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Bakker XXIX: Erratics and Impossible Erections


Anatúrinbor

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@ HE; The have war machines such as catapults and the screw driven towers used at Shimeh, complex lock etc require lathes and other types of machinery etc.

Hm… good points, but I’m not convinced. If I lived in the 13th century and you showed me a washing machine, a modern car, or an airplane, I’m not sure I would identify it as a machine.

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Hm… good points, but I’m not convinced. If I lived in the 13th century and you showed me a washing machine, a modern car, or an airplane, I’m not sure I would identify it as a machine.

Sure. I was engaging in pedantry rather than a cogent argument really.

Tangentally, surely Kellhus could have implemented industrialization to some extent, harnessing sorcery, hydro or steam power at least, in preparing the Great Ordeal, were it possible. (Although they likely lack fossil fuels.)

This is part of the reason I don't think physics work quite the same way in Earwa.

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I was thinking about why a dragon might be resistant to magic. I don't think it's completely about having a body strongly resistant to force. [Again, see Cleric cutting through solid stone.] Perhaps some kind of field (electromagnetic?) is developed around the dragon which sufficiently alters the status of the world around it?



So a sorcerer's intentionality is focused on slicing through the air and through the dragon's body. But the onta now contains a presence the mage, uneducated in the ways of science, cannot account for. This in turn weakens the truth of the sorcerer's utterals, blunting the magic?



eta: The Inchies wouldn't necessarily understand why magic is diluted against dragons, they'd just notice Wutteat's efficacy against Quya and then stick him in their 3D printer.


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The Chorae were also created during that time by the Aporetic practitioners for the Inchoroi. Perhaps they were involved with the creation of the dragons in some way.

in WLW Wutterat says he came to Earwa with the Inchies. So the Inchies didn't create him at least not here.
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What would they compare it to? They don’t have machines in their world, other than the wracu. He can’t have internal dialogue saying “It looked like an oversized locomotive mating with a Jacquard loom”. He has not the concepts to grasp what a machine is, he can’t “recognize” it.

He might not identify it as a machine, but it would not classify as a living being, animal or beast either. The artificiality of it would stand out enough - if it was indeed wholly mechanical. Which is why I suggest that if it is essentially a machine, it has biological components (such as eyes) which can rot and basically look animalistic.

I also made a Terminator reference, thanks for not noticing, world.

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I don't think Kellhus would introduce industrialization, it would let people challenge sorcery which is the basis of his power. For all the power of his empire I'm pretty sure and industrialized military could wipe it out.


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I don't think Kellhus would introduce industrialization, it would let people challenge sorcery which is the basis of his power. For all the power of his empire I'm pretty sure and industrialized military could wipe it out.

What?

...

I can't even begin to follow this line of reasoning.

:leaving:

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Truth. It shines.



Or something.



This is one of the reasons I'm fairly concerned that TUC is going to be Lost-like and pull things out of ass that no one could have seen coming - when you're either obtuse with the rules of the world or deliberately incorrect, everything is built on sand. I'm sure we'll be able to go back and look at prior books and go 'oh, that's what that meant' - but we could also easily look at all the things that were mentioned that didn't get any payoff at all and see nothing.


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Truth. It shines.

Or something.

This is one of the reasons I'm fairly concerned that TUC is going to be Lost-like and pull things out of ass that no one could have seen coming - when you're either obtuse with the rules of the world or deliberately incorrect, everything is built on sand. I'm sure we'll be able to go back and look at prior books and go 'oh, that's what that meant' - but we could also easily look at all the things that were mentioned that didn't get any payoff at all and see nothing.

Yeah, I'm kinda worried about this is as well. We're left with an incredible number of possibilities from a varied number of unreliable sources. It's supposed to be a metaphysical whodunnit yet it's not clear the revelations of TUC will make the clues in prior books snap into place.

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What?

...

I can't even begin to follow this line of reasoning.

:leaving:

If there were guns, Kellhus could simply be shot, and his bullet-time reflexes might not work for actual bullets. They could put Chorae into rifles. They could fly his wheelchair with a remote-controlled helicopter into an industrial smokestack. Too many variables, see.

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The problem with that is that Kellhus controls via love. It's not his power of sorcery that he uses to keep people in line.

That being said, guns in the hands of skin spies would be bad for him.

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The problem with that is that Kellhus controls via love. It's not his power of sorcery that he uses to keep people in line.

That being said, guns in the hands of skin spies would be bad for him.

I'm just thinking of that time when Kellhus is love-manipulating General Martemus when an assassin tries to kill him, and Kellhus just plucks the arrow out of the air all casually or whatnot. So it's not impossible for people to genuinely want to murder him. Kellhus can only directly control so many people.

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Meh, industrialization =/= guns necessarily. I was thinking more of mass production to better equip his armies, improved communications for propaganda and faster transportation for supply lines, stuff like that.


Kellhus gets to choose what kind of innovations he wants to add with his massive dunbrain. It's just that TTT hinted that stuff like this would happen with the improved siege weapons Kellhus whips up at Shimeh - I was kinda surprised when there was none of that in TJE.



Not that the increased chance of assassination is that bad a trade off against the other improved efficiencies. I mean, polarizing tyrants like Hitler, Napolean et al maintained control without getting shot and they were 1000 times more fallible.


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Good point. The Inchies probably had a 3D Printer with some templates in there. But I wonder if they had Bakker threads 4000 years ago.As for Dragons and Chorae, I think it's a legitimate question. And if it's true that the two are not compatible then Bakker should provide an answer as to why given that other Tekne creations can wear it. Or at least give us more info on dragons so we can infer it ourselves.General point on where the series is heading, I don't know the answer but supposedly (according to Madness) in all these years of speculation no one has guessed where the story is going - not even in broad strokes. If true then the most likely reason is that Bakker has not foreshadowed his story properly. And as we know if it is only after that we understand what has come before then we understand nothing. Thus, all this wanking is just pointless.

This is a problem. Without the prologue in a game of thrones, everyone would say wtf when Sam kills the white walker, or even when the zombies show up. Bakker doesn't use layers of revelation it's a neener neener data dump.

The stuff on the inchoroi held to the end of twp is the sort of shit on the audiences head stuff I expect from the next book. I remember stopping reading ttt the first time for a month or two because the appendix was so much more interesting and readable.

The sagas are repeatedly described as unreliable. I'm not even sure if Seswatha was at the fall of Tryse (2147), as he was captured at Sauglish when it fell in the same year.

Pretty sure he managed to take down Skafra at Eleneot though.

@ HE; The have war machines such as catapults and the screw driven towers used at Shimeh, complex lock etc require lathes and other types of machinery etc. Mainly they seem to lack engines to power their machinery, except in the case of the gate of the library at Sauglish - it's described as arcane machinery, powered by sorcery via the engine of bound souls.

At any rate, if you're making flying robots with some type of internal heat source that can melt metal, iron seems like a very poor choice for the chassis.

Only the mandate thinks they are unreliable and seswatha has an extreme bias towards misinforming his followers . It's more likely the history is right and seswathas memories are not.

Truth. It shines.

Or something.

This is one of the reasons I'm fairly concerned that TUC is going to be Lost-like and pull things out of ass that no one could have seen coming - when you're either obtuse with the rules of the world or deliberately incorrect, everything is built on sand. I'm sure we'll be able to go back and look at prior books and go 'oh, that's what that meant' - but we could also easily look at all the things that were mentioned that didn't get any payoff at all and see nothing.

Yeah, see above, how do you withhold nuggets like 144,000 for 3000 pages rather than weave it in earlier?
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Only the mandate thinks they are unreliable and seswatha has an extreme bias towards misinforming his followers . It's more likely the history is right and seswathas memories are not.

They aren't even presented as histories. The sagas are a series of 2000 year old poems by various authors. This is like taking the Illiad literally, imo.

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