[What Came Before]

Why do the Nonmen have a religion based on worshiping the empty spaces between the Gods? What drove them in this cultural direction? (And why do they seek a state of nothingness after death, rather than aiming for paradise?)

The Nonmen generally seem to have a thing for absences and emptiness - they invented stuff like Aporetic sorcery (canceling out the meaning of other sorcery), for example.

Plz speculate.

[What Came Before]

Well we kind of know that the 100 gods are big ciphrang, or some such similar thing. The Nonmen dont, or have no reason to, have the same religious views as the tribes that came over from eanna, but they do have some first hand knowledge of the outside that may have lead them down a similar path.

It could have been the nonmen dabbling in the diamos. They gained some insight into the so called gods, realized that they where all damned to some kind of eternal misery, and that "paradise" was an empty promise. The only way to be saved was to seek oblivious.

[What Came Before]

I wonder if they were always that way?

Anyway, it seems they stick to their values/guns so much, they would rather enter oblivion than worship a drugged up landscape as paradise or genuine. Never mind the line 'I've heard the howls of the damned and the shrieks of ecstacy of the saved, and I swear to you brother, they sound the same!'

[What Came Before]

I'll riff.

Seems to me like souls are holes in objective reality, bordered by the boundaries of skin.  The bit in TTT where Cnaiur muses over what Akka told him about madness (divine and profane) really resonates with what I understand of nonmen beliefs.
Assume that there are holes in subjective reality, then finding the absence in the outside where your soul belongs (because it is in the objective world whilst you're alive...) might be the idea - and you can't do that without avoiding the interest of the various outside agencies. 
So oblivion becomes a little self contained reality made from your meanings - morality and experience.

[What Came Before]

Is it worth pointing out the etymological link between 'Oblivion' and what happens to Erratics? Oblivion is forgetting. If an Erratic got to the point that he couldn't even remember traumatic events any more, would he escape Damnation and find true Oblivion?

I also wonder about whether this obsession with seeking Oblivion predates the coming of the Inchoroi? Did the Nonmen already suspect some sort of unpleasant afterlife from their sorcerous investigations (summoned Ciphrang are quite gleefully open about what horrible things they're going to do to their summoner once he's safely inhumed), or did they only take it seriously once the Inchies showed up with the Inverse Fire?

Hmm... Kellhus' conversation with Nin'sariccas implies that the Nonmen of Ishterebinth, at least, believe that their worshipping of the spaces between the Gods is the cause of their damnation (and also seem to genuinely buy into the 'False Men' lie the Inchies inserted into the Tusk).

[What Came Before]

Jeez, a hole looking for the place where it's supposed to be absent? Whoa, bit zen for me!

Reminds me of the idea of 'fruitful voids' in RPGs: http://lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=119

[What Came Before]

Reminds me of the idea of 'fruitful voids' in RPGs: http://lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=119

Hey, that diagram looks like a pit bent into a circle of ever-falling souls...

[What Came Before]

So far, incompatible narratives include:

Sorcerers are Damned (Tusk) vs. Sorcerers are Saved (Kellhus) - The Nonmen also corroborate sorcerers are damned. They taught humans how to seek Oblivion. Damnation, Redemption, or Oblivion. The Inchoroi corroborate Damnation for all, though they've traditionally seduced those who already think themselves Damned.

Nonmen are False (Tusk) vs. Nonmen are... X (Not-Tusk) - since the Damnation of sorcerers has been an overarching theme, I think Bakker is set to explore the tenet of Nonmen Damnation - especially, at least, for this one, we know its actually (Not-Tusk).

Nin'sariccas is lying to Kellhus. Kellhus knows this and doesn't care, he's planned past the initial interactions with the Nonmen. Perhaps, Achamian reaching Ishual shortly after Serwa, Moenghus, and Sorweel because he's supposed to help them is part of Kellhus Clockwork Earwa.

What if Mimara sees an Ishroi, not Quya, with the Judging Eye and he is Righteous?!

Belief in Damnation and Oblivion pre-Inchoroi vs. Post-Inchoroi - I'd hazard that the Nonmen knew of the Outside from Topoi and learning not to harness "agencies". They likely knew of Damnation specifically from set "agencies" and the moral degradation that sinks the world into the hellish outside.

We're learning that Ciphrang can substitute themselves for souls - making themselves powerful avatars in the world. Is this what happened to Su'jiroit (sp?) the Witch-King? Or is this why Nonmen stopped toying with the Gnostic Daimos?

Achamian speaks of Nonmen Mystery Schools and how Cleric's expressions of belief don't jive with whatever Achamian knows of Ancient Nonmen practice, which regardless, are already influenced by the Womb-Plague. This, of course, fuels my Dunyain-Conditioned Ishterebinth.

What if Kellhus found a sorcerous means to travel through time?

EDIT: Sorry, I hate adding to posts like this but I experience dissonance double posting, o.O?

Anyhow, Auriga, to try for your original question, I've always had this hypothesis that the Gods as we know them, didn't exist when the Nonmen were their own, functioning, civilization.

Perhaps, it takes consciousness, the development of an abstraction in the world, to the point that it is the most advanced abstraction and thus, space is yielded in the Outside.... (which, ironically, is my thought on Plato, Auriga, mundane world vs. world of Form).

The Nonmen, in teasing apart the metaphysics of everything, invent, create the Kiunnat deities? Sejenus shapes the God-of-Gods, Fane the God-that-is-Solitary?

[mrganondorf]

@ Duskweaver

Is it worth pointing out the etymological link between 'Oblivion' and what happens to Erratics? Oblivion is forgetting. If an Erratic got to the point that he couldn't even remember traumatic events any more, would he escape Damnation and find true Oblivion?

This is really strange.  Combine what you said with the way ciphrang are supposed to feast on souls forever, I guess they would do that by forcing you to remember/relive your misdeeds in life.  So Hell is remembering bad shit, maybe there's a Heaven where you only remember the good bits, and maybe you can just aim for eternal slumber.

Perhaps the nonmen are forgetting that they're not supposed to remember, failing to remember that they really wanted to forget it all. 

It's neet the parallel between the Nonmen seeking spiritual void and the Inchoroi traversing physical void.  Are there no voids left for the humans???

The sought after void = the darkness that comes before? the puppeteer's place?

@ Madness - I would bet that the nonmen had some idea of their spiritual state before the Ark fall.  If there was a time when gods walked the world with humans, maybe the nonmen had a similar experience.  Maybe they had a falling out and that's what got them damned!  The absence of a nonman creation myth/fall from eden loomz.

[Aural]

In the scene where Kellhus meets Ninsarricas the emissary of Ishterebinth. Nin says that they worship the places between the stars and Kellhus responds that that's why they are damned as False Men. We know from Bakker's interview that the whole "false men" stuff is an Inchoroi invention designed to goad the five tribes into killing the Nonmen.

But what if that exchange is actually the truth? The reason the Inchoroi came to Earwa and started the war of extermination is that the Nonmen worshiped the places between the stars? In other words, the damnation of the Inchoroi is related to that practice.

[Wilshire]

Not really sure what you're driving at there. How could they be related?

[Cüréthañ]

Spaces between the gods can be construed as emptiness.
In TJE, Incariol describes how creating empty space deep in the Earth is 'holy'.
The Ground provides the distorted afterlife/reality that exists outside.
Perhaps the nonmen attempted to create emptiness/oblivion in the outside with their subterranean mansions and instead invited void/damnation.

Inchoroi - "People of Emptiness" (Ihrimsû)
The Inchoroi descended from the void.  Moenghus describes their two near victories as the void rising up from Golgoteroth.