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Bakker XLVI: Make Eärwa Great Again


Rhom

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It's been awhile but I thought the text of TWP addresses why the holy war wasn't done as a ship attack. That's holding aside that the Nansur would never go for that because it wouldn't fit into their grand betrayal plan. 

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13 hours ago, Corvinus said:

And the Three Seas is a land where slavery is prevalent, where the slave population probably heavily outnumbers the population of free people, so the labor exists, and can be put to this kind of work, as well as the capacity to have oarsmen for ships.

Sure, slaves can row a galley, but you aren't going to be fielding a fleet of galleys to transport soldiers.  Galleys are (usually) small and cramped things, made for fighting, not transporting people.  You still need sailors and a great deal of them for all the carracks, cogs and/or hulks that you are going to need to bring in order to fit that many people (let alone the horses).  You definitely need experienced sailors considering how tempestuous the Meneanor Sea is, let alone in ideal conditions.

There are plenty of other logistical nightmares that would come with that many people/ships, but if you make your mind up that it's possible, nothing anyone says will convince you otherwise.

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I thought this was addressed. Kian had a huge and capable fleet of its own, and it was considered too dicey to try to defeat it to land on the coast. This was borne out when the Nansur fleet was obliterated by the Kianese on Trantis Bay.

Also, opposed naval landings are relatively rare in pre-modern history. Doing D-Day without amphibious assault vehicles and under withering arrow and artillery fire from the shore is extraordinarily difficult.

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9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I thought this was addressed. Kian had a huge and capable fleet of its own, and it was considered too dicey to try to defeat it to land on the coast. This was borne out when the Nansur fleet was obliterated by the Kianese on Trantis Bay.

Also, opposed naval landings are relatively rare in pre-modern history. Doing D-Day without amphibious assault vehicles and under withering arrow and artillery fire from the shore is extraordinarily difficult.

Yeah, even more so when you realize that most people could not swim at all and so you are trying to make a contested landing of 300,000 people, with few to no small crafts.  Lets not even get into the horses.  Or those wearing armor.

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They also didn't want to just take Shimeh. Shimeh was important - but the entire pilgrimage route was an important one to have, and it's not like Shimeh was a city-state or something like that. 

Remember that the original goals were (by the Consult) to wipe out the Cishaurim because they could see the skin spies. The original goals by the Scarlet Spires were also to do the same. The original goals by others were to either have a false war that didn't do very much, or a true war that gave limited gains to the empire (that was Conphas). None of those goals are met by simply attacking and taking Shimeh, even if it succeeds.

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48 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

They also didn't want to just take Shimeh. Shimeh was important - but the entire pilgrimage route was an important one to have, and it's not like Shimeh was a city-state or something like that. 

Remember that the original goals were (by the Consult) to wipe out the Cishaurim because they could see the skin spies. The original goals by the Scarlet Spires were also to do the same. The original goals by others were to either have a false war that didn't do very much, or a true war that gave limited gains to the empire (that was Conphas). None of those goals are met by simply attacking and taking Shimeh, even if it succeeds.

Good points, amid me missing the forest for a single tree.

No doubt, the true war for the Nansur was in no small part also bent by Xerius to actually reclaim part of the "Old Empire" for the glory of his own name (on Conphas' back).

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I think another issue is the volume of military forces involved. The Battle of Dorylaeum had about ~30K combatants. The analogue of Dorylaeum in PON is the Fifth Battle of Mengedda which has about ~200K combatants. The sizes of the armies in the first trilogy are stupidly massive, incredibly unrealistically so. The battle at Anwurat has nearly half a million combatants. You would not be able reliably transport that sheer number of troops by sea for a coordinated naval assault. Nron would be a poor staging base too: it has Atyersus, maybe a handful of major towns for fishing markets and a bunch of podunk villages, none of the infrastructure to sustain preparations for a naval campaign of that magnitude.

I'd also agree with Kal that the conquest of Shimeh may be the telos of the Holy War, but that's mostly just a pretext. The point is the destruction of the Kian Empire, the institutions of Fanimry and the Cishaurim (in service to Inrithi interests, or fulfilling the TTT). Taking Shimeh first in a lighting raid doesn't accomplish that. You have to conquer, subjugate and occupy: Gedea, Shigek, Khemema, Enathpaneah, Xerash and Amoteu along the way.

I think a throwaway line discussing a naval campaign and why that wouldn't work would be a nice touch. But it'd only be a sentence or two. I don't think it comes up because it's just so untenable from a logistics standpoint.

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On 2/10/2017 at 8:49 PM, Sarcellus said:

A Bakker performative philosophy piece circa Nov, 2016.

An Algorithmic Earwa (probably spoilers for the whole series as I doubt he ever expected his fans to get a hold of this):

EDIT: Pretty sure that's Bakker under the table.

Unlistenable. A precis? Not bakker under the table

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3 hours ago, Valandil said:

Unlistenable. A precis? Not bakker under the table

Indeed, not Bakker, just some dude the looks vaguely similar.  I found it quite listenable once there was only one speaker at a time, plenty of great little tidbits in there, including more on Kellhus as the meme-of-all-memes and possibly the Thousandfold Thought being the same.

Not to mention the "Earwa is Hell" line as in there too.

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42 minutes ago, .H. said:

Indeed, not Bakker, just some dude the looks vaguely similar.  I found it quite listenable once there was only one speaker at a time, plenty of great little tidbits in there, including more on Kellhus as the meme-of-all-memes and possibly the Thousandfold Thought being the same.

Not to mention the "Earwa is Hell" line as in there too.

And a "8" tipped on it side is infinity caused such an uproar each time......Academia, smh. Unfortunately, it all buzzed over top my pea-size brain. 

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Just now, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

And a "8" tipped on it side is infinity caused such an uproar each time......Academia, smh. Unfortunately, it all buzzed over top my pea-size brain. 

Haha, intellectual humor, so not-funny it's funny.

I'm going to need to listen to it a few more times, but I was spinning my wheels on the nonsense that is the Finnegan's Wake reference...

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On 2/10/2017 at 3:49 PM, Sarcellus said:

A Bakker performative philosophy piece circa Nov, 2016.

An Algorithmic Earwa (probably spoilers for the whole series as I doubt he ever expected his fans to get a hold of this):

EDIT: Pretty sure that's Bakker under the table.

What on Earth is this.

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Cross-posting this, since you guys are smarter than me on philosophy type things, but a look at some Nonman beliefs,

Quote

"Before they began forgetting, the Nonmen had been obsessed with the mysteries of time, particularly with the way the present seemed to bear the past and the future within it.

Long-lived, they had worshipped Becoming... the bane of Men."

 

Quote

"You think Nil'giccas is something I have lost!" the Nonman King called down. "And therefore something that I can recover!"

"You forget," Cleric shouted, "that before the Nonman King's passing, I did not exist!"

"I can no more recover him than you can recover your mother's virgin womb."

 

Quote

"We are Many!" the Erratic roared. "We are legion! What you call your soul is nothing but a confusion, an inability! A plurality that cannot count the moments that divide it and so calls itself One.

 

Quote

"Only when memory is stripped away!" Cleric cried out, the glow fading from his eyes. "Only then is Being revealed as pure Becoming! Only when the past dies can we shrug aside the burden that is our Soul!"
"Only then does the Darkness sing untrammelled!" Cleric cried. "Only then!"
"And yet you seek memories!" the Wizard cried, at last delivered to tears.
"To be! Being is not a choice!"
"But you claim Being is deception!"
"Yes!"
"But that is nonsense! Madness!"
Again the Nonman King laughed.
"That is Becoming."

So, what are the key concepts here?  First, these all seem to be related on the level of identity.  Not only that, but then how does the plurality of time relate?  And the plurality of the soul?

Being, presented as the forbearer of Becoming, is implied to be contingent, or at least somewhat dependent upon memory.  So, what does that mean?  And what does memory have to do with distinction?

I would venture to speculate (since we have so little information) that Being is something of the narrative view we tend to have of our lives.  That is, we take experience, each moment, as a sort of story, unfolding, to some conclusion.  In this way, each moment has meaning, since the construct of I or The Self is composed of all these pieces of time.  So, in this way, we have our connection, why th Nonmen were so interested in what FB correctly identified, in a conversation we had, something of superpositions and what Akka describes in the depiction of the wolf sculptures of Cil-Aujas as well.  Time, divided into moments, nonetheless encapsulate each other and so, in a way, exist with each other.  The present, enfolding the past within in, yet yielding to the future, another moment's present, and so on.  Consider then, in this way, your present Self as a sponge, constantly absorbing what comes and holding it as the past.  So, you (now) are the culmination of all the (past) you-who-was-but-now-is-more.  In other words, your Self is generated by the layering, or encapsuling of you in past moments into the you in the present moment.  So, in this way, I would guess that Being is the state of existing within that narrative structure, the Self constructed to be of and with the story it tells.  But Being is a deception though, right?  In a way, yes, our stories are just that, stories.  Based on fact, sure, but stories nonetheless, but importantly they are memory-driven stories.  What is the story of things no one can remember?  Nothing.

This recursively generated, past-driven Self, what happens to it when memory fails though?  Who are you then, if you can't remember?  This is where the transition happens from a past-driven attempt to Being (what you were) to Becoming (what you are).  Becoming, the existence in the present moving to the future.  Not what was I in the past and so where does that place me now as I move to the future, but rather, what am I now and what do I become from here?  This is not so easy though.  The mind seeks to fill the gap, where memory was.  So, it endlessly seeks memory, even fleetingly, because Being is the Self's natural state, Becoming is simply it's broken down attempt to still function with failed ability.  The Self wants to make a story, even if none is available.

Consider:

Quote

"He means that he's not a... a self... in the way you and I are selves. Now go to sleep."
"But how is that possible?"
"Because of memory. Memory is what binds us to what we are. Go to sleep."

So in summary, what is the difference between Being and Becoming?  Being is the story that tells of who one was and so is and will be. Becoming is the story that tells only who one is now, shorn from the past, and so is new again in every moment.  A story written only in the present about the future.  Simply, a story with only a present.

No surprise here, the Nonmen lost their past with their memories and lost the future with their women.  So, the present is thier only recourse, the only place they can be sure they exist.

 

On a different note:

Quote

“There comes a point where all the old ways of making sense just slough away. You persist in your daily ablutions, your ritual discourse and habitual labour, but an irritation claims you, the suspicion that others conspire to mock and confuse. This is all that you feel …”
Massacres lined their passage, the toil of making dead.
“The Dolour itself is invisible … all you ever see are cracks of fear and incomprehension where before all was seamless … thoughtless … certain. Soon you dwell in perpetual outrage, but are too fearful to voice it, because even though you know everything is the same, you no longer trust those you have loved to agree, so spiteful they have become! Their concern becomes condescension. Their wariness becomes conspiracy.
“And so the Weal becomes the Dolour, so the Intact become the Erratic. Think on it, mortal King, the way melancholy is prone to make you cruel, impatient of weaknesses. Your soul slowly disassembles, fragments into disconnected traumas, losses, pains. A cowardly word. A lover’s betrayal. An infant’s last, laboured breath. And for the heroes among us, the heartbreak commensurate with their breathtaking glory …”

 

Quote

“And so the Weal becomes the Dolour, so the Intact become the Erratic. Think on it, mortal King, the way melancholy is prone to make you cruel, impatient of weaknesses. Your soul slowly disassembles, fragments into disconnected traumas, losses, pains. A cowardly word. A lover’s betrayal. An infant’s last, laboured breath. And for the heroes among us, the heartbreak commensurate with their breathtaking glory …”
Oinaral lowered his head as if at last conceding to some relentless weight.
“This is how you know that you stand before the least of my Race,” he voice raw. “The fact that I stand lucid and Intact before you.”

 

Quote

“Depravity, Son of Harweel. Only depravity retrieves the Wayward soul. No one knows why, but only horrors can render it whole, the commission of atrocities. You recover yourself for a slender interval, and you despair, crack for shame at the dishevelled beast you have become, and you rejoice. You live! The hunger for life burns far stronger in us than in Men, Son of Harweel. The suicides among us are miraculous, rare names in the Great Pit of Years …

Here we are presented with something different.  Perhaps this isn't really even philosophy, but I present it here anyway because I believe it does dovetail in a way with what Nil'giccas relates to us about the plurality of time and the soul.

The idea of Nonman states of being seem to be presented as the following:

The Weal: This seems to be the "natural state" of Nonmen, before they were forgetting, weal meaning "that which is best for someone or something."  So, the Nonmen, pre-immortatlity, had found ways, seemingly through ritual and such, to keep themselves in a well-being state.  When memory failed though, as Oinaral says, the daily routines failed to keep their these practices intact (because thier meaning was lost in the past).

The Dolour: The state of having lost one's Self.  Shorn of memory, the lost past speaks to a lost future.  Everything has no meaning.  Cruelty seeps in, since there is nothing but irritation in a meaningless existance.

So, The Weal begets the Intact and the Dolour begets the Erratics.  But the question is, why does depavity seem to mend?

I think it goes back to how the soul, plural, as Nil'giccas likens it, is composed.  I had an idea that the soul must, in some way, be like a ledger, since it can tell of your past sins.  So, in this way, perhaps new entries, new atrocities written into it spark a "reverse flow" where past entries come back.  Of course, these are fleeting for Nonmen, since memories are simply unable to be held for long.

Thought anyone on this crack-pottery?

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