[NronFisher]

The Inchoroi's main goal is to metaphysically seal off the world from the Outside, which works as a great literary device as and as a philosophical idea of splitting the objective from the subjective totally. But does their aim truly make sense? I mean, yes they are damned, but they are also immortal, and apparently they don't suffer the same madness of immortality that afflicts the Non-Men. So why not just devote all their efforts to creating an impregnable fortress and living forever? I'm just saying, a lot of Inchoroi are now suffering eternally because they picked a fight with the Non-Men, when no Non-Man magic was ever capable of breaching the Ark.

[SmilerLoki]

The Inchoroi's main goal is to metaphysically seal off the world from the Outside, which works as a great literary device as and as a philosophical idea of splitting the objective from the subjective totally. But does their aim truly make sense? I mean, yes they are damned, but they are also immortal, and apparently they don't suffer the same madness of immortality that afflicts the Non-Men. So why not just devote all their efforts to creating an impregnable fortress and living forever? I'm just saying, a lot of Inchoroi are now suffering eternally because they picked a fight with the Non-Men, when no Non-Man magic was ever capable of breaching the Ark.

My way of thinking about it goes like this: yes, you can live infinitely, but infinite time means infinite possibilities, and one of those possibilities is you dying. It only needs to happen once, and, as far as it's stated in the books, there is no possibility of escaping the eternity in Hell after you get there. Unlike dying somewhere along the lines of infinity, escaping from Hell just isn't possible. So, at some point in your infinite life you die (it is inevitable, since infinity holds all possibilities as already realized), go to Hell, and stay there, period.

What the Inchoroi are trying to do is ruling out that very possibility by excluding it from reality, i.e. shutting the world. Then their infinite lives don't hold in them the inevitability of dying and suffering eternal torment. It is excluded from the realm of the possible, thus saving their souls for certain.

The problem is, it's a fairly convoluted explanation. But, again, this is a convoluted series.

[H]

As SmilerLoki says, there was always the possibility of some kind of accidental death.  This could be insulated, but the cost would nearly be a sort of damnation in and of itself, meaning that life can almost not be lived at all.  Even if they sealed off the Ark, presumably they'd need some sort of supplies, presumably the Ark being not 100% functional cannot provide food forever.  So, there would still need to be some sort of resources acquisition process.

Recall though, that Sil, having organized the Inchoroi in the chaos after the fall (and presumable death or mortal wounding of Ark itself) figured that this would just be another episode of the same game they had played out on countless other worlds.  No one and nothing had ever stood up to the Inchoroi before, why would they believe after a millennia or more, that something so unprecedented as sorcery might exist and not only that, but be so formidable?

It isn't really as if they had a choice, since there is a good chance that the Ark itself ran the 144k system prior to the being relegated to the Sarcophagus.  So, population reduction was probably always objective number one.  Should they have been more cautious when exiting the Ark though?  Absolutely, yes, anything could be out there.  But impatience, hot-headedness, and numerous lifetimes of finding nothing that was ever a challenge meant that Sil was absolutely not prepared to deal with such a novel problem.

[SmilerLoki]

Oh, it's also worth noting that the Inchoroi we meet as readers are a weapon race in their own right, made specifically for the purpose of shutting the world off (which would, presumably, benefit their makers). So their being zealous is by design.

[Simas Polchias]

Crackpot time.

Do we actually know for a fact that "world" is a synonym for all reality and not just the stellar body? There could be numerous worlds already shut and numerous "crusader arcs" bringing salvation to the rest of the universe. It's just this one arc had a crash story, so it's highest weapon race is totally wrong about history of the shutting endeavour -- shutting was successfull all along and Earwa is a botched land, not promised one.

[Wilshire]

Not a bad idea actually. It actually makes sense for the Inchoroi and the Ark to not be one of a kind, but rather one of a continuous production.

False memories seem something trivial for the Proginators to implant, so it could be that Earwa inchoroi are no so old as they think.

That said, I don't think it fits into the story well that other words could be shut. If that were the case, the Proginators wouldn't continue the mission, would they? Or perhaps they are scouring the universe for all places like Earwa where the Outside can be reached, and are slowing colonizing the closed worlds behind their Inchoroi armadas.

[natanaj]

The Inchoroi's main goal is to metaphysically seal off the world from the Outside, which works as a great literary device as and as a philosophical idea of splitting the objective from the subjective totally. But does their aim truly make sense? I mean, yes they are damned, but they are also immortal, and apparently they don't suffer the same madness of immortality that afflicts the Non-Men. So why not just devote all their efforts to creating an impregnable fortress and living forever? I'm just saying, a lot of Inchoroi are now suffering eternally because they picked a fight with the Non-Men, when no Non-Man magic was ever capable of breaching the Ark.

What does splitting the objective from the subjective mean?

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[TaoHorror]

The Inchoroi's main goal is to metaphysically seal off the world from the Outside, which works as a great literary device as and as a philosophical idea of splitting the objective from the subjective totally. But does their aim truly make sense? I mean, yes they are damned, but they are also immortal, and apparently they don't suffer the same madness of immortality that afflicts the Non-Men. So why not just devote all their efforts to creating an impregnable fortress and living forever? I'm just saying, a lot of Inchoroi are now suffering eternally because they picked a fight with the Non-Men, when no Non-Man magic was ever capable of breaching the Ark.

What does splitting the objective from the subjective mean?

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Eliminating "meaning" from the world - this is, to exist without gods. If there's no afterlife, if the show does not go on after death - then you're just here as a fact in and of itself, there is nothing more ( no meaning to life other than what you see is all you get ). At least I think that's what it means 

[Simas Polchias]

Or perhaps they are scouring the universe for all places like Earwa where the Outside can be reached, and are slowing colonizing the closed worlds behind their Inchoroi armadas.

This.

My guess was about other planets of Bakkerverse can form topoi or be subject to anti-topoi measures (which is technically approaching to the Outside / distancing from the Outside, opening the World / shutting the World). But they have no sorcery. You will have to shut these world manually one by one and hope one day you will find or research some new, more efficient, universe-wide method. Inchoroi were lucky to find sorcery, gnosis  and Shaeönanra, lol.

Assumption is. Sorcery is an "intelligence within intelligence", a rule-breaker. There is mostly empty space in the universe. Sometime there are stars. Even less, there are planets. Life is ever more rare thing. Intelligence? Much more rare. Intelligence capable of sorcery? Maybe the rarest thing possible.

Without sorcery you can create topos-wide planet by torturing it's intelligent population. Without sorcery you can shut the said world through forced evolution (torture is about pain, pain is about experience of tissue trauma, science can destroy the very existence of torure, including psychical one -- nonmen innoculation seems like a botched attempt of it).
But it's just a local event. After making the numerous population, ahem, into 144000 post-specie creatures, you are safe on the shut world. Gods won't recognize it or you anymore. It's better than to just count on your immortality and never dying, but it's still a procrastination. Contitents will migrate, supervulcanos will awaken, stars will grow and devour a whole planet. One day you will have to pack your tekne and find youself a new world, starting the cycle again.

With sorcery you can completely change the field and the rules of this game. So to say, you can gouge out eyes of gods instead of acting stealthy in front of them. Go full assault instead of hiding.

TL;DR Earwa is a final, non-procrastination solution to the Outside problem.

[Wilshire]

Simas Polchias, I like it. Can't think of anything that contradicts that explicitly. Its especially important, I think, that topoi are created without sorcery of any kind.  You can apparently create very nearly a tear into the outside with what amounts to sticks and stones (endless millennium of mundane torture).

[TaoHorror]

Wow, Simas - that is awesome - I dig it, makes sense. Just need to figure out what makes the few the few, would take it no god would allow that genetic variation/mutation to occur, unless it is the string that pulls ( Bakker saying god generated reality could not possibly be perfect, there is some error somewhere ... ).

[Simas Polchias]

Simas Polchias, I like it. Can't think of anything that contradicts that explicitly.

Thank you, Wilshire! I've already done that, lol. The weakest link of such theory is book-proofed but still scarce information about topos/tortute relation. All explanation I could imagine is gods are fond of torture in their world and they are attracted by mass torture in the world of living. With a considerable stretch, a place without suffering would be hidden from their attention or the last one in line to check? Maybe, if you die there, you will have Oblivion like nonmen did.

You can apparently create very nearly a tear into the outside with what amounts to sticks and stones (endless millennium of mundane torture).

I. Just. Can. Not. Resist.



Next time I'm making a joke about tyranids running from duniyains, slap me.

Wow, Simas - that is awesome - I dig it, makes sense. Just need to figure out what makes the few the few, would take it no god would allow that genetic variation/mutation to occur, unless it is the string that pulls ( Bakker saying god generated reality could not possibly be perfect, there is some error somewhere ... ).

Thank you! My bet is on exposure to the Outside, you know, like a "fantazy evolution" scenario.

There is theory about human ancestors had a weakening mutation of jaw muscles, which were not unlike gorillas before that. There were other factors constibuting to brain's growth and complication of it's higher function, of course, but powerful muscles spanning from jaws to occiput/crown were clenching the skull and limiting it size in the very beginning. Presumable mutation came from natural radiation like meteorite or african uranium deposits, made a lot of hominids into poor chewers, but gave their long descendants a chance to stack intelligence through different means and processes.

The Ouside is a phenomenon out of time and space, which sounds like a possible evolution frontier for creatures who flow linearly in time, have to navigate the space with primitive appendages/machines, are easily damaged by spatial variations (no air you die, magma around you die, no amynoacids around you die etc).

The guess is — if intelligent creatures, who are still limited by the "natural" world, came in contact with the "supernatural" world, they undergo a process not unlike those irratiated hominids. Something breaks, something appears. The Outside stacks in them and in their progeny to the point when their long-long descendants will be capable to affect natural world with methods highly-unburdened by time, causality etc. With sorcery, I mean.

That may explain the hatred from (some?) gods towards sorcerors. I recon most of people will hate the idea of cultivated or wild plants becoming sentient, it just won't fit into their established image of evolution.

[Wilshire]

I recon most of people will hate the idea of cultivated or wild plants becoming sentient, it just won't fit into their established image of evolution.

And yet, there are recent forays into the area of animal, and even plant, sentience.

[Simas Polchias]

And yet, there are recent forays into the area of animal, and even plant, sentience.

It's all fun and games untill they stand roughly eight feet tall and have the appearance of a huge, oval-shaped barrel with starfish-like appendages at both end.

[natanaj]

And yet, there are recent forays into the area of animal, and even plant, sentience.

It's all fun and games untill they stand roughly eight feet tall and have the appearance of a huge, oval-shaped barrel with starfish-like appendages at both end.

Fkin elder things

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