The Judging Eye V

[Kalbear]

I looked at the text and it indeed looks like Kellhus's shield of debris was different. The difference is however limited to the scale and shape of the wind patterns.

Akka does a similar debris shield. It's not really that uncommon or that odd.

The Carapace stops all physical attacks, including flying Chorae (and possibly the effects of Chorae - the "choric script" on it sounds significant and if the No-God was immune to Chorae why not just have him carry one?)

Why do you think that the No-God is human or human-shaped? The Carapace doesn't sound like a coffin to me; it sounds like a shell. You're hung up on assigning meaning to names; well, what does a Carapace mean? To me, it means the outer shell of a creature. So in this case, the No-God was wearing chorae. Several.

The Consult had many Aporetic sorcerers in their service, so it's not unreasonable to think that they could know some way of nullifying Chorae, even if that way was infeasible for most situations, such as that it took the form of an airtight and very heavy iron shell that blocked sight in addition to antimagic...

I'm curious where you got that they had 'many' of anything. Or really can say anything definitive about this.

Finally

I do think the No-God was most likely the greater sorcerer in life and dying seems to make people more powerful, so the No-God could have a bigger whirlwind that worked as offense as well as defense. Maybe the No-God's whirlwind is a three-inutteral version of Kellhus's two-inutteral spell. We know that two is possible so why not three? Or a thousand, as per Thousandfold Thought?

I think you're way too tied up in inutterals. Inutterals don't seem to increase the power of a spell; they seem to increase the specificity of a spell. That's why the gnosis works so much better than the anagogics; the inutteral nails down the meaning better. That's what kellhus does as well for his spells. But there's diminishing returns here; at some point you get perfect meaning, and you get nothing better.

Another point here is this: why is this sorcerer who has bound thousands of utterals in a way no one has even been remotely hinted at before dead? Given that the Consult sorcerers can live forever (so the theory goes), and given that according to you they've mastered aporetics so that they can be protected from magic while simultaneously using said magic - why aren't they just sending out their sorcerers and wracu to go fuck shit up?

Unless, of course, they're totally fucking stupid.

[Rhadamanth]

I like the idea that inutterals increase the specificity of a spell. That fits with the idea of sorcery. The only thing that bothers me is that there must be a limit, as Kalbear said, where you would nail the perfect meaning of a spell. If Kellhus has managed to approach this limit he would theoretically be able to do anything. There was one other part that made me wonder. In TTT, Kellhus describes the Cishaurim as recalling the tone, timbre, and passion of the God's voice to near perfection even though the meanings of sorcery escape them. If we assume Kellhus may be able to completely elucidate the meanings of sorcery, wouldn't it require the passion (and tone and timbre as well I guess) of the God's voice before he could truly master sorcery (and maybe creation too, perhaps)?

Nerdanel, I wonder if you have read Thorsten's theories on sorcery and the No-God on the Three Seas Forum? He makes a number of good explanations of just about everything which is worth reading. It may help you with some of your ideas.

There has been speculation that Kellhus will team up with the No-God but I wonder if Kellhus doesn't want the No-God itself, just the secrets of its making. The No-God is the antithesis of God and if Kellhus wants to truly master his circumstances (the world basically, I guess) then he would need to know this. At the end of TTT, Kellhus seemed very interested in Moenghus' theories on the No-God (maybe just to know his enemy, maybe not). Kellhus seems to have a good idea of God but maybe he doesn't know enough about the No-God to complete his plans. Perhaps in order to remake the world (in his image? hehe) he needs to shut it off from the Outside for awhile.

One last thing, does anyone have an idea about what Kellhus meant when he told Esmi that the White Luck will break against her? At first thought this may be just reassure her that she can handle it but it seems like there might be more here. I don't know, maybe someone out there does.

[lokisnow]

Kell is using Esme as a shield, making sure the resentment gets directed towards Esme rather than him?

and also he could be reassuring her, meaning if she believes she'll overcome it, she will (with some help from Kell).

Or, Kell may have had another moment of prophsying without realizing it. Not knowing that little Kellmomus is going to rip the throat out of the White Luck warrior and then tear out WLW's penis and stuff it down the WLW throat when the WLW tries to kill Esme.

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

I looked at the text and it indeed looks like Kellhus's shield of debris was different. The difference is however limited to the scale and shape of the wind patterns. Kellhus's shield of whirling debris "fairly obscured" him, and the No-God's whirlwind has a lot of sand in the air, which also makes the Carapace harder to see as well as disrupting ranged weapons and all that usual deadly sandstorm stuff.

I do think the No-God was most likely the greater sorcerer in life and dying seems to make people more powerful, so the No-God could have a bigger whirlwind that worked as offense as well as defense. Maybe the No-God's whirlwind is a three-inutteral version of Kellhus's two-inutteral spell. We know that two is possible so why not three? Or a thousand, as per Thousandfold Thought?

Kellhus' debris shield seemed to be just moving blocks of stone, whereas the No-God produced a whirlwind. The difference here is both scale and kind; Kellhus picked up some stones and moved them around, while the No-God created a tornado that did it for him. As for the inutterals, as said those just make a spell more specific, rather than increasing its power.

As I've said earlier:

- The Chorae redundantly stop all magic

- The Carapace stops all physical attacks, including flying Chorae (and possibly the effects of Chorae - the "choric script" on it sounds significant and if the No-God was immune to Chorae why not just have him carry one?)

- The whirlwind stops all physical ranged attacks as well as anyone trying to get close and prevents anyone from just hammering away at the Carapace and/or the embedded Chorae

- The fact that the Carapace is flying stops ground-bound enemies from getting close

I think the Consult was trying to think of anything, but nothing in that setup protects against nonphysical nonmagical ranged attacks like lasers... Normally sorcerers are vulnerable both to Chorae and to greater magic overloading their shields and even physical attacks if the attacker is powerful enough.

There was apparently exactly one laser weapon left on the planet at the time of Mengedda and the Consult had every reason to believe that it had been lost permanently or destroyed at Eleonot. The rest of that pretty much makes the No-God invulnerable.

Really, the argument that you're making is a bit ridiculous. We have ample evidence of the effects of Chorae, both in terms of the salting and the rendering of their bearer immune to sorcery. There's no evidence whatsoever that they can render one immune to magic and yet still allow the bearer to use magic. He'd die because of the Chorae.

And like Kalbear said... if they had this ability, why not just send the whole School down armed with them? They wouldn't even need Sranc; a shield would protect them from everything physical while their Chorae and "choric-script" armor or whatever protected them from sorcery.

[Nerdanel]

I've read Thorsten's threads. I don't buy it. I don't think Eärwa is a "clap your hands if you believe" kind of place and I find the idea of the No-God being an artificial superconsciousness very unconvincing. I think the dangers of blind belief have already been a theme in the books.

There are two basic options for the No-God and the Chorae:

1) The Carapace with its choric script makes him immune to the effects of the Chorae. Similar devices are not used by the Consult sorcerers since the prototype (this one) turned out to be far too impractical for combat use. The Consult sorcerers would be using excessive power just to fly around in all that metal and to see where they are going, so that their actual combat efficiency would be intolerably low. And besides, the Consult knows how to make disposable remote-controlled bodies that are far more efficient. The No-God is powerful enough that the required support magic is no big deal for him.

2) He is so powerful that the Chorae don't nullify him, but he nullifies the effects of the Chorae on him. The Chorae are on the outside so that the Carapace stays intact against enemy magic. Otherwise the No-God could be killed by a one-two punch from magic and a siege weapon.

The whirlwind and the shield of debris are conceptually very similar. Both are making a very strong, directed wind that moves in loops around the caster, carrying matter with it and providing protection from ranged attacks. I totally can see the whirlwind a two-inutteral version of the one-inutteral shield of debris, or something like that. I think in sorcery precision equals practical power, since when the magic power is spent more efficiently, larger and more complex effects can be achieved. The Cishaurim are very imprecise with their magic, replacing finesse with brute force, and I think that's why they are relatively weak for the most part. The Anagogic sorcery is also less precise and weaker than the mathemathical Gnostic sorcery.

[lokisnow]

I think the dangers of blind belief have already been a theme in the books.

And yet, in your theories in particular you will do everything possible, bending over backwards stretching your theory into an impenetrable tautological pretzel in order to make it continue to fit, even in the case of countervailing evidence. We humans always want our theories to be right and selectively recruit to support the idea we're always right.

I mean, no one is going to take seriously someone who says, "see! SEE! Shakespeare believed in women's suffrage and equality! Twelfth Night is actually a feminist tract, and these two lines, taken out of context from Act III, prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, he was actually writing a secret message into his plays and no one but me has ever figured it out."

[Nerdanel]

I do change my mind. After TJE my view of the most likely metaphysical situation of Eärwa changed to something resembling Gnosticism from generic dualism with forces of Good and forces of Evil.

I think people have been unduly attached to their Tekne construct oversoul theories and to thinking that belief determines the reality of Eärwa. We have Bakker's word against the latter, as I really don't think that the ancient Israelites believed that the God was dependent on their belief rather than them being the dependent ones in the relationship.

[Kalbear]

There are two basic options for the No-God and the Chorae:

You're missing a very big one: that the No-God's power is inherently something else. That's the one that's heavily implied (in the same way that sranc aren't magical artifacts, skin spies aren't magical artifacts, and Tekne produces no magical artifacts.

And that's also a fairly reasonable conclusion if your basis is that the No-God is the absence of God. If that's the case and it has no real connection to the Outside or to the word of God, why would it be able to do magic - or more accurately, why would the rules of magic apply to it?

I do agree with Nerdanel that the notion that belief changes the physical reality seems to go against virtually everything Bakker is making points of in this world, and the argument about modernism and whether something can produce good outcomes with a bad goal completely disintegrates if you think that everything will change just if people believe in it enough. But I don't think most of the rest remotely follows.

[Nerdanel]

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck we should consider the possibility that it in fact might be a duck. I think the evidence is far more convincing that the No-God is a really powerful Ciphrang than a really powerful Tekne creation. More accurately, I suspect the No-God was a Ciphrang possessing a Tekne synthesis body.

Ciphrang have shown the ability to control and speak through vacant (or not so vacant) bodies. No Tekne creation has ever shown that.

Ciphrang have shown the ability to trap souls. No Tekne creation has ever shown that.

Ciphrang have shown the ability to radiate supernatural fear in at least one case. No Tekne creation has ever shown that.

Sorcery has shown the ability to create and control powerful winds in the local area. It is not known that Tekne could achieve the same without large and complex machinery or that there even is such machinery.

[Kalbear]

Ciphrang have shown the ability to control and speak through vacant (or not so vacant) bodies. No Tekne creation has ever shown that.

Errr...The inchoroi have shown this ability many times. The Synthese is a great example. This has been an established ability of theirs since the first time we've seen them.

Ciphrang have shown the ability to trap souls. No Tekne creation has ever shown that.

First of all, when? Second of all, what does it mean, trap souls? Third of all, why do you think that the No-God is trapping souls?

Ciphrang have shown the ability to radiate supernatural fear in at least one case. No Tekne creation has ever shown that.[/quote}Wracu and Bashrag both have done this, as early as the first Seswatha dream and as recently as TJE.

You mean like some artificial shell with odd designs? That kind of machinery?

Okay - we've only seen 3 Ciphrang in the books. All three were summoned creatures from the Outside that had anagogic sorcery magic analogues, were completely vulnerable to Chorae and desperately wanted to return to the Outside.

None of the No-God's characteristics meet this at all. Some actively violate those things, like the chorae. In this case, the problem is that it DOESN'T walk like a duck. It certainly doesn't quack like a duck. The analogy would be better stated as "if it has some kind of wing-like appendages, it's definitely a duck despite lacking the ability to fly or a bill'.

[Rhadamanth]

Speaking of Ciphrang, what do all of you think about the ability of the Ciphrang to rip out the souls of the weak Cishaurim (specifically from their meat, IIRC) who were using their particle beam from their forehead trick (I wonder what would happen if they crossed their streams?)? We haven't seen it but I don't think they could do it against Anagogic or Gnostic sorcerers. The Cishaurim use their passion (and maybe belief as well in a way) to produce that beam but it is attached directly to their souls?

I've been thinking about the various things the No-God could be and I came up with this: The Inchoroi were searching desperately for a way to save their souls from damnation. They decided to try to use the way the chorae can cancel out sorcery's ability to change the world in a new way. Instead of a physical object, they try to create a soul that can cancel out the effects of the Outside. Boom! Here's the No-God. This made me think of the Dunyain's quest to create a self moving soul. A soul unaffected by anything else. They too thought the soul was flawed and tried to change it. Maybe they are heading to the same place by two different paths? Obviously this isn't completely thought out but I just wanted to see what everyone else thinks.

[Nerdanel]

Errr...The inchoroi have shown this ability many times. The Synthese is a great example. This has been an established ability of theirs since the first time we've seen them.

By the time of PoN, Aurang had long since learned sorcery. Do you have any evidence of the Inchoroi using remote control bodies in the backstory and not just slave creatures?

First of all, when? Second of all, what does it mean, trap souls? Third of all, why do you think that the No-God is trapping souls?

Trapping a soul is exactly what it sounds like. You take someone's eternal soul by unspecified means and keep it so it can't escape. This appears to be a fairly common ability, really. Witches can make whore's shells to prevent conception by trapping the soul of the child, and they can trap the souls of the dying to make Wathi dolls. Demons can later take the souls of the sorcerers who summon them. Zioz can take someone's soul even when they are alive, but it is unknown if he gets to keep it. Presumably, everything in the Outside (or at least everything worth mentioning) is able to overpower the soul of a lesser spirit, as long as a greater spirit doesn't intervene for the soul.

As for the No-God:

"The soul that encounters Him, passes no further."

He was clearly having a very significant effect on souls. I think he was trapping them so that they couldn't pass on, and since he was in the World, he could get the uncontested first pickings, like witches who capture the last breath of a dying person don't have to worry about beings in the Outside who also want that soul.

Wracu and Bashrag both have done this, as early as the first Seswatha dream and as recently as TJE.

Really? I must have forgotten that. In particular do you have any such examples from when the No-God wasn't in the World and doing things like speaking through Sranc mouths so that we know that it's really Wracu and Bashrag and not the No-God in them?

You mean like some artificial shell with odd designs? That kind of machinery?

The sarcophagus-like thing with carved script like the one seen on magic-created artifacts? Made of a material that may be identical with the one used in said magic-created artifacts and very definitely different from the gold of Incû-Holoinas? No antennae, nozzles, sciencey blinking lights, moving parts or anything to that effect? Well, it COULD be really advanced technology, but we have no evidence whatsoever for it.

Okay - we've only seen 3 Ciphrang in the books. All three were summoned creatures from the Outside that had anagogic sorcery magic analogues, were completely vulnerable to Chorae and desperately wanted to return to the Outside.

There have been five Ciphrang, not counting those on Kellhus's belt:

- Ankaryotis, a physical fighter.

- Zioz, who could kill Cishaurim by yanking their souls from the bodies and was classified by the Scarlet Spires as a Potent as opposed to a Debile. He fights Achamian physically, but Achamian sees on him a Mark of truly remarkable depth, meaning that he is no common demon.

- Sohorat, who used something like Anagogic sorcery.

- Setmahaga, a physical fighter.

- Gin'yursis, the Wight-in-the-Mountain who was a Gnostic sorcerer in life.

Achamian thinks that the last wouldn't have been vulnerable to a non-inverted Chorae, and that Seal thing makes me think that if some force didn't keep the Wight-in-the-Mountain in, he wouldn't stay in.

I think there is a good chance that the No-God is possessing a Tekne body inside the Carapace, allowing him to feel more at home in the World. Compare that to the Wight-in-the-Mountain's takeover of Cleric's body.

None of the No-God's characteristics meet this at all. Some actively violate those things, like the chorae. In this case, the problem is that it DOESN'T walk like a duck. It certainly doesn't quack like a duck. The analogy would be better stated as "if it has some kind of wing-like appendages, it's definitely a duck despite lacking the ability to fly or a bill'.

I purposefully didn't include the "looks like a duck" since we haven't actually seen what the No-God looks like inside his Carapace.

[Tes'thesula]

Is the Wight-in-the-Mountain definately a Ciphrang?

[Shryke]

How is it even close to a Ciphrang?

[Tes'thesula]

Nerdanel seems to suggest it clearly is

[Shryke]

Yeah, but Nerdanel is a crazy man.

There's no actual evidence that they are anything alike.

[red snow]

I'm enjoying watching the current debates from the sidelines but will hopefully, momentarily, sidetrack things by asking if someone can clear this one up or summarise it (if it was discussed in an earlier thread).

Why has Kellus allowed Moenghus (jr) to live and to have a position of power in his council?

I can only think of a handful of reasons which are;

A) Kellhus doesn't know that Cnaiur is dead (by prologue accounts) and thinks having his son could come in useful

B) Kellhus doesn't know Moenghus is Cnaiur's son. I'd say that's impossible as even Sorweel figured it out.

C) Kellhus is being sentimental over Serwe. Almost as unlikely as in B

D) To keep his new council and esmenet happy. Also seems dubious as they all knew that Serwe was with Cnaiur at first and he could easily have written it off. Plus there are many ways he could have killed Moenghus and make it look like an accident.

E) Kellhus has been testing whether a normal child can be trained in the ways of logos. Kellhus doesn't stike me as being bothered about that - TJE never mentions any training of his own kids (that i remember). Maybe it's as a test for his own children at some stage, possibly to kill Moenghus?

Option A, still seems the most likely to me - unless Kellhus really has grown soft.

[Shryke]

Cnauir displayed an uncommon intellect, like Esmenet.

Why not keep the kid around? He could be useful. Dead is permanent. Can't go back from that decision.

[Maithanet]

I'm enjoying watching the current debates from the sidelines but will hopefully, momentarily, sidetrack things by asking if someone can clear this one up or summarise it (if it was discussed in an earlier thread).

Why has Kellus allowed Moenghus (jr) to live and to have a position of power in his council?

I can only think of a handful of reasons which are;

A) Kellhus doesn't know that Cnaiur is dead (by prologue accounts) and thinks having his son could come in useful

B) Kellhus doesn't know Moenghus is Cnaiur's son. I'd say that's impossible as even Sorweel figured it out.

C) Kellhus is being sentimental over Serwe. Almost as unlikely as in B

D) To keep his new council and esmenet happy. Also seems dubious as they all knew that Serwe was with Cnaiur at first and he could easily have written it off. Plus there are many ways he could have killed Moenghus and make it look like an accident.

E) Kellhus has been testing whether a normal child can be trained in the ways of logos. Kellhus doesn't stike me as being bothered about that - TJE never mentions any training of his own kids (that i remember). Maybe it's as a test for his own children at some stage, possibly to kill Moenghus?

Option A, still seems the most likely to me - unless Kellhus really has grown soft.

I think it's a combination of A and the fact that he is widely known as Kellhus' son. Having family members die off isn't good, and it's not like keeping Moenghus around is a problem. He's crazy and all, but not dangerous to Kellhus (he's no Dunyain). So he's keeping him around to lead some sort of suicide mission or something.

[Nerdanel]

He knew something of demons, Ciphrang, knew that when summoned, a Chorae could destroy their corporeal form. But what faced them had risen on a tide of unreality. Hell had come with him, the shade of Gin'yursis, the last Nonman King of Cil-Aujas, and he should have taken them all, Chorae or no Chorae.

It's not as unambiguous as I could wish, but I think the implication is clear.

Though, I suspect I'll get comments about how the souls of the damned and the demons are totally distinct categories, even though the Wight-in-the-Mountain apparently runs Cil-Aujas, possesses great power, hungers like a demon, and can take the souls of others.