Sumna is part of the Nansurium...

*goes to check PON wikia*

There's Proyas line in WLW about old vices become new virtues; "Women now had equal standing as men, sorcerers were now priests."  Maybe Esmi could be a female Shriah.  Why not?

Or, Psatma and the Yatwerians get a pro-cultic Shriah elected.  Just another thing to fuck over the New Empire that Esmi has to deal with.

I really don't quote actually phrases from the text.. I have memorized a few of the epigraphs and aphorisms that I sometimes pepper into conversations to sound smarter than I am.   "The shape of virtue is inked in obscenity" may have been fortuitously planted in a term paper on Kurosawa's Throne of Blood 

*Picks jaw off of the floor*

This isn't actually my theory.  My mother pitched this one to me.

Mekeretrig is 100% sane from having found a loophole out of the post-immortal mind degeneration.  He basically fakes the behavior of an erratic so no one knows.  And fakes his absurd power level as well.

Rationale:  The inverse fire completely and utterly reveals the truth of one's damnation.  After his exposure to the IF, the existential horror and trauma of this act tainted and brutalized every memory of his life.  Even the banal and happy memories became trauma, with the knowledge that comes from all of it being meaningless from damnation.  So he remembers everything... because all of his memory is fundamentally suffering now.

BUT, instead of just normal memory, he is basically Disciple Manning.  He remembers EVERYTHING with supernatural clarity.  This enhanced level of cognition means that Mek has had millennia of time to utilized his enhanced mental function to hone his Quya craft to reach Meta-Quya levels.
 
Cue Mekeretrig/Kellhus Meta-super-Gnostic battle to end all battles in Earwa

*drops the mic*

Yeah, I concur with Cüréthañ and call bullshit on lack of selflessness too.  But, I think you were kind of misinterpreting what I was saying locke.  Fanayal ceding authority to Skaurus for the campaign in Gedea and Shigek is less about selflessness, but much more about "following the shortest past."  Doing what is pragmatic to preserve the nation of Kian, sovereignty of the Solitary God, such and such, etc. etc.

 And because I'm an asshole  " Men, Kellhus had once told her, were like coins: they had two sides. Where one side of them saw, the other side of them was seen" So I ask you locke, who do you think was manipulating Fanayal?  And why do you think he gave command of the Shigek campaign to Skaurus?

I think Madness has articulated this somewhere, that the difficult task of getting a solid read on a set perspective of this series is the Curse of Knowledge that the reader is afflicted with.  How can we empathize or understand what motivates these characters when we ourselves have a such a profoundly totality of understanding that belies compassion?  We are like the Hundred Gods in that sense.  We apprehend the whole, but we are blind in so many other ways.  Anyway, I thought it was funny that Cüréthañ brought up AE as being the bleaker series that lacks selflessness, when for 99.9% of The Great Ordeal it is probably the most self-sacrificing thing they have ever done.  One of the most iconic images of the series, for me, is when Kellhus gives his speech to the Ordeal right before they leave Sakarpus and cross the threshold into the Ancient North.  I'm paraphrasing, but he says something like "There will be blood, there will be sacrifice for you the chosen.  You who have taken up the yoke up the apocalypse.  Verily, you may lose your very lives.  But knows this, though you may die, you will save the world." Spoken without any irony.  Now, since we know Kellhus is Kellhus we suspect everything he says.  But for The Great Ordeal, this is Aragorn marching on the Gates of the Morannon, this is the final battle against the Legions of Mordor and such.  In their minds, there is nothing more selfless, this is the most important thing they've ever done in their lives.  But we as the readers are cursed with knowing the truth!  *shakes fists at the heavens*

I was re-reading WLW last week.  And it struck me that Mimara opening The Judging Eye, and her descriptions of the Scalpoi therein, is very evocative of the Wraith-world that exists in Middle-Earth.  Which makes The Judging Eye... The One Ring?

Also, this has nothing to do with Tolkien, but I noticed that a member of House Biaxi dies in every volume of PON.  But none die in The Aspect-Emperor.  So... I predict that three Biaxis are going to die in TUC. 

Revelations!