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elvencantation · 9 months

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@thursdayplaid thoughts/predictions for harrow the ninth

harrows hallucination is not new. nice to know. (she had that question after the first bit. we just finished chapter two and paused to chat)

whether she’s actually hallucination or seeing the body in a vision (is it internal or external) it doesn’t rly matter cause of what they cause to happen narratively. the result is the same

the body isn’t the first resurrection?

what would be the irony if you kill an entire planet to resurrect someone and that creates a crazy beast and then the person immediately just offs themselves (she means the body, though she did add this was more of a fun theory)

doesn’t like jod. he’s now a villain

he doesn’t have to play nice. he’s the only person in the book who could pretty much do whatever he wanted

the fact that there is consequences to killing a planet- very satisfying. like our world is being killed by ppl we cant touch and even if we can they’ll be replaced

jod needs to get another hobby

very happy the planets are fighting back

he doesn’t deserve eyes that cool!! we need to invent a new color that’s bad just for him

what should happen is- actually killing a planet slowly also creates resurrection beasts except they take longer to show up

he doesn’t even deserve to look upon soup!!! and also broth. no broth for jod. or stew. banned

even tho now it makes sense in hindsight, she’s a little sad the body wasn’t Gideon and just that harrow couldn’t bear to say her name

harrows gonna resurrect the body. or gideon. or both. might be almost worth it to kill more planets just to have more creatures to go after the emperor

jod is like if someone took like a shell ceo and made him god

like to charge reblog to cast that harrow brings about the death of the emperor and does it like three more times

she said i could copy paste this as long as i also told everyone that i am the best

bonus thoughts/theories about gideon the ninth under the cut

we’re right before the pool scene she’s like- oh something about dulcinea is off not saying she’s the bad guy, not that this story really has bad guys and good guys, but the ways she react dont really add up

“also it seems too far fetched that gideon would be like- the kid of the emperor or something” 👀 “her eyes and her hair are just such a unique color and other characters seem to emphasize that and be like ‘i wonder where you’re from’ but i think it might be a bit too cliche for this story if she was the kid of the emperor”

also theorizing about all the ninth kids dying being a necromantic experiment “maybe they accidentally created a biological weapon?” “maybe gideon was the first person who was resurrected, and she like absorbed life energy. and when she was a child she accidentally absorbed the life force from the other children and as she grew older she became in tune with the planet so she didn’t have to absorb from other people anymore” (almost reverse lyctor?) maybe she was a created child, like the person wasnt actually her natural bio mom omg she just said “alternate theory- harrow absorbed all the children oh wait nvm forget that theory it doesn’t make sense”

“my theory is gideon finally ends up escaping at the end of the book and the next book is harrow trying to get her back, maybe not in a traditional sense”

“what’s in the tomb? a disease that killed the kids? the emperor? the first emperor? is it not a tomb at all but a prison??” is gideon the thing that used to be in the tomb? “i think what’s in there is the first and only resurrected creature and that for some reason it’s tied to the ninth house or the emperor or something like that. maybe it’s like the emperors power source or something’

the heads of the ninth house saw their kids were dying and tried to wake up the thing in the tomb that knows the secrets of immortality and resurrection and tell it to bring back the children only they open the tomb and oops it’s a baby (gideon) who isn’t really of use, maybe she has the secret in her but she can’t tell them or maybe they tried to synthesize a cure from the baby but were too late harrow opens the tomb and sees its empty, or sees the lock is broken, and when the parents are like- you’re in trouble harrow does uno reverse and threatens to call the emperor and tell him they released his immortality baby i dont actualy think gideon is the tomb baby, but if she was, it would make sense why they were so obsessed with not letting her leave

is this a plot to kill the emperor?

#harrow the ninth #harrow the ninth spoilers #harrow the ninth theories #tlt theories #tlt #the locked tomb #tlt reaction #blue reads #with jiejie!!#gideon the ninth #gideon the ninth spoilers #gideon the ninth theories #thursdayplaid

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ourg0dsal · 7 months

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Gideon Nav CANNOT Die. Hold on- I know... but give me one second and I'll explain.

So, as I said before Gideon Nav cannot die, or at least her body can't. Cause clearly (spoiler warning) Gideon Nav died at the end of Gideon the Ninth. There is no avoiding that.

But! If you have read all the books GtN, HtN, and NtN including all of the accompanying short stories (tho I will admit I have not read The Mysterious Study of Dr. Sex yet) then there is a better understanding of the timeline of the whole story outside of just what the three main books give you. Specifically and especially with Gideon's body. But also there are many times In Gideons life were she has faced near death events or events that she should not have survived from and still was breathing on the other side.

To go in chronological order of these events, when she was first born she was found in a container held by the air depraved suit of her mother. And while ofc In the book it does state that her mother had redirected her air supply to Gideon, but it is simply being stated to cover all my bases.

Then the 200 sons and daughters massacre when Gideon was 1 (or 2 im not sure) when she inhaled poisonous air without dying. Which led ofc to the Reverend Mother and Father fearing the ground she walked. And this is a big one because, it literally creates waves in the plot. It's a defining point of Harrow and Gideons relationship. That Gideon did not die when she was supposed to.

Later in the story Gideon talks with Pal when she believes Harrow to be a murderer and openly admits to him that "she nearly killed me a half dozen times growing up" which obviously in context was to emphasize on the brutal relationship between her and Harrow. But this could also be other times where miraculously Gideon survived death when she shouldn't have. Because as we know from the first confrontation between Harrow and Gideon. Harrow doesnt hold back for her.

Finally of all the events where Gideon escapes death, this one actually happens within the main story of Gideon the Ninth. When Harrow siphons from Gideon to retrieve one of the challenge keys. And at the end when Gideon passes out, it is narrated ""ha-ha," said Gideon, "first time you didn't call me Griddle," AND DIED." Now, this could obviously just be the snarkiness of Gideon narrating. Or something incredibly clever left behind by Tamsyn Muir for a book series that is so clearly meant to be reread. But ofc to do my rounds the next line after does state "well, passed out. But it felt a hell of a lot like dying." But then immediately after "wake up had an air of ressurection." Which honestly feels like Tamysn Muir teasing the readers at this point. The question then becomes rather, which one was the tease and which one was foreshadowing/ evidence.

Now the point of listing all of these events is that in all of these cases the chances of death are so incredibly high that for most its a miracle she's alive. Ofc most notably for the siphoning trial and the poision gas, but none the less there is proof within the written story and and out that Gideon has looked death in face and moved on with maybe a headache. And it wasn't just in her child hood this is something she can just do. Some recreated in the written story! Because as Pal said. Even with the siphoning challenge done perfectly the chances of leaving Cam with severe brain damage was far to high. And Gideon didn't even suffer that.

Sadly, despite all these Gideon gets to the final battle and fights Cytherea and does die. At the hands of a particularly pointy fence. Or was it truly the fence that did her in? Rather than the lyctorship ritual that was started seconds afterwards.

My full theory, isnt just that Gideon Nav can't die. It's that Gideon Nav wouldn't have been able to die... If Harrow hadn't sucked her soul out. There are at the very least 8 seperate events that Gideon should have died, two of which were nearly gauranteed, but she was ended by a piece of metal. Yes, a very well placed piece a metal, but the point still up to that point she had faced worse a came out unscathed.

If Harrow had not completed the lyctor ritual, Gideon would not have died. Wether or not through resurrection or simply walking it off. Gideon's body has some sort of necromantic attributes to it that keep her alive. We see this in the Untitled Entry short story with Judith Deuteros that describes Gideons body, as it does not rot, cannot be injured, cannot be fed to animals forced or otherwise. And that is all before Jod ever gets a look at the body, because otherwise he would have known Gideon was his daughter before the later events of Harrow the Ninth.

And ofc during the first challenge when Harrow uses Gideon as her eyes to be able to see the construct in the other room and Gideon is able to see the thanergetic signatures that Harrow remarks should be impossible. (I assume because the process is Harrow extracting information (Gideons eyesight) from Gideon and so Gideon should not also be receiving information (the ability to see the signatures)) unless Gideon had some form of necromantic abilities, which she was tested for as a kid and apparently did not have. Alongside not having the correct attitude to be a nun of the ninth. And so we can round it out to be her body being naturally necromantic leaving Gideon without the ability to use it. (Which Is a jump from the actual point we are attempting to use, but for now this stops us from assuming Gideon as any sort of necromantic ability which is a theory all on its own. One that I personally have no evidence for or against)

Now, that I have hopefully made both my Ap Lit and Lang teachers proud with my 3 am essay, I must give you the real tragedy of Gideon the Ninth. Had Gideon not died, had Harrow been unable to complete the lyctor ritual for emotional reasons or otherwise, had Harrow not become a lyctor and killed cytherea. Gideon would have had to watch Harrow and Cam be killed, possibly even Corona, Judith and Ianthe. And then to be used for Cythereas own motives. Tamysn Muir beautifully set up the story so that the best possible outcome could have happened. Had Gideon not died. Everyone else would have. And "Camilla the sixth was no idiot" cam knew and accepted this whereas Harrow never would have. And so the unkillable Gideon had to die, and forcing Harrows hand was the only way to do it.

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g1deonthefirst · 3 months

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a while back in the discord server we were talking about the possibility of wake returning in atn and @katakaluptastrophy pointed out that we learn in HTN that revenants can attach to murder weapons and we get a very specific description of pyrrha pressing the gun against cytherea's skull when she shoots the body to kill wake's revenant — possibly creating an avenue for wake's revenant to jump into the gun.

then @eskildit pointed out that we get a clear chain of custody for the gun in NTN, so i wanted to highlight some of the passages where the narrative really seems to focus on pyrrha's gun. i thought it was particularly interesting that pyrrha's first priority is retrieving her gun even after camilla's just been stabbed, when nona describes everyone else as rushing toward camilla. admittedly this might just be because it has a herald bullet in it (which she later uses to shoot ianthe), but i thought pyrrha's fixation on the gun being because of wake's revenant was a cool possibility nonetheless.

[cred to @dve for the screenshots since i don't have the ebook tysm <3]

#nona the ninth #harrow the ninth #tlt #words #pyrrha dve #commander wake #awake remembrance of these valiant dead #pyrrha #wake #theories

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chilly-weirdo-in-a-tomb · 3 months

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Harrow, at some point in AtN:

#harrowhark nonagesimus #alecto #gideon the ninth #the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #alecto the ninth #tlt #tlt series #alecto predictions #alecto theories #alectopause #tlt brainrot #tlt fandom #tlt memes

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gaycicada · 6 months

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Wait hang on you guys, you know when Nona dies in Ntn how her body and organs split at the seams and her skin kinda starts to slough away? That’s like strikingly similar to what happens to people with acute radiation poisoning i.e. nuclear weapons. Irradiated soul Alecto causing Harrow’s body to fall apart?

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figonas · 1 year

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I’m sorry but you all aren’t listening, lyctorhood itself is not the “indelible sin” and you can pry this theory from my cold dead hands, honestly, maybe not even then. TazMuir herself could not dissuade me until she explicitly tells me otherwise. My proof for this you ask? Pyrrha’s conversation with Varun in NtN chapter 9.

But let’s backtrack for a second. John has stated that the resurrection beasts are after him and the lyctors for committing the indelible sin of lyctorhood, and as such the lyctors can never return to the Dominican System for fear of drawing the RBs back to the Nine Houses. I’ve never believed this was true given the fact that John is always the greatest common denominator when it comes to the presence of an RB and there’s no mention of an RB going after a lone lyctor. Sure, lyctors have been killed fighting resurrection beasts but there’s a huge difference between being caught in the crossfire and starting a firefight. For me, Nona the Ninth only reinforced that what we’ve been told is the “indelible sin” is either John misunderstanding the RBs (doubtful) or lying for his own purposes (more likely).

In chapter 9 of NtN, Nona recounts the story of her disastrous beach trip and towards the end of this recitation Nona says that Pyrrha;

“…crossed to the taped-up window, bottle and glass in hand. To Nona’s awe, she twitched the blackout curtains aside—stood bathed in the hyper-blue light from the sky as Nona held her breath—and she said to the window, “Here’s to Camilla Hect, yet another of devotion’s casualties,” and knocked back the glass. Then she said to the light, quite gently, “No, I don’t blame you, man … He was always looking for things to throw himself on.”

Pyrrha stands in front of Nona, bathed in the light of Varun the Eater, and proceeds to have a conversation with it. We only get one side but based on the context of the last line, “No, I don’t blame you, man … He was always looking for things to throw himself on.” Varun seemingly apologizes to Pyrrha for killing G1deon. It’s proven later on in the book that Varun can speak to Nona, and while it could be argued that since G1deon is dead and his soul is gone the “indelible sin” has been undone this still begs the question; why would the punisher apologize to the sinner?

If Varun and the other RBs are hunting the lyctors to dole out justice for their sins why would they apologize for doing the very thing they sought to do unless that wasn’t their true intent. The “indelible sin” is not the consumption of another soul, it is the consumption of a specific soul. It is John taking Alecto into himself, not being able to house all of her and instead making an exchange. Housing a piece of her in him, and a piece of him in her. Splintering the soul of a great and terrible force into manageable parts. Which explains Varun’s ominous presence hanging over the planet in the first place.

If RBs are hunting Lyctors there are no lyctors on this planet. Palamedes has not consumed Camilla’s soul, G1deon is gone, Harrow is in the River, Gideon is thumbtacked to her dead body, the only soul of any significance to Varun is Nona. Later on in chapter 13 Varun, by way of Judith, says to Nona;

“…what they did to you and what they wrung from you and what shape they made you fill—we see you still—we seek you still—we murdered—we who murder—you inadvertent tool—you misused green thing—come back to us—take vengeance for us—we saw you—we see you—I see you.”

And in chapter 27,

“….what did he do to you, to make you this way.”

What did HE do to you!!! what did HE do to YOU!! To give John credit he doesn’t deserve he may not realize it himself but the RBs have been looking for Alecto this whole time. They don’t want the lyctors, they want what John stole, they want the piece of Alecto inside of him. Want to make her whole again, their misused green thing. She’s almost there. She has her piece back from harrow’s body, united with the piece of her hidden in the locked tomb. She only has 1 piece left to collect. And god knows what will happen when the green and breathing thing is whole once again.

#the locked tomb #Nona the ninth #john gaius #alecto the first #tlt #tlt theories #this has been rattling around in my brain since Gideon the Ninth #John’s explanation of the RBs just doesn’t add up #and you know he has to be lying about it because he straight up lies to Harrow about the number of RBs in HtN

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majorgammage · 11 months

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Just bought the paperback of Harrow, and uh…new conspiracy just dropped.

Five pages earlier:

Valency’s description from her portrait:

QED red hair and martial prowess runs in the family 🤷‍♀️

#the locked tomb #harrow the ninth spoilers #nona the ninth spoilers #tlt theories #valancy trinit #commander wake #awake remembrance of these valiant dead

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transbutchblues · 8 months

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hi locked tomb fandom !!

i made an analysis document that compile important informations about the series, comments on every single chapter of every book, theories, biblical and classical parallels, name meanings (not limited to those in the prononciation guides, and linked to character theories), and other things. i spent a very long time on it and it’s still in progress, but i think it’s long enough to be shared now, since it’s over 100 pages.

please tell me if you have ideas of things to add, any theory you’d like to share, anything you think might be relevant. and please share this, writing it really helped me understanding and connecting things better, so i think it could be useful for others

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shayberri789 · 1 year

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My theory on the NtN ending:

Cassiopeia wasn't the only one to betray Jod thousands of years ago. She wasn't the only one to see that what Jod was doing was wrong and put plans in place to deal with it.

Anastasia the first almost had perfect lyctorhood and watched her God kill her cavalier in front of her so she couldn't do it. Maybe she really would have died. Maybe she would have gone the paul route. Maybe she would have survived and Samael would still be around. But he was killed in front of her and she had no say in it.

Alecto was odd, and a little dangerous, but she's the soul of the earth and if Jod could kill the most important person to Anastasia of course he could kill the thing who loved humanity so much she gave them power over life and death.

And when the Lyctors were convincing him to kill his pet revenent beast, the pin point of his greatest sin and a being in constant pain and hurt, maybe Anastasia, the one left behind, the one maybe magicked to silence through a sewn tongue, cursed jaw, felt sympathy and kinship with Alecto. Maybe she knew Jod would never truly kill Alecto. Maybe she was the first person in hundreds if not thousands and millions of years to look at Alecto with compassion and actually say "I will help you if only you tell me how". Maybe she made a promise to protect Alecto, maybe she made a promise to look after her while she sleeps. Maybe she made a promise that one day she'd come and wake Alecto up and they'd solve things together. Maybe one day they can undo what John did and maybe Alecto can have peace, finally, one day. And maybe Alecto swore that for the debt of waking her again she would do anything for Anastasia, any one thing, if Anastasia woke her up in a time when things could change.

But by the time Anastasia, frail with her necromancer build and squirreled away at the edge of the solar system, started reaching old age she realized it was too soon to wake her up. Too soon to send her into the lyctor viper pit again, not while Anastasia was so weak. So she tasks her daughter with guarding the tomb. "This door must stay shut until the day comes when the emperor must die" she says, and her daughter repeats this to her son, and so on and so forth until the body in the locked tomb becomes Armageddon. Not locked away for her own protection, not awaiting the day for the tomb keeper to wake her up and try again, not awaiting the day when the nine houses get to restart. No, she's the greatest enemy of god, she must be locked away lest she start Armageddon, locked away for the protection of the emperor and their duties to her tomb an icon for devotion.

But the bloodwards hold for 10000 years and one day the curse of silence will be lifted from the jaw of the ninth house tomb keeper, and the oath to Alecto is preserved in the Anastasian bloodline. And the daughter of the tomb keeper has awakened the monster once again

#this is me attempting to put a storyteller spin on a hc thats been buzzing around in my skull since i finished ntn #shay posts #tlt #the locked tomb #alecto the ninth #alecto the first #alecto theories #harrowhark nonagesimus #harrow the ninth #gideon the ninth #anastasia the ninth #anastasia the first #nona the ninth #alecto #griddlehark

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ossifer-bones · 9 months

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Liminal Physics 101 - What's wrong with the River?

I want to preface this theory/analysis by giving credit to the excellent, thought-provoking response left on my theory on the mechanism behind lyctoral thanergy generation by @greyhairedgeekgirl, because it inspired me to finally finish typing up this post.

There is a lot of conjecture contained within this theory but I've attempted to firmly root it in the terminology used by the characters in relation to the River, as well as how the River itself is described. My avenue of thought is closely related to that of @greyhairedgeekgirl, but I think my conclusion likely differs due to how I have chosen to interpret the definition of the River as a liminal space.

Anyway, onto the question I'm seeking to answer here: I feel that the answer to it lies in Harrow the Ninth, during the explanation we get in response to a question asked by John Gaius himself, and the veritably horrific implications of it.

“Harrowhark, what happens when somebody dies?”

“Thalergetic decay causes cellular death,” you said carefully, pressing the nail in harder, “which emits thanergy. The massive cell death that follows apopneumatism causes a thanergetic cascade, though the first bloom fades and the thanergy stabilises within thirty to sixty seconds.” “What happens to the soul?” “In the case of gradual death—senescence, illness … certain other forms—transition is automatic and straightforward. The soul is pulled into the River by liminal osmosis. In cases of apopneumatic shock, where death is sudden and violent, the energy burst can be sufficient to countermand osmotic pressure and leave the soul temporarily isolated. Whence we gain the ghost, and the revenant.”

Note how this explanation is structured in a sequential way that is likely deliberate:

We establish that thanergy is emitted by thalergetic decay: thalergy is characterised as life energy, produced by cell growth and reproduction. Thanergy is also said to be produced by cell death in the glossary of GtN, which to me indicates that the thalergy produced by a cell is in some way tied to it, beginning to decay into thanergy when the cell dies.

Massive cell death follows apopneumatism: the soul leaving the body results in mass cell death, resulting in the body's thalergy 'flipping' and rapidly decaying into thanergy.

Gradual death results in the soul being pulled into the River by liminal osmosis. Sudden and violent death results in a thanergetic energy burst sufficient to countermand (lit. revoke or cancel an order) osmotic pressure, leaving the soul temporarily isolated outside the River.

The soul leaves the body, the cellular thalergy begins to decay into thanergy in the absence of the soul, and the amount of thanergy produced results in the soul either being pulled into the River or being temporarily stranded.

River Terminology

liminal - occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold; relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. This word is used in reference to the River a lot.

apopneumatism - apo meaning 'from, away from' and pneumatism referring to the pneuma, or soul; this is the process of the soul coming away from the body. put simply, this is death.

liminal osmosis - osmosis is 'the spontaneous net movement or diffusion of solvent molecules through a selectively-permeable membrane from a region of high water potential (region of lower solute concentration) to a region of low water potential (region of higher solute concentration)'; a solution is a solute dissolved in a solvent, meaning that osmosis is the process whereby a solution resolves the discrepancy in solute : solvent ratio between itself and another solution that are divided by a selectively-permeable membrane. imagine you have two bodies of water, of unequal volume, one with more solute in it than the other: osmosis will result in the body with more solute gaining water from the body with less solute until the ratio of water : solute is equivalent in each body. it equalises their concentration of solute.

osmotic pressure - 'the minimum pressure which needs to be applied to a solution to prevent the inward flow of its pure solvent across a semipermeable membrane', but it is also defined as 'the measure of the tendency of a solution to take in its pure solvent by osmosis'. this is to say that osmotic pressure can serve as the current that pulls a soul into the river, if you assume that the river is a solution and the soul is a solvent. Alternatively, one could also consider the River as the selectively-permeable membrane dividing two solutions.

What does this mean?

Assume the following:

The world is a solution, solute dissolved in a solvent, and the soul is the solvent in that solution.

The River is a selectively-permeable membrane.

The River beyond that Abigail Pent speaks of is another solution.

The soul (solvent) is pulled through the River (selectively-permeable membrane) by osmotic pressure into the solution with less solvent in (the River beyond), except it can't, because that semi-permeable membrane has been rendered impermeable: why?

Solute concentration.

What is the solute?

You collected bits of dried wood—dried wood?—and empty-coloured stones—stones?—from the banks of the River beyond death, and you collected armfuls of the sharply unkind osiers and tall, feathery plants, the ones with long fibrous stems as tall as you were and thin, tangled leaves. Filthy salt wind whipped your faces as you formed wards from the flotsam that grew, apparently, on the bank.

She stood before the coffin of the Sleeper, and gathered those white, soft, solid rips in her hands, and she popped the bubble, and the River came rushing in. 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 buoyed up by a spray of ice water and filth.

The River is described as brackish, it is associated with salt wind. Brackish means water with higher than average salinity, saltwater concentration, so let's assume our solute is salt.

What did John do when he became God? He introduced a copious amount of thanergy into the system, because murders generate more thanergy, enough to make souls unable to pass into the river, and used it to fuel himself.

He murdered Alecto. The salt-water creature: the first thalergetic planet he flipped. The water is the solvent, the solvent is the soul, salt is our solute, salt-water is our solution.

I was so close to cracking this third thing, the soul. I’d realised there was the energy you produced from being alive and the energy you produced when you died, but the fact that energy was produced when you died meant there was another phase. I could get a corpse’s heart beating and get all the neurons firing in the brain, but it wasn’t producing the alive stuff anymore. It wasn’t an on-off switch.

“The body needs thalergy and a soul to keep the lights on. Anastasia’s tripod principle. Body plus thalergy, but no soul, is basically a very weird vegetable … after a while it gives up and shuts down.”

Nona the Ninth shows exactly what the soul is: the third thing, the on-off switch, the leg of the tripod. A body full of thalergy without a soul shuts down after a while because the thalergy isn't stable in the absence of a soul, and decays in its absence. Thalergy decay emits thanergy.

Thalergy is salt, water is the solvent, water is the soul, salt-water is the solution of a living creature: thalergy stabilised by a soul.

How does salt affect water?

A river is freshwater: it doesn't have high salinity. It is not salt-water.

What does salt do to water? It adds to its mass, makes it more buoyant. Buoyancy, or upthrust, is an upward force exerted by a fluid that opposes the weight of a partially or fully immersed object.

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 a stoma has never returned. It is a portal to the place I cannot touch—somewhere I don’t fully comprehend, where my power and my authority are utterly meaningless. You’ll find very few ghosts sink as far as the barathron.

Ghosts don't venture near the Riverbed. The Riverbed is studded with stoma. The stoma are mouths that open when Resurrection Beasts near them, and the Resurrection Beasts are the souls of murdered planets, the only souls that can sink that low; the stoma lead to a place John can't touch.

[...]“And that was a titanic effort on the part of Cassiopeia the First, who was brilliant and sensible and careful—she thought she could bait physical portions of the Resurrection Beast into the current. She was right. It followed her.”

They were writhing together, wild and excited—the current swirled in an agitated pandemonium—there was a massive sickening jolt, and the Mithraeum started to slide again, forward … tilting … sliding. “We’re in the current now,” said Pyrrha calmly. “We’ll be pulled in, if the mouth doesn’t close.”

The current of the River leads to the stoma. The River is a semi-permeable membrane that leads to the River beyond, and the stoma are mouths in the Riverbed that lead to a place beyond the power of John. Osmosis pulls solvent, souls, through the membrane into the neighbouring solution.

Conclusion

You went en masse into the River, leaving your bodies behind to slump into C-curves—or at least, yours did, the rest of them stood—and crunched the silvery sand of the bank beneath your feet as the three saints led you both to assemble wards. No blood or flesh or bone here: the first two might be scavenged, the last swept away by the capricious tide. You collected bits of dried wood—dried wood?—and empty-coloured stones—stones?—from the banks of the River beyond death, and you collected armfuls of the sharply unkind osiers and tall, feathery plants, the ones with long fibrous stems as tall as you were and thin, tangled leaves.

The River holds no blood, flesh, or bone. But its waters are made brackish by a kind of salt: the thanergy of murdered billions. How can one make a ward from something unthanergetic, from dried wood and stones? It's impossible, unless they are suffused with thanergy, made pliable to a lyctoral touch.

When John murdered the planets and humanity in one fell stroke, he flooded with the River with enough thanergy that its buoyancy countermanded the osmotic process that draws souls into the River beyond. The River is full of ghosts gone mad: souls that should have moved beyond, but can't, because the current cannot carry them through the stoma, the thanergy working against its pull.

“A powerful necromancer at the peak of their game could last ten seconds in the River,” said God, pushing himself up to stand. “Soul magic is the great leveller. In the first few seconds their thanergy would all be stripped away … then their thalergy, and then their soul.”

The River strips away thanergy and thalergy, but it can only do so much: when its waters are already so permeated with thanergy, souls float, fail to sink to the depths and pass through it, carried by its current. They cannot reach the stoma because their souls are too light compared to that of the Resurrection Beasts, the thanergetic buoyancy pushing them back up.

What lies beyond the stoma isn't Hell, or rather, it is Hell: it is a place where John Gaius can't touch. It is where souls are meant to go. It is the River Beyond.

#the locked tomb #harrow the ninth spoilers #nona the ninth spoilers #tlt theories #tlt meta #hi it's me again i've gone even more insane :)

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elvencantation · 8 months

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@thursdayplaid thoughts/theories after we read chapters 4&5 of harrow the ninth

is she planning to kill the emperor and that’s why she’s erased her memory? what do i want for my bday? the death of the emperor. you can give me an ides of march situation. emperors are for two reason. deus ex machina. second is for murder i think this would be too convoluted. but it’s interesting they didn’t find gideon’s body. might be interesting if we ran into her body, or something in her body is the split skull at the beginning of the chapter a metaphor for what harrow did? harrow needs to learn the meat magic to remake a body??

theories about the brain thing -she’s planning to kill the emperor and that’s why she’s erased her memory -she’s very sad and wants to be stop being sad. she knows something that’s dangerous for her to know so she’s protecting herself -harrow felt the body was trying to possess her so she removed part of her brain to make that impossible -harrow was having gideon problems, so she removed the part of her brain that held gideon in it -somebody has either technology or the ability to read the mind, so she did something to her brain to prevent that -.000001% that this isn’t harrow, this is gideon, but she knows so much about harrow that she can fake being harrow, and the brain purge was so she would forget that -its some kind of ritual where you need to do it but you cant know why you’re doing it

a huge amount of effort has gone into describing gideon’s physical appearance, mostly her hair and eyes. is gideon a hungry ghost? or is someone else possessing people? she thinks someone’s possessing someone and that’s an important plot point theoretically if you have enough physical material you can frankenstein someone and make a new person?? maybe thats the direction she’s going in. never mind spiritual resurrection there might not be room for it in these books, but it would be neat if someone had an opposite but equally powerful ability for life instead of death? like causing rapid mutation or rearranging chromosomes. would be fascinating. if you have that ability, could you use a lyctor’s endless battery against them? like turn their arm into venomous insects that can attack them?

#no spoilers in comments pls!#harrow the ninth spoilers #ish #harrow the ninth #the locked tomb #tlt theories #harrow the ninth theories #thursdayplaid #blue reads

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so-we-all-know-toenails · 2 years

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i see your “gideon was always an asshole” and raise you “yes she was but also she was property gideon doesn’t feel like she’s her own person gideon doesn’t feel like she has autonomy gideon doesn’t really know what emotions are, she never had anyone to talk to about anything except maybe aiglamene and then this girl who has been nothing but mean to her for her whole life is telling her that she’s her ‘only friend’ and that she is ‘undone without her’ and even if gideon feels the same way imagine how confusing that is for her??? maybe she lets harrows head get hit on the wall because she sucks (girlboss btw) but maybe its also because she doesn’t understand that her own pain-- and by extension, harrow’s-- is serious. she’s been abused and beaten her whole life and when you grow up like that you don’t understand that it’s a big deal. gideon doesn’t understand that she needs things. she just understands when she’s hurting.”

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lady-harrowhark · 1 year

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I promise I’m going somewhere with this but I am currently fixating on how seeing Naberius’s trident knife in the beginning of HtN gives Harrow the Gideon Memory Migraine™, despite no clear connection to Gideon:

Ianthe considered this. She nudged the confection basket hilt of the rapier at her hip aside, and took out a long knife that, again, ran a hot rill of pain down your temporal bone. It was—though you had never bothered to learn—Tern’s main-gauche, his trident knife, a long blade from which two other blades would spring at the press of some hidden mechanism; she flicked that mechanism now, and with a snickt they burst out like a firework, two hard points of gleaming steel. She flicked it again, and the blades went snickt back into their housing.

Is it simply that it’s something from the Canaan House era in general? Or is there more going on? Stick with me here.

One of my pet theories I’ve been harboring since Kiriona’s wounds were revealed is that Harrow herself wounded Gideon after she threw herself on the fence, paralleling Jesus’s side wound from being speared after his crucifixion. They needed to ensure Jesus was truly dead, and presumably Harrow also needed to be well and truly sure that Gideon was dead before proceeding. Ianthe says she put a sword through Naberius’s heart to pin his soul in place for her ascension, and we see his body run through with the sword. Harrow needing to do the same to Gideon would certainly be some very juicy angst fuel.

The other crucial component here is one of my other favorite pet theories: that Harrow knew Gideon’s sword was haunted, likely before even coming to Canaan House. I’ve seen a few people do some more detailed explanations about that, but I’ll do a brief rundown here.

Harrow says as far back as GtN about the sword “I never liked that cursed thing anyway; I always felt like it was judging me.” After the events of HtN with the River and Canaan House 2.0, we know she has an innate and potentially subconscious talent with spirit magic; it seems likely she was able to sense what was in the sword whether she knew exactly what was going on or not.

In HtN, Guideline #3 in her her pre-lobotomy letters to her post-lobotomy self has several stipulations (wipe it down with arterial blood nightly, coat it in regenerating ash, don’t cut flesh or bone with it) that sound a lot like precautions one would take to keep a soul from hopping out of it.

When discussing the sword with Abigail in Canaan House 2.0, we get some very specific qualifiers around how much information Harrow is able to provide about the sword. Directly before remembering that the sword was Gideon’s we have: “Harrow’s brain, though still a jumble, was no longer a mess in a darkened room. Memory had gifted her a small torch she could light the disarray with.”

After that, she struggles to recall further details, her own brain providing obstacles: “The light was not proving helpful enough: she was, in desperation, kicking over piles of the rubble in her own brain.” In the end, she’s able to tell Abigail: “I hated that damned sword for years. I don’t know why; it just felt strange - rancorous. I cannot deny that I often assumed its edge would be the last thing I saw. I don’t know.”

Circling back to the final battle of GtN, we get my favorite little nugget of support for this: Harrow is described as looking “affrighted” when Gideon tells her to go get her two-hander. I’d initially taken that to mean she was startled (and maybe a bit annoyed) to find out that Gideon had brought it at all, or freaked out at the situation in general. But I’ve begun to wonder if she specifically didn’t want Gideon to bring that sword with her to Canaan House because she knew, or at least suspected, what it contained.

Which brings us to the trident knife. If Harrow needed to fix Gideon’s soul in place by impaling her herself, and she knew there was a malevolent soul in the two-hander that could conceivably hitch a ride in another body that it came into contact with, she would have needed a different tool for the job… Which may very well have been the trident knife. Seeing the weapon she used to mutilate her cavalier’s body with seems like exactly the sort of thing that would bring on one of Harrow’s Gideon-induced headaches, no? It’s also notable that when Harrow sees this knife, it’s directly before Ianthe stabs her through the hand, again analogous to crucifixion wounds. I gotta say, if this holds water, there’s a certain poetry to both Harrow and Gideon receiving versions of the Holy Wounds on the blade of the same knife.

(Edit to add: further theorizing prompted by @camilla-rekt‘s fab addition can be found on this reblog)

#this is really just a jenga tower of theories but i'm still sitting here rubbing my hands together like a cartoon villain #i am just ripping biting tearing to know what happened between those two chapters #(and incidentally there may have been actual ripping biting tearing involved but i digress)#i wonder if this could have anything to do with the favor harrow owes ianthe… hmm #Nona the Ninth spoilers #harrowhark nonagesimus #Gideon nav #kiriona gaia #ianthe tridentarius #Nona the Ninth #ntn #the locked tomb #tlt #tlt meta #tlt theories

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