Earwa > Atrocity Tales
The Knife of Many Hands [Spoilers]
Aural:
--- Quote ---The Pirates of the Momas Gale are Damned and don't care. So things that might previously seem like Damnable sins to them are instead simply viewed by them as more pleasures.
--- End quote ---
I thought Bakker was cryptically talking about the Consult?
--- Quote ---The crew of the Momus Gale had no doubt that their souls lay beyond reprieve, and so they sucked as violently as they could from the teat of brief life. They were Takers in every way, and woe to those with wares to be taken.
--- End quote ---
Maybe the Consult or the No-God are actually collecting souls as some have suggested.
H:
--- Quote from: Ejjannelsouda on April 02, 2015, 12:52:29 pm ---That's what I thought, but I'm still not sure how the fires of damnation (the punishment) are analogous to a 'whore's tongue' in Carythusal. Seems to me that Bakker is bending over backwards to insert the word whore in everything.
--- End quote ---
Well, he brings about an interesting parallel, in that damnation in the afterlife is torment, yet damnable acts in life are often pleasurable.
mrganondorf:
--- Quote from: Aural on April 02, 2015, 01:40:20 pm ---
--- Quote ---The Pirates of the Momas Gale are Damned and don't care. So things that might previously seem like Damnable sins to them are instead simply viewed by them as more pleasures.
--- End quote ---
I thought Bakker was cryptically talking about the Consult?
--- Quote ---The crew of the Momus Gale had no doubt that their souls lay beyond reprieve, and so they sucked as violently as they could from the teat of brief life. They were Takers in every way, and woe to those with wares to be taken.
--- End quote ---
Maybe the Consult or the No-God are actually collecting souls as some have suggested.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: Aural on April 02, 2015, 01:40:20 pm ---
--- Quote ---The Pirates of the Momas Gale are Damned and don't care. So things that might previously seem like Damnable sins to them are instead simply viewed by them as more pleasures.
--- End quote ---
I thought Bakker was cryptically talking about the Consult?
--- Quote ---The crew of the Momus Gale had no doubt that their souls lay beyond reprieve, and so they sucked as violently as they could from the teat of brief life. They were Takers in every way, and woe to those with wares to be taken.
--- End quote ---
Maybe the Consult or the No-God are actually collecting souls as some have suggested.
--- End quote ---
hated by Yatwer!
H:
So, while I wait for TGO, I am unwilling to pollute my readerly pallet with things other than Bakker, to facilitate a quicker and better read of it when I do get it. This means all I have to read are Atrocity Tales. So, in the spirit of The Slog, I am going to look at Knife and see what I see.
Part 1 for today:
--- Quote ---They could sense it in him even then, the Incarnal, the patter of some unseen pulse, beating as quickly as murder
--- End quote ---
I do believe this is our first introduction into what the Incarnal is.
--- Quote ---But the man was anything but–Eryelk could see it.
All sorcerers bore the Mark of their sin.
--- End quote ---
So, Eryelk is one of the Few, which is pretty interesting.
--- Quote ---He had stood as he always stood in the blood-drenched aftermath of the Incarnal, alone, surrounded by the pulped wreckage of what had once been living.
--- End quote ---
A hint at the the Incarnal is...
--- Quote ---‘It is my other face.’
--- End quote ---
So, the Incarnal is the manifestation of his second heart, the mask that heart's face?
--- Quote ---‘You speak of the necessity of deceit,’ Eryelk scoffed. ‘I speak of truth.’
As old as Ancient Shir, they said. The Sranc Pits, a ziggurat gutted for the sake of death.
Boma-boma-boma-boma...
The rat’s whiskers twitched in surprise.
‘Truth?’ he snapped. ‘Oh... you mean lies that win.’
They knew him not at all, the Holca realized–or nothing of the Incarnal, at least.
--- End quote ---
Seemingly my above interpretation seems correct. The Incarnal though isn't a second face, really, but rather the true face. Actually, I take that back, I think what he means is that the mask does not conceal, but rather reveals.
--- Quote ---‘The rat that burns other rats, that would rule over other rats, become tyrant of the rat nation...’
His voice–his hatred–had become as a grinding mill.
Boma-boma-boma-boma...
‘Silence, cur!’
Boma-boma-boma-boma...
‘...that would worshipped as the Rat of Rats...’
--- End quote ---
I wonder if this is the Incarnal talking here? He certainly mocks the Spire's intentions, reading them correctly too.
--- Quote ---‘Uh! Even the mask reeks.’
‘Aye. Sulphur...’
Feminine voices, young and old.
‘Sorcery?’
‘That is why we did what we did.’
--- End quote ---
So, they did know of the Incarnal, at least, the higher-ups did...
--- Quote ---The carriage sat upon black-lacquered yokes long enough for some twenty or more bearers, but possessing only twelve, slaves that in no way resembled slaves, armed and armoured as they were.
--- End quote ---
3801 is the year that the Scarlet Spires "create" the Javreh, this story shows why then really.
--- Quote ---No man craved both wisdom and peril as he did. His was an upside-down soul, the Sranc slaver insisted, one that, combined with a Holca frame, made him as rare as nimil. “If only you had will, boy, discipline, the whole Three Seas would tremble!”
--- End quote ---
I don't think I was alone in thinking that the concept of the upside-down soul was more profound than it really is. I think in actuality it is simply a soul who is truly a collection of opposite and seemingly incongruous motivations.
--- Quote ---‘So it’s true. You do not recall what you do, when Gilgaöl seizes your soul.’
--- End quote ---
Considering how active the Gods are in the AE, I think before the Slog I would have doubted that Gilgaöl was actually involved, but now I kind of do believe it.
--- Quote ---And with that, the floors seemed to plummet, dissolve into a Pit more profound than any he had mastered.
--- End quote ---
This must be the Diamos, right? Opening the Pit is opening a way for a ciphrang to influence Eryelk?
H:
Part 2:
--- Quote ---They had stained him, somehow, polluted him with their wicked craft–he could feel it!
--- End quote ---
Feels it in his second heart, I am guessing?
--- Quote ---So they described the Carythusal they needed to balm their own blistered hearts, or to stitch the mercurial rifts that arose between them. For them, she was a place where the fires of damnation licked as a whore’s tongue, anything but the gleaming marvel that Stitti had described.
--- End quote ---
Even with the debate above, I still like this line. How the "consequences" of damnable acts is so very different in life than in death.
--- Quote ---Carythusal was simply what came after, a civilization that had run out of blank scroll, and so
began to overwrite what was written. It was a place where anything was allowed so long as it did not impede commerce, where aimlessness was not a crime...
--- End quote ---
Interesting line here, considering how "the darkness that comes before" guides the world in the books. Here, we are presented with the idea that Carythusal rewrites that, that it seeks to be new, guided by the now.
--- Quote ---‘Shinurta claimed that Nagamezer survived,’ Eryelk amended.
‘He didn’t, but there’s no way Shinurta could admit as much. As far as the city is concerned, Nagamezer has to be alive, otherwise the Spires would be releasing someone who had murdered one of their own.’
--- End quote ---
I think Shinurta was being kind of cheeky and was implying that they know full well where Nagamezer is, damned as he would be.
--- Quote ---Shinurta cackled in his soul’s eye. Claws combed the ginger haze across his abdomen.
His stomach lurched. His second heart flexed into a brandished fist.
--- End quote ---
So, Shinurta inhabits he second heart's soul? Or a ciphrang? Or both?
--- Quote ---The barbarian blinked, saw Shinurta hunched, a greased grotesquerie toiling over his loins. The world kicked and yanked about chains and manacles–
What did they do to him?
--- End quote ---
It seems as if Shinurta is the ciphrang, at least, somewhat through these descriptions.
--- Quote ---Chained to a thread above Hell. Choking sulphur. Bolting terror. Something horrid convolving about his hips, climbing, mounting...
--- End quote ---
His second soul was bound to the Pit?
--- Quote ---Screaming. Thrashing. Bestial glimpses of spider eyes and puckered cunnies.
--- End quote ---
This would seem to be the result of the ciphrang inhabiting him.
--- Quote ---Shinurta had no need to curse him, he realized. He need only trust the curse that was his blood. He need only know him to transform him into a knife for yet another hand...
--- End quote ---
The curse of being twin-souled?
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