Earwa > The Almanac: PON Edition

ARC: TTT Chapter 1 (and What Has Come Before)

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TheCulminatingApe:

--- Quote ---"My heart shrivels even as my intellect bristles.  Reasons - I find myself desperate for reasons.  Sometimes I think every word written is written for shame."
- DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, THE COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOlY WAR
--- End quote ---

TheCulminatingApe:
From what has come before - the Kellhus section, we learn that Esmenet has an
--- Quote ---extraordinary native intelligence
--- End quote ---
  Any sons Kellhus has with her will be powerful tools - interesting that it doesn't say children - daughters dismissed.

TheCulminatingApe:
For Achamian the past no longer defines the future.  He contacts the Mandate - a beetle passes by as he speaks the spell. - Ajokli reference?

He finds Nautzera pinned to wall of corpses at Dagliash. A Bashrag nails a living man to the wall.  Together with the last scenes of TWP, we are shown how horrific the Consult are.

Mekeritrig appears. He tells Nautzera/ Seswatha that all monuments or memorials are obscenities.


--- Quote ---A cut scarred where a caress faded away.  In this simple fact lay the tragic and catastrophic truth of the Nonmen.  Mekeritirg had lived a hundred lifetimes - more!  What would it be like, Achamian wondered, to have every redeeming memory - be it a lover's touch or a child's warm squeal - blotted out by the accumulation of anguish, terror, and hate? To understand the soul of a Nonman, the philosopher Gotagga had once written, one need only bare the back of an old and arrogant slave. Scars.  Scars upon scars.  This was what made them mad.  All of them.
"I am an Erratic," Mekeritrig was saying.  "I do that which I hate, I raise my heart to the lash, so that I might remember!  Do you understand what this means?  You are my children!"
--- End quote ---

He wants the Heron Spear and thinks Seswatha knows where it is.

--- Quote ---"I will strip you to your footings," the Nonman grated.  "Though I love, I will upend your soul's foundation! I will release you from the delusions of this word 'Man', and draw forth the beast - the soulless beast! - that is the howling Truth of all things... You will tell me!"
The old man coughed, drooled blood.
"And I, Seswatha... I will remember!"
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---... With volcanic palms, Mekeritrig clenched Seswatha's brow, serrated both body and soul.
Nautzera howled in voices not his own.
"Shhhh," Mekeritrig whispered, clutching the old sorceror's cheek.  He squeezed away tears with his thumb.  "Hush, child..."
Nautzera could only gag and convulse.
"Please," the Nonman said.  "Please do not cry..."
--- End quote ---

Akka manages to break the dream an speak to his colleague.  He tells him about Kellhus.  Nautzera tells him to do everything in his power to protect Kellhus.  Akka tells Nautzera that Kellhus wants the Gnosis.  Nautzera asks if Akka can be trusted - like Akka trusted Nautzera regarding Inrau.  Akka is to teach him the lesser cants.


--- Quote ---You still don't understand, do you, Nautzera?  The Warrior-Prophet cannot be deceived!
All men can be deceived, Achamian. All men.
--- End quote ---
- Harks back to the first prologue in TDTCB, and forward to the ending of TUC.

The Men of the Tusk are victorious.  They eat Fanim food and drink Fanim drink.  Captives are told to curse Fane - those who do are sold to slavers.  Those who don't are killed, and Kellhus anoints the Inrithi with their blood.  We are again reminded that the Holy War and Kellhus are not the 'good guys'

Akka goes to the Fama Palace.  He realises that Kellhus would change the world, in the way of an Inri Sejenus.  It is year 1 of a new age.

--- Quote ---The eyes of men were but pinholes - no one knew this better than Mandate Schoolmen.  All their books, even their scriptures, were nothing more than pinholes.  And yet, because they couldn't see what was unseen, they assumed they saw everything, they confused pinpricks with the sky.
But Kellhus was something different.  A doorway.  A mighty gate.
He's come to save us.  This is what I must remember. I must hold on to this.
--- End quote ---

Esmi is there, walking with Kellhus.

--- Quote ---She was Esmenet and yet she wasn't Esmenet.  The woman of loose life had fallen away, and what remained was more, so much more, than she'd been at his side.  Resplendent.
Redeemed.
I dimmed her, he realised.  I was smoke and he... is a mirror.
--- End quote ---

Kellhus tells him never to kneel in his presence.  He knows Akka has contacted the Mandate.  Akka will give him the Gnosis. Akka is to be Kellhus' Vizier.

A skin-spy is strung up to a tree.  They are powerfully conditioned - it would take Kellhus months to break them.

--- Quote ---Achamian nodded.  Given time, he realised, Kellhus could empty this creature, own it as he seemed to own everything else.  He was more than thorough, more than meticulous.  Even the swiftness of this discovery - wrested, no less, from a creature that had been forged to deceive - demonstrated his... inevitability.
He makes no mistakes
For a giddy instant a kind of gloating fury descended upon Achamian.  All those years - centuries! - the Consult had played them for fools.  But now - now!  Did they know?  Could they sense the peril this man represented?  Or would they underestimate him like everyone else had?
Like Esmenet.
--- End quote ---
Kellhus does of course make mistakes - as we find out in TAE.  But note the faith Akka, Esmi and others have placed in him.


--- Quote ---All men surrender, Akka, even as they seek to dominate.  It's their nature to submit.  The question is never whether they will surrender, but rather to whom..."
--- End quote ---
The Men of the Tusk submit to the God - it preserves their pride.  There is no fear of degradation.  Others, like Achamian, submit to other people.  Lovers injure, humiliate and debase, but never test, not if they truly love.  Esmenet is not testing Achamian.  Neither Kellhus nor Esmi can undo Achamian's suffering - it is his own.  The skin-spy (which is ranting, thrashing and howling throughout) is his test, because he is a Mandate Schoolman.

TheCulminatingApe:

--- Quote from: TheCulminatingApe on January 10, 2019, 08:26:51 pm ---
--- Quote ---All men surrender, Akka, even as they seek to dominate.  It's their nature to submit.  The question is never whether they will surrender, but rather to whom..."
--- End quote ---
The Men of the Tusk submit to the God - it preserves their pride.  There is no fear of degradation.  Others, like Achamian, submit to other people.  Lovers injure, humiliate and debase, but never test, not if they truly love.  Esmenet is not testing Achamian.  Neither Kellhus nor Esmi can undo Achamian's suffering - it is his own.  The skin-spy (which is ranting, thrashing and howling throughout) is his test, because he is a Mandate Schoolman.

--- End quote ---

Is Kellhus admitting he cannot break Akka's Mandate conditioning - i.e. the link with Seswatha (which we have seen in action during Akka's torture in TWP)?

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