Bakker: The Great Ordeal SPOILER THREAD pt. II

[jurble]

2 hours ago, LuckyCharms said:

 The logistics of maintaining a naval force to transport soldiers to assault Golgotterath would be staggering—more so than the Ordeal itself.

Would it?  The Ordeal itself was, as mentioned in the text, simply a vehicle for the Schools.  Its size is meant to survive the Horde and have enough other people to eat to deliver the Schools to Golgotterath.  Even if Kellhus' goal is to feed souls to the No-God, he'd only need to consider how many many men would survive the Horde and the cannibal-march through Agongorea - like I speculated earlier, if his goal is to feed the No-God, he must already have estimated the Consult to have fed it a fare amount of the presumably 144k souls.   If the plan is to only get 50k-ish people to Golgotterath, wouldn't moving 50k by a fleet of carracks and caravels, designed by Kellhus to be ocean-worthy, be easier than marching 200k soldiers plus slaves into the wastes?

Unlike modern ships, large wooden ships could be built surprisingly fast by trained shipwrights.

 

That said, I decided to check the distances.  Is the scale accurate on this map?  Because the oceanic route, assuming you sail from Invishi is, using MSPAINT to copy and past the scale over and over again, is like 3-4x longer than the ground route.  But ships move faster than people, and can hold more supplies, so dunno.

[Grizzly Mormont]

On 7/28/2016 at 11:12 PM, Damned with the Wind said:

I'd go so far as to say The False Sun is essential.   Four Revelations has some discrepancies with the history of the Nonmen as described in the Isuphiryas as described in the TTT Appendix which might be of some interest if they represent the 'true' history, but more likely they're attributable to either the narrator's severe case of Erraticism or Bakker messed up.

 

Knife of Many Hands is just an action story.

Just read The False Sun. It was interesting, but what makes you say that it is essential? 

[Kalbear]

23 minutes ago, Grizzly Mormont said:

Just read The False Sun. It was interesting, but what makes you say that it is essential? 

It tells us a lot about the smarts of the consult as well as what the inverse fire does. Without it a lot of motivations for the consult are opaque. Okay,  more opaque.

[redjako]

3 hours ago, Triskan said:

Perhaps he's referring to the Dunyain as we get the Koringhus POV and some more info about Ishual?  But even there it wasn't like we got much.  We had speculated plenty about the destruction of Ishual and now just got the details. 

Oh, maybe I'm not thinking of the Shae dream because that sample chapter has been out for so long.  That was something, I suppose.

Still, I don't think the shit hit the fan more than it did in the previous book, really.  What do y'all think?

For me, it was the Nuke, and the insight into the Dunyain and their fallacy.

The Nonmen, which wasn't shit-hits-the-fan much to me, I suppose with Serwa/etc. being taken captive, it was some shit hitting the fan.

WLW was probably supposed to be as well, and I enjoyed it, but we won't see "why" Kellhus came back to Mommen until the next book, so it doesn't mean as much as it should.

I think Bakker referred to Mommen sorta-falling, Zeum ambassador going Demon, Meppa being defeated, Kellhus shorning buttox and beliefs of his Generals, abandoning Saubon (was pretty cool)... actually, a lot of "shit" hit the fan, I think some weren't as taken with the fan splattering.

[LuckyCharms]

Pretty minor, but I had conceptually considered the Nonman Tutelage something entirely altruistic from Nil'giccas. 

But the revelation that that the Tutelage was Cet'ingira's idea in the beginning so he could have a legitimate cover to look for human allies to reopen the Ark—fuck.  Pretty unsettling.

[Spring Bass]

That was his idea, but the Tutelage was a good idea anyways that apparently just needed an extra nudge to get going. The surviving Nonmen realized they'd been behind the Inchoroi in dealing with future threats, and stepped it up. 

9 hours ago, redjako said:

The Nonmen, which wasn't shit-hits-the-fan much to me, I suppose with Serwa/etc. being taken captive, it was some shit hitting the fan.

For me, it wasn't really "shit hitting the fan" so much as an extra elaboration of things that had been hinted at. The Nonmen long for the void and oblivion rather than the Gods and the Outside, they have all kinds of neat sorcerous artifacts such as flying ships, and so forth. 

What I want to know is why the whole "teaching sorcerers to hide their souls from the Outside" thing fell out of favor, even among the Mandate. There's some hints that it's still there, with the talk of the "narrow paths to oblivion", but among the pre-Kellhus Mandate and other Schools they seem to more or less just accept that they're damned (or they don't believe in it). 

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

@Electric Bass, where was the flying ships at? The Boatman's was connected to a chain and was wenched down to the holy deep. Or did I miss something?

[Spring Bass]

13 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

@Electric Bass, where was the flying ships at? The Boatman's was connected to a chain and was wenched down to the holy deep. Or did I miss something?

Weren't there the sorcerous flying ships mentioned that moved stuff back in the better days of the Mansion? 

[sologdin]

wasn't there a flying ship in volume V?

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

8 hours ago, Triskan said:

The Nonman Emissary shows up in a flying chariot for sure.

Yea, I just thought maybe EB was alluding to the boat. I got what he's saying now.

[karaddin]

 

On 26/07/2016 at 0:52 AM, WrathOfTinyKittens said:

Goddammit I hate the new quote function.  I find it completely impossible to add anything after the quote.  In any case, I meant to say that Kellhus then preps Proyas to lead in his absence, a process he had begun in WLW.  I think that Kellhus never intended to return to the NE until he sees what happens in Momemn in WLW and realizes the effect it has on him.

Also, something else that just occurred to me.  Kellhus orders Proyas to leave behind anyone who is showing signs of radiation sickness, despite the fact that some 20,000 of the Scalded are still fit enough to march and possibly fight.  It seems obvious now that Kellhus does this because those men are not fit to be eaten...

Just had this in my quote buffer as one of many different posts to be responding to with this, so not just at you WOTK.

My read of Kellhus going back to Momemn is that it was planned.  He's spent the last two books conditioning Proyas, and it seemed pretty clearly suggested even in WLW that he was going to be leaving the Ordeal at some point.  After the nuke goes off and he gives Proyas the pep talk, my impression was that *this* was actually what he was conditioning Proyas to do.  Not just to take the lead of the Ordeal, but specifically to turn to cannibalism...if it was just to lead the Ordeal there are other ways that could happen, but we are told explicitly that it's to make a decision that a believer could not have made.  So one way or another, Kellhus knew he was going to be getting rid of the Sranc and the Ordeal was going to turn to cannibalism to survive, Proyas would be in charge of that and Kellhus would have left town.

Now I'll admit my initial read of Dagliash was confused, I wasn't sure what he'd pulled out of the pit of Viri and thought maybe it was the inverse fire or the NG carapace - I missed the count down on it though.  I actually thought the nuclear explosion was an obscenely powerful metagnostic cant, and despite the clear support for the device being a nuke I'm still not 100% sure it wasn't this.  Particularly given that a nuclear explosion fits really well with lesser gnostic battle magic - it's all about pure energy, founded in mathematics.  Kellhus simply splits atoms with a metagnostic cant and BOOM.  Would also explain how he'd had the ability to observe radiation sickness.  This would leave the nature of the device up in the air still if it wasn't a nuke, perhaps it was the No God carapace and the countdown was to the No God getting resummoned, which explains why Aurang was risking himself hanging around the area Kellhus uses the nuclear explosion (which may have already been planned in some fashion) because the sorcery is only to split the atoms, the explosion itself is 'natural' and thus will destroy an object covered in Chorae! /crackpot.

I'm not sure on the details, but I am very much in the camp that things move to Kellhus's design still.

Overall I felt like this was the most 'Bakker' book to date, but it might just be that I'm getting over his shtick.  I can't imagine I would have gotten into the series if this was how I'd felt after the first book.  In particular the prose was really starting to feel tedious, beyond that required to hit the Homeric tone that he's struck previously, and especially the ridiculous repetition of eye rolling descriptions of getting boners over wanting to kill and eat Sranc, etc etc etc. I still got plenty to enjoy out of it, and got through it pretty quickly, but that aspect was definitely a downer for me, as was the implied rape of Serwa, the rape of Proyas, the revealed rape of Theli....you get the point.

The whale mothers pissed me off as well. Like Kalbear I don't think they fit internal consistency of this story from a genetics point of view, but also that the Dunyain just ignored the potential of half their people.  Thus far they have been depicted as supremely rational, they may completely misstep when there is a piece of information missing from their calculation, but their calculation is generally pretty good with the inputs they get.  For such a group, discarding all the women in this fashion is not rational at all and only appears that way if your prior assumption is that no one exceptional or worthy will come out of that group anyway (and this is ignoring the effect on even male kids of what they do to the women).  You can tell me 'but that's the world he's chosen to tell a story in, women are objectively inferior!' and I'll say that we've been told this as a metaphysical truth that was supposed to have pay off at some point, not that women are always dumber than me/have no other traits of use to the Dunyain beyond being wombs and the story keeps passing with no pay off.  Yes he can tell a story in that world if he wants, and I can hate it and criticise it.  This approach was always going to rely on the pay off justifying it, and I'm very sceptical now.

[jurble]

2 hours ago, karaddin said:

 as was the implied rape of Serwa,

There's a discussion on this a few pages back.   There's nothing in the text to support her being raped. We're told Harapior's torments fall explicitly short of her flesh and she has no interaction with any other Nonmen until they come to carry her away, where there is some ambiguity that might imply rape, but like I said, Moe doesn't start shouting until she's lifted up and would likely not have stayed silent during a rape.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

It's seems if we're going to get a payoff, it will be through Mimara. I keep thinking how Bakker said, "Just wait, wait and it will all make sense." (paraphrasing) I would certainly hope something justifies it, as I had a very hard time wrapping my head around the objective morality bit. 

In response to one of my posts at SA, @.H. theorized that Mimara may undo the No-God by answering his questions. I went on to add that maybe she'll be placed in the carapace and answer the questions and transform into The God. Remember, the skin spy protected her for a reason, whatever that might be.

[karaddin]

5 hours ago, Damned with the Wind said:

There's a discussion on this a few pages back.   There's nothing in the text to support her being raped. We're told Harapior's torments fall explicitly short of her flesh and she has no interaction with any other Nonmen until they come to carry her away, where there is some ambiguity that might imply rape, but like I said, Moe doesn't start shouting until she's lifted up and would likely not have stayed silent during a rape.

And that's certainly one interpretation of the book, but its not mine. It never even occurred to me that it might not have happened until reading that very discussion, which was the reason I phrased it as "implied", so I have read that thanks.

5 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

It's seems if we're going to get a payoff, it will be through Mimara. I keep thinking how Bakker said, "Just wait, wait and it will all make sense." (paraphrasing) I would certainly hope something justifies it, as I had a very hard time wrapping my head around the objective morality bit. 

In response to one of my posts at SA, @.H. theorized that Mimara may undo the No-God by answering his questions. I went on to add that maybe she'll be placed in the carapace and answer the questions and transform into The God. Remember, the skin spy protected her for a reason, whatever that might be.

This is actually part of my issue with it.  Everything about women comes down to sex or babies. Mimara only has the judging eye because of her pregnancy, a pregnancy which is the result of having sex with her mothers husband (another development that had my eyes rolling out of their sockets).  As has already been noted in the thread, Esmi's three book arc is about how amazed she is at how she's risen from her old profession and stressing over her kids. A pay off that is still within that same area is just not going to be a pay off for me. I'd hoped for more.

[unJon]

10 minutes ago, karaddin said:

 

This is actually part of my issue with it.  Everything about women comes down to sex or babies. Mimara only has the judging eye because of her pregnancy, a pregnancy which is the result of having sex with her mothers husband (another development that had my eyes rolling out of their sockets).  As has already been noted in the thread, Esmi's three book arc is about how amazed she is at how she's risen from her old profession and stressing over her kids. A pay off that is still within that same area is just not going to be a pay off for me. I'd hoped for more.

Mimara had the judging eye before being pregnant. I think. The pregnancy thing is that all with TJE are females that get pregnant have still births. Not that being pregnant with a still birth is the reason for TJE. 

[Kalbear]

Sorry, @unJon, you're wrong. All people with TJE are pregnant women at some point. You have to be pregnant. You have TJE earlier because of the weird way that causality works in earwa, but it is a requirement that you at some point become pregnant - and apparently have a still birth.

Hypothesis: because of twins and because of Qirri, one of the children will not be stillborn and like koringhus, will fully grasp the Absolute. Except they will do it at birth.

[unJon]

@Kalbear Intersting. Guess that makes sense given the timeline Bakker is playing with in TAE. I like your hypothesis as it is reminiscent of St Alia of the Knife. So I'll further predict that the child prodigy / abomination will be female. 

[jurble]

36 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Hypothesis: because of twins and because of Qirri, one of the children will not be stillborn and like koringhus, will fully grasp the Absolute. Except they will do it at birth.

Surely there's a limit to Dune parallels even for Bakker.

what does grasping the Absolute actually entail?  From what we've seen the God is all souls, and Kori's decision to kill himself to grasp the Absolute seems to be based on a desire to destroy the Self (I think) to better become one with everything.   So wouldn't an infant born grasping the Absolute consequently be absent Self - bit like, perhaps, Sammi and Kel?

 

[Kalbear]

What grasping the absolute would mean to me would be a person who knows and can use their connection to all humans, all the time. One who has maximal empathy and can understand everyone, and even feel everything. 

They are at all places at all times and can see everything that everyone sees. And they can even coordinate, guide and help. 

[Slick Mongoose]

So.... Did we already know that the Inchoroi helped write the tusk, or is that new information?