The path to Lyctorhood is independent research

Gosh! And it isn't even my birthday! An archive of theories and meta posts in the Locked Tomb fandom. Main blog: @chaos-has-theories

[lockedtombtheories]

Hey there Locked Tomb fandom,

I am but a humble tumblr newbie trying to read as many TLT theory and meta posts as possible. I started this sideblog for a way to find them again later, and maybe that's something that appeals to some other fans as well. It’s mostly older posts - I just queue them up as I find them.

Here's how I’m currently organizing them:

Character tags

#gideon nav

#harrowhark nonagesimus

#john gaius

#alecto the first

#mercymorn the first

#augustine the first

#gideon the first

#ianthe tridentarius

#coronabeth tridentarius

#pyrrha dve

#commander wake

#palamedes sextus

#camilla hect

#anastasia the first

#cassiopeia the first

There's a few more floating around, especially on the first few posts, where I realized later that there isn't enough material on them to warrant their own tags yet. These kinds of characters should all fall under group tags, though, so if you're looking for something very specific, try those!

Groups

#blood of eden

#ninth house

#og lyctors

#sixth house

#first house

Subjects

#saltwater

#stoma

#the resurrection

#lyctorhood

#timeline

#names    

#eyes

Meta Subjects

#greek mythology (not necessarily mythology

#roman mythology

#christian symbolism (really anything related to christianity)

#literary references (Shakespeare, Andersen, the lot)

#science  

Other

#fave (this one’s really mostly for me)

#more in the notes (for when there’s too many long variants of a post)

#not a theory (in case I ever decide to post something myself again)

I'll try to update this post as I add new tags. Generally I can't promise I'll stick to this project, but for now I'll be loading my queue with (mostly old) posts whenever I find them and the time to read and tag them.

If you have any suggestions how to do this better, feel free to tell me! I am very much making this up as I go along. Same goes for if I forgot to tag something, or if you want me to add more tags.

I’m currently not using content warnings since... I don’t know which ones to use, and these posts are all canon typical levels of everything, but if there’s something you want me to tag, just let me know!

EDIT: Yes, I’ve already edited it. Sorry. This might happen a lot.

[thunderon]

ok. Ok. Sent you an ask a bit ago assuming some things about Ninth naming conventions and Matthias Nonius and after reading 1 tumblr post and 3 google searches later, I have realized I was totally and obviously wrong on a lot of counts. In other news- according to Wikipedia, Nona is a goddess who’s part of the Fates and ‘spun the thread of life from her distaff to spindle’, and was often prayed to in the ninth month of pregnancy. There was a banner at the top asking for more credible sources though so this should probably be taken with a grain of salt. In other other news, I found the first page of gtn’s guide to naming conventions and “your last name always indicates the House you were born in, and is regarded as a part of your name: this is why Abigail Pent is known as both “Lady Abigail” and “Lady Pent” in a way that never would have been typical before the Resurrection: both Abigail and Pent are referent to her.” From this and the following paragraph (which mostly talks about siblings’ last names), I feel pretty safe assuming that it’s pretty rare to have the exact same last name as someone else, even if that someone else is already dead and/or it’s a legacy name. I’m going to guess that in the Ninth, it’s pretty common to take (a probably dead and venerated) someone’s name and use it as a base for new names. Ex.: Matthias Nonius -> Priamhark Noniusvianus, and Nona (last name unknown, although it is weird that the name we have right now could also function as a last name) -> Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Not so much of a direct example, but also Samuel Novenary -> Pelleamena Novenarius. Harrowhark knowing herself as the 87th Nona suggests there’s a lot of formality to this process. Also notable if I’m right on this: Nigella Shodash -> Ortus Nigenad. Nigella is a genus of plant who’s name comes from (according to Wiktionary) the nigellus, which comes from the Latin word for black, which I’m pretty sure is the same word Nigenad comes from, because I don’t know how else it could refer to the Ninth House/Black Vestals.

Finally, last pattern I noticed in my googling spree of Ninth last names is that 4/7 names seem to have a distant attachment to celestial navigation. Gideon Nav- nav as in navigation, also seems to be the root word for a lot of Latin words relating to ships and sailing; Matthias Nonius- a nonius was a device for taking finer measurements on an astrolabe, named after its’ inventor, Pedro Nunes/Petrus Nonius, a mathematician/cosmographer; Harrowhark Nonagesimus- nonagesimal can mean ‘the highest point or ninetieth degree of the elliptic intersecting with the horizon’. Ngl I don’t fully get what this means but it sounds like the sort of thing that would come in handy when you’re navigating by the sky; Harrow Nova- nova’s use as a distance indicator has it’s own subsection on the nova Wikipedia page. Nona isn’t a last name, but it is where the word noon comes from (nona hora -> ninth hour), when the sun is at it’s peak in the sky, which is probably something that has a lot of uses in celestial navigation, so it probably deserves a shoutout. All of this is very red-string and conspiracy corkboard but it’s weird and noticeable enough that I feel there’s a high chance it was purposeful. Also on the corkboard is that a sextant is ‘an instrument with a graduated arc of 60° and a sighting mechanism, used for measuring the angular distances between objects and especially for taking altitudes in navigation.’ which isn’t related to the point, but supports my 69 agenda. Anyways! Sorry for the two paragraphs of rambling but I felt the need to redeem myself after getting Ninth naming conventions so wrong, and then I fell down the research rabbit hole and here we are. Hope you’re having fun on your hiatus! And that this one is more safe for bears.

edit to add this: in the gtn content glossary or somewhere i think it stated that it’s really abnormal that two people take on the same last name, and if they do they have a ‘unit name’ (like the tridentarii). im going to verify that later when im less exhausted

oh i totally misunderstood the naming conventions as well. i just didnt redeem myself like you did lmao. but thanks so much for sharing your findings!!!!! that was interesting to read this in-depth breakdown :) ive never actually sat down and defined all the names but im extremely glad you did. great stuff really!!!!!

[fortjester]

okay, everyone's being really vague on my timeline discrepancy post from earlier, and idk if anyone else has made a post/theory abt this, but i also don't care. i'm gonna rehash this, mostly for my own benefit, but everyone is welcome to also come have a look and tell me if i'm missing smth. this post does contain spoilers for htn, so reader's discretion.

so, timeline clarifiers, per htn subheadings. let's start easy. this is the earliest date given in htn in its entirety:

parados (act 1) is the chapter where Harrow talks to Ortus in River bubble Drearburh. it's the second (chronological, not linear) chapter we read in the book at all. it's set 13-12 weeks prior to leaving for Canaan House, per gtn timeline details. it is the first time Gideon's name is explicitly redacted (or as i like to call it, Ortuscorrected).

if we ignore the (upcoming) discrepancy's date, the next earliest subheading date following parados's is, conveniently:

epiparodos (act 5) is the chapter immediately preceding/following Harrow's lobotomy, as told from Ianthe's perspective. while the setting is not explicitly stated, per Harrow's narration from chapter 45 (act 5) and the Upon Coherence letter in chapter 4 (act 1), we can glean that Harrow lobotomised herself 3-4 days following Gideon's death on the First House, which would mean they are still on the Erebos (and would argue that the Heir's stay at Canaan House lasted roughly three weeks to a month before Cytherea was killed).

the next (linear) date subheading:

chapter 1 (act 1), nine months. in this chapter, Harrow is stated to be on the Erebos, in a hospital wing. she has been given Gideon's longsword and is battling the awful psychic powers Wake's revenant (inside the longsword) is using on her, likely as an attempt to kill her so she can follow the thanergetic link into Harrow's body and use it for her own means (killing John) (this is mostly conjecture, but i see no other reason for the sword to have this effect on her, bar her lobotomy sparking a vomiting response as opposed to an intercranial hemmorhage response to the memory of Gideon). in the few chapters following this, Harrow is told about Resurrection Beasts, hears the Body speak to her for the first time in eight (estimate) years, recieves the Upon Coherence letter from Ianthe, and is nearly smothered in her sleep (or so it seems). at this point in the narrative, the only OG lyctor she's met is Cytherea, who is dead. she meets Mercymorn as she's being rolled onto a shuttle bound for the Mithraeum. it is only once on the Mithraeum that she meets Augustine and G1deon. during G1deon's entrance, he informs them bluntly that Resurrection Beast #7 is "just under ten months" away.

the next subheading is both chronological and linear, even though the exact placement in the timeline is somewhat unclear:

chapter 12 (act 2), six months. at this point, Harrow, Ianthe, and John have been on the Mithraeum for an unspecified amount of time. Harrow has killed twelve planets. she and Ianthe have been being tutored by Augustine in swordsmanship and understanding the river. in chapter 13 (act 2) Ianthe makes a crack about Harrow making it to her room from the docking bay without being assassinated. Harrow spends the next four chapters giving basic biographies for Mercymorn, Augustine, and Ianthe, as well as speaking with the Body, and revealing the truth of her conception to John.

now comes the discrepancy. the next timeline clarifier, per chapter subheading, is chronological, but oddly not linear:

chapter 19 (act 2), ten months. TEN.

this would place chapter 19 (act 2) prior to Harrow's lobotomy (nine months and twenty-nine days before; per epiparodos, act 5), which doesn't make any sense, because chapter 19 is the chapter where G1deon's first attempt on Harrow's life is recounted. he attacks her in the kitchen on the Mithraeum, quite clearly stated to be only a few days after she arrived on board, and she only narrowly survives the attack because Mercymorn intervenes, to her apparent disgust.

now, could it be that the attack in the kitchen is not explicitly specified to be the initial attack in question? could it be a sleight of hand on Muir's part to say that the first atatck came before Harrow even arrived on board teh Mithraeum, and then recount a completely different one? could the first attempt on Harrow's life actually be the attempted suffocation on the Erebos from chapter 4 (act 1)? i don't believe so. the suffocation is a bookend to the Upon Coherence letter scene with Ianthe, and there isn't even any scene break in the chapter to indicate shifting time between Ianthe's exit and Harrow's subsequent discovery of the fingernails she embedded in the wall in her attempt to defend herself against her attacker, mid-suffocation.

every other timeline clarifier in htn (of which there are nine remaining) makes sense and follows the narrative both chronologically and linearly - apart from the subheading of chapter 45 (act 5):

chapter 45 (act 5) is the River bubble scene where Harrow and Ortus rehash their guilt to each other, and Abigail announces her intention to exorcise Wake's revenant from the bubble. the subheading is vague where no other heading has been, stating only "an amount of time", despite the chapter preceding this one linearly (chapter 43, act 5) having this subheading:

logically, there should be very little time passing between the scene where Harrow comes to fully inside the bubble and sees it for what it is, and reuniting with Ortus properly. the only connection I can see between chapter 19 and chapter 45's discrepancie's is that both chapters make use of the Second House crest, 19's in reference to G1deon being the one to attack Harrow, and 45's no doubt being in reference to Harrow's realisation of G1deon's real name and the as yet unconfirmed connection he has to Gideon herself.

so, what's the fucking deal then? is it a woeful editing mistake? is it a cipher of some kind? is it a product of Harrow's canonical schizophrenia? I certainly don't know, but it's bothering me so much, and I just had to make sure I wasn't making it up in my head. anyway. woe, conspiracy theories on a book published three years ago that likely someone has already talked about be upon ye. whatever.

[hedge-rambles]

Oooookay so, this is interesting. Some of it seems relatively straightforward, e.g. Parodos has a definitive time because that scene slots neatly into the real timeline, however Ch. 45 is "some time" because at that point the timeline of the river bubble has gone totally off the rails and can't be placed neatly into her timeline of events, but there's some other stuff that's raising my eyebrows.

Firstly, the skulls...I never paid them much mind but now I'm looking at them, it looks like they represent people living and dead. So Parodos is a split Ninth jawless skull, representing Ortus, who is Ninth and Dead. Ch. 1 is a whole Ninth skull, representing Harrow, who is Ninth and Alive. Epiparodos is a whole Third skull - Ianthe, Ch. 43 is a split Ninth skull with aviators, i.e. Gideon, who is super, mega dead.

Ch. 45 is a split Second skull, which I guess represents Marta, this being the chapter I think where we finally actually learn something about who she is and was.

And that brings us back to Ch. 19. A whole, Second skull. Jody is off with BoE at that time, Marta is dead as, so who was phone the living Second house this chapter is about? Well it's obviously G1deon, but...G1deon wasn't there, then, was he? He was not on the Erebos as far as we know, nor would he have had any reason to try and kill her before the lobotomy (seeing as the reason for it was an attempt to trigger her lyctatorial abilities that she fucked up with the DIY brain surgery).

I don't know. Fundamentally, I do not know. However, it wouldn't be the first bit of timeline fuckery in that book. I mean, of course, the question of when did Harrow first enter the tomb? I can't be arsed looking up the exact dates right now but one thing that always struck me is that Harrow's story of at what age she opened the tomb differs between when she tells Gideon and when she tells Jod. Which makes sense, Gideon was integral to her decision to enter the tomb, and her brain likely had to cludge together a shoddy story to work around that.

Harrow's internal timeline is fucked, because she's had to chop and change so much of her memory to work around Gideon, who was the biggest part of her entire life. And I think that date is tied to that. 10 months, one day prior to 9 months and 29 days, i.e. the date of the lobotomy. Because the lobotomy didn't just erase the memory of Gideon, it erased the memory of the lobotomy too as a vital part of that. Of all the holes in her memory, that has to be a big one in a way.

So, my guess is that it's just meant to reinforce that Harrow does not have a truly reliable grasp on her own timeline. The skull is G1deon, the chapter is about G1deon, but the timeline point is about Gideon. Especially as, in Ch. 19, G1deon specifically tells Mercy that the Heralds will be there in eight months. Considering the arrival of the Heralds and the murder are basically the same time, I think this serves to reinforce that disconnect. The real question still remains though, what the fuck happened with the attempted smothering on the Erebos?

[ludiosia]

Behold... Thalergy Theory!

"For some reason."

Why... wouldn't Harrow know this? Babies are new life; they're more Thalergy than Thanergy because they're actively growing and they're growing quickly; they're not decaying, not as biologically mature adults are. It would make sense then that the void would larger if babies/infants in particular are killed; there's more Thalergy there to convert to Thanergy.

Increased cellular reproduction and multiplication = a higher Thanergy output when converted. They are directly related.

Here are the definitions as stated in the Glossary:

It's... a hole. Not in the magic system itself, but in Harrow's character, though I actually do believe this is very, very intentional and that it's probably not *just* Harrow who lacks these pieces.

The one topic we don't hear much about is the relationship between Thalergy and Thanergy. We know what they are individually and how they relate to one another, but we never see Thalergy in practice (Animancy); only Thanergy (Necromancy). It's to be expected though; all characters (aside from John, that we know of) hail from Thanergetic planets in a Thanergetic system, meaning everything is in active decay. The reason necromancers exist is directly due to Thanergy; it's the basis of the entire universe for these characters.

I can't blame them for not being able to fully grasp the concept of life energy when it's so scarce, and especially for a character like Harrow, who was the last born and the youngest of her house. She's never seen a baby. She's never witnessed a natural pregnancy either; of course she doesn't know what raw life energy looks like. Human reproduction is possibly the greatest source of Thalergy out there and even that is decaying. Between medical intervention and the increasingly clinical methods used to uphold the population, Thalergy in this form is dwindling.

We hear mention of 'Foetal Care Boxes' from Harrow's warped memories and Pyrrha's question to Camilla about Gravid Carry in the Sixth House. It's almost as if this source of Thalergy is being pushed to go so unnoticed that it's been nearly entirely disconnected from the population:

And y'know, if you think about it, John is a Thanergetic being who took the Thalergetic soul of a planet and preserved it rather than destroying it. Here, let him represent Death while Alecto would represent Life. There's no life without and death and no death without life, though if you kill one, the other dies as well. This balance is how Lyctorhood should have been, but he lied because it wasn't just a failsafe– it was insurance and collateral all wrapped into one.

It would make absolute sense why Thalergy; Animantic practice would be frowned upon, as seen here:

The fact that Thalergenic study has been made to be so foreign and so taboo is incredibly telling because if this was realized and accepted by all, it would bring the whole of Dominicus a huge step closer to learning of John's intentions to withhold power, knowledge, and understanding from them simply to protect himself and the truth of his actions.

It would bring his Lyctors a huge step closer to learning that the relationship between themselves and their Cavaliers ought to have been Thalergetic/Thanergetic, not Thanergetic/Thanergetic; that in having killed and eaten their Cavaliers' souls is a bastardization of the true Lyctor process and that they all could've lived in powerful, balanced harmony different than what John had them believe even when they did make the latter part of this connection.

The answer to Lyctorhood is right under everyone and yet they cannot see it because of how little exposure they get to the other half of the power they draw from and what they can see is written off so quickly as less important.

Life; Thalergy was locked away in a place designed to celebrate and embrace Death; Thanergy. It was hidden on purpose in a place so obvious nobody would think to look there.

It's all smoke and mirrors. Thanks, John.

I'm inclined to believe that what Harrow calls 'The Work' is really her mission to learn about Thalergy and how to actively use it. I'm also inclined to believe that this is how we un-revenant Kiriona as well as the Resurrection Beasts, but that's a post for another time.

[katakaluptastrophy]

I wonder, though, about "should" and "ought" and "true".

Is any form of Lyctorhood something that should be done or is desirable?

Which is not to say that a form of Lyctorhood where both parties lived in companionable power wouldn't have been better than the murdered soul burning forever inside you variety, but if there were such a thing as an ideal situation, I'm not sure that it's a different configuration of Lyctorhood.

If there was anything that "ought" to have happened, perhaps it would have been John maintaining the balance of thanergy and thalergy in the powers that the earth gave him, and using it to truly save the planet. The solar system never dies. He does not create a fascist empire with immortal, super-powered enforcers, however many of them and however more ethically we could imagine their genesis.

But I think OP is onto something in suggesting that an end game might involve thalergy, and some restoration of balance. Though how much that fixes the things we might want fixed is perhaps another question...

[katakaluptastrophy]

I wish you would write a fic where Abigail Pent has a crisis of faith, either in a canon setting, a modern AU, a historical AU, whatever! I just trust your handling of both faith and Abigail's character. 😀

The ask has reappeared! And yes, this would be such an interesting area to explore given Abigail and religion...

@faggedoutsocialite had an interesting comment when I thought I'd lost this ask:

Abigail learns some people survived (or 'survived') the bloodbath at Canaan House and proclaims "the King over the River is good" with such fervour that it genuinely triggers Harrow.

One of the most significant details she recalls from her childhood bedroom, after the bed where her little brother slept and the primrose coloured walls, is the picture of the Prince Undying.

She hides behind a pillar from a gun-wielding ghost who has just shot her husband and intends to send all of them to their second death and total spiritual destruction, and prays "Oh, God, please help me."

At least one of her degrees was taken on the Eighth, and she's effectively an ecclesiastical historian.

Her marriage is considered "traitorous to the ideals of the Necrolord Prime" by some religious authorities and the marriage and the Fifth House custom that permits it are described as "grotesque" and "revolting".

And then there's the fascinating moment in chapter 45 where Abigail reveals that:

House religion once believed there was a "River beyond" but hasn't for thousands of years, to the point that this is now considered such a heretical thing to claim that Magnus is genuinely worried about his wife expressing it in public.

That she is also aware of the stratification of the River that John described in chapter 36, that one's passage through the River apparently depends on one's moral behaviour in life and that there is a hell-like place beyond the stoma at its bottom.

That she believes their god is entirely ignorant of the space beyond the River! (and quotes Hamlet while expressing this, which has a tendency to pop up when River shenanigans are afoot...)

That the Houses are aware of the concept of divine omnipotence but that John has never claimed to so be.

That she has spent her whole life thinking that god didn't understand metaphysics and wanting to send him her notes on the subject!

That divine ignorance of metaphysics and the consequent social censure of it has directly contributed to the stagnation of their society.

She's obviously found a way to mentally balance the tension between an inhabited faith which very much does seem to imply an omnipotent and intercessory deity, and an intellectual one which seems to have a very evidence-based approach to John's own claims about himself. And unlike Palamedes, who we see in the clarity of death grimly commenting that "god takes- and takes- and takes" (and then taking a leaf from "occultist" Ianthe's book and reverse-engineering a form of ascension), we never see her articulate anything other than a neutral suggestion that god simply isn't aware of the River beyond. And I'm sure that growing up with stories from your admiral grandad might give you a slightly less deferential perspective on the guy but...she was personally invited by him to eat her husband's soul, and she, her husband, and their foster children were murdered with extreme prejudice by their faith's equivalent of an archangel, which you'd think might make one slightly less equanimous...

Which suggests that either the reckoning for the tension inherent in her beliefs is still to come, or that she's more focused on the things greater than John that she "believes more than ever now that I am dead."

That's not her only post-mortem belief statement. She also says "I firmly believe that the Kindly Emperor knows nothing of that undiscovered country", which is such an interesting sentiment, and not just for its reference to Hamlet! The idea of a divine but extremely limited entity who does not understand the spiritual complexities beyond him is a pretty specific one, and combined with her River heresies, makes me wonder to what extent Abigail is already looking at a greater reality beyond John. Especially as her appearance as a Hecate-like figure, assisting Harrow's Persephone, already places her in the context of another mystery revelation cult, the Eleusinian Mysteries.

We've already seen Dulcie's apparent transcendence of the River: in TUG, she tells Palamedes she "gambled on the truth" and that she's "really not allowed to tell" him what happened, but that it was "something awful...in the old sense of the world", and then in reply to him saying he'll find her on the shore of the River, she says "which shore?... It's a River. There are two shores. If this ends well, you'll find that out." (immediately after this, she is compared to a Biblical angel). We know that Abigail intends to cross the River. But unlike Dulcie, she has some unfinished business which may bring her more sharply up against the terrible realities of what John has done (which, incidentally, I have written a fic about, if you want Alecto's perspective on Abigail's brother responding to the truth about her death by rather turning on the Emperor...). Though I suppose it's also possible that an obviation of the crisis could come from her focus being on the bigger picture. Though I'm not sure that metaphysical clarity Abigail Pent would be any less scary than her having a crisis of faith...

(There's a whole digression to be had here about Abigail's apparent religious experience when summoning Nonius, and her "ancestral state of primaeval ghost worship"; or about the gnostic Gaia and anima mundi, and Alecto as the Sophia to John's Demiurge; and Abigail as psychopomp for crossing the waters; and whether she might play a Virgil like role to Harrow's Dante in Hell...but at this point we get into stuff like Jung, and probably also hermeticism, and I'm afraid my brain rather turns off...)

But I think there are a lot of AU concepts where this lands a lot more sharply (Psalms 107:1 by @badgerjaw is a fantastic example of this with Abigail as a Lyctor). Lyctor!Abigail is an AU concept that continues to haunt me both for the prospect of Abigail meeting the reality of her 'god' up close (John feels like the sort of guy who, for all he likes to use the trappings of poetry and history to make himself look better, would still joke about the humanities being 'underwater basket weaving') and for the implications of Lyctorhood for her own theology: "I am not even certain where they go. Do Lyctors enter the River? Do they pass as we pass? I don't know where they wait" - would a Lyctor!Abigail fear herself and Magnus fundamentally unable to cross the River in death, having committed that indelible sin?

[katakaluptastrophy]

👀 please can you elaborate more on the alecto + john gnosticism thing?

Gnosticism is rather a vague term for a broad collection of beliefs over time and space, but the account of cosmology in the text I mentioned - The Apocryphon of John - goes a bit like this:

There's a transcendent, ineffable metaphysical reality (sort of God) called the Monad. This creates an entity called Barbelo (sort of the Holy Spirit, kind of a girl, the first, in a very real way everyone's mother...), and together they create some other powerful beings including Gnostic Jesus (TM) and Sophia (wisdom, also sort of the Holy Spirit, also kind of a girl). Sophia engages in a spot of metaphysical procreation without the Monad's say-so or involvement, leading to the creation of the snazzily named Yaldabaoth. Sophia goes 'whoops, my bad' and shoves Yaldabaoth under the metaphysical sofa, hiding him and causing him to be unaware of the broader spiritual reality above him.

Yaldabaoth creates a whole bunch of entities called Archons, who are basically the demonic rulers of the planets of the solar system, and then declares himself God. (Yeah...)

At this juncture, it all starts to get a bit weird with Genesis and salvation and gender, but the general gist is that humans and sex are invented (this made a lot of people angry and has widely been considered as a bad move), and humanity lives in spiritual darkness, believing that Yaldabaoth is God when akshually to be saved you need to pass through the waters that separate the tomb of the body and the material realm from the higher reality to find the truth, etc. etc. (you can see how all this leads to everything from bad sci fi to worse opinions about the Hebrew Bible...).

I hope this sheds some light on what I mean when I say that there's something rather gnostic about what's going on with John and Alecto: John as an entity created not entirely on purpose, unaware of the greater reality beyond him, creating powerful entities to rule the planets and declaring himself the god of a people he tries to prevent from understanding the truth that's on the other side of some kind of metaphysical body of water. And Alecto as some kind of complicatedly female-assigned quasi-divine aspect whose nature and culpability is uncertain and who unwittingly is involved in the creation of the Guy Who Fucks It All Up.

To be clear: I don't think Tamsyn Muir is attempting any kind of step by step engagement with a text like this (and there are a lot of weird gnostic texts), nor do I think the end game of the series is going to be worked out in straightforwardly 'gnostic' terms. But it feels like it's in the worldbuilding sandbox, along with the canon Bible and classical myth and Homestuck and Tumblr memes.

[iridescentoracle]

bad wizards and shimmering rainbow-white robes

Someone else has probably already made this point—I'm late to the Locked Tomb party, I know—but I've been reading a whole lot of Locked Tomb posts (in between re-reading bits of the Locked Tomb books and thinking about The Lord of the Rings) recently, and if anyone else has made this point I haven't seen it yet, so, spoilers through Nona the Ninth:

Your gazes met. The other nascent Lyctor—the Third House saint, the Emperor’s bones and the Emperor’s joints, the Emperor’s fists and gestures—was clothed in a beautiful nacreous robe that glimmered all the colours of the rainbow: gauzy, iridescent white stuff that changed violently in the light.

(Chapter 4, Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir)

A mass of fabric whispered past you—you could not feel it on your body, but you felt the air upon your cheek—and then a person knelt in front of your chair. A shining, shimmering billow of pale fabric came into your field of vision, a rainbow-hued whiteness that ran through shades beneath the hot tungsten light, like the reflection of coloured glass on ice, the same stuff that now was draped around you. Then, awfully, your vision was lifted. Someone had pressed a finger lightly beneath your chin, and they were tilting it up so that you could see their face. You looked at the Lyctor. The Lyctor looked at you.

(Chapter 6, Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir)

‘“Radagast the Brown!” laughed Saruman, and he no longer concealed his scorn. “Radagast the Bird-tamer! Radagast the Simple! Radagast the Fool! Yet he had just the wit to play the part that I set him. For you have come, and that was all the purpose of my message. And here you will stay, Gandalf the Grey, and rest from journeys. For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!” ‘I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

(“The Council of Elrond,” The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien)

I told them, This is it. We were put here to save the planet. We’re going to save the planet. We’re not going to let them run away. We’re going to fix this. And they were all, Yeah, John, because they were my friends and they loved me. But because they were also dicks and most of them had multiple tertiary degrees, they were also like, How though. We know you can do X and Y and Z. That’s still not A or B or C. We love the bone magic, but how are you going to pull this off? And it was P— of all people who said, First things first. If they’re going to let us fix the world, you’ve got to make them take us seriously. Get some leverage. If they want to make you into a bad wizard, be a bad wizard. We can write the history books to say you were a good wizard. Or at least an okay wizard. They’re not going to listen because we talk nicely, they’re going to listen because we scare the shit out of them.

(“John 5:1,” Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir)

Ironically, of course, John himself doesn’t wear the shimmering rainbow-hued robes of the Lyctors—but his crown of infant fingerbones is first described as “a wreath of ribbon and pearlescent leaves in his dark hair, rustling prismatically in the windless docking bay" (Chapter 6, Harrow the Ninth), and frankly I think rainbow pearlescent leaves each “intertwined with a match-sized infant fingerbone” sounds significantly more evil than Saruman bothered looking, so eat your heart out Curunír I guess.

Of course, there's lots of irony about John adopting the trappings of that particular evil wizard, but I think the most ironic part might be the extent to which he really should've taken notes on the rest of the passage in question:

‘“I liked white better,” I said. ‘“White!” he sneered. “It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.” ‘“In which case it is no longer white,” said I. “And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

[ossidae-passeridae]

I'd be fascinated to hear more about gnosticism in tlt if you ever feel like writing about it.

I honestly don't know what's already been written r.e. gnosticism and TLT, so might be reinventing the wheel here, but I'll do a brief description of the overarching themes present throughout the books?

The uh, first layer of the gnosticism onion, as it were.

So to start this off I'm going to give a broad and at least partially incorrect overview of gnosticism:

Gnosticism is a tenth century mess that's loosely based off of Christianity, but then gets Weird. Thanks to some fun political situations in the Gulf, the Christians in the South were isolated from other Christians for decades thus spun off wildly from "mainstream" Christianity. We mostly have fragments left, and a lot of them contradict each other, so working out exactly what they believed/meant is Very Fun and also Somewhat Impossible. (Like the fragments of documents left in Canaan House, you could say...)

That being said, parts of their beliefs we do know better than others. They have the bible, of course, but on top of that they also have this pre-Bible creation myth regarding how God came to be in the first place.

It goes something like: In The Beginning there was a sort of primordial god-soup. This god-soup occasionally emits binary pairs of entities, also known as aeons and (later) twin flames. These binary pairs are two souls made for one another and with one another, and together they are balanced, and perfect, and full of Holy Light(tm). Each binary pair had one grammatically-masculine name, and one grammatically-feminine name. These names do not necessarily relate to perceived gender, and in fact the binary pairs are often referred to as if they are Beyond Gender Altogether. (*stares pointedly at the Lyctors*, *stares even more pointedly at Gideon's name*) [I could probably write a whole thing on this alone, honestly, they're sometimes referred to as like, the fingers on God's hand which, yeah.]

Anyway, in this pure and godly space, there is no matter, only Holy Light. But one of the entities, known as Sophia, goes off on her own and interacts with the shadowy chaos that exists outside of the godly soup. She's half of a whole, unbalanced. And through her meddling she (unintentionally) creates another half that's not pure and holy and full of godly light, but instead a dark reflection of what he Should Be. This is generally referred to as the Demiurge.

Unlike all these other beings, the Demiurge is made of matter. He is the first thing of matter to exist and he looks around the void that he's birthed into, bare aside from him, and concludes that he and he alone is God. (Hi Jod)

Then he makes earth, and heaven, and a bunch of other things besides, the things we know as the universe today. In the immortal words of Douglass Adams — this has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

The problem is — all of these things that the Demiurge has created are made of matter. And being made of matter, they're cut off from the light of Godness (which is incorporeal and made of Pure Energy), thus inherently flawed. What's more, they're never meant to have existed in the first place. The Demiurge is tormented by his failure, but unable to create anything that is not inherently Wrong. (oh look it's the Nine Houses, I'd bet money that there's a link between being cut off from Godly Light and the Nine Houses being the only stable thanergenic planets here)

Sophia, who has watched these unintended consequences unfold and the suffering they've caused, cannot undo what's been done, but she can descend into the material world to share the light of wisdom and try to alleviate what suffering she can. So she does.

The story culminates with Christ being born and teaching all of humanity Gnosis — a special, mystical knowledge that can only come from the Divine, we are not really given specifics here — before he's sacrificed in order to make humanity's ascent beyond their material prison possible.

So that's the broad strokes of gnosticism as a religion, and also first layer of the TLT gnosticism onion. Just the really broad spectrum thematic *waves hands around* Stuff. I've refrained from speculating on the end because until Alecto comes out we really don't know.

If you want anything more specific anon, let me know?? I've been in the gnosticism soup for so long I can't always tell what's common knowledge and what isn't.

[carys-the-ninth]

Gnosticism was a 1st-2nd century phenomenon that was almost completely suppressed by the 4th century, not from the 10th century. It arose at the same time as many other Christian sects, as what is now orthodox Christianity was being determined, and many scholars believe these beliefs mainly originated and spread from heterodox Jews. (There are many many forms of Gnosticism--Manichaenism spread the farthest.)

As OP says, there is a lot of variation in the mythos and our understanding of Gnosticism, likely because Gnostics were essentially a loose collection of elitist mystery cults. They believed there were esoteric meanings of the Bible, and only certain, enlightened believers could be intiated to this higher understanding--likely much of the tradition was oral. (If you see a religion being deemed 'gnostic' today, often it means that they have revealed wisdom they will only share with a self-selected elect few.)

But yes, the splitting of the world into material (evil, product of the Demiurge) and spiritual (good, realm of a transcendant God) is a core belief of Gnosticism, as is the Sophia myth.

[ossidae-passeridae]

Indeed, apologies, you're correct about the timing I must have misread my notes - 1 not 10! There are some gnostic sects in the tenth century, but they weren't the ones I meant to reference above. There's certainly a great deal of debate over if the religion was mostly oral, or the writings have been lost to time and conflict. Perils of building one's monastery in the holy land, even on the fringes.

[ghibli]

more newbie theoryposting, this time on the ninth house and soul mélanges. readmore for so so many spoilers.

• The soul melange known as Teacher seems very fond of the Ninth house. He's really happy that Harrow showed up, he loves to come and chat with Gideon, and in the dreambubbles he fears awakening the sleeper because he thinks she is Alecto - a very Ninth reverence for the locked tomb.

• Teacher was a Ninth project: "blame your own house for that," says Cytheria of him. The messy lab with the pinboard project where they first find out about Teacher has a letter from Anastasia to Samael, and relies heavily on bone magic (Harrow has to unravel the tooth, Pal also says this lyctor created what he calls the hideous corpse, the Canaan bone servants.)

• We know that Anastasia's experiments in this area were directly aimed at becoming a lyctor, just like every other first house lab. She had access to Canaan's pool of ghost souls (apopneumatic shock of nuclear war presumably stopped most of Earth's population from being pulled into the river, see my Hellmouth Under Canaan Theory).

• This lab is also the key that Cytheria took for herself immediately. Harrow and Pal only get in by using his perfect object memory to create a duplicate. The trial Pal describes gives very little theorem information. Ianthe doesn't mention it at all when describing how she worked out lyctorhood from backwards principles. Therefore, Anastasia and Samael's research is not currently included in lyctorhood as the existing lyctors understand it.

• Of course we already know that Anastasia and Samael went one step further, did one extra thing, because Anastasia believed there was a way to achieve lyctorhood without murdering the cav. John claims it went wrong and he had to kill Samael, and Anastasia just never became a lyctor. So either whatever they did didn't work, or it worked so well and so dangerously that John considered it a threat to his power.

• Now let's talk about Harrow. In a fit of desperation, her parents killed two hundred children in order to grant her necromantic abilities. It is implied, given the bodies in the river the first time Harrow submerges, that she carries those two hundred souls with her. Could it be that this was done based on the same theory Anastasia used to create Teacher?

• If so, doesn't that mean Harrow has managed to complete the lyctoral process with Anastasia's extra step included?

• This would explain why John's first attempt on her life comes even before that meeting where he makes her pass out by saying 'Gideon'.

Some other vaguely related stuff:

• Teacher hates the water: "Ponds... rivers... waterfalls... I loathe them all." The Ninth house tradition demands secrets only be shared when submerged in water. Plus Then There's The River.

• There's a prison circling the Ninth House where the other houses send their iredeemable, but nobody in the Ninth seems to actually work there. I think it would be fun if Anastasia was still in there making soul melanges with them.

• Harrow exchanged *some* of herself with Gideon, just as John exchanged *some* of himself with Alecto. The little bit of Gideon inside Harrow doesn't swap with Alecto at the end of HtN, which is why Nona has some very Gideon traits. (This means Nona is like, a little bit of Gideon, a little bit of John, and the bacterial soul of Earth, in Harrow's autistic teenage body.)

• I also think it would be fun if Anastasia had just added Samael's soul to Teacher. It would explain his reverence and Ninth affinities. This is a crack theory though, the evidence is pretty circumstantial.

[saltwaterbitch]

the unwanted guest reference compilation (revised, thank u tltblr!) (scroll down for additions)

every day i thank tamsyn muir for her planet sized brain (and the new short story). will be quoting heavily from TUG so spoilers under the cut!

woo this is a long one. (will probably miss stuff, im a non-western zoomer) 

References are in the order that they appear in TUG ->

Pal’s mask being a reference to his shattered and glued-back-together skull:

“This is PALAMEDES SEXTUS, whose mask is distinguished by being plain, of shattered wood clumsily taped or glued back together.” (page 480)

Pain (slight pain) (jk. pretty good amount of pain)

2. An Inspector Calls by JB Priestly: 

“IANTHE Oh — Inspector. How terribly good of you to call so late.” (page 483)

Ok there are so many other parallels to AIC in this story (the setting, the stage play format, overall message) and I’ve written briefly about it here

3. This better not awaken anything in me [original clip from community thank u @what3ver]

“[Ianthe gayly describing infinite strip poker with harrow] Yuck. I hope that hasn’t awakened anything in me.” (p492) 

(she’s tucking the image away in her mind palace as we speak)

4. Ace attorney (i LAUGHED)

"Palamedes slams both hands down flat on the lid of the upper coffin, then thrusts his arm out to point an accusing finger at Ianthe. PALAMEDES you're avoiding the question!” (p493) 

Insert ace attorney OBJECTION dot gif here 

5. and right after ace attorney, Monty Python:

“IANTHE No. It's a fair cop, guv'nor. But, in this instance, society really is to blame.” (p493)

Probably a reference to Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Church Police". Quote taken from tvtropes: 

Man: All right, it's a fair cop, but society's to blame. Church Policeman: Right, we'll arrest them instead.

6. Looney tunes: 

“IANTHE (Brightly) That’s all, folks! Back after the break.” (p495)

Here’s a clip of porky pig saying it bc why not: That's All Folks HD

7. Hamlet

“VOICE ‘Use every man after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?’” (p500)

Original quote:

“Use every man according to his desert and who should 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity, the less they deserve ... the more merit in your bounty.”

notes: very hot of dulcie to know shakespeare

8. Haters meme (?)

does this even count as a meme at this point. Idk but i love that dulcie said it. 

“VOICE Truly, wonderful news for my haters.” (p501)

9. The bible (ofc)

“PALAMEDES (as if reciting) ‘And her body was like the chrysolite, and her face as the appearance of lighting, and her eyes as a burning lamp; and her arms, and all downward to the feet, like in appearance to glittering brass.’” (p502)

Palamedes quotes Daniel 10:6 when Dulcie reveals (?) herself to him. I'm not super familiar with the bible, but depending on dif sources from google (lol), the original quote describes either Christ or the angel Gabriel appearing to Daniel:

"And his body was like the chrysolite, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as a burning lamp: and his arms, and all downward even to the feet, like in appearance to glittering brass: and the voice of his word like the voice of a multitude." (from the Douay-Rheims Bible)

ok finally stuff that might be a reference but I havent been able to figure out a lot has been figured out! additions from tltblr here:

p481 

> probably nothing, but any significance re pal’s calling card being the skeleton hand?  probably a reference to the skele hand harrow made him in htn (via @guyrunsbackwards)

p482

The Almond Room?? Is this anything. It seems so weirdly specific lol

 “IANTHE the master will see you in the Almond Room, sir.”

crowdsourced possibilities:

the almond room representing babs' borrowed amygdala, which is involved in processing memory, decision making, and emotional response; would make sense for the investigation/interrogation to take place here (via @confusedbyinterface)

may be a reference to the game Clue, where the individual rooms in which the mystery happens have specific names (via @the-light-of-stars);

a reference to cyanide, which smells like almonds (@the-light-of-stars, @satans-poptarts); + @winged mentioned that in a lot of early 20th century whodunnits, someone has a revelation about the real conclusion when they smell almond somewhere it shouldn't be (vs pal and ianthe having their revelations about babs' soul in the almond room)

p487

"IANTHE False things have a piquancy which the real can never match.  PALAMEDES     is that from something? IANTHE      Everything's from something.”

• ianthe is this actually from something. google yielded no straightforward results :(

p503

"IANTHE You look to me like a small boy holding a tail when he doesn’t even know where the donkey is.”

Nothing in particular just the image of tiny pal playing pin the tail on the donkey is so. He’s baby. Also he probably found a way to be very good at it via psychometry lol

@mayasaura: Under the circumstances, the donkey thing also reminded me of Buddhist parable of the blind men and the elephant, about the limits of perception in understanding the true nature of being. Or, to quote Wikipedia: "The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience" <- ianthe turbo roasting pal, love to see it

Miscellaneous / theatre techniques:

> What's up with the coffins?

@tangelotime: the coffins might be a black box theater technique, using boxes to represent certain settings rather than faithfully recreating them on the stage; @the-light-of-stars mentioned that the arrangement of the coffins depends on Pal's questions:

first he asks a philosophical question thus the arrangement in the style of a greek symposion - their style of dialogue also is in reference to Plato's work 'Symposion', as well as Ianthe offering Pal wine and the servants placing velvet cushions. The next question is about Babs' murder thus arrangement in style of a courtroom. Then a question about Gideon, the cavalier, thus arrangement in the style of a fencing ring. The last arrangement follow a question about Ianthe's motives for Corona and they are playing cards- both a classic trope symbolizing a battle of wits and a metaphor for Ianthe holding secrets (cards) that she has to reveal one by one (via @the-light-of-stars)

@transbutchbluess, @gwydionmisha also ID'd the greek symposium scene as a parody of a socratic/platonic dialogue, which "presents a discussion of moral and philosophical problems between two or more individuals illustrating the application of the Socratic method." (via wikipedia)

> continuing with the theme of theatre, @valence-positive also mentioned that the servants thumping the coffins at the same time after each question may be a theatre technique to underscore Pal's question; @winged made the connection to bells/gavels/gongs, which are often used for judgement (which occurs during the discussion of Babs' murder and Ianthe's intent/endgame.)

the coffin thumping might also be a reference to the bell toll in A Christmas Carol (via @winged again, you have a huge brain); it's also implied that Pal's visits parallel the three ghosts who visit Scrooge and induce a moral awakening:

"IANTHE Five minutes to midnight, I'd say. You can't last much longer, and we both know it. PAL You said that three visits ago." (p483)

vs the original novella by Charles Dickens (taken from sparknotes again):

“You (scrooge) will be haunted… by Three Spirits… Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls One…. “Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third, upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!”

Pal makes Ianthe realise that Babs' soul has been slowly fusing with hers all along, which is similar what the third ghost does in ACC:

"The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come leads Scrooge through a sequence of mysterious scenes relating to an unnamed man's recent death...Scrooge, anxious to learn the lesson of his latest visitor, begs to know the name of the dead man. After pleading with the ghost, Scrooge finds himself in a churchyard, the spirit pointing to a grave. Scrooge looks at the headstone and is shocked to read his own name."

Finally, like other references in TUG (An Inspector Calls, Dulcie's Hamlet quote), A Christmas Carol criticises the treatment of a disadvantaged class. AIC and ACC both end with the characters faced with the morality of their actions. (intertextuality! delicious)

I also thought the thumping was similar to the synchronisation thing we see in ntn:

"[Ianthe] flounced up the dais, threw herself back into her chair—the dead bodies jerked their left hips convulsively, all in unison" (Nona the Ninth, p335)

Ok that’s it thank u for reading the whole thing ???? And thank you so much for contributing guys! Feel free to leave a reply or dm me if you have any additions <3

[theriverbeyond]

can we hear about your gideon eyes tinfoil hat theory 🥺 i love to think unhinged thoughts

THANK YOU FOR ASKING also i had an entire essay typed up for you and tumblr lost the draft. apologies because this re-do is Definitely Worse

my unhinged theory is this: Gideon has, and has always had, a fragment of Alecto's soul inside her, that lay somewhat dormant until it was "activated" by Harrow consuming her soul (and thereby also consuming the Alecto fragment).

bear with me: we know Harrow began to be haunted when a fragment of Alecto escaped into Harrow when she kissed her in the tomb at age 10. Harrow's individual fragment wasn't enough for the Body-vision to have sentience OR for her to, as a child, be sending out "I'm here!" signals that were trackable by the other RBs, so they were basically just hanging out.

HOWEVER. when Harrow ate Gideon's soul, two things happenened: 1) Alecto/The Body started speaking to her, protecting her, gained enough coherence to eventually becoming Nona, etc and 2) Harrow became a becon for the RBs, specifically Number 7, who immediately turned towards her to make a beeline to the Mithraeum.

This makes me think that Lyctorhood "activated" the Alecto-fragment in a certain way, and it makes sense to ME that the trigger would be that fragment getting bigger, via Harrow taking up Gideon's soul (including whatever fragments Gideon herself was carrying)

"evidence" (wild speculating) for Gideon having Alecto's soul under the cut!

1. the gold eyes

in these books, eye color is explicitly linked to what soul is in what body. this is a heavily important plot mechanic throughout every single book - it feels "off" for Gideon's eye color to be the ONLY time in the entire series where eye color means "genetics" and not "soul".

Gideon does not have a normal human eye color. the color is described as like an egg yolk & gold coins, and no human eye color reaches even close. This is further evidenced by how when Augustine and Mercymorn saw Gideon in Harrow's eyes, they thought Alecto had woken up. pre-NtN, this made more sense as The Body was assumed by the fandom to look somewhat like Harrow. post-NtN, we know that Harrow and Alecto looked *absolutley* nothing alike, and therfore these eyes are not fucking normal, they're weird enough that if you see them you automatically assume "8 ft tall Barbie Doll Alecto Woke Up" even when the body you are presented with is 5 foot nothing with black hair.

"Lipochrome... recessive" does not make sense even for the most basic understanding of genetics, which I am assuming is what is happening here - eye color genetics can get really complicated but colloquial understanding is that recessive genes present themselves when BOTH parents are carriers. John had gold eyes because Alecto chose him, but.... how would Wake be a carrier for what is basically Alecto's stigmata? it makes NO sense for Wake to be a carrier of the Alecto-specific, egg yolk kind of eyes

2. the emission

John and Alecto's souls are inherently linked. rather than being two seperate souls, they are more like two parts of continuous whole -- John hid himself in Alecto, and he hid Alecto in him. it's not even two puzzle pieces they are just layered over and continuous with each other

John, then, would very reasonable "pass on" a part of Alecto when he, ah. well. you know. blew a big load.

maybe the Holy Emission carried soul fragments, is what I'm saying

3. the two hander

Occam's razor posits that Gideon likes the two hander and is good at it because she is cool and buff and it was the option presented to her. BUT!!!

Nona instinctivly knows how to hold a two handed sword. Alecto has a greatsword with her in the tomb. Gideon uses a two hander. idk makes u think!!

[multifunctionalnitroglycerin]

Poe’s Annabel Lee in TLT #1

“Annabel Lee” is the last poem E. A. Poe composed, and arguably one of his most famous ones. It is in many ways, typical of one would consider a Poe poem, featuring thematics such as the death of a beautiful young woman, love, and grief. Thematics and subjects that are ever-present in the tlt book series, and I will do my best to dissect in this post.

With a superficial read of the books, most would garner the rather obvious parallel between John Gaius and Alecto on the one hand, and the hero of the poem and Annabel Lee, on the other. John himself is not particularly mindful or discreet of the analogy he himself creates. And he has no need to, seeing as he is the only one that remembers the world from before. And I think it is terribly beautiful and utterly devastating, in a poetic irony sort of way, that a comparison so obvious as this, a hallmark of American poetry would go completely unnoticed in the new world that John has built in his image, for he is the only one who truly knows, the only one who remembers.

Another more subtle parallel, I feel could be drawn between Gideon and Harrow, and the poem’s heroes. Though, I must admit it is perhaps a bit of a stretch. I might make another post abt that. But for now, let’s dive in the magical world of Annabel Lee, and dissect the poem, bit by bit.

For all our literature geeks out there, I will just point out that the poem is a narrative poem, and it uses a few different rhyme schemes, and meters, with both anapests and iambs being present (Shout out to all the lovely people who are familiar with iambic fifteen-syllable lines and have been haunted by them).

I will now start with a general feeling of the poem before jumping into the details. From the start, Annabel Lee feels like a fairytale, with a hopeful start that alludes to the fairytale opening of Once upon a time… However, as the poem progresses this hopeful emotion slowly devolves to something eerie, ominous, and desperate. Something dark, cynical, and terrifying. And this is where we will draw our first parallel.

The Earth is dying. That much we can garner. There is however a man, that loves her more than anything else. That desperately, with his clumsy, human, imperfect, selfish way wants to save her. And thus, she bestows him with a gift, hoping that he would indeed help. It does make for a nice fairytale start of the story does it not? Unfortunately, however, this is not how it evolves, for John inevitably fails to do what he has been tasked with, despite all his love for her. And he kills her. She is now trapped in a human-like body of John’s design, a body that in its design is proof he could not escape the industrialism he so loathed, and she feels like a monstrosity. And the story only gets worse from then on, with her inevitable banishment in the Tomb for what seems to be an eternal sleep at the behest of John’s Lyctors.

Both takes I feel follow the same pattern of emotional development, regarding both their content of the text and the emotional rollercoaster they inspire in the reader.  

It was many and many a year ago

In a kingdom by the sea

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

by the name of Annabel Lee

10.000 years ago, to be precise, in a water-filled planet called Earth. See that fairytale tone? Also, I would like to point out once more, that saltwater references. Salt water, the sea, Θάλασσα as a source of life and energy is a strong thematic that repeats itself multiple times in Muir’s books, and this is no exception. And the fact that Earth is a planet with a lot of saltwater, and in this instance serve both the kingdom and the personification of the maiden is an apt usage of the theme. Moreover, in these introductory lines, we are immediately presented with what will be the central figure of the poem, Annabel Lee, an alleged maiden. A noun that alludes to a young, beautiful woman. (Alecto is arguably in the form that John gives her, also a beautiful woman, despite the Lyctors finding her monstrous. I am of the opinion that what unsettled them was that Alecto was both too bizarre, too other, too immense to be fully understood and contained within so plain a physical vessel, and way too human to be clearly marked as different and other. One look at John’s creation and they would immediately see that alien strange cavalier, and their closest friends in her quirks and mannerisms, all at once.)

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

than to love and be loved by me

I was a child and she was a child

In this Kingdom by the Sea

I need not point out I feel the thematic of an impossibly powerful love that is introduced in these lines, the desperate love that John harbored for his dying home planet, and the equally desperate love Alecto harbors for the man she thought would save her. Even when he betrays her, one of the things she says to John immediately after he confines her in the human form is I love you. (“What else...” “I love you”, “…You said that too.”) And of course, the notion that they were both “children”, inexperienced with little idea of what they were doing in their despair– most certainly not untrue. A line that heavily points to one of Pyrrha’s most iconic lines in Nona the Ninth “We were children - playing in the reflections of stars in a pool of water... Thinking it was space.” And they were children in comparison to what they are now. Inexperienced and stumbling through their first steps in the chaos that love is.

But we loved with a love that was more than love— 

I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven  

Coveted her and me.

Now these lines tie a bit more loosely to tlt. The love that these children so to speak harbor is not any less real because of their youth and inexperience. On the contrary the aftereffects of Alecto’s and John’s love are very much real and rather disastrous for the solar system. And such love, apparently inspired jealously. In the poem in the usually benign and protective guardians that angels are, and in the books, in the Lyctors. And I think that it is at this point that the thematics might or might not deviate from the books. Because one might say, that the Lyctors, that I feel are in these lines represented by the angelical figures, could not possibly be jealous of Alecto, and her relationship with John, could they? They find her monstrous and wrong, a hindrance, so what could they be jealous about? A lot of things, I believe. For we do see in the books the extends of the affections that John harbors for Alecto, even though his little man not responsible for the consequences of his actions, behavior. In the beginning John explains everything to Alecto through his eyes, takes her everywhere, and does not part with her. He harbors this love and kinship for his strange cavalier, or the soul of the Earth that chose him to save her, that it seems to overshadow even the depth of emotion he feels for his Lyctors. For he cares for and loves Augustine and Mercy and Gideon and Cassiopeia, Ulesses and Titania, but I feel that the love he has for them is but a speck in the ocean of the emotional turmoil that Alecto inspires in him. So they cover them for a love they themselves cannot feel.

               And what would you do, how would you feel, if the man you gave everything up for, the man you uprooted your life for, the man you condemned the planet and the billions of lives on it for, barely had eyes for you? If despite all you had done for him and all you did on a daily basis to keep this impossible empire intact, all he ever did was parade his monstrous, weird, wrong, guard dog around? And no matter what you did you could never get rid of her, for she was everywhere, and she was his, and he never could care for you as his friend, as a companion, an advisor, a pillar of the empire, his hand and gesture and manifestation of his will with nearly as much love and devotion he showed her? What if you felt that she was a distraction keeping him from building the empire he was meant to build?  

And this was the reason that, long ago,    In this kingdom by the sea,  A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling    My beautiful Annabel Lee;  So that her highborn kinsman came     And bore her away from me,  To shut her up in a sepulchre    In this kingdom by the sea.   The angels, not half so happy in heaven,    Went envying her and me— Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,   In this kingdom by the sea)  That the wind came out of the cloud by night,    Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

Given my ramble above I will not expand anymore on how the Lyctors would see Alecto at least as a hindrance to the empire, and at most would loathe her, for despite never having sacrificed as much as they had – in their eyes at least - she had John’s attention, devotion, respect and -frankly obsessive- love. What follows now, is an abrupt change of tone (gone are the fairytale notions) and an allusion to the Tomb, even though we know that John himself put her in there and not the other Lyctors. But we also know that the other Lyctors were on a surface level, the driving force of that decision. He sealed her away to appease them. And at least in John’s little man mentality he could insist that it was for them and their insistence that he sealed her away. And he feels the loss of Alecto, his Annabel Lee. Furthermore, Annabel Lee has been chilled, and while the interpretation in the poem can be a bit vague, we know that Alecto is held in a freezing ice coffin practically. Frozen in time in the subzero temperatures of the Ninth.

 But our love it was stronger by far than the love  

Of those who were older than we—  

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in heaven above, 

 Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 

 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

Lyctorhood ala John. Binding your soul to the soul of a planet, to the soul of Earth. It doesn’t get any stronger and up and personal than that. A love and bond that is stronger than all he knows I don’t think there is much of anything anyone can do to sever Alecto’s connection from John. It is presented as one of the big issues in the book. How to kill God when he has bound his life force to a bloody planet, who seems to be rather murderous on the best of days. I quite look forward to seeing how that moves forward. For the hero of our poem, don’t know about John I must admit, seems to be certain nothing can tear their souls apart from each other.

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams 

 Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes  

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, 

 In her sepulchre there by the sea, 

 In her tomb by the sounding sea.

The first two lines are pretty familiar, aren’t they? They should be because they are featured in the books. And they point that our hero meets Annabel Lee in his dreams. Aka the whole premise of Nona the Ninth, where Nona dreams of Alecto’s memories. As for the second set of lines, it seems to be an allusion to both John’s original bright  golden eyes and the bottomless black pits of Alecto’s in which the stars never rise. As for the next line, my presumptive butt would like to take it as a bit of a foreshadowing. And a symbol. Yes, it does bring to mind John’s ascension in a sense with the lying on the ground theme, but the imagery here is much more serene, peaceful. So, I would like to believe it alludes to the end, where John will finally find peace and will lie besides Alecto for what could be their final rest. I do not remember if he lay beside her every night before, so correct me if I am wrong. But I would find it awfully poetic for them to do that as they set off Resurrection Vol2 or they reverse what they have done. And the last lines again allude to the Tomb and the sea. So, a random crazy idea is that they would both lie together in the Tomb and reset everything. And that the Tomb, their place of final rest or not, will be surrounded by water, so I have this crazy imagery that perhaps the Tomb containing Alecto’s and John’s lifeforce will be the center, the core, of the new planet that would resemble earth. And thus, an ocean shall rise surrounding the two, and they will eternally lay beside each other in the depths of a planet surrounded by saltwater.

All in all, both stories are stories of love in its all-consuming nature, that can be romantic and all encompassing, or take a darker turn and become obsessive and destructive. Of Love that can transcend the mortal realm and alter the laws of the world as we know it, inspiring dark feelings in what should be benevolent characters. And still that love transcends the obstacles that are set, for better or worse. Is it really as beautiful as it appears? The stories also are stories of grief and loss that defines the one that gets left behind, grief that attaches itself to the person and doesn’t let go, overpowering sense and sensibility. That becomes the past present and future of our hero. That has no outlet and suffocates its bearer. (We have seen John’s darker days, where he is drunk and barely functional.)

Okay it is probably way too late, and I am way too tired, but it makes sense in my head. Next part of this one we will be analyzing possible comparisons between this lovely poem and Gideon and Harrow’s relationship.  

Take care of yourselves.

[winepresswrath]

The princess told me that she had felt for a long time that the Cohort movements didn't make sense to her. She said what would be most economically productive was intermingling with these people, allowing immigration and absorption into the Nine Houses; that shepherd planets got more costly the further the Houses extended themselves, and that instead of creating long-lasting industry we were doing little more than slash-and-burn trading. Scattershot, she said. Notwithstanding the moral issue. She said she and her sister had always been interested in the way the Houses were being run, and that lanthe had encouraged her interest. She had always thought we were being wasteful... Afterward she said it was much more than theory. She said she had groomed herself for something and all it had done was make her unfit for the purpose. What purpose? ... I told her she wouldn't understand. When she asked me why not, I said I was just an administrator; she was a princess. A king. ... The princess turned to me then and took my hands. I kept my balance. She said, Jody, if I offered you that sword, wouldn't you take it? I know how to use it. I know what it would mean. Lieutenant Dyas is dead. My own necromancer wouldn't have me. Won't you let me be your cavalier? Here, now, at the end of the world? Save me, Jody. Bind me to you, or who knows where I will go? What throne will I mount, if you don’t bind me down?

- As Yet Unsent

“But we’re closer to the goal than ever before.” “Of course we are, you perfect genius,” said Crown, lovingly, and she took the dead gloved fingers, and she kissed them. Every single dead soldier’s fingers twitched. Prince Ianthe Naberius raised hers, an involuntary movement almost, and that waxen, handsome face was an expressionless mask, with only the cool grey eyeballs moving in their sockets. Then Crown said quietly, “We can do good work, Ianthe. I know people who need us.”

-Nona the Ninth

- The Unwanted Guest

Corona recoiled from Gideon and looked up at her, her golden hair smeared to her forehead with sweat and tears. “She took Babs,” she said, which seemed fair enough. But then Corona started crying again, big tears leaking out of her eyes, her voice thick with misery and self-pity. “And who even cares about Babs? Babs! She could have taken me.”

-Gideon the Ninth

Emphasis mine, excuse my dreadful formatting I'm just excited because every time we learn more about the Tridentarii's schemes I remember again how Coronabeth (Crown) wants to be eaten and knighted and bound, but also possibly be god-king of the universe, allegedly on the grounds that Jod's forever war is morally bankrupt and economically likely to lead to bankruptcies.

[thewinterstale]

What Happened to Nigella Shodash?

I once again find myself scratching a persistent itch in my brain as I think about my bestie and yours, the sixth house lyctoral cavalier, Nigella Shodash.

Here are the reasons we love this lady:

She was a funky professional artist

She provided capes and eyeliner on demand with no preparation, so you know she had a cool sense of style

Queer af

Consented to a shotgun gay wedding during the apocalypse

Thought the tooth bouquet was hilarious

Didn't out her repressed lawyer gf in front of her friends even though it would have been easy to slip up

Supported her repressed lawyer gf after she ghosted her fancy job in contract law and moved to New Zealand to be a professional apocalyptic lesbian/necromancer wrangler

She is allegedly prettier than Pyrrha Dve (according to Mercymorn, who is very serious about ranking people by attractiveness)

She was loved by Cassy, the smartest lady in the whole universe

She's kinda a slob (cavaliers - they're just like us!)

If you knew nothing else about her other than these details, how might you imagine the house she went on to co-found?

And yet. Sure, Cassy had a big hand in the policies on the sixth, but Cassy loved Nigella! Even if their marriage didn't transfer post-resurrection, they were still necromancer and cavalier for hundreds of years, and Augustine describes Cassy as protective. They were in love. They were a team.

It makes me wonder where we can find Nigella's hand in the sixth aesthetic. How did we get from "capes and eyeliner" to "gray librarians?" Sure, I make jokes about the practicality of communal laundry, but is there no color whatsoever outside of requisition forms?

Yes, it's a very small discrepancy, and there could be an explanation (WHO FOUNDED THE SEVENTH, DAMNIT)... but it is grating on me because it's not the ONLY small discrepancy. There's also the discrepancy of Cristabel coming off as incredibly well-spoken and competent pre-resurrection and dumb as a doornail post-resurrection. Was it the persistent, elective trepanning, or memory manipulation? Both? It's a lot easier to reconcile the ways Augustine and Mercy (and even Pyrrha and G1deon) changed between the John chapters in NtN and the current timeline because they've had ten thousand years to become something other than human. They make a poor case study. But the first-gen Canaanite cavaliers are interesting to me. Did the Sixth lose the whimsy over 10,000 years, or was the whimsy lost in translation?

Just a little food for thought on this rainy Friday! Even if it's nothing, I feel a little Nigella appreciation is always warranted. I hope we see her in action in Alecto!

[hedge-rambles]

So like, I'm extremely here for the idea that the Seventh was actually set up by Nigella, cos it's got a sort of perfect symmetry with the Sixth. The power couple set up two houses, sequential numbers, one is perfectly fitting with a genius necromancer-lawyer of astounding outward repression, and the other is very in line with a teapot-collecting, aesthetically obsessed artist. And it makes sense that it's not as simple as just "each OG lyctor set up a house", because the Seventh lyctor was a later addition to the gang who was from the Seventh, the Ninth post-dates lyctorhood but was set up by someone who was going to be one. The Second was actually set up by a cav as well, it wasn't G1deon's house, it was Pyrrha's.

Other support for Nigella as the founder of the Seventh: they're the aesthetes, the keepers of beauty and art, but it's like a very grim, goth form of art despite the colour palate. Their big thing is a beautiful, drawn out death. Nigella was delighted by flowers with teeth and clearly had some serious goth-sensibilities.

I also wonder about Cristabel, and I wonder if there was like...John resurrected his old pals, who had all died in various ways. We know A- and M- were shot but not necessarily where they were shot (right?). C- however blew her brains out and then her soul was also the first one John truly held, the first time he even truly comprehended one.

The first step of the Eightfold Word is "Preserve the soul, with memories and intellect intact", I wonder if she sustained a sort of metaphysical brain-damage due to shooting herself or the fact John had even less of an idea of what the fuck he was doing than normal? Did he accidentally break her in that moment? Did he, not knowing what he was doing but suddenly being super-charged by holding a soul, eat part of her by accident?

[katakaluptastrophy]

So you know how at the end of Nona the Ninth, Harrow doubts that John is god and goes off into the River to find god, who is maybe Alecto?

It turns out we had a clue right at the beginning that John is not the metaphysical engine of the universe of The Locked Tomb...

When Teacher gives the assembled scions at Canaan House a highly selective history of the OG Lyctors, he says:

Those eight necromancers were first after the Lord of Resurrection; they have spread his assumption across the blackness of space.

Remember that John is, in the theology of the Nine Houses, the "God who became man and man who became God." It's never entirely explained what this means to them, but it's clearly intended to riff on Jesus, the 'Word made flesh' (John 1:14), "born in the likeness of men" (Philippians 2:7).

But here's the thing if you're going to be a Catholic-flavoured god: Catholicism has some quite specific terminology for leveling up in terms of heavenly power.

Jesus, who is God, goes up to heaven after the resurrection. This is described as his "ascension" - it's an active process. He is ascending, going to his heavenly throne. He can do that, because he's God. He *is* the rules of the universe and metaphysics. If he wants to fly up into the sky and transcend into another dimension, he can do that, because he's God.

But there are three other people who are understood to have gone up to heaven bodily: Jesus' mum Mary, and the prophets Elijah and Enoch - for all three of them, this is described as their "assumption": it's a passive process, which they aren't doing under their own steam, it's being done by God. In art, this has historically been depicted by showing them being propelled skywards by a writhing mass of cherubs.

So let's get back to Jod.

You know, the man who became god, etc etc etc? The one who resurrected his Lyctors who then "spread his assumption across the blackness of space"?

Either John wasn't paying quite enough attention when going through Catholicism for Dummies or Teacher is being a bit sly here.

So this is a nod, right at the beginning, to the fact that John isn't actually the metaphysical power of the universe that he claims to be.

[mercymornsimpathizer]

per request of (checks notes) two people….the premises of my interpretation of the plot of gideon the ninth vis a vis cytherea and john are as follows:

i. the actions taken by cytherea and john are not consistent with their stated motivations

ii. this is on purpose

iii. we can work backwards from these characters' actions to determine their real motivations

because i am a funny poster and because i love my followers i will explain further under a readmore. abandon all sanity ye who enter here etc.

why canaan house: john and john's motivations

while john does not appear "on screen" in gideon the ninth, his actions set the plot into motion and shape the conflicts the arise. (1)he sends letters to the scions of each house, requesting that they come to canaan house with their cavaliers and no one else. he does not request the leaders of each house, or the best necromancers of each house, or the most experienced. (2)he does not provide information of what the lyctorhood trials will entail, either in the initial letters or upon arrival at canaan house. (3)during the creation of the first lyctors, he did not inform anyone that the death of the cavalier is not necessary, and (4)he interfered in the ascension of anastasia/samael, (5) the pair who spent the longest studying the lyctorhood process and (6)who we can presume were closest to achieving "true lyctorhood," which we can presume is (7)more powerful than "normal lyctorhood" and (8)does not kill the cavalier.

(9)the stated purpose of the events at canaan house is to create new lyctors to replace those that have (really or apparently) died to the resurrection beasts. (10)john further states that he did not intend for any unwanted deaths; (11)that he intended for the necromancers and cavaliers to enter into lyctorhood willingly; and (12)that, if the necromancers and cavaliers decided not to enter into lyctorhood, he intended that they should have been allowed to leave peacefully. (13)we can presume he also intends that any new lyctors created would be loyal to him, or at least not a threat to him.

are these actions consistent for these motivations? in my correct opinion, they are not. the secrecy of what the lyctorhood trials entail and the choice of very young, competitive people as postulants do not lend themselves well to the postulants making wise, well-informed choices. if john wanted the postulants to enter into lyctorhood willingly, and leave peacefully if not, he could have informed them of what the trials and lyctorhood entail, encouraged cooperation between the houses, and stated explicitly that they could leave at any time.

one way to interpret this mismatch is that john was careless or negligent in how he set up the trials, which is possible but not consistent with his characterization otherwise. another interpretation is that john was not sincere in stated motivations 10-12, and that he rather set things up as he did to create uniquely easy to manipulate per 13, which both makes sense and is in character but is not consistent with his other actions.

why canaan house 2: cytherea and cytherea's motivations

while john shapes much of the plot of gideon the ninth, cytherea as the primary antagonist drives the plot more directly. (14)she kills dulcinea and adopts her identity to pose as a postulant in the lyctor trials, and she poorly reanimated protesilaus's corpse. (15)she presumably is responsible for disposing of the transports, stranding the postulants at canaan house.  (16)she kills first the fifth house and the fourth house. (17) she prompts the ninth to complete the avulsion trial. (18)she attacks gideon, harrow, and camilla after being confronted by palamedes, but (19)repeatedly offers to spare gideon. (20)throughout her murder spree, she writes on the walls, questioning or criticizing  john for the events of her own ascension. (21)she did not participate in dios apate and is not mentioned by mercymorn or augustine as being party to their conspiracy to kill john (i think...correct me if this is wrong!). (22) her identity is not revealed by teacher or the other constructs at canaan house, despite the fact that they presumably would recognize her. (23)she does not contact or encourage the other postulants to contact john or anyone else for help.

(24)cytherea states that her motivation is to sabotage the creation of new lyctors and (25)to draw john to the nine houses, putting himself and the nine house in danger from the resurrection beasts. (26)she strongly implies that this is in revenge for her cavalier or possibly all of the original cavaliers. (27)presumably, she also wants both to survive long enough to accomplish these aims, though (28)she does not seem to intend to survive for very long beyond the events at canaan house.

are these actions consistent with these motivations? again, in my correct opinion, they are not. she does not send a distress call to draw john to canaan house, and she does not encourage anyone else to do so. she kills jeannemary and magnus, even though killing isaac and abigail would prevent the fourth and fifth from ascending; while it could be argued that she would have had to kill magnus to protect her plan, but this isn't true of jeannemary's murder. she further lets other necro-cav pairs live, despite the fact this allows for the opportunity for them to ascend. her stated goals (24 and 25) could be well achieved by (a, for 25) killing (simply or gruesomely) all or most of the necromancers, while allowing the cavaliers to live, and/or (b, for 24) calling or encouraging someone else to call for help or otherwise alert someone that things have gone wrong; neither of these actions would contradict her other stated or implied motivations.

(as an aside: i think many people believe that cytherea killed the fifth first because she suspected they were likeliest to figure out her plan, which is possible but doesn't explain why she would kill the fourth next or why she wouldn't kill the sixth or third.)

one interpretation of this mismatch is that she planned sloppily or haphazardly. while this doesn't directly contradict anything we know about her, it doesn't make much sense to me -- i don't think anyone, let alone a very powerful and reasonably intelligent person, would half-ass a revenge/justice plot as their last hurrah, even if she did not have long to plan or if her plan changed upon realizing that gideon is john's daughter. another interpretation i've seen is that cytherea is simply sadistic and/or dramatic, and that her actions are motivated by a desire to make the postulants paranoid and afraid. i think this is on the right track, but doesn't itself explain everything she does (and the things she does not do).

why be perfect when you could be normal: the original lyctors and perfect lyctorhood

what is "perfect lyctorhood" and under what conditions does it occur? when i use the term "perfect lyctorhood," i'm referring to a situation where both the necromancer and the cavalier ascend to lyctorhood and share their newfound power; this is in contrast to what i'm calling "normal lyctorhood," wherein the necromancer kills and consumes the cavalier and uses them as a power source. in text, john and alecto are the only example we see of "true lyctorhood," while the other original lyctors (and ianthe) are "normal."

while the creation of the original lyctors is not thoroughly described in the text, we do know some details. it is strongly implied that (29)mercymorn and augustine, the first two lyctors, ascended under duress after their cavaliers forced their hands, presumably by killing themselves. much later, (30) anastasia and samael attempted to ascend after (5)spending a long time studying the process, but are (4)interrupted by john, who kills samael. (31)john states this he interfered because anastasia and samael had made a mistake. (32)at no point does john inform anyone that perfect lyctorhood is possible or that the cavaliers do not need to die.

i think it's reasonable to conclude that (33)very skilled necromancers, with strong bonds of mutual respect with their cavaliers, given the right resources (i.e. the trials at canaan house, or something equivalent, and sufficient time) could achieve perfect lyctorhood, or at least come close to it. (34)fear, pressure, and devaluation of the lives of cavaliers, on the other hand, push necromancers towards normal lyctorhood.

i think it's also reasonable to conclude that, in line with (13)his motivation to maintain power over the lyctors, john does not want perfect lyctors to be created, and that (4)his interference in the ascension of anastasia and samael was not because (31)they made a mistake but rather (35)to prevent them from achieving power that would rival his own.

connecting the red string

if john and cytherea's actions are not sufficiently explained by their stated motivations (or of them the motivations commonly attributed to them by fans), what motivations would explain their actions? because john (by asking for young people as postulants, and by being secretive about the lyctoral process, and by not stating that postulants could leave) and cytherea (by killing people, and by preventing people from leaving, and by generally encouraging competition and paranoia among the postulants) both created an environment of fear and pressure at canaan house, and because cytherea (by letting both necromancers and cavaliers live in other cases) john (by not providing a deadline, and by not forbidding or obscuring parts of the trials, and by not directly or indirectly supervising the trials) otherwise do nothing to prevent to an outcome that they does not want, i think we can draw the following conclusion: john and cytherea are both attempting to ensure that normal lyctors, and only normal lyctors, are created at canaan house.

in other words, i think john tasked cytherea with going to canaan house to put pressure on the postulants to ascend quickly and to prevent them from leaving alive if they were likely to not ascend. i think he did this because he did not want the postulants to become perfect lyctors, and because he did not want the secrets of lyctorhood to be known to the nine houses in general, and because he did not want to take responsibility for the deaths. i think cytherea likely did want revenge against john, and likely did not want to live beyond canaan house, but did not want to kill john; rather i think she wanted to be killed by john or by one of the new lyctors.

i think that tamsyn muir is a talented writer who has demonstrated an ability to create twisty, multi-layered plots where characters are often working on incorrect or incomplete information and where characters are often not forthcoming or are dishonest about their actions and motivations, and that therefore the mismatch between characters' actions and stated motivations are intentional. i think my conclusion sufficiently explains the actions taken (and not taken) by both cytherea and john in the gideon the ninth, and while it contradicts their stated motivations, i do not think it contradicts any of their actions or any of their demonstrated motivations. moreover i think it is consistent with their characterization in general: cytherea is dramatic and emotionally distraught over her own ascension, but she is not part of the plot against john, and she encourages gideon in her role as cavalier; john is very smart, and has few compunctions about doing horrible things to children (especially to maintain his own power), but does not want to be blamed for the things he does, and so often outsources the dirty work to his followers.

[pencildragons]

a moderately (in)coherent essay on loyalty and divinity and covenants of salt in the locked tomb

we can all agree that salt is very very central to the locked tomb. probably i should have some kind of actual thesis statement but i've never been very good at coming up with those and this post is also a direct continuation and progression of conclusions ive come to over the last two hours which are scattered through several other as yet unsent posts. so. all im saying is that im pretty sure im onto something here so please please bear with me

wait ok. ive come up with working thesis statement: the motifs of loyalty, promises, life/selfhood, and salt in the locked tomb - and their biblical connections - all line up to say, pretty clearly, Alecto Is God And John Is The Adversary.

i. introduction and context

ok so. a lot of this is about covenants of salt, which were a Big Thing for a very long time, until . salt is vital to life. abrahamic G-d's covenants to his chosen people that they are his Chosen People are covenants of salt, which is The promise ever. here's a little bit about covenants of salt because it is VERY IMPORTANT you know this context (source wikipedia):

A covenant of salt was a cultural practice in the ancient world in which one party would form a covenant by eating the salt of the other. Usually the party with the greater power or authority provided the salt. Salt was seen as extremely vital for life, so much so that among many cultures, it was thought to be the vital substance in the blood itself that made things alive. Thus, eating someone else's salt was seen as equally significant to drinking their blood, a variation of the idea of blood brothers, in which two people are thought to symbolically share in a common source of life by exchanging blood, as if the two lives had become one. The two parties involved in the covenant were bound by this sacred rite to be loyal to each other for life, ensuring that they do not harm one another, and look out for the other's interests.

also: because of the scarcity and vitality of salt and the labour-intensive efforts its production required until VERY recently, covenants of salt are the most holy and solemn of promises that at once represent preservation and (eternal) life and power

ii. alecto and john's covenant.

the abrahamic G-d, in point of fact, makes two convenants of salt - one to his priests and one to the line of kings descended of david. we'll get to the priests later.

alecto, the salt-thing, is being used as a battery to fuel john's eternal life and is the source of his enormous power, which is centred around the preservation of life through manipulating undeath.

quite literally, alecto made a covenant of salt with john - she chose him, and gave him the power - gave him her salt - for which in return he was supposed to enact her divine will. and instead, john broke with her, killed her and ate her and made himself god.

iii. jod and the Adversary play who's-who

john has made himself out to be god, and alecto the devil. in harrow's canaan river-bubble, teacher's ghost says that "even the devil bent for God to put a leash around her neck". post-resurrection, john is the sole holder of this knowledge. if alecto is to be labeled the devil by anyone except john, then it is because he named her such first.

so, sure. john is god and alecto is the devil. except that alecto is the source and uttermost representation of the power and the life and the preservation. alecto is the one who gives the salt, not the other way around. in the abrahamic monotheism which canon is both textually and subtextually based in, there is and only can be one true god; and to break from god is a terrible thing. the salt-thing gave herself to her chosen and asked him to save her, and instead he broke with her and buried her and styled himself the man who became god and took the mantle of her divinity for himself.

so if alecto isn't actually the devil and john isn't actually god, this means that Hell With All Its Hungry Gaping Mouths at the bottom of the River, which by the way connects to the saltwater pool in alecto's tomb, might not actually be capital-H HELL. which means that the place that the stomata lead to is somewhere else. which means that hell is somewhere else too.

Hell classically has nine circles. just saying. nine is an important number, after all. and, classically, the ninth and innermost circle of hell is the circle of treachery, where the worst of the worst (being traitors) end up. just saying. for no reason at all.

iv. the nine houses are hell and the ninth house is the circle of treachery: an extended metaphor.

silas octakiseron calls the cult of the tomb a blasphemy. the worst criminals in the nine houses are imprisoned on the ninth. gideon spends the first eighteen years of her life being punished, because, for this metaphor, she is not of the ninth - not a native, so not a demon or clergyperson of the devil - she is beholden to it. she has come to the ninth from the outside, and, metatextually/thematically, she is a tortured soul on the ninth, the worst of the worst, the dross (incidentally a word both used by crux to describe gideon and john to describe the things including the RBs that they dispose of in the mouth of hell) because her very existence was conceived in an attempt to commit the most blatant blasphemy of all against jod. it's pluto, which is fuckass nowhere; it's freezing, it's almost unlivable, and it stagnates. there's a pretty solid case to be made here for the houses being hell and the ninth being the ninth circle.

and alecto, the 'devil', is at the centre of it all. classically, or at least in dante's inferno, the ninth circle where lucifer THE ADVERSARY resides is a large frozen lake. all the worst sinners, the blasphemers, the traitors, those who have broken covenants of salt to their lords and to their god, they are encapsulated in ice. classically, those who have broken covenants and betrayed god are trapped in this place. on the ninth house, the reason for its existence, the thing around which all else in hell was formed, the betrayed salt-thing is entombed alive in ice. because of the reversal of roles and john's assumption of alecto's godhood, it is instead the person whose covenant of salt has been broken - the person who has been betrayed - that is imprisoned here, trapped in the centre of hell in the adversary's place while he is in hers.

v. harrowhark nonagesimus and the covenants of salt

if john is god and alecto is the adversary, then harrow is the devil's #1 worshipper. she is everything silas despised and feared and about a million times more again, because not only is she head of her devil worship cult, not only is she in love with the death of jod to the point where it drives her to become immortal, but she opened the fucking tomb. BUT if john and alecto's positions are reversed, then this means harrow and all from whom she is descended are those rare rare few who remained faithful and loyal to the one true g-d amidst idolatry.

harrow is the culmination of the line of Tomb-Keepers who dedicated their everything to the fervent worship of The Body - they are the priests with which god makes a covenant of salt. harrow's loyalty is to her god, not her jod - harrow's loyalty is to Alecto. over and over again, harrow has been bathed in salt and made promises in salt. harrow, alecto's most devoted priest since anastasia, is the mish-mash of her own soul and that of the child of god's other chosen, the king who broke with alecto and betrayed her and uses her. harrow is the amalgamation of both alecto's covenants of salt and she is devoted to her utterly, and she is rewarded for it. and alecto is going show the universe exactly what being the faithful chosen one of god means.

conclusion

[nael, aged 6 voice] the salt-thing, she destroyed her cage. she is free.

salt preserves. just as alecto is ended by the breaking of a covenant of salt, she is brought back by the enforcement and renewal of both her covenants through harrow.

all throughout htn, alecto has slowly but surely been thawing. salt melts ice; the salt-promise of god is destroying the encapsulating ice of her adversary. a covenant of salt was never to be broken, and the salt-thing was betrayed by the man who became god and the god who became man. and harrowhark's god is a vengeful god, and honey, there is a big flood coming