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Bakker: The Great Ordeal SPOILER THREAD


Werthead

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10 hours ago, Werthead said:

Part 5 of the History of Earwa, taking us up to the end of the Holy War.

There will be a Part 6 on the Great Ordeal, but I'll leave that until just before The Unholy Consult comes out.

I'm really surprised that you didn't bring up that the Dunyain explicitly destroyed any notion of magic existing and deliberately lied to themselves. It certainly was a big deal to both Moe and Kellhus discovering that magic was real and the Dunyain were totally wrong. 

Also, no mention of Inrau? 

I also don't think this is at all established:

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This was their nature and they were damned for it by the metaphysics of the universe, condemned by the Hundred Gods to burn for all eternity in scouring fire. To avoid this fate the Inchoroi had to rob the Gods of their belief, the thing that gave them substance, and the only way to do this was to destroy the source of that belief: the people of the world. 

Shutting the world from the Outside is what they needed to do - seal the world from the judgment - but it's not at all clear that the gods needed to be robbed of their belief or even that the gods get power from said belief. 

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Completely aside - prior to the Swayali, all witches were basically self-taught, right?   How is then that the Dunyain, after seeing sorcery performed during the Quya assault on Ishual, were unable to replicate sorcery, at least in whatever primitive form?

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Shutting the world from the Outside is what they needed to do - seal the world from the judgment - but it's not at all clear that the gods needed to be robbed of their belief or even that the gods get power from said belief. 

If that is the case, what is the point of wiping out the population? Is there another mechanism that links the number of souls to the ability to seal the world from the Outside? And if the Hundred really are Ciphrang (or a different kind of demon) that exist independently of the number and fervour of their worshippers, why do they bother with mortal affairs if it has no impact on them?

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So one thing I haven't seen mentioned and I thought was neat and probably important was Koringhus informing us Mimara is having twins. I figure the one with the JE will be still-born and one will live with a voice a là Celmommas/Kelmommas. It made me think of the dream in TJE when Celmommas son asks Celmommas, "Who's Mimara?". Then Akka wakes up and you're not sure if it's the real world bleeding into his dream or not. Anyway, I've always thought it might be a clue......to something.

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3 hours ago, Werthead said:

If that is the case, what is the point of wiping out the population? Is there another mechanism that links the number of souls to the ability to seal the world from the Outside? And if the Hundred really are Ciphrang (or a different kind of demon) that exist independently of the number and fervour of their worshippers, why do they bother with mortal affairs if it has no impact on them?

We don't know what the point is of wiping out the population, but one possibility is what we get from the prologue: "there are no crimes when no one is alive'. The idea being that it isn't power that drives the shutting of the outside, it's witnessing. The Gods can only interact with the World through humans (Psatma and Meppa say this a couple times, though the earthquake of convenience might say otherwise here) and likely can only perceive the world through humans. When there aren't enough humans around there might not be enough ability to judge anything. 

Why do the Ciphrang bother? They do exist independently of the fervour of their worshippers, but they don't exist independent of them. Humans are the bread, after all. They eat souls. Belief in the mortal world doesn't appear to matter directly; Saubon was very warlike but certainly wasn't taken by Gilgaol, after all. The gods aren't strong because people believe. They're strong because they are strong, and have always been thus (timelessness is weird here too, mind you). They want to stop Kellhus because he's polluting their grain supply with lies. 

And remember, the gods take absolutely zero action to help the humans stop the No-God because they simply can't see it and think the humans are lying. 

Anyway, these things are my conjecture. The important thing to note is that we have no idea why killing people shuts the Outside or even if it does. We know that the Consult believe this very, very fervently - but per Wutteat, they've tried it on world after world and it's never worked. We don't even know if you can shut the Outside out at all. 

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 Going to do a reread of the Ishterebinth and Akka/Mimara storylines because they were great and I feel like I rushed through some stuff, specifically the cunuroi take on metaphysics and their history, the boatman's songs, and Koringhus's zero-god stuff.  

 

Like many others, I felt the momemn and Ordeal sections, other than the head on a pole scenes, were disappointing.  It almost felt like filler while the Ishterebinth and Ishual arcs played out.  Which sucked because I really enjoyed the Ordeal chapters in the last two books, and felt like Bakker had a lot to work with back in the empire with Kelmomas, Theli and especially Malowebi.  Malowebi seemed like a different and much more petty and terrified character.  Momenm was just massively unsatisfying in every sense of the word.

 

And with Dagliash, couldn't they have triggered a massive nuclear type event without it having to be an actual nuke that Kellhus knows the effects of?  Really hoping this is earned after the fact because right now it just feels like a cheap nuke ex machina.  What's Kellhus been up to the last twenty years?  The Manhattan Project and steeling himself to bugger Proyas (maybe a long con to further enrage and madden Cnaiur?  Wasn't Proyas the only one Cnaiur had any respect for?)

 

 

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8 hours ago, Claustrophobic Jurble said:

Completely aside - prior to the Swayali, all witches were basically self-taught, right?   How is then that the Dunyain, after seeing sorcery performed during the Quya assault on Ishual, were unable to replicate sorcery, at least in whatever primitive form?

I think there's a mention of witches tutoring other witches on their little tricks and abilities, in a very ad-hoc and oral tradition way. Furthermore, the Dunyain might be able to understand some of the basic concepts but they don't have the inutteral to go with it, and they don't know the language that is being used either. They can learn the language eventually, but probably not easily given that they're not typically seeing conversations and they're still in the middle of fighting hordes of sranc. 

While it didn't take Kellhus as long to learn how to do things, it did take him a bunch of study time with Akka. I doubt the Dunyain had a chance to do so. 

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I think Bakkers battle sequences are the best in the biz and it was a trip seeing all the fantasy epithets applied to nuclear weaponry. 

Also, sci: Critique of Pure Interest is incredible stuff. thanks for linking it

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41 minutes ago, Baztek said:

Also, sci: Critique of Pure Interest is incredible stuff. thanks for linking it

Wow, that blog is shitty about its knowledge on computational theory. And mathematics as they apply to science. Yikes.

And this makes me actually angry

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 The second consideration, taken from modern physics, is that all physical processes are thoroughly computable, with the laws of nature acting as algorithms taking the present state of a physical system as input and producing the next state as output.

This is almost precisely the exact opposite of what modern physics states. The notion that everything given perfect knowledge of a physical system and being able to predict the future outcome is simply incorrect per scientific experimentation. 

It does read a lot like what Bakker's philosophy in the books is, however. Down to the poor understanding of what it means to comprehend paradox. 

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52 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Maybe Saubon was taken by Gilgaol; he sees Mengedda where he won his first great victory, and where he's described with some comparison to Gilgaol (can't find Warrior Prophet right now).

Well, he describes when he's taken as being taken by countless Ciphrang. So I doubt it. 

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14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

More MAPS, including a couple I didn't put in the history articles.

Awesome!

This also makes it clear how absurdly fast Akka's group is. They go around, through Cij-Aujus, over and across a massive amount of wilderness to Sauglish, then to Ishual - and then end up at the coast of Neleost and the leash. Varys has nothing on them. 

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I'd have to recheck the dates, but it does seem a mite improbable they could cross such a distance in the time allotted. I think they've travelled a distance so far about twice that of the Holy War. The Holy War did travel a lot more slowly and did have to pass through an actual Sahara-class desert (or at least the edge of one), but it's still a little extreme.

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18 hours ago, Triskan said:

Amazing. 

My favorite is the one with the approximate map of the Holy War's path.  Is Kyudea presumably right by Shimeh in close proximity?

Yes. On the TTT map they are actually shown to be separate, but I think the scale is ridiculously off, otherwise Kellhus would have taken days to get there. To fit the timeline in the books it needs to be much closer to Shimeh.

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30 minutes ago, Claustrophobic Jurble said:

Question: How does the Survivor's Zero-God concept differ from Kellhus' description of The God being behind everyone's eyes in TTT?

The Zero-God isn't a persona. It isn't something that sees with eyes. It is the aggregate of all souls everywhere - or possibly more accurately, souls are a leaf on the tree that is the God. Every leaf is connected to the tree, every leaf is separate with its own experiences from other leaves - but all are part of the tree. Now, imagine every leaf being its own center of the tree. 

Another way to think of it is that every soul is a point on the surface of a sphere. There is no specific direction on the sphere, no north or south, up or down. Everything is relative. From the vantage point of one of those souls, it is the center. As is every other soul on the sphere. But the points are all the same, just in different physical and temporal spots on the sphere. And if you think about it well enough, you can simply think of yourself as another point on that sphere. Because you are everyone else, and everyone is God.

With Kellhus's view in TTT, the viewpoint is much more transcendent - that the God is a persona, talks to him, wants him to take control and win. (note that we never actually hear him talking with the God, just the No-God). God is an omnipotent power, not an immanent force. In this way, God is Other - and sees behind people. Whereas with the Zero-God, God is everyone, and everyone is God.

This also explains a certain amount about the metaphysics behind damnation - when you harm someone else, hurt them, murder them, lie to them - you are specifically blaspheming against God. 

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1 minute ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

In this way, God is Other - and sees behind people. Whereas with the Zero-God, God is everyone, and everyone is God.

In TTT, Kellhus explicitly says, "We are the God that we worship." to Achamian.

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2 minutes ago, Claustrophobic Jurble said:

In TTT, Kellhus explicitly says, "We are the God that we worship." to Achamian.

If that's the case then they don't differ at all. Though it's not entirely clear whether or not Kellhus is simply telling Akka what he wants to know at that point. This is where, IMO, it gets kind of tricky. It's not clear at all what Kellhus' thinks about the God vs. what he's been telling everyone. For folks like Saubon he's framed the God in the very much traditional Inrithism sense. For Proyas, he does that for a while until he rapes him. Kellhus' personal viewpoint seems to indicate that he, specifically, is super awesome and the most powerful ever, which seems to imply a certain lack of empathy. 

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Here's the exact quote

"That this place behind our face though separated by nations and ages, is the same place, the same here.  That each of us witnesses the world through innumerable eyes.  That we are the God we would worship."

Following this, Achamian sees the world through the eyes of others.   Since it dovetails with Koringhus' Zero-God, and if it's just bullshit Kellhus is spewing, it's accidentally correct bullshit - similar to his prophecy to Saubon.  It makes me wonder if it's evidence for Kellhus' prophethood - something even he has discounted as madness in the intervening decades.

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