The Second Apocalypse
Earwa => General Earwa => Topic started by: mrganondorf on September 15, 2014, 11:05:55 pm
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I would wager that young R Scott Bakker, author of The Darkness that Comes Before let something slip in his first book that older RSB of The Unholy Consult worries about. Perhaps he made a mistake and revealed too much too early? He seemed to have the whole story thought out from the beginning, so what is in TDTCB that foreshadows all else?
There are two moments that seem especially juicy to me.
1) The arrival of the Dunyain at Ishual. The bastard repeats the bardic priest's line about 'if there are no men then there are no crimes/as long as their are men there are crimes.' The bardic priest is an overt foreshadowing of the Inchoroi/Consult, not just the words, but also the rape. The dunyain's answer 'there are only crimes so long as men are deceived' - is this going to be the big answer to the Consult at the end of TUC or later? Some pervasive insight will bring the redemption that the Inchoroi sought but in a way they did not imagine? Some truth will wipe away sin?
2) Inrau's death scene. The copper tree and the one and only extended bit about Onkhis seem so out of place that they are perhaps especially significant. That Onkhis IS the dancer in the dark is just too much. Perhaps Bakker is revealing a little bit about some kind of darkness that determines the entire story that is specifically mixed up with the nonman and more particularly Cujara Cinmoi, Bakker's own avatar? Madness seemed especially moved about Ishterebinth!!!
What do you think? Anything in TDTCB that might be giving away secrets?
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The way the story has developed thus far seems to suggest that there is altogether too much in the text itself to guess future events. While pretty much everything has been internally consistent, there haven't been a ton of "i called it" moments for major twists.
Thats part of the brilliance of the story Bakker crafted. Vague enough to not be obvious, but with enough in there that looking back you can see clearly the shortest path.
The Dunyain's magic is being able to see that path into the future rather than retrospectively. Who are the Dunyain among us?
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I don't know, I think the Bardic priest line is perfectly placed for re-reads and how Aurang himself says it in TTT. I do think Inrau's death scene is significant but the Symbolism is ambiguous enough for it to go in any direction, really.
I've been contemplating a re-read for a while now and you're just about pushing me over the edge Mr. G.
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You owe it to yourself to do a re-read. Its like reading a new series. The amount of information and hints that the reader misses on the first read is absolutely staggering. Highly recommended.
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More on topic though, I think there are even earlier moments of pure foreshadowing that have yet to be revealed, especially "you cannot guard against a secret" or whatever that line is. I think its extremely telling, and has been poignant throughout the entire story, and to be more so IMO later on in TUC. Heck, even meta-foreshadowing, TSTSNBN.
Inrau remains, to me, a big mystery. There are a few moments in TDTCB that I think might have been author mistakes, and I can't decide if Inrau's few scenes where something more, or another one of these moments.
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An eerie parallel to Inrau's death scene--Chapter 14 in The Judging Eye, Cil-Aujus
Remarkable elements in Inrau's death scene: an inchoroi, the gnosis, Onkhis, the copper tree. All of these things come up in Cil-Aujust too.
- the chapter starts with stuff about Cu'jara Cinmoi--the copper tree
- Sil/inchoroi also included in the depictions of yore--inchoroi
- chapter reveals history of the war between nonmen and inchoroi in general
- odd gnosis things happening: it was weird that a clergy member would suddenly use the gnosis (if he had used it before, then he would be stained and very exposed to the College of Luthymae; if he had not used it before, how in the world could he suddenly be so badass?; if he had not used it before, why do mar your own soul right before your likely death? even if he escapes, he's tainted) AND there's weird stuff with the gnosis -- Achamian hands the light to Mimara
- Onkhis is there too? The Dancer in the Dark? Oh yeah, the quote from Cleric:
"We Nonmen...we think the dark holy...The dark is oblivion made manifest. And oblivion encircles us always. It is the ocean, and we are naught but silvery bubbles. It leans all about us. You see it every time you glimpse the horizon--though you know it not. In the light, our eyes are what blinds us. But in the dark--in the dark!--the line of the horizon...opens like a mouth...and oblivion gapes...For my kind, holiness begins when comprehension ends. Ignorance stakes us out marks our limits, draws the line between us and what transcends. For us, the true God is the unknown God, the God that outruns our febrile words, our flattering thoughts..." US paperback 323-324
what what, help me out!
p.s. some odd parallels between Cu'jara and Kellhus too. Cleric refers to Cu'jara as "Our Tyrant-Saviour" which would be the combo of what the Yatwerians and the Zaudunyani call Kellhus (299). Later, Cleric speaks to a statue of Cu'jara. From Akka's POV, it is described as "a magesterial Nonman hewn from the walls, at once hanging with arms and legs outstretched--a pose curiously reminiscent of the Circumfix" (306-7). Later, when Cleric is preaching the above, Akka thinks that it sounds like Kellhus-talk -- not a connection to Cu'jara directly, but perhaps still significant.
So is the big big reveal, the darkness that comes before all going to be a secret about Cu'jara Cinmoi? Revealed in the Ishterebinth parts that so moved our sanctified Admin???
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Going to run with this tangent for a bit. Here's the Onkhis paragraph:
"'God has a thousand thousand faces,' Sejenus had said, 'but men only one heart.' Every great faith was a labyrinth possessed of innumerable small grottoes, half-secret places where the abstractions fell away and where the objects of worship became small enough to comfort daily anxieties, familiar enough to weep openly about petty things. Inrau had found his grotto in the shrine of Onkis, the Singer-in-the-Dark, the Aspect who stood at the the heart of all men, moving them to forever grasp far more than they could hold." p121
thousand thousand
labyrinth
grottoes
secret
grotto
Singer-in-the-Dark
the Aspect (Bakker's capitalization)
All these words call to mind Ishual (literally Exalted Grotto), the Dunyain, and Kellhus.
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On the next page
"[Onkis] The idol was worked in white marble, eyes closed with the sunken look of the dead. At first glance she appeared to be the severed head of a woman, beautiful yet vaguely common, mounted on a pole. Anything more than a glance, however, revealed the pole to be a miniature tree, like those cultivated by the ancient Norsiriai, only worked in bronze."
white marble
severed head
beautiful yet vaguely common
bronze tree
All of these words associate Onkis with Cu'jara Cinmoi. Nonmen look like white marble, to humans they are beautiful yet hard to distinguish one from another. Cu'jara's head was cut off when he fell in battle and he had a copper tree for his symbol.
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Damn....nice find...
It's hard to answer the OP as Wilshire touched on because there are so many tidbits like this that are vague or ambiguous, possibly deliberately so. Need the next book!
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I believe there is a whole topic discussing Intrau's death, and within there is a brief debate about what you have asked. Elsewhere, Mimara and the Surrilic point might be in the Sorcery topic (though I don't think any conclusions were drawn).
Inrau risks damnation to tell Achamian, and thus the Mandate, that they were indeed right, that the world was in grave danger, and that Akka need to run/hide/escape. His old teacher, and the world, where worth the price of his soul.
The Nonman-Dunyain link, or the possibility of it, has arisen due to, among other things, Cleric's sermons.
Tyrant-Saviour being Yatwerian-Zaudunyani combination... Nice find.
That whole seen, with Inrau, Onkis, and the Consult, drips with hidden information. Onkis looking like a Nonman is interesting. Possibly pointing to some of the older gods being directly inspired by Nonman, something the Eanna saw long before the breaking of the gates, that get suffused into their culture before the Inchoroi gave them their Tusk.
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I think the line about "crimes existing only so long as men are deceived" is a very big tell, particularly in relation to the nature of damnation and the Hundred's relationship to existence. To put it simply, damnation (existential punishment for "crimes") only exists because the Outside is a distorted reflection of mankind's (obviously anthropomorphized) set of subconscious standards for right/wrong, which as we know are largely bullshit -- men being somehow objectively better than woman, for example, is a deception. Ironically, it's not mankind itself that's the issue in my opinion, but the nature of Earwa itself. Thus, everyone who isn't human is pretty much fucked, and even most humans aren't making out too well. But, replace the dominant intellect on Earwa with something closer to you own sensibilities -- as the Consult intends to do -- and all those "crimes" are different. Or better yet, non-existent.
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Yeah, I pretty think the same thing right now.
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Maybe non men women are trees and non men are born in buds. And a human pollinated a tree accidentally by jacking off around it?
All typ0s courtesy of Samsung.
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I believe there is a whole topic discussing Intrau's death, and within there is a brief debate about what you have asked. Elsewhere, Mimara and the Surrilic point might be in the Sorcery topic (though I don't think any conclusions were drawn).
Inrau risks damnation to tell Achamian, and thus the Mandate, that they were indeed right, that the world was in grave danger, and that Akka need to run/hide/escape. His old teacher, and the world, where worth the price of his soul.
The Nonman-Dunyain link, or the possibility of it, has arisen due to, among other things, Cleric's sermons.
Tyrant-Saviour being Yatwerian-Zaudunyani combination... Nice find.
That whole seen, with Inrau, Onkis, and the Consult, drips with hidden information. Onkis looking like a Nonman is interesting. Possibly pointing to some of the older gods being directly inspired by Nonman, something the Eanna saw long before the breaking of the gates, that get suffused into their culture before the Inchoroi gave them their Tusk.
You would have me skulk in the archives! It's so much more fun to think I thought of it first! :P
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Why not at all. I was just letting you know there might be some interesting info in the archives if you so desired for more information.
Maybe non men women are trees and non men are born in buds. And a human pollinated a tree accidentally by jacking off around it?
All typ0s courtesy of Samsung.
From chapter 3 of TUC, Sorweel is doing just that. Maybe he's going to have little hybrid babies leading all the way to Ishterebinth. He's the races savior, not Serwe, and the Nonmen just forgot where all their wives went.
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I'm doing a re-read in anticipation of the new book and noticed this :
Doesn't Simas' admonition that one has to be skeptical of one's own skepticism come dangerously close to apprehending paradox for someone later revealed to be a skin-spy?
Or am I misreading this?
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Well he is likely an exception to the paradox rule, because one needs a soul to comprehend a paradox. What is sorcery but holding two meaning, one spoken and one unspoken, within the mind at once? Any skin-spy that can wield sorcery has a soul, and can therefore comprehend a paradox.
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“A skin-spy with the ability to work sorcery,” the Shriah of the Thousand Temples said, grimacing with exertion. “A skin-spy with a soul.” And the grand old sorcerer realized he had known all along.
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How did that SS grow a soul anyway?
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How did that SS grow a soul anyway?
Gotta be a grafting, right? Either Consult or Moenghus grafted a heart (?) with the gift of the few into the skin spies chest?
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How did that SS grow a soul anyway?
The Inchoroi/Consult do not know, according to Maithanet/Moe/Kellhus (whoever said it, I don't remember). If so, they'd just make an army of them and obliterate the world.
Wonder how the Gods feel of their glimpse in the Inchoroi's mysterious Teckne? How does that fit into their false mosaic of omnipotence?
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Maybe constructing a skin spy begins with deboning a human? And Simias was randomly one of the few who retained that capacity through all the rebuilding? Calling it now: Simias is the reconstructed Seswatha and he's still at large!!!
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I was sort of thinking of Simas as a "skin spy - Wathi doll" but it does make sense that it had to be some sort of accidental rare occurrence.
If the Inchies could either make ensouled skin spies, or count on it occurring randomly at any appreciable rate, it would be game over for the humans of Earwa.
It only makes sense that this single or exceedingly rare freak occurrence would be embedded at the Mandate, rather than being used to chuck fireballs at nomadic northern tribes.
But, does anyone have a proposal on how such a freak cosmic occurrence could take place?
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But, does anyone have a proposal on how such a freak cosmic occurrence could take place?
At this point I just don't think we know enough about the metaphysics of Earwa -- or of the Tekne -- to say. Presumably though, if you fuck around with making "life" for long enough, eventually something will awaken. Bakker said in an interview somewhere that even animals can (albeit rarely) awaken enough to have a soul. For example I personally suspect that snakes might actually have souls, which is either the cause -- or a result of -- their holiness, as well as being the reason the Cishaurim use them to see (or the reason that they even CAN use them).
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I think the line about "crimes existing only so long as men are deceived" is a very big tell, particularly in relation to the nature of damnation and the Hundred's relationship to existence. To put it simply, damnation (existential punishment for "crimes") only exists because the Outside is a distorted reflection of mankind's (obviously anthropomorphized) set of subconscious standards for right/wrong, which as we know are largely bullshit -- ... . But, replace the dominant intellect on Earwa with something closer to you own sensibilities -- as the Consult intends to do -- and all those "crimes" are different. Or better yet, non-existent.
So you think the outside is a "law-mirror" and that if you change the one reflected in it, than you changed the...consequences?
But how then is Earwa the problem and not the ones reflected? And why then should anyone not-human be especially fucked?
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@ Ozark - put me down for Simas as a Moenghus creation! Not a fluke! That's why Maitha knew he could press it just so...
@ Kellais - i'm thinking that the Nonmen, men, and Inchoroi are all related like billions of years ago, in fact, the separation started as far back as 2015 CE