Judging Eye X (Re-read)

[Happy Ent]

With the permission of the moderators I will branch my TJE re-read off from Judging Eye IX, both to make it more visible, and because it becomes too difficult to disentangle the discussions.

I’d be delighted if others would join me!

[Happy Ent]

Rereading TJE. 1. Sakarpus

The chapter opens with one of Bakker's increasingly infrequent passages from the 3rd person "history"-voice. Bakker the world-builder takes very seriously the sheer logistics of planning a war over such long distances. (The price for this planning is revealed in the next chapter.)

First mention of the Battle of the Pass and the ensuing strife between Men and !Men.

Then comes a wonderful Sorweel passage, where we see Proyas again. As ever, Proyas comes off as honest, deep, and melancholy. I like this scene very much, pitting the three different characters against each other. Sorweel's themes (his rage, his internal conflict regarding his heritage, his mixture of curiosity and distaste regarding Kellhus) are all mentioned, together with his feelings towards his father.

Then follows the chapter's main focus: the exquisite battle scene of Sarkapus's fall. I can't get the images from Jackson's strongly realised battle from The Two Towers out of my head. More generally, the whole Sakarpi culture feels well aligned with Rohan's, though we get only few details: the king's hall, his throne, some descriptions of arms and armour. Stables. The steeds were holy.

A central scene just before the battle lets Sorweel (cold, wet, angry with his father's display of indecision before Prosha) meet his father around burning coals. This is splendidly written, the coal's embers pick out details at whim in contrasting orange (and the obvious wet/cold/alone transition to warm/dry/father). The gist of their conversation is to have Harweel tell Sorweel that he will be overcome by fear and despair, as all men must. Yet he must not break, like a fool. Sorwa's hatred evaporates and is replaced by renewed veneration for his father (who, of course, dies shortly after delivering this message, as the rules of narration proscribe).

We see a stork, obviously holy to the Sakarpi, and some random superstition about warblers.

I think Harweel's eyes are described as "judging" in this chapter, but can't find it again. I must be wrong.

Kellhus almost dies in the last scene. His bare sword hand is encrusted in salt, probably from his short confrontation with Narsheidel. Sorweel could kill Kellhus with ease at this point, his Chorae is inches from Kellhus.

Is Kellhus the beggar who blows up the Herder's Gate, dressed as a beggar? Otherwise other schoolmen must have learned to teleport, of which we have no other indication. (Also, Kellhus's original spell in Thought is too difficult for a world-born sorcerer to pull off, requiring two inutterals.)

[Happy Ent]

TJE Reread. 2. Hûnoreal

The chapter starts with Seswatha dream that includes the revelation that Nau-Cayûti is the sorcerer's son, not the king's. We get a little bit of description again, that gives the Old North almost a viking age feel: Chieftains, Clans, trestle table, animal tokens, people eat with their fingers, bronze tripods. On the other hand, there are pillars, decorative mosaics, and very solid, precise stonemasonry. I can't quite fit an image from Earth's cultures that fits.

Most of the chapter is concerned with the arrival of Mimara and the dialogue and internal monologues of Acka and Mim. I find this all splendid and heart-breaking, but have very little to add. Acka has become bitter and weird. Mimara is another fully realised Bakker character, depth and warts and all. Some of the small aphorisms are great: "But it means less than nothing, winning arguments. The same as with her mother." Both characters are old in the game of insults and hurts. These are very mature characters untypical of the genre (compare to how GRRM would have written this. Witty and perfects retorts—winning arguments—are a cornerstone of his dialogue. Bakker instead avoids exactly that. It's far less entertaining, of course!)

Mim's POV is always in present tense, for no reason I have yet been able to discern. It gives, of course, a very immediate and objective feel to her POV, and since we will later know that she has (or is) the titular Judging Eye.

Nice touches: Note how the description of the scene prepares the dichotomy in Mim's declaration. And she judging aspect is there as well (the division between light and dark):

Now the sun drew a line down her centre, violated only by the crease of her clothing, whose contours smuggled light and dark this way and that. The wilderness rose behind her, far more pale but likewise divided.

"I can distinguish between the created and the uncreated[...]"

The chapter sets up a mystery around Mim's parentage, so far unresolved. My money is on Inrau, but I'm sure Nerdanel can outdo that theory.

I like the atmosphere of Acka's little world, with the slaves that behave like caste-menials, children running around. I don't normally like my pre-modern characters to behave modernly, but I think it fits for Acka. He has slaves, but he doesn't care about how they behave.

Acka has owned Geraus for the entire time ("In the beginning, when it had just been him and Geraus…"). Geraus is Galeoth. The naming scheme is Idrusus Geraus, so he inherits Acka's first name with a prefix signifying his slave status. (I never understood where Acka got his first name from.) As far as I can tell, five or six years ago, Geraus took Tisthanna for his wife. I guess she is also a slave. Did Acka buy her? How did he find her? Clearly a case of cherchez le Dunyain; I must cross-check this with Geraus's visits in Marrow.

[Happy Ent]

TJE Reread. 2. Hûnoreal

The opening quote of the chapter is a description of the Mandati from an unknown Mandate schoolman. We resemble what we are: men who never sleep. This sets the scene only for the beginning of the chapter; the emotional centre is instead the confrontation between Mimara and Acka, and I would have preferred a quotation that was less focussed on the plight of the Mandati. (Also, Acka is no longer plagued by the Dreams so much as he was before. Other demons hunt him now.)

[Curethan]

My opinions;

Mimara is in present tense because she has the judging eye and, as we are told, judgement is unceasing.

I fastened on Etruscan culture when visualizing the Kuniuri scenes.

eta; Inrau as Mim's pop makes no sense to me. As Akka's student he would have been at Atyersus and probably prepubescent from what I recall off the top of my head. Don't think he would have been in Momemn at the correct time.

[lokisnow]

Reread: What has come Before

Right there at the start of the What has come before its stated flat out. The Inchoroi came to seal the world against the heavens. I guess they didn't like how damnation on their planet worked out, so like Zod they were sent away. :-p the What has Come Before is fasinating for much more than just the most important bit--which Bakker makes particularly significant by how he offsets it from the rest of the text.

And go mad.

But enough about the most over debated single line of the Judging Eye. Interesting tidbits:

Nonmen live longer, are more intelligent, more beautiful, more wrathful and more jealous than humans. The last two strike me as an interesting addition to the typical elf traits.

The Treachery of the Aporetics is an interesting phrase, did the aporetics manufacture chorae for the inchoroi or did the inchoroi take the aporetic knowledge and use it to fashion chorae?

The Gift of Immortality was in fact a fell weapon--the Womb Plague. So the two do go hand in hand, there has been some debate as to whether or not this was two separate workings or a combined thing.

The Gates were left unguarded. Sure this is specifically referring to some nonmen kings who did not defend themselves against the tide of men from Eanna, but in light of the end of TJE with the Wight and the Gate, as well as the phrase The Breaking of the Gates, this seems like a sneaky way of giving us another look at how men came to Earwa. The nonmen stopped guarding the gates, and man came through them. Bakker does not specifically mention the Breaking of the Gates. Methinks there is more legend, than fact, in the story of how Noah and the Eannans came to live in Earwa. How ironic would it be if humans coming to Earwa wasn't an epic triumph, but an accidental trickle of immigration?

Not a single nonman is named in the entire description of the cuno inchoroi wars

Those who could discern the joints of existence founded the first sorcerous schools.

The purpose of the Consult is to bring about a world shut against the judgement of Heaven.

The creation of the no-God required filling pits within the ark of innumberable corpses. sounds like a topos.

In creating the No God they were enslaved by him,

They made themselves slaves to better destroy the world.

Note that Bakker sets this off on its on paragraph in exactly the same way he sets off the abovementioned, "And go mad." I think knowing that the Consult is enslaved to the No God is at least as important as Kellhus going mad.

Seswatha is the first human mentioned, hardly any names are mentioned in the prologue, which is probably rather smart of Bakker up until this point.

Rather cleverly, Bakker gives us a nice little catalog of names in the paragraph he leads with, "And so the Nameless War raged anew. What has come to be called the First Apocalypse destroyed the great Norsirai nations of the North." The first part of the prologue began with an invocation of an Endless and Nameless war. That part is done, ended by the line about the enslavement of the Consult, the next part of the prologue begins with the Naming of the Endless and Nameless War. The First Apocalypse. Before this, names are not quite as important, following the Naming, we will get a slew of names. In the Naming paragraph alone we get: Norsirai, Seswatha, Anasurimbor Celmomas, Kuniuri, Golgotteranth, Ketyai, Heron Spear, Anaxophus, Kyraneas, Mengedda.

That is a huge stylistic shift, considering all the names we got in the entire prologue up until the Naming paragraph were: Min Uroikas, Sauglish, Mangaecca, Aurax, Aurang, Consult.

The names come fast and furious in the second part of the prologue.

But first note, that the paragraphs that bind the Naming paragraph, they both explicity refer to the Consult as slaves, because in the paragraph immediately after the naming paragraph we have this:

The No-God was dead, but his slaves and his stronghold remained. Golgotteranth had not fallen, and the Consult, blasted by ages of unnatural life, continued to plot their salvation

Interesting, how in the English language how similar the words slave and salvation are. I think Bakker is being very deliberate here. He's contrasting both slave and salvation, he's contrasting Shutting the world and Destroying the world, he's giving us different perspectives and understandings very rapidly. We're seeing both the Consults objective intent in some phrases and their interrpretation by the larger world in others. These repetitive cycles are deliberate, they're not meant to reiterate the point, but to make you think again. The consult are trying to shut the world to avoid damnation and earn salvation. The Consult are destroying the world and enslaving themselves. The Consult are being set up as another opposing religion, and in doing so, Bakker is setting up another indictment of religion, but perhaps of the more Marxist/Socialist sort of Belief.

And naturally, these contrasts and setups of the Consult religion are followed with descriptions of the rise of the two major human religions. The introduction of the Tusk is not mentioned. But the rise of both Fanimry and Inrithism are detailed. hmm.

We have another offset, single line paragraph here, as the description of the religions and Mandate ends and the description of the Holy War begins:

"And as always, they found nothing."

The next section is just three paragraphs, but it describes the creation of the Holy War using none of the principle actors of the last series, mentioning only Maithanet. And the section ends mentioning the circumfix and a man like a god, leading to our third offset:

"Anasurimbor Kellhus"

This introduces us to part four of the prologue which will describe Kell and Moe and TTT and their position in the story for us.

the Dunyain are described as ascetics here, not ecstatics.

In the context that TTT is presented in this, it reads very much like Leto II's Golden Path, a crafted future, drawn from a probability trance, a future that would allow humanity to unite against the threat of the Consult before the No God was resurrected (only a score of years away, btw, which is exactly what the dust jacket copy reads as from the first line, "a score of years have passed...")

It says that it was in thinking beyond TTT that Kell goes mad. is that madness believing that he can ascend to becoming a god himself if he succeeds? I don't know TTT as described here is about ending the nameless war by uniting all of humanity and taking the fight to the Consult. presuming victory, what would Kell see beyond that? trying to attain godhood seems likely, for some reason, so I'll go with that for now. yet a few paragraphs later is says kell tells moe that only with Moe's death can TTT be realized, this seems a big mad. ;) Hmm. Perhaps, understanding Kell's madness attributed here is as simple as going back to first principles. What Comes before determines what comes after. By leaping to beyond TTT Kellhus never grasped it properly. He thought he grasped it, but only in the manner that worldborn men grasp revelations. Rather than dispassionately absorbing every detail he leapt to a conclusion beyond TTT and by making that leap, he is mad, deluded in the manners that worldborn are deluded--he sees the forest but not the trees. otoh, it is Cnaiur that is later described as Kell's one mistake, not something as big as TTT.

dunyain genes in Kells seed is described as an onerous burden for Esmenet to bear.

Akka Esme and Cnaiur are dealth with rather swiftly. Cnaiur is described as dead, Moe is described as mortally wounded.

We end, somewhat similar to how we began, in reverse, a nice little parallel structure Bakker worked into this section.. Nameless War, Scope of History to start off the WHCB and Scope of History and Nameless War to end the WHCB section.

[Curethan]

In soviet Earwa, TTT grasps you.

[Madness]

Lol, oh soviet Earwa.

Lockenow, I don't want to hijack this thread for discussion so I just want to mention one thing. Please, please, really think about considering the What Has Come Before as canonical. If you read the What Has Come Before in both TWP and TTT, they outright contradict things that happen in the books. I think there were the best option for Bakker to introduce new readers to the story without spoiling things, and even, possibly, to intentionally mislead them.

Just sayin'.

[Happy Ent]

Please, please, really think about considering the What Has Come Before as canonical.

Hm…

the character and faction glossary includes,

Moënghus, son of Kellhus and his first wife Serwë, eldest of the Prince-Imperials

I don’t know whose POV that’s written from, but it isn’t mine, or that of any reader who paid attention, or from a all-knowing narrator. It’s a valid description of Moënghus, and official-from-the-point-of-view-of-an-Eärwan. But not a complete description of Moënghus’s parentage.

[lokisnow]

yeah I know, not necessarily canonical. we've been over that discussion several times, mostly it revolves all around the "And went mad." bit which usually gets the thread length series of replies of "did not!" "Did too!" "Did not!" and so on.

What I do think is interesting is how Bakker weaves different explanations of the Inchoroi and Mangaecca in the space of a few sentances. They're closing the world they're destroying the world. They're seeking salvation they're being enslaved. The lack of consistency within just those few lines makes me distrust the entirety of the what has come before. Particularly as it comes after the text of the book.

haha, what comes before determines what comes after, the 'what comes before' is written to be biased by our reading of TJE. :-p

[Curethan]

I don’t know whose POV that’s written from, but it isn’t mine, or that of any reader who paid attention, or from a all-knowing narrator. It’s a valid description of Moënghus, and official-from-the-point-of-view-of-an-Eärwan. But not a complete description of Moënghus’s parentage.

From the new empire's census, I would imagine.

[lokisnow]

or from an authorly decision that encompasses this, RSB said on the three seas forum

I haven't been looking at the history of Earwa so much from the standpoint of an 'absolute observer,' as from from the standpoint of what is known or thought to be known at the time of the Holy War. This isn't a rule that I adhere to, just a tendency I seem to have largely followed.

So think that probably is as good an explanation as we're going to get. http://forum.three-seas.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=543&start=60

[unJon]

I don’t know whose POV that’s written from, but it isn’t mine, or that of any reader who paid attention, or from a all-knowing narrator. It’s a valid description of Moënghus, and official-from-the-point-of-view-of-an-Eärwan. But not a complete description of Moënghus’s parentage.

Not to derail this thread (though by titling it TJE X it's going to be derailed as soon as IX closes--may want to rename as the Reread thread or something), but this explanation may work for the glossaries, but it fails with the WHCB "Kel is mad" quote. I will say no more on the subject.

[Spring Bass]

I was wondering about that myself. Is this the continuation thread, or a special re-read thread? Initially, I thought it mere coincidence, but I've become more and more convinced that Happy Ent took the Shortest Path towards getting to name the new thread by starting it.

[Madness]

Yeah, I would also, again, direct this discussion back towards the other thread. Serwe is pregnant before she ever sleeps with Kellhus and Bakker just heavily misdirects from that description throughout the rest of the trilogy.

I, as well, said don't think of the What Has Come Before as canonical. The glossary and character factions, like the TTT Appendix, I wholly support.

EDIT: Ent asked that this just be a reread review thread with minimal speculation, seperate from the other discussion. I would agree because I hope to post chapter reviews tomorrow, lol.

[Happy Ent]

I was wondering about that myself. Is this the continuation thread, or a special re-read thread? Initially, I thought it mere coincidence, but I've become more and more convinced that Happy Ent took the Shortest Path towards getting to name the new thread by starting it.

Ah, I hadn’t seen this. Yes, I suggest this thread is X, and the other thread progresses IX to XI. We can ask for a Great Council to decide this, or spend a few years in the probability trance.

[Happy Ent]

Reread: What has come Before

The passage tells us that the Consult "realized" the No-God. There are now various verbs about how the No-God appeared, including "summoned".

I like "realized" because it is compatible with the idea that the No-God is "just" a huge tekne-based artificial intelligence, as laid out by Torsten on the Three Seas forum. (Instead of, say, a Ciphrang from the Outside.)

The summary also points to the countless dead that preceded the realisation of the No-God. Instead of for creating a Topos, like lockesnow suggests upthread, I simply think that the No-God requires a huge fricking number of souls for cognitive power. These have to come from somewhere. So the Consult kills innumerable men, traps and harvests their souls (presumably on the Inside, not the Outside, but I haven't made up my mind about that), and puts them into a Dalek. Instant supercomputer.

[Happy Ent]

Chapter 5: Iothiah

(Apologies for not chronicling my re-read systematically. Chapters 3 and 4 are interesting enough, but I don't have so much to say about them.

In Iotiah, we meet Psatma Nannaferi, trying to beg anonymously. Clearly, she's too much of a Yatwerian superstar to pass unrecognised for long.

We get lots of glimpses of Yatwerian ethics. It's a cult of selfless giving, and easily on of the the Bakkerian concepts that fascinates me the most. The morals of a religion among caste-menials and slaves ennoble the plight of the helpless, they make servitude holy. The rewards are reaped in the afterlife.

This is of course utterly perverse and appalling to somebody like me, but makes complete sense. Yatwerianism is exactly what is needed in such a society, both from the perspective of the psychological needs of the underclass (because it gives purpose, meaning, and hope to their life), and from the perspective that religion enables stability.

In a few pages, Esmi will tell us:

I shudder to think how many coppers I tossed to beggars, thinking they might have been disguised priestesses. The Goddess of the Gift [...] You have no idea, Maitha, what a salve to the heart Yatwer can be... (Ch. V, p. 120)

(Remarkably, Esmi is very open about her motivation for giving: you might happen to hit a priestess, and since Yatwer is compensatory, this might help you. It's exactly what Nanny tries to avoid in her opening scene. Clearly, Yatwerian followers understand the concept of tit-for-tat a lot better than the Cult's leaders would like them to…)

We've seen plenty of Yatwerians before, both Serwë and Esmenet belong to that cult, and had glimpses of their rituals before. From Warrior-Prophet:

Xinemus had begun muttering some joke, but just then Esmenet sat next to Serwe, smiling and frowning.

"Has Kellhus worked him into a frenzy again?" she asked, handing Serwe a steaming bowl of spiced tea.

"Again," Serwe said, and grasped the proffered bowl. She tipped a glittering drop to the earth before drinking. It tasted warm, coiled in her stomach like sun-hot silk. "Mmmm... Thank you, Esmi."

During solstice, cultists touch a Chorae in Carythusal.

I like the various aspects from which Bakker weaves the religion: birth, giving, furrow, planting, sex, menstrual blood, etc. I am not sufficiently schooled in historical religions to recognise the intermingling of fertility god and slave god, but it works well. (Please point me to historical examples.)

We are told that Yatwer is the largest or second-largest cult (Theliopa informs us later that 6 out of 10 caste-menials attend Yatwerian rites. Aside: Kellhus's administration has these kinds of statistics!). Like all the Kiünnat faiths it is threatened by the more monotheistic reinterpretations of Inri Sejenus and Fane, and the Kellhusian version of Inrithism. In Fanim times, Yatwerianism was simply outlawed and considered blasphemous (remember that the Solitary God is not a conglomerate of the others, but separate from them, and that entities like Yatwer are considered demons). The Thousand Temples (the institutional arm of Inrithism outlawed the function of Mother-Supreme (i.e., the function held by Nanny). The Matriarch is the cult's titular leader, I assume (speculate) that a Mother-Supreme is divine, which is the reasons for her being outlawed by the Shria.

(We are never really treated to the theological details of the Shria's presence. I assume he's like the pope, so he's the God's formal representative on Earth, holy, but not a prophet. In any case, he can not tolerate other divine humans in the hierarchy of Inrithism, which is the Mother-Supremes were outlawed. On the other hand, Matriarchs, to the extent that they perform a purely political or administrative role, are of course a valuable function in the enormous machine that is the Thousand Temples.)

Like all the Cults, the Yatwerians were originally thrilled with the Holy War, since it wrested one of their holy places in Iothiah from the hands of the Fanim heathens. Their enthusiasm has since mellowed, because it has become clear that the last two decades have resulted in a marked strengthening of Inritihism and the Thousand Temples.

Politically, the whole caste system has undergone big changes in the last two decades as well. We've only seen glimpses in Esmi's POVs so far, but the slave-reforms are clearly a big thing, and very controversial.

Word has it, Blessed, Empress, that so-and-so is questioning the slave reforms, and in the emost troubling manner… (Ch. III, p. 67)

[Maitha to Esmi: ] "The Cultists themselves are no more or no less foolish than other Men. They see only what they know, and they argue only to defend what they cherish. Think of the changes my brother has wrought…" (Ch. V, p. 122)

(I think there is one other quote about the changes in Kellhus's New Empire, but I can't find it.)

These seem to be the main reasons for the Yatwerian insurgency: A shift in power towards the impressively well-run Thousand Temples, a demographic threat in the form of slave reforms (and, I assume, other improved conditions for caste-menials), and

The Yatwerians are, of course, only one of the many sources of opposition to the New Empire. We know from interviews that this interests Bakker a lot, he didn't want to write a history where a huge political infrastructure just survives unopposed, no matter how well run (or well-intentioned) it may be. We have pockets of Fanim resistance under Fanayal and the Cishaurim, we have several Cults (also, the Assassins that try to kill Kelmo and Esmi in the Prologue), and of course the Consult. (Ironically, the big threat will turn out to be Kelmo, the snake nurtured at Esmi's breast.)

So much about Yatwerianism.

On to the plot.

Nanny. Is a Shegiki-born cultist, so we can understand that the Cult existed in Fanim times (another Shigeki Yatwerian is Porsperian (whom I'll call Perry), Sorweel's slave.) Pox-ridden, and clearly with a withering presence and rapid ascension through the Cult.

Some timeline details:

Year X: Nanny enters the cult as "Shegiki pox girl" "in her youth". That's all we get, I think. She may be 8, she may be 16. (I don't think she can be 25 and considered "in her youth" in a pre-modern society. At 25 she'd have been an adult for years already.)

Year X+20: Nanny becomes Matriarch twenty years after her entrance.

Year X+20 + 14: Nanny becomes Mother-Supreme.

I we put her cult entrance at 10 y.o., she's is Mother-Supreme at 44. How old is she now? We know she's way past menopause, but it seems that she's really old. Here breasts are withered. Only Phoracia is older. Is Nanny 70? I think she's even older. In any case, I think her advance to Mother-Supreme predates the New Empire.

The first thing we see happen to her, from her POV, is a revelation where the goddess Yatwer actually speaks to her in direct speech. Gods speak in bold face.

Interestingly, a Nansur caste-noble helps her up. I am puzzled by this. Why would a caste-noble stoop to help a beggar after an epileptic seizure ("the Falling Disease" he calls it). What's he doing in Iothiah anyway? Is he a doctor? (Probably nothing to see here, just feeding crackpot theories.)

Anyway, she clearly has a revelation. (Likewise, nobody else sees it, so we can continue to view this whole incident as the complete fabrication of a madwoman.) The supernatural stuff increases: the next item is just before she exposes the witch

[she] closed her eyes, knowing they would be globes of crimson when they snapped open.

"Because the Goddess," she murmured, "lets me see."

Shouting clamour. The clinking thump of a stone stool falling. Eleva leapt to her feet [...]

If this actually worked like Nanny thinks, it must be a pretty stunning special effect, akin to what sorcerers can do. We are never told if her eyes actually do look like globes of crimson, and the commotion can be cause by Eleva alone. In any case, Nanny thinks she looks like that, which seems to be "so Yatwer". Earlier we learned,

Even Gilgaöl shrank from Yatwer's bloody gaze.

Since we get the entire section from Nanny's POV it's impossible to say whether she can actually do stuff. There's the revelation, the bloody gaze, and some funky blood-smoke coming out of the cave, but it could all be in her head. Anyway, the other priestesses are sold and end kissing her knee and fondling her. She then announces the White-Luck Warrior. In a later chapter, she invokes unquestionably supernatural powers when she transforms herself.

What else? Eleva is a witch and has replaced the real Eleva some time ago. This kind of magic is new to us, we have seen nothing better than Mallahet's glamour. The Swayal Compact can change their appearance using sorcery, as well as any skin spy. Out-of-book we have learned that the Swayali are a Gnostic school. This is all weird to me, doesn't sound like Eärwan sorcery at all. The Witch, once unmasked and salted, is buxom and improbably young. We can assume that the Thousand Temples have infiltrated other Cults similarly.

[Madness]

I'll keep this minimal. Btw, Ent, you are a very good writer. I'm trying to write up chapter reviews and I keep stumbling; they're less reviews and more speculation. Not good. Anyhow:

Out of book, we've learned that Kellhus teaches Serwa the Gnosis. We don't actually know that the Swayal Compact functions like a normal school or that Serwa, Kellhus, or whomever else, unilaterally taught the Compact the Gnosis. I suspect that, perhaps, the Swayal are a collection of witches who had been living on the fringe of Three Seas society pre-Kellian Empire. I have the feeling that many different sorceries are at work in the Compact; makes a good time to point out that while we've only seen four and know of five different types of sorcery (Gnosis, Anagogis, Phsuke, Daimos, and Aporos) and it's implied that there very well might be more.

[Nerdanel]

Yatwer has a massive gap between her PR and her reality. She's supposed to be this generous, all-forgiving goddess but really she's a wrathful deity who gives nothing for free. I even have a nagging suspicion she isn't really even female but only claiming so for the street credibility as a deity of the oppressed.

I wonder about the rest of the gods and the God...