December 2023

Do you think if John hadn't purged the knowledge of My Immortal from the universe that the sixth would've known immediately that cyth was impersonating dulcie? I just feel like dulcie is the most likely candidate to describe herself in that style.

SEE i think the tragedy is despite both Cam and Pal having spent over 10 years corresponding with her, neither of them were able to pick up on Cytherea’s lie, even (as we find out later, in HtN) when she really isn’t trying very hard. Like, why didn’t they know immediately? It’s not like they didn’t have enough clues as is.

because…. Dulcie had definitely described Protesilauris to them, quite extensively!! and it doesn’t take a genius to know the vivacious man who loved his children and roses and Dulcie isn’t the shambling zombie that showed up at Canaan house. Not to mention the girl who wanted to run away and smoke cigarettes instead of lying in bed to convalesce from familial blood cancer wouldn’t have spent her days at Canaan house lying on the terrace, reading books and knitting, doing exactly the same thing she would have been doing had she stayed at home to die. The clues were so obvious they were barely even clues!! Dulcie fed Cytherea “a lot of hot bullshit” about her life, which means Cytherea was literally working with less than no information when it comes to a convincing impersonation and… Cam and Pal still missed it.

i know this was probably supposed to be a silly ask but I just can’t not think about the tragedy of it all. Was it Palamedes’ well of grief – maybe even anger? annoyance? frustration? resignation? – at her rejection the reason that both he, and Cam, missed that she was gone? Did Cam’s fire of devotion towards Palamedes blind her to all the obvious signs, her rush to protect and close ranks around him being enough to eclipse all rational thought with regards to the image of the person who rejected him? Were they both so utterly wounded, frustrated, jealous, that they truly did forget the friend they knew?

have you seen any breakdown of the political situation on New Rho (in New Rho? is the rest of the planet also populated? I think at one point someone says "down in Ur" but maybe there is an application of 2-dimensional direction terms to 3d space I havent yet thought of). Like who do they mean by militia, who is the government (who is the police?), is there any official house presence, what is the status of the barracks, who manned the spaceport, what power does BoE hold and how are they viewed in the population (Hot Sauce denounces them but who is her faction-that Pyrrha saw her with-then?) and do they know how splintered and farspread it is? what is the siege the blurb is speaking of, just the imperial emissaries showing up?

Also assuming the BoE wings are all named after different planetary settlements which seem in turn to be named after cities in the ancient near east (ur, merv, ctesiphon), why isnt new rho? but i might be misinterpreting this.

Also where does the Empire want non-House humanity to end up? They seem to be turning planets left and right with no endgoal. And how many settled planets might there be?

Sorry I'm dumping this all at you, I havent seen any worldbuilding discussion here on tumblr at all really so maybe you can redirect me somewhere.

Thankies, keep up the good work (posting)

I HAVE seen posts about the political situation on New Rho including analysis posts that were very interesting and I have utterly failed to tag them appropriately, I am sorry – if anyone who sees this has links to that meta pls add on/reply to help anon!

But to cover the rest of your points:

What is Ur?

Ur is mentioned twice that i can find, in ch 16: Ianthe says that the end has come to the “rebels of Ur”, and a person in the crowd says “Ur is fighting”.

EDIT: big thank you to @eskildit in replies: “There are four total references to Ur- Corona also says that Judith is in the Ur facility and Kiriona says that the 6th house is "parked outside the Ur system”. Could be that Ur is the planet New Rho is located on. While we refer the nine houses as planets, canonically the houses are actually “installations” on each planet with quite small populations. New Rho alone, which is specifically stated to be just one city on a resettled planet, is 3x the size of the 6th house"

It may have been mentioned more times, but Kindle search is giving me the 2,320 times the letters “ur” were used next to each other so I’m ngl I cannot sift through that. Rather than being a city, though, I actually am assuming that Ur is another planet entirely! This is due to multi-planet SciFi in general treating entire planets like countries or even big cities. Like…. planets are huge. There are thousands of different cultures on a planet, but in SciFi planets are often like. One Big City. One Big Country, if you have a particularly ambitious worldbuilder. See: Star Wars, the Nine Houses themselves, etc. not saying that Ur cannot be on New Rho, just that I don’t think it is because this is multi-planet Sci Fi.

The militia/civic government?

In chapter 6 a distinction is made between “the militia and the old civic govnerment”. Following that, I think the civic government was probably installed by the Houses, as a ruling party that is friendly to them/House interests. I think the militia is a non-unified population of hired guns, that probably revolted at some point priot to the story. It does seem like at least some section of the militia is in power in most of the city, but I do not think there is one coherent government at the moment

Official house presence?

Yes, because there are official cohort barracks. I don’t think they have much political leverage by the time NtN rolls around, though

Barrack status?

Under siege due to the people of New Rho hating them/political instability/possible militia revolt, doing badly otherwise because any and all necromancers are suffering from Blue Madness/RB proximity, as seen in ch 20 when Ianthe mentioned some of them were so poorly she had to put them down.

Space port?

I am assuming the civic government/House was originally in charge. unsure of who is in charge during NtN

What power does BOE hold?

Unclear. It seems like BOE itself is fractionated, with a lot of animosity held between different factions, and a lot of both animosity AND collaboration between different factions of BOE, the militia, the population, and the old civic government. It is a very decentralized resistance force, despite sharing a name. BOE do not appear to BE the official government, or BE the militia, though, but I would not be surprised if some groups had ties to one or both. It seems like they have influence both socially and politically but it is unclear what that power is… some factions have some amount of power. Over some parts. But!! it seems that during the events of NtN they had more power than in the past (“best hand they were ever delt”, chapter 1)

How is BOE viewed by the population?

My guess is they have mixed reviews. I think a lot of people probably rely on them for resources/protection even if they don’t like or fully trust them. I think a lot of people probably see them as extremists and wish they were less extreme (the liberals, u could say). Like Hot Sauce and the gang, a lot of people probably think they aren’t radical enough and wish they would resist more, harder, differently. I think a lot of people probably deeply support them, either physically by being part of BOE or by providing resources/etc, or quietly because they are afraid of retaliation by the House or civil government. A lot of the population probably has opinions about BOE versus the militia, BOE verus House, BOE versus the civic government, based on their own interests/position/power. This is a really long answer that can boil down to “idk”

What is the siege?

I think the siege is the cohort being sieged into the barracks. I am guessing there was some sort of revolt in the local government, probably related to Blue Madness weakening the cohort, and they have pushed the cohort into the barracks. , as described in chapters 1 (“the cohort dies like anyone else under seige”) and chapter 20 (“the barracks siege”).

What group is Hot Sauce in if she denounced BOE?

Hot Sauce specifically calls BOE “fat cats” and “zombie lovers” in chapter 15, after noting that she, Honesty, and Born in the Morning, as well as Born in the Morning’s father, are “active” in with an unnamed group at the park. It is unclear what group that is, if it has a name, or if it is organized in any capacity. From what little we know, it appears it is a group of people who are more radical than BOE, which I think is either ex-BOE members that were pushed out for their radial choices/beliefs, or civilians/other freedom fighters that aren’t satisfied with what BOE is doing. But beyond that I have no idea

BOE wing names vs New Rho?

So BOE wings are named after historic Earth cities. Ctesiphon, Troia, Merv, Valencia (which is not historic to us, as it exists today, but WOULD be history in 10k years). They are named by BOE, likely to keep connection to Earth, just like BOE people-names. “New Rho”, on the other hand, is likely named by the House. Rhodes is a place on the 7th house (see: 7th cavalier is the “Knight of Rhodes”), and I assumed that New Rho was like. The house naming shit. Like how New York is named after York in England, even though that area of land already had a name (Lenapehoking, I think?).

Specifically this difference is important because like, the House is a imperial colonizing force here, and they are naming things after their home system as a part of the imperial violence they are enacting. In As Yet Unsent, Judith notes that the non-house people call New Rho, “Lemuria” – HOWEVER, in NtN chapter 17, the Angel mentions Lemuria twice in a way that is phrased like Lemuria is Somewhere else, and is Not the city they are in right now (“I was born on Lemuria”, “there’s still a facility on Lemuria”) I am not sure what happened there, honestly. Perhaps an oopsie?

Where does the Empire want non house humanity to end up?

Unclear. Coronabeth notes in As Yet Unsent that even she (who has studied the war in-universe) has no idea what the real goal is. My guess is nowhere, because a forever-war has no end goal. It’s a war for resources gained only by literal blood and death. Many analysis could be made about this as an allegory to to oil based forever-wars of today – I read a few of them and as said before unfortunately failed to tag them, so if anyone has a link and can share with anon that would be awesome! But anyway, I do not think I am smart or learned enough to say a lot beyond this but, yeah. I think there is no end goal to the war besides meaningless revenge and the resources gained via murder, because that’s the point. We could learn different in AtN tho! who knows

How many settled planets?

No idea! Thousands. Hundreds of thousands? Hundreds? Unsure! 10k years is a long time, and there are a lot of planets out there in the fantasy universe that could be habitable. EDIT ty @eskildit, unclear how many planets were settled over the course of the Empire, but there are three settled planets by the timeline of NtN: “"Everyone was crammed on one of three planets now, and they all agreed that this planet was easily the worst”, from chapter 2

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Thanks for sending this!! I really enjoyed answering it, and I hope it helped – sorry if I missed any. Ask more any time!!

did you have a coherent picture in your head when you read about the bone monsters, the one in the laboratory and the one that killed everyone? I was struggling tbh

my idea for the bone monster is like what if a T rex was quadruped with accessory bone-sword arms that didn’t touch the ground and also a massive and very long prehensile tail and face spikes.

big thank you to Sue the Trex for being my bad photoshop model!!!!

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also i couldn’t resist making this meme:

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