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Bakker: Pounded In The Brain By The Great Ordeal Spoilers III


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36 minutes ago, Damned with the Wind said:

I think all the Tall are Erratic and absent the Mountain, since Sorweel doesn't comment on any of the Nonmen Ishroi he sees as being gigantic.  I don't think Nin'ciljiras has any opportunity.  But it does raise the question of whether any one of the Tall has ever attempted such a thing for the sake of memory.

I'm not sure they can be Erratic, from what Oinaral says:

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“That is why your father came down here,” the youth asked, “to find Oblivion?”

They followed the black path of their shadows into regions of dwindling light, toward the heap Sorweel had spied earlier.

“All seek it,” Oinaral replied softly. “He came here because he is Tall, and all the Tall come to the Mere when they Succumb.”

“Why?”

“The Dolour affects them differently: their confusion is less profound, but their violent humours rule them more completely. They come here because only the Tall can hope to survive the mad humours of the Tall.”

 

37 minutes ago, Damned with the Wind said:

The guy in the Amiolas is Immiriccas Cinialrig.  Based on context, Imimorual was the founder of the line of Tsonoi, but it's unclear whether Tsonos is another name for Imimorual or whether Imimorual was the son of the Tsonos and his sister.  Anyway, Immiriccas seems like it might be composed of [Imimorual being reduced to Imm]+[Rig meaning son becoming unvoiced in the center of a word]+[cas a typical Nonman name indicator] - a name fit for a Tsonoi prince.  Perhaps Cinialrig also indicates a familial relationship to Cu'jara Cinmoi?   Did Cu'jara Cinmoi sentence his own son to death?

Edit: nvm, I see in the appendix, it says Cinial is straight up his father. So it's not a form of Cinmoi in his patronymic,

I don't know, I'm not really even sure there are strict naming conventions for Nonmen.  However, the Atrocity Tale is Four Revelations of Cinial'jin.  Not that I am going to pretend to understand if that is significant.

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Eh, Oinaral says it right there - they're Erratic but less confused and more violent than regular Nonmen.   They still do the whole killing for memory, hence why Oinaral lets himself be killed - remember, he's a sorcerer, he could've cast some skin-wards to prevent getting one-shot by his father, but he knew he had to die so that his father would remember the incident.  Edit: wait, is oinaral a sorcerer? I think he casts during the Nonman zombie stuff, right?

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18 minutes ago, Damned with the Wind said:

Eh, Oinaral says it right there - they're Erratic but less confused and more violent than regular Nonmen.   They still do the whole killing for memory, hence why Oinaral lets himself be killed - remember, he's a sorcerer, he could've cast some skin-wards to prevent getting one-shot by his father, but he knew he had to die so that his father would remember the incident.  Edit: wait, is oinaral a sorcerer? I think he casts during the Nonman zombie stuff, right?

Fair enough, but he does say that all the Tall come to the Mere.  I mean, he could be wrong, but I doubt there were many left, so he could be right.  Only thing I could see is that there may be more Tall in the Mere?

On him being a sorcerer, I don't recall that, but I could have missed it.  If he was though, wouldn't he be a Quya not a Ishroi?  I though only Nil'giccas was both.

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24 minutes ago, Damned with the Wind said:

Edit: wait, is oinaral a sorcerer? I think he casts during the Nonman zombie stuff, right?

My reading was that that was from one of the wretched(or reduced, I can't remember which term) that was chasing them.  It's from an erratic Quya that blows up Mu'miorn and half a dozen other wretches that are tailing Sorweel and Oinaral. I thought Oinaral was just a regular schmo Ishroi.

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9 minutes ago, .H. said:

On him being a sorcerer, I don't recall that, but I could have missed it.  If he was though, wouldn't he be a Quya not a Ishroi?  I though only Nil'giccas was both.

Ishroi is the noble caste and Quya is their word for sorcerer, you can be both.  Akka says to Mimara in TJE

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And that means he’s not only a Quya Mage, but Ishroi, a Nonman noble

 

 

 

This is before he knows it's Nil'giccas.  That makes me wonder though, are Tsonoi a distinct caste (tier higher) from Ishroi? 

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Am i the only one who listens to this song on repeat while reading Bakker? it was a bit more fitting for the first trilogy but still makes pretty interesting background music for the second trilogy

 

 

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1 hour ago, Damned with the Wind said:

Eh, Oinaral says it right there - they're Erratic but less confused and more violent than regular Nonmen.   They still do the whole killing for memory, hence why Oinaral lets himself be killed - remember, he's a sorcerer, he could've cast some skin-wards to prevent getting one-shot by his father, but he knew he had to die so that his father would remember the incident.  Edit: wait, is oinaral a sorcerer? I think he casts during the Nonman zombie stuff, right?

Hmm, I remember it differently.  I do not think Oinaral is a Quya - he never casts any light for them, for example, choosing to rely on the light cast by his sword in the Mere - and I also do not think he intended to die.  He explicitly brings Sorweel with him in hopes that his presence would protect him from his father.  He seemed to want to simply convince his father to do one final act of glory.

43 minutes ago, Damned with the Wind said:

This is before he knows it's Nil'giccas.  That makes me wonder though, are Tsonoi a distinct caste (tier higher) from Ishroi? 

Seems like it, yeah.  Ishroi are nobles, Tsonoi are royalty.  I didn't catch whether this was exclusive to Injor-Niyas or if it was true for all of erstwhile Nonman society.

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I think that the Tsonoi are royalty for all of the Nonmen mansions, that is why Nil Cilijiras is able to take control of the mansion after the exit of Nil Giccas. Remember in Cil Aujas Cleric calls the shade of Gin Yursis cousin, so all of the royal families were apart of one bloodline . And because he was the last surviving person of that bloodline Nil Cilijiras was made king of the mansion.

 

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Sorweel, at least, is pretty certain that Oinaral was planning on dying, so that his death would move his Very Large Dad to action. My reading was that it wasn't exactly plan A - he'd have been very happy if Oirunas had gone "Holy shit, really? LET'S FUCK EM UP, SON" - but he knew that dying was a possibility and planned accordingly.

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I think that the Tsonoi are royalty for all of the Nonmen mansions, that is why Nil Cilijiras is able to take control of the mansion after the exit of Nil Giccas. Remember in Cil Aujas Cleric calls the shade of Gin Yursis cousin, so all of the royal families were apart of one bloodline . And because he was the last surviving person of that bloodline Nil Cilijiras was made king of the mansion.

Yeah, I think the Tsonoi/House of Tsonos is an individual family of royal blood, and the Ishroi are a caste to which many families belong.

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3 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

It said something about how he took to his Emwamma slaves and such. The oil was made from the fat of his Emwamma slaves, I do know that. 

so, another cannibalism analogue.  nice.  

3 minutes ago, Lies And Perfidy said:

(I have also been idly wondering about the apparent sexual dimorphism of the Tall

they became tall through unregulated growth, as i recall it. were there tall female cunuroi? or did the male tall grow outof the ability to reproduce at that point? or was tallishness a result of the inchie extinction bomb, i.e., what made the women die off?

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I thought Tallness was a concretized-metaphor kinda thing – like, heroic Nonmen grow to match their reputations – but I might've pulled that outta my ass. Whatever it is, it has to predate the Womb-Plague, since we have reports from the first Cuni-Inchoroi Wars of Ciogli wrasslin' dragons and such.

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8 minutes ago, Lies And Perfidy said:

I thought Tallness was a concretized-metaphor kinda thing – like, heroic Nonmen grow to match their reputations

This was my understanding too.  But I'm oddly okay with having Bakker-Nephilim.  Biblical giants roaming the earth in ye olden times.

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concretized metaphor as psychological delusion?  doesn't the series generally take philosophical conceits and render them literally?  

am nevertheless fairly certain that tallness is described sufficiently to determine the stark size differentials.  the image for me is a lucifer in cocytos differential.

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41 minutes ago, LuckyCharms said:

It would be bananas if the Nonmen women were basically Cunoroi Whale-mothers.  Hence the Dunyain being able to hone that gene from the Nonman blood in the Anasurimbor germ.  But I'd rather not know for certain...

Nil'giccas thinks Mimara can pass for his wife - if she wept and was bleeding.  In Revelations, Cinial'jin's daughter is easily shoved into the pit with one hand, I imagine a whale-mother would require both arms.

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6 minutes ago, sologdin said:

concretized metaphor as psychological delusion?  doesn't the series generally take philosophical conceits and render them literally?  

Right, a literal rendering of a different sort. There's probably better vocabulary I could be using, but basically my impression is that the "size" of a Nonman hero's reputation manifests physically. It could be tied to Nonmen's place as Earwan natives who predate the Hundred; the literal nature of the planet is in their flesh & bones and that's how it shows itself. (I'm not clear on whether it's the regard of their fellows for their heroism that causes the Tall to grow, or the objectively "heroic" deeds themselves.)

One could also read something into that about "the circuit of watcher and watched" – the Tall grow because so many eyes are on them, so to speak – but that might be a reach.

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