The Judging Eye VI

[Xereaux]

You can learn both, but you do things like sacrifice your eyes.

I don't know for sure (obviously), but I always assumed that the sacrifice of a Cishaurim's eyes was part of the tradition of becoming Cishaurim, but not necessary for the use of the Psukhe. Relatedly, I wonder if there are non-Cishaurim practitioners of the Psukhe, blinded or not, analogous to wizards in comparison to sorcerers.

[Rhadamanth]

According to Kellhus, they blind themselves to better remember the angles (or something) which makes them able to better use the Psukhe.

[Maithanet]

According to Kellhus, they blind themselves to better remember the angles (or something) which makes them able to better use the Psukhe.

It makes it easier to use the Psukhe, but it is not essential. I think we still may see Kellhus use both magics, and he won't blind himself to do it.

[Rhadamanth]

It may be possible to use the Psukhe, but I think he will have some weird combo of emotion and logic (Psukhe and Gnosis) which will make his magic much more interesting. If he feels emotions clearly enough to use the Psukhe.

[jurble]

I was thinking how cool an Apocalypse game would be.

It opens with a cinematic. The doors to the Great Hall pen, and a Non-Man enters, and he's all like what-up King Celmomas. He starts talking and describing the Mangaecca entering Golgotterath and how the Nonmen suspect there are still Inchoroi alive.

Celmomas says something like "Forget them, they are damned, the Gods will deal with them" and then the Nonman says something, but the translator doesn't want to speak, and Celmomas is like "Spit out mang!" and then you hear a voice ring out "He says that if they succeed, your gods will die", and it's Seswatha! Seswatha then listens to the Nonman and describes the threat of the No-God and Inchoroi.

Celmomas is like "yeah whatev" but then Seswatha tells the story of the nameless war and the womb plague (no flashback, because the appearance of the Inchoroi will be a surprise later in the game). Celmomas is like "hmm, alright, then we shall raise an Ordeal!" he orders Seswatah to go to all the Kings of the North. That's when Seswatha's Long Argument begins and shit.

Game starts for real then, you play as Nau-Cayuti out killing Sranc for fun, and shit. After one gameplay hour or so, you're recalled to Tryse, where your dad explains the coming fight. He sends your north ranging. It's basically a GoW clone at this point, smashing Sranc to death and shit. Anyrate, after a few more hours including a boss fight against a Bashrag, the Ordeal is ready, and is coming to meet you. Your father asks that you scout a staging ground for an assault on Golgotterath, and you find a field, BUT A WRACU IS THERE! You and your men (npcs) try to kill it only to find yourselves getting owned. Seswatha appears and blows it up.

Next cinematic, you're in a tent, under the furs with your favorite concubine, when the tent is pulled into the air and you find yourself looking at a night sky as a giant Synthese type thing grabs your concubine (i forget her name) and pulls her into the sky, towards Golgotterath.

Then it's the whole Seswatha and Nau-Cayuti in Golgotterath thing, looking for the Heron Spear. You can control both characters now, you can switch using the bumper buttons, but they both play like a GoW-style game play, Seswatha shoots geometric looking light and crap, while Nau-Cayuti uses his sword.

Later, after that whole shit, and some more wangst ridden cinematics, Nau-Cayuti is poisoned by his wife. All this time, the game has slowly transitioned into Seswatha as the main character, so subtly, you don't even notice until Nau-Cayuti is dead. Now, as Seswatha, you have to watch the No-God take the field and kill everybody. It's pretty much a game where you keep winning your personal fights, but everyone else is losing theirs. You smite Wracu, flay Bashrags, and duel Inchoroi.

The game ends with the heron spear, a lone, thin beam of light flying into the abyssal darkness that is the whirlwind of the No-God.

[jurble]

God rereading Darkness again, for some reason, this time, I can't stop laughing.

"Kidruhil patrols usually number more than fifty. We have killed only a dozen.”

[Rhadamanth]

Sounds good, but can any console or PC render the phalli to Scott's standards?

I think it'd be better as a FPS with Seswatha as the main character. Instead of guns, you would have sorcery... I admit I haven't thought this through.

[Nerdanel]

The problem with Kellhus learning Psûkhe is that he doesn't have anyone to learn it from. The Cishaurim were mostly killed off, and any remaining ones appear to be very good at hiding. It makes sense too, with Psûkhe leaving no Mark and all. There could be Cishaurim right under Kellhus's nose and he would be completely ignorant of them as long as the Cishaurim acted with due care and kept their spells of nondetection up. The strange case of the Bandit Padirajah that all the forces of the Aspect-Emperor cannot catch is currently the best and only sign that there indeed are surviving Cishaurim at all...

I think, say, Moënghus is more likely to combine Gnosis and Psûkhe than Kellhus. I tend to think he isn't really dead and that he really is powerful in Psûkhe, unlike Kellhus thought. I think Kellhus fatally underestimated his father, and Dûnyain are not in fact near-emotionless, but just keep their emotions bottled up. But well, I've discussed this at length in earlier threads.

Gnosis is awesome in sheer power, but the strategic advantages of invisibility and misdirection cannot be ignored.

[jurble]

I think, say, Moënghus is more likely to combine Gnosis and Psûkhe than Kellhus. I tend to think he isn't really dead and that he really is powerful in Psûkhe, unlike Kellhus thought. I think Kellhus fatally underestimated his father, and Dûnyain are not in fact near-emotionless, but just keep their emotions bottled up. But well, I've discussed this at length in earlier threads.

Nah, they're definitely near-emotionless. Kellhus doesn't even understand what he's feeling when he sees Serwe getting raped. Moreover, Moe is mosdef dead. He kinda got stabbed and chorae'd.

[Spring Bass]

I tend to think he isn't really dead and that he really is powerful in Psûkhe, unlike Kellhus thought.

I'm pretty sure he's dead, Nerd. Cnaiur rubbed a chorae across his cheek.

Here's the passage in question -

Moenghus gasped, jerked, and spasmed as Cnaiur rolled the Chorae across his cheek. White light flared from his gouged sockets. For an instant, Cnaiur thought, it seemed the God watched him through a man's skull.

What do you see?

But then his lover fell away, burning as he must, such was the force of what had possessed them.

"Not again!" Cnaiur howled at the sagging form. He stumbled to his knees, weeping, raving. "How could you leave me?"

He definitely sounds dead unless he (unlike the rest of the Cishaurim) somehow discovered a cheat code to avoid getting killed by Chorae while, for all the world and Cnaiur . . . looking like he'd just been killed by Chorae.

Re-reading that passage, I thought the wording of that was interesting. Particularly the part about how to Cnaiur "it seemed the God watched him through a man's skull". That might be further verification that the Psukhe is "holier", unless this is just a case of Cnaiur (who is already batshit insane at this point) making an unusual comparison.

I mentioned earlier that the Cishaurim seem to die differently than the normal sorcerors when hit with Chorae. In addition to Moenghus's death, here's a description of Cishaurim deaths from chorae:

TTT, pg.363, Chapter 16"]

Cishaurim were struck down with Chorae - quick, soundless flashes, like tissue cast into flame . .

Compare the above death to that of Hem_Arkidu of the Scarlet Spires on page 356 of TTT:

TTT, page 357, Shimeh Chapter 16"]

Now and again, when one of the slave-soldiers stumbled across the treacherous footing, a Chorae would whir out of the fire and darkness. Hem-Arkidu was struck, so perfectly balanced he remained standing as incandescent lashes snapped through his fading defences, a pillar of salt amidst sizzling, screaming ruin.

I really need to do a re-read of the whole trilogy again. There's some interesting nuggets in there, and hopefully Scott has it all tied together.

[jurble]

So non-Cishaurim get salted, while Cishaurim burn like a really fast burning piece of paper.

Anyrate, rereading first book, is Cnaiur's obsession with Serwe and Anissi because, as they are both Norsirai, they look like Moenghus?

[Nerdanel]

It's central to my idea that the body that got salted wasn't really Moënghus but only remote-controlled by Moënghus. The actual identity of the body was likely a lesser Cishaurim who was a fanatical follower of Moënghus to the point of being willing to die for him, like others of his kind we had seen earlier. It's noteworthy that when "Moënghus" first appears he is standing behind a waterfall that obscures his features and later on it is very dark. That kind of thing would have helped to hide any possible flaws in the illusion of Moënghus's face.

If Kellhus had stabbed Esmenet while she was being possessed by Aurang, would Aurang have died?

If Xerius had hit Mallahet with a Chorae when he was channeling Skauras, would Skauras have died?

As for the Dûnyain emotionality, there is no evidence for vestigiality rather than extreme repression while there is for the converse. Kelmomas is only half-Dûnyain, but I think it's noteworthy how he imagines himself a perfectly rational unmoved mover while it's clear to the reader that Kelmomas is in fact completely driven by the emotions that he doesn't recognize. It could be that Kellhus is more similar to that than he'd like to imagine... And well, the Nansur intelligence thinks Mallahet is extremely powerful in the Water and somehow he also has gained multiple Cishaurim followers ready to die for him, which would be much easier if he actually were that powerful.

[jurble]

There's no evidence for that at all. Moenghus is clearly Moenghus, Cnaiur remarks that he looks like Kellhus, he looks like who he is, most def. The water-fall thing is a scene out of kung-fu movies. There's no evidence at all he has the ability to puppet control other bodies. Moreover, we know from Kellhus that the spell to control the Synthese requires several Gnostic mages chanting over Aurang's body. Moe's power with the Psukhe is much, much, much more reduced. The Gnosis lets the Dunyain mind go wild, since it caters to their intellect. The Psukhe is nearly useless to a Dunyain, because their emotions are vestigial.

[Nerdanel]

Everyone agrees that Mallahet = Moënghus, right? (It's kind of obvious really.)

So, therefore we have a pre-Kellhus appearance of Moënghus in the scene where he meets with Xerius in TDTCB. I think that scene is a massive clue.

In the scene Moënghus channels the voice and face of the distant Skauras. It is not stated how hard that kind of thing is to do for a Cishaurim, but for people in the Moe = dead faction it would be clear that this kind of thing does not require very much Water at all since Moënghus is able to do it. Since Skauras is not a caster until something very weird is going on[*], that would mean that it's all Moënghus's doing too. (If you want to add supplementary Cishaurim to the other end, they won't change the big picture.)

We know that Moënghus has Cishaurim followers who are willing to commit suicide for him and that Moënghus is willing to sacrifice them for things like delivering vague messages to Kellhus. The idea is that Moënghus takes one of his followers, and tells him to channel Moënghus's face and voice and movements, so that when Kellhus stabs him, just like Moënghus had calculated that he would do, Kellhus thinks that his father is now permanently out of the picture. This in turn means that Kellhus is unaware that Moënghus is still manipulating him and does not try to outwit his father, making him the perfect tool for someone intelligent enough to predict him.

And by the way, we know that possession does not take much magical energy. Aurang's magical power was much diminished so far from his true body, but he was still able to cast illusions and to possess Esmenet from the relay station of the bird body. Since Moënghus is a Cishaurim, he could do all of that, and Kellhus would be none the wiser, not being able to sense his father's magic.

[*] Crackpot theory time! Skauras is really Shaeönanra a.k.a. Shauriatas, the leader of Mangaecca, under a somewhat unimaginative fake name and possibly a body not his original one. He got himself the position of the Sapatishah-Governor of Shigek since it's so close to Mengedda and if he's going to resurrect the No-God it has to be done in Mengedda. He's been plotting with Moënghus and trying very hard to avoid Cishaurim not in on the plot.

Yes, that was particularly crackpotty even for me.

[jurble]

Except Moenghus states he's better at that kind of stuff (the face thing) than other Cishaurim, since it requires brains not emotion. Moreover, Skauras' face isn't lifelike, iirc, he looked sorta like Princess Leia did in the R2D2 hologram. It was clearly his face, but it was floating infront of Mallahet, and it was translucent. The other Cishaurim probably can't even manage that, for them the Psukhe is a blunt instrument. Moenghus is weak as hell magically. He did not know how the Psukhe worked before he jumped into it. His calculations were wrong, and he effectively crippled himself.

[kuenjato]

Jurble, Nerdanel's been promoting his idea of Moe's survival for quite a long time now. Even though there is no evidence pertaining to this theory and, in truth, it would significantly rob TTT of the power of its conclusion (not to mention be incredibly lame), he persists in assuming Moe was this incredible mastermind, rather than a somewhat pathetic manipulator trapped and reduced in the end by his own Dunyain programming.

[lokisnow]

yeah, but Moe can't die because it's a fantasy novel, and the number one trope of a fantasy novel is: "He who is Bad-Ass can never die, but rises again, stronger and harder."

[Rhadamanth]

The only way Moe comes back is if Kelly (or someone else) can travel to hell (plausible, perhaps) and pick him up. I doubt Kelly will though since he has enough Dunyain to worry about and Moe knew the plan anyway (till Kelly went insane or something else ) which would spoil Kelly's fun.

Nerdanel, keep those crazy theories coming. We have over a year and a half till the next book and without them this thread will probably die. Who knows, maybe Pierce Inverarity will return and give us a tease.

[akh]

Hmmm. Way off the current discussion, but..

Moenghus sent the dream "Bring me my son" to a lot of people in Ishuäl. Do you think all those people had the Mark, and were capable of magic? Because if they were, all the potential wtf-casters of Dunyain are efficiently eliminated since all the dreamers were killed. That would leave Kellhus still the uncontested number one sorcerer, even if they introduced other Dunyain to the world now.

[Shryke]

Hmmm. Way off the current discussion, but..

Moenghus sent the dream "Bring me my son" to a lot of people in Ishuäl. Do you think all those people had the Mark, and were capable of magic? Because if they were, all the potential wtf-casters of Dunyain are efficiently eliminated since all the dreamers were killed. That would leave Kellhus still the uncontested number one sorcerer, even if they introduced other Dunyain to the world now.

They were all potential sorcerers. They didn't have the Mark though.