[Kosoter]

I just can't see Kellhus not finding a use for them. Any use. Even just tools or breeding stock. He clearly has need of things he can bonk successfully enough to make babies. He needs people who can manipulate others for him at a lower level when he's not around. He needs assassins. He needs spies. He needs guards (for important dudes). He needs people that can see skinspies. He needs sorcerers and being the Few seems to be genetic...so some surely must be good candidates. I just can't imagine him being so...unimaginative as to go in and kill everyone and blow everything up. Maybe he took the useful ones and destroyed the rest.

I definitely think he'd have gone back there at some point. It just doesn't make sense for him not to for any of the reasons I listed or more. He needs to make babies above all else and it's pretty hard for him...and there's far more mundane uses for some weaker Dunyain. He just needs to convince them he's totally awesome at the logos and they'd never even think to betray him. There's also a few characters here and there that might be Dunyain and acting out his will as it is.

That leaves me to believe the Consult found it and smashed it so Kellhus couldn't do it first. It wouldn't take much really. No matter how amazing Dunyain are at fighting or bullshitting, they can't really do much against even just a couple of sorcerers without chorae. If they even had any chorae somehow (killing invading sranc?), they'd probably be totally ignorant as to its use. I wouldn't rule out the Consult breaking a few of them and using them for their own games but still, I think they'd just wreck it if they found it. If not them then who? A raving Erratic that just happened to show up?

I think the scroll being opened hints at a very specific person finding it. If it was the Consult, they'd probably either take it with them, rape someone with it or both. Also if the Consult found the scroll, why'd they not let Wutteat out to cause some trouble for the Ordeal? They're gathering up yokes of sranc, why not have a badass zombie dragon? I don't think it could have been them. Why would Big Moe or Kellhus need the map anyway? Surely their memory is good enough to find the way home? If not, there's always magic or tracking skills to figure it out. Who else even knows about the library? Who else even knows about the Dunyain? I thought originally it could have been Cnaiür but I still think he died in the mansion way back when. If he was working with the Consult though...the above points come into play. He's the only person for me that isn't really the Consult but who even knows of the Dunyain. I just can't think of anyone else that makes sense. It could be the case has nothing to do with the destruction of the monastery. At this point I still think it's a random Erratic that felt like being a dick and there's nothing big and meaningful to it at all.

[EkyannusIII]

I just can't see Kellhus not finding a use for them. Any use. Even just tools or breeding stock. He clearly has need of things he can bonk successfully enough to make babies. He needs people who can manipulate others for him at a lower level when he's not around. He needs assassins. He needs spies. He needs guards (for important dudes). He needs people that can see skinspies. He needs sorcerers and being the Few seems to be genetic...so some surely must be good candidates. I just can't imagine him being so...unimaginative as to go in and kill everyone and blow everything up. Maybe he took the useful ones and destroyed the rest.

I think of Kellhus returning to Ishual in terms of his conversation with Papa Moe.  Kellhus knows that the Dunyain's positivistic/materialistic/deterministic outlook on life is factually wrong and reductionistic, and that the world runs on principles very different from those the Dunyian are comfortable with.  He also knows that per the baked in morality of Earwa the Dunyain are more or less damned.  And he knows that given the Conditioning the Dunyain will, once they find out about the Outside and all it implies, be forced to choose between reconciling themselves to becoming "more than Dunyain" as he has by the end of TTT, or siding with the Consult and attempting to close the world so as to master circumstance and free themselves from divine judgement. He also infers that many Dunyain, exemplified by Papa Moe, will not be willing to accept the degree to which Dunyanic philosophy is wrong, and that they will end up siding with the Consult. So Kellhus gives them a choice - join me or die; and the Dunyain have themselves a schism. The unreconstructed sect who refuse the new ways are destroyed so they can't strengthen the Consult; the Kellian sect come with him to the new empire and become highly placed spies and grandees in his empire.

Also, this part made me smile:

He needs assassins. He needs spies. He needs guards (for important dudes).

A Dunyain or even half-Dunyain guard would be perfect, precisely because their near peak strength and stamina would both make them highly effective at protecting their charges and highly effective at killing them if Kellhus decides they are no longer worth protecting. So they are guarding their assignments and Kellhus from their assignments, all at once.

[locke]

I still love the idea that in the second paragraph of TDTCB there is the line, "no furnace hearted dragon had torn down its gates" and that this was foreshadowing the fate of Ishual, torn down by the furnace hearted father of dragons himself.

[Madness]

...

As per the conversation with Moenghus, Kellhus thinks that Dunyain who do not have his... particular experiences, who remain Dunyain, will ultimately side with the Consult. Making them a threat.

So Kellhus gives them a choice - join me or die; and the Dunyain have themselves a schism. The unreconstructed sect who refuse the new ways are destroyed so they can't strengthen the Consult; the Kellian sect come with him to the new empire and become highly placed spies and grandees in his empire.

+1

Also, I know there is the "Doom, should you find me broken" inscription but isn't it most likely that the map-case broke in the crazy Quya/Wizard/Wracu battle that just went down?

I still love the idea that in the second paragraph of TDTCB there is the line, "no furnace hearted dragon had torn down its gates" and that this was foreshadowing the fate of Ishual, torn down by the furnace hearted father of dragons himself.

Wow. Thanks, lockesnow. I always love the idea that Achamian disturbing Wutteat led to the destruction of Ishual but that quote is truly prophetic.

[mrganondorf]

No way that the map is broken in the fight!  The break must mean something!

[Triskele]

Wow.  The idea that Wutteat destroyed it is hilarious. 

[Aural]

What if Kellhus implanted a fake map in the Coffers?

[Madness]

Wow.  The idea that Wutteat destroyed it is hilarious. 

+1 - truly awesome.

What if Kellhus implanted a fake map in the Coffers?

Could be...

[locke]

No way that the map is broken in the fight!  The break must mean something!

Ever do the puny minds of world born men seek to find meaning and patterns in all that transpires.


The map was opened recently, otherwise the parchment would not have survived long unsealed and unprotected from the elements.

[Madness]

Good call, lockesnow.

[mrganondorf]

No way that the map is broken in the fight!  The break must mean something!

Ever do the puny minds of world born men seek to find meaning and patterns in all that transpires.


The map was opened recently, otherwise the parchment would not have survived long unsealed and unprotected from the elements.

Ouch!  Time to double down--Locke is Bakker and he's trying to throw us off the trail!  The map is more meaningful than evar!!! 

[mrganondorf]

@ Kosoter - You got me thinking that Kellhus first priority, after getting warp power and wrapping up things in Shimeh (or before? no reason to think that the warp in Kyudea was his first) was to get back to Ishual and start bonking.

Twist in TUC is a dying Kayutas watching as what looks like a hoard of twins slam into the Consult ranks!

Really like your idea of taking "the useful ones."  I had thought that Kellhus would think a full-blooded dunyain too dangerous to keep around.  But if he rounded up defectives and babies, then denied them the training that he benefitted from, he could be sure that there powers would not match his own.

---------------------------------

@Nskoghar - I like the idea of a fake map, but what if it's like this--Moe or Kel planted a real map that would detail a specific approach.  That way the hidden watchers would recognize Akka and prepare the way.  Is he going into the most conditioned place ever?

---------------------------------

It would be cool if Bakker gives us a scene where the most badass Dunyain are simply swept away because they have no expertise in sorcery.  Would fit with Bakker blind-spot conceits.

[Wilshire]

Fake map is a solid idea, though that would mean Achamian didn't find Ishual at all and that he might still successfully complete his task. Considering how he has failed at literally everything so far, I think he found ruined Ishual. But your idea about following a specific path is plausible. No reason decimated Ishual isn't the final destination.

Wherever he is, it will probably be entirely conditioned.

[mrganondorf]

I had been thinking that the residual mark would tell Akka a lot about whoever attacked Ishual.  But if the whole thing was done with the psukhe/markless divine magic, the perpetrators could cover their tracks by having a gnostic/anagogic/quyan go over the whole thing once the job is done.

[Madness]

I had been thinking that the residual mark would tell Akka a lot about whoever attacked Ishual.  But if the whole thing was done with the psukhe/markless divine magic, the perpetrators could cover their tracks by having a gnostic/anagogic/quyan go over the whole thing once the job is done.

+1

It's interesting, I don't think this has been considered yet but Wilshire paraphrases Serwa as talking about some ruins destroyed by a strange mark. Maybe these are the same ruins? Maybe they are a pair of recent ruins? Too many possibilities!!!

Wherever he is, it will probably be entirely conditioned.

+1