The Unholy Consult Post-Release SPOILER THREAD

[WalterX]

Is it the end?  Like, absent some wave of support or other I thought these things weren't selling super well.  Dude is clearly not making bank on his novels, I don't see why he writes another book.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to read more in this world, but do you think that's in the cards?

[jurble]

Question: Since apparently the No-God works to mask things backwards in time from its summoning (Golgotterath and Kelmomas) why doesn't that equally work in regards to damnation?

[WalterX]

I didn't get the idea that the No-God works backwards to mask things, rather it is that the Gods exist across time.  They don't 'happen all at once', to quote Psatma.  Their field of view is like the WLW, seeing the future and past at once.

The No-God is the end of time, and thus outside of their view.  The futures that they see don't include him, etc.  When he acts, it rewrites the entire timeline that the Gods exist in (witness Kelmomas foiling WLW).

[Kalbear]

Just now, WalterX said:

Is it the end?  Like, absent some wave of support or other I thought these things weren't selling super well.  Dude is clearly not making bank on his novels, I don't see why he writes another book.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to read more in this world, but do you think that's in the cards?

Bakker has said otherwise, but he has a tough road to hoe. The overlook relationship is probably not that great at this point on either side, Orbit probably wouldn't want to pick him up unless they get the rights to republish prior books, and virtually any other publisher would want the same thing. Overlook sucking doesn't help this either.

Self-Publishing may be his best shot, but that doesn't tend to make a lot of money and is hard for many to do (because among other things good editors and manuscript work aren't cheap or easy, and motivations are entirely based on your own views). 

2 minutes ago, Damned with the Wind said:

Question: Since apparently the No-God works to mask things backwards in time from its summoning (Golgotterath and Kelmomas) why doesn't that equally work in regards to damnation?

Well, it kind of does. That's what Koringhus believes when he talks with Mimara - his 'everything has already happened". 

Just now, WalterX said:

I didn't get the idea that the No-God works backwards to mask things, rather it is that the Gods exist across time.  They don't 'happen all at once', to quote Psatma.  Their field of view is like the WLW, seeing the future and past at once.

The No-God is the end of time, and thus outside of their view.  The futures that they see don't include him, etc.  When he acts, it rewrites the entire timeline that the Gods exist in (witness Kelmomas foiling WLW).

This is how I view it as well. The analogy I use is that to the gods, time is a book. They can skip to any page they want and read it, but them reading something on 110 doesn't change what happens on page 304. 

The No-God (to pervert this analogy) is the extratextual information outside of the book provided by the author. It's true, and accurate, and changes the interpretation of what happened in the book, but if all you have is the book you have no way of determining if it's true, and may disbelieve it. For them, the WLW isn't foiled - they just assumed that something happened as it always does, and the WLW failed for some reason. They fanwank it away, providing explanations that make sense in the context of the book but aren't actually accurate. 

[jurble]

But then how is then that the Ark itself is invisible to the Gods?  Kellhus states the success of the Inchoroi in the future is what causes the Ark (and those inhabiting it) to be invisible.  The utmost fate of the Ark affects the Ark's visibility through time.  If it was just that the No-God being the end of god-visible time makes all the actions up to the No-God outside the God's view, then the fact of the Ark's existence wouldn't be invisible to the Gods, anymore than Kellhus or Esmenet are invisible for making Kelmomas.

[TheRevanchist]

Is this the final book in the Second Apocalypse, or there will be a new trilogy? (I haven't read this book or the thread).

[Kalbear]

Just now, Damned with the Wind said:

But then how is then that the Ark itself is invisible to the Gods?  Kellhus states the success of the Inchoroi in the future is what causes the Ark (and those inhabiting it) to be invisible.  The utmost fate of the Ark affects the Ark's visibility through time.  If it was just that the No-God being the end of god-visible time makes all the actions up to the No-God outside the God's view, then the fact of the Ark's existence wouldn't be invisible to the Gods, anymore than Kellhus or Esmenet are invisible for making Kelmomas.

That was confusing to me as well; I had thought that the No-God was the only thing invisible to the gods. (it might still be, mind you, but I suspect not). 

However, if the No-God is part of the Ark (an Ark prosthesis) and it is Ark itself that is responsible for the ending of the gods, it makes sense that it and anything to do with it are invisible. That would make one bit of sense. So inchoroi are totally visible, Shae and Mek are totally visible, but Ark is not. This would neatly explain why they see their damnation in the Inverse Fire as well. 

The other possibility is that it is not that the gods can only see what is in their timeline. It's that the gods can only see what was created by God, or as part of the design and the timeline. So the Inchoroi, the Ark, and the No-God all cannot be seen because they are literally nonobjects in the book that the gods have to read. It's like someone asking about the space aliens past the lands of Shadow in Dance With Dragons. What in the book would make you think those exist?

[Kalbear]

Just now, TheRevanchist said:

Is this the final book in the Second Apocalypse, or there will be a new trilogy? (I haven't read this book or the thread).

Neither as far as we know. There are reports that there will be a duology after this. 

[.H.]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

So the Inchoroi, the Ark, and the No-God all cannot be seen because they are literally nonobjects in the book that the gods have to read.

Yeah, presumably the Ark was manufactured.  Then, to achieve the goal it was manufactured to accomplish, it manufactured the Inchoroi.  So, when they said they were children of the Ark, they were speaking quite literally.  We don't really know if the gods can see manufactured things, even if they are souled.

It was suggested earlier that the No-God was employed on other worlds and so then the question is why does it now need a soul to function now.  I think the answer might well be that while the Ark was fully functional, it would not have needed a soul or anything else at all.  It was simply part of Ark's normal function.

The plan would be, decend on a world, eradicate it to 144,000 souls and while monitoring the code read-out.  If it wasn't what it needed to be, move on, that wasn't the place where the device/Ark could preform it's ultimate function.

Bakker alluded to the "death of birth" being a later add on they figured out after the Womb-Plague.  The Indigo Plague though, that is more of a head scratcher as to what and why.

[Damelon]

5 minutes ago, .H. said:

Yeah, presumably the Ark was manufactured.  Then, to achieve the goal it was manufactured to accomplish, it manufactured the Inchoroi.  So, when they said they were children of the Ark, they were speaking quite literally.  We don't really know if the gods can see manufactured things, even if they are souled.

It was suggested earlier that the No-God was employed on other worlds and so then the question is why does it now need a soul to function now.  I think the answer might well be that while the Ark was fully functional, it would not have needed a soul or anything else at all.  It was simply part of Ark's normal function.

The plan would be, decend on a world, eradicate it to 144,000 souls and while monitoring the code read-out.  If it wasn't what it needed to be, move on, that wasn't the place where the device/Ark could preform it's ultimate function.

Bakker alluded to the "death of birth" being a later add on they figured out after the Womb-Plague.  The Indigo Plague though, that is more of a head scratcher as to what and why.

I've understood the Indigo Plague as being due to the [radioactive] remnants of the Carapace / Whirlwind blown across Earwa.

[Kalbear]

Just now, .H. said:

Yeah, presumably the Ark was manufactured.  Then, to achieve the goal it was manufactured to accomplish, it manufactured the Inchoroi.  So, when they said they were children of the Ark, they were speaking quite literally.  We don't really know if the gods can see manufactured things, even if they are souled.

The gods can apparently see sranc and bashrag - or at least Mimara can. I agree, it's not entirely clear. Do gods see snakes? Or is the god view like the view of Xavier through Cerebro?

Just now, .H. said:

It was suggested earlier that the No-God was employed on other worlds and so then the question is why does it now need a soul to function now.  I think the answer might well be that while the Ark was fully functional, it would not have needed a soul or anything else at all.  It was simply part of Ark's normal function.

The plan would be, decend on a world, eradicate it to 144,000 souls and while monitoring the code read-out.  If it wasn't what it needed to be, move on, that wasn't the place where the device/Ark could preform it's ultimate function.

As I said, it makes sense if the Ark needs a soul from each world to determine the code of that world and then subsume it via No-God initiation. 

Just now, .H. said:

Bakker alluded to the "death of birth" being a later add on they figured out after the Womb-Plague.  The Indigo Plague though, that is more of a head scratcher as to what and why.

My take:

No-God functions as a tripartite system to seal a world from the Outside. It does so by the following:

• Stops all soul movement from the Outside while population is being reduced & redirects all soul movement to the Outside from death and reads it until it hits the magic number
• Introduces a virulent plague that kills most of the population in a selective fashion, reducing the population to 144k.
• Introduces another plague that does not kill, but leaves the remaining population immortal and sterile, thus preserving the 144k number forever.

The inchoroi used the No-God system to determine the Womb Plague first, jerry-rigging that part to work on the Nonmen. They only thought that it made them immortal, and didn't realize it made the females sterile, but it was working as intended. This discovery let them discover at least more about the No-God and how it worked. 

Shae was able to determine that the No-God required a soul to function as its primary system, and the Inchoroi knew they had to reduce the population down to 144k (but did not know how this was done in the past other than shooting things and blowing things up). None of them knew about the Indigo plague. 

When the No-God was destroyed, the Indigo plague was released.

Alternate crackpot: The No-God was never destroyed. The planned operation is that the No-God reads in souls, gets some amount of information, and when it receives enough it releases a plague to kill most of the remaining population, assuming that the population has already been made sterile and immortal. Thus the No-God death and indigo plague release is simply the normal thing, and it would have sealed off the world - but since men had not been inoculated with the womb plague, it didn't stop the cycle.

[Damelon]

The 3rd series should be renamed to "The Theory Generator" or something...

[Kalbear]

Also, something that the Ark prosthesis neatly explains is why Sranc and Bashrag and Wracu are all controlled by the No-God - because they are all creations of the Ark (as are the Inchoroi), and the No-God has built into it a mechanism to coordinate and control all Ark creations on a planet. The No-God acts as a probe and C&C system; the Inchoroi and other creations are simply drones being sent down to each planet. The only time the creatures aren't under control of No-God is when they're between worlds, and it's not even clear if they're alive then. It's nothing special about Sranc or even the design of No-God; it is a natural function of the No-God to control all Tekne creations. If anything, the unnatural part is having them uncontrolled and running around weirdly when the No-God isn't active.

[jurble]

Or the No-God is literally (the) God manifest via technology and has absolute control over all matter save that which possesses souls (because the Souled possess 'free will' per Bakker ((not free from causality/fatalism but not subsumed to the Divine Will))).  Being only a manifestation of The God, the No-God has limited ability to control inanimate matter beyond sucking it up for the Whirlwind, but despite the attenuation of divine will over distance, motile inanimate matter (weapon races) can still heed its call.   The animate can feel this draw (the Bode) but aren't enslaved to it.

[Hello World]

I wonder what the Progenitors are doing right now... Surely the Ark wasn't the only one that they built, they made a bunch and sent them out to seek worlds and wipe them. But did they not keep contact or at least track of the Arks? Or do they just have their own Inverse Fires that they look at from time to time to figure out whether they're still damned or not?

[lokisnow]

how much of the ark has extant ai anymore? Are the mutilated in communication with it?

is the carapace the only part of he ark that still had functioning ai?

the indigo plague, what if seswatha never got get heron spear but instead used a nuke he stole instead--nuke equals indigo plague.

Non sorcerous, the sogomant of the carapace protects against the explosion energy but not against the radiation or heat, and the person within is cooked or destroyed as a result. So although the carapace is undamaged , what it carries is not. And once the pilot is killed the carapace collapses, the weapon races lose their will and everyone believes whatever seswatha says.

[Werthead]

Quote

I've understood the Indigo Plague as being due to the [radioactive] remnants of the Carapace / Whirlwind blown across Earwa.

I don't think the Carapace was ever destroyed. The Carapace probably has badass abilities, but at the end of the day it's a box. When Anaxophus blasted it with the Heron Spear, it probably fried Nau-Cayuti and that effectively killed the No-God (we know the body inside the Carapace is left over, as they mentioned putting people inside it, they die and they open the Carapace and eject the corpse down the well of the Horn). Without the soul inside, the Carapace shut down. The Inchoroi then took it back to the Ark and either repaired it, or realised it didn't need repairing, just another motivating soul, and just started feeding people back into it again.

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

the indigo plague, what if seswatha never got get heron spear but instead used a nuke he stole instead--nuke equals indigo plague.

I believe we've ruled this out. It did not cause symptoms like the Scalding did. You've made this specific suggestion before, mind you, and it certainly could be right; my counterargument is that if it was radiation, it is fallout that is spreading across the entire planet over a fairly long period of time, and causing a lot of people to die, and I suspect fallout of that level and nature would have pretty well irradiated most of Earwa. It was also described as virulent, and fallout doesn't sound like that either. 

As to functioning AI, I doubt that it contains any AI itself, and I also doubt that it was what they use to create sranc and bashrag and skin-spies. But we simply don't know. So instead, explore what that would actually mean to the story. Does it matter if the Ark or the No-God have AI? Does this change our knowledge of why the gods are blind to Ark? 

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

Well, about the only thing I got right was a connection with Ajokli, his love for Esme and that he truly was trying to destroy the Consult and "save" humanity.

Having said that, Kellhus is not a good guy working to save humanity because of gaining emotion. Missed a bit there. Lol.

I truly hope we get the next series, so much left hanging and so much left unexplored. I be read the thread and ill give my thoughts on a few of your guys ideas.

I think Mimara did something to reveal the No-God. I'm not sure what, but it felt like reading the scene it was a big deal to Bakker.

I've felt Ajokli was connected to Kellhus since TGO and the breaking of the WLW, felt like he was aiding Kellhus. Didn't know it was to this extent. I like the idea put forth that Ajokli thinks Kellhus deceived him somehow, and he very well might have. Kellhus is dead but I'm 99.999999% sure he is either a God or an extremely strong entity in the Outside. We're not done with Kellhus.

I felt the 1st half of the book was extremely slow and not a whole lot went on of any consequence. Very sad that Mimara didn't play a bigger role than giving birth for 3 chapters. I thought we would get some clarification on Akka's dreams other then Kellhus having nothing to do with it. Sucked there was two opportunities for that to happen only for nothing. 

Overall, I enjoyed the book. Some things were clarified and the battles were good, Serwe in particular. The ending wasn't a surprise once we see the No-God walk, so no qualms there.

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Well, about the only thing I got right was a connection with Ajokli, his love for Esme and that he truly was trying to destroy the Consult and "save" humanity.

Having said that, Kellhus is not a good guy working to save humanity because of gaining emotion. Missed a bit there. Lol.

Yeah, I tried to hint at that with the "I don't think you'll be happy with the answer". But you were right, in that Kellhus at least stated that he did it for Esmi. My personal take is that he is saying this to her because it is one of the only things that works in manipulating her, but that's mostly because he has shown so little actual affection for her. And he's a douchebag.

7 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

I felt the 1st half of the book was extremely slow and not a whole lot went on of any consequence. Very sad that Mimara didn't play a bigger role than giving birth for 3 chapters. I thought we would get some clarification on Akka's dreams other then Kellhus having nothing to do with it. Sucked there was two opportunities for that to happen only for nothing. 

Yep. There were plenty of cool things, but TUC diminished significantly the arcs of Mimara, Esmi and Akka. It was an odd, and IMO poor inversion of Chekov's gun. 

7 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Overall, I enjoyed the book. Some things were clarified and the battles were good, Serwe in particular. The ending wasn't a surprise once we see the No-God walk, so no qualms there.

Yep, though holy crap was the MRA dragon bad. Seriously, for those of you who got the manuscript early, how could you not tell him how bad this was? How did an editor read this and think 'yes, this is good stuff'.