TWLW Chapter Headers

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locke

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« on: April 18, 2013, 05:28:37 pm »
The White-Luck Warrior
Frontispiece:
The heavens, the sun, the whole of nature is a corpse.  Nature is given over to the spiritual, and indeed to spiritual subjectivity, thus the course of nature is everywhere broken in upon by miracles.
   —HEGEL, LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY III

Chapter One: The Meorn Wilderness
Without rules, madness.  Without discipline, death.
   —NANSUR MILITARY MARCH

Chapter Two: The Istyuli Plains
We belittle what we cannot bear.  We make figments out of fundamentals, all in the name of preserving our own peculiar fancies.  The best way to secure one’s own deception is to accuse others of deceit.
   —HATATIAN, EXHORTATIONS

It is not so much the wisdom of the wise that saves us from the foolishness of the fools as it is the latter’s inability to agree.
   —AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN

Chapter Three: The Meorn Wilderness
The bondage we are born into is the bondage we cannot see.  Verily, freedom is little more than the ignorance of tyranny.  Live long enough, and you will see: Men resent not the whip so much as the hand that wields it.
   —TRIAMIS I, JOURNALS AND DIALOGUES

Chapter Four: The Istyuli Plains
All ropes come up short if pulled long enough.  All futures end in tragedy.
   —CENEIAN PROVERB

And they forged counterfeits from our frame, creatures vile and obscene, who hungered only for violent congress.  These beasts they loosed upon the land, where they multiplied, no matter how fierce the Ishroi who hunted them.  And soon Men clamoured at our gates, begging sanctuary, for they could not contend with the creatures.  “They wear your face,” the penitents cried. “This calamity is your issue.” But we were wroth, and turned them away, saying, “These are not our Sons.  And you are not our Brothers.”
   —ISÛPHIRYAS

Chapter Five: The Western Three Seas
As death is the sum of all harms, so is murder the sum of all sins.
   —CANTICLES 18:9, THE CHRONICLE OF THE TUSK

The world has its own ways, sockets so deep that not even the Gods can dislodge them.  No urn is so cracked as Fate.
   —ASANSIUS, THE LIMPING PILGRIM

Chapter Six: The Meorn Wilderness
Everything is concealed always.  Nothing is more trite than a mask.
   —AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN

If you find yourself taken unawares by someone you thought you knew, recall that the character revealed is as much your own as otherwise.  When it comes to Men and their myriad, mercenary natures, revelation always comes in twos.
   —MANAGORAS, ODE TO THE LONG-LIVED FOOL

Chapter Seven: The Istyuli Plains
... and they scoff at heroes, saying that Fate serves disaster to many, and feasts to few.  They claim that willing is but a form of blindness, and conceit of beggars who think they wrest alms from the jaws of lions.  The Whore alone, they say, decides who is brave and who is rash, who will be hero and who will be fool.  And so they dwell in a world of victims.
   —QUALLAS, ON THE INVITIC SAGES

Ever do Men use secrets to sort and measure those they love, which is why they are less honest with their brothers and more guarded with their friends.
   —CASIDAS, ANNALS OF CENEI

Chapter Eight: The Western Three Seas
Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice.  Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy.
   —AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN

Chapter Nine: The Istyuli Plains
The shape of virtue is inked in obscenity.
   —AINONI PROVERB

Chapter Ten: The Istyuli Plains
There is morality and there is cowardice.  The two are not to be confused, even though in appearance and effect they are so often the same.
   —EKYANNUS I, 44 EPISTLES

If the Gods did not pretend to be human, Men would recoil from them as spiders.
   —ZARATHINIUS, A DEFENCE OF THE ARCANE ARTS

Chapter Eleven: Momemn
This one thing every tyrant will tell you: nothing saves more lives than murder.
   —MEROTOKAS, THE VIRTUE OF SIN

No two prophets agree.  So to spare our prophets their feelings, we call the future a whore.
   —ZARATHINIUS, A DEFENCE OF THE ARCANE ARTS

Chapter Twelve: Kûniüri
Skies are upended, poured as milk into the tar of night.  Cities become pits of fire.  The last of the wicked stand with the last of the righteous, lamenting the same woe.  One Hundred and Forty-Four Thousand, they shall be called, for this is their tally, the very number of doom.
   —ANONYMOUS, THE THIRD REVELATION OF GANUS THE BLIND

Know what your slaves believe, and you will always be their master.
   —AINONI PROVERB

Chapter Thirteen: The Istyuli Plains
Gods are epochal beings, not quite alive.  Since the Now eludes them, they are forever divided.  Sometimes nothing blinds souls more profoundly than the apprehension of the Whole.  Men need recall this when they pray. 
   —AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN

Chapter Fourteen: Momemn
The truth of all polity lies in the ruins of previous ages, for there we see the ultimate sum of avarice and ambition.  Seek ye to rule for but a day, because little more shall be afforded you.  As the Siqû are fond of saying, Cû’jara Cinmoi is dead.
   —GOTAGGA, PARAPOLIS

Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing.  Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.
   —AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN.

Chapter Fifteen: The Library of Sauglish
In life, your soul is but the extension of your body, which reaches inward until it finds its centre in spirit.  In death, your body is but the extension of your soul, which reaches outward until it finds it circumference in flesh.  In both instances, all things appear the same.  Thus are the dead and the living confused.
   —MEMGOWA, THE BOOK OF DIVINE ACTS

Yet the soul lingers like a second smell
A sailor wrecked at sea, it clings
Lest it sink and drown in Hell.
   —GIRGALLA, EPIC OF SAUGLISH

Interlude: Ishuäl
The heroes among us, they are the true slaves.  Thrust against the limits of mortality, they alone feel the bite of their shackles.  So they rage.  So they fight.
   We only have as much freedom as we have slack in our chains.  Only those who dare nothing are truly free.
   —SUÖRTAGAL, EPIMEDITATIONS

What Came Before

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« Reply #1 on: April 26, 2013, 04:49:42 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
aside from a much longer post I'm writing attempting (foolishly) to draw connections between the five frontispieces:

the last chapter header, TWLW, of the epilogue--in which Akka and Mim discover Ishual in ruins--seems to me the author clearly implying that "Heroes" aka Akka and Mim are slaves of Kellhus' will.  It's only by straining against Kellhus that the full extent of their enslavement becomes apparent--or it becomes invisible, because it is so total we cannot perceive(or more likely will refuse to acknowledge) the forest in lieu of the trees of the first three books of direct manipulation.

More heretically, Kellhus is just a man, even if he's Dunyain, and perhaps it is by straining against the chains of the Gods/spiritual(outside)world that Kellhus can demonstrate the enslavement men and world are blind to.  Perhaps in order to free men from the enslavement of the gods, and break the back of natural subjectivity and create an objective, modern disenchanted world Kellhus first has to show us the chains of our enslavement.  And there is maybe no better way to show the world it is enslaved by gods and subjectivity than to have the gods unjustly slay the man who is trying to save the world from another extrinsic threat.

What Came Before

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« Reply #2 on: April 26, 2013, 04:49:48 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
Nice work collecting the epigraphs man   :)

What Came Before

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« Reply #3 on: April 26, 2013, 04:50:00 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Interesting, given that the gods are apparently blind to the consults presence, somehow.

Seems a bit generous of him somehow, though?

What Came Before

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« Reply #4 on: April 26, 2013, 04:50:04 pm »
Quote from: sciborg2
Thanks for these Lockesnow.

So...is Ganus the Blind an alien from another planet?

What Came Before

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« Reply #5 on: April 26, 2013, 04:50:12 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
I doubt it, but the Blind tend to see more clearly in Earwa.

What Came Before

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« Reply #6 on: April 26, 2013, 04:50:18 pm »
Quote from: sciborg2
Interesting that he mentions the 144,000, which the Inchies believed in before they came to Earwa. I say interesting because Scott mentioned, in specific reference to this, that not all beliefs regarding damnation/salvation are true.

What Came Before

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« Reply #7 on: April 26, 2013, 04:50:23 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Ganus the blind = Titirga?

Francis Buck

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« Reply #8 on: January 14, 2014, 09:56:06 pm »
I somehow never noticed these threads before. Thanks for compiling these lockesnow, it's nice to be able read them easily.

I think the one I find most intriguing, aside from Ganus the Blind, is this one:

The world has its own ways, sockets so deep that not even the Gods can dislodge them.  No urn is so cracked as Fate.
   —ASANSIUS, THE LIMPING PILGRIM

Not positive, but I'm pretty sure this precedes one of the WLW's perspectives. I tend to lean towards the idea that Kellhus is very much a creature of "fate", not the Goddess, but in the sense he is filling a role that was always going to be filled no matter what. He's in the perfect place at the perfect time, so to speak. So whatever he's doing, and whatever his goal is, I think it's inevitable that he'll fulfill it -- it's one of those sockets that even the Gods can't interfere with (I personally suspect that this is because it involves Kellhus becoming the God himself).

As for the 144,000 stuff, I think this will end up being one of those things that's kind of already "known" in Earwa, and the audience was just being kept ignorant to it. It wouldn't shock me if suddenly Achamian is like "Ah yes, you see Mimara, the Consult believe that if the World can be reduced to 144,000 souls then blah, blah, blah". But, I think it actually is true, or at least the idea of reducing Earwa's population so much that it shuts the Outside off is true. For whatever reason, humans are sustaining that barrier (this ties into how Earwa is "special" in some way).

Yellow

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« Reply #9 on: August 31, 2016, 08:31:45 pm »
So, there's a passage I've always been confused about regarding the 144k. It's from chapter 6 of WLW (page 187 according to my kindle app).

Quote


A sadness welled through the old Wizard as he walked and peered, a mourning that possessed the airy clutch of premonition. There was poetry in loss and ruin, a wisdom that even children and idiots understood. For a time he suffered the eerie sense that he walked one of the great capitals of the Three Seas, that these were the ruins of Momemn, Carythusal, or Invishi, and they were the Last Men, thirteen instead of the one hundred and forty-four thousand of legend, and that no matter how far they travelled, how many horizons they outran, all they would find was soot and broken stone.



Is Akka referring to some knowledge that the Consult want to reduce everyone to 144k, or is he referring to some other "legend"? I guess it could be either, but seems clear that it's generally known amongst the mandate at least.

You are the fist that beats us.

You are the fist that beats us.

MSJ

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« Reply #10 on: August 31, 2016, 08:41:53 pm »
So, there's a passage I've always been confused about regarding the 144k. It's from chapter 6 of WLW (page 187 according to my kindle app).

Quote


A sadness welled through the old Wizard as he walked and peered, a mourning that possessed the airy clutch of premonition. There was poetry in loss and ruin, a wisdom that even children and idiots understood. For a time he suffered the eerie sense that he walked one of the great capitals of the Three Seas, that these were the ruins of Momemn, Carythusal, or Invishi, and they were the Last Men, thirteen instead of the one hundred and forty-four thousand of legend, and that no matter how far they travelled, how many horizons they outran, all they would find was soot and broken stone.



Is Akka referring to some knowledge that the Consult want to reduce everyone to 144k, or is he referring to some other "legend"? I guess it could be either, but seems clear that it's generally known amongst the mandate at least.

You are the fist that beats us.

I believe it's well known that that's what the Consult was aiming to do during the FA. I thought this was mentioned throughout the series, I could be wrong though.
“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,