“Pyrrha crossed over to the truck, to Nona, and leant heavily into the interior; Nona could see that she was sweating, in exactly the same way she had sweated after the bottle of bleach. She mumbled ‘You knew this was happening. You knew this was happening months ago,’ and when Nona put her hand on Pyrrha’s, it was like Pyrrha hadn’t even noticed her.”
i think one of the notes harrow should have run across in HTN should have had 7 lines. three on the top, four on the bottom. 6 vertical and 1 horizontal.
“I intended for the new Lyctors to become Lyctors after thinking and contemplating and genuinely understanding their sacrifice—an act of bravery, not an act of fear and desperation. Nobody was meant to lose their lives unwillingly at Canaan House.”
Also John Gaius:
Ignored the warnings about how many of the scions were children.
Sent out invitations you really couldn’t have refused (how do you say no to god?).
Had the shuttles destroyed to prevent anyone leaving the planet before he wanted them to.
Banned all off-planet communication, with the only radio being one controlled by his priests connecting directly to his flagship.
So…just what did he think was going to happen?
I feel he likes to maintain the illusion, even to himself, that he is a nice and reasonable man. And of course he wasn’t making anyone do anything! He was just giving them information! What they chose to do with that information, while trapped on a planet and with him knowing that last time a combination of suicide pacts and peer pressure made everyone acquiesce eventually…well, he wouldn’t be responsible, of course…
But what if Cytherea hadn’t crashed the party? What if Ianthe had still worked it out and ascended as she did and everyone else just stared in horror and said no? What was the plan…?
haven’t been able to stop thinking of a locked tomb + his dark materials crossover all week, so here’s some incredibly self-indulgent ramblings and sketches to exorcise the concept out of my head (gideon’s daemon is a pokemon - a growlithe - because of course gideon’s daemon would be a pokemon)
I had three reactions to this, in order:
OP you have GOT to tell me about Nona, this is CRUCIAL
Harrow keeps saying over and over all through the second book that she doesn’t have a daemon and everyone just ignores it because they think it’s lyctor trauma.
Nobody actually knows how weird Gideon’s is. Nearly everyone on the Ninth has rats and bugs because there’s almost no other animal life, so everyone there assumes Gideon saw this orange thing in some piece of offworld media that she smuggled in and has it because she’s unruly and rebellious. Everyone from offworld assumes it’s some sort of weird dog breed from the Ninth because no one anywhere cares enough to find out otherwise. Mercymorn and Augustine care even less than anyone else in the entire universe. Which leaves only John, who, while he knows exactly how weird this is, primarily responds to it by trying to find opportunities to comment that Harrow wants to be the very best, like no one ever was.
There are two schools of thought on the locked tomb series; there are the people who took tazmuir at her word when she said gideon had a longsword and drew it as such; then there are the people who know what a longsword is and know that the thing gideon swings is at the bare minimum a fucking claymore.
gentle reminder for those that belong to the former school of thought
It’s standard practice on the Ninth for luggage trunks to be capable of fitting one adult skeleton
some points. some things. some ideas. none of which are connected, i’m sure.
“anastasia” means “resurrection” or “one who will be reborn.”
she is the only one of the original lyctors explicitly stated to have sired her house’s line of succession.
this is vitally important (important enough to have been actively preserved against all odds for 10000 years), but nobody seem to quite understand why, including the reverend family.
alecto says “you are the blood of anastasia,” as if this is relevant to her. she then kisses harrow and draws blood.
it’s only after getting verbal confirmation and (presumably) tasting her blood that she pledges her sword to harrow.
she says “i am sorry about samael,” as if that would mean something to harrow, as if she expects harrow to have the same grief over anastasia’s cavalier that anastasia did.
the ninth house is “the house of the sewn tongue,” which is a ritual for the keeping of secrets. it also sounds oddly flesh magic-ey for the ninth, which means they probably didn’t originate the practice.
this would imply that it’s relevant to their history somehow.
the ninth’s skull is jawless, which we know from the ianthe situation is the way to undo the effects of the sewn tongue.
when people talk portentously of the ninth, they talk about its “secrets” and its “mysteries,” always in the plural.
which implies that there are more secrets than just the tomb. i doubt they added the plural after the creche flu, can you imagine? the ninth has other, very old secrets.
harrow loved alecto from sight.
alecto recognized her immediately.
like i said, this is a series of random, unconnected facts. there are no conclusions whatsoever to be drawn from this.
The Locked Tomb plot is a 4D chess played along a myriad where the main characters are just the last pawns being crowned to checkmate the white king
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