[Alia]

And I'm just left wondering who Mimara's father was and how come he broke the shell's spell of infertility.

[Madness]

and modern Dunyain take longer to gestate than other Homo sapiens

+1 your post, The Sharmat. By the way, is this bit textual or something you're otherwise noting? Just curious if this results from an isolated population breeding over long periods of time?

And I'm just left wondering who Mimara's father was and how come he broke the shell's spell of infertility.

+1

[mrganondorf]

And I'm just left wondering who Mimara's father was and how come he broke the shell's spell of infertility.

WONDERFUL

Candidates: The God, a god, really was Akka, Moe?

[Alia]

Now, I'm not an evolutionary biologist, either. But I have a problem with the theory that dunyain have evolved to become a different species. It's not just that dunyain-human union does not produce viable offspring. It produces monstrosities and kills potential mothers in the process, as this quote from TJE shows:

But if his divine seed was a burden she could scarce bear, then it broke all the others. Of the seventeen concubines he impregnated, ten died in childbirth, and the others gave birth to more... nameless ones. Thirteen in sum, all drowned in wine.

So on the one hand we have a genetic difference so big that it produces a baby with eight arms and no eyes, but on the other, it does not preclude "normal" children (normal in that their bodies are fully human). Somehow it does not seem possible to me.
(No eyes, that's something I could accept as a genetic glitch, but eigth arms?)

@mrganondorf - not Akka, at one point he muses about Mimara's father and this is what he thinks:

For the first time, it seemed, he noticed how much lighter her skin was than his or her mother's. For the first time he wondered about her real father, about the twist of caprice that had seen her born, rather than aborted by Esmenet's whore-shell.

So it seems her father must've been a Norsirai.

[Wilshire]

Thanks Sharmat, thats the kind of input I was hoping for. Might I direct you to my thread regarding the initial size of the original Dunyain refugees? (http://second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=993.msg8304#msg8304) I've been fishing for a biologist for a while its got visual aids at the bottom.

[The Sharmat]

+1 your post, The Sharmat. By the way, is this bit textual or something you're otherwise noting? Just curious if this results from an isolated population breeding over long periods of time?

It's from the text. If I remember correctly, Esmenet said she'd carried most of them for around a year.

Somehow it does not seem possible to me.
(No eyes, that's something I could accept as a genetic glitch, but eigth arms?)

Duplication of whole limbs is a very easy mutation, actually. You see it a lot in nature. There are even a number of recorded instances of it occurring in humans, some very recent. A girl in India with 8 limbs a few years back was thought by some to be the avatar of a Hindu Goddess. Just copy some Hox genes somewhere during meiosis, and suddenly you get an extra arm. Or you switch something out, and you now have legs where the antennae are supposed to go.

I'm guessing what we're seeing here is a fairly nasty incompatibility in gene loci. It's not even so much that Kellhus' genome is hugely different than Esmenet's in content as it is the possibility that Kellhus doesn't keep genes in the same places she does, leading to hideous errors during crossover with crucial genes being duplicated or deleted. Hell, it's even possible the Dunyain ended up with a different number of chromosomes than Homo Sapiens (A similar event seems to have been a big part of generating Hominids from apes. One of our chromosomes appears to be two primate chromosomes that fused together). You can still produce offspring despite that, sometimes. Though they're almost certainly sterile. Do we know if any of Kellhus' children are fertile?

There's one other factor to consider though: Just how aberrant is Kellhus' success rate with Esmenet? To really judge how incompatible they are, we need to know how fertile Dunyain are when they mate with each other, as well. Maybe they have a great deal of rejects too, and it helps fill up their supply of "defectives". If that's the case, then some or all of the problem may just be inbreeding depression rather than something akin to speciation, albeit inbreeding depression so profound that even outbreeding with a very genetically distant individual still produces a lot of deformities.

Thanks Sharmat, thats the kind of input I was hoping for. Might I direct you to my thread regarding the initial size of the original Dunyain refugees? (http://second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=993.msg8304#msg8304) I've been fishing for a biologist for a while its got visual aids at the bottom.

I'll take a look.

[Alia]

Thanks for your clarification, it was very informative.

[Madness]

So I may or may not have started some fires at Westeros over the past couple days...

But in the flames following, I found that the commentary about birth and Yatwer insightful and needing to be considered in these conversations.

[mrganondorf]

So I may or may not have started some fires at Westeros over the past couple days...

But in the flames following, I found that the commentary about birth and Yatwer insightful and needing to be considered in these conversations.

Love it!  So did Yatwer cause the abominations, the twins, or both?  I'm hoping some of the 'things' are living in the Andiamine basement.  Maybe Kel meets them, becomes their ring leader, leads them to the light.  Now we got lil Kel mixed up with Ajokli AND Yatwer.  Kid's gonna need some therapy.

Crazypottheory: Aurang left a ticking time bomb in Esmi's mind.  At the crucial moment, she's going to see the Inverse Fire just as Aurang did.  Prolly same time Akka sees it.

[Madness]

The consensus was there, MG, that Yatwer started interfering with Esmenet's pregnancies when the abominations started, which probably correlates to when the Hundred turned against Kellhus. Then Kelmomas and Samarmas is an Ajokli intervention on Yatwer's decree.

Crazypottheory: Aurang left a ticking time bomb in Esmi's mind.  At the crucial moment, she's going to see the Inverse Fire just as Aurang did.  Prolly same time Akka sees it.

Amazing. This could be a thing.

[mrganondorf]

The consensus was there, MG, that Yatwer started interfering with Esmenet's pregnancies when the abominations started, which probably correlates to when the Hundred turned against Kellhus. Then Kelmomas and Samarmas is an Ajokli intervention on Yatwer's decree.

Crazypottheory: Aurang left a ticking time bomb in Esmi's mind.  At the crucial moment, she's going to see the Inverse Fire just as Aurang did.  Prolly same time Akka sees it.

Amazing. This could be a thing.

The time bomb IS Kelmomas?

EDIT: time bomb is mimara's baby--culmination of the prophecy

"and a child of the void will conceive our savior in a womb that is a pit"

[Madness]

I took you to mean that Aurang saw the Inverse Fire and Esmenet could have the Inchoroi's memory of that.

[mrganondorf]

I took you to mean that Aurang saw the Inverse Fire and Esmenet could have the Inchoroi's memory of that.

Oh yeah, or anything!  Esmi is just able to defeat Fanayal and consolidate her power, when bam!  Inverse Fire breaks her mind.  But it wouldn't break her, maybe she'd turn traitor against Kellhus, help assassinate him or something.

OR!  Aurang could have left something else, lord knows what.  Perhaps a beast will pop out of her chest like in Alien.  It will kill lil Kel and Theli and claim the crown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-sBROXalU4

[mrganondorf]

Thinking about Esmi, I'm wondering if she could be a Dunyain without knowing it?  Bakker loves ignorance and self-deception, he's got us all wondering what's not on Kellhus' radar, could be a big surprise from Esmi?

Is it possible that the Dunyain (or someone) could breed/train a strain of Dunyain who had this specific cognitive blind spot?

Points for:
- She's the only one who can successfully breed with Kellhus
- She's one of the most capable characters in the series

Points against:
- She's Ketyai
- Her POV doesn't sound like a Dunyain at all

Why?
Someone is exploiting the 'darkness that comes before' Kellhus.  Since he imagines that she is merely a world-born woman, he is blind to the possibility that someone is manipulating him through her.

What got me started on this track was a moment just before the Wathi Doll Test where Serwe observed Esmi's eyes dropping out of focus.  Probably nothing, but it made me think PROBABILITY TRANCE!

Weird ramification:
- The Anasurimbors are actually full-blooded Dunyains who think they are half-bloods.

[Wilshire]

Well Moenghus was NOT the first Dunyain they sent into the world. There might be a slight possibility that the Dunyain have been mixing their bloodline into the pool from time to time, maybe even into the same line, creating some small group of people that can bare the weight of the Dunyain seed.

Seems pretty crazy though.