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The Unholy Consult Post-Release SPOILER THREAD


Werthead

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Ooh, there's another way that the gods are different than Ciphrang - the Cil-Aujas test.

None of the god-things leave even the slightest Mark. They are undetectable by the Few, they are undetectable by anyone alive, they even define the course of action that the world will take. They are, in other words, part of the maximal objectivity of the world. They aren't something outside of the natural workings of things, they are entirely attuned with the natural workings of things and the objective view of God. They work precisely like the Wight did in Cij-Aujas, except they don't need a topoi to function. When gods manifest in humans, it is entirely expected and rational as well. 

Therefore, any explanation that they are somehow different or alien cannot work, at least not without some reason why they've become the maximally objective viewpoint of the world.

That's hard for me to personally reconcile that gods work like they do in Malazan where a strong enough person can manifest as a god.

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The mark on the Ciphrang and the effectiveness on Chorae on them might have to do with the the nature of the Daimotic spells that pull them into the world, though.  How else should Kakaliol being the god of Carythusal's slums be interpreted then? 

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3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Spoiler tags were only necessary on page 1, for people who wandered into the thread by accident.

A further thought: the gods are described by the Nonmen as "principals" rather then sentient beings. I'm wondering if the gods are more animal than human, non-sentient but intelligent, acting on instinct rather than full logic. That would explain Ajokli screwing himself over at the moment of Kellhus's triumph (because he can't help it, it's nature, like the scorpion and the fox). For all that they're supposedly powerful beings, the gods of Earwa are sure immune to logic, intelligence or even just rational conversation.

I think "principals" here is a callback to some old names for angels in Christian theology.

Did Ajokli screw himself? I thought that whole Ajokli thing was a bait and switch? Ajokli can't see the No-God/Consult as well as we thought (when we thought that he was the one driving Kelmomas) He got screwed by Kelmomas just as when the Narindar failed.

 

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

They're probably even worse. It does appear to be that the gods are different than Ciphrang; their abilities aren't stopped by chorae, for instance, whereas Ciphrang turn to salt.

The gods aren't irrational or rational, they're not actually conscious entities. They exist without reason and intellect, and instead simply act and react. Stimulus and response. Ajokli needed Kellhus. Ajokli and the other gods are very different than souls in that way, at least as far as we can tell. Especially since Akka believes souls do retain their intellect provided it isn't sheared away. Gods don't have that. They simply have hungers.

Perhaps - perhaps it's because Cnaiur has bound those souls to him. We don't know for certain that Kellhus has, nor do we know whether or not Cnaiur as living binder of souls is different than Kellhus, who hasn't exactly cut swazond into himself.

Again, it's still unclear if Ciphrang are the same as gods. But otherwise I think this is reasonable, and goes well with the time shenanigans of the Judging Eye and (presumably) how Kelmomas is unseeable by the gods even before he becomes the No-God. 

What we don't know is whether or not gods can start from things. A problem with this theory is that gods have apparently existed since the God was broken, and that was their creation; mortal souls don't appear to have anything to do with that, and souls appear to be very different than Ciphrang and the like. (if they weren't, why is there a difference between enslaving souls and enslaving Ciphrang?)

We're delving into metaphysics that either aren't completely understood or more open to interpretation for my liking.  If we assume that the various gods are splintered from a larger absolute god, then there are actually statements that say all men are connected to each other as well.  So fundamentally there's only a difference in quantity not quality.  As for intuition vs reason, I don't see the big difference for creatures that exist throughout time.  We're framing processes of thought on creatures that would fundamentally think differently.  If all they need to do is think about what happens to know what happens then that would be intuition.  There's actually little reason to think things through when you can just see what's true.  Also if Ajokli really did surmise the existence of the No-God then that would count as reasoning to me.

I'm also not following how Cnaur's swazond are relevant.  Yes, they represent the momentum of those he killed but is that more than symbolic?  The Kellhian Empire has been described as the soul of one man spread across nations or something like that.  To me that's symbolically makes Kellhus worse.  So its atrocities would also be his own.

Is there evidence I'm not aware of for how Gods react to Chorae? 

I also found the quote:

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"You worship a demon."

The Mother Supreme laughed with the bitter hilarity.  The cackle ran across distant halls, echoed through the the high crypt hollows, gelding all the humour that had come before it,  Suddenly the assembled men were nothing but ridiculous boys, their pride swatted from them from the palm of a shrewd and exacting mother.

"Call her what you will!"  Psatma Nannaferi exclaimed.  "Demon?  Yes!   I worship a demon!- if it pleases you to call her such!  You think we worship the Hundred because they are good?  Madness governs the Outside, Snakehead, not gods or demons- or even the God!  Fool!  We worship them because they have power over us.  And we-we Yatwerians-worship the one with the most power of all!"

I'd also like to add this mundane argument.  The 100 gods are really the hundred gods because the Inchoroi defined them as 100 gods in the tusk.  If they wrote the Tusk with 99 gods and the humans only worshipped 99 gods, would the 100th god no longer be a god?  There could have been 101 Gods too if they wrote it that way.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Ooh, there's another way that the gods are different than Ciphrang - the Cil-Aujas test.

None of the god-things leave even the slightest Mark. They are undetectable by the Few, they are undetectable by anyone alive, they even define the course of action that the world will take. They are, in other words, part of the maximal objectivity of the world. They aren't something outside of the natural workings of things, they are entirely attuned with the natural workings of things and the objective view of God. They work precisely like the Wight did in Cij-Aujas, except they don't need a topoi to function. When gods manifest in humans, it is entirely expected and rational as well. 

Therefore, any explanation that they are somehow different or alien cannot work, at least not without some reason why they've become the maximally objective viewpoint of the world.

That's hard for me to personally reconcile that gods work like they do in Malazan where a strong enough person can manifest as a god.

Am I missing something or are there examples of how the Gods are viewed when in the mundane world?  As far as I know Ajokli/Kellhus is the only example we have.

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I'd also like to add this mundane argument.  The 100 gods are really the hundred gods because the Inchoroi defined them as 100 gods in the tusk.  If they wrote the Tusk with 99 gods and the humans only worshipped 99 gods, would the 100th god no longer be a god?  There could have been 101 Gods too if they wrote it that way.

 

 
The worship and knowledge of the Hundred Gods predates the Tusk: the Old Prophets revealed there to be 100 gods after communing with them and gaining the power from them to overthrow the Shamans. The Inchoroi merely collated that information on the Tusk. The only "new" information the Inchoroi put on the Tusk that was not pre-existing was the command to journey into Earwa to kill the False Men.
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Question for Kalbear: A while back I asked you why the White-Luck Warrior failed and you said that there were two possible explanations in TUC. Having read the book (though not the encyclopedic glossary), I can only find one reason: that Kelmomas is invisible to the gods and the White-Luck Warrior. What's the second possible explanation?

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3 hours ago, Werthead said:

The worship and knowledge of the Hundred Gods predates the Tusk: the Old Prophets revealed there to be 100 gods after communing with them and gaining the power from them to overthrow the Shamans. The Inchoroi merely collated that information on the Tusk. The only "new" information the Inchoroi put on the Tusk that was not pre-existing was the command to journey into Earwa to kill the False Men.

I stand corrected.  I still believe that the Gods and Ciphrang are just bigger and smaller versions of the other.  Since I'm heavily focusing on how time isn't a thing in the outside, there's little to differentiate cause from effect.  The last book can cause something in the first book rather than the other way around since everything has happened already.  I'm in the middle of my Aspect Emperor reread anyway so I'll post up what I find.

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Finished it last night, in what became a 2-day marathon session.

Overall, I'm quite pleased, although I agree with most of what's been posted here -- the first third was overlong, many important character arcs didn't pan out as they could have, the dragon speech was just awful, the WTFery of the last quarter was all I could have hoped for and much more.

I am surprised no one has mentioned the excessive use of italics -- it was so over the top, even for Bakker. I have to wonder if RSB's editors in the past mostly served as removing italics tags in the copy edit and hounding him to make descriptions and transitions clearer -- these last two books, in particular, have been annoyingly obtuse in areas that should be written clearly and cleanly.

(seriously -- it was so bad that italics were eventually throwing me out of the story by the mid-point of the novel. Used sparingly, OK. Used on every other page, not-OK.)

I've suspected Kelmomas would end up as the No-God from at least the time of WLW, but assumed it would be daddy shoving him in. The ambiguity about whether Kellhus planned his own salting seems to rely on an almost ludicrous amount of coincidence, but Earwa has already shown itself to be time-twisted up to the point that I suppose it's possible that "fate" could have brought it all together. I actually loved how M used the Judging Eye at the end, that whole sequence was just epic and bizarre.

I agree with lockisnow - grimdark teenage Bakker wanted to inverse the happily-ever-after trope; adult Bakker is aware that TSA consists of three distinct novels/stories broken up into smaller novels, and that this was the conclusion of the complications/2nd act, where at the end everything goes to shit and only a small glimmer of hope remains.

It was pretty ballsy to end the book with the Great Ordeal being utterly annihilated / close curtain, go on home folks. Don't think I've ever seen a novel or series ended so abruptly. 

 

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On 08/07/2017 at 0:20 AM, Damned with the Wind said:

Did it really just consist of Aurang, Aurax, Shae, and Mekeritig prior to the Dunyain joining them? There were a couple hundred Erratic Quya, but they clearly aren't useful beyond being unleashed on a foe.  I had always assumed the Mangaecca continued to exist in some form, but given the elaborate form of immortality Shae took, it seems unlikely the Mangaecca also existed in that form.  

Sos-Praniura, the founder of the Mangaecca, is one of the Nonmen Quya mentioned being killed by chorae bowman. I remember him from the TTT glossary, but had assumed he was a human. 

I think the rest of the consult's human sorcerers died off long ago and that Shae was the only one important enough and possibly knowledgeable enough to cheat death. It's also possible that before the First Apocalypse, the consult replenished themselves by recruiting human sorcerers but were unable to continue doing so after the destruction of the ancient north's human population.

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3 minutes ago, PapushiSun said:

And, god, the constant capitalisation.

I'm Almost Used To It Now. But yeah.

Kalbear & Werthead - are there any notable entries in the glossary that given particular insight into the ending / how Kelly might have survived? Or anything one should scroll to first? 

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Stayed up all night to finish it... some quick rambling thoughts. I generally liked the book. Especially the final few chapters. The reveals about the Inchoroi, the Progenitors, the No-God, etc were great, that's exactly the payoff that I've been waiting for this whole time. The Dunyain taking over the Consult made it a far greater threat to Kellhus than a Shae run Consult would have been, which made the final confrontation a lot more tense and interesting. The Mimara, Esmenet, Achamian reunion was good too. I didn't have a problem with them spending a lot of time watching over Mimara giving birth (although those scenes would have been a lot better if Bakker didn't add any pointless action to them by making them dodge Sranc and run and whatnot.)

Some negative points or things that I didn't get, (disclaimer: I skimmed through most of the battle scenes involving random earls and thanes, just like I did in TGO, nothing interesting there)

  • What was the point of turning Sorweel into the WLW only to have him do exactly what the last WLW did and die in almost the same manner that the last WLW did?
  • Bakker spends so much time showing us the cannibal ordeal only then to have Sacarrees repeat what he saw to Achamian. That first part could have been cut entirely.
  • There was so much focus on Proyas and his turn in the first half of the book that you could almost call the book the Unholy Proyas.
  • Sacarrees shouting at Achamian instead of listening to what he had to say about the Dreams and then Akaa refusing to tell Kellhus was really annoying.
  • Cnaiur's return seemed more fanservice than anything else. He only came across as a shouting angry buffoon this time around to be honest, and didn't add anything that couldn't have been done without him.
  • Bakker spends so much time telling us about the dread horde general only to have a him die in a comical way.

As I said the Inchoroi as a weapon race reveal was good (had to lol when Kellhus said "so they are themselves a kind of Sranc?"), but it was a bummer not to hear any explanation for how the progenitors found out about the promised world and what that means exactly.

I didn't think that Kelmomas was part of Kellhus's plan at all, he kept him alive for Esmenet, just like Achamian. It was a bit weird and convenient for the Consult to take him in and allow him to enter the golden room at the exact right time... and why did he save Kellhus from Sorweel anyway?

All I have to say about the Skuthula the Black battle is... what the fuck? How could Bakker go from giving us one of the most awesome dragon scenes ever in Wutteat to giving us the worst thing I've ever read?

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1 hour ago, kuenjato said:

I am surprised no one has mentioned the excessive use of italics -- it was so over the top, even for Bakker.

I noticed it yeah, and it was annoying because on my ereader (I guess I could have changed the font now that I think about it) the etalics were sometimes hard to distinguish from normal text. And, yeah, Bakker usually spams italics but this was too much even for him.

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On 7/5/2017 at 9:36 PM, Kalbear said:

Except that doesn't explain Nau-Cayuti. That's the part I don't get. It's implied that Nau-Cayuti's lineage is important and that him being Seswatha's son matters - but then it doesn't make sense why Celmomas' actual lineage matters later. 

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“And then,” the reflection of the burnt Dûnyain said, “they inserted Nau-Cayûti... the famed son of their mortal adversary.”

“My ancestor,” the Holy Aspect-Emperor said.

Their mortal adversary here refers to Celmomas I think, not Seswatha, who is Kellhus's ancestor,

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“I am the Harbinger,” the glowing vision said, “a direct descendant of Anasûrimbor Celmomas. Perhaps, old friend, I am just human enough ...”

I think we've had theories way back that Nau-Cayuti was not really Seswatha's son even if he had an affair with Celmomas's wife.

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Whereas what happened with Kellhus, why Kelmomas was known to the DunSult, what was Ajokli's role, what was the actual DunSult plan, what was Kellhus actual plan - this stuff is stuff  that we really should have not had up in the air at this point. We should know whether or not Kelmomas was actually part of Kellhus' plan all along.

I'm ok with just taking the text at face value (ten years of believing Big Moe crackpots did that to me). Not everything was planned for. Neither Kellhus nor the DunSult knew about Kelmomas (Kellhus' final words prove as much). The Dunyain actually assumed that they could convince Kellhus that they were right, just like Moenghus did.

Bakker's point is that Kellhus' "love" for Esmenet is what ended up fucking him over. (We could theorize that Esmenet is a stand-in for some other god, the whore of Fate, maybe, and she was responsible for both Kellhus's defeat and the Consult's defeat in the next series. And that's why Mimara has that unique image of Esmenet through the JE.)

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Does anyone else find it odd that Kellhus would leave himself open to death-by-chorae?

 

To me, it makes zero sense to go through all this trouble amassing terrestrial power, gnostic power, daimiotic power, and possibly becoming a ciphrang-god, only to leave one's self vulnerable to salting.

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1 hour ago, Hello World said:

Bakker's point is that Kellhus' "love" for Esmenet is what ended up fucking him over. (We could theorize that Esmenet is a stand-in for some other god, the whore of Fate, maybe, and she was responsible for both Kellhus's defeat and the Consult's defeat in the next series. And that's why Mimara has that unique image of Esmenet through the JE.)

Except Kellhus knew Esmenet would free Kelmomas - he explicitly tells her "Stay away from his chain!" in order to goad her.   Kellhus himself can't free Kelmomas, because then the latter would suspect some machination. 

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Kalbear & Werthead - are there any notable entries in the glossary that given particular insight into the ending / how Kelly might have survived? Or anything one should scroll to first? 

 

The entry on the Decapitants is intriguing, but some are saying it's a red herring.

The entry on the gate of Ishterebinth is pretty good, because it reveals that the other Spear of Light is called the Sun Lance and used to be Aurang's personal weapon. It's unclear why he gave it to a random Nonman sniper.

The Unification Wars is quite a big entry and reveals a lot of new information on what happened between the two series.

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“K-Kel? How di—”

The nearest skin-spy clapped the Chorae in its palm about his ankle.

And the Aspect-Emperor was no more.

That's all I'm taking from this. Maybe he expected Esmenet to free him, he also probably expected Achamian to free Proyas, and Mimara to have a baby, etc... none of these things mattered to him in the golden room, though. He did not expect Kelmomas to be there.

To me, there is no point really expending too much time thinking about theories that could go either way at this point (you could say Kellhuas said that last line to fool the other Dunyain...) :dunno: and you could come up with all sorts of crackpots about why he did that and wait 5 years for the next book to have no payoff whatsoever.

Kellhus left Achamian, Kelmomas, Inrilatas, etc alive because he loved Esmenet.

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“I know not,” Kellhus said, shifting his position. “You are my only darkness, wife.”

In the end, Kellhus' feelings for Esmenet were the only darkness that comes before that he couldn't fathom/conquer, and he failed because of it. Esmenet was probably god-entangled herself with the Whore of Fate.

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Interesting theory from Reedit:

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However, I feel like it is presented fairly explicitly - the No-god is a new Ark. (Presumably, it has 144,000 ports for souls and will annihilate excess souls until it reaches that number.) Humans will simply replace the Inchoroi, a new Holy Swarm. The Inverse Flame will still work, because Hell still exists in the past.

And that is the cornerstone of the irony. Earwa was never the 'promised land', it was just another target. The Ark wages war against life everywhere, not some specific version of Hell. Damnation is just the Goad, there is no salvation for the servants of the Ark.

 

 

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