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theriverbeyond · 1 year

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so i was thinking about this post, specifically the comparison between Ianthe/Babs and Silas/Colum. because on the surface, they're both necromancers whose relationship to their cavalier seems wholly consumptive. but: Silas differs from Ianthe on one big, key point -- he refuses to ascend to lyctorhood. he has been indoctrinated since birth to view his cavalier as only a tool for him; Colum was quite literally made for him, the 8th house breeds batteries, but when the chips are down silas refuses. he tried to kill Ianthe for it!! like, he was the only one in the room who thought what Ianthe did was so fucked up that she should die for it.

and this is so fascinating!! because one could potentially interpret the 8th house's treatment of their cavaliers like Mercymorn trying to innoculate her house against the grief that destroyed her for 10,000 years. she loved Cristabel too much, and she never wanted that to happen to anyone else. but the thing is, I don't think it worked. at best, I can see Silas becoming like Augustine "human plex" the First. you are not immune to grief etc.

and i think this is going to be important like, idk. the 8th house is the only dead Canaan House pair that hasn't yet had their arc concluded. and IMO, i think the 9th house wasnt the only house to have their dynamic be challenged by and radically shift due to the events of GtN!! that scene where Silas invites Gideon to "take tea" and then tells Colum to kill her -- Colum refuses, Silas lets Gideon go, and we never see the conclusion of that fight. and of course, despite refusing to wholly consume his soul, when fighting Ianthe Silas falls back on old habits to steamroll Colum's agency, and ends up opening the path for the River Devil that comes and kills them both. I think it is very intentional that this is framed as a consequence of Silas overriding Colum's agency and treating Colum like a tool and not a person, and I think the rest of their arc is going to address this. in HtN, when Silas fled Harrow's bubble, I am convinced that he went to go find Colum's soul.

im very interested to see where their arc leads re: forgiveness, atonement, etc, especially in the context of Gideon's forgiveness of Harrow in the pool scene, Hot Sauce's forgiveness of Nona, and Ortus & Harrow's mutual forgiveness of each other. how do we make it right when it can never be made right, how can we move forward without ever being able to erase what we have done to each other?

#this was originally just a reblog reply but then i was like going off on too many tangents so! new post #silas octakiseron #colum asht #tlt meta #gideon the ninth #im just fascinated by them bc they along w babs are like #like de-emphasized in the narritive in the like 'why do u care abt these losers' kind of way but the things that #they have going on are SO fascinating and i think on some level #our dismissal of babs and silas and colum is very much the result of intentional framing etc #but like!!! the river. what's at the bottom of the river? the stoma #whose house sucks at the stoma like a fat teat? the 8th #what monsters came out of the bottom of the river? the devils #where have we seen the devils? colum and the 9th house.#listen it is all connected #tlt thoughts #trb.txt #we've had one big forgiveness per book #and anyway #8th house makes me go kind of insane

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katakaluptastrophy · 8 months

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Abigail Pent literally brought her husband, and look where that got her!

Oh, I can't be normal about this...

Ianthe is saying all of the quiet parts out loud about cavaliership in the Nine Houses:

She says "the cavalier’s job is to die for the necromancer" (Palamedes tries to gloss this to "protect the necromancer", but concedes that "if this entails their own death, then they're expected to accept that"). She talks about Naberius as a commodity, procured at birth, raised for a purpose, modifiable and disposable at will.

She wants to make it clear that she was terribly clever and has no regrets. Which is obviously why she's been thinking about two people she deems "dull and stupid" to the extent that they're her main touchpoint for explaining her position and that she name checks both of them, separately, during her responses... (poor Magnus).

Because the Fifth represent the opposite of how things turned out for the Third: an incidental cavaliership to a relationship of two equals who chose each other (against social currents, quite possibly on several counts). Ianthe made a choice at Canaan House. And Abigail made choices eleven and five years before that. And Ianthe has been thinking about those choices.

So Abigail Pent brought her husband on a research jolly to the First instead of bringing a slave to the killing fields (to paraphrase Harrow). And where did that get her?

Well, The Unwanted Guest rather confirms Abigail's heretical speculations about the River: it is not the end, but a purgatorial passing point through which one can travel lightly to the further shore, or sink down to the horrors at the bottom. Abigail may not have gained ultimate power and posters of her face, but she did end HTN going off to cross the River to what, in the implied cosmology of TLT, sounds rather like heaven.

And as for Ianthe? Jod's "indelible sin" may not be the most reliable account of Lyctoral River theology, but Lyctors do not seem to travel lightly in the River...and the Stoma did try to grab Ianthe back in HTN. The newly created Paul offers Ianthe - and Naberius - a second chance and she rejects it.

And now the Death of God has been released, Ianthe has bet on God, God is having a mid-dismyriad crisis, and the girl Abigail Pent risked a second and total death to help knows the truth and is off to harrow hell.

Ianthe Naberius used her cavalier for the rotten true purpose of cavaliers, and look where that got her.

#the locked tomb #tlt #abigail pent #magnus quinn #john gaius #harrowhark nonagesimus #ianthe tridentarius #ianthe naberius #palamedes sextus #the unwanted guest spoilers #the unwanted guest #Yes I am making everything about Abigail Pent

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demolitonlcvers · 1 year

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what happened to the ten billion?

I just finished another reread of Nona and there were a few lines that I missed the first two times that I picked up on this time– namely, about the rest of the ten billion people John killed during the Resurrection. The simplified version of the theory is: I think the rest of the ten billion went through the stoma into hell, and I think the thing that possessed Colum Asht at the end of Gideon, as well as the things that were in Drearburh at the end of Nona and that Kiriona talks about fighting on Antioch are the ten billion. I also think that the first act of Alecto, which is titled “Harrow in Hell,” is going to be Harrow descending into hell and setting all of those souls free. I also think they have something to do with the Tower, but since we know so little about the Tower my evidence on that is shaky at best, and the Tower could also be something of John’s. If you want my full in-depth explanation with quotes and everything, it’ll be below the cut:

Someone has probably already figured out that whatever took control of Colum Asht’s body in Gideon (+ the things that were in Drearburh + the things the Cohort are fighting on Antioch) comes from the stoma, but it was something I just put together myself today and I’m very excited about it. The first piece of evidence is the fact that they have a similar appearance– the bodies possessed by these revenants’ eyes turn into mouths, with teeth and tongues, and the tongue they’re supposed to have in their regular mouth gets bigger. The stoma described at the end of Harrow has teeth and a bunch of tongues (also this is off-topic but the appearance of the stoma resembles the sea monster Charybdis from Greek mythology to me, I wonder if that’s intentional). All of this I’m like 95% sure I’ve seen in a post on here before, but I also found this quote in Harrow, spoken by Augustine to Mercymorn– “You never did take the stoma seriously, which is why your whole damned house sucks at it like a grotesque teat…” (htn 340). Weird gross description aside, this is what cemented this theory for me– the Eighth clearly worships the stoma in some way, probably because of their soul siphoning practices, which can let something from the stoma into the body of the cavalier if they are siphoned too much. Also, close to the end of ntn, Kiriona is explaining these things to Paul and says John calls them “devils:” “They shouldn’t be here. We would have gotten word if they were back in the home system. they’re confined to Antioch— he said they’d only be on Antioch… (Paul asks where they’ve seen this before) Silas Octakiseron’s poor bastard cavalier… I didn't understand then… we call them devils. I mean, Dad calls them devils… they can't be here. He said they couldn’t travel” (ntn 448). Devils = from hell, et cetera et cetera. More on the fact that the devils “shouldn’t be in the home system” later.

But what do the revenants from the stoma have to do with the ten billion? I have a few pieces of evidence for this, but two of them are from Varun possessing Judith to speak to Nona, so they don’t make a lot of sense. The first quote is from the scene where Nona and Varun-in-Judith are talking on top of the trucks: “They are coming out of their tower, salt thing. There is a hole at the bottom of their tower. I will pull their teeth. I will make it blank for you” (ntn 393). I’m not even going to try to figure out what “I will pull their teeth, I will make it blank for you” means, other than the fact that the stoma has teeth so maybe that has something to do with it? I was very confused over what “they” were until I got to the second quote, from the scene when they’re driving in the River and see the Tower for the first time: “He left them too long— you left them too long, my salt thing” (ntn 440). The ten billion, if they are in hell, have certainly been there for too long, long enough for them to turn into the revenants they are now. What complicates this is the fact that Kiriona and Ianthe are called the “Tower Princes–” why would John name them after the Tower if it has something to do with the ten billion people he killed, who he’s now presumably losing a war against on Antioch? Unfortunately, I don’t really have an answer for that other than “this whole theory could be totally wrong and Tamsyn Muir will completely contradict everything I’ve said up to this point in Alecto.”

The last piece of evidence that pulls it all together for me, though, is Harrow. In the last John chapter in Nona, she says to him– ““I want to understand the mathematics, now that I have seen them for myself. I want to know how many of the Resurrection are left, and how many you began with, and what the discrepancies are. I want to know where you put them. They didn’t go in the River” (ntn 435). Right after this, she walks into the River towards the Tower. To add to this, it’s confirmed that the first act of Alecto will be titled “Harrow in Hell,” and Tamsyn has said before that Harrow’s name is specifically a reference to the Harrowing of Hell. The Harrowing of Hell is the period of time between Christ’s death and his resurrection, during which he descended into hell and freed all of the souls who had been trapped there since the beginning of time. I think what’s going to happen in the first act of Alecto, presumably in between when Harrow walks into the River in Nona and when she comes back to her body in the epilogue (it’s been established that time works differently in the River, and probably underneath the River, too), is she’s going to go into hell and set the ten billion free (and also maybe Augustine and Ulysses, both Lyctors who were trapped down there, but I could be being too hopeful). Also, as an extra note, the harrowing of hell has a name as a subject in Christian art: Anastasis, which is Greek for “resurrection.” And another note that I don’t know where else to put: Anastasia’s cavalier being named Samael may end up being important, what with all this discussion of hell and devils.

My last point has to do with how the devils ended up in Drearburh. This part of the theory is very tentative, but I don’t really see any other way it would be possible from the information we have now: at the beginning of Harrow, in a scene I forgot about the first two times I read it, John sends some of the ancient dead to the Ninth House:

“Oh my God,” you said, forgetting that the deity in question was right there. “The ancient dead. You’ve committed resurrection.”

He said, “No. I haven't truly resurrected anyone in ten thousand years. But all that time… I set many aside, for safety… and I've often felt bad about just keeping them as insurance. They’ve been asleep all this myriad, Harrow, and it’s frankly a relief to my mind to wake them up.” (htn pg 36)

I think this is, somehow, how the devils ended up on the Ninth. However, it clearly isn’t something that happened to every single resurrected person sent to the Ninth– at the end of Nona, she mentions seeing people of all ages in Drearburh, something they definitely didn’t have at the beginning of the series. I also want to point out how insane and fucked up it is that John’s been keeping a bunch of resurrected people from ten thousand years ago in his basement “for insurance.”

Again, all of this is very very tentative and I'm sure when Alecto comes out I will have predicted maybe 2 things correctly

#tlt meta #alecto the ninth #harrow the ninth #gideon the ninth #nona the ninth #the locked tomb #alecto speculation #alecto theories #tlt #tlt theories

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paradoxcase · 6 months

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Chapter 45 of Harrow the Ninth

So with all the like creepy tubes that someone said were reproductive-system-related, and the stuff with the pipettes and pills and slides, this makes me think of the first note that said THE EGGS YOU GAVE ME ALL DIED/etc., and if it really is Commander Wake that's haunting Harrow, is all this stuff just about conceiving Gideon? Is that most of Command Wake's post-death anxiety, not anything to do with BOE or their war with the Nine Houses, but just whatever had to be done to conceive Gideon? And then I guess Gideon the First (and possibly Pyrrha) are probably some of the people in these notes

So, this is the room that would have belonged to Gideon the First and Pyrrha, and I think it's clear that Commander Wake had something to do with them or some relationship with them or something, I would almost think at this point that Gideon's parents were Gideon the First and Commander Wake except that I've seen everywhere on tumblr that Gideon's dad is John, so maybe Commander Wake's ghost is leaving this room alone because it belonged to Gideon the First and she recognizes it?

It's true, now that we've seen what Lyctors can do, I think she could have done better, and maybe Harrow would never have figured it out. I wonder why she didn't?

It now occurs to me that there's one person who died in Gideon the Ninth who hasn't made an appearance here yet: Colum. What happened to his ghost? It was seemingly implied in Gideon the Ninth that he returned to his body in time to die in it, but maybe he is still off in whatever place he goes to when Mayonnaise Uncle siphons him? Did he not actually die?

So, in this cosmology that Abigail is suggesting, combined with what John said earlier, the River is more like Purgatory, or something, and the good souls cross the River and wind up in Heaven on the other side, whereas the bad souls are maybe weighted down and wind up on the bottom and go to Hell via the stoma? And Abigail says that people used to believe in this, but no longer do for some reason

I'm curious about this, but it looks like I'll probably have to wait to find out more

Really curious what about the bomb indicated that Crux specifically had put it there, or did they just assume it was him because he was the one who put them on the shuttle?

I like that Ortus, resident expert on epic poetry about warriors, gets that it's essential for Harrow's narrative to say that Gideon was killed by Cytherea so that she has an external person to blame for her loss, but that this takes agency away from Gideon and she wouldn't like it. Even when she didn't remember Gideon, Harrow seems to have been somewhat obsessed with Cytherea, even if it does turn out that some of what she saw Cytherea's body doing actually happened

So he did know about the Weekend at Bernie's stuff, and that the 200 children were intentionally killed, and so did his mother, so when Mayonnaise Uncle and his family talked with her revenant they presumably did learn about that, but for some reason he didn't share this knowledge with Gideon back in Gideon the Ninth and actually let her find about it from Harrow, which is interesting, maybe he thought that Harrow really was some cartoon villain and that if Gideon heard about it from her she would hate her? And I gather that Ortus was spared because he was the son of Priam's cavalier and they needed someone to be Harrow's cavalier when she grew up. And I also feel Ortus's angst here of "I left horrific things happen to these children and I was a grown-ass adult". I think I saw a post somewhere where someone was complaining about people saying that the characters in this book had been de-aged to appeal to a young adult demographic, which is not something I've seen personally, but I do think it's correct that this isn't mean to be a YA book or appeal only to that demographic, because it does also have these adult perspectives - in YA, generally adults are pretty useless and don't play much of a role in the story, but here you have Ortus saying this, and you have Magnus and Abigail trying to protect the Fourth teens (and now trying to protect Harrow) and you have Mercy being horrified by how young Harrow and Ianthe are

I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure Gideon never cared about the Ninth and did everything she did for you

This sounds more like a BOE-vs.-Nine-Houses thing now?

I'm wondering if they are going to use the candles in a more traditional way to do this exorcism, or if they are going to do some kind of necromancy with the animal fat? And I mean, Canaan House is covered in blood at this point, does that not work for making a ward of some kind?

#the locked tomb #harrow the ninth

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toughtink · 1 year

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a long time ago i made a guide to keys in Gideon the Ninth. i said i’d do some more Locked Tomb notes in the future, so i’m back to do that! these posts are pretty much my personal notes taken during my last reread, perfectly prone to errors, so feel free to add on if you spot any inconsistencies. also, the citations are specifically for the american paperback versions of the books. and i haven’t put much from nona in this list yet; mostly this one focuses on Harrow the Ninth info.

The River Sections in The Locked Tomb Series:

The Riverbank—seems to have many of the things you’d find on an actual real-world beach: silvery sand, dried wood, colored stones, long feathery plant stems and willow-like branches washed up on the shore, salt wind.

Epirhoic—Uppermost, near the banks. Where the lyctors plan to fight RB 7. Where folks always hope their ghost travels (“may your spirit travel high on the River” or smth), where Abigail assumes Isaac and Jeannemary’s spirits will travel given their youth and goodness ( “[They] never did anything wrong other than the time they tried to pierce each other’s tongues, should have travelled lightly through those waters.” —Abigail, htn 397).

Mesorhoic—middle, i guess. some ghosts.

Bathyrhoic—where the swiftest fight against a RB (8) took place. much fewer ghosts.

Barathron—very few ghosts sink this low. Jod says if he believed in sin, he’d say they died weighted down with sin, placing them nearer the trash space. deeper portions have pressure similar to water pressure in deep ocean (htn 494), but they never figured out what the River’s made of. Apparently there’s also rocks down here??? Because the Mithraeum gets caught on some rock face when dropped into the River (htn 496).

Stoma—Super hell? Opens & closes. Ferocious gravitational pull. Mouth to Hell. “A genuinely chaotic space—chaos in the meaning of the abyss as well as unfathomable…located at the bottom of the River. The Riverbed is studded with mouths that open at proximity of Resurrection Beasts, and no ghosts venture deeper than the bathyrhoic layer. Anyone who has entered the stoma has never returned. It is a portal to the place I cannot touch” (Jod, htn 240). Jod’s rubbish bin 🗑️. When a hole opens, it’s enormous with huge human teeth at the edges, each tooth “six bodies high and two bodies wide.” Gideon also describes it as “an eaten-away tunnel of reality.” (htn 495) Also, thousands of tentacle-y tongues come out (htn 496). Stoma is Greek for mouth, and though medically it normally refers to a hole in the abdomen used to expel waste, if we think of it as a mouth (which like, teeth + tongues sounds pretty mouthy), it could be compared to the mouth of a river, aka where it meets the ocean. Is “The Beyond” (in the next section) that ocean?

The River Beyond—what lies beyond, believed in thousands of years ago, but pooh-poohed now, and researched/believed in by Abigail Pent (htn 397), aka where spirits are attempting to cross to without being dragged to the depths of the River or going insane. Abigail believes there is a whole school of necromancy still undiscovered because of a lack of studying The Beyond (my capitals, not hers) and that something has gone terribly wrong in the River.—Personally, it feels like the system has been gummed up by necromancy, souls coming and going and causing problems when they really should have been going in one direction. Alecto asks Jod where he put all the children in ntn, so maybe normally those souls go directly back to their planets/nearest cosmic bodies? But killing the planets has made that impossible so now they’re stuck in a subspace Purgatory occasionally getting sucked into Hell ala The Good Place where OOPS! No one’s been able to get to Heaven for 10k years!

some miscellaneous thoughts about the river:

perhaps the river was never meant to exist at all? could the destruction of the solar system have created it? and what’s with its use as subspace travel? it’s plot convenient, sure, but is that a feature that can be expanded to all souls, living and dead? or is it the spiritual dimension being sucked into some kinda worm hole that was already in space or something? idk, it’s very weird as you can be there spiritually but not physically or you can be there physically too as evidenced by the very physical kinds of rocks and stuff as well as whole space ships getting dropped in. it’s certainly a fun take on the river styx, and i do think we’ll be going beyond the stoma in alecto. maybe it’ll really lean in to the greek mythology connection this time and we’ll get a bit of an orpheus and eurydice moment with a certain saddest girl in the world going in to rescue a certain goth nunlet?

#the locked tomb #tlt #harrow the ninth #htn #gtn #gideon the ninth #nona the ninth #ntn #the river #capitalization is a funky lil thing on this post #because it got written at different times and was all about the Current Vibe #tinks tlt notes

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necromancy-savant · 1 year

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I just finished re-reading Nona the Ninth and I'm having some thoughts and theories...

I'm really interested in what Varun the Eater says: "they are coming out of their tower...There is a hole at the bottom...I will pull their teeth. I will make it clean" (406-7).

It sounds a lot like the stoma seen in Harrow to me. They could be the same thing, or the stomata might be or have something to do with whatever is wrong with the River.

I think Alecto's soul might have gone to the River while she was asleep in the Tomb, been in that Tower while she was there, and then entered Harrow's body while Harrow was under. We already know the danger of someone leaving their body unattended without a soul for too long: it happens to Colum Asht back in Gideon, and we're reminded of that exact thing again towards the end of Nona when they're fighting the "devils" that Gideon explains are the same thing (467), right before Alecto and Harrow return to their bodies.

John might have sent Alecto's soul to the River intentionally in an attempt to distract the Resurrection Beasts there because she says "he laid [her] down as an appeasement to them" (495).

#it's all speculation and there's not really enough to go on but I think I found some crumbs for sure #if my other theory is correct the souls could also still be stuck in that Tower somehow #and then if Harrow is going there we could then get the Harrowing of Hell we've been promised all along #that's enough theories for now; I think I want to look more closely at some motifs #the locked tomb #the locked tomb theories #the locked tomb spoilers #nona the ninth #nona the ninth spoilers #alecto theories #alecto the first

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lilliankillthisman · 2 years

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Augustine, Satan, and Paradise Lost in The Locked Tomb

I was reading through Book IV of Paradise Lost (as one does ya know) and some of the imagery used by Satan to describe his fate suddenly jumped out at me:

Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.

"And in the lowest deep a lower deep/Still threatening to devour me, opens wide" is metaphorical here, but it's a very, very literal description of what happens to Augustine at the end of HtN, swallowed up by the stoma at the bottom of the river. The preceding part fits perfectly too; Augustine literally casts everything around him into hell in a fit of despairing rage.

This got me thinking of Augustine as a Satanic figure; God's angel and Saint who betrays him, attempts to cast him down and is cast down in turn instead. I'm almost certain this is a deliberate framing from TazMuir; Augustine's story is absolutely the story of Satan, and she likes melodramatic religion and classical references enough that I think she's not above references to Milton. This suggests that Augustine is going to reappear later just as casting Satan to Hell is only the start of the story, and that he definitely isn't going to give up on his grudge against John/God. In addition, in Paradise Lost the gates of Hell are guarded by Sin and Death. Lyctorhood is consistently referred to as the Lyctors' sin in a setting where I think no one ever mentions any other sin at all despite our main characters being nuns, so it's safe to say the concept is usually absent and its usage for Lyctorhood is important. Since Sin persuades Death to allow Satan to pass out of Hell, that might suggest that Lyctorhood is key to escaping the place beyond the river. Of course, that won't be easy: "Long is the way/And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light". But I really do think we haven't seen the last of Augustine.

When we run this symbolism along its course we come to Harrow and Ianthe as Adam and Eve; the new creations of God to replace the angels he has lost. Ianthe clearly fills the role of Eve, the woman Augustine/Satan tries to tempt away. Unlike in Paradise Lost she resists his persuasions at the climax of HtN, and in doing so avoids dooming humanity in the form of destroying Dominicus. However, I genuinely think this association is very relevant, and may well predict future events in the series - Eve is not tempted at Satan's first attempt, but instead later in Book IX. How is she tempted away from God? With an apple, forbidden knowledge, and the promise of divinity. That is a remarkably specific parallel to her studies and her suspected goals, and again I really don't think this is wild speculation; I think Ianthe's story could really mirror Eve's, ending with her turning from God in an attempt to replicate his power and getting fucked over for it. The specific way I think she might get fucked over is losing her exalted state and immortality, just as Eve did; to whit, losing her Lyctorhood. If we take Harrow as Adam, that suggests Harrow will cease to be a Lyctor as well.

Btw, the last book of Paradise Lost focuses on the child of God saving mankind, which is definitely good vibes.

#harrow the ninth #augustine the first #the locked tomb #tlt #long post #i believe all of this to a greater or lesser extent #nona is augustine in harrow's body confirmed by the way #<-<- i do not believe this #paradise lost is unironically good btw

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terezis · 2 years

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@sgrumby i didn’t wanna keep replying on that person’s post LOL but ok so about the tower

afaik it’s mentioned a couple times: nona sees the tower in the river when she’s on the truck going to the ninth, and she implies that alecto knows what it is—and harrow ditches john to go check it out and “find god” starting there (???) at the very end of the book

varun ALSO references it - actually hold on let me look up what he says - “the danger is upon you and you do not even know... they are coming out of their tower. there is a hole at the bottom of their tower. i will pull their teeth. i will make it blank for you.”

AND of course ianthe and kiriona are the “tower” princes, tho that’s less relevant to the point i’m about to make

based on all of this and the fact that tamsyn keeps saying that harrow is now in hell, and ALSO that john and augustine refer to the stoma at the bottom of the river as “the mouth to hell” in htn

i’m assuming that the “hole” at the bottom of the tower is a stoma, which the devils are coming out of, and since harrow went to the tower, she’s in the stoma also. as tamsyn said. girl’s in hell

but i don’t think we have any idea as to why it’s a TOWER, who made it, how it came to be, etc. ??? nor do we know what the devils actually are, although gideon says its revenant magic.

when harrow talks about “finding god” she also mentions that there’s a discrepancy between the number of people john resurrected, the number he woke up (i’m assuming some have been in stasis like the renewed ninth were), how many remain, etc, and she wants to know where he “put them.” AND that alecto was apparently mad and john was scared about something related to this. when john tells harrow about what he did to alecto, one of the first things she says to him is “where did you put the people”

my guess: in the tower??? again no idea why or how but i feel like the devils have to be related to the resurrection in some way based on that conversation

#my initial feeling is that they are like corrupted souls of the res'd but no evidence there just vibes #also sorry this got mad long for your question but i got too Into it LOL #nona the ninth #nona the ninth spoilers #the locked tomb #analysis #tlt tag #ntn spoilers

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0w0 · 8 months

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Made a post on Reddit of tlt theories I have, here's it:

But here it is under a read more so you don't have to suffer. I'd really love to hear everyone's thoughts!

Ianthe, Lychtorhood(s), the Tower, the Trinity, Ba & Ka, Vriska

Inb4; I'm an audiobook listener so my spellings are probably not right

[ Not Vriska ]

I'm a broken record when it comes to finding all of the little homestuck things in the locked tomb, and Ianthe seems ofc Very Serket-y. So my unironic but absolutely crack theory is that she's going to end up having a hand in bringing the story to its climax but in a way that could be considered either heroic or aligning with the protagonist, even if that's not the spirit of what she's doing. "Protagonist" being Alecto over all, not Harrow, not Gideon.

[ Motivation ]

I genuinely think Ianthe wants knowledge and power But not because she wants to be God to everyone, I think she wants to be God to herself (and of course however that plays into her enmeshment with Corona), looking back on how she always had to play second fiddle to Corona ineveryone's eyes, she was a puppet master further puppeted by her parents who obviously gave her a lot of issues. I genuinely believe she hates herself, and just looking for anything to fill that void.

[ Tower ]

I haven't read very many other theories on the Tower, But because the afterlife we've seen is referred to as the river, I believe it is a lighthouse allegory, meant to guide all of the souls who have been lost, straying, and absolutely ravenous. "Jewel or gleam of a smile" gives me very "beam of light" energy, I believe Ianthe will have some kind of end as a ferryman or harbinger, becuase John never was - he was just vindictive as a god.

[Types of Lychtor]

💙1) Swaparoo; John and Alecto - the switched souls or essences, something that traded their eyes but let them both live.

💙2) Headmates; Pyrrah and Gideon - two souls living in one body, independent of each other but the eaten soul isn't actually devoured, Pyrrah still having agency for example. I believe this is what Anastasia and Samael may have ended in, if John hadn't killed him.

💙4) Fusion; Paul - When Camilla and Palamedes achieved lychtorhood, it seems like they've fused into and have become a new being, like their souls are blended into a new one, which is parts of them both, yet is still new being.

💙3) Cannibal; Mercymorn and Christabelb- And the other cases of lychtors we've seen for the most part it seems like the soul has been completely devoured, or like the personality of the cavalier is gone, all there is, is autopilot and a battery.

[ The Trinity - what is it? ]

BUT if the perfect Lychtorhood trinity is actually 3 souls, here are my guesses for endgame trinity:

Upon my reread of Nona I realized Anastasia had mentioned a trinity, and I don't think it's just in a Christian Context. A possible reading of what the Trinity is - Adept, Cavalier, and the whole of what they make. The new entity is the 3rd thing, Lychtor type 4.

Ianthe, Babs, Corona

Alecto, Harrow, Gideon

John (father), Gideon (son), Alecto (holy spirit).

Alecto (father), the 10 billion souls (son), the tower/river (holy spirit)

Ianthe, for those last combos, I'd consider a Judas or Longinus allusion. I think her final defining act will be one of mercy, that will leave everyone in... awe ;)

[ Connective tissue ]

💙 Permission; "There is only one rule. Don't go into any locked room without permission. Wink." This quote from teacher in Gideon has been making my brain itch, and I really feel like it has something to do with the tomb itself, the tower, the river, the stoma.

💙 Eyes; are the window to the soul. The way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I believe the stoma at the bottom of the river isn't just a gateway, and isn't just full of teeth because it's creepy and necromantic. I think the entire river is a living being, that the entire universe in this series is a consciousness all of its own, and that entropy is only being expedited by John, whether he realizes it or not. I believe the river is one big revenant waiting to happen.

💙 Iceberg; Alecto is the Earth, but not the 10 billion souls. John is very much like Harrowhark, in that he is made up of so many more than just his own soul. I don't believe he devoured human kinds souls, I believe they're the mindless restless dead in the river that are so hungry and searching for closure.

💙 Tarot; The tower card often means unforeseen change and dangerous circumstances etc, though in reverse it means illness, loss, etc. I'm choosing to see the river as a reflection of sorts, so I believe the tower is a place of mourning, not the dangerous and ominous thing it seems to be. I genuinely feel like there used to be beings in the river who would help guide souls along.

💙 Ba & Ka; everyone here is extremely well read so I'll let you look up this Kemetic belief and jump into it curtly: I believe when a necromancer devours their cavalier, the eye color switches because the KA (essence) is what is switched with adept and cavalier. I believe this is why even though Gideon dies, Pyrrah still has his eye color rather than hers remaining. Her essence is what has been made part of their soul.

I believe the Ba is what joins the river even when a Cavalier is made into a battery, but that the KA stays. I believe that is what would explain things like only certain body parts or bisected spirits in the river, because why would it dead thing see itself as only part of its whole? Because it's whole isn't there.

Now the BA, personality and individuality, is what gets destroyed in type 2, but blended in type 4. Think Paul's eyes blending color.

[ In conclusion ]

(I'm talking about a lot of complex things that I only have cursory knowledge of, apologies if I get anything wrong thusly dismantling this entire red string maze.)

I still firmly believe that the Trinity is it's two parts plus the whole it makes, and I believe Babs will be rejected or expunged based on what was said in Nona. I don't think his entire Ba has been corroded down to just his Ka yet, so he still may be able to be saved.

This would leave and Ianthe and Corona. BUT I believe Ianthe will have to reconcile her own parts to become a whole person, and become a mini Trinity before even thinking about a perfect Lychtorhood - But she gives a love that is toxic and codependent, I could really see her going between eating Corona, or simply denying her again because she is the one person she can't live without, despite everything.

That, and Corona being Judith's Cavalier in spirit, I'm not sure where her final loyalties will lie. I think her rejection of Ianthe is what will drive Ianthe to do the ""right"" thing. She's always been into people who don't want her and Ianthe had already rejected her once, I don't know if she will get a second chance to reject her.

#smear campaign #tlt #the locked tomb #alecto the ninth #spoiler heavy

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bossoftheoss · 2 years

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Heaven in the Locked Tomb Series

Having covered Hell in the Nine Houses, I figured we should also look at how Heaven and Hell appear within the world of the locked tomb, rather than the text. This will be referring to a generally Catholic understanding of Heaven and Hell, as that seems to be the tradition that John Gaius’ space church mainly pull from.

I fully expect this to become obsolete after the release of Nona and Alecto, but that just means I can write it again at least twice. It was also supposed to be short. Damn.

“Hell” appears in Gideon the Ninth sixty eight times (damn), with an additional two “hell’s” and one “hellish”. These instances are generally all in a casual, colloquial way. “What the hell”, “like hell I am”, “hell no” etc. The stuff that Catholic school teachers get mad at you for. There are seven times that hell is capitalized, but these are all at the beginnings of sentences. These aren’t all from Gideon, so the nine houses seem to have a familiarity with “hell” but don’t often refer to the theological location outside of “go to hell”.

There is one instance of “heavenward” in Gideon the Ninth. This occurs during Silas’ fight with Ianthe, and describes something moving upward. Interestingly, it is placed next to the priestly character undertaking what he believes to be his holy duty, but no one actually utters the word “Heaven”.

“Hell” appears forty five times in Harrow the Ninth, with one additional “hell’s”. Of these, two instances of capitalization are at the beginnings of sentences, one is used to refer to Pyrrha Dve as “hotter than the flames of Hell”. Twice Hell is capitalized to refer to Harrow fighting with the Beast in The River, and five times to refer to the place that lies behind the stoma at the bottom of The River. Hell is capitalized twice by captain Wake, but one of these times is in an all caps angry letter.

Heaven appears four times in Harrow the Ninth, with an additional “heavens”. Every instance of “heaven” appears while Harrow is in The River, during Canaan House remixed. Two instances denote upward. One instance One instance shows Ortus (dead) transported to a “wide-eyed heaven only he understood”. When Harrow lets Gideon drive, Harrow emerges in her own internal version, the ceiling of which is a “dismal Heaven”. With Harrow as the narrator, we see an interesting understanding of Heaven. There is a sense of Heaven as an afterlife, but in an almost transient sense. We haven’t met a dead or dying person who is restful and at peace in paradise, but surrounded by the ghosts of murdered hangers on.

“WHEN I AM IN HEAVEN I WILL REMEMBER YOUR MOUTH, AND WHEN YOU ROAST DOWN IN HELL I THINK YOU WILL REMEMBER MINE”

This is the passage that prompted be to write thus, because not only is it raw as hell, but it also gave me a moment of “oh shit is Wake the only person who believes in Heaven in a book about Space Catholics” This passage references both Heaven and Hell, and while we can’t tell if they are capitalized, the implication is that Wake understands Heaven and Hell as afterlives. More so, she assumes that she (being good) is going to Heaven, and the Nine Houses (being “wizard shits”) will go to Hell for their crimes. The Hell behind the Stoma, while capitalized, is described by John as “chaotic space—chaos in the meaning of the abyss as well as unfathomable”. This is the Hell space as exists within The River. And Yet Wake and John both refer to a flaming Hell. Now Christian Hell doesn’t necessarily -have- to be on fire, but it’s a popular interpretation. In the same passage as the above, at the end of Chapter 36, John says that he doesn’t believe in Sin. One of the Church’s weapons, asides from all the weapons, is the threat of Hell and the promise of Heaven. Everyone, no matter their position, must conform or be denied eternal Paradise. John, while he has adopted the trappings of Christianity, has not adopted these practice or the belief that spawned them.

While Hell appears as a physical place in the River, Heaven has no such equivalent. Heaven, in Christianity, is both a paradise for the dead -and- God’s seat of power. Abigail Pent mentions that some people believe in a “place beyond the river” but this theory has been largely repressed. John promises, or offers no Paradise. But if you serve him, your bones may adorn the Mithraeum, his seat of power.

Capital H Heaven and Hell seem to have been erased from John’s empire, but live on in the Blood of Eden. The name itself is telling. Eden refers to the Garden in which God made all creation, including the first people, before they got banished. Eden may also more generally refer to Heaven. Every instance of “Eden” in Harrow the Ninth refers to the Blood of Eden, except one. Harrow asks “Who is Eden” to which Jod replies “Someone they left behind”. Not some place, according to John.

John himself makes reference to the original story of Eden. Alecto, being the first resurrection, is referred to as John’s “Adam”, Adam being the first Man, and first Human, created by God in Eden. In the Christian tradition, Eve is persuaded into eating forbidden fruit by Satan, and she then persuades Adam to do the same. This is the first Sin, and Adam and Eve’s banishment leads to all of human suffering. Some Jewish tellings of Eden also mention Lilith, Adam’s first wife who was banished when she refused to be subservient, and who now enjoys a relative amount of pop culture fame as the queen of Succubi, or some variant. Importantly, Adam is always a Victim. While the Lyctors claim that Alecto is a monster, is the she demon or the lying snake, John’s telling frames her both as the fist, but also as an innocent party caught up in the machinations of others. It could be a thousand years before we know who and what Alecto truly is, but it will be interesting to see just how she and the Blood of Eden may be connected.

#gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #the locked tomb #john gaius #commander wake #i have so many thoughts and none of them matter

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theriverbeyond · 1 year

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thinking a lot about the Stoma actually and the idea of it being something hungry at the bottom of the river, reminded me of Charybdis, the toothy whirlpool sea monster who hung out in greek myths and made life harder for all those guys. and im like. huh. Charybdis had a counterpart, Scylla, and adventurers had to basically choose between them when traversing that area of sea. and i was thinking of the river, and the stoma. and, yknow. what could be its counterpart? what danger lies ABOVE the river?

#tlt meta #overanalyzing tlt time..........#trb.txt #tlt thoughts #like NOT john and co. theyre not on the same level #what power does humanity lie stuck beteween. u know #things that probably mean nothing but i have chosen to think abt instead of being in any way productive.

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deoderantstick7399 · 2 years

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Hey also the teeth around gideon’s wound is fucked up right??

What did John do to her??

What did John do to her that the hole where her heart is mimics the fucking stoma at the bottom of the river?? The river that’s deader that dead btw<3

Okay like the parallels of gideon and the river, kill me, but maybe just maybe healing/reversing whatever is wrong with the river will heal our darling little kiriona gaia. Personally I think she deserves it as a little treat <\3😭

#gideon nav #kiriona gaia #the locked tomb #the river #john gaius #nona the ninth

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mayasaura · 3 years

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Alecto, The River, and Colum Asht

I’ve been working on a few different Harrow the Ninth meta theories, and I noticed some threads that seemed to pull them together. Maybe you could call this another megatheorum, but I’m not sure it’s comprehensive enough for that.

I think whatever kind of monster Alecto is, the clues we need to guess are in salt water and the death of Colum Asht.

Salt water leads us to the River. @ovrgrwn @sauntering-vaguely-downwards and I were talking about the symbolism of salt water in the series, and Ovrgrwn mentioned both that Alecto is a “saltwater creature” and that the River isn’t salt water. The thing is, I realised later that the River is salt water.

One of the biggest puzzles we were left with pieces of in Harrow the Ninth was "What is Alecto?". She's been called a lot of things, but we know very little abit definitively. There’s a theory that I was discussing with @thunderon and @asimovsideburns that Alecto is something like a Resurrection Beast, in that she and Harrow are both communal souls forged through human sacrifice. There’s a theory that maybe she was someone else before the Resurrection and in trying to pull her soul back John accidentally got a whole bunch of souls instead. Or she could literally be Alecto the First the way Harrow is an entire generation of the Ninth, with every soul that used to inhabit the world of the First packed into her body. I like all these theories—it feels like we’re on the right track, but also like we’re missing something. This by itself doesn’t seem like it would be so viscerally terrifying to Augustine and Mercy, who were present for the creation of Teacher and the revenant constructs in Caanan House. If she’s an overstuffed suitcase of ten billion souls, why is she a saltwater creature? Why does Teacher call her tomb a zoo, and why are her eyes Like That?

[Image: It came down around her in shreds, as light and insubstantial as drifts of spiderweb. The water sprayed through white holes, rushing in with a pounding roar: that brackish, bloodied water that only existed within the River. She was bouyed up by a spray of ice water and filth - but she wasn’t; she seemed to be walking down her long black corridor again-]

In chapter 53 when Harrow tears her way out of the bubble of the false Canaan House, the River is described as “brackish, bloodied water”. Brackish water is the water that’s found at the place where a river meets a sea; too salty to drink, but not as salty as sea water. The River is brackish salt water, and Alecto is a saltwater creature.

Brackish water is mentioned only one other time in either book.

[Image: She appeared behind the grey-thing-that-had-been-Colum. She took its twisted neck in her hands as calmly and easily as though it were an animal, and she tilted it. The neck snapped. Her fingertips dipped inside the skin; the eye-mouths shrilled, and the tongue around Gideon’s neck flopped away, and both those mouths dissolved into brackish fluid. The body dropped to the floor—]

When Colum Asht dies in chapter 34 of Gideon the Ninth, a brackish fluid runs out of his eye sockets. Whatever creature was inside Colum, it came from the River. And then there’s the description - it’s too long and spread out to quote in full here, but the details are that his eyes went liquid black, and he moved “like there were six people inside him, and none of those six people had ever been inside a human being before”. There are lights under Colum’s skin and things pushing and slithering along his muscles as he walks. When he opens his eyes again, they’re toothed mouths with tongues, and Colum’s tongue has become long and prehensile and it wraps around Gideon’s neck like a tentacle.

The stoma at the bottom of the the River, the mouths to Hell that only open for Resurrection Beasts and the Emperor, are described like this:

[Image: It was a huge, hideous, dark expanse, and it had seething, weird edges; it took the lights pattering over them for me to see that the edges of the hole were enormous human teeth. Each one must’ve been six bodies high and two bodies wide, with the dainty scalloped edges of incisors. The teeth shivered and trembled, like the hole was slavering. And that hole had nothing in it; that hole was blacker than space, that hole was an eaten-away tunnel of reality.]

[Image: Streamerlike lingual tentacles emerged—the unassuming pink you got on normal, non-Hell-bound tongues—easily a thousand of them, jostling, questing, blindly thrusting up out of that mouth. Pyrrha flinched.]

Colum’s eyes have become miniature stoma. It’s interesting that while the thing possessing Colum advances on and kills Silas first, the stoma don’t open until Gideon attacks it. It uses Colum’s sword to kill Silas, but draws Gideon in with its tongue, like the tongues from the stoma at the bottom of the River draw her father the Emperor and Augustine in. But that’s another meta post.

Perhaps the stoma are creatures, sentient hellmouths lurking at the bottom of the River, and it’s stoma that are possessing Colum the Eighth. Maybe it’s the river itself possessing Colum, and the lights under his skin are souls. Maybe it’s something from beyond the stoma, something that came out of Hell. It’s an important question, but not one I have an answer to right now. I am confident in the connection between the stoma and the Eighth House. In chapter 36 of HtN Augustine accuses Mercy of not taking the stoma seriously “which is why your whole damned House sucks at it like a grotesque teat-”. Mercy’s House is the Eighth House, so whatever the metaphysical effect of siphoning is, it presumably involves the stoma. What interests me most about Colum’s transformation for now is that his eyes went full liquid black, and that he was possessed by a creature that left salt water behind it.

Still with me? Now we tie it all together with Alecto’s eyes, the eyes currently in the face of God, the Emperor of the Nine Houses. Like the possessed Colum, their sclera are black. Unlike Colum, their eyes have irises and pupils. The irises are “dark and leadenly iridescent - a deep rainbow oil slick, ringed with white.” Even before I had any idea about Alecto, I wondered what sort of soul the God who was once a man had consumed to have eyes like that. The way Ianthe’s eye colors swirled and merged when Naberius was fighting her, I wondered if his dark iridescent irises were the colors of ten billion souls swirling together, but that wouldn’t explain the black sclera. Now I think the Resurrection Beasts, the stoma, and these theories about Alecto are offering an explanation.

Perhaps Alecto is an enormous collection of human souls, like in our theories, but she is not only human souls. Whatever was possessing Colum Asht is also a part of Alecto. The black sclera she gets from the River, and the iridescent irises she gets from thousands or millions or billions of human souls. Depending on how you interpret what possessed Colum, that could mean a few different things. Maybe she's a human stoma, a human soul merged with the mouth of hell. Maybe she's a tributary or avatar of the River, and the power of all of history's death runs through her. Maybe she's partially comprised of a creature from the incomprehensible chaos of Hell.

The stoma option seems like the most likely to me, to explain the fear and disgust that Mercy and Augustine feel toward Alecto. An avatar of the River is terrifying, but also awesome. That's not the right vibe for 'put that thing down before it hurts one of us'. It was implied in the conversation about Hell and the stoma at the end of chapter 36 that nothing had ever been observed coming through the other way, and it's plainly stated by the Emperor that nothing which goes in has ever come back. If Mercy and Augustine were aware that part of Alecto was from Hell, I would expect it to be hinted at in that scene, and it wasn't really. I did notice that Augustine is more scared of Alecto than Mercy. When Mercy thought Alecto had come to kill her, she spoke to her. When Augustine thought he had seen Alecto, he turned and ran. Maybe Mercy is just braver in general, but Mercy is also less afraid of the stoma than Augustine.

As a closing note, evoking the stoma or what might lie beyond it would explain the only line in Annabel Lee as a metaphor for Alecto that puzzles me.

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

#the locked tomb #tlt meta #alecto the first #alecto the ninth #harrow the ninth #htn spoilers #tlt spoilers

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karalynlovescake · 3 years

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Questions I have after my last HtN read-through

(Not counting the obvious questions like “Alecto =???” and JOHN WHAT DID YOU DO?)

1. Canaan House. In GtN, Palamedes Sextus is certain that the lyctor trials are teaching theorems leading to a “mega-theorem.” Harrow, conversely, believes it’s going to lead to a massive source of necromantic energy. Palamedes is mostly proven correct, in the idea of the “Eight-fold word” but what if Harrow is also correct? In Chapter 27 of GtN they’re arguing about it, Pal says “your secret door theory (very Ninth)” and Harrow says “it’s a simple understanding of area and space, including the facility we’ve got access to maybe 30% of this tower.”

In chapter 35 of HtN, Abigail says “I think we’ve got a similar chance of Magnus tripping over the secret entrance to the lost chambers of the Emperor Undying. Actually, that’s significantly less unlikely, as I’ve come to believe they run sidelong to the facility rather than - never mind.”

(These books are so finely crafted, ever single time a character says something and then trails off and says never mind, I want to scream.”

2. About those lyctoral trials. Anastasia was the last lyctor to try and I we assume from HtN that she had figured out how to do it perfectly (I think it’s safe to assume John is a lying bastard) and the Emperor stopped her and killed her cavalier to prevent her from achieving what only he had before. If Cytherea had not come to fuck things up... how was the Emperor going to stop the new set of necromancer geniuses from figuring it out? Or was that just oversight on his part, and he left Teacher there to push them in the right (wrong) direction. Would Ianthe still have been first to the finish line? My bet is on Abigail. And without all the murder I bet there would have been more cooperation.

3. The Third House Princesses, what are they up to? Why is Ianthe going to see a man about a queen? Coronabeth stops Judith from telling Harrow about the traitor in the Emperor’s retinue. Has Ianthe been able to contact her sister (or vice versa) since they got to the Mithraeum? Judith says she’s a prisoner of war, but Camilla says she and Harrow are no longer on the same side. So she, at last, has thrown in her lot with BoE. Presumably Corona has also, at least on the surface (are the three women caring for the nameless person at the end of HtN Camila, Judith and Corona then?) but what is her real agenda? Ianthe saves the Emperor at the very end there, so could THEY finally be working at cross-purposes?

4. There is Something Wrong With The River. The 8th House (that’s Mercy and Cristabel, also, BTW - Augustine says “you never DID take the stoma seriously, which is why your whole damned House sucks at it like a grotesque teat”) had something to do with studying it and the stomas that open at the bottom of the river. This has something to do with what Silas and Colum do - (Colum goes into the River and Silas summons him back?) I expect them to show back up later, since we know cannot count out ANY dead people apparently. Is anyone else betting that when the Emperor did... whatever he did, he fucked up the River somehow? Is this related to the massive source of thanergy in Canaan House?

#gideon the ninth spoilers #harrow the ninth spoilers #the locked tomb trilogy #Harrow the Ninth #Please chime in i'm dying here with no one to talk to about this FUCKING BOOK #long post

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nocerealmilk · 3 years

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Harrow the Ninth Timeline + Synopsis + AtN Predictions

Ok So I know I wasn’t the only one really confused after reading HtN, so when I reread it I made a bunch of notes so I could try to piece together the timeline! Here’s what I got, it’s as accurate as I could make it.

The universe is dominated by the force that is called the Cohort at the behest of the Necrolord prime AKA John AKA God AKA the Emperor, a man who resurrected all of our solar system to use “thanergy” (dead stuff energy) instead of “thalergy” (alive stuff energy). For unknown reasons, instead of just living in the galaxy, the Cohort overtakes planets by “flipping” them from thalergetic into thanergetic, allowing the arrival of necromancy. This is achieved by front line Cohort non-necromantic soldiers indiscriminately killing enough of the creatures on said planets that the Cohort necromancers can then use that energy to perform necromancy which causes the planet to die, releasing thanergetic material that can then be used for necromancy. It should also be mentioned interstellar travel is apparently only easily achievable for regular people by obelisk, which is a structure that must be bathed in fresh blood daily. They are, basically, super evil.

They are at war with Blood of Eden, a rebellion insurgency of people who want to cleanse the universe of necromancy, which was (ambiguously?) created at some point by God and then betrayed him.

Wake, the previous leader of Blood of Eden, was sent by Mercymorn and Augustine, who had betrayed God to work with BoE, to the Ninth House to take samples and look for signs of life within the locked tomb, which contains The Body (AKA A.L., Annabel Lee, or Alecto), God’s cavalier. Because the locked tomb is only accessible by God’s genetic material, Mercy gains God’s genetic material via menage e trois, and uses it to make foetal dummies, which all die, leading to Wake carrying God’s genetic child to term.

Gideon the First, Lyctor, is sent to intercept her - he does not and betrays god, Because both him (Gideon) and his lyctor (Pyrrha), who both share Gideon’s body, were both separately having an affair with Wake, and believed the child to be theirs. Wake crashed to the Ninth and died, but the baby lived; as Wake died she said “Gideon”, so the child was named Gideon, although she was referring to Gideon the Firsts name when she said it. (Note: I don’t believe it is ever mentioned what happened before Wake came crashing to the Ninth, only that she was intercepted by Gideon1, who failed to kill her.)

Wake’s hatred of necromancy is so strong that her ghost remains a revenant, haunting first her old bones, then haunting a two-handed blade, which the child of hers and God’s, Gideon9, the Ninth raises wields and loves.

When Gideon9 and Harrow are 10 years old, they get into a fight - it’s important to note that Harrow says specifically that Gideon9’s skin was under her fingernails, because she is able to bypass the wards that only God (or a genetically similar being) can access. Harrow looks inside of The Locked Tomb and sees Alecto’s body, who she both falls in love with, and is haunted by her via auditory and visual hallucination.

8 years later, Gideon9 and Harrow go to Canaan house, all of the events of GtN happen. Gideon9 dies and something (which I will speculate on later) happens in the time between.

Harrow the Ninth starts with Harrow not remembering Gideon’s existence, having made a debt to Ianthe to compartmentalize her memories of Gideon so as to avoid truly absorbing her soul. (Harrow does not remember this either). It is important to note that Harrow feels none of the rapid healing benefits of lyctorship, although her soul/body is a void like other lyctors.

The body of Gideon was not recovered, neither were the living Coronabeth, Camilla, or Judith, who ended up with Blood of Eden (It is easy to extrapolate that Gideon’s body is probably also currently in possession of BoE).

In the meantime, Wake’s soul haunts the two handed sword Harrow possesses, which her past, cognizant self has told her to never let leave her side, and not allow it to come in contact with flesh. (Harrow’s past self is evidently aware of the sword’s haunting; she also is aware the revenant wishes to leave the sword, and apparently that was not intended) During a moment of sleepwalking or possession, Harrow stabs the sword into the body of the dead lyctor Cytherea, whom the ghost of Wake leaves the sword and possesses the body of.

Later, Harrow is on a faraway planet, murdering it, when Camilla Hect and the other two who survived Canaan show up in a spaceship. Harrow’s letter to herself tells her to seal Judith Deuteros’ mouth shut, which she does just as Judith attempts to tell her someone has betrayed God and that she is a “prisoner of war”. She also successfully restores part of Palamedes Sextus’s body, creating an articulated hand for his soul to possess. Important to note, Gideon9 is not there, alive or dead.

In the meantime, in the River, which is basically a limbo-type place souls go after they die, and also where alive people can go if they know how, Harrow has been reliving an incorrect version of the events of GtN within her mind, using the trapped ghosts of those who died to re-enact the story. The story, however, goes haywire when The Sleeper, AKA the ghost of Wake, attempts to kill Harrow (and the others) in this dream-bubble esque world. Wake’s ghost changes the parameters of the story, causing Canaan to fall apart, be plunged into freezing cold, blood raining from the sky etc. Abigail Pent, a spirit caller who is also a ghost now, helps Harrow’s memories return and then awakens the Sleeper/Wake.

In the real world, Harrow has been fatally stabbed by Mercymorn, who attempted to kill her because she didn’t want Harrow to go insane and suffer as a resurrection beast, the soul of one of the nine originally resurrected planets, approaches them. Instead, Harrow’s memories are restored and she is trapped within the simulation she created, fighting Wake’s ghost, while Gideon’s soul is able to overtake her body.

Shortly before this, Harrow’s visual hallucination of The Body AKA Alecto vanished.

Gideon9, in Harrow’s body, is able to fight off the heralds of the resurrection beast easily, and has wicked regeneration powers - her thumb grows back entirely within seconds, something that was directly stated to not be possible for normal lyctors. Mercymorn and Augustine have a big reaction to seeing Gideon9’s eye color inside of Harrow’s body.

Gideon9 and Ianthe find God, Mercymorn, Augustine, Gideon1, and a tied up Wake-possessed Cytherea having a discussion. Mercymorn and Augustine confront God about Gideon’s yellow eyes, which God does not have but Alecto has. The only possible way Gideon9 could have yellow eyes like Alecto is not because she is the child of Alecto, but because she is the child of God, and Alecto is God’s cavalier, whose eyes were perfectly swapped with God’s, and Gideon9 is God’s daughter. Previously God told the Lyctors that to become immortal they had to kill and absorb the soul of their cavaliers, but since Alecto/The Body was still alive after the eye swap that took place before they all met, it was apparently a lie and perfect Lyctorship was possible the entire time (in which both parties absorb and share the combined power of their souls, resulting in a reversal of their eyes, and remain living).

Wake tells God that Mercymorn, Gideon1 and Augustine betrayed him and had had prior contact with her. Mercymorn also, importantly, notes that when she checked Gideon’s body at Canaan house she neglected to open her eyes, implying that Mercymorn was at Canaan house and worked with BoE to ferry Corona, Camilla, Judith, and Gideon9 out of Canaan.

Mercymorn explodes God. Augustine and Mercymorn express a hope for the death of necromancy in the future.

God somehow rematerializes (will get into my theory on that later), and explodes Mercymorn back, who does not rematerialize, because she is dead. God admits the resurrection beasts cannot kill him, and he lied to their faces for 10,000 years.

God offers to spare Gideon9, Gideon1, Ianthe, and Augustine. Augustine instead plunges the entirety of the space station into the bottom of the River, attempting to throw God and the rest of them into the stoma, which is basically just Hell or Nothingness. Augustine and God fight; Gideon1 tells Gideon9 (still in Harrow’s body) that Gideon1 actually died, and who is taking through Gideon1’s body is his necromancer Pyrrha, whose soul was compartmentalized similar to how Gideon9’s was. Ianthe chooses to push Augustine into Hell and save God, which is very evil of her.

Gideon9 decides she would rather try to save Harrow’s body and brave the river, a futile act. In her last moments, Gideon9 sees light, and then sees the face of Alecto leaning over her saying to perform chest compressions despite her shattered chest (Which, I believe, is Gideon’s soul returning to her own body)

At the same time, Harrow has defeated the sleeper and everyone has left the dream bubble except her and Dulcinea. The bubble is falling apart. Dulcinea tells her something left intentionally ambiguous to the reader, which leads to Harrow popping the bubble. In Harrow’s last moments she walks into a coffin that has Gideon’s sword and spicy magazines inside of it, and falls asleep with a smile on her face. Important to note it specifically says this happened in a “faraway place”. This is happening, I believe, in tandem with Gideon seeing that final vision.

The epilogue describes an unknown character with unusual healing powers (most likely in the body of Gideon), living in a faraway land (Harrow is also there, possibly?), who is given bones and a sword but does not understand what to do with either of them, and Camilla Hect is there, but her eyes are gray, the color Palamedes’ eyes are described to be. The narrator notes their specific love for those eyes.

Ok now ~predictions~ which I mostly wanted to put here to look at later when the new book comes out.

Dulcinea is the character that we see in the epilogue. Honestly, I’m not completely sure; I think Harrow or Gideon both could love Pal’s eyes, they did care about him, but it feels kind of like a weird thing to point out unless it was relevant. If it was Alecto, like i’ve seen some speculation on, why would she comment about the eyes of someone she doesn’t know? Dulcinea also alludes to an understanding of perfect lyctorship in HtN: “Goodbye, Palamedes my first strand, Goodbye Camila, my second...One cord was overpowered, two cords could defend themselves, but three were not broken by the living or the dead”...One by itself was very strong, two could defend (as a cavalier defends their necro in the river), and three were not broken by the living or the dead (essentially, true immortality with invulnerability). This, and the board in the Lyctor room at Canaan in GtN also describes the pinboard as having numerous clusters of three pins. (Granted it is not stated completely what perfect lyctorship between three people would entail, or if the pinboard in GtN was alluding specifically to lyctorship.)

I don’t think Harrow is in Harrow’s body right now, if she is, I don’t think she is lucid. Harrow also states “There’s a difference between saving a shred of dance card, and saving the last dance” Dulcinea gave Harrow the information that crawling into that coffin, whatever it means, would allow Gideon to survive. That is what she wants above everything else, I think knowing that is the only way Harrow would be content at the last and go without fighting.

Harrow planned the entire thing. I actually do think this is possible. I don’t think Harrow does anything irrationally. I think she erased her memories knowing that it would cause her to forget a plan she made at Canaan with the others, agreeing to go with Ianthe to the First. She did specifically give instructions to her future self to seal Judith Deuteros’ mouth shut, to stop Deuteros from giving her the information required to stop the attempt on God’s life. My personal prediction here is that Harrow always meant to reconvene with BoE at the end, and Wake’s revenant leaving the sword and Mercymorn’s failure to kill god compromised all of that.

Harrow and Gideon are currently occupying Gideon’s body together, but neither of them are at the wheel.

Alecto is not dead, and maybe never was dead. I know she is literally called The Body and is described as being dead. However, I don’t think she’s in a state of death she can’t come back from. I believe that “perfect” lyctorship involves one body being able to remotely protect the other, hence why God reformed from complete paste and Alecto is who Gideon sees. I think God being dead would involve somehow killing the both of them, or killing one and then stopping the other from reforming while you kill the other.

Alecto is not human, she’s a robot or alien? She is referred to as a monster most of the time, and originally had the black and white eyes of God.

God’s three person Lyctorship is him, Samael and/or Anastasia and Alecto. Still not totally sold on 3 person lyctorship being the goal, but I think if it is the case that’s it. I know Gideon says Alecto’s voice is “wrong twiceover”, which is what made me think it was two people, and neither were Alecto.

I don’t think Alecto is the main character of the third book. I think Gideon will still be the speaking character, but I think Alecto will be the pivotal character.

The Cohort is bad actually. I think it’s one of those things where it seems glamorous because the main characters are brainwashed a bit. I mean as far as I can tell, it’s outrightly stated in the text that the Cohort murders innocents and overtakes planets. Real Empire vibes!!

BoE is also bad actually. I think we’ll learn Cohort bad, then BoE good, then BoE bad as a twist at the end, that they have some kind of hidden agenda or something like that.

Corona kills Ianthe. Most people just suspect this because of the whole Cainabeth and Abelle placeholder names and I’m also in this camp. I think Ianthe is pretty morally gray so I don’t necessarily think she will end up being killed because she’s straight up a villain, but I think she will be killed.

Harrow comes face to face with Alecto

Necromancy goes byebye, God is Kill

#gtn #textpost #mostly just posting this so i can look at it later when im inevitably confused before atn comes out and i reread the books #then ill be like oh me of the past youre so smart and sexy and just read this post to become unconfused

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