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Messages - profgrape

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346
General Earwa / Re: Cishaurim
« on: July 14, 2015, 06:53:15 pm »
Ah, gotcha!

In reading up on the Onta, I discovered that it's believed to be the secular analogue to animas, the "moving force of all existance, often analogized as the 'breath of God'". 

We (or maybe just I) don't know how the Onta relates to the physical world exactly.  But could be as simple as: Sorcery directly affects the physical world and in the process, damages the Onta whereas the Psuhke directly affects the Onta and thereby modifies the physical world in the "right" way.

347
General Earwa / Re: Cishaurim
« on: July 14, 2015, 04:04:28 pm »
Quote from: H on July 14, 2015, 12:57:30 pm
So, blindness gives you a better view of the Onta?  The Onta is the 'stuff of Divinity' and/or is Water?

Based on the RSB quote below (italics mine), it might be the opposite:

Quote
Practitioners of the Psukhe blind themselves to see through the what and grasp the how, the pure performative kernel of meaning...

Blindness allows practitioners to see through the Onta (the "what") and grasp the "how" (the Divine). 

348
General Earwa / Re: Cishaurim
« on: July 13, 2015, 08:45:17 pm »
Quote
Would square with serwe making kellhus divine.  And I love the idea that the water rinses away the mark.

And squares with the notion that the "rules" of Earwa are shaped by human beliefs.

349
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Kellhus: good or evil?
« on: July 12, 2015, 02:44:08 am »
Right FB -- not our actual world but a world whose metaphysics matches our own.

I'm not familiar with RSB's blind brain theory. But I do wonder if the underlying metaphors of the world of the third series will be based on it.

350
General Earwa / Re: Cishaurim
« on: July 10, 2015, 10:22:54 pm »
That's a really interesting inversion, H, conceiving Water as an abstraction for the source of all divinity.

When RSB described the Psukhe as being about impetus rather than representation, I interpreted it leveraging the intent behind natural forces.  Extending Acquinas' argument of the unmoved mover, it's God's thought that that causes his divine hand to set something in motion.

Imagine that Earwa is a vast sea of unrealized potentialities (reality seeds, if you will), the Water.  The impetus of Solitary God causes some to be realized as tangible forces (a gust of wind, for example).  But the rest lie dormant. 

It could be that the Psukhe allows practitioners to realize this otherwise dormant impetus.  And there is no mark because they're working "within the system" rather than forcibly changing the end result.

351
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Kellhus: good or evil?
« on: July 10, 2015, 07:32:12 pm »
Quote
Then the after series deals with what happens to Kellhus after?  I don't know, Madness told us we should be left with more questions than answers and that seems too cut and dry...
I guess that's why I think there has to be more to it than Earwa becoming like our world...


352
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Kellhus: good or evil?
« on: July 10, 2015, 02:55:33 pm »
In practical terms, does the absence of meaning essentially make Earwa like our world? 

353
General Earwa / Re: atrithau
« on: July 01, 2015, 03:49:56 pm »
Quote from: Wilshire on July 01, 2015, 12:10:44 pm
It could just be that Atrithau, just like every other human city, survives simply because the sranc have not be wielded en mass since the First Apocalypse. Sure they like to kill/eat/rape humans, but there isn't a big enough driver to band together and assault a fortress/city. At this point, if the Consult found some need to destroy a city, especially Atrithau, it probably could figure it out, but to what end? AFAIK, there is nothing interesting there, not even the Mandate proselytizing against the Consult on street corners. In the grand scheme, cities are nothing, especially when they are heavily infiltrated by skin-spies and the like.

I think this is pretty much the reason.  Sranc alone, even in numbers, aren't a good match against a walled city.  While they do seem to have the facility to craft basic arms, I couldn't imagine them mounting a siege without the help of Bashrag, Wracu or sorcery. 

Beyond that, since the FA, the Consult seems to have taken great pains to avoid a direct confrontation that might incite the world of Men to unite against them.  Their greatest weapon, on the other hand, seems to have been pitting Men against each other.

It's strange that the No-God let both Sakarpus (spared) and Atrithau (survived) stand during the FA.  And it seems like those cities' respective sorcery countermeasures must be involved somehow!


354
General Earwa / Re: The Womb-Plague (A new theory, perhaps?)
« on: June 25, 2015, 10:16:33 pm »
On a semi-related note, Cnaiur's mother was impregnated by Moenghus and gave birth to a daughter.  It's not mentioned whether the child was a mutant but the mother definitely survived... to get killed for her infidelity.

355
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Iëva [TUC Spoilers]
« on: May 19, 2015, 07:11:14 pm »
There's only one other mention of a a dispute between the Sagas and and Mandate scholars:

Quote
At the Battle of Skothera, the Sranc hordes are crushed by General En-Kaujalau, though he died of mysterious causes within weeks of this victory (according to The Sagas, he was another victim of Iëva and her poisons, but again this is disputed by Mandate scholars)

This seems like another case of embellishment on the part of The Sagas' authors, except in this case, it was to make Iëva seem even more villainous.  Again, the Mandate know better via the Dreams.

356
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Iëva [TUC Spoilers]
« on: May 01, 2015, 11:12:23 pm »
Good catch! 

While NC might have had more than one concubine, it would be really lame if the "filthy whore" Ieva refers to *isn't* Ausili.  So it makes sense that Ieva would trade her hated husband to the Consult in return for the means of avoiding the horrible consequences.

I'm not, however, convinced that it means she was rescued.  I always figured that the "disputes" were based on first-hand accounts from Seswatha's Dreams -- that's the only hidden knowledge the Mandate specifically would have. 

What if Ausili wasn't rescued but remained a prisoner of the Consult?  Then they offer Ieva not only the opportunity to kill her husband and avoid damnation, but also get to rub it in Ausili's face? 

Cold-blooded.

357
General Earwa / The Inverse Fire and Seswatha's Dreams
« on: May 01, 2015, 11:01:17 pm »
While re-reading part of TJE to find a reference for another post, I came across an interesting line from Akka where he explains to Mimara why Seswatha left the Mandata his dreams:

Quote
"...by suffering the First Apocalypse over and over, we had no choice but to war against the possibility of the Second."

Akka boils down the Dreams to a way to keep the troops in line.  A vision of something so terrible that you'd stop at nothing to prevent it.   Much like Inverse Fire.

It's an interesting irony that mortal enemies like the Consult and Mandate use such similar "mechanisms of control". 


358
General Earwa / Re: Your favorite character?
« on: April 24, 2015, 05:22:21 pm »
I've a certain fondness for Akka.  He is damaged and pitiable, yet capable of amazing things.  He's like taking a Gandalf/Allanon/Belgareth "guide" character and making them utterly, even consistently, fallible. 

359
General Earwa / Re: The Womb-Plague (A new theory, perhaps?)
« on: March 20, 2015, 03:11:20 am »
Ha!  Good point. Which makes me wonder when and from whom they first learned of sorcery. Would it have been from Nin?

360
General Earwa / Re: The Womb-Plague (A new theory, perhaps?)
« on: March 19, 2015, 11:08:01 pm »
It's unclear at what point did the Inchoroi realize they'd reached the Promised World.  So it could have been that they just went about their genocidal business-as-usual without realizing that the stakes had been raised.

I wonder if it wasn't until they encountered a Man (the criminal Sirwitta) that they realized they'd reached the promised land and changed their strategy.


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