#Cassiopeia the first

[donut-wraith]

I'm thinking incoherently about how John makes Cassiopeia kill her wife to stick around with him and how she called him the most vindictive man she's ever met and how she established a society based on 'truth over solace in lies' About how g1deon could never choose between pyrrha and john, and how john put g1deon in a position to kill her, and he does, but does it in a way that breaks imperceptibly and lets pyrrha still live

[llovelyclouds]

"NEVER LEFT THE PLANET, DIED IN THIS SELFSAME TOWER"... ok. ok. so. okay so. if we're operating under the assumption that canaan house is john & company's labs, and that the other skeleton servants also died at canaan house and never left the planet, then one can assume that the bone servants in gideon the ninth are all of the cultists & ex-cultists in nona the ninth.

wow. so. after the cultists killed johns friends... he didn't fully resurrect them but instead kept them all to work for him and his pals and make food for them and rot until they couldn't even remember how to write anymore. okay. the implications.

haha. anyway

[nona-gay-simus]

"If he hears that yet another one of his duplicitous sluts betrayed him, he's never going to come back from it. He's so fragile right now."

- Ianthe Tridentarius, Nona the Ninth Officially, 'duplicitous slut' is the funniest way to refer to the OG lyctors :D

[ossifer]

The question of Cassiopeia

Cassiopeia was the founder of the Sixth House, the Fourth Saint to serve the King Undying, and seemingly not perfectly loyal to him: it was on her instructions—created prior to her death—that the House she founded withdrew from the Empire, transporting its facility away with the aid of five hundred and thirty two obelisks. Why?

What is her current status?

Cassiopeia is dead, according to Mercy. She was torn apart by ghosts whilst luring the physical portions of a Resurrection Beast into the current of the River—specifically Resurrection Beast Number Seven, Varun the Eater.

Mercy is not averse to lying. Mercy witnessed this happen from the bank of the river, as she was nowhere near as immersed as Cassiopeia was, and thus we also don't know if her recollection of events is accurate. We don't know how long ago this happened, either. Pyrrha also asserts that Cassiopeia is dead, but we don't know how accurate this is, because she was compartmentalised within G1deon most of the time, and may have received this information from an unreliable source.

The characters, besides Camilla, also thought that Palamedes was dead. Harrow could not believe his survival. As for how he survived? He made a bubble in the River:

This bubble, created with a single thereom, relied on the use of spirit magic:

Ninth, this place is powered by one single theorem, held together with the fragility of spirit magic.

What was Cassiopeia's specialty, again? Spirit magic. And she was no ordinary spirit magician, she was Augustine's superior!

And she could use theorems while in the River. This feat was only replicated by Harrowhark, whose parents harnessed the power of the thanergy bloom resulting from the killing of two hundred to guarantee she would be born necromantically capable, resulting in her being a staggeringly powerful adept. Cassiopeia is possibly the most powerful spirit magician we know of.

If there was anyone who would be able to replicate Palamedes' creation of a bubble in the River, achieveable with a single theorem? it's Cassiopeia. Who's to say she isn't alive in some regard? Cassy played long games.

What is Cassiopeia's long game?

Now, we don't know the context in which this exchange took place, but the entire Dios Apate plot was only made possible because of Cassiopeia's sharing a tidbit about blood wards to Mercymorn:

Dios Apate Major was the direct result of Cassiopeia's action of sharing this knowledge. Why did she share it? Did she intend for it to be weaponised?

We know that Mercymorn's anatomist specialty is only relevant to someone who intends to kill Lyctors, or God, something Augustine points out, so perhaps Cassiopeia was banking on Mercymorn using it in this way. Or perhaps she was a co-conspirator. We don't know. But you know what we do know?

Cassiopeia worked with Anastasia in the hopes of achieving a perfected form of Lyctorhood.

An avenue of research that John said ended in disaster.

(An avenue of research that was successful enough that John knew she had cracked it, and interfered by killing Samuel.)

Anastasia and Cassiopeia carried out this research together, closely. Anatasia, who later helped John design the tomb, guarded with a blood ward, or more accurately a cell ward. Anatasia, whose remains lie in the tomb.

Cassiopeia's long game is unfolding and the Sixth House's emancipation is merely part of it. And maybe, just maybe, Cassy herself is one of the pieces in play.

Bonus: Finger food

Harrowhark attempts to assassinate G1deon by sectioning her own tibia and animating the bone into a construct inside him, an attempt that is nearly successful. This attempt catches God off guard at first, because not even Mercymorn would be able to perceive foreign bone within a Lyctor, until Harrow reveals it's her own bone.

When else do we see a Lyctor introduce their own bodily material into another Lyctor? The incident with Cassiopeia's cooking that Augustine recounts in the very same scene.

Why would Cassiopeia do this intentionally? To me, two distinct possibilities exist.

She intended it as a contingency of sorts, aiming to use the introduced bodily material to kill one or more of her fellow Lyctors in the event she needed to. They presumably can't perceive it within themselves.

She intended to track the movement of her fellow Lyctors by using her introduced bodily material to circumvent the fact Lyctors are perceptive blank spots: Harrowhark can manipulate her own bone within G1deon from a distance, so presumably Cassiopeia would be able to sense the movement of her own bodily material within her fellow Lyctors as it is digested

Or maybe, just maybe, the finger incident was for irony's sake, considering what Harrow was about to do. Who knows?

[witchhazelevesque]

duplicitous sluts is to the locked tomb as vicious trollop is to gilmore girls

[domibomz]

BIRTHDAY GIIIIIRL!!! everyone helped with the cake (except alecto but shes just happy to be invited tbh) @ghostsessioned birthday :3

[talaricula]

I know this is a gay lawyer opinion and as such probably spectacularly biased but ever since ntn came out I have been going absolutely crazy about the reveal that Cassiopeia is a gay lawyer and that she was the one to, first, call Jod out for granting more importance to punishing billionaires than to saving the billions of other people on Earth, and to, second, plot for ten thousand years to betray him. Idk if tazmuir did it on purpose but this reveal hit me right in the fucking heart and is for some reason incredibly meaningful to me.

Other ppl have already pointed out that Jod picked his STEM buddies to be necromancers and the more humanities leaning people/very broadly service workers (not that I'm a big fan of cops or clergy but you catch my drift) as cavaliers. But what's interesting here is that Cassiopeia is the exception to that. She's a necromancer and she's a lawyer. Which speaks v interestingly to the position law holds in a lot of STEM ppl's minds - it's "tough" enough to kind of be honorary STEM. But, crucially, it is factually not STEM. It is factually, very obviously, humanities. Its whole point is analysing society and figuring out how we want to shape it. And STEM people forget that. Which means that Of Course it's the STEM ppl who forge ahead, doing things because they have the capacity to, and of course it's the lawyer who is the first to question whether they should do so, what the impact of that is on the actual world, whether there shouldn't be agreements and rules about this.

And look don't get me wrong, I don't have an idealised view of law. Law can be one of the most oppressive forces in our current society. People often uphold it for the sake of itself and not for the sake of what it can do for people, to make the world and people's lives better, and the consequences of that are, unquestionably, a net bad. But that's where the gay lawyer part comes in. I work in an office where over half of us are queer lawyers and there is something fundamentally delicate and "in the middle" about being gay and a lawyer. Law is often actively hostile to queer people, and most queer people who go into law go into it with the intent to change it (or its application, even on a very small scale) rather than to uphold it because they are aware of its unfairness and oppressiveness. But simultaneously you need to believe in law enough to believe that it can be a useful tool for change if you're going to devote your professional life to it, which is a relatively idealistic position to hold. In my experience, the consequence of that is that queer lawyers are often the most likely to be very critical and sceptical of law and agreements and systems and people in power, even the ones they're close to, because a significant part of their lives is led in the midst of, very close to, or at least in a state of constant hyper awareness, of a system that is hostile to them for being queer.

Which is why it is so crucial that Cassiopeia is a Gay Lawyer. Of course she is the one who realises that the new rules and agreements implemented by her friend who suddenly finds himself with incredible power are detrimental to society as a whole. Of course she's the one who sees the inconsistencies between what he says he wants to achieve and what he's de facto working towards. Of course she's the one who calls him out for it. Being in close contact with both the rules and the people who makes them or enforce them isn't new to her, and analysing them is literally her job. He made a contract with his friends and with the world and he's not upholding it. Of course she's the one who takes issue.

Cassiopeia has to be radical enough to actively support Jod's cause at the beginning and traditionalist enough to see when he's going overboard and then again radical enough to call him out for it and build her own revolution. Cassiopeia has to be idealistic enough to believe a better world is possible and sceptical enough to realise when the new world they're building is emphatically not better and then idealistic enough again to believe it is possible to change it again, not back but forward, to something even newer. Cassiopeia has to be radical enough to spend thousands of years fomenting a rebellion against Jod and also traditionalist enough and enough of a Fucking Nerd to decide that the best and most efficient way to do that is to turn her House into a Rebellion University over that time period instead of, idk, anything a normal Rebel Against The Established Order would do. Of fucking course she's a gay lawyer.

Last point and then I'll shut up but equally crucial to this is that Nigella, her wife and cavalier, is AN ARTIST. The biggest cliché of "useless humanities", the person STEM looks at and thinks "I mean sure, fun enough, but ultimately a luxury at best and a waste of money and resources at worst". Because part of the divide within the field of law wrt what law means for society (is law a tool for society as it is or as it should be) is very much informed by how you look at society, of course, and while part of that outlook is informed by personal identity and experiences (ie the gay thing), another part is informed by the experiences and views of the people you surround yourself with. And Cassiopeia who loves an artist, Cassiopeia who strongly believes in the value of art for society, Cassiopeia who admires her lover for the way she studies and represents and transforms society through her art? That's so relevant to her specific brand of gay lawyer. That's the same Cassiopeia who's enough of an active idealist to side with Jod in an active rebellion against the agents of climate change at first, to stress the importance of helping innocents over punishing the guilty second, and to, finally, try to organise a revolution which, if I am interpreting all the care she takes with the Sixth correctly, prioritises helping the people Jod fucked over over punishing Jod.

TL;DR: Of course Cassiopeia is a gay lawyer and I love her, your honour.

[multifunctionalnitroglycerin]

The Locked Tomb Series- Alecto Theory

Brace yourselves this is 3000 words of me connecting dots that aren't even there.

First things first, this post is an amalgam of various brilliant theories I have seen posted on Tumblr, so if anything feels familiar, that will be the main reason. I am just going to present my own take on this, and hopefully add something new to what we already have.

                The subjects of today’s conspiracy theory are Alecto and Anastasia -and Cassiopeia in part, the vow to Anastasia’s bloodline and what could very possible be, Dios Apate MAJOR.

                So let’s start with what we have from the books, and feel free to correct me or add sth I might have forgotten.

                Anastasia and Samael are the only ones of the original Lyctor batch, that didn’t complete the Lyctorhood process, thanks to - in no small part – John, and/or possibly Alecto. (“I am sorry about Samael”). Which could mean that Alecto was somehow involved in the whole process going wrong, and thus she feels responsible for Samael’s death, or that she was close enough with Anastasia and Samael, that she herself felt Samael’s loss, or she felt for Anastasia’s grief. (I like to believe that they did have a tentative friendship even before the vow thing happened.)

                Anastasia is also the only one of the Lyctors we know, so far, to have had children. Which is an important bit on its own, (Can full Lyctors, have children? If so, are they different from other children, necromantic or not? Is there a reason that in spite of biological capability- if it exists-the other Lyctors have chosen not to have children? Even with Augustine’s and Mercymorn’s plan we see that in the end Gideon is conceived with Wake’s material – John is a whole different story as far as Lyctorhood goes so he doesn’t count.)

Back to our discussion though, Anastasia’s bloodline was so important to the Ninth House that it has been preserved for 10.000 years. We do not really get a clear picture on whether the Reverend Family knows why the continuation of the bloodline is important, Harrow certainly doesn’t, but it was so deeply ingrained to them that Anastasia’s bloodline must remain intact, that they effectively committed genocide, dooming the House’s future, in order to produce one more direct descendant of the Saint that wasn’t.

We do get a hint, a rather big one, on why the preservation of Anastasia’s blood is so important, in Nona’s Epilogue. Alecto states that Harrow is “the blood of the tombkeeper” after kissing her and drawing blood. What did she taste on Harrow’s blood I wonder? And how did she recognize the taste, as the taste of Anastasia’s line? Did the vow she initially made to Anastasia herself involve them drawing blood? Did it bind them to one another, so deeply that they ingrained themselves into each other on a molecular level?

To add to this, young Harrow, young desolate Harrow, who had had enough with her life and was prepared to die, young Harrow who opened the Tomb for that express purpose, loves Alecto from sight. And decides to keep living for her. And there is something exceedingly weird to just how much Harrow loves Alecto. Alecto is probably the most attractive person Harow lay her eyes upon to that day, true, but this instant infatuation, and its persistence throughout the years has something more to it, don’t you think? As Gideon points out, both to herself and to Ianthe, Harrow’s heart belongs to the dead cold body in the Tomb. And said cold dead body in the Tomb, recognizes Harrow from sight when she wakes “Alecto recalled her, for it was a face once dreamed in Alecto’s dream.”

And this line begs the question. Could Alecto dream, in the tomb? If so, how? And what did she dream of? Did she dream of Harrow? Why did she dream of Harrow if that is the case? Or did she dream of Anastasia, and the resemblance is that great? On the other hand, if this refers to Harrow first opening the Tomb, and looking at Alecto, does that mean that she was in some form conscious throughout that stasis? Does this mean that she could have heard and felt Anastasia while they were both locked in the Tomb, for however long the other woman lived?

(The scene where Nona describes the feeling of Anastasia's hands in the water and feeling safe. I am going to cry.)

I do have an interesting theory about Alecto’s “dreams” but we’ll get there in a bit.

Something else that is fishy, is that the Ninth, is the House of the Sewn Tongue. It sounds a bit like too much flesh magic for a bone magic house to specialize in, right? The cure to the Sewn Tongue on the other hand? Removing the mandible and all that? That sounds like a Bone Magic solution to a flesh magic problem. And I wonder if the fact that the Ninth House’s emblem is the Jawless skull, insinuates that the Ninth is not so much a house where many secrets are kept – though this is undoubtedly true, as the Ninth is known as the House of secrets by the other houses – as much that in the Ninth, all secrets are revealed. Where the sewn tongue is healed, and the truth comes to light. And I’d like to point out that it sounds a bit like foreshadowing, and a promise. Anastasia has been betrayed by John and sworn to secrecy, and then locked in the Tomb to die and take his secrets with her. I feel like the jawless skull acts as a constant reminder, that even with the sewn tongue, all curses can be broken, and all secrets will eventually come to light. And it feels like a promise to John, that her House, the house of secrets and unspoken truths, will be the one to rid of the sewn tongue and bring the truth he so fears forward. And this aligns a tad too well with the Sixth’s mantra, Six for the truth, over solace in lies.

And you know what else fits here, in this concordance of the Sixth and Ninth Houses? Cassiopeia and Anastasia’s friendship. Their alliance if you will. We know they both worked closely together trying to figure out the perfect Lyctorhood process, and it is possible that Anastasia made her attempt a bit before Cassiopeia. The exact same attempt, that performed in perfect conditions ended in failure, with John ultimately killing Samael.

 We also know that Cassiopeia left contingency plans in place, should the emperor become a hindrance to the empire. And from what we have seen of Cassiopeia in the books, it is safe to assume that she is driven, determined, exceedingly intelligent, perceptive, logical, and excellent at planning. She is also the one to point out John’s less than favorable qualities pre-Resurrection such as his interest in taking vengeance on those that wronged him being bigger in his interest to save lives.

So, we have, Cassiopeia and her logic driven, truth seeking brilliance, and Anastasia, the thorough, overly methodical researcher. We have them both working on perfect Lyctorhood, and we have them both, in one way or another, being betrayed by John. Chances are, that they were the first post Resurrection to notice John’s flaws, the first to concoct a plan against him. But contrary to Cytherea, Mercy and Augustine, they are more subtle than those cannonball attempts. No, I believe they planned. And they planned long term, and together. Cassiopeia left her House a note, left them instructions, she was preparing them for when John would become a liability. And then an aforementioned amount of time later, Anastasia is asked to design the tomb.

We do not really know anything about Alecto’s relationships with the other lyctors apart from the fact that most found her revolting, a “monster” in Mercy’s words. So here is a thought, perhaps Anastasia, the one of the original Eight to never ascend, perhaps the one whose failure Alecto was involved in – “I am sorry about Samael” – finds kinship in John’s unnerving pet, his undead “cavalier”, the one he betrayed first, the soul of earth. Perhaps they even became friends. Perhaps she and Cassiopeia realize the extend of what John has done and realize that Alecto is the key to undoing it. When John refuses to kill Alecto to appease the others, the plan fully forms.

So, they construct the tomb. And Cassiopeia is well-known for building mechanisms within houses, so maybe her and Anastasia create secret passages, and mechanisms with extra access to the tomb that would be independent of John sneaking in, or whatever he planned to do with that blood-ward.  And hear me out, we know that Cassiopeia stayed 7 minutes in the river before being torn apart by the resurrection beast – at Mercymorn’s account at least, not sure how reliable of a narrator she is. But what happened during those seven minutes? Paul says he thinks he knows how to get to the Locked Tomb via the River. So, the river and the Tomb are connected. What did Cassiopeia do, I wonder? (Here I’d like to say that my other theory is that she did eventually die, or rather was consumed by Varun the eater, much like Judith Deuteros was. The RB burned through her in what, a couple months? How long would a Lyctor last? Perhaps that was the reason that Varun didn’t resurface until 100 years after Cassiopeia’s presumed death. She could have been alive and slowly wasting away, while still making failsafe within failsafe until she lost her sense of self and eventually wasted away)

To recap until now, the first part of my theory is that Anastasia and Cassiopeia dissatisfied with the world John had made and the truth he had served them, probably worked together to find the truth. And they worked together from the shadows, to create a plan, a long-term plan, with which they could bring John down if the need ever arose, and undo what he had done. And Anastasia’s bloodline and their secrets are really bloody important to that plan. (Also, some nice symbolism about the Ninth being about secrets revealed, rather than secrets kept, and that functioning as a bit of foreshadowing.)

Now into the second part of my theory. Anastasia’s bloodline is so important because she has bound her bloodline to Alecto. And I think this happened in the premise of the Vow Alecto has made to her, or they have made to each other. This might be part of the initial vow, of which we know nothing about, apart from the fact that Alecto pledged herself to Anastasia, and that it is important enough that she pledges herself to Harrow, or a failsafe within it. A failsafe to ensure that should Alecto wake after Anastasia has passed, she will not be fooled by any imposters, or anything else John might have planned. Or perhaps, a failsafe to ensure that even if John changes his mind and finds a way to rid of the body within the tomb, to “kill” Alecto, she will not be completely gone, she will keep existing within Anastasia’s line, thus ensuring that the plan for John’s demise can still be enacted and that the soul of the earth will not be dead.

That plays really hard in the Alecto is within Harrow from the beginning theory. And I will explain. I believe I saw something that looked like this in Twitter by lesbian_mothman, but I do not really remember so I apologize if all this has been said before.

In all the dream chapters with John, we relive memories from just before and after the resurrection, and John talks to Harrow as if she is Alecto “You always say that Harrowhark” as a response to “I still love you.” Or when Varun recognizes the Earth’s soul “green thing” within Nona in the car chase scene, or when Judith regaining consciousness asks “Harrowhark?” and Nona replies, “No, and I never was.” So that begs the question of how much of Harrow is Harrow, how much is Alecto and how much are the 200 souls within her? (And there was a crowd of dead children there. They were striving loudly against living children on the far-off shore of the tomb. CHILLS)

In Nona we learn that Palamedes and Camila on the one hand and Pyrrha on the other have two different theories about who Nona is. The Sixth believe that she is an amalgam of Gideon and Harrow, and Pyrrha believes she is Alecto, golden eyes and all. And I am more inclined to believe that it is indeed Alecto, or at least a part of her, that resides within Harrow, and took the wheel when both Harrow and Gideon were gone. Think abt it. Gideon is back in her body, and we have no idea what the hell happened to Harrow, only that she doesn’t have the wheel, and Nona acts nothing like Harrow or Gideon did. It’s like she is learning how to be human for the first time. She learns how to love and be loved for the first time. So with no soul to govern the body, the part of Alecto within Harrow takes the wheel.  

And then there is the candle metaphor in NtN. Alecto’s soul is the candle passed from one necromantic heir of the Ninth to the other.

So long story short, part of the vow, if not all of it, is that part of Alecto will always live within Anastasia’s descendants, so long as they are necromancers. And here comes the part of Alecto’s dreams. Because if indeed she lives within the souls of Anastasia’s necromantic descendants, does she see through their eyes? Does she feel through their hearts? Does she dream of their lives, while locked in the Tomb, while a part of her lives in them? Is she conscious within them? Or does the whole thing act like a cavalier- lyctor sort of connection, where she cannot take the wheel unless the other soul in the body Is gone?

 Part of her soul is bound to Anastasia’s line, and they are bound to her, and over the course of 10.000 years do they spill over? Alecto to Anastasia’s descendants and they to Alecto.  Was this part of the plan to have a failsafe within Anastasia’s line in case something happened to the body in the Tomb? Was it a promise Anastasia made to Alecto, to give her a chance to live, to be human, through the lives of her own descendants?

All in all, I guess I could some it up in a few concise points.

Cassiopeia and Anastasia worked closely together, they were friends and allies and saw in John, the unfulfilled promises he made, and all the faults he tried to cover with rewriting his own version of history.

They decide to make a plan, a long term one, a detailed one, for when John is more a liability than it is worth. And thus, Cassiopeia creates the mechanisms in the Sixth and leaves the protocols for the rest to find. Truth over solace in lies.

Meanwhile Anastasia attempts to ascend, and John kills Samael. Alecto might be consciously or unconsciously involved and harbors guilt over Samael’s death.

Anastasia probably befriends Alecto or finds kinship with this strange being that is the soul of a planet that no longer is.

The planning continues and John after being asked to kill Alecto decides to lock her in the Tomb instead and has Anastasia design it. He later asks her to stay in the tomb and guard Alecto. (Antigone style)

Anastasia designs the tomb, probably with Cassiopeia’s help, probably with a few hidden mechanisms of its own and or a secret pathway through the river, an extra way out.

At some point, Anastasia sires a line, and she makes her vow with Alecto.

The vow probably is in regards of bounding Alecto to Anastasia’s line so long as there are necromantic heirs. A part of Alecto is constantly alive within each descendant of Anastasia’s.

It might work a bit like the lyctoral process, because Alecto only takes the wheel when there is no Harrow and no Gideon in Nona’s body, aka when there doesn’t seem to be another soul guiding it.

Alecto dreams. Whether she dreams of herself within the tomb and that’s how she recognizes Harrow on sight – from the memory of Harrow first unlocking the Tomb – or her dreams are glimpses of the lives Anastasia’s descendants lead I don’t know.

Alecto is thus bound to Anastasia’s line by blood. She recognizes Harrow by her blood, tasting either Anastasia, or the part of herself residing within it, when she kisses her. It also ensures that the line is intact the vow is intact and it’s not a pretender trying to fool her.

Anastasia and Cassiopeia planned to bring John down by opening the tomb when the time was right and leaving her to Alecto’s (and the RB’S???) mercy. There is still a lot left to be explored.

The tomb is to remain closed until the time has come God has to die. We can all see how that can be misinterpreted to > if the tomb opens God will die. And instead of a promise to be fulfilled it becomes a terrible terrible thing, that will spell everyone’s doom.

The freaking skull of the ninth is a threat, a foreshadow and a promise. The Ninth was a house that should have died with Anastasia in the tomb. But it didn’t. It continued existing its bloodline unbroken for 10.000 years. Nine for the tomb and all that was lost. The Ninth is predominantly I feel a house of mourning – the whole nuns, all black, and skull makeup thing. But it is also a house of secrets. It is a house represented by the cure to even the tightest secret held. So the Ninth, the house that should never have been the house that should have died with its secrets in the tomb of its inception, is the one that will break the sewn tongue, and reveal all the secrets, bringing the truth to light.

[mayasaura]

now that soul permeability is established, do you think cassy and/or g1deon will have a major effect on varun?

varun has already shown small signs of quote unquote 'infection' from cassy, because i remember that varun-through-judith laughed at palamedes lamenting sounding like he was a sixth house committee member which. y'know. is a cassy thing to do. and varun was reported to have gone dormant for a century after it ate her

do you think we'll learn more about cassy through varun, and that her motivations have bled into its own, affecting how it will approach alecto and the idea of vengeance and love?

(on a smaller level, do you think we'll learn about pyrrha's pre-res memories this way? if her knowing g-'s name is a result of memory blending, then how does he know his name?)

Did Varun eat Cassiopeia? We have a few slightly differing accounts of her death that mostly boil down to: Which would you rather be torn apart by; ten thousand feral ghosts, or one feral ghost ten thousand times the size?

But yeah, that laughter was fucking weird wasn't it?

If that's Varun laying low inside Judith and getting startled into laughter, then. Damnit, I hadn't even considered that. It would be just like this series to have two ghosts playing dead in one scene; one the audience explicitly knows about, and one we don't.

Anyway, let's assume Pyrrha's account of Cassiopeia's death is the most accurate.

At the volume a soul like Varun's must have, I wouldn't think we'd find out too much about one specific soul it incorporated. Unless....

I noticed something very interesting while I was searching for the above quote. "Dormant" is repeatedly used in Harrow the Ninth to describe only one thing: a lyctor's body when its soul is elsewhere. We've seen that a Resurrection Beast can also throw its soul elsewhere—into poor Judith—so .... if there's an equivalency there, where did Varun go for those hundred years after killing Cassiopeia? And what was it doing?

A planet's ghost is burning through Judith pretty quickly, but how long would it take it to burn through a lyctor? Maybe a century?

[lylikers]

some pre res lyctor designs&doodles

[figgolu]

The Fourth House:

Hope of the Emperor

The Fifth House:

Heart of the Emperor

The Sixth House:

The Emperor's Reason

The Eighth House:

the Forgiving House

quite funny, isn't he?

[dabblingreturns]

I've been assuming this but I might be wrong.

In John's cryogenic group

C- was legal.....(do much legal around human experimentation) she supplied the bodies

G- was a an Mechanical Engineer with a focus of life support design. He created a physical space to put the bodies

M- doctor dealing with the body as a system. She was the one who checked if the process could harm the bodies

A- biochemistry dealing with the molecular processes inside each cell. He was the one who created new ways to change the chemical makeup of the bodies

John- biologists with a focus of cells and preserving life on the most basic level. He tried to find some way to preseve to the bodies

[hibernica]

Unless I’m remembering wrong, I don’t think we know what triggered Cassiopeia's break clause for the Sixth House. It could have been any number of things that ultimately triggered it from Cam and Palamades feeling personally slighted by the events at the First House to some interaction with BOE that we don’t see. But what if the escape clause was predicated entirely on Gideon telling them that Harrow opened the tomb? Jod tells us that without him the Sol system goes bye bye, and Alecto being walkabout could easily lead to that and therefore the destruction of the Nine Houses. I think Palamades believed enough in Harrow’s power and Gideon’s experience to secede. It would also go a long way towards explaining the events of Nona and what the Sixth seemed to think she might be.

[twink-with-an-agenda]

"Cassy played long games"

Cassiopeia the First, Fourth Saint to serve the King Undying

[2plolo]

Me, in the dead of night, delicately whispering my desperate pleas into the universe,

PLEASE DONT LET ALL THE OG LYCTORS BE WHITE, PLEASE DONT LET ALL THE OG LYCTORS BE WHITE, PLEA