The Second Apocalypse
Earwa => The Aspect-Emperor => The Great Ordeal => Topic started by: MisterGuyMan on August 25, 2016, 05:56:37 pm
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By the God, his fury felt so empty, so frail against the eart! He reached out with his bare left hand and grabbed another hand-cold, heavily callused, leathery fingers and glass nails. A dead hand. He looked up across the matted grasses and stared at the dead man's face. An Inrithi. The features were flattened against the ground and partly sheathed in blood. The man had lost his helm, and sandy-blond hair jutted from his mail hood. The coid had fallen aside, pressed against his bottom lip. He seemed so heavy, so stationary-like more ground.
A nightmarish moment of recognition, too surreal to be terrifying.
It was his face! His own hand he held!
He tried to scream.
Nothing.
And he knew the way all the Dead knew, with the certainty of timeless recollection.
Hell... rising on a bubbling rush. Agony and wickedness chattering with famished glee...
Demons, come to pull his outside through his inside, to invert, to invert and expose, to bare his every tenderness to fire and gnashing teeth...
Damnation... in spite of everything.
There was no describing the horror.
He tried to clutch with dead fingers... to hold on...
Don't! he tried to call across the space of a dead man's reach. But his ribs were a breathless cage, his lips cold and soil. Don't let go...
Please! he screaned at his younger self, trying to communicate the whole of his life with sightless eyes... Fool! Ingrate!
Don't trust Hi--
First of all let me say that I totally missed this on my first read. I only caught it when I went back rereading the first trilogy. Second, it's pretty much one of the best moments in the novel for me now. We already suspect this happens ever since Kellhus states that Serwe is burning in hell but that POV of actually seeing Saubon transition into hell after his death was just a great moment. I really love how I always thought that excerpt of Saubon seeing himself in the second book was just a way to add creepiness into the battle in a very general way but Bakker had it all planned out to bring it full circle three books later.
I have no idea what to think of this so far. From the top of my head it's weird because it always seemed like only the gods could affect the past but here a random soul is literally reaching out to his past self. I know Mengedda is a special place as a Topos but it still seems odd that random souls have that power. I also like how the very highwater moment that Saubon's faith in Kellhus is cemented is looped inextricably linked to the moment when he loses his faith completely.
As a Zauduyani myself I don't think this shakes my belief in Kellhus at all. He's still the messiah figure of the story. He uses people as tools and doesn't care if they end up in hell. He'll still save humanity IMO.
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You fool! Kellhus is not the Messiah! Don't let a fictional character become so powerful that he even seduces the book readers! He IS the Second Apocalypse, not its harbinger. His sigil is that of the false prophet and he leads his followers to Golgotterath, where no salvation can be found.
Seriously, this was one of the coolest parts of the whole series, definitely a "put down the book" moment. I wonder if he heard it when he was younger and this is why he didn't want to see Kellhus after the battle?
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Loved the passage. Goosebumps! I had reread the whole series dieting the months leading towards the release of TGO. I remembered the passage ams immediately liked it up: It was exactly the same.
I know Mengedda is a special place as a Topos but it still seems odd that random souls have that power.
What do you mean "random soul"? ;) Remember it was Kellhus who sent him forward with a (tentatively) calculated risk in TWP with the remark to punish the Shrial Knights before the battle of Mengedda, thus binding Saubon to him. The link (impersonated by Saubons linked arms) between the two scenes here is created by Kellhus, not Saubon.
If I'm correct, this is all kinds of messed up ^^.
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What happens to Saubon (his future self appearing to his past self) is part of why I feel it is more probable than ever that Kellhus might actually be the one in his own visions, there, sitting under the tree. I speculated on this before TGO, but now I feel we've been told that it certainly is possible.
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Time isn't stricktly linear in the Outside. The gods don't perceive like humans do, prophecy is real, and sorcery works. That which comes After can determine what becomes Before.
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Time isn't stricktly linear in the Outside. The gods don't perceive like humans do, prophecy is real, and sorcery works. That which comes After can determine what becomes Before.
Early on, in one of the Aörsi/Dagliash chapters, we discover Kellhus referring to himself as "The Place called Anasurimbor Kellhus" in one of his POV scenes.
The idea that he can then be elsewhere instead, like somewhere else in time, is not so far-fetched then.
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Time isn't stricktly linear in the Outside. The gods don't perceive like humans do, prophecy is real, and sorcery works. That which comes After can determine what becomes Before.
In this world.
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Time isn't stricktly linear in the Outside. The gods don't perceive like humans do, prophecy is real, and sorcery works. That which comes After can determine what becomes Before.
Early on, in one of the Aörsi/Dagliash chapters, we discover Kellhus referring to himself as "The Place called Anasurimbor Kellhus" in one of his POV scenes.
The idea that he can then be elsewhere instead, like somewhere else in time, is not so far-fetched then.
Somewhere and some-when collapse in the outside for sure.
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I really have no idea what the hell is going on at this point, but I've gotta ask the Zaudunyani here: What does saving the world/humanity even mean?
As far as I can see the Consult has the only real plan.
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I really have no idea what the hell is going on at this point, but I've gotta ask the Zaudunyani here: What does saving the world/humanity even mean?
As far as I can see the Consult has the only real plan.
Yes, but we still don't see Kellhus's plan. He has walked in the Outside. He might have a better way of making war on the gods or sealing the world than burning the gods' fields. No genocide, no damnation beats genocide and no damnation.
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As far as I can see the Consult has the only real plan.
The Cunuroi have probably forgotten theirs.
Kellhus's has to do with him being the Second Apocalypse, but what (possibly who's) world is to end, remains to be seen. Currently I have the impression it has to do with creating a gate to the Outside.
The Halaroi in general have none.
Akka and Mimara ("our Heroes") are clueless (to a measure).
The world created by Bakker is not ideal to think about under influence I suppose, but with some mind-relaxing stuff I got thinking last night:
What if the Cunuroi actually managed to seal off Heaven (before the Inchoroi even landed) to ensure they would never got to the Outside on their deaths, and Kellhus is the one to unshut it for humanity? Think about it: There is currently only demons and evil deities we have seen. Where are Heaven and the good-aligned outsiders?
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The world created by Bakker is not ideal to think about under influence I suppose, but with some mind-relaxing stuff I got thinking last night:
What if the Cunuroi actually managed to seal off Heaven (before the Inchoroi even landed) to ensure they would never got to the Outside on their deaths, and Kellhus is the one to unshut it for humanity? Think about it: There is currently only demons and evil deities we have seen. Where are Heaven and the good-aligned outsiders?
Good aligned outsiders? Have you no respect for the Mother of Birth? She Who Gives? Are you some Fanish heretic or Nonman to call The Hundred demons? The Hundred keep heaven for the faithful. The priests assure us this is so. :)
You're assuming a lot that isn't at all supported in any of the texts. Yawter is as close to a benevolent god as we find, a goddess who actually gives a fuck about the downtrodden. She rewards people with their sacrifices, their often materially quite harmful sacrifices, in the Outside. Maybe. She also eats sinners and is blind to the coming of the No-God so she blames the coming catastrophe on who she can see who has great power: the lying false prophet emperor. She is a benevolent god, by the standards of the setting and many ancient religions. This isn't a setting with armies in heaven waging wars to armies of demons of hell. This is a setting where the elect, whoever they are, become the pets of gods and the damned are cast to demons and there may or may not be too much difference between their fates. It isn't warm and fuzzy.
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Yea, I wouldn't even say that Earwa has what we call "heaven". There is a quote at the beginning of a chapter, "I've heard the screams of hell and the sighs in heaven, trust me brother when I say there is nary a difference.". Paraphrasing obviously.
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I really have no idea what the hell is going on at this point, but I've gotta ask the Zaudunyani here: What does saving the world/humanity even mean?
As far as I can see the Consult has the only real plan.
I think Kellhus's plan is to shut the Outside, but by some other means than reducing the population, and defeating the Consult. I'd even go as far as saying Kellhus might not want to shut the Outside, but defeat the 100 and become/resurrect The God.
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So what I'm still getting is: 1. We don't know if Kellhus intends to save the world. 2. We don't really even know what that means if he it was what he intended anyway.
I've gotta say, it looks to me like he just abandoned his ordeal to the best surrogate he could make on short notice because, blind as he was to what moved him, he found that once he left he couldn't stand to be parted overlong from his Empire and whatever inhuman approximation of love he has for his wife. The trial has broken him. Moenghus did nothing wrong. Etc etc
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It's difficult to say, because Scott is careful to not allow to see Kellhus's plans when he writes from Kellhus's point of view. We do know such emotions are not beyond Kellhus and can influence his actions because that's exactly what happened when he did not dispose of Cnauir in The Prince of Nothing even though that was the logical action.
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Yeah. Rare moment of pity there. His emotional range is peculiar and tremendously stunted. But it's still there.
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I really have no idea what the hell is going on at this point, but I've gotta ask the Zaudunyani here: What does saving the world/humanity even mean?
As far as I can see the Consult has the only real plan.
To me, saving the world just means his plan and vision is more preferable to humanity than the Consult's plan of killing everyone and resurrecting the No-God. So even if humanity is mauled, the race is still saved from the extinction that would have happened otherwise.
I believe that this might not even be Kellhus' main goal. His ultimate goal is to be a self moving soul and as a side effect, humanity will be saved. I'm starting to think this is one long setup for a bootstrap paradox. Kellhus will eventually reach a point where he can reach back into the past and condition his own ground. This plan of action just happens to neutralize the Gods and the Consult. Working backwards I figure that the design of Kellhus as a character is to be the savior of mankind but to fill that role with such obvious immorality that the reader would barely be able to recognize even this obvious fantasy trope. I love how Bakker twists tropes like that.
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Yea, I wouldn't even say that Earwa has what we call "heaven". There is a quote at the beginning of a chapter, "I've heard the screams of hell and the sighs in heaven, trust me brother when I say there is nary a difference.". Paraphrasing obviously.
Interesting... This reminds me of Peter Hamilton's "The Night's Dawn" trilogy? Have any of you read it? A sci-fi series where the plot deals with the discovery that after death human souls are trapped in another dimension, where they are suffering endless torture, and that they have found a way back into our universe and possessing bodies, and they try to desperately find ways to cut themselves off from returning to that "hell". It is not Hamilton's best work, but I just realized that this part is very similar.
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I'd rather face oblivion under the No-God than the Eärwan afterlife to be honest.
Titan: I thought only some human souls ended up in that horrible nowhere place?
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I'd rather face oblivion under the No-God than the Eärwan afterlife to be honest.
The Earwan deal suuuuuuuuuucks. Everyone gets a limited number of years of mix pain and pleasure, possibly with a lot more pain than pleasure, and then a very large percentage gets torture for eternity. Compared to that, nonexistence because of a successful genocide isn't such a bad deal. It's still horrible, but its not being tortured in unimaginably horrific ways until the end of time.
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Titan: I thought only some human souls ended up in that horrible nowhere place?
If I recall correctly all souls did go there briefly, but the majority of them were unable to ... move on? But my memory is foggy. And I didn't really care for the ending of the series. :)
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I'd rather face oblivion under the No-God than the Eärwan afterlife to be honest.
The Earwan deal suuuuuuuuuucks. Everyone gets a limited number of years of mix pain and pleasure, possibly with a lot more pain than pleasure, and then a very large percentage gets torture for eternity. Compared to that, nonexistence because of a successful genocide isn't such a bad deal. It's still horrible, but its not being tortured in unimaginably horrific ways until the end of time.
Is it eternal, though? There seems to be an element of reincarnation in Earwa. Souls seem to be recycled into newborns (either whole or rebuilt from fragments), and it was this soul in-flow that the No-God prevent with the womb-plague.
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Since there's no time in the Outside from your subjective view it's always eternal even if it looks like a short blip to anyone "inside".
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Is it eternal, though? There seems to be an element of reincarnation in Earwa. Souls seem to be recycled into newborns (either whole or rebuilt from fragments), and it was this soul in-flow that the No-God prevent with the womb-plague.
It could be that the quest of recovering a whole soul were the Dunyain definition of a self-moving soul, which could explain their 2000-year breeding program. Incidentally the word Holy comes from the Old English word Hálig, which meant Whole.
But on the other hand, what references do we have for reincarnation? I remember Cleric somehow remembering Mimara in WLW if that counts, but apart from that? The description of the Outside seems more like a demonic gore-fest than something where souls escape from in a shattered form to give life: Even in Eärwa, thousands of babies must be born on a daily basis.
Since there's no time in the Outside from your subjective view it's always eternal even if it looks like a short blip to anyone "inside".
This seems fairly reasonable to assume, although outsiders seem to perceive the passage of time all the same. In TGO p.44-46 one of them mentions Kellhus having been in the Outside before (the Head on a Pole passage). Of course this could be a reincarnation-thing, but that remains to be seen. I'm curious as hell about the explanation :)
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Is it eternal, though? There seems to be an element of reincarnation in Earwa. Souls seem to be recycled into newborns (either whole or rebuilt from fragments), and it was this soul in-flow that the No-God prevent with the womb-plague.
Why do you believe that? I don't recall any source that supports that interpretation? I would be grateful if you would explain why you believe this is so.
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Sarl's mad ramblings and at least one line from the Captain suggest that sometimes (though apparently quite rarely) souls come back from the Outside instead of staying there. This maybe what happened with little Sammi. Also, the former King of Cil-Aujas seems to have coalesced into something resembling a Ciphrang while in the Outside. So it's possible the fate of a soul isn't entirely final in all cases.
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Is it eternal, though? There seems to be an element of reincarnation in Earwa. Souls seem to be recycled into newborns (either whole or rebuilt from fragments), and it was this soul in-flow that the No-God prevent with the womb-plague.
Why do you believe that? I don't recall any source that supports that interpretation? I would be grateful if you would explain why you believe this is so.
The Sharmat has already tackled the first part, do you need a source for the No-God stopping souls from attaching to children in wombs? I guess I don't have a direct source, but that seemed to be pretty explicit to me - or maybe I jumped to a conclusion here. But the Consult is working on shutting out the outside, and with souls moving back and forth from the Outside, it seems to me that the womb plague was an indication of a partial success.
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My interpretation of Sarl's comment was that Ironsoul had a near death experience but instead of the tunnel and bright light, saw hell. There's no denying that No-God prevents the birth of new life with souls, but how these souls come to be is another question entirely. Reincarnation is a potential mechanism for it working, but it isn't the only one. The gods harvesting the souls of men and damnation being a very real thing suggests that reincarnation isn't what is going on. Nor does the fact that identity is retained for damned beings like the Wight King of the Mountain support reincarnation. It doesn't rule it out either, but how does this proposed reincarnation cycle reconcile the existence of heavens and hells (however little distance their may be between the two) and why settle upon it as the source of new souls entering the world? The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, which Scott has mined heavily in setting up this world, does have new souls combing into the world without reincarnation.
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My interpretation of Sarl's comment was that Ironsoul had a near death experience but instead of the tunnel and bright light, saw hell. There's no denying that No-God prevents the birth of new life with souls, but how these souls come to be is another question entirely. Reincarnation is a potential mechanism for it working, but it isn't the only one. The gods harvesting the souls of men and damnation being a very real thing suggests that reincarnation isn't what is going on. Nor does the fact that identity is retained for damned beings like the Wight King of the Mountain support reincarnation. It doesn't rule it out either, but how does this proposed reincarnation cycle reconcile the existence of heavens and hells (however little distance their may be between the two) and why settle upon it as the source of new souls entering the world? The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, which Scott has mined heavily in setting up this world, does have new souls combing into the world without reincarnation.
Well, I suspect what is up with The Captain is the same as Cnaüir. We learn that some souls that are so evil begin the transition to a Ciphrang while still alive. And, I assume that is what was going on with Ironsoul. Never really saw hell, he is just becoming a part of it, or was.
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When did we learn that?
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You know Bakker, he just casually dropped that info during the Author Q&A bit we had on the forum not long ago.
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I wish he wouldn't do that. Not only is it potentially spoilery but it opens a huge can of worms if he later decides that it's not a good idea and does something else.
Cnaiur is gonna make a hell of a ciphrang though.
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I wish he wouldn't do that. Not only is it potentially spoilery but it opens a huge can of worms if he later decides that it's not a good idea and does something else.
Y'know, like mentioning en passant the Tusk is an Inchoroi gift to the 5 Tribes during a Q&A session.
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I wish he wouldn't do that. Not only is it potentially spoilery but it opens a huge can of worms if he later decides that it's not a good idea and does something else.
Y'know, like mentioning en passant the Tusk is an Inchoroi gift to the 5 Tribes during a Q&A session.
To be fair at least that one has come up, albeit indirectly and in the last book. And Mimara does see Cnaiur with horns. And now I see Ironsoul and Cnaiur with horns and wings, brofisting each other in hell.
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I somehow missed Mimara seeing horns on Cnaiur in the judging eye.
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I somehow missed Mimara seeing horns on Cnaiur in the judging eye.
It's part of one of the lines describing his damnation. It's actually more supportive than that. Page 479: "The great black figure regards him, horned and smoking, and yet already a Prince of Hell."
Being so damned that one becomes a demon in hell isn't supportive of reincarnation theories, but doesn't rule out reincarnation if at the end of cycle of reward/punishment and transformation. It is still, in my opinion, a reach based on the sources and the inspirations for the sources but there's a few mysteries regarding the Outside that have yet to be revealed.
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Something I haven't seen mentioned yet - except I think once on Westeros - is that "The soul that encounters Him ... passes no further" (TWP, p172) from Achamian to Saubon.
What if Saubon hasn't actually been taken by Hell...
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I hope that means we'll get to see an Inrilitas based Ciphrang somehow. Sure he died young, but he started super early too.
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Maybe he was on to something with that resembling the God nonsense and is having fun as a prince of Hell now instead of getting chewed by ciphrang constantly?
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I hope Kellhus goes to bail him out and he screams "IT'S NOT A PHASE DAD!"
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Some thoughts i'd like to add.
Kellhus and the Dunyain in general thing themselves as places when they are meditating. There are examples of that in the first trilogy. When young Kellhus was first conditioned by the Pragma in order to control the legion within, he was referring to himself as a place. He was doing the same think before entering a probability trance. As far as the Logos is concerned, a place, unlike a person, is impartial. But according to the metaphysics of Earwa, a person is a place where the outside is looking in.
The interesting thing about the metaphysical part is that time in the outside is perceived all at once. So what happens with Saubon makes perfect sense. Saubon dies, he is turned inside out (his inside, his soul goes to the outside). The POM are a topos and thus partially in the outside as well. So Saubon, being now in the outside, has access to all time (as perceived by the God of Gods) and thus access to the time when he was at the POM.
The difference in time perception between the outside and the inside (physical word) is one of the if not the most important factor that shapes the metaphysics of Earwa. It even explains how divine judgement can be shaped by belief without actually changing at all.