The Second Apocalypse
Earwa => General Earwa => Topic started by: mrganondorf on February 26, 2015, 03:39:34 am
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Wheel of Time has a fairly fleshed out magic system but I'm hesitant to recommend it.
all i remember is that i gave up
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Yeah I did too.
There was a time when Robert Jordan was the end all be all of contemporary fantasy and I'm glad that time is gone.
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Sanderson did such a good job with the Allomancy\Feuromancy systems in the Mistborn trilogy - then he completely butchered the One Power system in Wheel of Time. Whatever criticisms can be laid at WoT feet the magic system was ridiculously internally self consistent. The notes RJ kept on the power rankings are crazy!
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is this branch of sorcery mentioned anywhere else in the series?
TDTCB, p. 319 "Achamian had decided to revisit an old passion of his. He would cook. All sorcerers had studied ALCHEMY to some extent, and all alchemists, at least those worth their salt, knew how to cook."
Any idea what gnostic alchemy would look like? I'm having trouble picturing Eleazarus cooking...
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Well, Eleazarus was an Anagogic schoolman....so the image of him using the Gnosis to cook would, i imagine, look roughly the same as the image of me using the Gnosis to cook.
unlike my psukhe-a-chinos.
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is this branch of sorcery mentioned anywhere else in the series?
TDTCB, p. 319 "Achamian had decided to revisit an old passion of his. He would cook. All sorcerers had studied ALCHEMY to some extent, and all alchemists, at least those worth their salt, knew how to cook."
Any idea what gnostic alchemy would look like? I'm having trouble picturing Eleazarus cooking...
Thats an interesting catch. I wonder if that is just a medieval-esque reference to chemistry, or if there are magical branches that delve into manipulating and imbuing items (beyond chorae and the other sorcerous artifacts), making potions with magical properties, etc.
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I suspect that it's just poorly understood Iron Age chemistry, with bits of magic added to it. Some parts of it actually do things, some parts don't.
As for the manipulating and imbuing items with things...the Gnostic schools of the Ancient North seem to have excelled at this, judging by a lot of the stuff in the Coffers. We don't see that in the Three Seas for some reason. Lost knowledge, or is their simply a greater cultural taboo against sorcery in the Three Seas than in the Ancient North, so there's simply no market?
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is this branch of sorcery mentioned anywhere else in the series?
TDTCB, p. 319 "Achamian had decided to revisit an old passion of his. He would cook. All sorcerers had studied ALCHEMY to some extent, and all alchemists, at least those worth their salt, knew how to cook."
Any idea what gnostic alchemy would look like? I'm having trouble picturing Eleazarus cooking...
Yeah, I've noted this before, especially since we never really hear of alchemy again to my knowledge. I think it's most likely what The Sharmat said above, I.E. a poor understanding of chemistry with maybe a few magical flourishes here and there. It seems like a grey area though. Can you imbue magical properties onto a liquid? Haven't all the magical objects we've seen required runes and stuff? And even then...what would you make out of it? Sorcery is destructive (or at least, distortive, by nature). I find the concept of magical artifacts fairly interesting, if only because we know so little about the mechanics/possibilities of it all.
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Shit, they think the bubbles from boiling water are magic or angry water
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Shit, they think the bubbles from boiling water are magic or angry water
lol, enrage the water! it is time for tea!
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i wonder if the prohibition on sorcerers getting married is really a prohibition on sorcerers producing children. like if the mark does strange and dangerous things to the fetus, kind of like Alia in Dune?
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But OTOH while they are forbidden to get married, they freely take lovers. I would rather think more along the lines of celibacy introduced in the RC church - it's a move to stop the rise of sorcerous dynasties.
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But OTOH while they are forbidden to get married, they freely take lovers. I would rather think more along the lines of celibacy introduced in the RC church - it's a move to stop the rise of sorcerous dynasties.
ah! i'm sure you are right. it would be cool if Bakker ever writes about a past school that was organized as a dynasty. it could be torn apart by a conflict between the sorcerers loyal to the ruling family and those not
unrelated--even though it is officially illegal to have a sorcere without a school, i bet someone like the Scarlet Spires could make use of an "independent contractor." like if they wanted to have an assassin but be able to disavow them if caught
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The Mysunsai are mercenaries. Basically the same thing.
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I'm having trouble picturing Eleazarus cooking...
Now I'm having trouble to stop imaging Eleazarus & Iokus cooking chanv in Breaking Bad style.
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I'm having trouble picturing Eleazarus cooking...
Now I'm having trouble to stop imaging Eleazarus & Iokus cooking chanv in Breaking Bad style.
Even more ridiculous if you think that chanv is debased quirri, so they would be cooking cooked Nonman.
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and or boiling down sranc into a nice broth base
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and or boiling down sranc into a nice broth base
I don't know, if eating Sranc had any benefits, wouldn't some scalpers have found that out a long time before?
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I have my doubts. Its too close to cannibalism, like eating children, and there is such a sense of revulsion to sranc in battle, that I dont find it likely scalpers would have been driven to that extreme. Takes someone like Kellhus to tip the scales.
No one was restocking their meat stores within Cil'Aujas, or in the Mop, with sranc after battle. You'd think that given an unknown length of the journey within Cil', and no chance to forage, there would have been some mention or thought of skewer a few sranc for dinner to tide them over till the got out, if that was in fact a common, or even uncommon, practice.
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I have my doubts. Its too close to cannibalism, like eating children, and there is such a sense of revulsion to sranc in battle, that I dont find it likely scalpers would have been driven to that extreme. Takes someone like Kellhus to tip the scales.
No one was restocking their meat stores within Cil'Aujas, or in the Mop, with sranc after battle. You'd think that given an unknown length of the journey within Cil', and no chance to forage, there would have been some mention or thought of skewer a few sranc for dinner to tide them over till the got out, if that was in fact a common, or even uncommon, practice.
While I agree with you, considering how long bands of Sranc have been out there for thousands of years, that simply no one has ever eaten Sranc before. People on earth have resorted to canibalism, for one reason or another from time to time. It just doesn't seem reasonable to me that it is totally unprecedented. I can see it as rare, even once a thousand years maybe, but not never.
Maybe, more likely, no one has ever eaten Sranc and lived to tell about it though...
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Lived to tell, or wanted to tell. Its not something you'd go around telling your friends about, especially considering how superstitious (some for good reason) the three seas are.
I probably has happened, yes, but no written accounts of it happening and its affects doesn't seem unreasonable.
Kellhus probably tested it. Forced/convinced prisoners or subjects to eat a diet of only sranc and see what it did to them. How much you needed to eat, for how long, for anything to happen, if anything at all. If effects, what they were and if they were permanent if you went to a normal diet, or only imbibed some minimum amount. And then, kill all the participants so no one (consult especially) knew what he was doing.
Quirri/chanv/sranc remind me of Limitless' "NZT". Maybe he found a way for himself to mitigate or eliminate any unwanted side effects. Not probably feasible or worth the effort to figure out how to keep the whole Ordeal alive, but maybe a select few... like say a school or two.
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Lived to tell, or wanted to tell. Its not something you'd go around telling your friends about, especially considering how superstitious (some for good reason) the three seas are.
I probably has happened, yes, but no written accounts of it happening and its affects doesn't seem unreasonable.
Kellhus probably tested it. Forced/convinced prisoners or subjects to eat a diet of only sranc and see what it did to them. How much you needed to eat, for how long, for anything to happen, if anything at all. If effects, what they were and if they were permanent if you went to a normal diet, or only imbibed some minimum amount. And then, kill all the participants so no one (consult especially) knew what he was doing.
Quirri/chanv/sranc remind me of Limitless' "NZT". Maybe he found a way for himself to mitigate or eliminate any unwanted side effects. Not probably feasible or worth the effort to figure out how to keep the whole Ordeal alive, but maybe a select few... like say a school or two.
So, he presumes the benefits are at least neutral? We kind of know that it isn't going to work out how he thinks it will though, from the blurb...
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Not at all. It just needs to not have an acute and immediate affect on the TGO. They are just a meat shield for the sorcerers anyway.
Effects need to be mitigated or long-term enough to get Kellhus to where he needs to be. He only needs to have a better plan for the imporant few, or maybe just himself.
Could be as simple as using whatever forage is available to feed him and his inner ciricle, keeping them off the sranc and whatever effects it will have.
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Speaking about revulsion for eating quite sentient being, hatred for srancs, srancs as a possible resource for chanv, I've just got this guess.
Part of being a nobility is a certain right/duty/ritual of breaking taboos (it's mostly math paradox than psychological one: to establish guidelines for others you have to erase some of yours). That way they could have invented chanv through some of their ivory-tower-&-behind-sealed-doors orgies, just by attempts to cook out sranc taste from sranc meat. Or maybe it was a cooking assistant, who charred a costly meat to a cinders, was pushed into them as a punishing jesture, but got high instead.
Considering other taboos (and the way people got syphilis & hiv from llamas & apes), human-nonman offsprings, nonman infertility theme, srancs being a perversion of cunuroi... It is possible to have sranc-human hybrid? Do they call it ur-sranc in Golgotherath? Kinda nice handwave to Tolkien & uruk-hais, if it is.
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Considering other taboos (and the way people got syphilis & hiv from llamas & apes), human-nonman offsprings, nonman infertility theme, srancs being a perversion of cunuroi... It is possible to have sranc-human hybrid? Do they call it ur-sranc in Golgotherath? Kinda nice handwave to Tolkien & uruk-hais, if it is.
I think the parallel is deliberate. In the books, we don't learn how Ursranc were (or are) made, but the implication that they have some "mannish" qualities is presented in the books:
Far more numerous were what Eskeles called Ursranc, a species bred for obedience.
The Scions could only guess at their numbers, since they not only crawled throughout the column whipping and beating their more wolfish kin, but also patrolled the surrounding plains in loose companies of a hundred or so—the way Men would.
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That is just gross. Trying to imagine what would be less detrimental to the human donor, male or female. I'm guessing either way the human would end up dead after 1 union, given the voracity of the sranc.
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That is just gross. Trying to imagine what would be less detrimental to the human donor, male or female. I'm guessing either way the human would end up dead after 1 union, given the voracity of the sranc.
I'm not sure they are half-breeds in that sense though. My thinking would be more like they were bred with humans at some point in the past and selected for better obedience, which gradually lead them to have more "mannish" behavior. In other words, tempered Sranc.
I'm not sure that a Sranc with a human would actually yield any viable result, besides death obviously...
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Eugenics makes more sense, and could be accomplished without the Tekne. Just a bit of animal husbandry.
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Eugenics makes more sense, and could be accomplished without the Tekne. Just a bit of animal husbandry.
Yeah, the word "bred" leads me in that direction. Could be a part of the explaination of the hordes of men in the Ark that we've seen alluded to (and present in some of the Nau-Cayût dreams).
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From TTT 325-6
"Sohorat roared, and plaster rained throughout the forest of columns. Flies burst from his maw. Raving wolves bubbled from his palms, smashed the sheets of light, gorged on those cringing behind them. Zioz swept burning threads into his fist, wrenched souls from their housing meat. Setmahaga clawed aside flimsy defenses, struck heads from bodies, gloried in the blood that smoked across his limbs. He squealed like a thousand pigs such was his exhultation."
So it seems that anagogically summoned demons themselves uses anagogic magic? Maybe when Kellhus summons a demon it will use gnostic attacks?
Also, the Nilnameshi sorcerers favor wolves, I wonder if there's any connection?
Also, given the efficacy of the ciphrang attacks, I can only guess that the SS don't use it more because they can't or because there is a great risk involved. Otherwise, why bother risking your neck against Seokti and co?
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Seems like analogies to me as well. Gnostic Ciphrang, what a lovely surprise that would be.
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Seems like analogies to me as well. Gnostic Ciphrang, what a lovely surprise that would be.
Wouldn't that be kind of superfluous though? At the point of using the Gnosis, you are working at the essential "base level" no need for representational agents at all. With the Gnosis, if you want something burnt, you make it burn, you don't need fire. If you want force, you don't need a hand, you just push.
The Gnosis is so powerful because it doesn't need second order agents. It works direct on Reality. While I don't doubt that the Gnosis could summon or bind ciphrang, I'm not sure it would really be worth the effort. The Daimos is an attempt to circumvent the limited power of the Anagogis, since it seems that the Analogies aren't as pure as the Gnosis and so aren't as powerful. In other words, using the Daimos is an attempt at a "force multiplier" to circumvent how little one Anagogic agent can bring to bear.
The Gnosis doesn't need any of that. It is power in it's rawest form and the Gnostic sorcerer is the agent; middle men and brokers would only dilute it.
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Seems like analogies to me as well. Gnostic Ciphrang, what a lovely surprise that would be.
Wouldn't that be kind of superfluous though? At the point of using the Gnosis, you are working at the essential "base level" no need for representational agents at all. With the Gnosis, if you want something burnt, you make it burn, you don't need fire. If you want force, you don't need a hand, you just push.
The Gnosis is so powerful because it doesn't need second order agents. It works direct on Reality. While I don't doubt that the Gnosis could summon or bind ciphrang, I'm not sure it would really be worth the effort. The Daimos is an attempt to circumvent the limited power of the Anagogis, since it seems that the Analogies aren't as pure as the Gnosis and so aren't as powerful. In other words, using the Daimos is an attempt at a "force multiplier" to circumvent how little one Anagogic agent can bring to bear.
The Gnosis doesn't need any of that. It is power in it's rawest form and the Gnostic sorcerer is the agent; middle men and brokers would only dilute it.
i'm still divided about this. as far as the text goes, the gnosis is represented as a purer form of sorcery (albeit by humans with their habit to self-flatterize). but then there is that quote by bakker somewhere saying that anagogis could be just as good if developed further. so i still don't know if the gnosis is 'purer' or is just like the anagogis except instead of using a sword, the gnosis manifests sorcery in the geometrical shape of a beam. perhaps sorcery cannot happen in Earwa unless it is filtered/interepreted through some kind of system like visualized objects like dragons or geometrical shapes or torrents of water or whatever
if Kellhus summons a Ciphrang via the gnosis, maybe it will appear as nothing more than a bright sphere or cube or something
oohh ooohhh maybe it will show up like a huge obelisk!
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H, I look at it like, the Anagogic summoned Ciphrang use anagogic sorcery whilst also being giant armored tanks.
A gnostic summond Ciphrang would be the same giant armored vehicle of death, but using gnosis instead of analogies.
If a schoolman is strong, and two schoolmen are twice as strong, then a schoolman summoning a pet that uses the gnosis is as strong as 2 schoolmen. Though, in this case, there is the added bonus of mobility, meat shield, and physical stopping power not against chorae bearing enemies.
Schoolmen dont like getting their hands dirty, and have qualms about running into a wall of chorae bearing bashrag, or storming a gate or literal wall where chorae bowmen sit. A ciphrang can take things like this out, probably dying in the process, but who cares. Kellhus is the savior. He says your soul is saved, so what matters what a lowly demon says about eating your soul. Just summon another one.
I personally dont think that a gnosis summoned ciphrang would be any different than the ones we have seen. Its a matter of binding critters from the outside. Though, it does seem strange that such things would use analogies in the first place.
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A new postulate!
Perhaps the reader is blinded by the notion that only the branch of sorcery labelled 'daimos' is in fact daimotic. Could it be that the reader AND that sorcerers are unaware that to commit any act of sorcery is equivalent to (no more/no less) drawing the real content of the Outside into the world?
Let us use the unit Scott provides: the Ciphrang. I propose that any spell is a spell because it is made up of some amount of Ciphrang. For instance, summoning a dragon-head flame thrower is really summoning 500 tiny spirits, we can call them milliciphrangs and having them arranged just so. The gnostic 'analogue' to the aforementioned spell would be superior in that it conjures more milliciphrangs and/or connects them in a more effective way.
I am thinking along these lines--In our world 2 firearms would be distinguished (ultimately) by the number of atoms contained therein and they way they are connected. This firearm has less atoms and is a handgun. This other firearm has more atoms and is a something massive, powerful, and vaguely phallic in a god-like manner as it protrudes from deck of a battleship.
A spell achieves greater levels of potency based on the number of Ciphrangs involved and the cleverness of there composition. A deflationary view of Earwan metaphysics!
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That is pretty out there MG, I don't know that I can follow it, haha,
What I was going to say though, with regards to Ciphrang knowing the Anagogis, is that there is a chance that the reason it knows that is because it is the soul of a damned Anagogic sorcerer.
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That is pretty out there MG, I don't know that I can follow it, haha,
What I was going to say though, with regards to Ciphrang knowing the Anagogis, is that there is a chance that the reason it knows that is because it is the soul of a damned Anagogic sorcerer.
WOAH
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So. Daimos through the sorceries, eh? Oh, I'm into this game.
1) Anagogic daimos = a techique of spawning malevolents & picturesque rampagings djinnies, who are by themselfves a nearly perfect metaphor for anagogic sorcery.
2) Gnostic agency relation = somehow is linked with discerning demiurge & saviour. The nice part here is the cants of the internetz, which gave me a rl gnostic school of Mandaeans who considerer Jesus a false messiah & perverter of the teachings entrusted to him by John the Baptist. Never though of the Kellhus & Akka connection that way...
3) Psukhe something = अवतार, avatara, manifestation of the solitary godling. The sincerest and most powerful thing a fanim could possibly ever do while practising his faith.
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So. Daimos through the sorceries, eh? Oh, I'm into this game.
1) Anagogic daimos = a techique of spawning malevolents & picturesque rampagings djinnies, who are by themselfves a nearly perfect metaphor for anagogic sorcery.
2) Gnostic agency relation = somehow is linked with discerning demiurge & saviour. The nice part here is the cants of the internetz, which gave me a rl gnostic school of Mandaeans who considerer Jesus a false messiah & perverter of the teachings entrusted to him by John the Baptist. Never though of the Kellhus & Akka connection that way...
3) Psukhe something = अवतार, avatara, manifestation of the solitary godling. The sincerest and most powerful thing a fanim could possibly ever do while practising his faith.
Are you saying that you think different sorcereries summon different kinds of ciphrangs? And that the psukhe ciphrang would be especially bad ass--maybe even something that should be called an Angel???
UNRELATED:
I was listening to something the other day, maybe it was When The Levee Breaks by Led Zepplin, but I was pleased by the way the guitar, harmonica, bass, and drums blended together. Sometimes I like doing that--following the separate parts of the music instead of hearing as a whole. It struck me that that experience is as close as I can get to whatever Kellhus is doing when he is thinking multiple tracks in his mind whether he is doing metagnosis or not. Just thought I'd share
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Are you saying that you think different sorcereries summon different kinds of ciphrangs? And that the psukhe ciphrang would be especially bad ass--maybe even something that should be called an Angel???
Yep. For if these sorceries are different knives, they should cut Outside in different manner!
Dunno if there is a place for meta-class sorcery here. It's too groundbreaking, sorry for the pun.
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Are you saying that you think different sorcereries summon different kinds of ciphrangs? And that the psukhe ciphrang would be especially bad ass--maybe even something that should be called an Angel???
Yep. For if these sorceries are different knives, they should cut Outside in different manner!
Dunno if there is a place for meta-class sorcery here. It's too groundbreaking, sorry for the pun.
"If you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth."
Hell, the Nonmen even called Aurang an Angel.