Bakker XLVIII - Selected to LEAD not to READ

[Kalbear]

Bombing the camp at sakarpus would have wiped out probably the entire great ordeal. And we know from tje that they can get skin spies into the mix. They could have presumably brought everything there via tekne having no mark at all.

 

In the camps the sorcerers are grouped together as well. 

[Kalbear]

Also, there would be a lot of non downward pressure from a bike on points anywhere other than directly above. 

Unless the viritic well is a very specific weak point to the entire mountain range chances are good that the level of kinetic energy released isn't going to compare to, say, random earthquakes.

Also, if mansions were vulnerable to nukes why weren't they used before?

[Happy Ent]

Anyway, I like the explanation. It explains why we get all the infodumps about how to kill sorcerers, how Viri was structurally damaged already at Arkfall, how extensive the tunnels are, etc. It makes narrative sense and explains the behaviour of all the factions in a way that is much better than what we had before.

[Happy Ent]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Also, if mansions were vulnerable to nukes why weren't they used before?

Against whom? You mean during the Cûno-Inchoroi wars, to wipe out Ishterebinth or Cil-Aujas? Good question.

[LuckyCharms]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Bombing the camp at sakarpus would have wiped out probably the entire great ordeal. And we know from tje that they can get skin spies into the mix. They could have presumably brought everything there via tekne having no mark at all.

 

In the camps the sorcerers are grouped together as well. 

This isn't GoT season 5, where Ramsay can just sneak into Stannis' camp with almost 0 effort. Kellhus would have the entire North fenced with cavalry pickets and the Imperial Trackers and sentries and who-knows what else, you are making it sound way too simple.  And again, we have no idea when the nuke was brought out. I will reiterate that it may have been jerryrigged incredibly recently. You are speculating just as much I to declare that Sakarpus was a viable target at that time.

I will try to break it down for the arcane footing. Let's say hypothetically that you have a threshold of 100 feet above the ground to cast an Echo. If you are on flat ground and at your 100 foot threshold, you can step down as many intervals as you want with almost no threat. But if you are at your 100 foot threshold and the ground falls down 200 feet or whatever, you will fall down with that Echo and your intertia will stay with you. I like to think of it like there is a ghostly topographical simulacra of the ground that is hanging above the actual ground. If the physical ground changes, that threshold's topography changes too. Which is why Titirga falls to his death. Which is why the Schoolmen marching up to the Urokkas are watching their footing because if they misstep into some massive valley or gulch they will fall down too.

[Happy Ent]

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

In the camps the sorcerers are grouped together as well. 

Well, I assume they clustered. The Scarlet Schoolmen were are a camp within the Ainoni contingent, etc. 

But let me maintain the following argument: If were able to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the knicker drawer of Anasûrimbor Serwë, and got it to ignite, then the incipient wards of the witches would immediately start. Boom. After the smoke clears, you have 200 witches standing inside completely spherical wards on glassed Earth. They walk away, over the carcasses of the Ordealmen.

(This should be easy to shoot down because of Gwanwë. I don’t get why she was nuked.)  

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Against whom? You mean during the Cûno-Inchoroi wars, to wipe out Ishterebinth or Cil-Aujas? Good question.

Yes, exactly. We know nukes were used in the past, and the most plausible time would be when the inchoroi had most of their arsenal and used their weapons of light against the nonmen.

So if the mansions could collapse why not hit them then? 

And luckycharms, using a nuke to drop an entire mountain range in a calculated demolition is even less plausible than a skin spy sneaking into camp, especially since textually we know of at least one skin spy who snuck into camp.

[Kalbear]

Also, why wouldn't incipient wards trigger against falling? Surely the kinetic energy of a nuclear weapon is higher than a 50 foot fall?

[Kalbear]

Also, titirga does not fall to his death, from what I recall. He falls and is trapped, and then they collapse the mountain on top of him. Why do the latter if he's already dead?

[profgrape]

11 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

(This should be easy to shoot down because of Gwanwë. I don’t get why she was nuked.)  

Gwanwë was salted before the nuke went off.

[LuckyCharms]

17 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Yes, exactly. We know nukes were used in the past, and the most plausible time would be when the inchoroi had most of their arsenal and used their weapons of light against the nonmen.

So if the mansions could collapse why not hit them then? 

And luckycharms, using a nuke to drop an entire mountain range in a calculated demolition is even less plausible than a skin spy sneaking into camp, especially since textually we know of at least one skin spy who snuck into camp.

Please. A skin-spy sneaking into a human settlement, and a cadre of skin-spies lugging a massive golden tekne device into the center of a human settlement are very different. Don't conflate a known action with this hypothetical.  And again, eliding the issue of when the nuke may have been ready for deployment.

As for not using it against the Mansions, your bog standard declaration that you can never veer from is that the Inchoroi are always complete morons: what do you think? 

17 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, titirga does not fall to his death, from what I recall. He falls and is trapped, and then they collapse the mountain on top of him. Why do the latter if he's already dead?

I always felt that collapsing Nogaral was more of the Mangaecca openly abandoning their fortress so it couldn't be used against them. After killing Titirga from the fall, they would've been openly enemies of the Sohonc and now there's no reason to stick around at Iros, they can just evacuate to Golgotterath.

Also, if Titirga managed to survive with incipient/skin wards somehow—which I dispute virulently—couldn't he just destroy all the falling debris with his Gnostic badassery?

Although bringing up incipient/skin wards has caused me to reconsider this a tad. I'll have to reread the beginning of the last chapter of TTT when Achamian falls from the Ciphrang. How far did he fall to survive that, or did he first fall into the sea? Could skin wards protect against a fall from an Echo?

[.H.]

18 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Yes, exactly. We know nukes were used in the past, and the most plausible time would be when the inchoroi had most of their arsenal and used their weapons of light against the nonmen.

So if the mansions could collapse why not hit them then? 

And luckycharms, using a nuke to drop an entire mountain range in a calculated demolition is even less plausible than a skin spy sneaking into camp, especially since textually we know of at least one skin spy who snuck into camp.

It is plausible that only Viri, due to the damage suffered at Ark-fall, was particularly susceptible to such a thing.  It was already a ruin though at the point of the Cûno-Inchoroi Wars anyway, I think, mostly abandoned due to the damage and famine.

There is also the issue of intertia, where attempting to push down a mountain range would take a very large force, of which I have no clue how you would calculate.  To undermine or structurally weaken braces though, perhaps specifically at the Well, which is reffered to by Kellhus as the "axle" of Viri, would presumably take less.  I mean, it's all made up, I think if you start from a position it makes no sense, you can prove that, because of course it doesn't, no one hollows out mountains, or builds huge mansions inside them, or digs wells down into the heart of the planet.  But if you want it to be plausible, one can make a case.

As for why not sneak it into the camp, it could be something of a risk analysis.  They felt like hiding it in the Well presented less risk of it being found and failing than it walking out there with some Skin-Spy.  Of course we have the benefit of hindsight to know it doesn't matter, Kellhus will find it anyway, but presumably the Consult doesn't have multiple, so they have to guess what would work out the best.  The joke's on them, of course, as no matter what they do, it won't work out because Kellhus already knows what they'll do before they even do so all plans are destined to fail for them.  They think they are out-thinking him, they think they can out-think him, but he already planned for all their plans, because the Thought is outside time.  They have been preceded at every turn, because Kellhus precedes even himself.

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, LuckyCharms said:

Please. A skin-spy sneaking into a human settlement, and a cadre of skin-spies lugging a massive golden tekne device into the center of a human settlement are very different. Don't conflate a known action with this hypothetical.  And again, eliding the issue of when the nuke may have been ready for deployment.

I'm simply saying that if your plan is to collapse an entire mountain range with a nuclear weapon, what is and isn't 'feasible' is really kind of got a big range. We know - from the text - that skin-spies can make it into the camp - as far as the umbilicus. We don't know and have zero evidence that nukes can destroy mansions. Heck, even Arkfall didn't destroy any mansions completely, and those literally created new mountains. 

2 hours ago, LuckyCharms said:

As for not using it against the Mansions, your bog standard declaration that you can never veer from is that the Inchoroi are always complete morons: what do you think? 

The obvious answer is that they tried and it didn't collapse the mansions. 

2 hours ago, LuckyCharms said:

I always felt that collapsing Nogaral was more of the Mangaecca openly abandoning their fortress so it couldn't be used against them. After killing Titirga from the fall, they would've been openly enemies of the Sohonc and now there's no reason to stick around at Iros, they can just evacuate to Golgotterath.

Also, if Titirga managed to survive with incipient/skin wards somehow—which I dispute virulently—couldn't he just destroy all the falling debris with his Gnostic badassery?

Maybe, but he'd still have a pretty hard time climbing up, and destroying a mountain's worth of terrain might be tough for someone. 

In fact, the text has Titirga actually alive (though this fact is somewhat unbelievable to Shae at the time)

He glimpsed a white twinkle sparking far below, a tube of surrounding stone. A
sorcerous mutter climbed from the bottomless reek ...
He blinked in disbelief.
“Quickly,” the nude Inchoroi cried, a noise like a dog’s cough.

...

Cants of Concussion. So the Man and the Inchoroi began, blasting the circular lip,
striking great fractures into the grain of the rock, so that the Well’s mouth sloughed
into its throat, a rumbling, clacking torrent. They pulled down the rooves of the
Asinna, baring the deceit that was high blue sky. They stepped into the sunlight ...

2 hours ago, LuckyCharms said:

Although bringing up incipient/skin wards has caused me to reconsider this a tad. I'll have to reread the beginning of the last chapter of TTT when Achamian falls from the Ciphrang. How far did he fall to survive that, or did he first fall into the sea? Could skin wards protect against a fall from an Echo?

I don't see why not. It protects against actual rocks hitting people, it protects against normal arrows, of masonry and the like, of actual fire as well. 

 

2 hours ago, .H. said:

But if you want it to be plausible, one can make a case.

Well, sure, one can speculate for fiction's sake for all sorts of things, and one can even say that the intent of the Consult was to destroy Dagliash like they tried to trap Titirga - even if it wouldn't have worked. (in that way I could be right that they're dumb, and you could be right that they tried). 

But bringing down an entire mountain range when it's lasted for almost 8000 years in the same state and has survived an impact so great that it created its own mountain range is a smidgen implausible to me as a concept. 

2 hours ago, .H. said:

As for why not sneak it into the camp, it could be something of a risk analysis.  They felt like hiding it in the Well presented less risk of it being found and failing than it walking out there with some Skin-Spy.  Of course we have the benefit of hindsight to know it doesn't matter, Kellhus will find it anyway, but presumably the Consult doesn't have multiple, so they have to guess what would work out the best.  The joke's on them, of course, as no matter what they do, it won't work out because Kellhus already knows what they'll do before they even do so all plans are destined to fail for them.  They think they are out-thinking him, they think they can out-think him, but he already planned for all their plans, because the Thought is outside time.  They have been preceded at every turn, because Kellhus precedes even himself.

Yeah, all of this being pre-ordained would be not super satisfying but does make sense. Whatever has happened is what must happen because if it didn't happen, the future wouldn't happen either. 

[Kalbear]

And to totally refute myself, here's another part of the False Sun that makes @LuckyCharms' argument a bit stronger and also possibly totally wrong at the same time:

The sky cracked. Iros shuddered. The impossible sun tipped and stumbled. Plumes
of ejecta exploded from points along the mountain’s perimeter, scarcely visible for the
Diurnal’s encompassing glare. The mound that had been Nogaral shrugged then slumped
into its contradiction. It was as if a dome of cloth had been pressed into a dimple. Summit
became basin. Illumination became shadow. The mountain had been rotten with
Viri, its innumerable ways fractured by the cataclysmic impact of the Ark thousands of
years before. The underworld mansion imploded, collapsed inward and downward, tier
upon tier, hall upon hall, undone by this final indignity. This last outrage.

So yeah, apparently you can bring down a mansion, one weakened by Arkfall and age and sorcery - and it had already happened. Heh. Though apparently it took Shae and Aurang and Titirga's sorcerous ways to do so. 

So...yeah, LuckyCharms, you were right. It's totally feasible to implode a mansion, and in fact Viri was susceptible to it. But I doubt that after it happened once, it could happen again. 

[jurble]

Here's a question: During the period of peace when the Inchoroi moved freely in the Mansions (administering the Womb Plague), why didn't they doll up some nukes, set a 5 year timer on them and give them as gifts to the Nonmen kings, claiming they were some manner of Inchoroi art?

[Kalbear]

And here's @LuckyCharms being right about falling, textually, in the very next paragraph. 

The Man and the Inchoroi toppled with it. Though suspended, they remained
bound to the earth, and as with all drastic changes of circumstance, the meaning of
their sorcery ceased to be. Only Aurang’s wings saved them. The Inchoroi seized the
Man from kicking emptiness, bore him up beyond the Diurnal blue into the truth
that was cold and night.

So oddly they expected Titirga to fall and die (but he didn't, probably because he's awesome), but then almost killed themselves with the collapse of Viri and Nogaral. 

So...plausible? I dunno. The mountain had already collapsed. Maybe they were hoping to cause the Viritic well to open again and collapse? Seems a bit odd. 

[Kalbear]

Just now, Damned with the Wind said:

Here's a question: During the period of peace when the Inchoroi moved freely in the Mansions (administering the Womb Plague), why didn't they doll up some nukes, set a 5 year timer on them and give them as gifts to the Nonmen kings, claiming they were some manner of Inchoroi art?

My understanding is that the Inchoroi did not expect to actually kill the nonmen wives, and were legitimately attempting to give them immortality. My suspicion is that it made the wives immortal at first but was designed to steriize them, and in that way they would seal the Outside eventually from attrition as well as simply live forever.

[.H.]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

My understanding is that the Inchoroi did not expect to actually kill the nonmen wives, and were legitimately attempting to give them immortality. My suspicion is that it made the wives immortal at first but was designed to steriize them, and in that way they would seal the Outside eventually from attrition as well as simply live forever.

Bakker actually told us that: "They attempted to give immortality to their Nonmen allies to begin with, to save their souls, realized afterward that their gift was fatal to their women. This yielded a crude tool they needed to accomplish at least part of the No-God's function."

So, at first they were really trying to just recruit Nonmen and save their allies.

Also, let's not pretend that nukes are a really good way of winning a war, unless somehow they had tons of them to lob at every army and city around.  At that point, why even leave the Ark ever?  Or just lob them at places from the backs of wracu?  Rise and repeat, until nothing is left alive?  It gets rather silly, unless you determine they must be a very scarce resource.

11 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

So...plausible? I dunno. The mountain had already collapsed. Maybe they were hoping to cause the Viritic well to open again and collapse? Seems a bit odd. 

My initial hunch about the whole thing was that it was another play to open up the Well.  Call it the Titirga test, perhaps.  It was always going to fail in the further respect that Kellhus is way beyond Titirga, since he teleports everywhere, there is a zero percent chance he'd fall anywhere.  But the Consult really is pretty desperate.  I don't think they really care about the Ordeal itself all that much, it's Kellhus himself that is the real threat to them.

[Kalbear]

Just now, .H. said:

Also, let's not pretend that nukes are a really good way of winning a war, unless somehow they had tons of them to lob at every army and city around.  At that point, why even leave the Ark ever?  Or just lob them at places from the backs of wracu?  Rise and repeat, until nothing is left alive?  It gets rather silly, unless you determine they must be a very scarce resource.

They're not a great way to kill everything, but they're a fine way to tactically reduce an important resource. And using a nuke to, say, destroy the Mandate would be pretty awesome; having no one know of the Gnosis would be pretty useful. If the nuke was only revived later, having the nuke wipe out all of the Swayali or Mandate or simply the Umbilicus would be pretty useful too. Heck, the nonmen meet with Kellhus, right? Have them bring the nuke right then and there. Sacrifice everything, present it as a 'gift', and boom goes the dynamite. That's not that long before Dagliash, no?

 

[Damelon]

Well, this whole nuke business points out, to me, that narrative ambiguity is in this case unhelpful. Quite unhelpful. Credibility is stretched here until the sense of this nuke-idea becomes incomprehensible. Perhaps things get cleared up in TUC, but I doubt it. This has been one of the points in TGO that I felt intensely ambivalent about, sharp writing/execution(!) of an idea that became harder to get the longer I looked at it.

I give you all points though for the crash-the-mountainrange-to-wipe-out-the-sorcerors-theory. That's effing creative. It does feel contrived, yet that fits with this whole nuke business.