“Death first to vultures and scavengers.”

I remember A— and M—… they were alive … we all hid behind a kitchen table. I remember their hands in my hands … I remember A— telling me something, and M— saying, We’re together. We’ll go together. But they found us, they were already there. They shot A— right in front of us … hauled me out … M— said, Take John alive. He’s worth more to you alive. And they shot her. He stood there and he said: “Do you remember what I said was coming?” She said, “Yes.” He said, “This is the part where I hurt you..."

They've been cornered by heavily armed former cultists. John has been dragged out from behind the table, over A-'s dead body, and M- is begging them not to shoot him because, evidently, they are very much planning to shoot him. They shoot M-, and then John's narration...jumps. Jumps to him outside, yelling at the spirit of the earth, about to set everything in terrible motion.

There's something missing here.

John and Nona's stories unfold with a series of parallel moments, and I can't help but think that Nona gets shot (twice) but it simply doesn't stick.

Did John wait til his friends were both dead before remembering that he could kill people with magic? Or did they shoot him too?

ACTUALLY...

Do you know the ONE person who is THERE AT THE FACILITY who dies AFTER A— and M— do? John stops G—'s heart remotely but..

HEY GUYS...?

Don't get me wrong, it was definitely his choice to Do This To Her, that part was John, or scraps of John, but definitely not her. But I keep thinking about this with the idea of him getting shot and waking up in Tantrum Mode, and now I'm questioning more than ever how much the lines were already blurring.

From the point that it becomes clear that his attempt to stop the FTL ships by taking the nuke to Melbourne has failed, John crashes hard. When the nun turns up with Pyrrah's gun, his reaction is:

I thought she was there to kill me. Titania and Ulysses were there, but I didn’t have them jump in front of me, I didn’t have them stop her. I guess I almost—I was feeling pretty bad, you know? I was feeling pretty shaken.

Later, after he's watched his friends die and possibly died himself and then woken up alone beside A- and M-'s bodies, he begs the earth to take him and purge him and use him.

John spends an awful lot of John 1:20 wanting in some way to no longer exist. And he is reborn in terrible violence as he... Tries to be subsumed into something greater? Become something that cannot fear and fail?

In the pool scene, Harrow tells Gideon about how she broke into the Tomb to see if the terrible violence used to create her was worth it, planning to walk out of the airlock if it wasn't:

Nothing we've seen implies that spectres are capable of just manifesting without possessing a physical form. Revenants certainly can't, or things might have gone a bit differently on the Mithraeum.

Great news!! Signs indicate this is more or less exactly what happened!

Augustine and Ianthe go on to elaborate that thanergy mass could be comprised of grave goods, remains, a murder weapon, all examples were tangible physical objects.

I'm so sorry, OP, but I have spent way too much time thinking about the functionality of Fifth necromancy...

So when we see Abigail summing Wake's ghost in the River bubble, she is doing what in many respects looks like a nekiya - an ancient Greek ghost calling rite. In fact, many of the steps she takes and words she says are drawn directly from Odysseus summoning the ghost of Tiresias in the Odyssey: a libation of what might be milk and honey (no blood to follow, as she's a ghost herself, but as mammalian milk is a blood product it presumably has some efficacy there), a form of words and promises of future blood offerings. Now nekiya is often associated with liminal underworld-adjacent spaces, but that wasn't a prerequisite for the rite. In literature, these ghosts are viscerally corporeal: they physically consume the blood offering, and you can fend them off with a sword.

Here's Odysseus talking to a friend's physically present ghost, who has been attracted by the blood from the sacrificed rams:

The other detail we get about Fifth necromancy is that it involves a lot of complicated chalk diagrams. Which is also a feature of historical practices of necromancy (fun fact: the idea of necromancy as raising skeleton soldiers or zombies or whatnot is very modern. Historically, "necromancy" means summoning the spirits of the dead to gain knowledge. The Fifth are, quite literally, practicing biblically accurate necromancy).

We don't get any details about the chalk circles Abigail is drawing, but my assumption is that it's meant to be drawing on early modern necromantic practices. Here's John Dee and Edward Kelly summoning a ghost:

The only suggestion we get that what we see Abigail doing is outside of her usual practice is her not being able to use her own or other people's blood. Otherwise, we have to assume that the libations and chalk circles are her usual practice.

Dr Sex was an improperly summoned revenant, trying to go about things with limited time and capacity. He and Wake were haunting objects or possessing people or their remains because those were the limited courses of action available to them under their own steam.

My assumption, from the historical traditions of necromancy that Fifth practice draws on, is that when properly summoned, a revenant would take on some kind of bounded and temporary form that could be communicated with. I think that's very much what a Speaker to the Dead does - grant ghosts the temporary ability to communicate (in the Odyssey, it's the consumption of blood that grants them ability to speak and remember). A revenant possessing, say, their own hand bones or their old copy of The Little Office of the Blessed Cristabel Oct or whatever, might then be bound with wards and offered blood, and thus granted the ability to communicate, were an appropriately skilled necromancer available. Per the Odyssey, a cavalier with a sword might be useful here too.

I know there’s been a ton of discussion in the fam about Born in the Morning’s name but I have a theory! As anyone who has been reading my posts knows by now, this is kinda long-winded.

So I think his name is Chen, a Chinese name that signifies “born in the morning”. Literal translation would be like, “dawn” or “morning”. (I really hope I did the link correctly!)

Kid has so many fathers, right? Well, in Chinese from what I gather grandpa, parents, dad, and male relatives all have the same Chinese symbol in how they are written!

父 fù is the Chinese symbol for patriarch and the compound version is placed above other symbols to produce derivatives! I’m sure there are more than what I’ve listed below, but here are a few.

父亲, 爸爸, 爹, 爸 - Father or Dad

父母, 父母亲 - parents

岳父 - father in law, good-father

祖父母 - grandparents

祖父, 外祖父 - grandfather

舅父, 伯父 - uncle

教父 - godfather

“Born in the Morning, who was saddled with five fathers: Eldest Father, Second Eldest Father, Brother Father, Younger Brother Father, and New Father”

I’d assume these are all on his father’s side as Chinese naming conventions follow the paternal line (and much much more really cool info regarding male lineage!)

Eldest Father - Grandfather

Second Eldest Father - Father

Brother Father - Older Uncle

Younger Brother Father - Younger Uncle

New Father - Father’s New Husband???? (This one stumped me but sexual orientation rules are very evolved in TLT so this wouldn’t be a reach)

In the TLT universe, womb-vacs are available for citizens to use, I don’t think they’d be limited to the Nine Houses since they’re the ones to “Shepard” and take care of newly colonized planets. It’s entirely plausible that Born in the Morning’s family utilized womb-vacs with donated eggs and selected male chromosomes for the child they’d incubate, thus producing only males in their family. This is a fascinating possibility and one that theoretically could be replicated by other families with different variations. (I could go on about the possibilities womb-vacs could create, but I’ll shush for now. Ugh I love TLT so damn much!)

Back to the naming conventions of Father; if Nona is directly translating names from what the name means into House (which I think is assumed to be English) then if Born in the Morning is talking about his shúshu (叔叔) Nona would translate that to Younger Brother Father because she’d automatically add in all of the age and generational differences associated with that name. Which is fucking impressive as hell! As if being able to automatically translate all languages wasn’t impressive enough.

If you'd like to find me the other spots I lurk, check out these places! [Tumblr] TLT Blog: @gideonnavtheninth MCYT Blog: @citywolf

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This post had actually a prodecessor I developed in a claustrophobic hotel room in Paris. But apparently, developing something in a claustrophobic hotel room in Paris is no garant for success... It was pretty much of a conspiracy theory. (Also, I just looked it up for the quotes, and... it looks as if I'd forgotten to insert them. Ooops!) But! Back to the theme! During her villain monolouge in GtN, Ianthe says this:

And... It strikes me as really odd... I mean, why? Why wouldn't she use at least the first key? And why would she ask Teacher for that key if she didn't intend to use it? I thought Ianthe would try to get in first before anyone else can and burn any bridges that need to be burned...

I mean, imagine you want to reach a goal very urgent, have a key to it, and... just don't use it. That doesn't make sense. Especially, since she is obviously interested in the information the rooms hold. That's why she's spying the others all the time. As far as I can see, there are two possible explanatations for that:

Ianthe DID use the key. I mean, as if she wouldn't use it as fast as she could. Unfortunately, she failed (like Harrow, at first) because she tried it alone and would've needed her cav for it. Therefore she gave up and started to sneak around instead. And since she can't just admit that in her great villain monolouge, she says "I didn't need your stupid keys, anyway! I haven't even tried it!" (Like a lying liar)

The first option is already very convincing to me... But there is another, which I find at least as much interesting... It is: Ianthe is afraid to to go into the cellar of Canaan House alone. We see her there only with others, after the murder of Magnus and Abigail. And it's not even unrealistic... Ianthe seems to know much more about the dangers of Canaan House than the others:

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Gideon wasn't an attack dog in John's recollection. He was steadfast and devoted, but he was an engineer moonlighting as a grill dad. Reminding John to put airholes in his bovine forcefield, then firing up the barbie to make sure everyone got fed. It was Pyrrha who carried a gun and wanted to hit back hard and fast. Pyrrha who advocated for a show of force.

FINALLY name time! Abigail name time!!!!

"I never got the impression Abigail was all that zealous in her religion. I will say, I will be keeping an eye out for anything that really makes Abigail feel particularly Jod-sympathizing."

My read is that Abigail is actually one of the more religious characters we meet, but that rather gets drowned out in the face of teenage cult leaders Harrow and Silas! Her reflexive response to learning that others survived Canaan House is to murmur "the King over the River is good" (rather triggering poor Harrow, who has very much been having the 'The King over the River is awful' experience) and when it becomes clear to her that Ortus is hoping she will summon the ghost of Nonius ("Nigenad, you think too much of me!"), she is heard saying "Oh, God. God, please help me." Which makes her the only character other than Harrow who we see praying spontaneously.

Obviously Abigail has a somewhat complicated relationship with religion, openly acknowledging that some of her beliefs would be considered heretical in mainstream Joddism and specifically pointing out that Jod isn't omnipotent. But I don't think this is atheism - I think this is a sort of more 'progressive' or 'deconstructed' Joddism. She's a historian of the very earliest days of their civilisation, of the formation of the intertwined empire and religion of the Nine Houses. Her comment about Jod's lack of omnipotence isn't a denial of divinity - she's pointing out that while the religious hierarchy may consider her views heretical, they don't contradict the King Undying himself. She talks about John almost fondly, wishing she could send him her notes. And all this despite the fact that by that point in the story she knows exactly what a Lyctor is, and what she was summoned to Canaan House to do. Elsewhere, she says that the opportunity to come to Canaan House and see the place she had studied first hand meant almost more to her than the idea of serving the Emperor. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Abigail loves her god, but she's perhaps oddly fond of him, and very much recognises that properly understood, their faith entails metaphysics beyond him. Which, thematically, isn't all that far off from where we see Harrow at the end of NTN - recognising John's limitations and the need to explore the metaphysical reality beyond him. But unlike Harrow, she doesn't have the full context for just how awful this guy is. I'm so curious as to whether we'll see her again in ATN, and what she might know by then... (she does promise to return to her 'homeland' when summoning Nonius, which is a direct reference to the Odyssey, but also has some interesting implications in light of the whole saving her house thing in the Biblical narrative).

"Good old' Wikipedia describes her name as derived from the Hebrew word ab, "father", and the Hebrew root g-y-l, "to rejoice," Meaning it probably means "father's joy". Again, not all that sure how this relates to Abigail the character, but still gotta cover my bases."

A battle to see if I can actually get to the book at this point, but man... I do love to dive into the houses! y'know how it is. Back on the topic of the fifth house!

The Fifth can be fairly straightforwardly assumed to be Jupiter:

Fifth poetry is very much I come from climes of sulphur gas/I shine in plasma sheet/Er-hem-er-hem-er-hem, surpass/My spot a crimson feat

Abigail was born "at" the Koniortos Court, which seems to the preposition used for installations in the Cohort Intelligence Files, ane she talks about her windowless childhood bedroom with specially reinforced desk for sheltering from zonal jets, which are a feature of the Jovine atmosphere.

But like the other gas giants, Jupiter also has rings, made of fine dust particles trapped by its massive magnetic field.

Of all the things to keep track of in TLT, I almost always fail to remember that the houses are the actual planets! But the fifth's relation to dust makes doubly sense when it's because they're literally hanging around on a dust ring.

the locked tomb x homer: a not particularly comprehensive guide that no one asked for put together by a brain-fried uni finalist and it's all probably already been said but whatever

(previously discussed by me here (insane diagram linking everything) and here (paris, hector, gideon))