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Bakker: The Great Ordeal SPOILER THREAD


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11 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

I thought Aurang showing up made it obvious that it was the Consult's and that he armed the nuke and flew away...

Pfft. Like Aurang can operate anything more complicated than a fleshlight.

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12 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Lol. True, I thought it was probably their best tactical decision to date.

Possibly. They did wipe out their entire army (or at least their sranc horde) to kill, like, 1/5th of the army that's coming. There were a lot of opportunities that they would have had to do a lot more damage without killing their sranc; dropping it off in the middle of the night when the armies rejoined at the end of WLW would have worked a smidgen better, IMO. Or simply obliterating Momemn would have delayed the horde. As it stands, using it at Dagliash meant that the armies of men had to split up (to take care of the various mountains around it) and they'd have shielding from the blast (again, because of the mountains). 

That said, their 'best tactical decision to date' is not a high bar to overcome. So far we have them accidentally making their enemies immortal while killing their women, we have the No-God going out in the field to fight instead of sitting around and waiting for 20 years until all humans were dead, and we have them spending massive amounts of sranc and Quya mages attempting to kill Dunyain who were sitting around doing fuck all and happily putting their heads in the sand (and hey, how about a nuke there?). Or they even bothered to reveal themselves to the three seas instead of just pulling out their spies and again, waiting for a while until they could create the No-God again. So far the Consult remain a villain that is mostly scary because they're horrifying rape demons; they still seem to be fairly stupid.

And that assumes that they're the ones that did it. Again, it's really difficult to explain why Kellhus would be able to recognize digital Inchoroi displays, recognize a nuclear device, or know what a nuclear device would actually do once it exploded. It might be because the Indigo plague was also a nuclear fallout, but that seems unlikely - and it wouldn't explain why he'd tell everyone to look away from the light of the blast. Atomic fission and the results of it aren't something that are particularly easy to determine from first principles. Heck, on our world there were plenty of scientists that were worried that an atomic bomb would ignite the atmosphere. 

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Assuming the Ordeal is meant to fail, in order to provide the Consult with the fuel for the No-God, nuking its food supply - the Horde - is in Kellhus' interests.   At this point, I'm assuming either Kellhus meant the Ordeal to fail in order to either unite the rest of humanity with the No-God's threat or because he believes in the No-God's cause (the war with the God), but not necessarily the Consult's end-game (rape-paradise).  

I suppose this fits with Kellhus' remark that "It means not everyone can be saved."  He's referring to Saubon's (and other's) damnation here.  Without the supply of prisoners' the Ordeal will provide, the Consult would take generations more to resurrect the No-God, but with the Ordeal's souls, the process is sped up.

However, so Kellhus seeks to ally himself to the No-God against the God, but also he still wants to destroy the Consult for the sake of humanity.  He wants to save everyone - from the Consult and damnation. 

That favors the nuke being built by Kellhus - the Outside covers the entire Universe, which is why the Inchoroi have come to Earwaworld. Perhaps Kellhus interrogated the souls of scientists from atomic age civilizations.

 

Not arming the Ordeal with machine-guns he also learned about is squared by Kellhus wanting to sacrifice them.  

 

But he's going to need the machine guns at some point.

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2 minutes ago, Claustrophobic Jurble said:

Assuming the Ordeal is meant to fail, in order to provide the Consult with the fuel for the No-God, nuking its food supply - the Horde - is in Kellhus' interests.   At this point, I'm assuming either Kellhus meant the Ordeal to fail in order to either unite the rest of humanity with the No-God's threat or because he believes in the No-God's cause (the war with the God), but not necessarily the Consult's end-game (rape-paradise).  

I suppose this fits with Kellhus' remark that "It means not everyone can be saved."  He's referring to Saubon's (and other's) damnation here.  Without the supply of prisoners' the Ordeal will provide, the Consult would take generations more to resurrect the No-God, but with the Ordeal's souls, the process is sped up.

I don't understand this logic at all. By that token, the best strategy for Kellhus is to not have the Ordeal at all, right? Alternately, he can make them way more incompetently organized and have them absolutely slaughtered fairly easily in other points by doing fairly basic things - not having the Swayal, not having the supply chain, that sort of thing. There's no logic to have the Ordeal die just as they get to Golgotterath - especially if they are the key to creating the No-God. 

And if they're the key to creating the No-God, why would the Consult nuke them? 

2 minutes ago, Claustrophobic Jurble said:

However, so Kellhus seeks to ally himself to the No-God against the God, but also he still wants to destroy the Consult for the sake of humanity.  He wants to save everyone - from the Consult and damnation. 

That favors the nuke being built by Kellhus - the Outside covers the entire Universe, which is why the Inchoroi have come to Earwaworld. Perhaps Kellhus interrogated the souls of scientists from atomic age civilizations.

Not arming the Ordeal with machine-guns he also learned about is squared by Kellhus wanting to sacrifice them.  

But he's going to need the machine guns at some point.

As stupid of an idea as it was when I said it, logically Kellhus making and using the nuke is one of the only ways to make sense of the facts that we have. This, of course, assumes an infallible Bakker - which like assuming a spherical cat is not precisely fair.

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I just have no other explanation why Aurang would do a fly by at that moment. 

Here's a possibility. Aurang's 'trap' was simply to have a whole bunch of Bashrag with chorae waiting in the ruins of Dagliash. That was his clever ruse. That's what he thought was going to be awesome, and he's flying by to check out his awesome, stupid plan and how it's going to work. 

But Kellhus finds the nuke there. Maybe he accidentally activates it, or he plants it, or something - but IIRC he was digging for it, as if he was expecting it to be there. How would you magically determined that a nuke was there? And it's not like it was protected by chorae - because Kellhus lifts it up magically, right? So Kellhus circumvents Aurang's clever plan of Bashrag by blowing everyone the fuck up. 

This continues the notion that the Consult - or at least the Inchies - are incompetent fuckwits. And it somewhat explains why Kellhus does what he did (and the timing of him going back to Momemn then and teaching Proyas to lead via buggery). It also is backed up by the Consult's complete incompetence of killing the Dunyain. It took them years of fighting along with Quya mages and hordes of sranc to kill a bunch of monks that have zero magic and zero chorae. They didn't even bother just flooding the place like you would an anthill or mole den - they went in and failed, and failed, and failed again. 

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5 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

I don't understand this logic at all. By that token, the best strategy for Kellhus is to not have the Ordeal at all, right? Alternately, he can make them way more incompetently organized and have them absolutely slaughtered fairly easily in other points by doing fairly basic things - not having the Swayal, not having the supply chain, that sort of thing. There's no logic to have the Ordeal die just as they get to Golgotterath - especially if they are the key to creating the No-God. 

And if they're the key to creating the No-God, why would the Consult nuke them? 

 

 

No, the Ordeal is necessary to speed the No-God's rebirth - without it, the Consult have to rely on bred slaves and captured tribesmen that remain in the ancient North.  Moreover, it might be necessary that the Few are needed specifically to fuel the No-God as opposed to normal humans, further lengthening the required time for the No-God's regeneration project.

Having the Ordeal be slaughtered through incompetence doesn't work - the captives in Nau-Cayuti's flashback are actively being fed to the No-God somehow - the Ordeal must be delivered wholesale and intact to Golgotterath.  The Consult doesn't see the Ordeal for what they are (a gift), they see the Ordeal as a threat - Kellhus couldn't just tell the Consult, "I'm going to give you 144,000 souls or whatever to turn on the No-God." - they distrust the Dunyain and would never believe him.  So he puts on a show of actually attacking Golgotterath.  The Consult attacks because they see the Ordeal as a threat. 

 

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1 minute ago, Claustrophobic Jurble said:

No, the Ordeal is necessary to speed the No-God's rebirth - without it, the Consult have to rely on bred slaves and captured tribesmen that remain in the ancient North.  Moreover, it might be necessary that the Few are needed specifically to fuel the No-God as opposed to normal humans, further lengthening the required time for the No-God's regeneration project.

Having the Ordeal be slaughtered through incompetence doesn't work - the captives in Nau-Cayuti's flashback are actively being fed to the No-God somehow - the Ordeal must be delivered wholesale and intact to Golgotterath.  The Consult doesn't see the Ordeal for what they are (a gift), they see the Ordeal as a threat - Kellhus couldn't just tell the Consult, "I'm going to give you 144,000 souls or whatever to turn on the No-God." - they distrust the Dunyain and would never believe him.  So he puts on a show of actually attacking Golgotterath.  The Consult attacks because they see the Ordeal as a threat. 

 

Okay, let's say that this is the case. Why does Kellhus want to slaughter some of his troops, then? 

Either he wants to bring as many as he can to feed to the No-God for his own ends - in which case nuking them and removing their food supply isn't good. Or he wants to delay the Consult (which is what you suggested) - in which case, killing more of them faster is better. Killing some of them isn't optimal as a play regardless. That's the logic I don't get which you suggested here:

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Assuming the Ordeal is meant to fail, in order to provide the Consult with the fuel for the No-God, nuking its food supply - the Horde - is in Kellhus' interests. 

If the Ordeal is meant to fail, killing them earlier is even more in Kellhus' interests. If it's meant to succeed nuking its food supply is decidedly not. 

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25 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

If the Ordeal is meant to fail, killing them earlier is even more in Kellhus' interests. If it's meant to succeed nuking its food supply is decidedly not. 

They're not gonna starve instantly.  How many are left?  Assuming the 144,000 souls of prophecy are inside the No-God, maybe he's got it all planned to that exact number.  Say, the Consult already have 123,355 inside the No-God, and Kellhus can see this from the Outside somehow, and at the current rate of harvest the No-God would take another century or two to be reborn, Kellhus is trying to ballpark he can deliver 25,000 survivors-turned-captives to Golgotterath to finish the job.   Or if it's specifically the Few he seeks to deliver to Golgotterath, in any starvation scenario, the Few probably get the privilege of eating the other survivors, and so would survive the remainder of the journey to Golgotterath.

Perhaps that's Proyas' job as an unbeliever, to let the Few eat the other survivors.

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1 minute ago, Claustrophobic Jurble said:

They're not gonna starve instantly.  How many are left?  Assuming the 144,000 souls of prophecy are inside the No-God, maybe he's got it all planned to that exact number.  Say, the Consult already have 123,355 inside the No-God, and Kellhus can see this from the Outside somehow, and at the current rate of harvest the No-God would take another century or two to be reborn, Kellhus is trying to ballpark he can deliver 25,000 survivors-turned-captives to Golgotterath to finish the job.

Maybe. Seems awfully iffy and left to chance. If you're betting on sranc-eating starving people who just got a nice dose of radiation to bring exactly the right amount to a doorstep, that seems way tougher to predict.

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So I think I've finally figured out the exact relationship between the kinds of metaphysics Sci and I have been posting about and the nature of the Dunyain, as well as what's really going on with the Bakkerverse.

 

In Neoplatonism, initiatic systems, etc. the goal is to become a soul that moves but is not moved itself, an absolute individual through a transcendent superiority. Being in the world, not of it, and all that.

 

The dunyain goal is the same of course, but through an immanent superiority: an absolute knowledge of the system and the network of its causes while in the system itself.

 

The problem is, the God is just a complex of patterns and the perpetuation of those patterns, and in being beholden to pattern and trying to master it, Kellhus has come to imittate the God and, inadvertedently, going to "burn his own fields" because it seems the Bakkerverse is advancing towards some kind of telos, which I suspect is the God indirectly supporting the resurrection of the No-God so it might heal the primordial fracturing.

Notice how Onairal describes the No-God as the eschaton, not because the No-God is just the negative space in the causal web, but because it is the very limit of that web in the first place. The Gods don't recognize the No-God because all they literally know and in a sense are, is that single causal web, and they can't comprehend that causality continues past its terminus because it's all they know. 

 

The gods are literally the causal webs of an enchanted universe, and while the details get dicey, ultimately it's all progressing toward a disenchantment of reality, with Kellhus as the spearhead.

 

 

 

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The gods are literally the causal webs of an enchanted universe, and while the details get dicey, ultimately it's all progressing toward a disenchantment of reality, with Kellhus as the spearhead.

That was my conclusion as well, and one I had said before TGO came out. The End of the World is the End of the enchanted world - or at least this kind of enchanted world. And with it go the Gods. They know nothing about anything that comes after the eschaton. They can't. 

(Their ignorance of what they can't immediately perceive and their obvious desire to explain anything that anyone else indicates is there that they can't see as bullshit has parallels to Bakker's views on how the mind works, which is why I think it's likely to be accurate too). 

My only add to this is that I think the creation of...whatever Kellhus is going to do - is also the reason that things get fragmented, because the Gods become fractured at every point of the universe's existence (at least the enchanted one). In that way what Kellhus does is entirely determined, as his actions must result in the enchanting of the world and the breaking of the gods. He is the beginning and the end. 

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"That favors the nuke being built by Kellhus - the Outside covers the entire Universe, which is why the Inchoroi have come to Earwaworld. Perhaps Kellhus interrogated the souls of scientists from atomic age civilizations." 

At this point, I have to wonder if there is anything that Kellhus can't do. Even if he did not plant the bomb himself his reaction to it makes him all too knowing and powerful to be interesting anymore. And the idea of him planning this entire confrontation with the wlw and Celmomas's role in it just reinforces that. Maybe it makes sense in the series, but we're at a point where Kellhus can teleport the entire population of earwa onto another planet if he wanted to - a planet of his own creation. You could even legitimately make the case that Kellhus is capable of creating an entire new universe from scratch at this point. Maybe that's where the story is going actually.

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Just now, Hello World said:

"That favors the nuke being built by Kellhus - the Outside covers the entire Universe, which is why the Inchoroi have come to Earwaworld. Perhaps Kellhus interrogated the souls of scientists from atomic age civilizations." 

At this point, I have to wonder if there is anything that Kellhus can't do. Even if he did not plant the bomb himself his reaction to it makes him all too knowing and powerful to be interesting anymore. And the idea of him planning this entire confrontation with the wlw and Celmomas's role in it just reinforces that. Maybe it makes sense in the series, but we're at a point where Kellhus can teleport the entire population of earwa onto another planet if he wanted to - a planet of his own creation. You could even legitimately make the case that Kellhus is capable of creating an entire new universe from scratch at this point. Maybe that's where the story is going actually.

Sure, he could do that. But he's really busy raping his second in command.

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19 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

@Baztek, so when Kellhus is looked upon with the JE is he damned? From your explanation that he is imitating the God, I'd have to say no, he will be holy. I like your take on it. And, this shit usually goes over my head, but you explained it very nicely there.

I'm starting to suspect Mimara really is in touch with a transcendent, capital-g Good God in which all of existence and its facets is folded into, and Kellhus' Absolute and all that shit is, I think, dunyain autism tapping into the level of God that still "creates" and is the determiner of pattern (because the real Absolute, as the Supreme Principle itself, can't be going around twirling its moustache and fucking with causal webs by definition). So I think Kellhus is tapping into the ultimate, metaphysical blueprint of reality, while Mimara sees past that to its transcendent, ineffable source. The Neoplatonic Intellect vs. the One.

 

13 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

My only add to this is that I think the creation of...whatever Kellhus is going to do - is also the reason that things get fragmented, because the Gods become fractured at every point of the universe's existence (at least the enchanted one). In that way what Kellhus does is entirely determined, as his actions must result in the enchanting of the world and the breaking of the gods. He is the beginning and the end. 

Notice how Kellhus is described as the Place? And that quick little passage around halfway through the book where Mimara's talking about the JE, and it says to see through it is to be, "firm and unconquerable", even in death?

Here's what I think's going on: to have an enchanted universe, and to have Gods that make up the causal scaffolding of that universe (in other words, a universe where matter and not just consciousness has intentionality, and responds to subjectivity to an extent), is to have a universe where causality is always seen, always watched, a causality with agency behind it = the Gods themselves, which we can say are causalities with intentionality. That's what it means to live in an enchanted universe, fundamentally, is to know that when you pray to the sky or trees or whatever something is hearing you. The rest, Damnation, the Hundred, all that shit, just naturally comes out of that fact.

 

Now, the fracturing is what started the Watcher-Watched circuit. And the head on the pole is described as not just being behind Kellhus' seeing "but all seeing." And then there's that aphorism which pretty much it gives it away and says when some goddess or other's head was placed on a spike, the Hundred were born. I think that head, that goddess whatever, is the first thing that came out of the darkness that comes before, the primordial Other, and the God in some weird indescribable sense, freaked out and inadvertently created reality by comprehending (and desiring, etc.) this Other, and thereby beginning the Watcher-Watched circuit. 


I notice I'm contradicting myself, though. Honestly some of the most complex worldbuilding I've ever seen in any book, bar none

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I'm starting to suspect Mimara really is in touch with a transcendent, capital-g Good God in which all of existence and its facets is folded into, and Kellhus' Absolute and all that shit is, I think, dunyain autism tapping into the level of God that still "creates" and is the determiner of pattern (because the real Absolute, as the Supreme Principle itself, can't be going around twirling its moustache and fucking with causal webs by definition). So I think Kellhus is tapping into the ultimate, metaphysical blueprint of reality, while Mimara sees past that to its transcendent, ineffable source. The Neoplatonic Intellect vs. the One.

I assume you believe he'll be damned when seen with the JE? I don't think so. We see Cnaüir and how damned he is for his murdering raping and such. Kellhus does the same shit, he murders fucking nations. So why won't he be damned? I think it goes back to what you said earlier, he is bringing about the end of an enchanted world. He is healing Earwa, in a sense. He has a purpose behind his sins that is in line with the God. 

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Which leads me to the obvious question. Why would Kellhus want to give up all the power he has within this enchanted world? I guess it falls in line with him being a saviour and ending damnation. But damn, who could possibly give that shit up? Like @Hello World said, it's come to a point with him that nothing is unbelievable.

Though, I will say, I never got the feeling that he knew Kelmommas would break the circuit of the WLW. Which also begs the question, how does Ajokli see things the other Gods dont, and why?

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1 hour ago, Baztek said:

Though, I will say, I never got the feeling that he knew Kelmommas would break the circuit of the WLW. Which also begs the question, how does Ajokli see things the other Gods dont, and why?

 

Remember when the Nonmen king guy calls Yatwer "the Fertility principle"? Maybe Ajokli's the principle that can see beyond the gods, and it's somehow tied up with his nature as a god of hatred and murder. Idk.

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