Earwa > The Unholy Consult

[TUC Spoilers] How did the Inchoroi come think Earwa was the promised land?

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Clozee:
It's an unanswered question.

I like the following theory:

Because of Ajokli. Ajokli put the idea in their heads. He could influence them even when they were lightyears away from Earwa, because the Ark and especially the area around the Inverse Fire were such deep topoi. This allowed some of his influence to leak through.

(edit: Or maybe Ajokli directly influenced the mind of anyone looking into the Inverse Fire. After all, it is a "but a window into his House".)

And why did Ajokli put that idea in their heads? Because he wanted the Ark to crash on Earwa, so that eventually, thousands of years later, he could fully manifest in the golden room through Kellhus.

And maybe the malfunction that caused the Ark to crash was due to a miracle wrought by Ajokli.

Also, in TUC's glossary, there's an entry for the Ark:


--- Quote ---Incû-Holoinas—“Ark-of-the-Skies” (Ihrimsû). The great vessel that brought the Inchoroi from the heavens and became the golden heart of Golgotterath. All scholars agree that the Incû-Holoinas was some kind of ship built to sail the sky, that it crashed some time prior to the inscription of the Tusk, but only a rare handful concede the claim that it sailed the Void proper, which is to say, between stars. The most compelling rebuttal of this fanciful notion comes from Ajencis himself, who pointed out that the stars would move relative one another were they not uniformly embedded in a sphere hanging a fixed distance about the sky. Since the relative positioning of the stars is identical in star charts inked from different corners of the World, we can be assured that the Incû-Holoinas “came from someplace distant, but not far away.” This, the Great Kyranean concludes, means the Incû-Holoinas must hail from the Outside and not the stars.

This disagreement in origins forms the basis of the two different families of speculation on the Incû-Holoinas, with Nonmen and Far Antique Mannish accounts generally insisting it’s a vessel constructed to cross the Void, and with more recent Mannish accounts agreeing that it’s a vessel constructed to escape damnation in the Outside. Where the former accounts hold the occupants to be “aliens,” monstrosities from another World, the latter accounts claim the Inchoroi were in fact ciphrangi—demons, in effect.

The tremendous advantage of the latter theories turns on their economy, on the fact that they need posit nothing new to explain either the Incû-Holoinas or the Inchoroi. If the Ark were a vessel from another planet, then it had to be constructed by the Inchoroi themselves, when plainly, given its boggling dimensions, only a God could have forged it. Given the evil, rapacious nature of the Inchoroi, the construction is typically attributed to Ajokli. Some even think the Incû-Holoinas comprises two of the fabled Four Horns attributed to the trickster God in the Tusk and elsewhere. Indeed, some Near Antique lays refer to the conspicuously golden vessel as the Halved Crown of Hate.

Though the question of the origin of the Incû-Holoinas can be assumed to be safely settled, vexing questions abide, not the least of which concerns the actual size of the unholy vessel, and, most notoriously, whether the Consult still inhabits it. Though some promise is to be had in the resolution of the former controversy, Mandate arrogance and delusion promises to render the latter debate an endless mire.

--- End quote ---

So, this is supposed to be an entry from an in-universe encyclopedia, written by a scholar who thinks the Ark came from the Outside, and was maybe constructed by Ajokli.

We are supposed to laugh at this entry since we know better. We know that the Inchoroi actually are aliens, and the Ark was constructed via the Tekne, not by a god.

But we were also supposed to laugh at Fanayal and Harweel when they insisted that Kellhus was a demon! Even though, in the end, they were partly right. More right than most of us suspected.

So maybe this entry is also partly right, in that Ajokli did have something to do with the Ark crashing onto Earwa.


edit: changed topic title to be more accurate, was "Why was Earwa the promised land?'

SmilerLoki:
I asked Bakker a related question in Reddit AMA:

--- Quote from: SmilerLoki ---Are topoi and anarcane grounds connected to Earwa being the Promised World?
--- End quote ---

This is what he answered:

--- Quote from: R. Scott Bakker ---Only insofar as they are isolated, surrounded by arcane grounds. The Inchoroi homeworld, for instance, is entirely anarcane.
--- End quote ---

MSJ:
Anagke, The Whore of Fate.

They didn't think anything. The were running around destroying planets for millennia, and finally something went wrong and crashed into Earwa, lo and behold. The promised planet. One that can be shut from the Outside.

I think it took time before they even realized it. But, using brute force soldiers, Inchori, they fucked up. Sorcery decimated almost all of them right of the bat. Took a human and Aurang centuries to raise No-God (not having anyone left who knew how it worked.). Pure, blind, luck. Anagke.

Jabberwock03:
Maybe it's not even the "promised world" but just an average world partly connected to the outside through few topoi, and there is in the cosmos total (or almost total) topoi worlds which would be even better to close the outside from the reality.

But I like the idea that Ajokli used the darkness of the Inchoroï to make them crash Ark in Earwa in the attemp to manifest himself into reality (but then Kelmomas was hanging around being invisible to gods and stuff).

Wilshire:
I, personally, love the idea that Ajokli was the original mover. Welcome aboard ;)

IMO, the Inverse Fire seems like it's a tool fashioned by Ajokli - after all, what does it do if not lead to endless millenium of suffering and bloodshed. Basically this: Ajokli found a way to give the Inchoroi his dred knowledge of the fate that exists for any Inchoroi (or their creators at least) who ends up in his corner of the Outside.

We know for a fact that there are multiple instances of the Outside. What if the IF showed Gilgaol's Outside? Wouldn't it basically be the Inchoroi's ideal afterlife? They'd be celebrated as War Bringers and War Heroes of the Galaxy. Celebrated for eternity for their exceptional prowess at war. Millennia of victory, and eternity of heaven.

Ajokli's little corner of the Outside is just hell. He likes to tortuer endlessly his victims. Not all the Gods are like him. This is why everyone that sees into the IF sees the same thing, because Ajokli treats everyone the same in his afterlife. So it's the perfect goad. It makes living slaves of any who see it for the fear it sets into them, driving them to commit horrible acts of mass atrocity. Killing for the sake of killing - not for the sake of Glory and thus cutting Gilgaol out of the equation (maybe).

It makes sense of so many thing, and is my preferred theory of what the IF is and why the Inchoroi wound up on Earwa. Ajokli using it to set in motion is eventually manifestation into the Real fits so well into the world building.

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