GB: "You speak of rejecting easy answers, even those that none of us can escape. You say we should even reject the null hypothesis."
SG: "To be clear: I have never stated that the world is not wrong. I do not myself believe that the world is not wrong. But I question it. And I advocate for the questioning of it. Precisely because is such an easy conclusion to us."
GB: "Apologies. I didn't mean to put words in your mouth."
SG: "I don't think you did. However, I want to make my meaning clear. It is often misunderstood out of an instinctual revulsion. The truth is—of course—that if I did truly believe that the world had merit, we would not be having this conversation."
SG: "Knowledge of the wrongness of the world is intrinsic to a Strategist. To accept the world is to become something else."
GB: "Ah yes. I have read about this in the works of Ercangast and Alidag."
SG: "Much has been written on the topic, yes."
GB: "From your writings and this conversation I have gotten the feeling that you in particular don't place much value in being a Strategist. You seem rather disillusioned with it."
SG: "Mmh. We are glorious, beautiful and sacred things. But we are also defined overwhelmingly by failure, misery and self-delusion. It is a proud thing to be a Deathwright. But it is a pitiful thing, too."
GB: "By this logic, if accepting the world is to become something other than a Strategist—wouldn't that be a good thing?"
SG: "Ah, we must be careful in conflating these concepts. I am not secretive about my desire to transcend my state of unbeing as Cannamarka once did. But not every transcendence is a change for the better. We are not so wretched that we couldn't fall further. We all know this. We know what it is like to be a mere revenant."
GB: "Do you think accepting the world would cause you to fall back into revenance?"
SG: "No. In fact this is very unlikely. I have not yet met a revenant that didn't hate with the same fervour as we do. I am merely pointing out that—flawed and haunted as we are and yearning as I am to transcend—shedding our nature is not a good thing by necessity."
SG: "I cannot tell you what would happen if you opened your heart fully to the world and became truly convinced of its inherent merit. I do not know of a single Strategist who has done this. Perhaps it has happened, but there is no record of it. And so it is impossible to say."
GB: "Does that worry you?"
SG: "You are quite insightful, do you know that?"
GB: "You honour me, Illuminate."
SG: "You are correct. I am troubled by it. My pursuit of the ultimate transcendence has stalled for quite some time now. It is possible that this acceptance is what I am missing to take that final step. But I do not know."
GB: "I find that interesting. I'd think that acceptance of the world couldn't possibly be a part of it, given that Cannamarka had achieved this transcendence before there was a world to accept."
SG: "It is not that simple. Cannamarka's state of enlightenment is a complicated thing. She was not beholden to the dualities that we take for granted. She resided in Rainnuan and she did not. She did neither and she did both. She is in Creation's past and she is not. Both and neither. She was destroyed when Rainnuan was shattered and she was not. Is it really so impossible that she could have transcended void and world both before there was a world to transcend? Could she not have accepted the value of Creation before Cneph even conceived of it?"
GB: "It still strikes me as illogical, I must confess."
SG: "Mh. Then let us return to less murky ground. Assuming acceptance of Creation was impossible and therefore never necessary for Cannamarka, it would still trouble me."
SG: "Cannamarka achieved her transcendence in a vastly different environment and from a vastly different initial state of unbeing. Perhaps she needed not accept the world, but she also was not poisoned and degraded by it. She was never at war with it. We cannot simply walk her path and expect it to still lead to the same end. Rainnuan is no more. Ninuan is fallen. Everything we do, we do in the context of the world."
GB: "Ah. Yes, I can see the logic behind that. Given this, is achieving Cannamarka's transcendence even possible anymore?"
SG: "It is my fate to achieve it. And if there is anything I do understand quite intimately, it is fate. I only hope that when I find the path, I can mark it for others to follow."
— from Inside the Chancery: An Interview with Illuminate Scarthas Gadhra by Gratamund Bessicus, published in The Falling Star Gazette issue 142
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