Judging Eye IX (spoilers)

[Curethan]

Kellhus at least mentions that he is Dunyain to the people of Atrithau - his followers from that city supposedly called themselves the "little Dunyain."

Like all good liars the dunyain use fabrication as a last resort. Re-ordering and selective revelation of pertinant truths are far more effective for the purposes of deception.

[aimlessgun]

Damn.

Two things:

Firstly, dance, martial artists, bodily control, sports, whatever, all greatly increase brain matter, neurological strength and intelligence, fine motor skills. It's comparable to how knowing to play violin or guitar can translate into greater proficiency and ability in math or language. This shit is my academic & research bread and butter. It would help the Dunyain, and any of us, to know karate or ballroom dancing. Plus it fits in with their philosophy of coming before physically in all circumstance as well as emotionally or mentally. A certain stack of activities and practices in human life can enable us far more intelligence, creativity, and lateral jumps in emergent and fluid thought.

Lol, the human brain is such a sophisticated object, like a rocket engine, and rather then attempt to understand it, our academic consensus so far is to try and stick the technological augmentative equivalent of nitros tanks, red flames, and a spoiler on it. What a joke.

The Dunyain have to push physical and mental limits every generation or else they fail, regardless. Even in minute excess.

As Razor said, the face reading could easily have been the initial attempts to understand the passions, which are chiefly understood and expressed through our facial musculature and its positions. To minimize the animal appetites they must first understand them.

As for the Moenghus, Third Sight, Judging Eye nonsense. I'm almost positive it refers to these quotes:

TWP, p. 642 - 643

TWP, p. 651-652

And most importantly, even hinting something completely different and more confusing than the Judging Eye and my position that the Third Sight its simply a Cishaurim thing.

TWP, p.579

Just thoughts.

Oh, and Razor, perhaps Bakker just tried to hide the reveal as I think unJon said.

Hmmm.

Sorry, that's all I got. But I'll be looking for stuff relating to this in the future.

[lokisnow]

Just for reference, because I looked it up.

http://daelstorm.thegraveyard.org/maps/Prince%20of%20Nothing%20-%20Earwa%20Map%20Colored.jpg

I had thought Atraithau was where Tryse was.

I think they plan on using Sauglish, and then eventually Tryse followed by Dagliash for the base of their operations. A road is being built to Sakarpus. and I actually think the Road is being built to the river atyersus, that would provide a direct supply line from the Three Seas all the way to Tryse. Use the Road to the River and the River to Sea.

If Kell is smart he'd be trying to get the Zeumi and the Cingulat to ship supplies to Tryse by secondary and tertiary sea routes, and he should have been stocking grains with long shelf life in Tryse for quite a while. Is there a trade route from Atraithau to Zeum? Can it be made use of to get supplies to Atraithau and then on to Atyersus River and Tryse?

It's hard to imagine Kellhus trying to do this in a single year. I imagine it would be smarter to get to Tryse or Dagliash by Winter, establish a base, wait until spring and then march on Golgotteranth.

[Madness]

You just missed the specific quotes, aimless, no biggie. Don't know what's up with that. Look 'em up though, it's pretty neat stuff.

I'm almost positive, Triskele, that the Ordeal gets to Sauglish and, even, to Tryse before the end of WLW. Especially, due to Pat's review and the idea that the Ordeal passes through ancient Kuniuri, specifically where the first Ordeal launched from.

Certainly, I've thought about Achamian and the Skin Eaters meeting up with Kellhus and the Ordeal but I always seemed to think that that wouldn't happen until the Great Ordeal was already camped beneath Golgotterath. Ultimately, I see Achamian and the Kellian Empire crossing paths again, just not until the Unholy Consult.

[Rhadamanth]

Which brings up another question. We know that Kellhus can teleport a long-ass way. It's taxing, but he can do it. Where has he already gone?

Hell.

[aimlessgun]

And Disney World.

[Madness]

I'm not sure that Kellhus knows about the Coffers. Neither did Achamian, really, the Whore just made his lie truth; simply, Achamian didn't even realize that he actually needed to go Sauglish nor that the Skin Eaters spoke of the Coffers as a place of treasure until he was already on his way with them to Cil-Aujas. I'm also not convinced that Kellhus has gone to hell when its completely likely that he just had Iyokus bring him a Ciphrang to battle. Unless, I'm contradicting actual text there?

As for Kellhus' plans specific to the Ordeal.

All I remember is that the Great Ordeal is expecting to have beaten Golgotterath and be camping there before winter and Achamian is racing just to make it to Sauglish before the Fall Solstice or the Winter Solstice, yeah?

[Curethan]

And Disney World.

Thus determining that the consult isn't the worst thing that could take possesion of Earwa.

[unJon]

couple of quick hits.

1) Love, love, love the idea that Fane and Anjencis and other super-famous people in history are randome Dunyain ex-pats. Awesome. Hope something like this turns out to be true.

2) @Shryke - the problem with Inrau casting spells (apologies for not breaking out quotes, but I'm drunk and my books are packed away in boxes. however, in an old thread--hopefully still saved on the board here--this topic was discussed quotes and all).

Inrau casts a Gnostic spell in his death scene that has his burning fingers rip out the heart of some dude. That does not mesh with Akka's discussion about the Gnosis with Kel in TTT. Akka cautions Kel that when he goes down the path of learning the Gnosis, that there will be a period of time (years?) where he is vulnerable to chorae because he is marked, but will not be able to defend himself because he will not be able to cast any spells (because he will not be adequately fluent in the languages).

Yet we know that Inrau was not marked. He ran away from the Mandate prior to him getting to the point of being damned. And we are told that the 1,000 temples includes people that are the Few and would be able to spot Marked people as potential sorcerous spies. So, given Akka's comments, Inrau should not have been able to cast any Gnostic spells, especially one that is so clearly awesome and defensive as "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom heart grab." It doesn't jive with Akka's talk.

3) Kal, v. v. interesting about Kel possibly not being of the Few at the start of the series, but later becoming one when it fits with what the God wants. I don't think I buy it (I really think that TCBD is inconsistent on a metaphysical level with later books--see 2) above--so am inclined to not go to crazy speculations to explain away why we do not see Kel seeing Mek's mark), but it is a cool idea.

As an aside, two other things I view as metaphysical inconsistincies in the books, or by granting the principle of charity, things that were insufficiently foreshadowed:

a) Mimara being able to "hold" the sorcerous light w/o becoming Marked. Not how magic seemed to work in the first trilogy.

B) Avatars of the gods actually walking the earth. Not a bloody hint of any of this, or even the prevalence of the actual Cults, like the cult of Yatwer, in the first trilogy. It is just jarring.

[Nerdanel]

Kellhus can't teleport to somewhere he hasn't already visited. That's why he had to run to Kyudea but could teleport back to Shimeh.

I wonder if the Dûnyain defectives have been enough to turn Ishyäl into a topos. All the topoi are different from each other, probably having to do with the entity in control of the place, so they wouldn't necessarily find themselves having to deal with heart eyes or inexplicable corpses. The reason why the wilderness broke Kellhus could be that Kellhus had been born and raised in a topos and having to deal with the normal world was a shock, either because of the normal world acted naturally more chaotically than Ishuäl where Kellhus could predict the path of a fallen leaf, or because a divinity of some sort was affecting the wilderness and messing up Kellhus's predictive abilities.

I think the explanation for Inrau's sorcery is that even though he had the Mark, he acted vey penitently and convinced the authorities that he was sincere in wanting to leave sorcery behind. After all, it's not like the Mandate asks if the suitable children wish to become sorcerers.

As for Mimara, I think moving the light was like saying the command word to a Wathi doll. Not everything having to do with sorcery causes a Mark. Achamian took the hit for making the light while Mimara did nothing to bruise the onta any further.

I think about all of the Dûnyain are of the Few. Their selective breeding enhances the traits like good memory that are linked to belonging to the Few. Additionally, all of Moënghus's old associates apparently were among the Few. Dream message magic requires that of the recipient. Otherwise assigning sorcerers to dream receiver duty back home would be just plain wasteful.

The first trilogy has a lot of brief mentions of the Cults. There are also signs of the gods' influence. I think there are signs that Onkis tried to save Inrau but he brushed aside her warning as his own cowardice.

I've been thinking that Mekeritrig founded the Dûnyain. I think in these books one should be wary of what seem like massive coincidences. Kellhus just happening to bump into Mekeritrig, learning that Nonmen and magic are real after all, and then getting out alive would be a massive coincidence on its own, which is why I think Mekeritrig arranged the meeting to further his grand plan to cause the Second Apocalypse.

[Rhadamanth]

Kellhus can't teleport to somewhere he hasn't already visited. That's why he had to run to Kyudea but could teleport back to Shimeh.

I don't remember if this was mentioned in the text. The only thing I remember is him being limited by only being able to go horizon to horizon, which is why he was exhausted.

[unJon]

@Nerd, IIRC the text says the Inrau is not Marked. And in any event it defies credibility to think that the Shrial would take a Marked initiate.

Another thing that bothers me is the physics of the Chorae arrows. I cannot figure out how they could possibly be aerodynamic or accurate.

[unJon]

I've always thought that the idea isn't that the bowman actually shoot Chorae. I thought that they simply wore Chorae to protect themselves from sorcery while they fired arrows. It's a tactical unit.

Nope. They fire chorae tipped arrows or something. The sorcerers go up in salt when they get hit.

[Nerdanel]

The Chorae archers definitely shoot Chorae. That's how the arrows get past sorcerers' Wards. Chorae arrows would probably be inferior against normal troops, but the antimagic effect is worth some loss in aerodynamic quality when fighting sorcerers. And only the very best archers get to shoot Chorae, so I think they should be able to handle the handicap.

I wonder about Inrau's case. Perhaps Inrau has a Mark but it's too faint to see with a naked eye, except maybe for the Dûnyain. The faint Mark makes Chorae hurt him, but the damage isn't enough to be instantly lethal.

Kellhus's teleport spell is based on the Cants of Calling, and we know the latter are limited to only contacting familiar people in familiar places. Therefore it makes excellent sense that Kellhus can only teleport to familiar places within his range. It explains why Kellhus didn't teleport to Kyudea.

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

Akka states that Inrau knows some "rudiments" of the Gnosis. To me, this means that he studied it long enough to know a few spells, but that he was by that point in his education very well versed in the language and traditions of the Mandate.

Furthermore, I also think that Onkis might have been helping him out... she definitely appears in that scene.

As for the gods: there are other hints and small pieces thrown in here and there. Mostly we see the priests of Gilgaol, but even Cnaiur at some point in his Utemot encampment mentions dragging his fingers through the earth because of some tradition - this seems to be a remnant of Yatwer-worship.

Another random thought: Weird to think of the Yatwer rituals described in TJE and compare that to Cnaiur digging a similar hole in the ground and then banging it...

[Madness]

I think all of us here had a kind of Marked or not Marked attitude when it came to the few. Like yes, Achamian can wear a deeper bruise than Iyokus and Cleric deeper than Achamian but that there is some kind of line between those with the Mark and those without it.

@Rhamadanth:

In the same place in TJE, I believe, where Esmenet muses about Kellhus' horizon to horizon thing, I think she comments on the traveled where he's been.

But then as Mith has said in other threads - the text doesn't lie, characters do. As in, we all know, that a character's speculations aren't at all fact some, or even most, of the time.

EDIT: @WraithOfME:

I think what unJon was commenting on is that what made PON so good was the fact that all the metaphysical stuff was up in the air. It was a breath of fresh air, compared to almost every other fantasy, where Gods are real entities and have champions, etc. The metaphysics were up in the air.

Now they still may be but I agree, I was blindsided in TJE where the Gods suddenly, concretely existed, and even had Avatars.

[unJon]

Madness, yes, exactly, it was jarring.

@Wrath, if he knew the rudiments of Gnosis, which is obviously true since he cast the Temple of Doom spell, then he should have been Marked prior to that scene. That's the point of Akka's warning to Kel in TTT. It's an inconsistency.

[Nerdanel]

Look it that way:

Let's say each time a spell is cast, a (spiritual) micrograms of Mark substance is deposited in the caster's soul. Inrau casts his first spell ever. He now has a microgram of Mark. Meanwhile (the numbers continue to be drawn entirely from my hat) someone like Achamian could have an entire gram of Mark, and Mekeritrig over a kilogram.

(Quite possibly the level of the Mark per spell also depends on the power and complexity of the spell used, so that Kellhus with his two-inutteral casting should be racking up Mark really fast, but I'm not going there right now.)

But people just aren't that good at making minute distinctions. Let's say Achamian casts a light spell and goes from a gram of Mark to a gram and a microgram of Mark. I don't think his fellows would be able to notice the difference. Similarly Inrau's few dozen or few hundred micrograms of Mark can remain unnoticed by people, since the difference to non-sorcerers is just too small. Meanwhile the Mark is still there and Inrau's Chorae vulnerability is already apparent.

[unJon]

Nerdanel, it's a clever explanation. In any event though, I think even a microgram of Mark is enough to damn you. Or at least enough for Inrau and other believers to think of him as damned. Is that consistent with those chapters of TDTCB? My recollection is that Inrau ran away from the Mandate before the point at which he would have been damned. If true, that would mean no Mark at all, not even a microgram.

[Madness]

Nerdanel's theory aside, and I just realized that Bakker wrote extensively on this subject in the old Q&A threads of Three Seas, and likely answered it, but for purposes of debate, I won't look. And I'm lazy. WraithOfMe probably has it most correct.

In the TTT Appendix, Mandate, School of and Seswatha's Heart entry have some things to say on the subject of Inrau's damnation.

As does Aurang's quote:

TDTCB, p.135

"He knows this form is but a shell," the Synthese said to Sarcellus, "but I don't see Chigra within him. . . You don't dream the Dream like the others, do you?"

Paraphrasing the above three, I assume that Achamian faked Inrau's drowning a very short period of time before Inrau's Grasping, the episode of Cants and ritual that impart the Dreams to the Mandate Initiates. There is only one distinction of Mandate sorcerers, those of Rank and Initiates so I think we assume that the initiates can be pretty much as powerful as low level Mandate Sorcerers of Rank until the moment of the Grasping? Maybe those are to be their first ever Cants. Can't have the Gnosis without the safeguard, right? So Marked or Dead. And assumptively Inrau is only "allowed" escape by Simas and Nautzera to use later? Otherwise, all Initiates die, they don't leave.

Though, as much as I love Bakker, I do think a book's worth is marred by things like this. I shouldn't have to make a bunch of logical assumptions like this in order to have the World's metaphysics not fall apart on me. You know, the whole "transcendent reading experience" is kind of broken by my having to stop and sort through something, to make the story work.

Small gripe in Bakker's case. Huge gripe with other authors.