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The Judging Eye VI


Nerdanel

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drl84: I was referring to my earlier theory about magic-use and not just living for a long time being the thing turning Nonmen into Erratics, and that the same process is in work in human sorcerers (and was in the mortal Nonmen) but that it's far too slow for the initial effects to become obvious during a mortal lifetime (although it does continue in the afterlife). Two-inutteral users like Kellhus and Su'juroit just might be an exception though and develop the condition faster...

I do have some supporting evidence, but I don't think I should get into the details now.

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Nerdanel, I must say I have found most of your theories ludicrous. But this lead poisoning stuff is brilliant.

It's pretty fun to think about, at least.

I am re-reading Cornwell's The Winter King this week and laughed when Arthur lined an aqueduct with lead.

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Sorry about that Happy Ent, I haven't even begun reading any of the threads outside of the Miscellaneous section. I know you have contributed some excellent ideas to this thread but I enjoy your jokes and that is what I remember most.

Damn you Nerdanel! If Bakker is still revising his overall goal and we know he has visited here in the past, then he might take your ideas and make them his own. Kellhus will not be brought down by some subtle manipulation of the Earwan world (or lifted up in a similar fashion) he will die simply, without any grand gestures and will be disposed of like the rest of the trash, like Richard kills Jagger in the Sword of Truth (damn, did I just reveal that I've read those books... maybe no one will notice :ph34r: ).

Or maybe Nerdanel is Bakker's new handle. Instead of hinting in obtuse ways with dense language, he tells us his ideas straight out but we just think they are crackpot theories. :blink:

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Nerdanel - as usual, you're being completely ridiculous, albiet entertainingly this time, at least.

The role of lead poisoning in the decline of Rome is highly debatable, by which I mean to say that most serious historians don't consider it to be a significant factor. For one thing, it wasn't the lead pipes through which drinking water flowed that was the problem - sediment and minerals in the water tended to build up along the pipes and prevent lead contamination - but rather a syrup called defrutum that was used to sweeten wine and certain foods that was to blame. We have zero evidence of any kind to even remotely suggest that this is present in the Three Seas, although that hasn't stopped any other theory of yours.

Furthermore, and much more damningly, lead poisoning doesn't work at all for an explanation of the decline of Rome. Here's why:

1. Lead poisoning does not pass from parent to child, which means that each generation is exposed to the same amounts in a lifetime, given similar living conditions. With this in mind, lead poisoning doesn't work because the theory only serves to explain the decline and not the heights of Rome, all of which happened while this lead poisoning would have been a factor. Before you argue that maybe later they were exposed to more lead, let me tell you that the main physical evidence of lead poisoning among Romans are bones removed from the ruins of Herculaneum, which was destroyed well before the decline of Rome.

2. Cities in the East and North were built with the same water systems and contained just as much defrutum as Rome and the South, but the North and especially the East continued to prosper long after the decline of Rome.

3. There isn't any evidence that the amount of lead present in tested skeletons was lethal or even dangerous.

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I do have some supporting evidence, but I don't think I should get into the details now.

Whoa. What would indicate this? I'm fairly sure Scott has stated explicitly somwhere on the Three Seas forum that the Nonmen are all going mad because of accumulating trauma .

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Re: lead

The issue isn't about how much lead poisoning contributed to the decline of Rome (and since there is no safe amount of exposure, we can be sure it was SOME - even when it's not lethal it's generally a bad thing to have nobles having a brain handicap competing peoples don't have), but whether lead poisoning is an issue in the Three Seas. We know Bakker is heavily inspired by history but since he's not a historian he's likely read some popularized accounts.

(By the way, I was deferring to defrutum earlier, although I didn't use that word.)

And then there's Esmenet and others' likely lead-based makeup to account for... Esmenet's children, especially the later ones, could have been subjected to prenatal lead levels far above the Nansur norm.

Re: Erratics

I think Bakker is being intentionally misleading on that one. I think it's something we're supposed to believe at this point so that we can be surprised later on. The human brain simply doesn't work that way, and I strongly suspect the Nonman brain doesn't either. I think there's something at work that selectively deletes the memories of the affected people.

I think that something is the use of sorcery and becoming an Erratic correlates with the depth of the Mark. Eventually all pleasant and even ordinary memories will vanish, resulting in a character who does evil and is evil because all they remember is intense pain and grief and betrayal. The darkness that comes before has been altered for them.

Now, this process is obviously very slow. It takes an ordinary Nonman Quya many thousands of years to get noticeably crazy. The mortal Nonmen didn't have the time to become Erratics (althought I wonder about Su'juroit) and neither do mortal humans. Still, it is possible that humans are more vulnerable overall. For example, Achamian's childhood memories are noticeably grim. We know that his father beat him, but the only mention of his mother is that she cried when her son was taken away. Achamian remembers working with the nets, but there is no mention of him playing with the other children, which must have happened too. The Seswatha dreams are an extreme case of the same thing. (I think the mundane Seswatha dreams were fakes sent by Cleric/Mekeritrig which explains why nobody else in the Mandate has those.)

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This post is about a crackpot theory I find entirely unconvincing. Namely, I think the Law of Before and After is really inviolate in Eärwa. Future cannot affect the past.

Kellhus's prophecy? Kellhus came after in this case. Both the uttering of the prophecy and its fulfillment were planned in advance and orchestrated by a higher power.

The Celmomian prophecy? The same thing. Only in this case the higher power was different.

Mention of Mimara in a Seswatha Dream? Even though the Seswatha Dreams are about the past, they happen in the present. Thus the causality isn't violated.

The No-God mentioning Achamian by name in a Seswatha Dream? Achamian seeing himself in a mirror instead of Seswatha in a Seswatha Dream? Again the same thing. It is even made explicit in the books that different dreams about the same single event can have different details.

I have yet to see one good argument for any sort of time travel wackiness in Bakker.

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what on earth are Aurax and Aurang doing?

they themselves don't know. i'm assuming that RSB lifted aurang from mughal emperor aurangzeb, the second longest reigning after akbar, and about whom it was written:

the conquest of the Deccan, to which [Aurangzeb] devoted the last 26 years of his life, was in many ways a Pyrrhic victory, costing an estimated hundred thousand lives a year during its last decade of futile chess game warfare...The expense in gold and rupees can hardly be accurately estimated. [Aurangzeb]'s moving capital alone- a city of tents 30 miles in circumference, some 250 bazaars, with a 1⁄2 million camp followers, 50,000 camels and 30,000 elephants, all of whom had to be fed, stripped peninsular India of any and all of its surplus grain and wealth... Not only famine but bubonic plague arose...Even [Aurangzeb] had ceased to understand the purpose of it all by the time he..was nearing 90... "I came alone and I go as a stranger. I do not know who I am, nor what I have been doing," the dying old man confessed to his son in February 1707. "I have sinned terribly, and I do not know what punishment awaits me."

the last bit especially is general to the inchoroi, aye?

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Re: Erratics

Thanks for explaining. However, I don't agree - if your theory is correct, non-sorcerous Nonmen wouldn't be affected, right? And everything so far indicates that all Nonmen, Mark or no Mark, are going insane.

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Any rate, someone really needs to make a concept album out of Bakkerworld's backstory, especially First Apocalypse. You know, the first song would be "Shaeönanra's lament", he sings about how he's damned and how much that sucks, and how much he wants knowledge. Song ends with Mekeritig entering. Then we have "In the halls of Golgotterath", and so forth...

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This post is about a crackpot theory I find entirely unconvincing. Namely, I think the Law of Before and After is really inviolate in Eärwa. Future cannot affect the past.

You think that the law of what comes before causes what comes after being true is crackpot? :huh:

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Any rate, someone really needs to make a concept album out of Bakkerworld's backstory, especially First Apocalypse. You know, the first song would be "Shaeönanra's lament", he sings about how he's damned and how much that sucks, and how much he wants knowledge. Song ends with Mekeritig entering. Then we have "In the halls of Golgotterath", and so forth...

Nice idea. Maybe someone could post PoN to Bruce Dickinson.

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The future can influence the past if you decide you want something to happen and then manipulate events for millenia to make it so. Technically it would be someone's expectation of the future and their efforts to make it a reality but if it comes to be the future has indeed influenced the past. Then again, to do so you would have to really have a firm grasp on cause, effect and the logos...

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The future can influence the past if you decide you want something to happen and then manipulate events for millenia to make it so. Technically it would be someone's expectation of the future and their efforts to make it a reality but if it comes to be the future has indeed influenced the past. Then again, to do so you would have to really have a firm grasp on cause, effect and the logos...

So we are in agreement: Seswatha stubbing his toe that one time put into effect a long, sad chain of events that caused the birth of the No-God. :o

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So we are in agreement: Seswatha stubbing his toe that one time put into effect a long, sad chain of events that caused the birth of the No-God. :o

If you read my first post on the Judging eye thread you would have realised I was building up to this very moment :)

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No, no, it was Mekeritrig who pushed Seswatha from behind, causing him to stub his toe so that he'd have a memory of it so that two thousand years later Akka would think he's special because he dreamed about Sessy's stubbed toe.

that mekky dude is pretty all seeing and awesome and really great at planning out millenial long events with infinite variables with no problem. He's probably Cleric, and he's probably Cujy and he's probably sheeny and he's probably the No God as well. it's all about Mekky.

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