That conversation between Akka and Wutteat--my first reaction was to assume everything Wutteat said was a lie, a consult set up, Wutteat is still bound to NG, just says he isn't because…I don't know, it will make Akka think it's not a set up.  There was all that ominous foreshadowing about the map's seal, something like "doom if you find me broken" and then Akka finds it broken in the rubble.

Was the container broken and none where the wiser?  Did Wutteat know and tell the consult?  Did Wutteat know and not tell the Consult?  Did the Dunyain break it ages ago and it's part of their long con?  If the map is a Dunyain plant, does that mean the whole of Ishual is a Dunyain front--as several others have said, they are really in Ishterbinth, Athrithau, the Ark, elsewhere entirely?

If the dragon is telling the truth, then the impression I had was that something exceptional had happened just to Wutteat between the first apocalypse and the conversation with Akka.  I have no idea what it would be.

The whole thing about chorae and dragons, I don't know, would there be a physical space limit for a single chorae?  A dragon would need a lot of them to be fully protected, this might put a strain on the chorae reserve?  No that doesn't sound likely, you would want those things protected if you could.

That Wutteat runs on sorcery seems odd to me since he seems to predate the Inchoroi's discovery of sorcery.  BUT maybe something special has happened to him.

Lovely fine and thin crackpot theory: Wutteat is a skinspy to the original inhabitents of some other planet.

And what's up with the Inchoroi's physical forms?  Two hands, two legs, single penis, head up top on a neck, torso.  Is all that human-like body stuff just playing to a convention or are the Inchoroi former nonmen come home, former humans, or what Earthlings will become?


How many Inchoroi does it take to screw in a light bulb?

1,000,002.  A billion to rape and murder countless worlds and 2 to summon the No-God extinguishing the need for light for eternity.

Will Wutteat's blindness give him any cool powers like the Cishaurim?

I like what Borric said about the NG, makes me think the saccophagus is perhaps a chorae cage more than anything else.  What would happen if you put a sorcerer in extreme and extremely anguishing proximity to chorae, but never so close that he/she died?  They could salt at a level that could be perpetuated indefinitely and the clash between the sorcery and chorae might do something neat?

Oooohhhh, what if the Consult discovered the psukhe ages ago?  That would explain why skinspies can see seswatha within…but they don't have souls…wait, how do we know they don't?  Is the evidence reliable?  Psukhe charged, ensouled skinpies wandering around thwarting everyone with layers of deception!  The skinspy-mandate guy was only skinspy with a *damned* soul.  Lordy, they got that poor dude to damn himself for their purposes!  I suppose the Mandate do the same.  Damn, whoever thought up the psukhe first is going to win because it might be the invisible hand operative all along.

This is all so random, hardly any of this goes here.  I will stop rambling now.

Side issue: I hope we get a reveal about either old Moe or Kellhus using a pervasive network of 'turned' skin spies, have been spying on Consult for ages.  I'm thinking Moe might be particularly adept for this since he had all the extra time and the markless sorcery-neuropuncture know how combo.

Could be a double feint!  Consult completely aware that their skin-spies have been infiltrated, use this info to feed Kellhus/Moe false intel.   

Those timelines seem so long, I'm wondering if there's been any infighting that would have slowed things.  We've been led to believe that the Consult are bound by a common fanaticism, but who knows?  Dunyain are Mekeritrig's pet project to revenge his people on the Consult!

Side-note:

But Serwa's Womb is the topic of interest... Kellhus is basically sending the Nonmen their best chance to interbreed.

WOW.


sorweel won't like that

Don't know if the is the right place, it's not about what the NG is, but how you get one.  I'm wondering if the only way to get a NG is to have lots of fresh corpses.  So the first ordeal actually enabled the NG and the new ordeal will do the same.  Kellhus is in the meat delivery business.  Problem: what would stop the consult from just harvesting humans for the last 2000 years.  I don't know, maybe they don't know that this is the secret ingredient (and Kellhus does) or maybe not just any souls will do?

I have wondered if this is an area that Bakker will never really map out.  I think he's said something about the 'caprice of the outside' ... let's see:

"The caprice of the Outside (where the distinction between subject and object is never clear) is such that those rare souls who walk its ways and return never seem to agree on the nature of what they have seen. Since only demonic (as opposed to angelic) Ciphrang can be summoned and trapped in the World, practitioners of the Daimos can never trust the reports they receive: the so-called Damnation Archives in the Scarlet Spires are rumoured to be filled with wild contradictions. The Damned themselves only know that they are damned, and never why."

http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2011/07/r-scott-bakker-interview-part-2.html

Part of me thinks that he's not going to map a lot of the outside because it functions for Earwe the way the map does: not global just enough land and sea to situate a continent inside a nice square.

I wonder if Sacarees is only temporarily ostracized, has to sit in the corner and wear the dunce hat for a couple of days.  It would be neat if Kellhus new something about the Nilnameshi school that required their destruction at whatever the cost to the Mandate.  Unlikely but could be neat.