The Ground, the Void and the Outside.

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« Reply #15 on: May 22, 2013, 08:24:56 pm »
Quote from: Madness
As a whole... nah, not even close ;).

Based on the Void not being the Outside.

I'd give credence to Topoi detector but I doubt it.

If it existed, it either didn't work because there is only Topoi on Earwa and they went to a bunch of other planets first or its range sucks and there are Topoi on all planets and so they keep detecting lesser ones.

How do the Inchoroi find out about 144,000 or that Salvation is promised somewhere? Who dropped those nuggets of knowledge on them?

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« Reply #16 on: May 22, 2013, 08:25:11 pm »
Quote from: Duskweaver
Quote from: Madness
If it existed, it either didn't work because there is only Topoi on Earwa and they went to a bunch of other planets first or its range sucks and there are Topoi on all planets and so they keep detecting lesser ones.
My thinking was that they built the topos detector after wasting time on whichever world they visited right before Earwa - i.e. that they were basically guessing prior to that and that the new detector was what finally brought them to Earwa. The Inchies give the impression that they have a legitimate reason to think their plan will actually work this time.

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« Reply #17 on: May 22, 2013, 08:25:18 pm »
Quote from: Madness
Good call on temporal notation... I believe my last questions still stand.

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« Reply #18 on: May 22, 2013, 08:25:22 pm »
Quote from: Duskweaver
Quote from: Madness
I believe my last questions still stand.
Maybe the No-God talks to them when they look into the IF?

(In other words, I have absolutely no idea.)

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« Reply #19 on: May 22, 2013, 08:25:29 pm »
Quote from: Madness
You bent your mind the task - all I can ask :D.

How about a gradient?

It always puzzles me that the consequences of the Outside are unlimited in the Void but the manifestations of the Outside are limited to Earwa.

So I posit a gradient from Earwa, which has the most contact with the Outside (perhaps, a direct consequence of Topoi) and once the bubble broke, the Outside started leaking into Earwa... In this way, Inchoroi being encountering worlds where prophecy or the thaumaturgical takes place in more and more profound measures - leading up to Sorcery on Earwa?

Just thoughts.

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« Reply #20 on: May 22, 2013, 08:25:37 pm »
Quote from: Curethan
There are a few ideas I like to return to here when I have the time.  Some of my speculation was unclear, I think, for example about how the Nonmen may have created the Nail of Heaven and caused the Inchie's retribution despite the apparent temporal inconsistency.

But for now I'll just add this quote from Cleric refering to the fall of the nonmen.
Quote from: WLW
"Persecuted as false.  Hunted by the very depths we warred to uncover, the very darkness we sought to illuminate"

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« Reply #21 on: May 22, 2013, 08:25:42 pm »
Quote from: Madness
I've had this line tagged since reading WLW and marking important passages. I wonder at your thoughts.

It's what chiefly prompted my thoughts that the act of abstracting more complex abstraction creates the entities of the Outside, even though based on being created, they've always had agency through time and space. Nonmen distinguish the holistic Outside into Gods and Not-Gods, Men abstract stable forms, then a Transcendent God, then an Immanent God... then whatever abstraction of entity Kellhus thinks up...

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« Reply #22 on: May 22, 2013, 08:25:48 pm »
Quote from: Wilshire
Just some questions I thought up.

Probably belongs in a 'topos' topic but with the forum all messy I figured it would be fine here for now. I also might have already written all these questions down so sorry if these are old questions.

What is the oldest topos?
When does an area become a topoi? (Accumulated time of the suffering, magnitude of suffering, a combination?)
Was there topoi before the Inchoroi?
Is the center of a topoi more .... topoi-y .... than the edges?
What determines the size of a topoi and where does it technically stop?
Are all topoi the same? For example, are they like electron orbitals that must reach a certain threshold of energy before jumping levels ( except instead of energy we have suffering and instead of levels we've got yes-topos or no-topos).
As a consequence, does the amount of suffering (or whatever factors contribute to making the topos) cause the outside to leak more or leak less?


And for the conspiracy theorists: Topoi, Inchoroi. Coincidence?

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« Reply #23 on: May 22, 2013, 08:25:53 pm »
Quote from: Duskweaver
Quote from: Wilshire
And for the conspiracy theorists: Topoi, Inchoroi. Coincidence?
I think Bakker just likes Greek-derived terms. ;)

(Though 'in-' is actually Latin rather than Greek.)

ETA: 'Choros' and 'topos' sort of tread a funny line between being synonyms and antonyms. They both define a location, but the former connotes an emptiness (such as a room or an open space), while the second implies a point where something definite exists.

'Inchoroi' is very ambiguous. It could mean 'Void-Dwellers', 'Those-With-No-Country', 'Outsiders/Foreigners/Aliens' or about a hundred other possibilities.

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« Reply #24 on: May 22, 2013, 08:25:59 pm »
Quote from: Madness
+1 for Etymology.

He must also enjoy these games ;). Those are all pretty relevant ambiguities based on combining some tasty morphemes from an ancient tongue.

EDIT: Btw, +1 Duskweaver. I wonder if Bakker knew the kind of fans he might rouse...

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« Reply #25 on: May 22, 2013, 08:26:04 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: Madness
+1 for Etymology.

He must also enjoy these games ;). Those are all pretty relevant ambiguities based on combining some tasty morphemes from an ancient tongue.

EDIT: Btw, +1 Duskweaver. I wonder if Bakker knew the kind of fans he might rouse...
Id say yes because these kinds of posts were what i would call bakkerbait on old three seas forums.

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« Reply #26 on: May 22, 2013, 08:26:10 pm »
Quote from: Madness
It'd be real cool to see Cu'jara Cinmoi as a new user one day ;).

EDIT: To be quite honest, you've stumped me, Wilshire. A cursory glance to jog my memory has done nothing... where do we have a thread more relevant to Topoi?

So in lieu of finding no such thread, I shall take some responsive stabs (guesses) here:

Quote from: Wilshire
What is the oldest topos?
When does an area become a topoi? (Accumulated time of the suffering, magnitude of suffering, a combination?)
Was there topoi before the Inchoroi?
Is the center of a topoi more .... topoi-y .... than the edges?
What determines the size of a topoi and where does it technically stop?
Are all topoi the same? For example, are they like electron orbitals that must reach a certain threshold of energy before jumping levels ( except instead of energy we have suffering and instead of levels we've got yes-topos or no-topos).
As a consequence, does the amount of suffering (or whatever factors contribute to making the topos) cause the outside to leak more or leak less?

1) Oldest Topoi is either the Anarcane Ground under Atrithau (or Anti-Topoi?) or wherever the Nonmen first answered your second question. Lol, Duskweaver, what's a good etymolic creation for this, especially in light of Topoi and Locus having similar meanings and specific literary associations?

2)I think magnitude of suffering is more encompassing distinction and that time contributes directly to magnitude? So a combination? I wonder if X = 144,000 accumulated sufferers for the breach to occur (or soft spot to borrow Fringe analogies).

3)Yes but not where the Ark landed.

4)Yes. I like the invocation of gradient.

5)There is an exact circumference ;) - I honestly imagine those renditions of Einstein's pooling gravity of space-time. The center location of a maximum number/weight of emotion in a locus?

6)As per the Cu'jara Cinmoi quote, then all Topoi/Anarcane locus are places where the God dreams more or less lucidly, focuses more or less of its attention?

7)It causes the Hellish Outside to leak more... However, this offers no commentary on how the World and the realm of Absolution might breach. Is true Heaven on the other side of the subjective-objective realm of the Desirous Outside?

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« Reply #27 on: May 22, 2013, 08:26:24 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Topoi are paradoxes, they're like a pit to the outside, but Achamian describes them first as a Mountain  of suffering that allows one to see as though from a great height.  So a Topoi is a pit that is a mountain.

For some reason this reminds me of how a lecturer once described 'gravity/space time' as a blanket, and the earth sits in the blanket and the perceived displacement is gravity, so if you were to put another object on the blanket it would fall to the earth due to the displacement.

So if the universe is objective, that means suffering is objective.  That means suffering has weight.  That means suffering has mass.  That means that mass could accumulate until it exerts it's own force.  I think I made created a loop in there and didn't actually say anything.

Quote
“I’m sure you do … Do you know what topoi are?”

Saubon grimaced. “No.”

The attractive woman at his side yawned, rubbed her eyes. Without warning, a wave of fatigue crashed over the Galeoth Prince. He swayed in his saddle.

“You know the way you can see far from heights,” the sorcerer was saying, “like towers or mountain summits?”

“I’m not a fool. Don’t deal with me as one.” Pained smile.

“Topoi are like heights, places where one can see far … But where heights are built with mounds of stone and earth, topoi are built with mounds of trauma and suffering. They are heights that let us see farther than this world … some say into the Outside. That’s why this ground troubles you— you stand perilously high … This is the Battleplain. What you feel isn’t so different from vertigo.”

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Warrior Prophet: The Prince of Nothing, Book Two (Kindle Locations 3048-3057). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

note how the 'gods' also moves Saubon when Esmenet or Serwe yawns, I presume, based on Saubon's reaction that Achamian is walking next to Serwe. :-p

locke

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« Reply #28 on: June 04, 2013, 11:24:14 pm »
our quick assumption, or at least mine, has been that The Battleplain was such an epic battle that it created a topos.

Well that doesn't scan, otherwise most major battles or other tragedies would have a topos potential, and they seem to have not created one, 200,000 people died in the desert on the way to the Circumfix, but no topos in the desert (presumably).

What is unique to Mengedda, most likely, is that the death of the No-God released all the suffering that was contained/fueling him.  Perhaps the no-god was an attempt to contain or weaponize a topos.   Because if you can ensnare Hell itself in a ghostbuster Ecto-Containment Unit/Ghost Trap you may just have solved the problem of Hell.

Unfortunately, this may have caused all the supposed suffering because it also proved that everybody is already always damned/going to hell anyway.  And cutting off people's connection to hell meant their soul had no where to go when it died or it meant that souls trying to leave hell had no where to go when they're born--or if you're predestined, if a soul is already damned before it is conceived/born/created, but there is no longer a mechanism for the damnation to take effect then one can't be conceived/born and if the automatic damnation of a soul is a crucial precondition to a soul's existence then a new soul cannot come into existence.

In other words, perhaps damnation is so crucial to the human experience that to be severed from damnation is to have no existence.  To be human is to be damned.  (and perhaps humans were only created so that they could be damned by the gods, much like we raise cattle to harvest them and feast on their milk and flesh).

Wilshire

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« Reply #29 on: June 05, 2013, 01:54:01 am »
That is certainly a good point. Was Mengedda a particularly big battle? I thought that was a kind of 'last stand' for humans, but that doesn't mean it was particularly big, considering how many were already dead.

The only other topos we know about id Cil' right? And that was hundreds/thousands of years of torture.

Though, it is possible that being eaten by a good could be intensely pleasurable experience. The gods could certainly change how the human soul experiences the sensation, maybe 'hell' is simply a perception  change. Some gods make their food happy, other like the misery. To the human observation it would all look like souls being consumed.

Which leads to the same conclusion, that being cut off from the gods ceases any reason for living, though it changes the destination from "hell" to simply "outside"
One of the other conditions of possibility.