I really like a lot of your ideas, dragharrow. Very well thought out. I don't agree with all of them, but certain things I think are spot on. First starters:
By the way, I don't necessarily think everyone faces damnation when they return to the outside. The outside is chaotic. Really chaotic.In any case I think the Cish have the right of it. Like Meppa says the hundred are just great demons. Give them your respect but worship the Solitary God. The god of pure undifferentiated meaning. The fact of meaningful illusion.
Agreed on most fronts. I know I'm a broken record here, but I'm quite, quite confidant in the idea that the Solitary God is but the sum of all souls, and the reason people think of it as "sleeping" is because it's currently split, as Kellhus says, into a million warring splinters (which includes humans, Inchoroi, all the aliens of the universe, and then the denizens of the Outside -- both Ciphrang and the Hundred). I also think, however, that the Dunyain's Absolute is the same as the God. To reach the Absolute is awaken the God, to grasp the sum of all knowledge, thought, souls, etc.
What to make of the Inverse Fire then though? I don't think it lies, and while I cannot imagine the chaos would be comfortable, it would have to be pure torture to inspire the devotion it does. I want it to have only worked on mages who I could imagine face another order of damnation but if I recall correctly everyone who enters is converted.
I'm of the mind that what the Inverse Fire shows is completely true. I think the Inchoroi, while researching (via the Tekne, a.k.a. "conventional" science) the Outside, discovered the Inverse Fire by accident. It shows, literally, the inside of ones soul -- from the Outside (or something like that, somebody on Westeros said it much better). I think they were probably still on their own planet at the time. But upon discovering the reality of Damnation, and worse, the fact that the morality it's based on was completely alien to them (how could it not be, given that the rules of Damnation and the Gods themselves are anthropomorphic?), then set out on a quest to save their race. I think the fact that it happens to be a sort of happy coincidence -- if you can call it such -- that the Inverse Fire happens to be a very effective brainwashing device.
I do think one man saw the IF and didn't turn to the Consult though, and that man was Seswatha. I think he still wants to stop Damnation, but he had a better way of going about it (involving the Mandate and, possibly, the Dunyain).
No, my money is still on Kellhus. He's pulled the crucifixion once already but I think he'll do it again. The white luck will kill him and he will ascend to walk the outside so he can change the rules of play. Maybe he can open a new path to the bosom of the solitary god? Or just try and wrestle with the insolubility of determinism and finally solve the Dunyains quest.
But sometimes I like to toy with the idea that Kellhus may be an avatar of the No-God the way the priestess is the avatar of Yatwar, etc.
I think it might be both, actually. I think Kellhus is more like the
second coming of Jesus (Inri was the first), as he would at the end of the world. And I definitely think he's going to solve the quest of the Dunyain, by reaching the Absolute, the Monad, which is one and the same with becoming the Solitary God. He does by destroying the Demiurges (the Hundred) and shutting off the Outside, which cuts all the souls in the universe with it. The material universe essentially becomes a soulless, deterministic, disenchanted one -- one much more similar to our own. I also believe it's possible he will use the No-God to achieve this, possibly even by becoming the No-God himself, though I'm more uncertain of that aspect. Regardless, I think Kellhus truly is a "savior" of sorts, just the kind people might expect.