ARC (A Real Chopper): Prologue & Chapter 1

  • 50 Replies
  • 18245 Views

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

MSJ

  • *
  • The Afflicted Few
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • Yatwer's Baby Daddy
  • Posts: 2298
  • "You killed the wolf"
    • View Profile
« Reply #15 on: April 09, 2018, 06:56:03 pm »
Thanks for input guys! Madness, BFK, Tao, TLEILAXU and others.....time to jump on in.
“No. I am your end. Before your eyes I will put your seed to the knife. I will quarter your carcass and feed it to the dogs. Your bones I will grind to dust and cast to the winds. I will strike down those who speak your name or the name of your fathers, until ‘Yursalka’ becomes as meaningless as infant babble. I will blot you out, hunt down your every trace! The track of your life has come to me,

MSJ

  • *
  • The Afflicted Few
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • Yatwer's Baby Daddy
  • Posts: 2298
  • "You killed the wolf"
    • View Profile
« Reply #16 on: April 09, 2018, 06:59:51 pm »
I will take it upon myself to chronicle dreams and you guys can help dissect. As for wolves and trees, other must step up to the plate.
“No. I am your end. Before your eyes I will put your seed to the knife. I will quarter your carcass and feed it to the dogs. Your bones I will grind to dust and cast to the winds. I will strike down those who speak your name or the name of your fathers, until ‘Yursalka’ becomes as meaningless as infant babble. I will blot you out, hunt down your every trace! The track of your life has come to me,

MSJ

  • *
  • The Afflicted Few
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • Yatwer's Baby Daddy
  • Posts: 2298
  • "You killed the wolf"
    • View Profile
« Reply #17 on: April 09, 2018, 09:40:06 pm »
(click to show/hide)

Just tagged to save space.

« Last Edit: April 09, 2018, 09:44:53 pm by MSJ »
“No. I am your end. Before your eyes I will put your seed to the knife. I will quarter your carcass and feed it to the dogs. Your bones I will grind to dust and cast to the winds. I will strike down those who speak your name or the name of your fathers, until ‘Yursalka’ becomes as meaningless as infant babble. I will blot you out, hunt down your every trace! The track of your life has come to me,

MSJ

  • *
  • The Afflicted Few
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • Yatwer's Baby Daddy
  • Posts: 2298
  • "You killed the wolf"
    • View Profile
« Reply #18 on: April 09, 2018, 10:42:24 pm »
(click to show/hide)

Akka's 2nd dream
“No. I am your end. Before your eyes I will put your seed to the knife. I will quarter your carcass and feed it to the dogs. Your bones I will grind to dust and cast to the winds. I will strike down those who speak your name or the name of your fathers, until ‘Yursalka’ becomes as meaningless as infant babble. I will blot you out, hunt down your every trace! The track of your life has come to me,

ThoughtsOfThelli

  • *
  • Great Name
  • ****
  • Thelli's Revenge
  • Posts: 492
  • Approximation of a Human
    • View Profile
« Reply #19 on: April 09, 2018, 11:11:40 pm »
I will take it upon myself to chronicle dreams and you guys can help dissect. As for wolves and trees, other must step up to the plate.

I'll keep an eye out for all future mentions of wolves.
Not sure if I want to bother with the trees, since it's something that has been discussed in this forum and in westeros.org (I think) many times before... I only brought that up as a point of comparison with the wolves.
"But you’ve simply made the discovery that Thelli made—only without the benefit of her unerring sense of fashion."
-Anasûrimbor Kayûtas (The Great Ordeal, chapter 13)

"You prefer to believe women victims to their passions, but we can be at least as calculating as you. Love does not make us weak, but strong."
-Ykoriana of the Masks (The Third God, chapter 27)

Madness

  • *
  • Administrator
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • Conversational Batman
  • Posts: 5275
  • Strength on the Journey - Journey Well
    • View Profile
    • The Second Apocalypse
« Reply #20 on: April 09, 2018, 11:14:48 pm »
I've been meaning to take a morning and sit down with the forum for almost a month now to catch up on posts. I'd like to say I'll be partaking frequently but no promises on my part.

Also, MSJ, for your efforts: Dreams

And bonus: Trees, Trees, and Trees
The Existential Scream
Weaponizing the Warrior Pose - Declare War Inwardly
carnificibus: multus sanguis fluit
Die Better
The Theory-Killer

MSJ

  • *
  • The Afflicted Few
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • Yatwer's Baby Daddy
  • Posts: 2298
  • "You killed the wolf"
    • View Profile
« Reply #21 on: April 09, 2018, 11:26:34 pm »
I have a little theory spinning in my head, way to early to even begin to know if I'm right so I'll keep it to myself. But, yet something else I am chronicling. Ill just say I think it a good hunch.
“No. I am your end. Before your eyes I will put your seed to the knife. I will quarter your carcass and feed it to the dogs. Your bones I will grind to dust and cast to the winds. I will strike down those who speak your name or the name of your fathers, until ‘Yursalka’ becomes as meaningless as infant babble. I will blot you out, hunt down your every trace! The track of your life has come to me,

H

  • *
  • The Zero-Mod
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • The Honourable H
  • Posts: 2893
  • The Original No-God Apologist
    • View Profile
    • The Original No-God Apologist
« Reply #22 on: April 10, 2018, 02:26:53 pm »
Working my why through the Prologue.  I always entertained the idea that the Bardic Priest could have been part of the Consult, but there was always something that didn't fit right about that.  Mostly, that if he was, how did the Consult not know of Ishuäl sooner then?  Indeed, this is not proof, as we cannot ever know for certain if he was or wasn't.  I think the balance of plausibility leans toward him not actually being of the Consult, but rather a symbol of the moral (and maybe ethical) decline at the end of the world.  Not only that, but his framing, as a Bradic Preist, emplants the idea of a morally corrupt religious order, again, framed against the end of the world.  This is definitely evocative of a certain level of "Christian mythos" in the sense that the declining moral fiber is a sign of the End.

As for the latter part, with Kellhus, apart from the oddity of the whole endeavor (as in, why was Moënghus not in Ishuäl in the first place, why would they have risked allowing him or Kellhus to be out in the wild) is abut the role of the Logos.  The Logos (Biblically, the Word that forms Order from Chaos) is what grounds Kellhus, what the Dûnyain had used to master circumstance (and themselves and so their world) yet leaves him completely overwhelmed by the Choas that is the Wilderness.  Kellhus nearly dies attempting to figure out the pattern, discern what it is that he is seeing, logically, in the wild.  It's only once he finds the ruins, does he "return to himself" in a sense, seeing his own reflection and his wild visage, reawkens in him the words with which to tame the wild (both internal and external).  Kellhus no longer meanders in the wilderness now, he runs, because he realizes it is not the proper state of his being, it is Chaos.

When he meets Leweth, the depth of the Logos becomes clearer.  It isn't just "logic" as we'd describe it.  Leweth displays the order, "Each thing had its place, he would tell Kellhus, and those things out of place portended disaster." but fails in the fact that his evocation of Order is not Truthful, which Kellhus later unmasks.  This shows that the Logos isn't just "cimply" order, but is Truthful Order, the proper and factual ordering of the world.  And it shows, through his breaking of Leweth, that the Truth (and so the Logos) has power.

The Sranc and ensuing death of Leweth point to the depth of the Chaos that is Eärwa.  Then, culminating in the encounter with a Nonman, we are presented with the fact, yes fact, that the Logos is not all that there is.  This will actually be returned to much much later in the series, as PoN is really Kellhus (and The Logos) ascendant.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

TLEILAXU

  • *
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • Exalt-Smiter of Theories
  • Posts: 731
    • View Profile
« Reply #23 on: April 10, 2018, 08:52:46 pm »
The Bardic Priest is NOT a Consult agent, cease this madness! Also, was it ever confirmed directly by Bakker that the Nonman Kellhus encounters in the prologue is Cet'ingira? I remember there was some confusion about "ridden both against and for the No-God".

H

  • *
  • The Zero-Mod
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • The Honourable H
  • Posts: 2893
  • The Original No-God Apologist
    • View Profile
    • The Original No-God Apologist
« Reply #24 on: April 11, 2018, 10:19:37 am »
The Bardic Priest is NOT a Consult agent, cease this madness! Also, was it ever confirmed directly by Bakker that the Nonman Kellhus encounters in the prologue is Cet'ingira? I remember there was some confusion about "ridden both against and for the No-God".

Yeah, extra-textually he said it was Mekeritrig.  He also, extra-textually had said that the line should have said "ridden both against and for the Consult."
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

Wilshire

  • *
  • Administrator
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • Enshoiya
  • Posts: 5935
  • One of the other conditions of possibility
    • View Profile
« Reply #25 on: April 11, 2018, 11:35:06 am »
The Bardic Priest is NOT a Consult agent, cease this madness! Also, was it ever confirmed directly by Bakker that the Nonman Kellhus encounters in the prologue is Cet'ingira? I remember there was some confusion about "ridden both against and for the No-God".

Yeah, extra-textually he said it was Mekeritrig.  He also, extra-textually had said that the line should have said "ridden both against and for the Consult."

What was that, like 10 ... or even close to 15 years ago he said that? lol.
One of the other conditions of possibility.

H

  • *
  • The Zero-Mod
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • The Honourable H
  • Posts: 2893
  • The Original No-God Apologist
    • View Profile
    • The Original No-God Apologist
« Reply #26 on: April 11, 2018, 11:54:27 am »
The Bardic Priest is NOT a Consult agent, cease this madness! Also, was it ever confirmed directly by Bakker that the Nonman Kellhus encounters in the prologue is Cet'ingira? I remember there was some confusion about "ridden both against and for the No-God".

Yeah, extra-textually he said it was Mekeritrig.  He also, extra-textually had said that the line should have said "ridden both against and for the Consult."

What was that, like 10 ... or even close to 15 years ago he said that? lol.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...I think it was in the Pat's Fantasy Hot List interviews?
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

TheCulminatingApe

  • *
  • Kijneta
  • ***
  • Posts: 274
    • View Profile
« Reply #27 on: April 11, 2018, 07:46:58 pm »
My thoughts.
The Prologue is far better than Chapter 1, which contains a lot of clunky exposition.

Prologue: Always same things strike me here. First one is the Bardic Priest. I believe he was Consult and knowing what we know from TUC the Dunyain eventually "take over" the Consult, the Duyain could very well been lead there by the Consult, Mek or the like.....and just forgot.
I don't think he's in the Consult, but his line "there are no crimes when no one is left alive seems to foreshadow what the Consult are all about, i.e. if they kill enough people, then there is not enough judgement to cause damnation.

When the Dunyain are celebrating at the end of Prologue 1, are they celebrating finding Ishual, or a live Anasurimbor, or both?

Prologue 2 implies that the Dunyain live in a world where everything is predictable and to a large extent predetermined.  There a line about them knowing hows leaves would fall (or something similar).  The chaos of the world outside seems to awaken emotion in Kellhus - stuff about the sweetness of water and the beauty of sunlight which seems to surprise him.  Talks to his father in his head - doesn't seem like Dunyain rationality - the first inklings of his 'madness'

Then there's the line where he says he will make the people his instruments, and that he would possess all peoples and all circumstances.  It's there in black and white.  That's what he's been about all along.  At the end, from the encounter with the non-Man, we now know that he intends to learn sorcery.

Chapter 1.  Tells us Akka is not that good a spy - i.e. not great at deceiving people.  He's been sussed out by his informant and by the skin-spy
Sez who?
Seswatha, that's who.

MSJ

  • *
  • The Afflicted Few
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • Yatwer's Baby Daddy
  • Posts: 2298
  • "You killed the wolf"
    • View Profile
« Reply #28 on: April 11, 2018, 09:58:16 pm »
Quote from:  TCApe
Chapter 1.  Tells us Akka is not that good a spy - i.e. not great at deceiving people.  He's been sussed out by his informant and by the skin-spy

Yea, I think he's slipping, certainly. Because of Geshrunni knowing, picking it apart. But, at this point in the story, be a easy thing for a skin spy to suss ya out. Their unheard of.
“No. I am your end. Before your eyes I will put your seed to the knife. I will quarter your carcass and feed it to the dogs. Your bones I will grind to dust and cast to the winds. I will strike down those who speak your name or the name of your fathers, until ‘Yursalka’ becomes as meaningless as infant babble. I will blot you out, hunt down your every trace! The track of your life has come to me,

Wilshire

  • *
  • Administrator
  • Old Name
  • *****
  • Enshoiya
  • Posts: 5935
  • One of the other conditions of possibility
    • View Profile
« Reply #29 on: April 12, 2018, 01:07:47 pm »
I love that Kellhus tells us he sees the Mark on the nonman and the sorcery it wields. It wasn't until much after my first read that I caught that. Kellhus doesn't have the words to describe the wrongness of it - but he's definitely of the Few from the start.
One of the other conditions of possibility.