Earwa > The Unholy Consult

[TUC Spoilers] Esmenet the Angelic Ciphrang

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Francis Buck:
Been meaning to make this thread for a while now, but I was motivated to do so after catching Duskweaver's great thread on a similar topic, but I recommend you all read if you haven't already: http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=2402.0


I'll keep my hypothesis short and sweet...

Esmenet is a mighty Ciphrang. Like Cnaiur, who is a veritable Prince of Hell, so too is Esemenet a "Princess of Heaven", shall we say - and perhaps our only example of the elusive "angelic Ciphrang" which RSB mentioned in an interview years ago.

Consider:

-Mimara's JE can not only see the morality of a person but also their destiny and fate in the Outside.

-It's also capable of distinguishing between someone is merely damned (or saved), and someone who is actually one of the entities dishing out the damnation (or salvation).

-Note that when Mimara sees the Scalpers, or almost anyone that's damned up until TGO/TUC, she sees their souls being passed between demons in Hell and so forth.

-In contrast, when Mimara sees Cnaiur, and later the Ordealsmen at Golgotterath, she sees them as the demons, rather than one simply being fed upon by them. This is especially true in Cnaiur's case, who's not merely a Ciphrang but a so-called Prince of Hell, and again from an AMA/Q&A with the author, we know that certain people's souls are so strong they begin to "turn" early...perhaps when they're closer to their own death?

-As we also know, the Outside and all of its inhabitants exist atemporally. People don't so much become a Ciphrang, but rather some people always were a Ciphrang.

-This could also explain some of Cnaiur -- and now perhaps Esmenet's -- more extraordinary qualities. For example, Cnaiur's in his mid 60's by TUC, yet he's physically just as powerful as he always was, perhaps even more powerful, and in addition, he seems to have not aged almost whatsoever.

Compare with Esmenet, who should be in her fifties, yet is consistently described as being just as beautiful and healthy as she was 20 years ago. There's even a sequence in TGO where Esmenet actually sort of freaks out about it and wonders what kind of "abomination" would be so unnatural. It's even more poignant when you remember how the last Empress of the Three-Seas, Istriya, also had rather unnatural beauty for her age by the end, because she actually was was an abomination who had been replaced by a skin-spy.

Finally, it seems fitting that out of the original cast of series, we get two of them who end up on opposite ends of the moral and cosmic spectrum...

ETA: Thanks to Madness for grabbing this quote from the author:


--- Quote from: Madness on August 26, 2017, 03:29:05 pm ---
--- Quote from: Bakker Interview Part 2 ---Since only demonic (as opposed to angelic) Ciphrang can be summoned and trapped in the World, practitioners of the Daimos can never trust the reports they receive: the so-called Damnation Archives in the Scarlet Spires are rumoured to be filled with wild contradictions. The Damned themselves only know that they are damned, and never why.
--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---

Woden:
Nice point.

Duskweaver:
So, if Cnaiur becomes Ajokli, maybe Esmenet becomes Yatwer?

On the one hand, I hate that idea, because it screws up Ajokli's long-hinted 'special status', as well as the theme of 99 stones plus 1, if he is not the only one of the Hundred who lived as a mortal.

But on the other hand, the idea that Esme spent years believing Yatwer hunted her and her children, when she was actually Yatwer all along... that's just too cool to dismiss.

There is definitely something special about Esmenet, anyway. I'd actually not really noticed the agelessness. But she also seems able to do things that would (supposedly) get anyone else damned (being a whore and using sorcerous birth-control; razing a big chunk of Carythusal in a rage; killing Naree even though she herself saw it as morally wrong; plotting to murder her own husband), and yet still shines with the "promise of Paradise".

Yellow:
Maybe that's why she's saved? Because she tried to kill Kellhus.

Madness:

--- Quote from: Bakker Interview Part 2 ---Since only demonic (as opposed to angelic) Ciphrang can be summoned and trapped in the World, practitioners of the Daimos can never trust the reports they receive: the so-called Damnation Archives in the Scarlet Spires are rumoured to be filled with wild contradictions. The Damned themselves only know that they are damned, and never why.
--- End quote ---

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