[Wilshire]

Welcome to the forum, though since you're well aware of Omindalea, I assume you're not new .

Elsewhere (meaning somewhere out of the text), Bakker mentioned that the thing that was most important was that they psycology - the mind - of the person that could power the No-God would match, in some way, the original insertant.

Anyway, I think there is then an implied similarity between NC and Kelmomas - though what that is I'm not entirely sure.

Good point with the Y chromosomes though. In general there are many quasi-cannon explanations for what make the Anasurimbor special, and hybridization of them with the Nonman is the most compelling - at least for me.

Aside, I remain very irritated that Rape of Omindalea didn't make its own entry into TUC Glossary.

[Madness]

Also, hi!

Welcome to the Second Apocalypse, White Devil. I'm glad you found your way .

[Bolivar]

The carpace doesn't need a body, the Consult only knew that it needs a soul. My crackpot is that the No-God is Samarmus.

When the twins were separated, it seems both souls entered Kelmomas' body, leaving Samarmus a shell. The voice is confirmed to be Samarmus and, as amoral as Kelmomas is, I believe Samarmus is the actually evil one compelling him to kill people. After Samarmus the boy is pushed, the voice expresses that he wished he was killed much earlier than that. There's something sinister about eagerness to kill his former body, the hatred of wanting to see your physical form killed.

When Inrilatas talks with Kelmomas in WLW, he's Whelming him. He brings out Samarmus, who is the one who admits he would stack the screams of this world to the sky if he could. It was that passage that suggested to me that Kelmomas could be the No-God and with Kellhus saying in TUC that the two souls intermittently exchange the one acting and thinking, that also makes me think the monster is Samarmus. I'm not sure if he's inherently irredeemable, maybe he just went insane from inhabiting someone else's body while they're also thinking and conversing with you.

The gods can't see him because the Absolute is collapsing subject and object - the gods see a body and they see his souls. It's understandable why they wouldn't take notice that there's a second soul inside of him.

IMO this would be a nice way to pull the different plot threads together, the second voice inside of his head and his ultimate placement into the sarcophagus.

[Wilshire]

IMO this would be a nice way to pull the different plot threads together, the second voice inside of his head and his ultimate placement into the sarcophagus.

I do quite like that. It helps things fit together properly.
I'm wondering if you can reconcile NC with Kelmomas though. Was NC a twin? A psychopathic mass murderer? I just ask because in order for everything to really click those two need to be similar in some way since they both started up the NG for some particular reason.

[TaoHorror]

IMO this would be a nice way to pull the different plot threads together, the second voice inside of his head and his ultimate placement into the sarcophagus.

I do quite like that. It helps things fit together properly.
I'm wondering if you can reconcile NC with Kelmomas though. Was NC a twin? A psychopathic mass murderer? I just ask because in order for everything to really click those two need to be similar in some way since they both started up the NG for some particular reason.

To be fair, do we know enough about NC to say anything about him? Just some stuff from dreams, I believe. Could be the psychology of Kel/Sel isn't the only stuff to make the thing work ( could be some variations of that ).

[Wilshire]

We don't know a whole lot about him, and even some of what we think we know is intentional misdirection (NC Seswatha's Son, for one).
And yeah, could be any number of things, I would just like something concrete to back up Bakker's comment out of text (which I dislike relying on).

[Madness]

It's also Celmomas who was rumoured to have a dead twin whose voice haunted him, not Nau-Cayuti.

[Wilshire]

It's also Celmomas who was rumoured to have a dead twin whose voice haunted him, not Nau-Cayuti.

Sigh. I knew this, though maybe I missed NC though. Alas.

[Madness]

Lol, I wasn't necessarily responding to you. I've seen a number of people wrongly attribute Celmomas' affliction to Nau-Cayuti.

[TaoHorror]

Lol, I wasn't necessarily responding to you. I've seen a number of people wrongly attribute Celmomas' affliction to Nau-Cayuti.

This is such a clear similarity to Kel/Sel, makes me suspicious it's relevant to NC being TNG ( like however we know this is from a false source and NC is the one with the dead twin, Cel and NC are the same person ... have no idea, but this is just too similar to not be important ).

[ThoughtsOfThelli]

There's actually something genetically unique about the Anasûrimbor - their Y-chromesome isn't of human origin, but rather of Nonman origin.

So the Consult tried thousands, and eventually hit paydirt with Nau-Cayuti.

Thousands of years later the Dunsult realizes - "hey, maybe for whatever reason, what made the No-God function was because Nau-Cayuti was a human with the Y-chromosome of a Nonman Siqû. Let's try one of those again!"

Queue Kelmomas.

Fertile male hybrids are exceedingly rare in nature too. That's why non-African humans have 0 Neanderthal Y-chromosomes even though Neanderthal DNA occupies a good 1-2% of the rest of our genomes. The Anasûrimbor may be the only case of fertile human/Nonman hybrids.

From the curated sayings post:

820 - The Rape of Omindalea. Jiricet, a Nonman Siqû to the God-King Nincarû-Telesser II (787-828), rapes Omindalea (808-825), first daughter of Sanna-Neorjë (772-858) of the house of Anasûrimbor in 824, and then flees to Ishterebinth. When Nil’giccas refuses to return Jiricet to Ûmerau, Nicarû-Telesser II expels all Nonmen from the Ûmeri Empire.

Omindalea conceives by the union and dies bearing Anasûrimbor Sanna-Jephera (825-1032), called ‘Twoheart.’ After a house-slave conceives by him, Sanna-Jephera is adopted by Sanna-Neorjë as his heir.

I really like this theory, but I have to be the annoying person here and point out that Bakker specifically said in the AMA that inserting Inrilatas in the Carapace wouldn't have worked. So that kind of disproves the Nonman Y-chromosome thing, Inrilatas being Kelmomas/Samarmas' full brother and all. (Unless it's the Y-chromosome plus some other Nonman gene(s) in another chromosome(s) that do the trick?)

[MSJ]

It was Kelmommas because it was always Kelmommas. That which comes after determines what comes before. There is no logic you can place on it. He just was always the No-God.

[Wilshire]

There's actually something genetically unique about the Anasûrimbor - their Y-chromesome isn't of human origin, but rather of Nonman origin.

So the Consult tried thousands, and eventually hit paydirt with Nau-Cayuti.

Thousands of years later the Dunsult realizes - "hey, maybe for whatever reason, what made the No-God function was because Nau-Cayuti was a human with the Y-chromosome of a Nonman Siqû. Let's try one of those again!"

Queue Kelmomas.

Fertile male hybrids are exceedingly rare in nature too. That's why non-African humans have 0 Neanderthal Y-chromosomes even though Neanderthal DNA occupies a good 1-2% of the rest of our genomes. The Anasûrimbor may be the only case of fertile human/Nonman hybrids.

From the curated sayings post:

820 - The Rape of Omindalea. Jiricet, a Nonman Siqû to the God-King Nincarû-Telesser II (787-828), rapes Omindalea (808-825), first daughter of Sanna-Neorjë (772-858) of the house of Anasûrimbor in 824, and then flees to Ishterebinth. When Nil’giccas refuses to return Jiricet to Ûmerau, Nicarû-Telesser II expels all Nonmen from the Ûmeri Empire.

Omindalea conceives by the union and dies bearing Anasûrimbor Sanna-Jephera (825-1032), called ‘Twoheart.’ After a house-slave conceives by him, Sanna-Jephera is adopted by Sanna-Neorjë as his heir.

I really like this theory, but I have to be the annoying person here and point out that Bakker specifically said in the AMA that inserting Inrilatas in the Carapace wouldn't have worked. So that kind of disproves the Nonman Y-chromosome thing, Inrilatas being Kelmomas/Samarmas' full brother and all. (Unless it's the Y-chromosome plus some other Nonman gene(s) in another chromosome(s) that do the trick?)

I think the whole genetic thing, while interesting, is tangential.

Bakker is a philosopher of the mind. The reason it was Kelmomas was something to do with his psychology. You might throw in "Soul" for good measure, because Earwa.

This is one of those things that has, unfortunately, most of its 'evidence' outside the text. I'm not sure there's a lot within the books - other than MSJ's above comment "it is because it was" outside stuff (and I find that dissatisfying). I also don't particularly like going outside the books to Bakker's recent post-text comments because so much of what he said can't be corroborated by in-text citation.

So any explanation is as good as any other. I'm somewhat satisfied by Bakker's "psychology matched the original insertant", but that itself isn't great either since we don't know who it was, or what parts of the psychology was important.