All the architecture is massive as I remember - like the nonmen were trying to bring emptiness - the void - down to the low places.
Could this be some analogy for creating bubbles of oblivion in the afterlife?

Then we learn that they abused human slaves to make a topoi down there...
and seriously WTF is a DRAGON skeleton doing down there?
Then I remembered that Wutteat is sustained by a hell inside him - a topoi.
Perhaps creating that topoi was something the nonmen were trying to do?

At Mengedda in TWP, Akka says the Topoi are high places, causing a sense of vertigo.  Perhaps the inversion of depth and height are important.

And the Inchies...
Endless tunnels beneath Min Uroikas.
Pits of the aborted?
Always filling holes in the Ark with murdered prisoners.
Shauritas' soul is suspended over a bottomless pit...

Okay, I'm not sure what all this could mean but I'll pool my water (my new Cish idiom for intuitive speculation )
What if the Nail of Heaven (the Newborn) is a hole in the Ground that goes all the way through to the Void?
Perhaps the Nonmen of Viri damned the Inchies somehow when they "dug too deep" and let their damnation through into Inchi heaven?
Fallen Angels...

[What Came Before]

Always with damnation and the demonic are terms like falling and pit.

The Inchies came from the Void.  And emptiness and void are often used in conjunction with revelations throughout, with the Ground spinning or wheeling about etc.

Reminds me of: "Death came swirling down". We always get lots of that.

All the architecture is massive as I remember - like the nonmen were trying to bring emptiness - the void - down to the low places.
Could this be some analogy for creating bubbles of oblivion in the afterlife?

Also with the stuff you said about the Nail.... I wonder if the Great Medial Screw in Cil-Aujas lines up with the Nail of Heaven?

Then we learn that they abused human slaves to make a topoi down there...
and seriously WTF is a DRAGON skeleton doing down there?
Then I remembered that Wutteat is sustained by a hell inside him - a topoi.
Perhaps creating that topoi was something the nonmen were trying to do?

I asked some similar questions in the PreFAQ about topoi and have come to no conclusions since then.

Creating topoi deep underground. Trying to make "bubbles of oblivion", or making their own "space" between the Gods to which they may flee to after death.

Now that you mention it, Wutteat being his own topoi that gives him immortality may be similar to something the inchoroi are trying to do.... become truely immoratal in the sense that even when the flesh rots and dies your soul remains bound/anchored (or at least un-grasp-able by any of the Gods).

At Mengedda in TWP, Akka says the Topoi are high places, causing a sense of vertigo.  Perhaps the inversion of depth and height are important.

I always found "high place" an odd description, but it is more of a forced analogy than anything else. Just referencing that it makes the world closer to the outside in that place, as a mountain makes one closer to the sky.

[What Came Before]

Sci and I hashed out an interesting theory on Westeros more recently where Sci suggested the Nonmen learned of the Outside through Topoi and that informs their social discourse about Damnation and the nature of the Outside.

Their Mansions all start sinking into Hell due to their abuse of the Emwama...

[What Came Before]

That seems very likely. Strange things happen in the topoi whether or not you believe in the outside, so that is kind of an indication that something is going on.

[What Came Before]

Brother Siol,
Viri begs your pardon.


seems like perhaps it wasn't just an 18th century social nicety of discourse that Ninjanjin was using here.  Perhaps he did in fact have something to be really really fucking sorry for.  Something bad enough that he was conquered--something that had never happened before, eh?  because wasn't Cujara Cinmoi the first Nonman king to be king of two mansions?

Did Ninjanjin cause the Ark to fall because he dug too greedily and too deep?

Love the thoughts in the OP.  Great crackpottery that sounds sound.

[What Came Before]

Brother Siol,
Viri begs your pardon.


seems like perhaps it wasn't just an 18th century social nicety of discourse that Ninjanjin was using here.  Perhaps he did in fact have something to be really really fucking sorry for.  Something bad enough that he was conquered--something that had never happened before, eh?  because wasn't Cujara Cinmoi the first Nonman king to be king of two mansions?

Did Ninjanjin cause the Ark to fall because he dug too greedily and too deep?

these fucking books

[What Came Before]

+1, bbaztek .

[What Came Before]

Brother Siol,
Viri begs your pardon.


seems like perhaps it wasn't just an 18th century social nicety of discourse that Ninjanjin was using here.  Perhaps he did in fact have something to be really really fucking sorry for.  Something bad enough that he was conquered--something that had never happened before, eh?  because wasn't Cujara Cinmoi the first Nonman king to be king of two mansions?

Did Ninjanjin cause the Ark to fall because he dug too greedily and too deep?

these fucking books

Lol if something like that, or even something more ridiculous, happens I'd be happy to say I didn't see it coming.

[What Came Before]

I love the suggestion that something done in Earwa like Nin'janjin digging too deep could have summoned the Inchies.  Like fallen Angels.

If messing w/ the Daimos can summon a Cyphrang from the Outside, perhaps messing w/ a topos can bring things from the Void too?


As cool as all of this sounds, I don't think it too likely.  I think ALLCAPS Dragon proved that the Inchies were seeking out Earwa.

Although I guess we don't really know why though.

[What Came Before]

but if something, say an entire race, is trapped in hell, wouldn't it be seeking a way out?

[What Came Before]

but if something, say an entire race, is trapped in hell, wouldn't it be seeking a way out?

Sure.  And that could be why the Inchies sought out Earwa.  I'm just saying that we don't really have any clue if what Nin'janjin and Viri did would have anything to do w/ this at all.  It seems in intriguing possibility however unlikely.

[What Came Before]

Or perhaps the Inchoroi just worked out that the sort of special 'salvation-is-possible-in-this-life' world they needed would be one especially 'close' to the Outside - i.e. a world where topoi existed. So they built a machine to detect topoi and programmed the Ark to land near the biggest, deepest one they could find.

If whatever the Nonmen of Viri were doing prior to the coming of the Ark created a really impressive topos, well that would have sealed their fate.

[What Came Before]

Lol, you will all certainly mine the very world with your Nerdaneling and then our fate will be sealed .

[What Came Before]

Lol, you will all certainly mine the very world with your Nerdaneling and then our fate will be sealed .

a lesson for those who would mine too deep

[What Came Before]

Lol, you will all certainly mine the very world with your Nerdaneling and then our fate will be sealed .

Just salting the Ground.

However, I don't think it's much of a stretch to suggest a race capable of building the Inverse Fire could also build a topos detector. It seems like a pretty obvious extension of the same basic technology.

To put it another way, I don't think the theory is anywhere near wacky enough to qualify as a Nerdanel.