Never had Seswatha suffered such a horror, diffuse enough to ignore moment by moment, but possessing a tidal profundity, as though all that he cherished lay exposed, not just to harm, but to some horrifically contrary truth. Intellectually he understood the why and the wherefore, even as his viscera quailed. They walked the pits of Min-Uroikas, a place where the Inchoroi, in their wickedness, had gnawed at boundaries between the world and the Outside for thousands of years. And now the howl of their damnation lay near...
This was a topos, a place where hard lines of reality had become shading. They could hear it in the cavernous echoes. Gibbering screams in the scrape of their steps. Groaning multitudes in the rattle of their coughs. Inhuman roaring in the ring of their voices. And they could see it, as though images had been stitched to their periphery. Many-jawed faces, snapping out of the black. Weeping children... Achamian lost count of the times he saw Nau-Cayûti abruptly whirl, trying to catch apparitions in the certainty of direct sight.
... Even their reflections, stretched grotesque across the surrounding walls and haloed with an unnatural nimbus of black.
-TTT
my bold.
Seems pretty clear, according to Akka's dreams at least.
A couple years later.
They ascended what Siqu called the Toir’inskiri, the Grave-with-no-bottom...
“The Iyisku...”
“They made this...”
“To be their...”
“Sssshurrogate world...”
The vast well that plumbed Golgotterath’s Northern Horn.
“Now... now...”
“It belongs to me...”
They climbed to the world’s most wicked summit, where none but the dead and the damned descended.
“The very...”
“Stronghold...”
“Of ssssalvation!”
This potentially makes Golgotteroth the oldest topos we know of.
Cil Aujis fell during the Apocalypse, and the Mengedda topos was created at it's conclusion.
A pit bent into a circle, the most perfect of the Conserving Forms...
Sounds like the horns create some kind of circuit so that Shae's platform seems to be ascending within a circular loop ... or a figure 8.
I like the idea of a travelling topos. Tend to think Wutteat is one based on his undead state.
Roll up for Kellhus' Carnies from Hell!
I thought that the Topoi were bound to the ground, to Earwa, and to the suffering of souled beings. I don't think the suffering of animals or sranc count towards the atrocity cap. The thousands of planets the Inchoroi visited may not have contributed much to the Arc being a topos, considering they probably didn't spend nearly as long at each one as they did Earwa (land, pew-pew the stone age inhabitants, boot up the IF, still damned, next planet, land...) and therefore didn't start much of their atrocities until Earwa.
Cil'Aujas was likely a topos thousands of years before the Inchoroi even landed. Time seems to be a defining characteristic here, and I think the Skin Eaters spending day after day in the dark compounded the effect of the topos. If the Menggeca Plains was a mountain labyrinth, I think the Holy War would have had a similar fate as the Skin Eaters, going mad under the ground.
The Mop being a topos is an interesting idea, but I think its too large an area without enough suffering to be a true one. I think its likely a different kind of Outside influence we are not fully aware of yet.
I guess its possible that the millions that died when the Arc crashed could have boosted the Inchoroi's initial numbers, and the pit of aborted souls certainly helped, but I'm still not sure how the Arc could "catch-up" to Cil'. However, I do believe that Golgotterath should be the worst Topos, so there must be something I've missed. We do know that the death of the No-God made a topos, and I imagine his creation probably had a similar effect.
Also, the IF might generate its own little topos field that bleeds into the rest of the world around it. This alone might have slowly transformed the Arc into a traveling Topos.
I do like the idea of the Arc being a traveling topos. If there are other ensouled beings on other planets, and if there has been a lot of suffering on the Arc at each planet, whether its from the natives of the inchoroi themselves, then the Arc could easily be the deepest topos, the topos bound to the ship as its "place". I don't think something like a moving army could be a topos, since its not tied to any one place.