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BAKKER IX: Warrior-Prophet reread


Happy Ent

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I just can't figure out what other conclusion you'd expect the Consult to come to about who's eliminating their spies.

Since some other factor had obviously come into play, I wouldn't expect them to conclude it was the Psukhe and simply leave it at that.

It's not the Consult's style. What did they do once they found out their skin spies in the factions marching to war were compromised? Put their feelers out. Widened the circle. Honed in on those inscrutable factors. Yes, Kellhus tipped his hand and drew attention to himself, but as shown with Serwë and Cnaiür, the skin spies were able to get information anyway by slightly eclipsing the ellipse of Kellhus's social sphere.

It's not that I think the Consult should have been intelligent enough to merely conclude what the issue was. I think they're jealous enough to show some tenacity in getting some answers. Moënghus and his faction couldn't be everywhere, after all-- Moë couldn't have taught his homies to recognize skin-spies, not when he himself was only able to do so by differences in speech patterns.

It's apparent why Bakker couldn't give us much of a PoV down there, as it would have given up one of the central mysteries of his introductory trilogy-- but I would like it explained at some point in the future.

On the other matter, the metaphysics of the Phsukhe is "little understood" according to the appendix. I'm quite sure that the Cishaurim themselves have little understanding of it. They don't systematically research their own like the other schools do. How should anybody have known that Moe wouldn't master it like he masters everything else?

I keep envisioning a scene:

~*~

The sands swirled, fraught with whorls of implication. Given time, in winds such as these, beneath this oppressive heat-- flesh would be stripped, studiously pealed back to reveal the structure underneath. Eventually bone would bleach, breakdown, at length becoming one with the legions yoked by the desert.

If souls have coin it would be time, Seökti thought. The Heresiarch uncovered his face, his snakes squinted down at the pitiful creature staked into the baked grit of the desert. And we parcel it out with pieces of ourselves.

The scars on the prisoner's arms were bright wheals against scorched skin. Seökti had heard of these. The man looked up at him unflinchingly, attempting to belie the haunted hollows of his eyes. Yet like his fellows had described, when Seökti reached out with the Psukhe, their was no emotive response to the breath of the God. The man was an anomaly, hence his present condition- and company.

Eyes of a startling blue, he'd been told. They blinked sluggishly at him. A dry tongue rasped against cracked lips, causing Seökti's own mouth to quirk circumspectly. What do you mean to purchase?

'Patience.' The Heresiarch crouched beneath wheeling vultures, beside the mystery he meant to expose. 'Too curious the questions you ask, stranger. Mine is more straightforward- what makes a heathen think he could possess the Psukhe?'

To either side of them, the dunes rose and fell with the sinuous undulations of a reptile. The man smiled softly, his head lolled. His words came as a whisper, as dry as a lone reed yet defiant in the wind.

'One can only be tested. Never degraded.'

~*~

The point I'm trying to make, for the last time, is there were many ways for Moënghus to get some information [recall Kellhus and Cnaiür in the yaksh, in tDtCB, and this when Cnaiür knew what he was dealing with] Information from this person. Some from that. Enough to craft a mosaic. For one of the Conditioned, secrets are as childs-play in the realm of the worldborn. Now would a full understanding of the Psukhe be revealed? Most likely not, but enough to understand, to know what isn't said by that which is... [spreads hands] ...Unfortunately I'm going to have to reject some arguments as well.

edited for some stuff

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Since some other factor had obviously come into play, I wouldn't expect them to conclude it was the Psukhe and simply leave it at that.

It's not the Consult's style. What did they do once they found out their skin spies in the factions marching to war were compromised? Put their feelers out. Widened the circle. Honed in on those inscrutable factors. Yes, Kellhus tipped his hand and drew attention to himself, but as shown with Serwë and Cnaiür, the skin spies were able to get information anyway by slightly eclipsing the ellipse of Kellhus's social sphere.

It's not that I think the Consult should have been intelligent enough to merely conclude what the issue was. I think they're jealous enough to show some tenacity in getting some answers. Moënghus and his faction couldn't be everywhere, after all-- Moë couldn't have taught his homies to recognize skin-spies, not when he himself was only able to do so by differences in speech patterns.

It's apparent why Bakker couldn't give us much of a PoV down there, as it would have given up one of the central mysteries of his introductory trilogy-- but I would like it explained at some point in the future.

I'm sure they did send out feelers. And what did they figure out? That people within the Cishaurim were uncovering their skin spies. Ergo, the Cishaurim must be destroyed.

And, as HE mentioned, it's debatable whether even the Cishaurim understand the Psukhe all that well. They probably don't understand it well enough for Moenghus to be able to conclude that it wouldn't work for him. Kelhuss only understands sorcery by accepting the idea of God. An idea Moenghus STILL rejects, even at the end.

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AA, that was great! Please write more. Let me try as well.

~*~

Moënghus sat cross-legged in front of Seökti, inclining his head in imitation of Chnuërsus, his favourite student.

Even he, he though, even he is ruled by circumstance.

"It's never been done, Moënghus. Even Fane had to blind himself to see the Outside."

Men, forever ruled by their passion. Why does he not see the purpose?

The Heresiarch laid out the knives on the ceremonial table between them, handling them with unerring precision despite the hollows of his eyes. The snakes around his head stared, one at Moënghus, one at the instruments.

"Even the heathen closes his eyes when lies with a woman, or cries. For the depths of passion are sounded in darkness; the false images that your eyes see are distractions."

Moënghus lifted his head to the raised knife. What power awaits me! Each day in the thousand thousand halls of Ishuäl had prepared him for this, his Shortest Path. For he was Dunyain. He knew that men blind themselves to rule their passions, not to sound them.

Religion for the worldborn was an explanation that came after and tried to give meaning to events. But always these meanings were emotions, whims, passions of their gods. Men ever preferred the explanation from emotion to the truth. Like a child that learns to not play with fire because it makes father angry, men hungered for rules based on unfathomable axioms, because they were too weak to grasp the Logos — that all events and rules were explained by circumstance that came before. In this the Dunyain were like gods among men: they knew that Truth was reason rather than emotion, yet world-born men ever insisted on the latter. Even the Cishaurim, with their unfathomable power.

Once, when Moënghus was but a child in Ishuäl, a defective specimen had escaped into the upper level of the thousand thousand halls. For one of the Conditioned, the intricate escape through the labyrinth would take an hour, spent mostly in the trance, organising paths, rejecting turns, until a map of the topology was clear to him. The escapee needed three days. Before the Pragma killed him, he explained that the darkness had helped him to suddenly "see" the way out, that he could "feel in his heart" which path to take.

The lesson, the Pragma said, was two-fold. First, that the Logos finds the Shortest Path. And second, that he who is not Conditioned will mistake passion for insight, even when his insight is so much weaker than what the Logos gives.

What power!, Moënghus thought as he felt the knife gouge out his eye.

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Sorry for butting into this discussion all of a sudden, but I stumbled over this while lurking:

Kelly hasn't. His mind is open to the possibility of mastering circumstance through passion, not Logos. He is uniquely qualified to actually understand the basics of Cishaurim metaphysics because his conditioning is broken.

Eh? Where does it say that? I remember that Kellhus has vague notions of emotion and perhaps even love when he was dangling up on the Circumfix saw that Serwe was dead, but I don't think he ever tied any conclusions to it. He still dominates lesser men as one of the Conditioned, and only Akka has ever been able to escape his grasp as what passes for a sane man (meaning that Cnaiur and Conphas, one insane and the other so arrogant he was sick, don't count).

Or am I forgetting something here?

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Eh? Where does it say that?

Say what? That his conditioning is broken?

It breaks as early as in Darkness, when he feels pity at the sight of Cnaiür raping Serwë. His first religious experience is early in Warrior–Prophet, a section ending in "It was revelation."

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HE,

~*~

What power, Moënghus thought as he felt the knife gouge out his eye...

Recursively defined into subdivided parts, each an approximate yet reduced copy of the whole, his probability trance shattered beneath the point of a knife. As Moënghus unfolded his legs, his lips compressed into a thin red line. All paths, here, lead only to this.

The scents of cinnamon and bee wax permeated the air of the chambers afforded to Moënghus by his host. The reflection in the burnished copper mirror opposite was distorted by the imperfections of its beaten surface. His features looked swollen, battered.

It reminded…

Beneath a barren tree that clawed vainly toward spring, the Pragma sought Moënghus’s eyes.

‘Do you see?’

Blood tricked down the youth’s upper lip, forking unpredictably. Moënghus wiped it with his sleeve. He said nothing.

The Pragma’s eyes need not narrow to emote disapproval. ‘You failed against the onslaught of the stochasti because you are inflexible.’

‘I am Conditioned.’

‘Precisely. The exercise against the stochasti has been designed to teach this, and this only. You are conditioned to make the most of those things the probability trance cannot determine.’

It opened up as a cherry blossom, brilliant and harsh, unfurling to blanket his preexisting notions with a decay both sick and sweet. When too many deterministic individuals interact, a non-deterministic state may come into existence.

This was unacceptable to Moënghus, who though the current embodiment of a eugenic line was not nor would ever be its culmination. Thus begun his rebellion, ending with his expulsion from the Thousand Thousand Halls.

Moënghus splashed water into his face and toweled off with a fabric so fine it might have been silken. It made his skin crawl. The swazond on his arms, marking what came before, determining what would follow. They had made travel across the Nansurium hostile, which drove him into the lands of the Fanim, the Cishaurim, and Fane.

He had been corrupted. To live in the world is to become a part of it, to be either moved or crushed beneath its inexorable momentum. To be swept up by circumstantial passions or immobilized by them.

This too, was unacceptable to Moënghus, yet he would blind himself, and marry his abilities to something he could not grasp, become husbandman to an enigma, turning fallow ground.

~*~

I just don't see this as a choice a Dûnyain would make.

edited for bad coding, and grammar

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Say what? That his conditioning is broken?

It breaks as early as in Darkness, when he feels pity at the sight of Cnaiür raping Serwë. His first religious experience is early in Warrior–Prophet, a section ending in "It was revelation."

If by "his conditioning is broken" you mean how he believes he has reached a far higher level than the isolated, hermit Dunyain ever could by seeing the world as he has, then yeah, his conditioning is broken. But he never stopped using the techniques of the Conditioned (like the probability trance) or stopped being a cold, calculating, absolutely and completely ruthless guy concerned only with dominating others.

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I have to say that I agree with Azor Ahai there ;).

Concerning Esmenet, I just don't see her awesome intelligence either via her thought processes or via her actions. Also, every other intelligent character in the books seems to have achieved certain success/status via using their natural gifts _before_ meeting Kelhus. Except for her. Sure, her sphere of opportunities would have been very narrow, but even so she was a failure. I understand what Bakker intended for her, but I don't think that he succeded. YMMV.

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If by "his conditioning is broken" you mean how he believes he has reached a far higher level than the isolated, hermit Dunyain ever could by seeing the world as he has, then yeah, his conditioning is broken. But he never stopped using the techniques of the Conditioned (like the probability trance) or stopped being a cold, calculating, absolutely and completely ruthless guy concerned only with dominating others.

Yes, but he admits to himself that God exists. That the Logos is, in some way, not absolute. Moenghus does not.

This, btw, is what leads to their argument and Kellhus' killing of Moenghus.

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I think the Dunyain will play a major role. Cnauir has an interesting observation on them.

Cnauir talking to the bird-thingy:

"For centuries you have manipulated events from the dark, or so you claim. Now you assume that you must do the same, that nothing has changed. I assure you, everything has changed. You think yourself hidden, but you are not. Chances are he already knows you have approached me. Chances are, he already knows your ends and your resources.".

Even the ancient things, Cnauir realized, would suffer the Holy Wars fate. The Dunyain would strip them the way the People stripped the carcasses of Bison. Flesh for sustenance. Fat for soap and fuel. Bone for implements. Hide for shelter and shields. No matter how deep they ran, the ages themselves would be consumed. The Dunyain was something new. Perpetually new.

Like lust or hunger.

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Prediction time. Do you all expect to see the Dunyain exposed in the coming books? Or perhaps reintroduced into the story in some other way?

I wonder if Kellhus has any interest in them or if he would preferr Ishual to remain hidden.

In the synopsis for The Judging Eye, it says that Akka is trying to uncover the origins of the Dunyain.

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I wonder if Kellhus has any interest in them or if he would preferr Ishual to remain hidden.

I think he would prefer them to be all dead. The reasoning he applies to Moënghus applies to all of Ishuäl: the Shortest Path for the Dûnyain involves siding with the Consult.

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Climbing pitted mountain trails, Anasûrimbor Kellhus leaned on his knee and turned to look at the monastic citadel. Ishuäl’s ramparts towered above a screen of spruce and larches, only to be dwarfed by the rutted mountain slopes beyond.

Did you see it thus, Father? Did you turn and look for one last time?

Distant figures filed between the battlements before disappearing behind stone—the elder Dûnyain abandoning their vigil. They would wind down the mighty staircases, Kellhus knew, and one by one enter the darkness of the Thousand Thousand Halls, the great Labyrinth that wheeled through the depths beneath Ishuäl. There they would die, as had been decided. All those his father had polluted.

-emphasis mine

This from the prologue of The Darkness That Comes Before. It’s still amazing, to me, how utterly totalitarian the Dûnyain are.

I recall initially having taken the above as Kellhus being the last of his kind. By the end of tdtcb, I figured there could’ve been Dûnyain outside of Ishuäl, on missions or in other seed orchards, if you will. The Dûnyain that found the lone Anasûrimbor were not from Ishuäl, after all. Which brings into question the origins of the Dûnyain. Somewhat reckless speculation here, but I’ve been entertaining the notion that the Dûnyain are from offworld as well, and somehow tied into the backstory of the Inchoroi.

The idea was planted during a reread, with all of the ‘worldborn’ references, then my imagination took off. Not saying it has any basis in reality.

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I recall initially having taken the above as Kellhus being the last of his kind. By the end of tdtcb, I figured there could’ve been Dûnyain outside of Ishuäl, on missions or in other seed orchards, if you will.

Kellhus isn't the last of the Dunyain. Moenghus was only able to contact a few Dunyain, those he knew before his exile. Which raises interesting questions about the Dunyain, if he only knew a small number.

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Time for quotes.

First, Kelly to Moe:

Indeed. We dwarf the worldborn. They are less than children to us. No matter what we encounter, be it their philosophy, their medicine, their poetry, or even their faith, we see so much deeper, and our strength is that much greater.

So you assumed taking up the Water would be no different, that becoming one of the Indara-Kishauri would make you godlike in comparison, And since the Cishaurim themselves scarcely understand the metaphysics of their practice, there was nothing you could learn that would contradict this assumption, You couldn't know that the Psûkhe was a metaphysic of the heart, not the intellect. Of passion...

So you let them blind you, only to find your powers proportionate to your vestigial passions. What you thought to be the Shortest Path was in fact a dead end.

This confirms to me that there was nothing Moënghus could learn. The mystery is perhaps that Kellhus figured it out. (My guess: Kellhus can see that Moënghus must have failed, for otherwise he'd not have need of his son.)

Later in the same conversation, Kelly thinks about about how the Dûnyain will side with the Consult:

For the Dûnyain, it was axiomaticL what was compliatn had to be isolated from what was unruly and intractable. Kellhus had seen it many times, wandering the labyrinth of possibilities that was the Thousandfold Thought: The Warrior-Prophet's assassination. The rise of Anasûrimbor Moënghus to take his place. The apocalyptic conspiracies. The counterfeit war against Golgotterath. The accumulation of premeditated disasters. The sacrifice of whole nations to the gluttony of the Sranc. The Three Seas crashing into char and ruin.

So Ishuäl needn't convince the Consult they're on their side. They just need to betray the Three Seas in a counterfeit war.

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So Ishuäl needn't convince the Consult they're on their side. They just need to betray the Three Seas in a counterfeit war.

But that would only work if Consult didn't know about their existence. They already do know, and I don't see how they could regard Dunyain as anything else than deadly threat to be destroyed immediately.

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I think it is likely that Akka will expose the Dunyain, rather than destroy them. He really hates Kellhus, as shown by the quotes from his book at the beginning of one of the later chapters in TTT. I think it is likely that the Consult's realization that the Dunyain will make good allies will emerge somewhere during their interactions with Akka and his exposure of them. It's possible that he will help defend Ishual from the Consult, hoping to keep them alive for his plans, maybe repeating his mistakes with Kellhus, and teaching Dunyain the Gnosis, again, in his attempts to preserve them. He will be betrayed, and nailed to the walls of Golgotterath reflecting on just how badly he fucked up.

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