Earwa > Atrocity Tales
The inverse fire.
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Callan S. ---I'm not sure, is the idea that the whole experience is faked?
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Curethan ---@ Callan.
I'm suggesting that the inverse fire actually rewrites the neural wiring of those who veiw it, rather than provoking such a dramatic an almost instantaneous shift in attitude, empathy and belief by revealing some deeper understanding of the ultimate fate of one's soul.
It seems reasonable to speculate that the inchies developed the inverse fire in order to remove their compassion, and experiencing the fact of their (now inevitable) impending damnation was an unexpected side-effect that then prompted their interstellar quest to avoid their (now inevitable) damnation.
Or perhaps they opened a door to the uber ciphrang in the outside directly into their minds or something.
Either way, I don't think the experience is faked per se - but I do think it's not a genuine revelation that need apply to all sorcerers.
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Madness ---I am going to move it Curethan. Follow me ;).
--- Quote ---How could the man [Titirga] know? Even with his rumoured Grace.
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--- Quote ---A rasp like the screams of faraway children tangled in the wind. Inchoroi laughter. “You are already damned. All of you are already damned.“
“So say you.”
A deep chested rumble. Popping mucous. “So says the Inverse Fire.”
A flush of horror. Shaeönanra tensed against the sudden loosening in his bowel, not quite believing that the Inchoroi had dared name it aloud. Xir’kirimakra. The Inverse Fire. For a heartbeat he found his Voice divided between mere fear and what mattered. What? Did Aurang seek to seduce the Sohonc Archideme? Could he not see that Titirga was not one to suffer rivals, that Shaeönanra himself would be doomed were he to embrace their Holy Consult?
But these were vain questions. They fell away as quickly as Onkhis offered them up, so flimsy were the concerns that moved them. All that mattered, the Ground’s only consequential thing, was what he had seen…
Damnation.
Experience shredded into a thousand strings, each clawed and burned and burned, sucked like bottomless bones. Agony. Anguish. Horror. Lament. Shame… Shrieking-thrashing-screaming through the throat of his every memory, innumerable and one, groaning-choking-vomiting, his every particle a unique agony, a bereavement, a weeping-howling-scratching out eyes that grew and grew to witness anew, while burning-blistering-breaking–
It defeated the tongue, the intellect, what he had seen. Nevertheless it was in him, every moment in him, if not at the centre of his care then beneath, a hole that endlessly gnawed at his gut…
A terror, so profound, so abiding–and, yes, pure–that all other fears guttered into nothingness for lack of air. A terror that was a gift… such was the peace and certainty that followed upon it.
--- End quote ---
My bolding. The first part of the quote is just interesting Grace, capital G. I honestly should take a reread through the False Sun and give it some philosophic rigour - it has got a bunch of golden nuggets in it.
Again, I'm not convinced, Curethan, that this extra time is necessary. There are two known instances, that I can think of, where the brain's structure changes drastically and permanently (as permanent as any topography the brain takes) - in cases of amputation and in certain developmental stages when a theorized mechanism or neurotransmitter allows for heightened efficiency of cortical neuroplasticity.
However, I don't think Bakker even needs those explanations.
I'm rereading and I feel your biggest gripe is the time constraints on conditioning - however, a theme of Shaeonanra's perspective is the immediate certainty he's garnered from the Inverse Fire. He and Titirga discuss the changes in all the Mengaecca, how before they were the most licentious and treacherous of men and after seem welded by singular purpose and will.
I feel like many of the discomforts you have are the very threads being address by Bakker in the False Sun.
Also, I feel like we're all suffering Bakker Inversion Syndrome. We have to put the revelations of the False Sun in their proper place.
Firstly, the revelations of TFS are ours - not Earwa's. While the Inverse Fire is this interesting tidbit - a direct challenger to TJE for Judging the World - none of the characters we're following have had to deal with "Xir’kirimakra. The Inverse Fire."
Secondly, after all this time, I think many of us want and need the Consult to be Evil. Its easy for those of us who think so to deny this latest moral revelation and happily await Bakker's next Inversion. However, I think that we might end TUC with the ongoing assumption that the Inverse Fire is Truth.
Bakker did suggest that TFS spoilered events - and characters obviously - occurring at the end of TUC. Kellhus seeing the Inverse Fire and then unleashing Evil Dunyain?
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Madness ---*Moved due to spoilers from the False Sun*
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Callan S. ---
--- Quote from: Curethan ---Either way, I don't think the experience is faked per se - but I do think it's not a genuine revelation that need apply to all sorcerers.
--- End quote ---
But you think if all sorcerers were exposed to it, they would have this 'revelation'?
How can you have an ungenuine revelation? :twisted:
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