White-Luck Warrior VI

[Curethan]

The no-god is the antithesis of god, which is different from nothing. He is the 'inverse flame'.

He has corporeal form and he has no existence in the outside. He cannot percieve himself although he knows that he exists, which contradicts Kellhus' explanation of God (that He percieves everything but is unaware that He exists).

It's hinted that Mog 'eats' souls (in the Skafra/Seswatha scene). Doubtless there is some connection via him like that to the 'regular outside'.

I imagine that he has some negative version of damnation/exultation too. The consult worship him (refer to my previous Bakker quote), which backs up this idea.

eta.

Remember the Scylvendi ways are set in granite since the fall of Tsurramah. They seek oblivion because their god (and hopefully their ancestors) is gone. There is no one to intercede for them. Their brutal traditions may indeed be the correct ones if you wanna avoid damnation the non-man way.

[themerchant]

Okay, hang on, I may be mis-interpreting what is meant by Oblivion. I assume it's nothingness, that your soul isn't ripped apart in the Outside and you don't get to have tea with Heavenly!Ciphrang.

Exactly the sort of state the Consult are trying to bring about, because they know they are damned.

If this isn't Oblivion, what is? And if it is, why are the Scylvendi special? Doesn't worshiping the No-God count as worshiping the "wrong sort of god" and end up damning them?

I think it might be the fact that the inchies have caught the notice of the agencies in the outside, therefore oblivion while an option for some, isn't one for them, they're going to be tormented. So they have to find a way to bring oblivion back on the table for them specifically,so they go about trying to close the outside.

I suspect it wont be as simple as that, by closing off the outside maybe they can do something else with the soul if the body dies. Or more likely start off some sort of crazy thing i wont be able to understadn very well.

[Kalbear]

One possibility you left out:

Ascendance: being damned and becoming powerful enough in the afterlife to influence souls to you when they are damned. This appears to be the case to start ancestor nets and may be part of the 100 god's origins.

[Screaming Turkey Reborn]

Did anyone else think that Maithanet was pretty damn myopic when it came to Kellhus' plans? When he was speaking to Esmi just before he was assassinated, and he's like, 'Maybe Kellhus doesn't actually care about the empire intrinsically. See, he just used it as a means to gather his Great Ordeal and go fight those Consult rapscallions!!!'

Well no fucking shit. I thought that was really god damn obvious all along. Pretty dense for someone who's supposed to be Dunyain.

[Happy Ent]

One possibility you left out:

And, of course, the biggest reveal of book 5, the metaphysical jackpot:

Become. A. Tree.

Get your soul sucked into the sweet sap of an arboreal hunk in the Mop. Spend ages inside the bark of a mighty and powerful oak. Or an elm. A redwood. The mighty Tydonni pine. The plucky little Aspen! The great limping rude tree of Nansur!

(takes shower)

And note the significance that both Bakker’s and Martin’s epics reveal this possible future in their fifth volume, separated in publication only by months. The word, apparently, is out. This is a future that may await you all, if you play your cards right.

[Curethan]

Become. A. Tree.

As if I wood. You're barking mad. That'd involve trunk-ating the soul.

[Screaming Turkey Reborn]

I don't think that he was just figuring that out. It was just the first on-screen discussion with Esmi.

I know. But he obviously hadn't known it from the beginning.

[The Imp's Advocate]

So the feeling I'm getting is that the Scylvendi are more low-key than the Consult, and by virtue of their cultural beliefs and practices, avoid damnation for Oblivion. The Consult, and the Inchies especially, can't do that because they've attracted too much attention.

Right so far?

But... it seems strange that the Scylvendi are so unique in that respect. Where do their souls go? It makes sense that everyone faces Oblivion in a world with the No-God and less than 144,000 people. The Outside is cut off. But it makes very little sense that the Scylvendi would just vanish, while everyone else goes Outside.

Do they have no souls to begin with? Doesn't seem likely, especially after rereading Cnaiur's soliloquy over the body of his newly-born son, the one about having the power to make him Inrithi or Scylvendi.

Is it something to do with the swazond? If so, what about the men, women and children who died without killing anyone? If they fully believed in the Scylvendi traditions, would they be destined for Oblivion even without killing?

Just doesn't seem to add up, for me at least.

[Curethan]

Remember the outside has no physical existence.

Your experience in the real world is the discrete frame of your soul in the 'outside'.

When you die your continued non-corporeal existence as a soul sans body can go three ways.

- retain individual agency within some mini-dimension defined by the desires/memories of its gestalt units. (exaltation/ascension)

- lose agency and be used as 'building materials/food' by other dominant agencies like ciphrang (damnation)

- lose agency and decompose your identity and experiences into the infinite (oblivion)

Not all scylvendi would achieve oblivion. If any.

Note that their beliefs extend to those they kill, the swazond represents a soul delivered to oblivion. That doesn't mean that is what happens though.

Belief seems to hold weight in determining the fate of the soul but it's not the only factor.

[unJon]

IIRC, oblivion is in the TTT appendix. So it's like real and stuff.

[Kalbear]

Also, note that not everyone is right. The Scylvendi could be very, very wrong about their beliefs - that the swazond means anything, that their god is dead, that they go to oblivion.

My suspicion is that their god is dead but their trip to the outside is fairly pedestrian and is essentially damnation, all the time; they have no external agencies to vouch for them and they're clearly not godfearing folks, so they're ciphrang fodder.

[Curethan]

IIRC, oblivion is in the TTT appendix. So it's like real and stuff.

Also, note that not everyone is right. The Scylvendi could be very, very wrong about their beliefs - that the swazond means anything, that their god is dead, that they go to oblivion.

Both pertinant points that I was trying to make. Just because oblivion is (most likely) achievable, it don't mean the Scylvendi have the correct beliefs and traditions to attain it. Or to force it upon others.

[lokisnow]

there's also the possibility that Swazond are the opposite of oblivion that they tether the soul to the frame of the person cutting the Swazond.

That would be poetic, tethering the soul of your lover to your frame as you cut the final swazond across your neck and you enter oblivion tied together as your death is self inflicted...

[Sci-2]

Missing semicolon. Also, did you make belief static?

I think the bigger problem is that a full blooded Dunyain would have used Haskell.

[Spring Bass]

One question that I've pondered is why more sorcerers don't try to bind their souls to the World by magically tying them to constructs, like Akka's Doll (which was created by a witch practicing a "folklore" version of Anagogic sorcery). It might not be fun being bound into a human-sized doll, but it's better than the damnation that Mimara saw in WLW for one of the Skin Eaters.

Also, note that not everyone is right. The Scylvendi could be very, very wrong about their beliefs - that the swazond means anything, that their god is dead, that they go to oblivion.

I think that's the case. Bakker has said that entire nations can be damned.

My suspicion is that their god is dead but their trip to the outside is fairly pedestrian and is essentially damnation, all the time; they have no external agencies to vouch for them and they're clearly not godfearing folks, so they're ciphrang fodder.

True, although in Cnaiur's case he probably finds it arousing. ;)

It makes you wonder why they ended up following the No-God in the first place, considering that their children would have been stillborn as well. Maybe the Inchoroi promised them immortality and a place amongst the 144,000 ensoulled folks that can live on a world and still have the Outside cut off.

[The Imp's Advocate]

there's also the possibility that Swazond are the opposite of oblivion that they tether the soul to the frame of the person cutting the Swazond.

That would be poetic, tethering the soul of your lover to your frame as you cut the final swazond across your neck and you enter oblivion tied together as your death is self inflicted...

Kellhus explained the beliefs behind the swazond, and I remember roughly what he said:

The Scylvendi are a very action-oriented people. They believe that every life has force and momentum, and the act of killing another person "gives" you their momentum. The swazond are markers that signify not only how many people a given Scylvendi has killed, but the momentum that he walks with.

This belief (if Kellhus was telling the truth, and I think he was) implies an incredible degree of connection between souls. A man who walks with the momentum of 100 lives is intimately connected to those lives, in a way that the other Earwan philosophies don't emphasize or even acknowledge at all, to my knowledge.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Scylvendi are very connected to the Outside, not cut off from it when they die.

[jurble]

One question that I've pondered is why more sorcerers don't try to bind their souls to the World by magically tying them to constructs, like Akka's Doll (which was created by a witch practicing a "folklore" version of Anagogic sorcery). It might not be fun being bound into a human-sized doll, but it's better than the damnation that Mimara saw in WLW for one of the Skin Eaters.

Well, Shaeonanra achieved immortality by researching soul-binding techniques. And it took him his entire lifetime + the help of the Inchoroi. I suppose therefore only a Gnostic school would have the resources to create a soul-capturing device. The Mangaecca has already succeeded, obviously, and the Mandate is morally opposed to it. The Anagogic schools maybe have tried, but they lack the school to get past the Wathi-doll level of soul-capturing (souls-enslaved-for-tasks or to watch-shit to power sorcerous mechanisms). Remember, as in our world, your physical mind is the seat of your intellect, and a mindless soul isn't useful to anyone. The Inchoroi's Tekne combined with soul-binding is what allowed the Mangaecca to circumvent this problem.

[lokisnow]

It makes you wonder why they ended up following the No-God in the first place, considering that their children would have been stillborn as well. Maybe the Inchoroi promised them immortality and a place amongst the 144,000 ensoulled folks that can live on a world and still have the Outside cut off.

I've a crackpot theory that the swazond keep souls inside, attached to the man who cut them. So the no god doesn't nom nom the attached souls, and Scylvendi can still have children because each man is carrying around a surplus of souls waiting to attach themselves to new human frames as they are conceived. Scylvendi wouldn't have known to do this (swazond) if their god (nogod) hadn't told them to do it, so that's my reason why they worship him.

Or the God/Ciphrang that the Inchoroi turned into the no-god is the Scylvendi's god. Thus if one god clearly kills your god, best to start worshipping the new warrior chief god.

[lokisnow]

Kellhus explained the beliefs behind the swazond, and I remember roughly what he said:

The Scylvendi are a very action-oriented people. They believe that every life has force and momentum, and the act of killing another person "gives" you their momentum. The swazond are markers that signify not only how many people a given Scylvendi has killed, but the momentum that he walks with.

This belief (if Kellhus was telling the truth, and I think he was) implies an incredible degree of connection between souls. A man who walks with the momentum of 100 lives is intimately connected to those lives, in a way that the other Earwan philosophies don't emphasize or even acknowledge at all, to my knowledge.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Scylvendi are very connected to the Outside, not cut off from it when they die.

Cnaiur explains them too, before Kellhus, iirc (and I inherently wouldn't trust Kellhus' explanation, I trust Cnaiur's explanation much more). Do you have a citation for where Kellhus explains them.

Additionally, Cnaiur explains them twice, once in the first and second book, and iirc, in the second book it is word for word an identical explanation because he remembers what he told Serwe the first time in the first book. I think it was from Serwe's perspective that Cnaiur told her what swazond were in the first place.

[lokisnow]

Well, Shaeonanra achieved immortality by researching soul-binding techniques. And it took him his entire lifetime + the help of the Inchoroi. I suppose therefore only a Gnostic school would have the resources to create a soul-capturing device. The Mangaecca has already succeeded, obviously, and the Mandate is morally opposed to it. The Anagogic schools maybe have tried, but they lack the school to get past the Wathi-doll level of soul-capturing (souls-enslaved-for-tasks or to watch-shit to power sorcerous mechanisms). Remember, as in our world, your physical mind is the seat of your intellect, and a mindless soul isn't useful to anyone. The Inchoroi's Tekne combined with soul-binding is what allowed the Mangaecca to circumvent this problem.

I'm imagining a combination of Frankenstein's monster and Tleiaxu Face Dancers. A fertile woman and Shae have sex together while both are connected to tekne devices . When Shae ejaculates the Tekne kicks in and when his seed penetrates her egg, fertilizing it, his soul is transffered into the fetus, like lightning bringing Frankenstein's monster to life. Since his soul carries his knowledge and experience, rather than his brain he is born with all his past memories (st. Alia anyone) and is a very precocious child, to say the least. In other words he hasn't achieved biologic immortality, he's rather achieved immortality through reincarnation. :)