The False Sun- Bakker

[Happy Ent]

AP, you need to argue that the Inchies revel in cruelty for its own sake. You don’t need to inform me that they rape, or are immoral, or that they readily employ cruelty. I knew that, and don’t argue against it.

They want whatever cruel or depraved fantasy that fleets into their heads to be realised at once, […]

But we get pretty good insights into their fantasies. Even when they use intercourse for interrogation (versus Kellhus and Esmi) they are less depraved than when Conphas or Xerius have recreational intercourse. I fail to see any indication that they get off on cruelty, certainly not to the extent that several humans in Bakkerworld (or Martinworld or Realworld) do. Compared to the interrogations of Achamian by the Scarlet Spires, or of Kellhus by Cnaiür’s tribe, or the captive skin spy by Moënghus, on a scale from “pretty nice” to “very cruel” these encounters score pretty well.

But make the choice yourself: whom would you rather be interrogated by? Aurang, the Utemot, the Scarlet Spires, the Sohonc, the Dûnyain, Proyas’s torturers, Ramsay Bolton, the Tickler, Kellhus’s Judges, Mekertrig, Qyburn, the Taliban, the CIA, …. Who is most cruel? (I’ll take pendulous Aurang, thank you very much.)

Even the cruelty employed by Aurang in the famous last scene of Warrior Prophet is certainly not for its own sake. And it is no more or less cruel that several of the other tortures that Bakker (or Martin or real world historians) describe other species inflict. Aurang is not doing being cruel to anybody for the sake of cruelty.

So, no, I fail to be convinced of the claim that the Inchoroi are cruel for the sake of it. Cruelty can be an instrument to them, and not even one they use particularly often, since they have more powerful tools (which are also more pleasurable to them).

[Curethan]

Well, in Earwa what the inchies do is cruel, evil and immoral from a neutral perspective. That is why they are damned.

Here are some examples of where I recall inchies being cruel for the sake of it;

Aurang didn't have to physicaly and mentaly rape Esme (in TWP) - he could have simply used the cants of compulsion.

The sranc were designed as a cruel mockery of non-men.

They didn't have to rape, murder and nail the populations of whole nations to their city walls - they could have just killed them.

Nailing heads on spikes is cruel - wearing corpses as armour is just plain stupid unless you are seriously fucked up.

Crucifying Seswatha instead of just killing him is also being stupid for the sake of inflicting extra cruelty. (and a classic evil overlord mistake)

I don't know what expediant use Aurang would have had for the salt gathering boy.

[Happy Ent]

Well, in Earwa what the inchies do is cruel, evil and immoral from a neutral perspective. That is why they are damned.

I see no indication for cruelty. Immoral, yes.

By analogy, sorcerers and whores are also damned. That doesn’t imply they’re cruel either.

But thanks for playing along by providing examples. I want more of that.

Aurang didn't have to physicaly and mentaly rape Esme (in TWP) - he could have simply used the cants of compulsion.

But it’s not cruel. He isn’t being cruel to her. He derives sexual pleasure from her. He’s motivated by intercourse, not cruelty.

The sranc were designed as a cruel mockery of non-men.

Then every cartoonist is “cruel.” Sure, by that standard the Inchoroi revel in cruelty for its own sake. They’re as evil as, say, Jim Henson.

They didn't have to rape, murder and nail the populations of whole nations to their city walls - they could have just killed them.

The Inchoroi did that? We know Nonmen and weapon races are involved in that, and they are absolutely cruel, either by design or erraticism. But the wall at Sauglish does not say anything about it being constructed by the Inchoroi for the sake of revelling in cruelty.

Nailing heads on spikes is cruel - wearing corpses as armour is just plain stupid unless you are seriously fucked up.

Strikes fear and terror in the heart of your enemy. That’s also not cruelty for the sake of it.

Crucifying Seswatha instead of just killing him is also being stupid for the sake of inflicting extra cruelty. (and a classic evil overlord mistake)

Mekertrig. A Nonman erratic. Deliberately cruel, no question about it.

I don't know what expediant use Aurang would have had for the salt gathering boy.

I don’t know what to say to that. My first guess is that he wanted to rape him.

[Antonius Pius]

AP, you need to argue that the Inchies revel in cruelty for its own sake. You don’t need to inform me that they rape, or are immoral, or that they readily employ cruelty. I knew that, and don’t argue against it.

Cruelty and depravity and obscenity are what they are all about. That they sometimes employ it to learn something someone wouldn't otherwise tell them doesn't mean they don't enjoy it.

When Aurang as synthese (IIRC) has a discussion about why they are damned, he makes pretty clear that cruelty and depravity is all he cares about. I don't understand how you can reason away the Inchies cruelty simply because it seems to serve a purpose at a given time.

[Happy Ent]

When Aurang as synthese (IIRC) has a discussion about why they are damned, he makes pretty clear that cruelty and depravity is all he cares about.

Could you find that for me? I’ve reread the scene with Sarcellus, Inrau, and the Synthese, and the later scene between Sarcellus and the synthese and can’t find anything there.

I don't understand how you can reason away the Inchies cruelty simply because it seems to serve a purpose at a given time.

But that’s not how arguments work. Maia and several others here seem to think that the Inchoroi revel in cruelty for its own sake. I simply don’t find a single example of that.

This psychological profile exists. There are individuals who are gratified by the suffering of others. I understand the concept. I just don’t see it in the Inchoroi. (I see it in the Sranc. I see it in the Nonmen, but for a different reason than their psychology -- it seems a deliberate choice, performed not for immediate gratification but for memory. I see it in Conphas and Xerius and Ramsay Bolton.)

[Antonius Pius]

Could you find that for me? I’ve reread the scene with Sarcellus, Inrau, and the Synthese, and the later scene between Sarcellus and the synthese and can’t find anything there.

Oof, I don't know... I think it's in the first three books somewhere, but I can't recall exactly where.

But that’s not how arguments work. Maia and several others here seem to think that the Inchoroi revel in cruelty for its own sake. I simply don’t find a single example of that.

I understand the intellectual premiss of your argument, but I think you have it upside down for this reason: simply because Aurang uses restraint while questioning Esme and Kellhus doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy cruelty for cruelty's sake, especially as the whole back-catalogue of their work comprises nothing but depravity and obscenity, on a large enough scale to make sane folk go mad. It's like your saying there's no reason to believe a large part of the iceberg is under water, since you can't see it.

[Curethan]

I see no indication for cruelty. Immoral, yes.

By analogy, sorcerers and whores are also damned. That doesn’t imply they’re cruel either.

Sorcerers are damned because they impose their will over god's creation instead of submitting to how things should be.

Apparently they are making god's creation suffer - thus the 'bruise' of sorcery.

Whores are not auto-damned - refer Gierra. The tusk repudiates them but that ain't definitive.

But thanks for playing along by providing examples. I want more of that.

But it’s not cruel. He isn’t being cruel to her. He derives sexual pleasure from her. He’s motivated by intercourse, not cruelty.

I don't think so - he's motivated to find out what Akka knows. The rape is opportunistic and is inflicted for the same reason as most rapes; to dominate and degrade.

Then every cartoonist is “cruel.” Sure, by that standard the Inchoroi revel in cruelty for its own sake. They’re as evil as, say, Jim Henson.

That's not fair. Satirical cartoons can be quite cruel. :P

The sranc were designed to cause pain and suffering - that is pretty much the definition of cruel. The inchies own that cruelty. If they were sexbots that seduced and then sexed you to death then your arguement might hold.

The Inchoroi did that? We know Nonmen and weapon races are involved in that, and they are absolutely cruel, either by design or erraticism. But the wall at Sauglish does not say anything about it being constructed by the Inchoroi for the sake of revelling in cruelty.

The inchies are absolutely responsible for it.

Strikes fear and terror in the heart of your enemy. That’s also not cruelty for the sake of it.

You really think wearing corpses into battle is an effective strategy?

Mekertrig. A Nonman erratic. Deliberately cruel, no question about it.

C'mon ... Mek is just on guard duty.

You really think they let Mek decide what to do with Seswatha after they captured him? He's an erratic, just muscle, not a leader in the consult.

(If erratics seek trauma then I doubt he wants to do anything bar stare at the inverse fire all day.)

I don’t know what to say to that. My first guess is that he wanted to rape him.

Yeh, and the motivation? C'mon ... rape isn't the same as masturbation.

[Happy Ent]

C'mon ... Mek is just on guard duty. […]

You really think they let Mek decide what to do with Seswatha after they captured him? He's an erratic, just muscle, not a leader in the consult.

This is an interesting tangent, by the way. I don’t think we’ll get any further on the question of the Inchoroi revelling in cruelty, so let me follow the tangent.

From False Sun it sounds as if Mek is very much a leader of the Consult. It’s all his plan. He’s the boss, or close enough.

Consider this: He saw the Inverse Fire and reported back to Nil’giccas about it. The king decided to seal it off. Then, after a while, Mek decided to open it again anyway, for he understood that the only road to salvation lies that way. For hundreds of years he tried to bring down the glamour around the Pit of Obscenities. Stole the Heron Spear from Ishterebinth and presumably blasted the Barriers with it. No dice. Then seduced the Mangaëcca and tried generations of grandmasters. Finally, Shae could help him. Then the two released Aurax and Aurang.

Then these four individuals founded what we know as the Consult. But the big design, the grand plan, is all Meks. Without him, no Consult. I think he is far more than a henchman. (Henchnonman.)

[Borric]

I read it as Mek somehow being addicted to the inverse fire.

No one would attack the barriers for 6 days without a break. It sounds like a junky after his fix.

I didn’t get the impression he had any greater goals.

[Kalbear]

On cruelty and them reveling in it (since apparently HE has me on ignore):

Inrau's destruction - they were very much looking forward to torturing him to death.

Creating Sranc who revel in raping people as their weapon race, specifically designed to terrorize.

Torturing thousands and being prideful in it.

Getting erections at the sight of death and pain of humans (this happens with TWP and Aurax, with the debriefing of the skin-spy)

You say that they are a race of lovers - did it ever cross your mind what they love?

But it’s

not

cruel. He isn’t being cruel to her. He derives sexual pleasure from her. He’s motivated by intercourse, not cruelty.

Ultimately that's wrong, as we see in the False Sun - they are motivated by their single desire to avoid damnation. You know you're wrong here, authorially.

As to Esme, he's absolutely being cruel to her. Just because he wants to get pleasure out of it doesn't mean he's not reveling in her horrible reactions to it. He's toying with her - just like he does with the glamour of the kilted guy earlier, just like he does when he rapes the confessions out of her. He enjoys the manipulation; point of fact there is only the line of 'we are a race of lovers' that gives any evidence that they have any sexual pleasure at all.

Huh. Put it that way and we see no examples of the Inchoroi enjoying anything but causing pain and rape. They state what they are, but as you're so fond of saying, ever do inchoroi deceive themselves.

[jurble]

C'mon ... Mek is just on guard duty.

You really think they let Mek decide what to do with Seswatha after they captured him? He's an erratic, just muscle, not a leader in the consult.

(If erratics seek trauma then I doubt he wants to do anything bar stare at the inverse fire all day.)

Achamian, when he thinks of the leaders of the Consult, says Shariatus, Mekeritig, Aurang and Aurax. At least to Achamian, Mekeritig is a leader of the Consult.

[Curethan]

I suspect that Mek is infamous because of his role in getting into the ark, not as a commander.

Like Borric, I felt that he was primarily wanting to bake his brains on the inverse fire. If erratics seek trauma, then I think he found the ultimate trauma.

Cleric's behaviour and the previous short story about the non-man make it pretty clear that erratics would absolutely suck at planning and organising.

They need an elju just to keep them on track.

“This was what my master sought? To tear down the Barricades?”

”And his masters before him,” the Nonman replies. “For more than two hundred years.”

Mek didn't enlist the Mangecca to help him, they found him sitting there when they came to see what they could plunder.

You can see the Nonman there as much as not, sitting on the edge, where the air is too thin for fat men to breathe, waiting for souls more ordered than his own to tear down the Barricades.

Not much of a plan at all really.

Oh, and I found the quote that suggests the gods are now blind to Shae when I was digging that up.

This had been an old habit of his, identifying and assessing omens, born of days when he still walked paths that the Gods could reckon.

It doesn't seem to be refering to his new found interest in torture and inter-species copulation. I don't know what else it could mean?

[twooars]

Hi, I am new to the forum, really interesting discussions going on here! I just have a few questions...

Cruelty has no attraction to the Inchoroi. Pleasure does, to the point of magicking their rape victims into a state of lust. When we see Aurang rape Esmi and Kellhus from their point of view, Aurang specifically uses magic to make the experience pleasurable to the victim. Had Aurang revelled in “cruelty for its own sake,” these encounters would be quite different.

Not so sure sorcery was involved in making the experience pleasurable. My impression was that the Inchoroi being a "race of lovers", are just more 'adept' at sex and therefore make it pleasurable, maybe I am wrong. But if they used sorcery for that, what were the Inchoroi doing before they came to Earwa? Didn't they acquire sorcery after they had enhancements during their stay on Earwa? So were they not able to make it "pleasurable" to the victims before their arrival on Earwa?

[twooars]

(If erratics seek trauma then I doubt he wants to do anything bar stare at the inverse fire all day.)

I don't know if this follows from what we know about erratics? The books state that they seek trauma, not for it's own sake, but for the sake of memory. And my understanding was that it is the memory of loved ones that they cherish. Or memory of events that involved their loved ones. Or if they like someone in the 'present', they are cruel to them so that they will remember that person. I think they are never into pain for its own sake, so I find it unlikely that they would be obsessed with the inverse fire...

[Curethan]

Welcome, twooars.

From what Shae says, it can be deduced that the inverse fire seems to do have the effect of changing you, so that all you care about is the fact you are damned. For an erratic like Mek it means he doesn't care about cherished memories anymore. Only the trauma remains.

And the inverse fire sounds like standing in front of a fire hose in that respect.

I imagine it makes him feel very 'focused'. :)

Worth noting In his scene in TDtCB he behaved very differently from Incariol and wos'is'name from 'the fourth revelation' - he was explicitly happy to be reminded of someone he had killed and stitched into his face-cloak when Khellus stabbed him.

[Happy Ent]

I have a question about the silencing of compassion.

Some early description of the Inchoroi tells us that they “silenced all compassion” in order to better savour the reckless chorus of their lusts.

We know not when this silencing happened; I have the feeling it happened eons and planets ago. I had assumed this happened through some kind of genetic self-modification, brain surgery, or whatnot.

But the False Sun tells us that the Mangaëcca, too, have not a shred of pity left in them:

They had conjectured, the Mangaecca. They had experimented. They had taken captives and inflicted every possible agony simultaneously all in the name of some flimsy purchase, some scant knowledge of Hell. Drawing toenails, while crushing genitals, while setting afire, while murdering children, raping wives, strangling mothers, blinding fathers… They had visited lunatic misery on innocents, and they had found themselves utterly impervious, immune to the least remorse. Some of them had even laughed.

It’s one of the more puzzling passages.

The Mangaëccists at this time have no compassion, much like the Inchoroi. The passage hints at the following explanation: by comparison to Eternal. Damnation., whatever misery can be visited on somebody in this world is but a trifle. The scales of compassion have simply been redefined; there is no earthly torment left to elicit pity, because Hell is so much worse. It’s like watching Paris Hilton agonise over a chipped nail: sure, she may think it’s terrible, but we know that she’d being ridiculous. Compassion, plainly, is a relative thing, put into perspective by knowledge of Hell.

Since we assume that the Mangaëcca gained their knowledge of Hell by gazing into the inverse flame, it stands to reason that their new-found imperviousness to the weaknesses of pity is a relatively recent event.

Timeline:

1. Magnaëcca founded.

2. Mangaëcca contacted by Cet’ingira

3. Shaeönanra and Cet’ingira break the Barriers

4. Members of the Mangaëcca watch Inverse Flame

5. Mangaëcca’s compassion silenced

Thus, “they had conjectured” and “experimented” happens around step 5. I’m not sure what they try to learn from these experiments at this time: do they want to confirm to themselves that they are now really, really ruthless. To what end? What’s the conjecture?

—

Or did I get it backwards? The Mangaëcca have always tortured people in order to learn about Hell. Then they finally get a chance to see the real thing when Mekki opens the Pit for them?

—

Moreover, is this how the Inchoroi silenced their own compassion in the first place? Here’s a possible timeline:

1. Inchoroi decided that compassion hinders their hedonism

2. Inchoroi build Inverse Flame so as to silence their compassion

3. They watch. Compassion goes poof.

4. Unintended side effect: They now are cognisant of their damnation.

5. Project of multiple planetary-scale extermination starts.

I’m not sure I like it myself. It does fit, terminologically. A flame is something that warms you, makes you comfortable. You sit with friends around a fire (we’ve seen this theme several times in Bakker, both in the Holy War and among the Skin Eaters.) It brings you nearer to your fellow man. An inverse flame would do the opposite. Look at it, and you lose all empathy.

[Madness]

I have other ideas I'd like to explore but I'm so damned strapped for time right now.

HE, I read that passage a little differently, though I agree with your timeline.

The Scarlet Spires are reminiscent of the Mangaecca I think. The Mangaecca witness the Inverse Fire and don't want to believe that their Damnation is truly so terrible. So they spend all their time trying to verify it by other means - all the torture, etc. And this is where the fallacy might sneak in. The Mangaecca attempt to confirm the horror of Hell, only to come to the belief that Damnation exists seemingly only due its lack of earlthly comparison, not because of confirming visions from dying relatives. What they've seen is so horrible that none of what they attempt in confirming their visions phases them. They have to trust Inchoroi Truth.

And the Inchoroi can't even remember if the Inverse Fire is the recording of the Holy Prophecy or Aurax's personal anal snuff films.

It's still just perspective.

[Borric]

. I’m not sure what they try to learn from these experiments at this time: do they want to confirm to themselves that they are now really, really ruthless. To what end?

There continuing the experiments to create some vehicle to avoid damnation?.

I.E, the No-God. (well the No-God just speeds up the process).

The goal is a 144k population.

Or did i totaly misunderstand you? :)

[Curethan]

They had conjectured, the Mangaecca. They had experimented. They had taken captives and inflicted every possible agony simultaneously all in the name of some flimsy purchase, some scant knowledge of Hell. Drawing toenails, while crushing genitals, while setting afire, while murdering children, raping wives, strangling mothers, blinding fathers… They had visited lunatic misery on innocents, and they had found themselves utterly impervious, immune to the least remorse. Some of them had even laughed.

(off topic, but that bit reminds me of Anchorman...

Shae: We've done tests, you know. 63% of the time, you're damned 100% of the time.)

Given that the preceding few paragraphs to this describe the damnation that Xir’kirimakra reveals, I read it as trying to work out the why of damnation.

They can do all these horrible things and simulate the physical pain etc - but they can't make themselves experience the soul tearing remorse that is an intrinsic part of the pain of damnation revealed by the inverse fire.

Then they decided they aren't to blame anyway, that damnation awaits everyone.

This bit is interesting too. Does it suggest some form of reincarnation after all? Or just that salvation is a real possibility for pious non-sorcerers?

“This Ground …” Aurang continued, oblivious to his transgression.“This Ground is the one Promised. Salvation lies within your grasp. Salvation in this life…“

[jurble]

I read that as this life vs. afterlife. And salvation as getting into Heaven. And the idea being that, you can close the gates to the Outside, kill the world, and build yourself a paradise in in the world, as you're immortal.