Ah, that makes sense. The story did not begin at the beginning. Maybe thats the real power of the TTT. It lets you see into the past? Thats why we don't get Kellhus' POV because hes seen farther back than anyone else, not farther forward. Which makes sense a bit, because if you can see the beginning, and then follow the trance forward through the ages, you'd have far better predictive abilities than someone who is starting in the middle.

Even though the two prediction might be identical for a long time, eventually the one that started in the middle would become less accurate than the one that started at the beginning.
Its like finding an equation that describes a  set of data, and then taking a subset of that data and finding another equation that describes that. Locally, both are correct, and the equation specific to that region might even be more accurate. However, once you zoom out, that equation might make no sense at all.

A straight line fits through any 2 points, but it can't accurately describe a polynomial.

Oh and Madness, care to elaborate on that title remark? Is that a thing on this forum? 

The offer on the last forum was that you could choose a custom title if you had 50+ posts ( think). I'd say about 1/2 the people that got there picked something, the rest didn't bother.
Its just an added descriptor displayed under your name when you post. I thought it was cool idea.

All the pieces were there   

By your own reasoning, the reason that she is able to defeat the wight is because she proclaims it defeated. It said that "no one guards the gate" (or something to that affect), and she replies that she is now the guardian. Like a schoolman shaping reality to his whim, except the Eye goes far deeper.

Is it just me, or are wormhole stabilizing devices  often depicted as triangles? What gives...

Well if you consider any ability at all to preserve sperm/egg that could be kept after the owners death, even for just an extra 1 or 2 generations, there would be little chance of any real inbreeding. Stretched to the very limits, I came up with 5 generations separating potential partners.. If that could be extended to 6 or 7 you would be fine with an extremely small number of original families.

I was more focused on the number of bloodlines/families, rather than total number of refugees, though it is almost the same question. There were likely not many children or elderly in the group, but there could still have been 1-5 members of a family. 5*32=160.

I just don't know how popular the Dunyain cult was, and how sranc infested the north was when they chose to flee. Those original Dunyain were only marginally more gifted than normal people, if any at all, so a fair number of them should have died on their trek through the wilds (Anyone ever played the old Oregon Trail game?). They may or may not have had a destination, and even if they did think they knew where they were going (ishterebinth? some other abandoned city?), they probably took a roundabout way to get there.

I want to say that I feel like 200 is too much, but then again a tiny group is more susceptible to failure due to accident/disease, while a large group can survive some misfortune. If most/all the weapon races were tethered to the No-God farther south, a large group could go through the North unchallenged. Its also likely that the Dunyain cult was comprised of whole families, like your standard religious family, so  a medium-large size group isn't unreasonable.

I'm torn




I'm just glad I thought through the  thing and was able to figure out how a small group could keep themselves producing viable offspring for at least a 100 years with only a little bit of creativity. Once you get past 100 years, it gets more complicated, but the Dunyain certainly had the foresight to breed themselves in such a way to preserve themselves for  200-400 years. By that time they should have started becoming smarter/faster/stronger.

I'd say 10-20 generations is enough to see some results, so they may have been able to plan much farther into the future. They are in the mountains after all, and freezing some sperm isnt so high-tech. If they ever discovered how to do that, it would be smooth sailing from then on, they could just always breed with older/uncrossed family lines, and never have to breed together children that had the more complex bloodline mixtures.

Lol, shades of District 9, Wilshire. Anyone see Elysium yet?

Missed out on District 9, but I did just go see Elysium. As it was the first movie I actually went to go see in quite some time, I was a bit disappointing.  Nothing in particular was wrong with it, but (to me) there wasnt much exceptional about it either. Worth renting for sure, probably not worth my $21 for the 2 tickets.

Thanks  i don't know how well this fits into reality, but I didn't have internet or cable at my house for a week, so on the fifth day I spent several hours thinking about this and decided to write it down.