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31
Chapter 9, TJE:

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"The White-Luck," he whispered in a voice that was the sky, the curve of all horizons, "shall break against you."

She gazed up at his face through sting and tears, and it seemed that in it she could see every face, the mien of all those who had bent upon her in Sumna, when she had kept a whore's bed.

"How? How can you know?"

"Because the anguish that makes mud of all your thoughts, because the fear that stains your days, because all your regret and anger and loneliness..." A haloed hand cupped her cheek. Blue eyes sounded her to the bottommost fathoms.

"All this makes you pure."

Is he bullshitting her?  It's possible at the time that he could have been, but now it sure seems he wasn't.

I'm completely on the fence, but at this moment I am kind of leaning toward him actually knowing Esmenet was never really in danger.  And since he knows she really isn't, then she is the perfect bait to lure out the White-Luck Warrior/Yatwer.

32
Author Q&A / Philosophy reading list?
« on: June 22, 2016, 02:30:40 pm »
Perhaps there already is one and I have missed it, but have you ever considering putting together a reading list of philosophical works that could help people get a better understanding of the philosophy behind the Second Apocalypse?

Or perhaps ever writing a sort of "guide" after the series is over?  Preferably something that even a dumb-dumb like me could understand?  :-[

33
Author Q&A / Why a Womb-Plague?
« on: June 22, 2016, 01:22:58 pm »
I long while back, I made a thread on how I could contrive a reason why the Inchoroi would even bother to give the Nonmen immortality and thus deliver what ended up being called The Womb-Plauge, here.

I really doubt you will want to read all the nonsense I wrote there, so I will sumarize my point here, with a question.  I beleive that the Inchoroi realized, after Nin’janjin visited the Ark, that the Nonmen were just as succepatble, just as swayed by the Inverse Fire as they were.  So, they changed gears, rather than try to kill them all, they would try to "convert them."  So, they, having lost most of the Tekne already, gave them one thing they still did have, which was exactly what they themselves had taken to become immortal.  So the Womb-Plauge wasn't a weapon, it was a side-effect, a happy one too.  (The whole point of why the women died is a total aside I'll leave for now though.)

So as the immortality given more as a way to "recruit" the Nonmen and less a way to attempt to end them as a species?

34
Author Q&A / [TGO SPOILERS] Nonmen Species?
« on: June 21, 2016, 07:51:51 pm »
Now that we know that there is a difference between those Nonmen that were The Tall and "regular" Nonmen, it makes me wonder is one a derivative species of the other?  Thinking along those lines, are the Few among the Nonmen the same sort of derivitive?  Or are they actually the antecedents the what we see as the "standard fare" Nonmen?

35
TGO ARC Discussion / [TGO SPOILERS] Ûster Shraul?
« on: June 01, 2016, 12:45:20 pm »
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Check it out, if you’re interested. Help it out if you can. I’ll be writing the Foreword as well as providing a short story–an Uster Scraul tale, I’m thinking at the moment.

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Did a google search which returned no results, and a search on TSA forum, also none. I’d do a search here but I don’t know how, targeting google to this site gives nothing as well (except this post).

WHO IS USTER SCRAUL?

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Those who’ve read TGO know. Sorry to be cryptic…

I'm totally clueless.  Where is this person mentioned?

36
TGO ARC Discussion / [TGO SPOILERS] Kiünnat and Zero
« on: May 17, 2016, 12:44:04 pm »
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Because zero was everywhere, measure was everywhere-as was arithmetic.  Submit to the rule of another and you will measure as he measures.  Zero was not simply nothing; it was also identity, for nothing is nothing but the absence of difference, and  the absence of difference is nothing but the same.
Thus the Survivor began calling this new principle Zero, for he distrusted the name the old Wizard had given it ...
God.
The great error of the Dûnyain, he could see now, was to conceive the Absolute as something passivem to think it a vacancy, dumb and insensate, awaiting their generational arrival.  The great error of the worldborn, he could see, was to conceive it as something active, to think it just another soul, a flattering caricature of their own souls.  Thus the utility of Zero, something that was not, something that pinched all existence, every origin and destination, into a singular point, into One.  Something that commanded all measure, not through arbitrary dispensations of force, but by virtue of structure ... system ...
Logos.
The God that was Nature.  The God that every soul could be, if only for the span of a single insight ...
The Zero-God.  The absence that was the cubit of all creation.

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In Inrithi tradition, the unitary, omniscient, omnipotent, and immanent being responsible for existence, of which Gods (and in some strains Men) are but “aspects.” In the Kiünnat tradition, the God is more an abstract placeholder than anything else. In the Fanim tradition, the God is the unitary, omniscient, omnipotent, and transcendent being responsible for existence (thus the “Solitary God”), against which the Gods war for the hearts of men.

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In the Inrithi tradition, the Hundred Gods are thought to be aspects of the God (whom Inri Sejenus famously called “the Million Souled”), much the way various personality traits could be said to inhabit an individual. In the far more variegated Kiünnat tradition, the Hundred Gods are thought to be independent spiritual agencies, prone to indirectly intervene in the lives of their worshippers.

I know that often, people were of the mind that the Solitary God was the true God.  I had doubts about that from the get go.  Seeing how Yatwer has such power and wed this with Koringhus' revelation that the Zero-God and the Absolute are the same, lead me to the fact that the Kiünnat is the real truth.

This makes sense, since it is the ancient worship, that which is least touched by the tainted and changed Tusk.

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The Absolute dwells within your Gaze.  You ... a frail, worldborn slip, heavy with child, chased across the throw of kings and nations, you are the Nail of the World, the hook from which all things hang.

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But even this metaphor, “nail,” is faulty, a result of what happens when we confuse our notation with what is noted. Like the numeral “zero” used by the Nilnameshi mathematicians to work such wonders, ignorance is the occluded frame of all discourse, the unseen circumference of our every contention. Men are forever looking for the one point, the singular fulcrum they can use to dislodge all competing claims. Ignorance does not give us this. What it provides, rather, is the possibility of comparison, the assurance that not all claims are equal. And this, Ajencis would argue, is all that we need. For so long as we admit our ignorance, we can hope to improve our claims, and so long as we can improve our claims, we can aspire to the Truth, even if only in rank approximation.

The Zero principle, that if you are Zero, everything else is One.  This is how you achieve that absolute.  Zero fits into One infinity.  Therefor, as Zero, you are everywhere, even if you are nowhere.  This is how the God, errr, the Absolute is infinite.  This is how everything comes together, if you are Zero, all other things are One, that is, apart from Zero.  Additionally, Zero is the cubit of creation, because, as every point's origin, it is the fundamental building block of everything.  All things start at Zero.  In other words, Zero is the ultimate Darkness that Comes Before.  There is no more fundamental nature to things.  If you are at Zero, you are the fount of Everything.  That is the Absolute.  That which comes before everything (including itself).

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For whatever reason, the Three Seas seemed particularly prone to prophets and their tricks. Where Zeüm had remained faithful to the old Kiünnat ways, albeit in their own elliptical fashion, the Ketyai—the Tribe entrusted with the Holy Tusk, no less!—seemed bent on tearing down their ancient truths and replacing them with abstraction and fancy.

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"Fane?" the woman cried, her incredulity so thoughtless, so complete, that feminine timbre blotted out all other sound. "Fane is a fraud, what happens when philosophers fall to worshipping their fevers!"

Oh, yes, indeed.  Fane is but the tail end of the Inchoroi manipulation of the Tusk (remember, Fane was Inrithi at first).  Inri Sejanus a step on that trail as well.  They are all perversions, twists of the Truth faith.  Yatwer, Ajolki, and the rest of the Hundred are Deamons.  The Solitary God is nothing but an idea.

The true faith is in Zeüm.  It's no wonder why they have had no prophets there.  They don't need them.  They have basically been right the whole time.  It's all the Ketyai that have been wrong.  And they have been made that way.


The question is, what happens with Mimara?  I actually think that somehow, when she gives birth, something miraculous will happen with the child.  If Mimara is the Zero point, if she is the cubit, the measure, then what she makes, what she births, must be the True Savior?  Maybe, maybe not...

37
I just had an idea, because I was spinning some nonsense in chatting with Madness the other day, coming up with things that make sense but not really.  My question was essentially, why does Yatwer seem to be able to see everything, what happens and move agents within that, yet, cannot account for Kellhus?

Well, I was thinking that Kellhus is somehow outside of time, but that doesn't really make sense, since if he was, why not just go back and kill anyone before they were even a problem?  No, something more subtle is happening I think.

So, in spinning ideas of what goes on in the scene where the White-Luck Warrior tries to assassinate Kellhus, I started to wonder, what goes wrong?  It's Kelmomas' intervention, seemingly, that disentangles Kellhus and the Narindar.  That got me thinking, what do Kellhus (who has shown to be disentangled before and act beyond Yatwer's seeing) and Kelmomas share?  Well, one, is blood, but what is the effect of the blood?  Possibly the answer is to be "self-moving souls."

How?  Well, Kellhus tells us he is moved by visions (a topic for yet aother thread, but here it suffices that they exist, whatever the source) and Kelmomas is moved by either the Voice, Esmenet's affection, or, as Inrilatas, tells us, the pursuit of God-hood, perhaps The Absolute.  In either case, they are outside the usual cause-effect chain, outside the Darkness the Comes Before.

Why would this make them blind spots to Yatwer (and the rest of the Gods).  Well, possibly because the God are that Darkness.  Since they come before, they know what comes after.  But with the Absolute, with a self-moving soul, they are blind, because they cannot be seen in the chain of cause-and-effect.

Indeed, Kellhus says "You can be Everywhere and still blind," "You can be Eternal and remember nothing."  Also, "Even the infinite can be surprised."  The Anasûrimbor's are outside what the Gods can predict, because they are outside the God's influence (mostly).  They have the ability to move themselves, independent of the God's entangling.

Perhaps?

38
TGO ARC Discussion / [TGO SPOILERS] Kelmomas
« on: May 12, 2016, 02:24:37 pm »
OK, doing a reread in places and I am pretty confused about the interplay between Ajokli and Kelmomas, or the seeming interplay between the two.  The "ultimate," or seemingly, scene Kelmomas certainly seems to be convinced that he possess a White-Luck of his (Ajolki's) own.  That the Narindar is his co-conspirator.  That the aim he and the Voice have been working toward is the death of Kellhus.

None of that is true though.

Kelmomas' call to Esmenet and Kellhus save them.  It actually disentangles the Narindar.

There would seem to be two options.  Either Ajolki's intentions are at total odds to Yatwer's, or there is no real connection between Kelmomas and Ajolki.

There is the further complication of the Voice, insisting that Kelmomas has "ruined everything."  Kelmomas "Ruined everything" by allowing Theli to die, or causing her to die?  It is only after Esment holds he body weeping that the voice says that.  Well, it is also after Kelmomas has a vision of Inrilatas.  Does the voice mean that Kel ruined everything by involving Inrilatas?

Off-the-wall theory: Kel was a Narindar for Ajolki, but disentangled himself?  Kellhus was supposed to die, but not Esmenet.  The plan got jacked up and so the Voice scrapped it, saving Esmenet, but inadvertently saving Kellhus too?

I have a further thought, but I think that is best for another thread.

39
So, the Slog is over, probably a little earlier than we really excepted, but a pace is a pace.  This does give us plenty of time to ruminate on what we've found and a chance to reread some Atrocity Tales before TGO is out.

I think that overall, a pretty strong theme of the Gods involvement in Earwa is made clear throughout WLW, even more so than TJE.  So, does that trend continue in TGO?  Only time will tell.

40
Interlude: Ishuäl:

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"One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten," he says, reciting a proverb she has heard before. "And nothing is so forgotten as Ishuäl. For two thousand years it has survived—in the very shadow of Golgotterath, no less!"

Indded, as has been speculated, the prologue's quote is about defending Earwa against the Dûnyain.

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The Qirri again, she realizes. She avoids all thought of what the ash might be doing to her child.

I wonder too.

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At last they find themselves staggering across sloping moraine, the glacier rearing enormous blue beneath a flaring Nail of Heaven.

I think it's been remarked on before, but Earwa has no moon, seemingly.  I doubt if it really is important though.

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Its once grand bastions overturned. Its curtain walls struck to their foundations.
Another dead place.

I am kind of coming to think that it was the Consult who did it.  But I also think that there was no one there when they did.  Where did the Dûnyain go?  That it probably the next leg of Akka's journey...

41
The Almanac: TAE Edition / The Slog WLW - Chapter 15 [Spoilers]
« on: April 22, 2016, 12:30:30 pm »
Chapter 15:

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The hulking Nonman made a gesture that possessed the character of a shrug. "Fallen? No. Turned. In the absence of recollection my brothers have turned to tyranny... To Min-Uroikas."

Is this true?  Or a lie that the Captain told him to keep him from returning to Ishterebinth?  When Aurang speaks of it, he says they "have spies in Ishterebinth" not that the whole of it has come to them.  Why would they spy on Nin-Ciljiras if the whole of Ishterebinth was in league with them?  No, this is a lie, or a misunderstanding.  Something, but not a truth.

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"Why?" he asked. "Why would you lament our death when it was Men, not the Inchoroi, who destroyed all your great mansions?"

Oh, if only they knew, as we know, that the Inchoroi are well and truly at fault for the Tusk and the enmity of Men.

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Scales like overlapping shields, pale with filth and bronze.

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The Dragon stirred upon its heap, raised its armoured chest on limbs crooked and knotted like hoary old treetrunks.

My theory has always been that Wracu are something of Tekne "cyborgs" of sorts, biological beings, but enhanced with "upgrades" to make them much tougher, able to withstand sorcery.

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It differed from the ancient Dragons of his Dreams—no surprise given the florid diversity characteristic of the species.

This is interesting.  I wonder if they were made purposely different, like accumulations of certain grafts?

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And a mane of black iron tusks flared from its brows, bloomed into chattering skirts along the back of the beast's skull.

Again, more reference to the fact that he is ensconced in metal.  No wonder they can withstand so much, he is essentially a literal tank.

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"SO DOES FANCY BECOME SCRIPTURE..."
The old Wizard grappled with his anger, the urge to retort. The Coffers! he reminded himself, hearing Sarl's crazed voice as he did so. The Coffers!
"SO DOES GREED BECOME GOD."

Never quite caught this before, but foreshadowing?  Is this a reference to Kellhus?  His Thousandfold Thought is becoming scripture and while part of that is a need of the world, it is mostly his fancy, his whole plan being far more (at least in my mind) than just the defeat of the Consult.  Taken as such then, Kellhus' lust for domination, of both the Inside and Outside, the greed of power becoming a God?

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"Wutteät."
Like some beast in nocturnal seas, the Wracu shrank into the darkness. Laughter like sloughing cliffsides crashed through the ancient hollows.
"He dies from the outside," Cleric said, "because Hell sustains him from within."
"CUNNING..." the Wracu groaned out from the black. "CUNNING-CUNNING ISHROI!"

Just a thought, since I have speculated that the Inverse Fire is what "powers" the Wracu, but also perhaps what allows them to breathe fire?

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"I am Quya!" the Nonman King cried from places unseen. "I am Ishroi! Five of your sons and daughters have I slain!"

Hmm, fascinating.  Certainly these are Wracu whose names we do not know, at least, according to the list I had made.

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"FOOL. I AM THE FIRST. MY HIDE IS BRONZE. MY BONES ARE IRON!"

OK, Wutteät, we get it, you are made of metal,  ::)  :D

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"SUCH THINGS THAT I REMEMBER, CÛNUROI! TWISTING IN THE VOID FOR SAILING AGES! WATCHING MY MAKERS DESCEND AS LOCUSTS UPON WORLD AFTER WORLD, REDUCING EACH TO ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR THOUSAND—AND WAILING TO FIND THEMSELVES STILL DAMNED!"

Proof that the 144,000 prophecy predates the arrival in Earwa.

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Koll falls backward but somehow rolls back onto his feet. With his free hand he clutches the shaft. Pulls.
Screams.
The fingers of his face break apart, then fly open.

I totally forgot this part before this reread.

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"You think me the cripple!" Nil'giccas cried. "You think Cleric the ruin of someone whole! But you are wrong, Seswatha! I am the Truth!"

Implying that Men are the cripples.

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"We are Many!" the Erratic roared. "We are legion! What you call your soul is nothing but a confusion, an inability! A plurality that cannot count the moments that divide it and so calls itself One."

So, the madness of an Erratic is the truest form?

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"Only when memory is stripped away!" Cleric cried out, the glow fading from his eyes. "Only then is Being revealed as pure Becoming! Only when the past dies can we shrug aside the burden that is our Soul!"

[...]

"Only then does the Darkness sing untrammelled!" Cleric cried. "Only then!"

Wow, here he is basically informing us that memory is an agent of the darkness that comes before.  That minus memory, they are actually self-moving souls, free to Become.  That Becoming is close to the Absolute?  Man, this is not as strait forward as it seemed.  Allowing the "Darkness to sing" is allowing the true essence of Being to manifest without being shaped by the Soul?  But the Soul is the Darkness, or so we were lead to believe?  Perhaps not though, what comes before the Soul then, the Darkness?

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"And yet you seek memories!" the Wizard cried, at last delivered to tears.
"To be! Being is not a choice!"
"But you claim Being is deception!"
"Yes!"
"But that is nonsense! Madness!"
Again the Nonman King laughed.
"That is Becoming."

So, you have to choice but to try to remember?  No choice but to be?  But the madness, the fact that they cannot simple just be, is the path to Becoming?

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But it is at one with her, the centring counterweight, the ligament that binds her to future and fate.

Again, we know that Mimara's baby must be very important, but just some textual evidence.

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At last they find it, the golden map-case from Achamian's Dreams.
"It's broken," he murmurs with something resembling horror.

What is the significance of it being broken though?  The map is still intact.  But is it just a momentary foreshadowing, that of coming "Doom" since it is broken?

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By some miracle an oak leaf falls before her, swinging to and fro through the air. She picks it out of emptiness. Purple lines vein the lobes of waxy green.

An allusion to the leaf that Kellhus finds in TTT?  Purple paths?  I don't quite get it.

42
The Almanac: TAE Edition / The Slog WLW - Chapter 14 [Spoilers]
« on: April 21, 2016, 12:24:31 pm »
Chapter 14:

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The woman he had murdered had been overthrown.

The WLW here, saying he killed Esmenet.  Can the WLW be wrong?

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How? How could she abandon him? After all his work, his toil, isolating her from distractions, infiltrating her, possessing her—making her love...

Kel again here, is he feigning love for Esmenet?  Or is this part of what deranged him, that she felt so distant from her other children, he felt the need to make her love him?

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"What if he were simply a man pretending to be more—a prophet, or even as you say, a god—simply to manipulate you and countless others?"
"But why would he do such a thing?" the girl cried, seeming at once thrilled, confused, and appalled.
"To save your life."
Naree, for all her beauty, looked plain in her moments of unguarded sorrow. Esmenet watched her blink two tears before trying to find shelter beneath the false roof that was her smile.
"Why would he do such a thing?"

Oh, what a great conversation.  What a great question to end it.  Indeed, this is the whole AE series boiled down to one question.  One we really have little idea about...

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"Secret words—he even said so. Words that no one—no one—can hear."
He walked like an acrobat following a rope, heel to toe, heel to toe. Despite his diminutive frame, he seemed to tower above the ink pool of his shadow.
"No. He never told me to kill anyone. But then, why would he have to? The words were secret..."
For the first time the boy turned to look at the watching Knight.
"Of course he would expect me to kill anyone listening."

This is a curious part.  It almost seems like Kellhus trained Kel, or was trying to train him in something?  Perhaps this went wrong somehow?  Or even more oddly, perhaps it went right?

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"What?" he asked as he worked. "What is my brother's plan?" The Holy Shriah looked up from the posture of a penitent. "He must have known that the Gods would begin clamouring against him, that one by one their far-off whispers would take root in the Cults. He must have known his Empire would crumble in his absence... So then why? Why would he entrust it all to someone with no Dûnyain blood?"

Perhaps because the Empire doesn't matter?

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"Because he feared that tidings of discord would weaken the Ordeal's resolve."
This, at least, had been what she told herself... What she needed to believe.
"But then why would he cease communicating?" Maithanet asked. "Why would he personally refuse to answer our pleas? From his brother. From his wife..."
She did not know. The Holy Empress of the Three Seas wiped at the tears burning in the creases of her eyes, but the filth on her fingers only made them sting more.
"Then it dawned on me," Maithanet continued, looking out to the recesses of the shuttered Temple. "What if he foresaw the inevitability of his empire's collapse? What if the Three Seas were doomed to unravel no matter who ruled them? You. Me. Thelli..."

Or, as I talked about before, the Empire's collapse is wholly irrelevant to the ultimate conclusion, or goal?  Or could well be a necessary part of it.

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"If the Empire was doomed to perish," he said, "what would his reasoning be then?"

I know there is much speculation that Kellhus is different than other Dûnyain because he either has, had, or acquired passions.  While I don't disagree that he does have these "vestigal passions" at times, I do not believe he is currently allowing them to interfere with his Thousandfold Thought, even if they did influence his formulation of it.  Indeed, this lack of communication could well be an acknowledgement that if he were to speak to Esmenet, he might be tempted to interfere and so his reticence to do so is tacit confirmation that the crumbling of the Empire is within his plan.

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What kind of man made oil of his children? What kind of Saviour?

The Thousandfold Thought is a lie, we know this and Kellhus is no Savior.  Never was, just as the halos were never divine.

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"I made the exact same mistake you yourself made, Esmi," he said. "I thought of the New Empire as an end, something to be saved for its own sake, when really it's nothing more than a tool."

We know this actually.  Everything is a tool to a Dûnyain.

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"Sister!" he gasped. "You must tell my broth—!"

So cryptic, these last words.  Tell him what?  I think a warning, that the Gods are a bigger threat than he thinks they are.

43
The Almanac: TAE Edition / The Slog WLW - Chapter 13 [Spoilers]
« on: April 20, 2016, 12:33:09 pm »
Chapter 13:

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Three days Sorweel waited after learning of the Nonman Embassy and the Niom.

The question of why these three is an interesting one.  As strong as Serwa is, why send her away?  Does Kellhus anticipate that there is something up with Sorweel?

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"Nil'giccas is a myth," he said with open contempt. "There is no Nonman King."
Moënghus shrugged, picked a curl from his wild black mane to study. "So says Zeüm."
"So says Zeüm."

Well, they are right in the sense that he is King no longer.  But they are wrong that he is a myth...

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"Ponder?"
"The Apocalypse," she said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "How your city survived when far greater bastions toppled."
The young King of Sakarpus shrugged. "Some live. Some die. My father always said it was a good thing that Men could only trust in the Whore when it comes battle. He believed Men should be wary of war."

We wondered the same thing here, in numerous threads.

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"Could it be?" Carindûsû asked in derision. "Have the fabled Dreams of the First Apocalypse led the illustrious Saccarees astray?"
"Yes," the Mandate Grandmaster replied, his honesty so genuine, his humility so reminiscent of their Lord-and-God, that Carindûsû found himself shamed before his peers a third time.
"What we face... The world has never seen the like."

The Consult changing tactics?  Seems like it.

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"Maithanet," the Aspect-Emperor said. "My brother has seized control in Momemn."

If Kellhus knows of it, then it is part of the plan.  If it were contrary to his will, he would have ended it.

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"Do I fear for Esmi?" Kellhus asked. He turned his friend smiling. "You wonder, as you have wondered your whole life, what passions bind me." He closed his eyes in resignation. "And whether they are human."
So here it was, the question of questions...
"Yes."
"Love," the Holy Aspect-Emperor said, "is for lesser souls."

Indeed, Kellhus plainly admitting that passion does not guide him, at least not any human passion.  I think he is speaking plainly here and being honest.  While I think at times he did feel love, it was always fleeting, never the guide, just something on the way.  I think there is a passion, but it is the striving for the Absolute.  The certainty that he can and will be a God.

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"Father," Serwa explained, "says that we have an extra soul, one that lives, and another that watches us living. We are prone to be at war with ourselves, the Anasûrimbor."
Her terms were simple enough, but Sorweel suspected she understood the matter with a philosopher's subtlety.
"So your father thinks you crazy?"

Kellhus mistrusts his own children.  He knows that they are not anywhere near his level, just more tools to be used.  Another strike, in my mind, that he is guided more by passion or feeling then by the Shortest Path to Godhood.

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"To grasp the Absolute."
"Absolute?" he asked, speaking the word, which he had never before heard, slowly so as to make it his own.
"Ho!" Moënghus called, yanking a small bass onto the riverbank. It thrashed silver and gold even as it blackened the bare stone with wetness.
"The God of Gods," Serwa said, beaming at her brother.

I feel this is hitting the nail on the head.  Kellhus seeks the Absolute, not just to apprehend it, but to become the God of Gods and so the God of Men as well.

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"What are you saying?"
"Truth, Horse-King. Nothing offends Men or Gods more..."
Sorweel could only stare at him, witless. Was it possible for a god to be mistaken?

But we know Kellhus does not represent the Truth.  He follows the Thousandfold Thought still, which is expressly not the truth.

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The children of a god mating. The woman he loved betraying...

Did Kellhus premeditate this?  No way this was the first time.  Did he send these two because he knew of their sexual relationship?  It seems plausible he knew of Sorweel's feelings for Serwa too.  Yatwer never seemed to hide that, nor Sorweel from Serwa.

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King Sasal Umrapathur, one of their number, was dead, as were his kinsmen and vassals.

I can't help but think that Kellhus knew this would happen.  It was all bait, made to eliminate Umrapathur and the Vokalati, perhaps?  A true Culling then.

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"Henceforth, we eat Sranc."

The major question, of course, what are the consequences?

44
The Almanac: TAE Edition / The Slog WLW - Chapter 12 [Spoilers]
« on: April 19, 2016, 11:47:40 am »
Chapter 12:

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Nau-Cayûti. He had dreamed he was Anasûrimbor Nau-Cayûti... and more.
He had dreamed not the experience, but the fact of his ancient assassination.

Again, I feel very doubtful that these Dreams are from Kellhus.  Just too many details that were unknown.  And why show this?  I feel it is either Seswatha, or something even deeper, although what I don't know...

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Each night they force Qirri upon him.
She receives her measure willingly.

The Qirri is certainly a way to keep everyone in line, as well as assure they live through the Slog...

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This is the prize the Captain has cast upon the balance of their transaction. Cleric yields up his power, and Lord Kosoter offers him memory. Men to love. Men to destroy...
Men to remember.
And yet Lord Kosoter is Zaudunyani—one of her stepfather's fanatics. Why else would he protect her from the bent lusts of the others? And if he is Zaudunyani, then he would never deliver his expedition into destruction unless... Unless his Aspect-Emperor has commanded it.

I can imagine that Kellhus was in contact with Kosoter as long as they were Hûnoreal, so he probably does know of the Slog.  I don't think that he knows everything after though.

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If he were to choose to annihilate the Skin Eaters...
Only Achamian could possibly hope to stand against him—were he free to speak.

So, they believed that refusing the Qirri was the start of a rebellion by Akka.

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More days pass before she is able to piece things together. Sarl, especially, provides her with pivotal insights. He tells her how Lord Kosoter, famed for his cruelty and marshal zeal, had come to the Aspect-Emperor's attention during the Unification Wars. How he had been promised a special Shrial Remission by none other than her uncle, Maithanet, for founding a scalper company and remaining in the vicinity of Hûnoreal—where he could regularly check on the Wizard.
"He is born of Hell," the madmen tells her, his face squished into I-knew-all-along glee. "He is born of Hell, the Captain. And he knows it—oh ho! He knows it. He thinks your gurwikka, there, will pay his toll..." His squint pops open in mock alarm. "Deliver him to paradise!"
"But how?" she protests.
"Because of him!" the madman cackles. "Him! The Aspect-Emperor knows all..."

So, Kosoter was there to watch Akka.  He takes the contract because he still has to keep an eye on him.  No way is it coincidence that Cleric falls in with them.  Drawn to Akka, perhaps by Seswatha?  Or, somehow by memory of Seswatha?

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If she could simply walk into the old Wizard's room, Mimara reasons, then so too could her stepfather.

I'm buying this, because it most certainly seems true.  If Akka is free, it is because Kellhus has allowed him to be.  I still think it is because of the Seswatha factor, that he wants to see what it is that it is driving Akka toward.  The only way Akka's freedom makes sense to me is if it is Kellhus thinking that the known-agent is better than the unknown-agent.

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What Lord Kosoter does, she finally decides, depends on what he thinks his lord and master, his god, desires.

I think this part is true, tied to what Mimara deduces earlier.  I don't think he actually is in contact with Kellhus, so he is just guessing as to what he should do now...

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The lie is a foolish one: he need only guess at the length of her term to realize there is no way she could have been impregnated in Momemn. But then, what would a man such as him know of pregnancy, let alone one borne of a divine violation? Her mother had carried all her brothers and sisters far beyond the usual term.

Perhaps support for my crack-pot theory that Dûnyain really are basically a separate species.

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"How did she die?"
A single tear falls from his right eye, hangs like a bead of glass from his jaw. "With the others... Cir'kumir teles pim'larata..."
"Do I resemble her?"
"Perhaps..." he says, lowering his gaze. "If you wept or screamed... If there was blood."

Hmmm, a hint, in a very cryptic form, that she was murdered?

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"Nil'giccas..." he murmurs. "I am Nil'giccas. The Last Nonman King."

Why leave Ishterebinth?  My only guess would be that his erraticism drove him out to remember.

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"The child is yours," she whispers sobbing. "Can't you see?
"I bear my mother's child..."

Hmm, we've seen that for Yatwer, time is not linear, the White-Luck Warrior walks in all times at all times.  Is this something similar?  I don't know, but something is/will be special about this child.

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That night, as always, the old Wizard dreamed of the horror that was the Golden Room. The moaning procession. The eviscerating horn. The chain heaving him and the other wretches forward.
Closer. He was coming closer.

Yet more Nau-Cayûti dreams, fittingly at the end of the chapter...just as it began.

45
The Almanac: TAE Edition / The Slog WLW - Chapter 11 [Spoilers]
« on: April 18, 2016, 11:32:20 am »
Chapter 11:

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"The Four-Horned Brother..." the long-haired man was saying. "Do you know why he is shunned by the others? Why my Cult and my Cult alone is condemned in the Tusk?"
"Ajokli is the Fool," he heard himself reply.
The long-haired man smiled. "He only seems such because he sees what the others do not see... What
you do not see."

So, he knew all along that Esmenet would seek an assassin for Maith, so he kills the one who she would seek and takes his place, right?  What is it that Ajokli sees though, that others don't?

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"Issiral..." she repeated, struggling to recall the meaning of the Shigeki word. "Fate?" she asked, frowning and smiling. "Who named you this?"
"My mother."
"Your mother was cruel, to curse you with such a name."
"We take such gifts as she gives."

He seems to imply he serves Ajokli, and yet speaks as if he were gifted by Yatwer.  This is the White-Luck Warrior, right?  My memory is hazy at this point of the book.

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Anasûrimbor Kellhus, Malowebi and his fellow Mbimayu had assumed, was simply another Inri Sejenus, another gifted charlatan bent on delivering even more of his kinsmen to damnation.

I find it interesting how Zeüm regards the Tusk and it's prophets.  Of course we know they are right to and this makes me wonder, since they are outside the Consult's influence, how do they fit in to the grand scheme?

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A kind of war was being waged against them, they realized. At every point of connection between Zeüm and the Three Seas—mercantile, diplomatic, geographical—the Aspect-Emperor was preparing in some way.

What if the whole point of the Empire's collapse, of allowing Fanayal to live all this time, the Interdiction and stranding of Esmenet, is really to goad Zeüm?  Why?  Is it that somehow, once Kellhus "succeeds" that the Three Seas in chaos, partly under Zeümi rule will aid him?  I can't help but feel this is the case, but I can't figure how.

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Uncle Holy, for all his danger, was but one more tool...
He was the God here. The Four-Horned Brother.

I think this is the first time that Kel actually mentions being in service to Ajokli.  Is that true, or is he mistaken?

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"So you lied?"
A small smile. "I guided. I guided them to a lesser falsehood."
"Then what is the truth?"
He had laughed, shining as if anointed in oil.
"You would call me a liar if I told you," he had said.

Further proof, not that I needed it, in this conversation between Kellhus and Esmenet that she is recalling at the time, that Kellhus still walks the Thousandfold Thought and that it is still a lie.

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