#canaan house gang
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By the way. We're all in agreement that John WAS shot when the compound got gunned down, right?
People could see him. People knew who he was. No way nobody shot him, no way all those bullets missed. He was high on adrenaline, and already juiced up enough that he regenerated his wounds as he was being shot.
Also, obviously, this is why the Houses don't use guns.
#ty tumblr user chaos-and-theories for reminding me#john WAS gunned down with everyone else#canaan house gang#ntn#tlt#tlt thoughts#ejg#text in alt
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AU where poor ol' Sex Pal gets to heal and marry Dulcie like he dreamed of doing when when when
#the locked tomb#palamedes sextus#dulcinea septimus#cam as best man(girl)#we all know she's best girl anyway#all the canaan house gang present gideon gorging herself on canapés in the corner#harrow attending in maximum goth bling#magnus being embarrassingly supportive#gideon the ninth
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Periodically, I remember how absolutely fucked up the necromancers in TLT are meant to look. Like, necromancy does an absolute number on people physically.
Harrow is "rather small and feeble".
Necromantic Ianthe is "the starved shadow" of her non-necromantic twin.
Our first description of Palamedes is "a rangy, underfed young man" who is "gaunt".
Silas is "knife-faced...He had a necromancer build."
Ianthe parodies make-over scenes in House novels with "if the hero’s a necromancer it’ll be described like, ‘His frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral'"
Jod acknowledges to Wake that even small children with aptitude would look odd to non-House eyes: "“I have access to any number of cute pictures of necromantic toddlers with their first bone. They don’t make for fat-cheeked roly-poly babies, but they’ve got a certain something."
In As Yet Unsent, Judith brags about her previous physical fitness: "I could run a kilometre in ten minutes, which was among the fastest for my adept group in the junior reserves." Which is about double the time you might expect for a physically fit woman her age.
In non-necromancer-friendly New Rho, Harrow's body is mistaken for a child's and has to be explained as a result of starvation and trauma to seem plausible: "Pyrrha explained without missing a beat that what with everything Nona had gone through she had been ill and still didn’t eat very much, which was why she was so knobbly and undergrown. The nice lady said that yes, many of the children had problems like that, but it was still hard to imagine Nona was anywhere over fourteen, wasn’t it?"
Tamsyn Muir's descriptions of the Canaan House gang on Tumblr back this up: "Judith is somewhat less completely scrawny than other necromancers on the cast, though she should be less built than Marta is", Palamedes is "seriously underfed" and "bony", Harrow is "scrawny".
And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head - I'm sure there's more.
Anyway, necromancers aren't slender in a conventionally attractive way, they're gaunt in a concerning way...and probably the only reason no one instantly clocked that Coronabeth wasn't a necromancer was because they all just thought it was par for the course that a Third House princess would have had a lot of plastic surgery flesh magic.
#the locked tomb#tlt#And that's not even getting into the other fun and exciting aspects of necromantic health like unusual cancers and recurrent miscarriages#The joy of the death of the author of course is that you can draw or imagine characters any way you please
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Fucks me up that Hot Sauce is the same age as the Fourth duo in GtN. Because they let Hot Sauce be a kid; a sadly matured kid, a kid that knows and thinks too much but its sad because she's a kid.
Isaac and Jeane are quite almost active frontline military. They're young, thats acknowledged a lot in GtN but not in the same way as Hot Sauce and her gang. Because we saw the gang through the lense of a childlike teacher's aide, because we saw them as students, as kids with older people around them that were their older people as kids who ate fruit together on break and argued and fought and got to be kids, even in their war torn little school.
Isaac and Jeane were on equal footing with everyone else at Canaan house. The Heir to his house, and his Cavalier - the same rank as any other pair of them. Eager to fight, eager to die, seen mostly through the eyes of Gideon who didn't particually like them which took away some of that innocence. They felt younger in HtN because we mostly heard about them through Abigail
i was definately picturing hot sauce as younger until it directly said 14
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who's alive, dead, in between or beyond! pre-alecto the ninth character masterlist
After my previous pre-nona the ninth character status masterlist, I'm attempting another one! Some characters have been grouped for ease, and I did not include any characters from the previous post that are not mentioned as doing anything in NtN (i.e. Wake, Canaan House crew, previous lyctors et. al). They are all, presumably, in the same place as they were before.
Also not included is the empty stretch of time between Harrowhark's soul exiting the bubble-memory with John and reappearing in her own body at the end of the book - this is relevant as based on the preview, AtN may not immediately pick up post-NtN.
(current date: 12/12/2022, #ntn spoilers)
ALIVE (characters who have been alive continuously since their birth, and whose body&soul have never been separated)
The Gang - Hot Sauce, Honesty, Born in the Morning, Beautiful Ruby, Kevin (all last seen on New Rho)
We Suffer and We Suffer (last seen on New Rho)
Jolie/the teacher (last seen on New Rho)
AIM/the Messenger (Last seen in the megatruck on the top tier of the Ninth)
Noodle (last seen in the megatruck with AIM, barking)
Our Lady of the Passion (Last seen in the megatruck)
Crown Him With Many Crowns (formerly Coronabeth Tridentarius, last seen in the megatruck)
Judith Deuteros (Body still partially possessed by Varun, last seen in the megatruck under the care of Crown Him with Many Crowns)
The Sixth House Oversight body (notable member Juno Zeta, all last seen in the megatruck)
Various OG members of the Ninth House (last seen under Devil attack, sheltering in the catacombs of the Ninth)
Aiglamene (last seen outside the unlocked door of the Tomb)
Ianthe the First (feat. the chewed up battery of Naberius Tern' soul) (last seen in the Unlocked Tomb, having just been smacked by Alecto & thrown into the water)
Grand Admiral Sarpeadon (Presumed to be on Antioch with EJG. has received a large promotion!)
ALIVE (reunited and it feels so good)
Harrowhark Nonagesimus (feat. the cheeseburger portion of Gideon Nav's happy meal soul) (body & soul together, last seen being carried unconscious by Alecto. lyctoral/power status unknown, eyes black)
KILLED BUT NOT DEAD (they got better!)
Emperor John Gaius (presumed to be on Antioch, last seen being stabbed through the chest by Alecto but still chatting it up. previously murdered by Mercymorn the First)
Alecto (presumed to be on Antioch with EJG and Harrow, last seen putting a sword through EJG's chest. previously murdered by John's nukes)
Pyrrha Dve (soul active, body G1deon the First's, last seen in the Unlocked Tomb. no necromantic powers & immune to herald fear, lyctoral healing intact. previously murdered by John's nukes and also again by an unknown party - presumed to be self or G1deon the First - to attain lyctorhood)
Various members of the neo-Ninth (notable member Sister Berta, last seen sheltering in the catacombs of the Ninth & under Devil attack. previously murdered by John's nukes)
SOUL GESTALT (mutual death & rebirth, fusion)
Camilla Hect (body active as Paul, individual soul consumed by grand lysis)
Palamades Sextus (body blown to pieces & bones presumed to have been abandoned somewhere along the way consumed by Camilla Hect to complete ascension process (updated 12/14/2022), individual soul consumed by grand lysis)
Paul (revived/lyctorized soul gestalt of Pal&Cam, body Camilla Hect's, last seen in the Unlocked Tomb. presumed to have full suite of lyctoral powers, herald reaction unknown. implications of soul gestalt vs. traditional lyctorhood on abilities is unknown. grey-brown pupil, lambent grey iris)
Nona (amnesiac 6 month old world-soul of planet earth. last seen in the Tomb, currently presumed to have been subsumed into the body and greater consciousness of Alecto)
DEAD
Naberius Tern (body last seen on New Rho, empty. soul being used as a battery/chewtoy by Ianthe the First)
Crux (killed by Kiriona Gaia to provide the thanergy needed to unlock the Tomb. prior to death was soul-infected by the Devils, implications of which are unknown. soul status unknown)
Anastasia (soul status known, body last seen as only bones, nestled by the rock in the Unlocked Tomb)
DEAD*
Varun the Eater/Number 7 (revenant world-soul currently periscoping in Judith Deuteros, with Heralds currently attacking New Rho. Body is dead/revived as a House planet)
DEAD?
The River (what does a river of the dead being dead even mean? no idea, but Alecto found it so and was thus grieved)
MEGA DEAD
Gideon Nav/Kiriona Gaia (sans cheeseburger portion of her happy meal soul) (mega dead, aerodynamic, sad bitch and the most special girl in the universe. soul & body together, eyes gold. last seen in the Unlocked Tomb)
???????????????
Devils/Stoma creatures (are they individual beings or is it hand, finger, spider, web situation? what's their relationship to the Tower? what's their relationship to the Stoma? Spirit magic, possession shit, specific abilities unknown. Currently on Antioch and the Ninth. Seen also at Canaan house in the body of Colum Asht)
#the locked tomb#nona the ninth#alecto the ninth#tlt meta#tlt#FINALLY........... i needed to digest the book for a few months before i understood it enough fldsflsdjkfs#hope this is helpful... it was fun!#tlt masterlist#trb.txt#tlt thoughts#long post#dating this just in case we get like preview chapters or like an extra or something that totally changes the game
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locked tomb spoilers
this has probably already been said and perhaps even widely understood but during a recent partial relistening of gideon the ninth it hit me
canaan house is on earth, right? essentially by process of elimination, and the ocean. first house, but not mercury, so earth. sure.
but where? somewhere surrounded by the ocean, in an old strange winding building with many laboratories
canonically filled with leatherbound tomes (sure) and three-ring-binders and corpse freezers.
canaan house is in New Zealand. it's john's old lab, where everything went down. it's filled with cult bones and three-ring-binders and old mutilated photos of the gang and g+p carvings into old desks. and you can get lost in it the same way you can get lost in an unfamiliar university building or pharmaceutical manufacturing facility. we know john can't let anything go and is a sad wet sack of woe-is-me tears and of course he'd create teacher to wander as himself through the halls of his failure over and over and over and then bring other people to hang out with him and replay the lyctorhood drama
and when harrow and gideon bond over the lyctor trials by having to see through each other's eyes and fight a huge skeletal abomination with a 18+ ribs (gideon the ninth, page. 181, first edition), strangely short forearms that it used to "crouch forward on two of its heavyset arms", (gtn, p. 158, 1st ed) so 4-legged, with a "huge knobble(d)" skull, so unlike a human skull that gideon asks herself "was it a skull?" (gtn, p. 157, 1st ed) that i swear was also referenced as "compact” but i can't find it right now, basically bones that they have never seen before despite having seen a million and a half human bones, knowing that they're in the old compound.
giden and harrow fight an abomination made out of
COW
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New Zealand references in Nona the Ninth
Soooo I am now completely obsessed with the Locked Tomb series!!
As a resident of New Zealand, I was absolutely delighted to see all the kiwi references in there. I am guessing that most people would not have gotten a lot of the them, so I attempted to explain as many as I can below, including with visual guides and links. These references also help us pin down some details about John and the gang.
Hella spoilers for Nona the Ninth below!
John 20:8
These refer to Otago University in Dunedin and Auckland University in Auckland. I went to Otago. Maybe I crossed paths with John himself!! I am a millennial as well, after all.
The iconic Otago Uni clocktower building situated next to the Leith river. If John graduated from Otago, he would have a photo of himself in his gown with the clocktower in the background. Everybody does it.
Location of the facility (same as the facility as Canaan house or no??):
Greytown is an unremarkable tiny town in the Wairarapa. It’s located in the bottom of the North Island and is about an hour’s drive from my house.
A freezing works refers to a place where animals are frozen in preparation for getting shipped off to various places and eaten. A typical NZ freezing works looks like this one that I found on google maps:
That’s a lot to cover with cattle parts!
John 5:20
MoD is the Ministry of Defence. NZ doesn’t really have a military to speak of, but somehow people still have careers in it.
Phrases in Te Reo Maori (a language of the indigenous people of New Zealand).
kia kaha = be strong
kia maia = be brave
They are things you would say to someone who is going through a tough time.
John 15:23
Possibly implies that John is of Maori descent. He might look something like Taika Waititi with golden eyes, given the history teacher description. Maori TV is a local on-demand TV channel.
Macca’s = MacDonald’s
ute = pick-up truck or large SUV, short for “utility vehicle”
morepork = an owl found in New Zealand, also known as the ruru
Possums are an invasive species from Australia and are almost universally hated in New Zealand because they have no natural predators here and destroy native forests. They make all kinds of unholy noises.
John 8:1
wop-wops = middle of nowhere countryside
Parachute was an annual Christian music festival that ran from 1992 to 2014. The drinking age in New Zealand is 18, so that puts some limits on John’s age. The earliest he was born is 1976 (assuming 17 years old in 1992). The latest he was born was the late 1990s. If he was 17 in 2014, then he was born in 1997, but he may well have attended when he was younger than that, so it could be up to the year 2000. it’s overwhelmingly likely that he is a millennial, but there is a small chance that he is actually gen Z.
Some of my friends from high school might have met him at Parachute. Who knows!
Hamilton, city of the future! It’s a city a bit south of Auckland. It’s a place.
A great deal of the New Zealand countryside is farmland. Mostly cows and sheep. More cows than sheep these days, I think. You can see the cattle from areal photos in google maps. Here is an example from the Wairarapa, near Greytown:
John 5:1
NCEA Level 2 is the equivalent of 11th grade in the US. This implies that P-- did not finish high school and is a swipe at her low level of education. I should note that a lot of people in NZ do not finish high school, and instead leave school to learn trades or just work. It’s not considered shameful, but someone with a PhD (like John) may very well look down on someone who didn’t finish high school.
John 3:20
Trans-Tasman refers to Australia and New Zealand. The Tasman Sea is between them. Australia supports the cryo can project, yay!
John 9:22
Porirua is a town in the greater Wellington region and it is home to the Royal New Zealand Police College. One of my family members worked there for a time. Maybe he met P--!
I can just about get Porirua (northwest) and Greytown (northeast) visible on the same map:
John 1:20
Mince pies are a kiwi classic. These days, they are more goo than meat, but are a regular delicacy available at petrol stations, 24 hour convenience stores, and the frozen food section of the supermarket.
There is way more meat in the photo than that pie will have in real life. False advertising!!
If you are a kiwi, it is 100% culturally acceptable to trash Australians at every opportunity.
That’s all I’ve got!
But wait, there’s more! I only saw this post after I had compiled everything. It contains a bunch of other references and explanations that I didn’t cover, so please check it out of you haven’t seen it already!
#nona the ninth#the locked tomb#nona the ninth spoilers#john gaius#always blow on the pies#safer communities together
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now that i can pay more attention to descriptions (bc well . i tend to get lost and listening to the audiobooks made it so i couldnt go back as easily as i can with the physical books) i have GOT to know where the canaan house is. like what palace is it did john and the gang build it and if not what was it originally what happened what Is it. i need to know
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#tell me your opinions in the tags#the locked tomb#got a weird selection here but trust me theyre perfect for the job#gideon the ninth#tlt#canaan house
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John grew up playing with secondhand toys, went to a school where the majority of the student body were on scholarship — he probably didn't have much money. Probably same goes for G—, John's childhood friend
But Augustine. Augustine who was the liaison with the project investors and whose little brother was an hedge fund manager... I hope we can all agree that A— grew up rich. Alfred showed up at the cow compound in his leather briefcase and gucci loafers
#in the pre canon fic that lives in my head where Augustine was John's professor he was the one who always paid for lunch#tlt#canaan house gang
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some post-nona thoughts and questions in no particular order:
and this will be long and full of spoilers, sorry
so is silas coming back next time? because i have questions about wtf took over his cav especially seeing as those tongue eye things showed up on the ninth house. biblically, silas traveled with paul, so maybe paul will be related to his comeback? idk
what’s with the tower? “kironia” and ianthe are referred to as “tower princes,” the RB was yelling about a tower to nona via judith, and we got a big tower coming out of the river now?? and the whole “the tower has reactivated” cipher or whatever it said, too. the only tower that’s been story relevant thus far is canaan house + the facility beneath it. harrow estimated they only saw ~30% of that tower with the rest going deep under the ocean, which i always took to mean that it was originally a sky scraper that they built a temple/church/palace on top of. OH YEAh! and a tower is in the jod chapters maybe??? it was confusing. (gasp! what! confusing??? in this series?!)
so is nona translating a ton of people’s names when she hears them, and that’s why she calls corona “crown” and has that exchange with hot sauce where she gets corrected on born in the morning’s name? and this is a separate thing from the multi-sentence long names that seem to be BoE tradition?
speaking of weird name stuff, the jod chapters have him using intials to refer to his friends! that was annoying but implies that they didn’t all used to have their fancy mouthful names which makes some sense, especially since jod specifically mentions changing U— and T— to ulysseys and titania. however, i’ve seen a lot of folks under the assumption that he wiped his friend’s memories after rezzing them, but is there evidence for that? i gotta reread htn, but i know that mercy didn’t seem to realize that gideon’s gold eye color was jod’s before it was alecto’s and only put it together near the end—point in memory loss’s favor (tho i don’t think we can officially say it’s purposeful on jod’s part yet.) HOWEVER!! when nona & the gang are approaching the tomb near the end of ntn, pyrrha mentions gideon (the first) and after saying his name a couple times says “G—” like jod does in his chapters!! implying that pyrrha might just know gideon’s pre-resurrection name! so either jod’s friends did retain their pre-res memories OR that memory loss thing happened later, probably post lyctorhood if it could affect the lyctors but not the cav secretly residing inside still??? idk. EDIT: my frand ginny pointed out that on pg 433 jod talks about how his friends “won’t have to remember anything,” because he knows where remembrance lives in the brain, and this sort of mirrors harrow own attempt to alter her memories. i think with pyrrha remembering g1deon’s name, we can say these are likely altered memories rather than a complete clean slate.
i need people to realize that when nona describes “teeth” coming out of gideon’s speed holes, it’s most likely ribs and not literal teeth. also—the speed holes joke is maybe one of my favorites in this book and incontrovertible proof that kironia is indeed our gideon.
i want to know more about anastasiaaaaa! was she another married/romantically involved pair with her cav? did pyrrha mention something about painting a nursery on the ninth?? what if anastasia was pregnant when her lyctorhood went wrong????
what’s this with cassiopeia and the sixth house in communication? that was her house, right? also, cass is the C— mentioned in jod chapters that marries the artist N— (nigella) and has teeth flowers at their wedding. also, she had the tooth trial at canaan house. and the tooth secret message in the corresponding study. what’s with all the teeth? lol
that tooth secret message was about doing soul melanges to power the canaan house staff, including teacher! 6th house theorm was soul melange related, so paul makes sense!!! ;v; (it should be noted that everything with cam, pal, and paul had me in tears and i’m never getting over their recorded conversation.)
gideon is clearly missing pieces figuratively and literally (her heart!! 🥺). TM said that if gideon’s soul was a happy meal, harrow ate the cheeseburger, but that leaves the fries, sauce packets, and toy. so where’s the cheeseburger now? attached to harrow’s soul? or attached to her body? completely absorbed and essentially gone? something has to be powering nona’s lyctoral regeneration powers so i’m kinda team body. that and the fact that she’s wearing the cheeseburger shirt and that feels like TM trying to give us a giant neon sign of a hint?
as for harrow…i saw the icy tomb she climbed into at the end of htn as a metaphorical tomb in her mind, between the lobotomy slits i guess where she was keeping gideon’s soul, thus the nonexistent sexy magazine. ntn makes me think she was also in the actual tomb, aka fully swapped places with alecto? but i suppose either could be true. the jod chapters feel like she’s tapping into alecto’s memories and subbing in herself maybe? that doesn’t really say much about the literal placement of harrow’s soul, tho, just that she has a connection with alecto.
anyways, it looks like she woke up long enough for the epilogue and then promptly passed out again (woo go girl! give us nothing!). and we know that she’s going to be harrowing hell at the start of atn?? good luck have fun i guess???
oh yeah is part of the reason nona’s not all there because not only is she in the wrong body, but she’s dealing with harrow’s lobotomy brain???
gonna come back and add more laterrr—edit: i’ve come back SEVERAL times to add more. maybe i should just reblog or make a new post for more. 🙈 i’m at the end of my gtn reread so htn will be next. oof that one will take a while methinks! and then i can reread nona…which will be my first Proper read through for the final version since i’ve only read the ARC months ago and some random passages since it came out.
#nona the ninth#nona the ninth spoilers#the locked tomb#tlt#the locked tomb spoilers#ntn#gtn#htn#gideon the ninth#harrow the ninth
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Nona the Ninth chapter heading symbols
We’ve gotten a whole bunch of new symbols in Nona in addition to a truly interesting selection of skulls, so I’m listing them out, along with either my guesses for what they likely refer to (key people in bold), or if I have Absolutely Zero Clue, a summary of the chapter. For the verses in the John chapters, see this separate post.
The Locked Tomb, consisting of a round rock chained to a larger rock with a small skull positioned above the round rock – Likely represents Nona herself. Introduction to Nona.
The Locked Tomb – More about Nona’s life.
The Apple Tree, a tree with a single apple hanging from its lowest branch – Likely represents Blood of Eden, for the apple tree in the garden of Eden that held the fruit of knowledge. We learn of the Convoy from Nona’s school friends, which we later find out belongs to Blood of Eden carrying the Sixth House Oversight Body.
Skull of the Seventh – ??? Hot Sauce tells Nona that someone is watching the building, introduction to the Angel and Noodle.
Skull of the Ninth – Big hint that Nona’s body is Harrow’s, from the necromancy session with Palamedes and Camilla’s explanation for why the blue light doesn’t hurt them implying that Nona’s body belongs to a necromancer.
Skull of the Sixth – Camilla tells Nona the story of how she and Palamedes met Nona, alluding to how they came to share a body and the secession of the Sixth House.
Skull of the Second – Nona asks Pyrrha questions about herself, Pyrrha and Palamedes argue which brings up Pyrrha and Gideon’s old winnowing test from Canaan House.
Skull of the Third – Nona makes the fake radio call to Crown (Coronabeth)
Skull of the Sixth – What happened the last time Nona and Camilla went swimming, which is when Camilla and Palamedes temporarily fused when attacked by Merv Wing.
Skull of the Second, broken – (The same kind of broken skull that indicated Harrow’s dream chapters in Harrow the Ninth, which I think in Nona the Ninth indicates a shattering of expectations, a major shift in self-identity, or in this case how the character is broken by their circumstances.) Pyrrha harshly tells Palamedes to leave the people who were to be burned in the park be. ‘“I’m not moved by sentiment. Whatever it takes. Don’t feel. Just do.”’
Skull of the Fifth – ??? Nona asks everyone what they think is sexy, Pyrrha admits that she did go to the park after all and warns Nona about Hot Sauce.
The Apple Tree – Nona, Camilla, and Pyrrha are taken by Blood of Eden to meet We Suffer.
Skull of the Third – Crown brings Camilla/Palamedes and Nona to see Judith and figures out that Palamedes is possessing Camilla.
The Locked Tomb – Crown takes Nona to school. ‘“You darling, I know what you are, even if they refuse to see it,” she said softly. “All I can say, sweetheart, is I envy you more than anyone else in the universe.”’
Skull of the Seventh – ??? Hot Sauce talks to Nona about The Angel, tells the teachers about the broadcast, and talks about her family. Nona tells Hot Sauce her secret, that she’s dying. (Maybe it’s the last one? In Chapter 4 Beautiful Ruby observes that Nona looks sick, which is the first time her secret is alluded to. The Seventh House is obsessed with the dying.)
The Tower, a building with three arched doorways/windows and a conical roof – (Named as such because I think it likely refers to the Tower in the River) The broadcast introduces Ianthe and Kiriona (Gideon), who will later identify themselves as the Tower Princes.
The Sprout, a small sprig of leaves – ??? Pyrrha is missing. Nona accidentally listens to Camilla and Palamedes’ recorded conversation, and asks Varun to help her. Camilla decides that they must go to the spaceport but agrees to go with Nona to school first. The Angel teaches the gang about how to protect themselves, tells them a bit about their background as a zoo director, and gets horrified by Nona’s drawing of a cradle creature. (Pulled this name from the aether. Wondering if the symbol is related to how Varun calls Nona/Alecto ‘green thing’; there’s a few clues here about how Nona is related to the Revenant Beasts. This is the only time in the book this symbol occurs though so I can’t say for sure)
Skull of the Eighth – ??? Palamedes confronts the Angel, who calls for Palamedes/Camilla and Nona to be shot. Pash tells the Angel, Aim, about Nona being the Lyctor project. Camilla and Pash defend the group against Merv Wing while Nona goes to Hot Sauce. Hot Sauce realises that Nona revived from the shot, comes from the Nine Houses, and shoots her.
The Open Tomb, the Locked Tomb symbol with chains broken and an open passage instead of the round rock – Nona throws her third tantrum and wields a chair arm like a two-handed sword, recalling the aspect of her that’s Alecto.
Skull of the First – Crown goes to the barracks to meet Ianthe, who shows off some of her Lyctoral abilities in occupying Naberius’ body and reveals Pyrrha pretending to be the Saint of Duty. (Maybe also how Palamedes refers to his ideas of Lyctorhood? General riffing on Lyctorhood and Sainthood, First House concepts)
Skull of the Third, broken – We Suffer and Palamedes discuss Crown’s betrayal of BOE.
Skull of the Ninth, broken – Planning for Nona to pretend to be Harrow.
Skull of the Sixth – Camilla fights Ianthe and gets stabbed while transferring Palamedes to Naberius’ body.
Gideon’s Skull – Pyrrha and Nona retrieve Gideon’s body, who at the end of the chapter reveals herself to be conscious.
Gideon’s Skull, broken – Gideon/Kiriona is not who we thought she would be. She is the saddest girl in the world.
Skull of the Fourth – ??? We Suffer explains how Merv Wing had been hiding the Oversight Body and Nona recognises the Convoy. Nona goes to Honesty’s apartment to ask for his help, and reconciles with him and Hot Sauce. (I think this one is a little clearer though, the Fourth House is most associated with children and this is the highest point of tension within the gang, further the Fourth House is for fidelity and their confrontation is about their friendship and loyalty to each other)
Skull of the Second – Pyrrha tells Pash about her relationship with Wake. Also, when the Heralds come, Nona gets on the truck and talks to Varun via the Captain Judith Deuteros, who briefly recovers her senses for the second and last time in the book and her calling Nona “Harrowhark” lets Nona admit that she knows who she isn’t.
Skull of the Sixth, broken – Camilla and Palamedes die and become Paul.
Skull of the First – The group begin the plan to take down John Gaius.
The Tower – We see the Tower in the River for the first time.
Skull of the Ninth – The group reach the Ninth House.
The Open Tomb – The Tomb is opened.
Epilogue: Skull of the First – Alecto awakens and goes to stab John Gaius.
#The Locked Tomb#The Locked Tomb spoilers#Nona the Ninth#Nona the Ninth spoilers#love 'the open tomb - the tomb is opened' like no shit sherlock#if anyone wants to try deciphering the ??? chapters my theory is the skulls for houses that don't obviously refer to characters#might refer more to house themes and so children and fidelity for Fourth and sickness and death for Seventh#so if we can figure out how ch11 is tradition and debts to the dead or ch18 might be salvation no matter the cost that'd help my theory#hm now wondering if ch18 parallels mercymorn killing john as nona's best friend hot sauce kills her but it also feels like a stretch
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Nona the Ninth, John 5:18(1)
(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For detail on The Locked Tomb coverage and the index, read this one!)
(No icon) In which someone starts to really use his powers.
IN THE DREAM, night had fallen, or what she assumed was night. They were lying atop the hill they had climbed and he was pointing out all the constellations that they would be able to see if it weren’t for the thick green cloud and the softly falling flakes of ash. They were lying head-to-head, their eyes aimed at the right part of the sky to see, or in this case not see, the Southern Cross. The stars were sweet and familiar, but she did not know their names, though they seemed to be at the tip of her tongue. She asked him why it was called the Southern Cross. He said that was just one name for it, but the stars were in a cruciform pattern and it was only visible from the southern hemisphere. He said when he was little he’d been taught it was the anchor of a ship.(2) He still preferred that, he said. Liked the idea that the Milky Way was pinned down and couldn’t go anywhere. Said when he was a kid he hated change, any change at all.
She had quite liked change—mostly. But he did not want to dwell on that. So she asked him about the fingers trick, and he was happier to talk about why it had upset everyone so much.
After everyone in the gang has had a chance to see him do it, they needed to come to terms with it. C- and G-, despite being raised religious, took it better than anyone. M- was an atheist since age 12, even though her best friend was a nun. A- giving her "a benzo and a shot of whiskey" helped too, John thinks.
Still, they all wanted to believe in him. They all wanted a miracle. P- worried about a zombie apocalypse, but Ulysses and Titania weren't zombies, they were fully controlled by John's commands and will.
He and she sit in the fallout ash for a bit.
After a moment, he said: I knew it was fine. I knew I’d touched something, come away with something, that could be used for good. Could be used to fix everything, used for you.(3) I only had to figure out how. There was so much to figure out. But I’d got a dream team on tap, eh?
Then they started testing the limits. What he can and can't do, how much he can control them, from what distance. They even dug up a graveyard, to P-'s annoyance at having to cover it up, and he could "raise" the bodies of the long-dead as well.
At that point, they knew the biggest risk was getting caught, getting institutionalized, or weaponized by more stakeholders. Maybe they'd seen too many movies.(4)
He said, So we figured that what we had to do was make as big a noise as humanly possible, turn to the public. Find out if anyone else was like me, if there was someone out there who could do the same thing. And there was a way we could do just that. It was a different time back then. I didn’t want to do it. It felt too—kill switch, too awful to contemplate. Too grisly. Too shitty. But it was the only trick we had up our sleeves.
He sighed and said, “We had the internet. We decided to stream.”
She said, “What is this internet?”
And he said, “See, I did make a utopia.”(5)
=====
(1) "Hereupon therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he did not only break the sabbath but also said God was his Father, making himself equal to God." Well, that certainly seems relevant, are we four for four? Of course we are. I don't love the layer of "the Jews sought the more to kill him" because that sort of thing has been long, long used to justify antisemitism, but some people are probably getting more upset at John for not complying and giving up, considering how hard they worked to shut him down. Meanwhile letterizing brings us to THETOWER. Well, we certainly saw many towers at Canaan House, but this feels more specific somehow. THE tower, or perhaps The Tower, not just any old tower.
(2) It's true! The constellation the North knows mainly as the Southern Cross, or Crux, is known in Maori culture as the anchor on the Milky Way's boat.
(3) That sneaky "you" again.
(4) How many of us haven't made wild plans for things like nuclear attacks or zombie apocalypses because we've seen too much fiction to not think about it on some level? Even though the risks are so low for most of the world.
(5) The joke almost as old as the internet, that the internet is hell and cursed and we'd be better off without it. We wouldn't, mind, but I still laughed.
#the locked tomb#tlt#nona the ninth#ntn#nona the ninth spoilers#ntn spoilers#emperor john gaius#harrowhark nonagesimus
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Do you. Do you think the original Lyctor gang remembered Barbie? Do you think they were sitting around Canaan House, completely aware that there is an eight foot tall Barbie hanging around thinking “what. the. fuck. kind of apocalypse. was that”
#ntn spoilers#nona spoilers#tlt#Alecto#I’m a Barbie girl. in a post apocalyptic world#come on Barbie let’s go party (commit sins against nature)
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nona the ninth was sad the first time I read it but on my reread, it’s fucking devastating. nona caring SO MUCH about being involved with and accepted by the gang was sweet, but now im just like, fuck dude. Alecto’s entire extant life revolved around John and his handful of people at Canaan house, and they sent her away. rejected her. that loneliness, that betrayal changed her fundamentally. even without her full memories or sense of self, she was so desperate to be accepted and seen as useful in ways that make me sick to think of how she must have felt 10,000~ years ago.
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