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I bought Gideon a while ago but never got around to reading it. Looks like most other people here were less lazy than I was and have already read this book & its sequel, but still -- this seems as good an opportunity as any to dig in! Fair warning, I'm not much of a mystery reader so I may well miss things that would be obvious or conventional to a more seasoned reader. Rambling on the first eight chapters: Well, that certainly was a bunch of setup! Gideon's a great viewpoint character for a haunted house murder mystery, since she's got a very strong set of biases that color her readings of character feelings/motivations and events. Like, I'm fairly sure Harrowhark was white-knuckled in anticipation of something rather more dangerous than the necromantic syllabus Gideon was internally snarking about. She's also (mostly?) illiterate, which will probably be invoked later to conceal useful information from us, which is always fun. Was waiting for the "no necro-cellphones" rule, since that's a pretty standard restriction for murder mysteries. Speaking of necromancy, I'm not entirely clear on what it can do (see again: Gideon's 2kool4skool attitude). The prayers indicate that some sort of resurrection is possible and that at least the Emperor is undying. However, the Lord & Lady of the Ninth seem to just be regular-dead, with their continued existence being more akin to well-embalmed marionettes than to resurrected zombies. Plus, death was referred to as a serious risk rather than an inconvenience by the keepers of Canaan House and Ortus's mother seemed afraid of her son dying so... So. Necromancy is more of a way of utilizing dead things for labor and conflict, and not so much a means to live forever as a lich or something, and the religious veneration of death is meant to make using dead bodies as mindless skeleton laborers palatable to the populace. Ghosts can be called back, but only temporarily. The Emperor might be more powerful, be able to bind ghosts to bodies, maybe. Also don't know what or who the sleeping Ninth being is. Thoughts on the tech level. The Ninth planet (with no real ecosystem, just an artificial atmosphere pumped into a rift to support a bunch of people worshipping bones -- wonderfully evocative) is referred to as far-off and shadowed, but the shuttle took just one hour to reach the tomb-world of the First. There must be some sort of religious taboo or political restriction or something to discourage travel to the First/away from the Ninth if space travel is so common and fast but they haven't travelled for ten thousand years and the material situation of the Ninth is unknown to the leaders of the other Houses. The star is referred to as Dominicus instead of just "the Sun" and the teachers compare the attainment of Lyctorhood to gaining power over a galaxy, so presumably this society is spread over at least a handful of star systems? But then again, Gideon can see Dominicus from the shuttle shaft, so maybe the Sun just got a cool goth rebranding in the last ten thousand years. Since the Very Important™ First house is in this system, plus there being two planets closer to the sun, it's possible that the First planet (described as having big ol' oceans and hella clouds) is an abandoned Earth. Who's got murderous intent? Who's going to die? Whose death will be faked to allow them to continue their murderous rampage without suspicion? What did the various necromancers actually expect from this trial on the First? Are the servants killers? Absolutely no idea. With all that out of the way, here are some
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Aug 17, 2020 21:58
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Ah, my clever deductions were completely off base, as expected. The shuttles were removed to close off the board, Gideon's definitely not illiterate, and Dulcinea and Protesilaus are still breathing at the end of part two. Zero for three orz Lorechat. Love the creepy revelations about the house and the hints toward the nature of the broader... Nine Houses? Dunno how to refer to the Emperor's empire. The Empire, for now. So the Cohort is not just a space fleet but an invading, occupying, pillaging force on a galactic scale. They've got outposts on dead worlds and cities that need their governors defended on others; they invade planets with life and murder the poo poo out of everything they encounter to fuel their necromancers' invocations. It's not clear to me whether these other planets have aliens or just other humans that aren't chill with all the bones and ghosts and whatnot. Is the Empire expanding to fuel some project that requires lots of death juice? Because they're trying to exterminate who/whatever killed off the humans (can't perform a resurrection on something that's alive, yeah)? Or are the Houses just doing imperial things for the usual petty reasons? The House being a patchwork is weird, I guess? Presumably it means it was created cobbled together from disparate parts rcently in order to achieve... some goal. Maybe creating a historical narrative by putting pre-Resurrection labs next to other, chronologically distant but narratively important rooms? The symbol Gideon saw on the locked door Harrow's interested in, with the five circles joined by lines. Assuming it's a symbol that would be recognizable to the reader it could be, uh... well, maybe that's a bad assumption because I can't think of any common symbols that match that description. Maybe a pentagram, as per the Five Circles Theorem? Or one could maybe describe the chemical weapons symbol as being five circles joined by lines, but that's a bit of a stretch. What is Transference/Winnowing? What happened with Gideon's sight during the Response fight? Idle speculation says that it's part of the original Lyctorization process or something -- get a necromancer to transfer their mind into a more capable body, winnowing away a weaker mind in the process? Going back to how the Fourth sending Coronabeth and Ianthe both is going to be a problem for the two of them, and only the two of them, at the end of the Lyctor hunt (from part 1). Only one person from each House can become a Lyctor, and having to sacrifice your cavalier by scooping out their mind would fit since they only brought the one. It also grimly fits the "joined with their cavaliers" line from the Emperor's letter, which seems more setting-appropriate than meaning that each cavalier is also granted a spot at the Round Table But Made Of Teeth (which was my initial assumption). Murderchat! RIP the Fifth couple. They were really quite charming over the course of these last eight chapters, so I wasn't entirely surprised to see them dead. At least they got people together for a party full of juicy snippets of overhead conversations before they wandered off and died. Assuming there's a Culprit who is Murdering people for Reasons (and not that, e.g. Abigail and Magnus innocently toodled on down the shaft and accidentally woke a particularly irate ghost who squished their souls out), offing the Fifth couple first makes sense for a few reasons. First, Abigail was an excellent spirit conversationalist. Having someone around who can conjure ghosts to be like "Hey that necro's the one that corpsified me" would be rather inconvenient. Second, the Fifth is the most powerful/core House and both Abigail and Magnus seemed to be well-liked. Killing off people who could otherwise be the center of an organized response to The Murders strengthens their position and sets up more splintering and infighting among the survivors later on. Harrow spent a good few hours working out the first lab trial, giving everyone enough time to plausibly depart the dinner party and go prepare for murder in the retro labs. So, for now, we can only maybe rule people out based on the murder method: they were killed either with necromancy or overwhelming force ("back-to-front limbs", "what remains of their faces", "sad, crumpled corpse[s]"). All of the necromancers would be capable of this, given their ability to use death magic and all. Of the cavaliers, though, only Protesilaus seems readily capable of this level of violence. He's a giant lump of muscle blessed with neither social nor physical dexterity. Less likely are Marta, who might be able to get juiced up on death energy and twist some limbs around, and Camilla, since she comes off as a fighter more than a duellist in her attack on Gideon. Can't really see Jeannemary, Naberius, or Colum mangling corpses like that; they're more rapier swishy-stabby types. Let's trace out the events that led to the two Fifthers' deaths, starting from the murder and working backwards. The culprit murders Abigail and Magnus at the bottom of the laboratory shaft. Okay, so why did Abigail and Magnus go to the laboratory? Abigail wanted to go, presumably for scholarly reasons, and brought along Magnus as protection. How did Abigail know about the labs? She asked Octakiseron about downstairs access, and he answered truthfully. Why did Abigail know to ask him about the labs? Someone else told her about them, somehow. The two conversations Abigail took part in during the dinner were with Dulcinea, about her & Magnus's inability to conceive and her research into post-Resurrection pre-Cohort history, and with someone of the Second House, the contents of which we were not privy to. We haven't seen much of either member of the Second, really. Why didn't she ask about the labs before the party? She's shy, but not shy enough to not go talk to the Eighth scion if she had wanted to. So, I'll assume that one or both of those conversations contained information that led her to ask. This means that either Dulcinea or Judith know about the downstairs labs, which is interesting because neither of them were spotted by Harrow while investigating all the doors. Between the two, I'd say Dulcinea knows. Marta is spending a lot of time in the training room, which precludes her from exploring the labs with Judith. Only Harrow and Dulcinea seem to be without their chevaliers often, and the Cohort team especially seems like they'd adhere to proper protocol when exploring deadly haunted necromantic ruins. Furthermore, Protesilaus made that "It's shut" statement, which is something you'd say about a locked door that you had previously opened, and the only locked door to have been opened thus far leads down to the labs. And Dulcinea herself -- she went from being a sweetly overenthusiastic naif in the first part to seeming rather more manipulative. She refers to the dinner party as "useful", smiles with "animal cunning", instinctively deduces Gideon's postural tells and calls her out on her swordsmanship, insinuates herself into Gideon's day-to-day. Now that I've written those out there's really not that much textual evidence I can find to support my feelings here, but still. Segue! Let's go through the suspect list: First, Teacher and the priests. Don't think the butler(s) did it. Second, Judith and Marta. Motive... Cohort rising up against the rest of the houses, seizing control in a coup? Dulcinea notes that the Houses have greatly benefited from Cohort plunder (although that feels more like her threatening Gideon with her knowledge of the Ninth's sad state of affairs), so maybe they want to keep that all to themselves now or something. Third, Coronabeth, Ianthe, and Naberius. We've seen them talking together and they were rather more focused on discussing the matter of the puzzles at hand than murder. Ianthe, however, is roundly hostile to most everyone she talks to, so a potential motive for her working alone would be, what, a jealous rage? Showing off that she's so good, she can kill the heirs of all the houses under the watch of the First and get away with it? Fourth, Isaac and Jeannemary. They were subservient to the Fifth, so maybe they wanted to get out from their thumb via targeted murder? Maybe, but that motive doesn't really generalize to any other murders (and there will be more murders). Sixth, Palamedes and Camilla. Palamedes seems more interested in the puzzle that is Canaan House than anything else. Camilla is devoted and either always wary or was somehow primed to attack Gideon. Were the two previously attacked while exploring? Either way, the two of them had both Gideon and Harrow at their mercy and chose to aid them. Not the actions of a pair of serial killers. Seventh, Dulcinea and Protesilaus. Having failed to die in the first set of murders, the two are now top suspects... except that I have no idea what a motive would be. We know she wants to die in a beautiful way so maybe pulling off an And Then There Were None style murder-suicide in the tomb-world of the First is beautiful to her? And her cavalier is so loyal he's just like, okay with that? It's a stretch. Eighth, Octakiseron and Colum. Dunno about these guys, their antipathy towards the Ninth prevents us from spending any real time with them. Maybe they're so fanatically loyal to the Emperor that they're murdering people who fail him in some way? Ninth, Gideon and Harrow. Gideon's the viewpoint character and Harrow was with her the entire time. Questions of immediate relevancy. Personal guesses included, though I'm really quite unsatisfied with them: 1) Who killed Magnus and Abigail? Protesilaus. He took his big murdery hands and mashed them all up. 2) Why were Magnus and Abigail killed? The culprit is planning more murders and needed to eliminate Abigail so she can't call up ghosts to snitch. 3) What are the culprit's motivations? ... Dulcinea is a sociopath who took up murdering as a hobby and is getting one last hurrah before she coughs herself to death? Non-murder-related questions. 4) Why did the Ninth keep Gideon around? She's not good news, what with 198 children dead within a few years of her arrival. Gideon remembers pretty much everybody -- including the previous Lord and Lady of Drearburh -- looking at her with contempt and revulsion. Harrow said something about Gideon being a cuckoo -- is she responsible for the deaths of the children? For the deaths of Harrow's parents and their cavalier? Why not kill her and put a stop to it? Is she protected somehow? 5) On that note, to what extent was Harrow's recruitment of Gideon and exile of Ortus planned? If it was planned, then why? Gideon has to be valuable enough to take to the First but is then immediately cut out of all her plans. She has to be browbeat into begrudgingly using Gideon for the one thing she's halfway good at (swords). 6) How did Gideon end up on the Ninth? Who was driving the shuttle that Gideon's mom jumped/was pushed out of? What circumstances prevented her from raising Gideon elsewhere? 7) What's in the tomb, precious 8) Who or what is the Empire at war with? Rand Brittain posted:Now, at least, we have some bodies. minor spoiler wuz here Steely Glint fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Aug 22, 2020 |
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Aug 22, 2020 05:55
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Teacher talks... like a boomer... what with the unnecessary ellipses.... Chapter 19, Gideon being afraid of being inside the Locked Tomb "especially after what Harrow had done". What if the sorry state of the Ninth, the reason Harrow's afraid of being vassalized, is something more than her parents being dead and the Ninth having no people or resources? What if Harrow killed the thing in the Tomb in some spectacularly gory manner and eliminated the only justification the Ninth has for existing at all? Chapter 19, the paper that says "ONE FLESH, ONE END. G. & P.". More fuel for my theory that Lyctorhood involves the transference of souls, although if both necro and cav were in on it it's less likely that the cav is just forcibly evicted from their body and more likely a fusion of some kind. But straight-up fusion wouldn't seem to present a problem for the twins, so hmm. End of chapter 19. One of the original Lyctors was named Gideon? So our Gideon's mom knew that immortal Gideon somehow (or there's more than one person named Gideon in the galaxy, but let's discount that possibility). Chapter 20, Dulcinea says she should have been the first to die since it's so predictable. Feeling slightly called out by that. Also, if you contort it the right way, Dulcinea's line about how she's comforted by people's actions echoing on after death is more evidence for my dumb "immortalized by creating a perfect murder mystery" Dulcinea culprit theory. Foxfire_ posted:Ideas: Rand Brittain posted:It's definitely interesting that Teacher is all smiles and "of course you can all rise to Lyctorhood together" but is also all "by the way there are no rules." What is the intention behind this game? So far, we've been told that there was some pressing need to train people to do some very specific things and some people failed while at least Lyctor-Gideon succeeded. Harrow's been made to see through Gideon's eyes and siphon her life energy at a distance. In return, she's gained a theorem for creating regenerating skeletons and a second one for some other, unknown feat (weaving coterminous death & anti-magic spells?). Were the lab scientists trying to derive these theorems? Or were the spells powered by the theorems what they were fighting against? There was either a need for necromancers to operate at a distance, maybe using people as remote terminals for their necromancy, because the galaxy was full of murderous regenerating skeletons and lethal puddles or there was some reason they needed to invent said skeletons and puddles. And now the Emperor wants to make more Lyctors for some reason?
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Aug 29, 2020 03:12
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Idaholy Roller posted:Ianthe is 100% the powerful one, hot sister is just a foil As an aside, although necromancy seems like a very scientific thing in this universe with all the theorems and books and lectures, Ianthe's near-death experience at her sister's cord(?) having some magical influence on why she's the better necro would make a certain sense. Going out on a limb because baseless speculation is fun, I can apply that theory to the dead/missing Ninth children to get the following: Harrow's not actually the old rulers' biological daughter. They were unable to conceive and wanted to secretly adopt a kid and pass them off as their successor. And also that kid needed to be a super talented necromancer, so they went and put all the children through near-death experiences. Too close, for 198 of them. Harrow was the only child who survived and she got lots of bone mojo as a result. this is 99% just the ritual child murder stuff Foxfire_ brought up earlier, but with a grounding from potential textual hints at how/why such a ritual would work, plus a fun angsty tweest for Harrow Some of the (many) problems with this version of events: why did they need a kid so abruptly, why did they need that kid to be an especially powerful necromancer, wouldn't everybody on the Ninth recognize the kid, why would they still try it on the older kids who couldn't possibly be passed off as fresh biological offspring, how'd Gideon and Ortus survive but not get powers, etc.
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Aug 31, 2020 08:53
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RIP to the Fourth House. Honestly, at this point if it wasn't advertised as a murder mystery I'd assume that they awakened a malevolent collection of bones left over in the house from the time of the original Lyctor experiments that's taking revenge on the descendants of the people who were responsible for its creation or something. Our first closed room murder! And a gruesome one at that. Although it's a bit less closed than a traditional mundane one, what with necromancy permitting theories that require some unknown scientific device X. After setting up key collection as a prime motive, two people lacking any keys at all are killed. Did Magnus know he'd be killed for his key, so he stopped Jeannemary from holding on to hers? Could a culprit still be after keys, but simply not know who has which ones? (need to collate a list of who has which keys and who knows who has which keys) Why collect hatch keys, which seem to be interchangeable? (collect enough and stop people from interfering with something you're doing in the laboratories?) What's up with the teeth? Teeth from many different corpses found in the incinerator and in the wounds on Magnus and Abigail. Harrow's hiding in a shell of teeth in Sanitation and Palamedes notes that she's really unbelievably good with teeth somehow. We also now have viewpoint confirmation that both Isaac and Jeannemary were killed with bones more generally (while Gideon conspicuously survives) -- is Harrow involved or is someone trying to frame her? Speaking of Mr. Too Many Bones, its presence definitely rules out any theory with a cavalier as the sole culprit. Don't think there's any evidence to suggest any of the cavs are secretly necromancers too. And any necromancer that summoned it would need to be incredibly powerful and skilled with bones specifically, unless one of the theorems we haven't seen is titled "BONES 504: Advanced Seminar in Colossal Constructs". Writing, too, has been beyond any construct we've seen so far so presumably the necromancer responsible is either nearby, has line of sight with some hidden camera trick, or set up a way to remotely trigger the summoning somehow. Incinerator containing cremated remains from various different bodies at various different times of death (but mostly around three months ago), confirmed by multiple different Houses. Protesilaus is missing, presumed dead. He's the one in the incinerator, but how? Palamedes established that the House was a temporal patchwork, so maybe the House is under some sort of spell that jumbles whatever thanergic signature they're using to date things. The House itself was actually built all at once, but the Emperor doesn't want anybody to know exactly when, and that spell bleeds over into our newly-inanimate corpses. Alternatively, there's some evidence to support Protesilaus having straight-up died three months ago and then been preserved like Harrow's parents: Dulcinea's specialty being the preservation of things just before/after death, Camilla noting that he's unusually reticent, brutish, and clumsy for a Seventh cavalier, the priests worrying over an anomaly of some kind on the Seventh shuttle (only one life signature?), his skin being gross and waxen. Motive-wise, the first fits more. I simply don't have a motive for Dulcinea to bring along a zombie while the Emperor being weird and inscrutable fits perfectly with his characterization thus far. However, there's one final piece of evidence. Well, sort of: Protesilaus shares his name with the first Greek to die in the Trojan War. I desperately want this to be deliberate, and he can only be the first person to die in Gideon if he was ~dead all along~ 
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Sep 1, 2020 02:23
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Foxfire_ posted:Magnus and Abigail aren't teeth. They're tiny bits of bone from different sources and Palamedes is cut off before he can say what that implies. Harrow's pod isn't teeth either, it's one single piece of shaped bone that dissolves into chips and pebbles (which Palamedes finds fascinating for some reason). The one other place we have seen lots of teeth is in Dulcinea's ward outside avulsion, which was a spiral of teeth Thanks for the correction (and for that list of keys); that's even more evidence that Dulcinea was puppeting Protesilaus (and more of a connection between Harrow and the murders, hm). That makes her less likely to be the culprit, though, since if she were then why burn her incredibly useful remote-control cavalier instead of simply murdering the Eighth team? I think it's relatively safe to say now that it's the theorems more than the trials themselves that are key to the Lyctor process*. That's hard to reconcile with the idea that the laboratories are where the original Lyctors ascended. If the theorems powering the trials (regeneration in Response, coterminous spell invocation in Avulsion) are what makes a Lyctor, then surely everyone involved in building the trial rooms already knew enough to ascend. If the laboratories are purpose-built reconstructions, though, then why were the First priests terrified of going down there and why did the Fourth kids sense mass death in the Sanitizer room? There were lots of names (on a shift board, presumably) and lab coats implying serious scientific cooperation towards the discovery of these theorems, so I don't think the answer's something like "the Emperor set up all the trials so he could distribute his theorems to those he deemed worthy". * The trials still might be important psychologically. Take Avulsion, for example. It's a dangerous feat of necromancy that involves hurting somebody you care for, just not forbidden knowledge. Maybe the trials have been set up to weed people out who aren't willing to use the theorems in the necessary way?
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Sep 2, 2020 21:41
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Camilla's cool, no doubt about that. Scattered thoughts on chapters 26-29 follow. Suffering while dying makes you a font of thanergy. Ianthe's power didn't come from a single near-death experience, then, but from her body's suffering after the fact? Kinda ruins my theory about how Harrow was forced to undergo a near death experience to get her bone magic powers, since unless she's expertly concealing a cancer diagnosis she seems to be in fine health. "If you lie I'll mummify you." Guess Protesilaus is technically a mummy, not a zombie. Dulcinea wants to win, thinks she'll win, but gave up her keys. Does she not need them anymore? Gideon's got lots of bone fragments embedded in her, just like Abigail and Magnus. Plausible that the Bone Monster killed them too, although with blunt force instead of piercing trauma. Silas talked with Glaurica who presumably spilled the beans on everything. He's known from the beginning that Gideon was fake and the Ninth is a shell, then? Dominicus has a planet closer than the First (the 3rd planet from the star) that has a) polar caps and b) a "light side" possibly indicating tidal locking. Doesn't fit either Mercury or Venus, so my "First is actually a dead Earth" theory looks dead in the water. Palamedes says ascension is a megatheorem combining all the spells so far. Harrow says ascension involves tapping into whatever power source is keeping these spells running. Both can be true! Isaac sensed an incredible amount of death in Sanitizer, even more than the rest of the First (which is generally full of death), which would explain how they started the spells up originally. But it's been ~ten thousand years since and the spells are still running. Hypothesis: the original Lyctors were researchers trying to kickstart a perpetual necromancy engine. They killed some huge number of people to start up the necessary spells, which are now interacting in a synergistic manner that causes a net production of thanergy. Since Dulcinea told us that slow, painful deaths produce thanergy and the trials involve siphoning from conscious minds, it's entirely possible that the ghosts of the test subjects are trapped as fuel for the dynamo somehow. That would be horrifying enough to keep secret -- the Lyctors, and thus the Empire, are ultimately powered by the eternal suffering of countless former subjects.The haunting of the lower floors is caused by a slow leakage of ghosts from the dynamo, gone mad from pain, who now want nothing more than revenge on the scions of the Empire that thrives on their torment. Some combination of the dynamo slowing as ghosts escape and Lyctors falling prey to their conscience means that the Emperor now needs some new people who are okay with participating in the maintenance of an artificial hell to revitalize the spells powering his infinite energy source. A Lyctor jammed a lock with "perpetual bone"? Either the priests are Lyctors (and are playing dirty by interfering with the game) or somebody's already won, already found the power source, and is having a laugh. Harrow says both Third princesses are middling. Is she intentionally trying to mislead Palamedes? Or is their deception that good? That meeting with Silas and Colum was incredibly tense. We were supposing that Gideon was blackmailing Harrow about the death of the children, but she believes they all died of a flu? Who set the bomb? Why? Was it supposed to kill Gideon, or targeted at Ortus and Glaurica? Somebody on the Ninth can't risk anybody going out into the broader empire, still has secrets to protect. Crux, Aiglamene, or the two silent Sisters? Silas willing to kill Gideon for her keys. Is Silas also willing to kill other people who he thinks have sinned, have expressed too powerful of an interest in ascension? Teacher being weird and suspicious again. "We" never intended this to happen. Talking with Gideon like she's an old friend. Teacher & the priests being undercover Lyctors feels more and more plausible. Coronabeth can't -- mustn't -- do something physical, nor can she talk to Gideon about it. Harrow's keeping Protesilaus' head in a box. Gross. Dulcinea didn't burn Pro to escape the duel, then, since his head serves as evidence enough of her deception. Harrow killed Protesilaus, burned the body, kept the head. Or someone else did and is trying to frame Harrow (and managed to circumvent her wards in the process -- same way the Bone Monster got around Isaac's wards?). Harrow knowing that Dulcinea cheated by bringing a puppet is reason enough to want to keep Gideon away from her, but why not tell everyone and have her kicked out? Steely Glint fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Sep 4, 2020 |
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Sep 3, 2020 20:31
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Foxfire_ posted:I did find a bit at the dinner party where Dulcinea is asking Abigail all about her research on Lyctoral history. Abigail is very excited to be in Canaan House and thinks she's found some communique's between ---. At which point Gideon decides the conversation is boring and stops listening I marked that down as evidence that Dulcinea had investigated the tunnels, but didn't think to use it as motive. Abigail talked with Dulcinea, then "one of the Second", then Silas, then Teacher. Gideon overheard the first conversation and Harrow the third. It's not hard evidence, but if we assume no conversations or notable interactions were elided from the text (admittedly a dicey assumption with Gideon narrating) , then the people who knew Abigail and Magnus were headed to the labs were 1, 2, 7, 8, and 9, which leaves 3 and 6 as being less likely to commit the first murders. Mecca-Benghazi posted:I have suspicions that Harrow killed Jeanne and maybe Isaac. Early on, there’s an incident when Gideon is digging through her overcoat and realizes that there’s bone fragments in there, which Harrow can make use of. I’m thinking that that’s a good way of making Jeanne’s locked room death not locked. Isaac I’m less sure about because the construct isn’t something we’ve seen her do before but she’s been around them enough. I mean, hosed up necromancy is also an option but that’s not really satisfying is it At first I wondered if they might have been planted by Dulcinea while she was getting Gideon's hands all over her so I went looking for exactly when Gideon found the chips in her coat for the first time. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it (no ctrl+f in the physical edition), but I did find Harrow removing some fragments from Gideon's coat when she low-key threatens Dulcinea after exiting the entropy field in the siphoning trial. So Harrow definitely knew they were there! Having Harrow stash the murder weapon/spell on Gideon does solve the locked room quite handily... Foxfire_ posted:Shuttlebomb: re: shuttlebomb. Reread the early chapters looking for who had access to the shuttle and it's just two people as far as I can tell. Once the shuttle arrives, Harrow asks Aiglamene to tell the shuttle pilot to wait around. After that, everybody's present for the mustering in the chapel, then Harrow sends Crux to escort Ortus and Glaurica off-planet. Aiglamene has the best opportunity but has the least motive. Crux would have to be sneaky about it but he clearly voices his hate for all three potential shuttle riders. re: Eighth. I could also read Silas's surprise as being more like "You've already helped murder four people. Why in the world are you refusing *now*?". The thing that makes me rank the Eighth low on the suspect list is Silas's outspoken dogmatic dislike of bone magic. He studies only the holiest of spirit theorems and wouldn't be caught dead raising bone monsters.
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Sep 5, 2020 21:40
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So some motive for going after Abigail specifically maybe?
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My copy of Harrow arrived today! Unfortunately, as the book was packed with the back cover facing up, I've been spoiled on blurb contents were here, really sorry about that. No clues as to any of our immediate mysteries, though. I agree with the general thrust of the ideas presented so far. Thoughts on the incinerator puzzle: There's two corpses in the incinerator. Protesilaus is one of them. I can't see how the second corpse could be a mysterious 21st person in Canaan House, especially since that one also died 3 months ago. Therefore, Protesilaus is a Franken-mummy, having had a second body incorporated as part of the beguiling corpse ritual. Who's the second victim? Time to build a theory off of a single line. p374, Teacher gets some mysterious last words in. "Oh, Lord--Lord--Lord, one of them has come back--". There's two corpses from the Seventh house. Someone, presumably from the experiments ten thousand years ago, has come back. Ergo, Dulcinea is not actually Dulcinea but actually an incredibly powerful shape-shifting Lyctor who killed both Dulcinea and Protesilaus. She needed to incorporate Dulcinea into Protesilaus to pass some sort of magical orbital scan that looked for the signature of a particular House bloodline. This explains how the titanic bone constructs were created and given malicious sentience, why she doesn't die from the shock of having Protesilaus undone, how she's got the stamina to spend massive amounts of thanergy to commit murders despite apparently dying, how Protesilaus could have a sort-of will (since he's like the bone monster; a revenant rather than a construct). Admittedly, shape-shifting hasn't been foreshadowed at all, so this is pretty unlikely to be 100% accurate. But it'd be neat! edit: extra final speculation on the nature of lyctorhood and a potential motive We've seen perpetual regeneration, siphoning, coterminous spells from the trials. Teacher has 50 (100?) souls stuffed inside him. Countless people sacrificed in this house. An eternal power source keeping the trial spells running despite there being significant distance between them. I believe that Lyctorhood is the process of tapping into the vast self-sustaining reserves of thanergy beneath the house created by the sacrifices 10,000 years ago. Each cavalier needs* to go into the basement and interface with the soul-dynamo, taking in countless ghosts into their body. Coterminous spells of regeneration and entropy cause the retainers to die without meeting death, full to bursting with the life energy of ten thousand souls, generating huge quantities of thalergy. Necromancers then siphon this source of thalergy to become Lyctors. This requires the cavalier willingly condemn themselves to a fate of perpetual suffering to empower their Lyctor, which is why Palamedes is so strongly against it. This provides a motive for a potential hidden Lyctor. They can't open the way to the basement with the soul dynamo and all the old cavaliers by themself, so they need the ritual to proceed in a certain way to open the final hidden locked door. They need to get into the basement to find and kill the cavalier-batteries before Teacher catches onto them, because after ten thousand years they regret the decision they made and want to give their cavalier a peaceful death. Murders are to speed up the process: Abigail was a historian and discovered communiques containing information on the truth of Lyctorhood, but if everyone knew then they'd take their time and deliberate and argue about whether or not it's right and so on and so forth. Isaac and Jeannemary... eh, actually, I've never been able to make a motive for these murders fit. Maybe they've got a grudge against the OG Fourth House? * page 222: you can't move thanergy from place to place, you need to siphon thalergy Steely Glint fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 21:03
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Sorry about that! On second thought, I'll remove that text. People who've read the back of the book know how I've been spoiled and can weigh my speculation appropriately without me paraphrasing the blurb.
Steely Glint fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 22:46
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Locking in these. Magnus Quinn and Abigail Pent were killed by Ianthe Tridentarius (and Dulcinea Septimus, indirectly) with the Bone Monster. Isaac Tettares and Jeannemary Chatur were killed by !Dulcinea with the Bone Monster. Protesilaus Ebdoma was killed by Dulcinea Septimus originally, and then re-killed by !Dulcinea. Ortus Nigenad and Glaurica Nigenad were killed by Crux with a bomb. The corpses in the incinerator are those of Protesilaus and Dulcinea. Explanation: Dulcinea Septimus and Ianthe Tridentarius teamed up to commit the first murders. Dulcinea is a necromancer with a vast reserve of thanergy she can't safely use, and Ianthe is a brilliant necromancer with a serious complex stemming from her family spurning her in favor of Coronabeth. They decide to work together, Ianthe channeling the thanergy that Dulcinea can't safely use, to achieve Lyctorhood at any cost. Ianthe wants to prove that she's better than everybody else, and Dulcinea doesn't want to die. Ianthe starts helping Dulcinea keep up the beguilement on Protesilaus's corpse. Together, they solve a theorem room containing a theorem for bones or something that lets them summon an angry revenant in the form of the Bone Monster. Dulcinea hears that Abigail's found some interesting old letters that she recognizes as containing big hints toward the Lyctor ritual and sends the Fifth House down into the labs so Ianthe can murder them. Then, a Lyctor appears. Invoking a mysterious 21st person X is bad form on my part, but there's no plausible way to explain the second corpse without an additional person and Teacher's last words strongly indicate the presence of a Lyctor in Canaan House. This Lyctor kills Dulcinea and shape-shifts into her, becoming !Dulcinea. She learns about the duel and kills Protesilaus to avoid the duel with Colum (since she's a Lyctor, she doesn't need a mummy bodyguard any more and having Protesilaus revealed as a mummy would bring unwanted attention from Teacher). The discrepancy in death times (3 months, 4 weeks) can be explained by the times of death being different for the two corpses and the Lyctor doing advanced thalergy-draining on Dulcinea to fuel the shape-shifting magic and further obscure things. !Dulcinea surreptitiously takes control of the Bone Monster and proceeds to kill Isaac and Jeannemary out of pity -- she doesn't want children undergoing the Lyctor ritual. Being a Lyctor allows her to do things like bypass wards and teleport bones around. She spares Gideon because one of the original Lyctors is named Gideon and she's sentimental. Her plan is to get a small, manageable number of people to complete the Lyctor ritual so she can step in at the peak and use its power to unmake herself, having tired of living off of hell energy some time in the past 10,000 years. I think Ianthe has cottoned on to !Dulcinea and has a plan to attack her. Coronabeth and Naberius know, and Coronabeth nearly told Gideon before Naberius stopped her.
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Sep 7, 2020 18:45
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Finished. Lyctor ritual is less colossal in scope but somehow more tragic than I had expected. Those last fights were gruesome. Happy to have called a Lyctor being involved, not super happy that Ianthe's innocent (well, of the original murders. RIP Naberius) and now a demigod. Not how I expected Gideon to die. Harrow had better live up to the faith Gideon's placed in her. Where was Dulcinea's corpse hidden before Cytherea burned it, if she had been dead along with her cavalier since Rhodes? Why didn't Cytherea make a more convincing attempt at animating Protesilaus, given her limitless necromantic ability? Might have more thoughts if I can put Harrow the Ninth down.
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Sep 7, 2020 23:45
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The closed room being solved with Lyctor superpowers was quite disappointing, I'll admit. Still overall good enough to binge through the sequel and leave me stuck waiting until 2021 for Alecto  Mecca-Benghazi posted:Is the next book in the series a mystery like this one or should I plan to read it on my own time? Harrow isn't very much like Gideon. It does contain mysteries but the focus of the book is elsewhere.
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Sep 8, 2020 06:27
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