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There's so much going on at the end of the anniversary dinner.

There's Cytherea saying the dinner was "useful" and affectionately referring to the Fourth as "the children", when it of course transpires that the dinner was useful for identifying who to murder first, and when she will hunt and torment those children just weeks later.

Then, as the Fourth's whispered conversation about biceps grows in volume, this happens:

Their hisses carried. Abigail, who was standing nearby deep in conversation with one of the Second, reached out a hand to touch Isaac lightly on the shoulder in reproof. She did not even turn around or break off talking. The Fourth adept winced: his cavalier had a hard, resentful, told-off expression on her face.

The Fourth seem particularly upset by Abigail's silent warning. And with good reason. Isaac is the Baron of the Fourth. We know from the Cohort Intelligence Files that his father's title was held in stewardship. We also know that Abigail managed to get them rejected from the Cohort on age grounds, despite the fact that when they applied they were several years older than Judith was when she joined up. Which raises a interesting question: what is the Houses' definition of legal majority and does it differ by House? Did their rejection on age grounds perhaps have something to do with their education on the Fifth? Would they have been eligible on the Fourth, but were still considered children and in education on the Fifth? Regardless, at 13 Isaac is holding the title of Baron and Jeannemary is his cavalier primary. They are there formally as House scions in contention for Lyctorhood. They are, we have to assume, at this point in some legal way adults as far as the society of the Nine Houses is concerned. And there is Abigail - Abigail Pent, Lady of the Fifth, the House at that moment apparently actively annexing the Fourth - treating them as if they are still children and under her authority in public. Of course they're upset.

This isn't to say that it wasn't an otherwise prosaic family interaction and that they don't have a loving and very familial relationship with the Fifth - we see them bobbing around after Magnus and in and out of the kitchen before the dinner, happily acting like the Fifth's children. But the casualness with which Abigail shushes Isaac is inescapably, for all of them, also political.

And Cytherea immediately picks up on this. It's what seems to provoke her moment of candid reflection on House politics to Gideon:

Dulcinea murmured, “Oh, Gideon the Ninth, the Houses are arranged so badly … full of suspicion after a whole myriad of peaceable years. What do they compete for? The Emperor’s favour? What does that look like? What can they want?

Cytherea perceives this interaction as political. As evidence that she's right - that the whole system is broken. She sees competition in Abigail's parental gesture, and suspicion in the frustration of teenagers who want to be grown ups. And she kills them all.

And there's two rather awful thoughts that follow from this.

The first is the extent to which Jod's shitty system poisons things. Abigail Pent, who just wants to nerd out about ghosts but is very good at whatever job she sets herself to, has a marriage with a man that she loves as an equal...and over whom she holds life and death authority three times over, as his feudal lord, as his boss, and as his necromancer. He dies because he is her cavalier, even though it's suggested that his cavaliership was in part Abigail's gesture against having to participate in the whole system in the first place and evidence of her plans to escape it. And despite the fact that they clearly loved the Fourth as their own, every gesture of that love was also inescapably part of a political manoeuvre set in motion by previous leaders of the Fifth to draw the Fourth further under their control. And with Isaac still, at least on paper, holding authority in his own right, prosaic parts of that relationship suddenly become matters of state and not the teenage drive for independence. And Cytherea looks at this and, for all her hatred of Jod, is unable to see him as the poison at the root of it.

Worse, we don't know what happened next. We know eventually the Fifth went to the Facility, but what did the Fourth do? Did they make up, and say their fond goodnights? Or is part of the Fourth's hysterical grief as they try to summon the Fifth's ghosts at the crime scene because they slunk off after this, and it was the last time they ever saw them alive?

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

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

(sorry 4 dodgy photo editing... tried to add Visual Interest but. well. graphic design is my passion dot jpeg)

Gideon the Ninth is the best Locked Tomb book. It's wildly entertaining with a really cool setting and engaging haunted house mystery plot. And best of all, it has the best protagonist: an immensely charismatic swaggering butch lesbian sword fighter who just gives no fucks

Harrow the Ninth is the best Locked Tomb book. It's challenging and rewarding with fascinating character dynamics, incredibly cool structural storytelling and deeply philosophical themes. And best of all, it has the best protagonist, a fiercely determined, immensely powerful necromancer, who is also an incredibly traumatized useless lesbian who can't deal with the fact that she loves women more than God, who she works with

Nona the Ninth is the best Locked Tomb book. It's a deeply compelling exploration of the effects of war and colonization on the people who it hurts the most, with humanist themes and queer found family dynamics. And best of all, it has the best protagonist, an endlessly optimistic, childlike but never infantalized girl who can't do anything but love every single person that she meets even in the middle of a war zone and also she's friends with a six legged dog

Sudden brain blast over morning coffee:

John Gaius, necrolord whatever, cringiest man alive, refuses to let the earth die. And not just in the literal sense of locking the earth’s soul in a barbie on ice, in subtler ways too.

The most obvious is the memes, John constantly references memes that are dated even to us, but are in universe from a culture that died ten thousand years ago!

Slightly more subtle is the years. Why does everyone in the Houses measure in earth years? It’s been ten THOUSAND years since anyone lived on the earth! But John keeps them as a unit of measurement.

Even more subtle is the language. In sci-fi and fantasy we’re all used to the idea of the translation for the reader, people don’t speak english in lord of the rings, or dune, but the dialogue is in english for us, the readers. Not in The Locked Tomb. In this series, they ARE speaking english. Modern, bog standard english, to the point where two people born thousands of years apart speak similar enough dialects that one can pose as the other (dulcie/cytheria).

Now, this could possibly fall under that standard sci-fi trope, EXCEPT!!!! In Nona The Ninth, we see the non-house humans! And they speak dozens of languages, like you’d expect after TEN THOUSAND YEARS of linguistic drift!

John is trying SO HARD to keep the earth alive that he’s forced a language to stagnate for, say it with me now, Ten Thousand Years, to the point where even completely new things with no equivalent in our world don’t even have new words, just repurposed old ones (flimsy, sonic).

John Gaius, the first necromancer, could resurrect the planet itself, and millions of people, but he couldn’t resurrect the culture. So, John, cryogenics researcher, tried to put the culture on ice, to keep it as close to the one he remembers as possible. And he still failed.

Thanks! I think the biggest thing currently bugging me about HtN is why every surviving lyctor, with 1 single exception, was plotting to kill Jod? My understanding is that it was only when they saw cav!Gideon's eyes on the Mithraeum that they realized Jod lied about the existence of perfect lyctorhood. So why had they spent decades plotting with BoE to open the tomb and murder God? Only explanation I've read is "because he made them kill their cavs," which seems weak.

The short answer is: They at least suspected that he lied about it even before meeting Gideon. She was just the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. Plus, he did make them kill their cavs! Their siblings, their lovers, their closest friends! They dealt with that truth for far more than a lifetime, but they just so happens that they had a lot of time to dwell on it. It’s not really a surprise that it eventually got ugly.

Long answer under the cut, because I love my followers and don’t want them to suffer.

First off: it isn't just the surviving lyctors who betrayed God. Mercymorn, Augustine, Cytherea, yes; but even G1deon was willing to share a bed with the enemy. Either he or Pyrrha told Wake about the RB's and what they do to necromancers, thereby handing her an effective weapon against lyctors. 

And then there's Anastasia, who's implied to have gone against John's orders by even founding the Ninth House. Cassie, who contacted BoE *6 000 years ago*. So who really knows what Cyrus and Ulysses were up to, or would have been if they'd survived for long enough. 

As for why? We get two pieces of explanation in the text. 

YOU LIED TO US

Could this refer to the proof in Gideon's eyes? Sure.  But I'm not convinced that it wasn't the message Cyth always wanted to send. 

Checking in with the other duplicitous sluts:

“You’ve offered us explanations for everything over the years. But—some of them didn’t hold up on examination … It was the power I could never get my head around, you know? I follow power back to its source, John. It’s the skill you asked me to perfect. And the longer I looked at yours, the less things added up.”  “This has been troubling you for a very long time, then,” God said finally. [...] “You don’t get your power from Dominicus,” said Augustine. “It gets its power from you. There’s no exchange involved, no symbiosis. You draw nothing from the system. It relies on you entirely, as we all know. You’re God, John. But—as the Edenites are fond of pointing out—you were once a man. So whither that transition? Where does your power come from? Even if the Resurrection had been the greatest thanergy bloom ever triggered, it would drain away over time. And then Mercy said to me—in a moment of true Mercy vileness—she said, What is God afraid of? [...] I never wanted to believe it when she said, What if he didn’t really put down A.L.? And then—What if he couldn’t put down A.L.?” (HtN, ch. 51)

So: they knew that John didn’t have a tangible power source; and lyctorhood was the only kind of internal furnace they know about. Ergo: yes, they suspected that John had lied about perfect Lyctorhood. He made them kill their cavs. 10 000 years of guilt, literally chasing them across the universe, and for what? For whom?

What kind of God demands such a sacrifice? I think that's one of the central questions of these books. What kind of God demands it? (compare the Binding of Isaac - John) But also: What kind of God punishes it? (compare the Mark of Cain - the Resurrection Beasts) 

But - 

“Why would one of the Emperor’s Lyctors hate him?” “Hate him?” The voice of the girl whom Gideon had known as Dulcinea rose, high and intent. “Hate him? I have loved that man for ten thousand years. We all loved him, every one of us. We worshipped him like a king. Like a god! Like a brother.” (GtN, ch. 35)

They are Believers losing their Faith. They’re questioning the entire foundation of his divinity. Augustine and Mercy are still asking, still hoping that they're wrong - “All that effort to break open the Locked Tomb,” said Augustine, “only to have the answer we wanted wander up in the form of one dead teenager flaunting your genes." - but crucially, they are also lovers going through a messy divorce. You know, when people who once loved each other and were presumably capable of communication are suddenly throwing plates at each other? “Come, swear your loyalty, my son—my brother—beloved—Lyctor—saint.” 

Possibly what Tazmuir is saying is, they're the same picture. But that might be conjecture. 

(edited to add in links to other theory posts. call it the director's cut)

On the Mechanics of Lyctorhood

I want to preface this by saying this is a long, long post that is going to delve deep into lyctorhood, skim the surface of physics and biology, and fully embrace conjecture! If I'm right about all this then I'm very happy, but I also cannot wait to be disproven in Alecto the Ninth.

Thanergy

Thanergy is the product of the decay of thalergy: this is the principle that underpins all of necromancy. All necromantic adepts are capable of manipulating both thalergy and thanergy, but necromancy is shown to be reliant on thanergy specifically, and is most geared toward utilising thanergy as a result.

“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.” [Harrow the Ninth]

As shown by @pokkop15 in this post the term thanergy is almost certainly derived from Thanatos, the Greek God of Death, but thalergy's origins are more murky: likely candidates are thaleros (a greek word that means lively), Thalia (the muse of Festivity whose name also means blooming), or Thalassa (divine personification of the sea in greek mythology, which would fit considering how life is very associated with saltwater in TLT).

The Eightfold Word: What is Lyctorhood?

According to the resident tall glass of skank and questionably reliable narrator, Ianthe Tridentarius, the Eightfold Word is composed of the following steps:

Preserve the soul, with memory and intellect intact.

Analyse it—understand its structure, its shape.

Remove and absorb it: take it into yourself without consuming it in the process.

Fix it in place so it can’t deteriorate.

Incorporate it: find a way to make the soul part of yourself without being overwhelmed.

Consume the flesh [NOTE: Ianthe says 'a drop of blood is enough to ground you', which to me indicates that this step serves as a way to ground the incorporated soul into the lyctor's body, by having material from the soul's original body. This is very significant.]

Reconstruction—making spirit and flesh work together the way they used to, in the new body.

Hook up the cables and get the power flowing.

Lyctorhood seemingly works by providing the necromancer with, among other things, a near limitless reserve of thanergy that is presumably derived from the incorporated soul once the power is flowing: as we see with Cytherea healing herself, lyctors are either unable to generate thalergy—or their ability to do so is lessened in comparison to their ability to generate thanergy—and must instead siphon it from external sources when their own thalergy is depleted.

In Nona the Ninth we are introduced to Palamedes' conception of Lyctorhood in terms of Lysis: the Lyctorhood we are most familiar with is Petty Lysis, where only one of the components dies, while Grand Lysis is a mutual death—a gravitational singularity creating something new, as is the case with Paul. Lysis is a term used in biology that refers to 'the breaking down of the membrane of a cell', which as I've explored before

In the series, Lyctorhood is spoken of in terms of fire: there are repeated references to Gideon's soul being made the furnace of [Harrow's] Lyctorhood and serving as a furnace of power, Mercymorn refers to her cavalier's mortal soul burning in her chest, John says that the risk posed by fully incorporating Alecto into himself completely would be that he'd probably burn to death, and Paul's birth results in Camilla's body being consumed by flames. This leads us on to how lyctorhood is also characterised as consumption: eating the cavalier, absorbing their soul, burning it for fuel.

What is the mechanism behind the thanergetic generation of lyctorhood?

Lyctorhood is barbaric, it is cannibalism, it is taking another and burning them in yourself for power. But that raises the question of where that power comes from. By the way that thalergy/thanergy are spoken of with terms reminiscent of radiation, coupled with how lyctorhood is rendered through metaphors and imagery related to fire and/or consumption, it would seem that the logical conclusion behind this is that the soul is being subject to continual thanergetic fission.

The terminology Tamsyn uses is something that lends credence to this: nuclear fission 'occurs when a neutron slams into a larger atom, forcing it to excite and split into two smaller atoms—also known as fission products'. Sudden, sharp decay/conversion of thalergy into thanergy could be the mechanism behind thanergetic fission, as we see with Harrow's description of apopneumatic shock and how the burst of thanergetic energy (a neutron slamming into a larger atom, forcing it to excite) is sufficient to prevent liminal osmosis from taking place: "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."

But from what we know of the nature of the thanergy, thalergy, and the soul, this explanation makes no sense. Thanergy is emitted by thalergy decay, but souls in of themselves are not a source of thalergy nor thanergy, as shown by Anastasia's tripod principle: “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]

Going back to the nuclear terminology, I'm going to cut straight to the core of this theory: the mechanism behind the thanergetic generation of lyctorhood is thanergetic fusion.

What is thanergetic fusion?

The term I use here is a misnomer, because a more accurate term would be pneumatic fusion, considering how Tamsyn Muir is fond of using the Greek pneuma to refer to the soul: nuclear fusion 'is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei combine to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles'.

A nucleus in physics is 'the positively charged central core of an atom, consisting of protons and neutrons and containing nearly all its mass', while in biology the term refers to 'a dense organelle present in most eukaryotic cells, typically a single rounded structure bounded by a double membrane, containing the genetic material'. Palamedes uses the term lysis for Lyctorhood, which as you'll recall refers to the disintegration of the cell membrane, thus exposing it's innards: such as the nucleus. The soul is the nucleus.

Nuclear fusion involves combining two or more atomic nuclei to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles: the difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of energy; as a rule of thumb the fusion of lighter nuclei releases energy, making it an exothermic process, while the fusion of heavier nuclei results in energy being retained by the product nucleons, and thus the resulting reaction is endothermic. An exothermic reactions releases heat, causing the temperature of the immediate surroundings to rise, while an endothermic one absorbs heat and cools the surroundings.

In the context of this nuclear fusion explanation of Lyctorhood, an exothermic (exothanergetic) reaction releases thanergy while an endothermic (endothanergetic) reaction absorbs thanergy: the fusion of lighter souls release thanergy, the fusion of heavier souls absorbs it.

What are the implications behind these mechanics?

The question that comes to mind is what is a heavier soul? The answer, once again, lies in physics: "The heaviest atomic nuclei are created in nuclear reactions that combine two other nuclei of unequal size into one; roughly, the more unequal the two nuclei in terms of mass, the greater the possibility that the two react." [Wikipedia]

How does John explain the soul of a planet to Harrow?

John: “And what has a soul?” Harrow: “Anything with a thalergetic complexity significant enough to … have a soul. So, humanity.” [...] Harrow: “A planet’s a ball of dust. Its thalergy comes from the accumulation of microbial life. You can’t consider it one coherent system.” John: “Call it a communal soul. What’s a human being, other than a sack of microbial life?

Planets' souls are communal, formed from the thalergetic complexity of an entire world coalescing into a nuclei that lies at its heart, heavy in a way a human soul is not: a human soul is light, a planet's soul is heavy. In other words, Alecto is a heavy nuclei and John is a light nuclei, with the resultant nuclei of their combination forming something heavier than either: an endothanergetic reaction.

Moving back to thanergetic fission and the apopneumatic shock of a violent death, we can now examine what happens when John becomes God:

He becomes aware of Alecto when Cristabel kills herself in front of him.

Now aware of Alecto, he creates a massive flood of thanergy by inciting the violent deaths of millions, possibly billions, through the detonation of nuclear devices.

Empowered by the mass thanergetic fission caused by an untold number of apopneumatic shocks, 'I became a demigod', he finishes off the rest.

He kills Alecto, takes her soul in his hands, and attempts to become one with her.

He almost fails, and during this flawed process is forced to split her soul between his body and another, hiding himself in her and herself in him.

Fusion still occurs, this reaction is endothanergetic and allows him to near absorb a massive amount of thanergy in one sitting: "And when we were together … once the shaman had claimed the sun … I became God."

He violently kills the rest of the planets in the system, flipping them and creating a surplus of thanergy, a process of large-scale energy creation and transferall: to quote Ianthe once again, "You see, my field has always been energy transferral … large-scale energy transferral. Resurrection theory."

What this all means is that the secret behind the Resurrection is that John's Lyctorhood works fundamentally differently to that of his Saints, because his is endothanergetic where theirs is exothanergetic, a reaction between a heavy and a lighter nuclei.

Not only is it endothanergetic instead of exothanergetic, it generates a different form of energy. Emperor John Gaius produces thalergy.

Resurrection Theory

As we know from Anastasia's tripod principle, thalergy alone cannot make life, a soul is also needed—meaning that the inverse is true, in that a soul alone cannot make life, thalergy is needed; In order for John to have performed the Resurrection, he would have needed to imbue bodies with both their soul and thalergy to recreate the life he took in the first place. Logically, this means that John would have to be able to create thalergy. John is the only being in the universe who is able to generate thalergy, namely via the continual fusion reaction between a heavy soul and a light soul, also known as Alecto and himself, to produce it.

Let us return to what Augustine says of the nature of his power: “You don’t get your power from Dominicus,” said Augustine. “It gets its power from you. There’s no exchange involved, no symbiosis. You draw nothing from the system. It relies on you entirely, as we all know. You’re God, John. But—as the Edenites are fond of pointing out—you were once a man. So whither that transition? Where does your power come from? Even if the Resurrection had been the greatest thanergy bloom ever triggered, it would drain away over time.”

John is the source of fresh thanergy in the system: he produces thalergy, which he can decay into thanergy. The thanergy in the system is finite, it would drain away after enough time, but his heavy and light soul reaction producing thalergy that can then be decayed into thanergy allows for new thanergy to be introduced into the system; John's necromancy's unique in that it relies on the rapid creation of thanergy via accelerated thalergetic decay, resulting in thanergetic fission.

Why do I say thanergetic fission? Becase it could explain why his necromancy is shown to manifest as large amounts of light, because what does thanergetic fission result in? We see when Palamedes utilises the rapid thanergetic fission of his thanergy reserves to blow up in Cytherea's face:

The sickroom exploded into white fire, and the bonds pinning Gideon snapped. She fell hard against the wall and spun, drunkenly, lurching back down the corridor as Palamedes Sextus made everything burn. There was no heat, but Gideon sprinted away from that cold white death without bothering to spare a glance behind as though flames were licking at her heels.

White light that gives off no heat. What happens when John reassembles himself?

White light. It bleached the insides of your nose and the back of your throat. It hurt coming out your ears. It bled out your eyeballs. It wasn’t a flash of light, more … a suddenness; when it was gone—as though it hadn’t even existed, but had been a luminous hallucination—time stopped.

Speaking of that scene, it is likely the most definitive proof we see that John produces thalergy, because there is no way for his body to function without thalergy, and thanergy cannot be converted to thalergy (as far as we know). That thalergy has to come from somewhere. John, the Resurrector, is able to create thalergy.

Do you know where else we see what is explicitly called a form of resurrection? The endothanergetic reaction that created Harrowhark Nonagesimus: "My parents gassed fifty-four infants, eighty-one children, and sixty-five teenagers, and harnessed that thanergy bloom to conceive me. My mother used the resultant power to modify her ovum on a chromosomal level, so thanergy ignition wouldn’t compromise the embryo. She did this so I would be a necromancer." [Harrow the Ninth]

A large amount of thanergy is generated within an instant by closely-timed apopneumatic shocks caused by sudden death via what Harrow specifically names as nerve gas [Gideon the Ninth]. This brings to mind thanergetic fission as opposed to fusion, due to the fact it relies on thanergy, but the key detail here lies in two factors: the unequal size of the nuclei (souls) involved here, and the fact these souls are shown to have been manipulated.

The souls—emphasis on souls, as opposed to thanergy—of a large amount of children, of varying ages, are forcibly prevented from passing to the River via liminal osmosis due to the sheer amount of thanergy involved, and they are tied to Harrow's soul, as shown by Abigail commenting on her unique spiritual signature: "I’ve counted up to one hundred and fifty signatures contributing to you, and there’s more—they’re stamps rather than complete revenants, of course, which means their spirits were manipulated to leave marks on you in some way, which is fascinating if it means…"

What is a planet's soul? A communal one, the thalergy complexity of a world. What is Harrow's soul? A communal one, exactly two hundred sons and daughters of her House, manipulated to be stamped on her original one. I cannot speak of what this means, but it means that Harrow's soul is naturally heavier than John's: a nuclei formed from two hundred others.

Conclusions

Lyctorhood is nuclear fusion, with souls as the nuclei: the combination of souls produces thanergy as a byproduct of the process of forming a new nuclei; Souls are not a perpetual energy source, and are unable to generate thanergy or thalergy on their own, it is the combination of them that creates thanergy or thalergy.

Petty Lysis, the Lyctorhood of the Saints, is an exothanergetic reaction which produces thanergy as the two souls involved are melded over untold years: it is not a one-way consumption, it is a fusion, but the power transferral does only go one way, due to the fact it is not a mutual death. Grand Lysis is a more complete, and thus powerful, version of this reaction wherein the two nuclei are fully combined within an instant, as opposed to gradually combined.

John's joining with Alecto works on the same fusion principle of Lyctorhood, but the difference lies in the nature of the reaction at the heart of it: he is endothanergetic and produces thalergy as opposed to thanergy, which he can subsequently decay into thanergy to fuel his necromancy. The Resurrection was made possible by him generating thanergy.

Final Note:

I want to point out something before anyone else can, and that is the fact Lyctors could be interpreted as working on pneumatic fission as opposed to fusion: meaning that the constituent souls are split to produce power, and that the exothanergetic and endothanergetic reactions would be reversed—John exothanergetic instead of endothanergetic, and vice versa with Petty Lyctors, which explains why they appear to be thanergy voids: they absorb all thanergy in their surroundings.

I considered this while writing this theory, but ultimately I found that fusion seemed more likel. Alternatively, both Paul and John are examples of pneumatic fusion due to their more complete Lyctorhood while the Petty Lyctors are working on pneumatic fission. I prefer the idea that all Lyctorhood is pneumatic fusion, which is why I ultimately leaned into that interpretation in this post.

Thank you for reading.

In Defense of Loveday Heptane

My special interest in the lyctoral cavaliers knows no bounds. I have developed a particular interest in Loveday Heptane: a creature so reviled that God himself had to coerce Mercy and Augustine into eulogizing her a full myriad after her death... and he doesn't have anything kind to say himself. When even the guy who nuked a planet thinks you're a piece of work, you must be something REALLY special.

This begs the question: Did Loveday Heptane, like... eat a baby or something?! Is she evil incarnate? What the heck did she do?!

Reader, I have some thoughts.

Loveday never speaks anywhere in the text. All the details about her are second-hand (some might even say third-hand: her own necromancer only mentions her ONCE, and she doesn't give us much). Figuring her out requires a deep dive into contextual evidence, human psychology, and marvelous leaps of misplaced intuition.

Lucky for other cavalier-obsessed folks, I am deranged and up for the challenge! Join me beyond the cut for a very long post about grief, caregiving, and why literally every bad thing in this series is Cristabel's fault! Onward! (Heads Up: this is a LONG post, even for me!)

First Gen vs Second Gen Disciples

I think it's common for people to perceive ancient history as a monolith. When many people think about "Ancient Greece" for example, they're lumping together 1,000 years of history. Likewise, the pre-lyctorhood period spanned a minimum of 200 years from beginning to end.

For context, that's a little less than all of colonial American history. It constitutes multiple human lifetimes. A LOT of cultural shifts took place in that period. The difference between a "first gen" Canaan house disciple (for our purposes, any disciple present on Earth pre-resurrection, which may or may not include Ulysses and Titania) and a "second gen disciple (for our purposes, born in the Houses) is massive. First gen disciples were resurrected. They were whole, adult humans, without complete memories. They contributed to the culture and religious practices in the houses. We can assume they created the first necromantic theorems. Not only that, but they were always together. As far as they are aware, they did not exist in any other context - no parents, no families, no other support structure. They had each other, period. Second gen disciples were born. They had parents and families prior to their time at Canaan house - they came from a context beyond John and Canaan house. They grew up under the cultural and religious norms established by the first gen disciples. So much of what the first genners established from scratch was axiom to the second genners - the way things had always been for them. They all arrived at Canaan house as outsiders, chosen for skills or aptitude as the field of necromancy progressed. Most importantly: first gen disciples met John as a man and centered him as God. Second gen disciples met him as God and had to reconcile that he really was just a man. I do believe he was CLOSER to a man, pre-lyctorhood. He could still travel to the houses then. He was still and accessible, flesh and blood human. Even so, I find it hard to believe that a second gen disciple could stand before God without feeling a little starstruck. The power imbalance SEEMED greater, even if it wasn't.

All that said, I think it's essential to acknowledge that Mercy, Cristabel, Augustine and Alfred were all first gen disciples. In contrast, Loveday and Cytherea were both second gen - the LAST second gen lyctors to arrive at Canaan house, at that. There could have been a hundred years between Cyrus and Valancy's arrival and Cytherea and Loveday's. The first gen disciples had been palling around, creating a society, for nearly 200 years before those two were even born.

That gap mattered. Even posthumously, Augustine called Cytherea "Little Cyth." She was always and forever the little sister, even after she outlived three lyctors (plus Anastasia). Think about Mercy calling Harrow and Ianthe infants. Yes, the scale is a little different, but Cytherea and Loveday would have arrived with SO MUCH LESS life experience than the oldest old people.

Keep this all in mind as we move forward.

Cytherea and the Miracle at Rhodes

I believe that Cytherea's specialist Seventh house knowledge was essential to the completion of the eightfold word "megatheorem" and unlocking lyctorhood... and all roads to this discovery lead to, well... Rhodes.

What was The Miracle at Rhodes? I do not believe it was Cytherea herself, but her work. John says he wanted to remain a disinterested party: he didn't want to see the woman. In fact, he had to have it confirmed that the woman was even a necromancer.

What are the necromantic specialties on the Seventh? There's puppeting - but that would NOT be interesting to John. That was literally the first necromantic miracle pre-resurrection.

The other Seventh house specialty is the creation of the beguiling corpse and other funerary and preservation magic.

I consider Cytherea to be a pseudo-reliable narrator. I believe her when she claims she never lied. In GtN, she tells Gideon that her greatest fear - the fear that propelled her to go to Canaan house at all - was the fear of dying, being locked away, and being forgotten. It tracks that her personal necromantic work might have centered on creating beautiful, incorruptible corpses - cadavers lovely and perfect enough to be kept on display in glass coffins, where the dead would not be forgotten.

Perhaps by... fixing a soul fragment in place so it couldn't deteriorate, allowing the essence of the deceased to remain? Something with MAJOR applications for a certain megatheorem? Something like "Step four: fix [the soul] in place so it can't deteriorate" - the portion of the eightfold discovered in Cytherea and Loveday's lyctoral lab?

(I also want to take a moment to acknowledge that the two types of necromancy that John does not condone, beguiling corpsehood and siphoning, were keys to lyctorhood. Hmmm hmmm hmmmmm)

Either John or someone with him (Cassy? Anastasia?) could have recognized how Cytherea's expertise would be essential to the work at Canaan house. Either John decided to invite Cytherea, or he was coerced into extending the invitation so the disciples could gain access to the mind behind the miracle.

As I've asked before...is an invitation from God ever really an invitation? What would it have meant to say no to the emperor? Cyth seems to have thought that going was fully her decision, but I wonder about the extent to which she really felt she had a choice.

Ultimately, it was "the right" choice. The theorem wasn't complete until Cyth and Loveday arrived.

Canaan House and Grief as a Context

Not only did Cytherea and Loveday arrive as second-generation disciples, forced to leave family, culture, and lives behind, but they were also the first pair we know of who were grieving before they arrived. They were the only duo for whom arrival at Canaan House always meant goodbye.

Cytherea came to Canaan house to die. She was not doing well when she arrived - both John and Augustine describe being surprised by just how close to death she was when they met. Choosing to study under the emperor was a choice to die as brilliant AND beautiful, as someone too important to lock away in a grave for all eternity. I doubt Cytherea realized the others were working on immortality before she arrived.

She was sick. She expected to get sicker. None of the other disciples could "do anything for her" at the time (per Augustine in HtN).

I am reminded of the summons from the emperor at the beginning of GtN: "no retainers, no attendants, no domestics." Assuming there was no formal cavaliership in the early empire, Cyth would have been tasked with bringing along a single companion. For Cyth, this wasn't a case of "which of my closest friends do I pick to go and meet God?" or "Which nurse at Rhodes do I like the best?" This was a question of "who is going to be at my bedside holding my hand when I die?"

I do not think she made that choice lightly.

We don't know who Loveday was to her. A lover? A lady's maid? A nurse? A best friend? Perhaps some proto-cavalier with many duties of care? What's important to me is that she was someone who Cytherea was willing to ask to be with her at the end. What's even more important to me is that Loveday said yes, even though it meant giving up a LOT.

Being a caretaker is hard. Watching someone you love die is agonizing. I have done both, and I rate it a big 0/10 stars. The only person who has it harder is the person who is dying. It's kind of an unwritten rule of active grief that you do NOT ask the person who is dying to comfort YOU about THEIR death.

Now, remember all that seemingly irrelevant detail about first gen vs second gen disciples? About how strange and isolating it would be for second gen disciples? About everything they'd have to leave behind?

Here we have Loveday, the final second gen proto-cavalier. She's not the special one - that's Cyth. Everyone gathered to meet Cytherea: the woman, the miracle worker. Loveday was there for Cyth, period. Nobody is there for Loveday.

in GtN, Cytherea offers Gideon the most authentic smile when she calls herself "the fakest-ass cavalier who ever faked." It felt very much like she'd seen this behavior before. Did Loveday feel like an impostor? Was she being handed a rapier and being asked to compete with cavaliers with a century or more of sword fighting experience? Even if she could fight, she certainly felt like an outsider among God's best and brightest.

Furthermore, is she supposed to go to these intimidating members of god's inner circle for comfort as she navigates the imminent death of the person she loves most in the world? The one person who wasn't part of a 200-year old clique was the one person she couldn't go to for comfort. That's LONELY. At least on the Seventh there would have been a little respite - family members, friends, someone to talk to. And Loveday would have KNOWN Cytherea - known how well she could perform wellness, known that she was "good at seeming," known that she was going to push herself and make it seem effortless until the end.

What do you think happened when Cytherea returned to their quarters at the end of a long day of being smart and charming and polished in public? Who would have been there to help her when there were no longer eyes on her, and she could finally admit she was exhausted and in agony? Loveday was, presumably, her "safe person" - the one who saw the worst of her and her illness. Did Loveday ever get her at her best?

I assume Loveday didn't want her to go at all, but couldn't begrudge her the ending she wanted. I wonder if, from Loveday's perspective, "[she] had the choice to stop." In John's words, "Loveday brought [Cytherea] in, looking as though she wanted every one of us beaten to death." Anger is a stage of grief, and Loveday was dealing with more than grief over Cytherea's imminent death. She was losing everything she knew. As Cytherea's caretaker, she was about to lose a major part of her identity, too.

And what's the stage of grief after anger? Bargaining - the part of grief in which you "yell at God." I imagine that might have gone a little differently when God was literally standing there, picking biscuit detritus out of his teeth.

Imagine looking god himself in the eye, asking for help, for a cure for the brilliant, hilarious, kind, beautiful person you love - a person he claims to value as a friend and collaborator - and getting a pat on the head. I'm pretty sure that would test anyone's faith.

...not even to mention the fact that a tangible form of immortality was on the line, and they were close.

Mercy, Augustine, and John: Reliable Narrators?

"I will say this," said Mercy presently, acting as though Augustine had never said a word. "I NEVER mourned for Loveday Heptane. She did one good thing with her life, and she knew it."

Those be fighting words, Mercymorn! Augustine does not disagree with her or try to come to Loveday's defense - not even to be contrary and get on her nerves. Nor does John.

I would like to argue that John, Mercy, and Augustine are not the most reliable narrators, however. Just a few pages before the eulogies, John is misremembering the circumstances surrounding Cytherea's arrival. We've also seen them claim, carte blanche, that everyone hated Alecto and wanted her gone. We know that's bullshit from Pyrrha in Nona. We also come to learn that Anastasia likely felt differently, too.

This suggests to me that Loveday probably didn't eat a baby. We only know for certain that Mercy, John, and Augustine weren't fans, with Mercy being the most outspoken about her feelings.

Now, we got to spend an entire novel with Mercymorn and learn about what made her tick. I tend to believe that "I didn't like this person" is synonymous with "this person did something to Cristabel."

It All Comes Back to Cristabel Oct

Okay, so you're Loveday Heptane. The person you love most is dying painfully, and you are actively grieving. You're also hanging out in a big ol' castle with God. As Cyth's illness progresses and the megatheorem fails to materialize, your grief continues to multiply. You reach the bargaining stage. You are on your knees, begging God to do something, do more, do better. God does not do anything, let alone more or better. God apologizes and asks if anybody wants to play Scrabble on Game Night.

Could you blame Loveday for getting angry at God? For questioning everything she believed? For questioning everything going on at Canaan house, and casting doubt? Maybe she even tried to strangle John! Who knows!

Do you know who would see that desperate, hungry, angry faithlessness and strike? I'll give you one guess.

That's right! Cristabel "suicidal golden retriever with self-inflicted brain damage" Oct!

She's here, telling you why you're wrong, and why your suffering is actually nothing in the scheme of the work! She's here, telling you that God is good, actually! That you just can't see the bigger picture! Here, I'll shove a tract under your bedroom door! I'll let you know I'm praying for you whenever I pass you in the halls! Do you want to pray about it? Do you want to fast about it? Do you wanna do a bunch of inane, ritualistic shit about it and then come around to loving God again?!?! Huh? Huh? Do ya? Do ya?

COULD YOU BLAME LOVEDAY IF SHE DID, IN FACT, PUNCH HER IN THE FACE?

Now, I'm not saying she did that, but I think she would have been well within her rights to tell the nun to politely fuck off.

Anyway, if you have beef with Cristabel, you have beef with both Mercy and Alfred. If you have beef with Alfred, you have beef with Augustine. If you have beef with all of God's favorite toys, and you're being an angry heretic in his halls, you probably also have some beef with God, whether or not you tried to strangle him.

Candor and Alien Grief

Remember, THE FIRST GEN DISCIPLES HAVE NO MEMORY OF EXPERIENCING GRIEF! They have been living safely with God, with no fear of death, for hundreds of years! Before lyctorhood, loss was an alien concept for them. Every single person they loved (their "brothers and sisters") was immortal and living in a castle on their very own private planet! It was like the Garden of Eden!

Loveday and Cytherea are outsiders - the only two who honestly know what's coming.

To tell the truth, I don't think Loveday had to have kicked Cristabel's ass to get on Mercymorn's shitlist. I think this angry, doubtful, grieving, exhausted caretaker only had to observe Cristabel and Alfred's suicides (and Mercy and Augustine's ascensions) and have an honest opinion about it a little too soon.

It needn't even have been malicious. She could have merely whispered "that was shitty," within earshot before the bodies were cold.

She could have turned to Cytherea and promised she would NEVER do what Alfred and Cristabel had done - that it would always be their choice together, no secrets.

To Mercy, being a new denizen in the world of absolute grief, that might have been enough to put Loveday on the shit list for 10,000 years. How DARE she say anything about Cristabel now that she was gone? How DARE she acknowledge what, 10,000 years later, Mercy still could not acknowledge herself?

And remember: Cytherea was the last saint to ascend. We don't know how long it was between Mercy's ascension and Cytherea's. Loveday was the last, stubborn cavalier in the halls of Canaan House - a living, breathing reminder of what everyone else had already lost. It would be easy to resent her. She was the proof, however temporary, that it was possible to say no.

What we do know, from Cytherea herself, was that the choice was 100% mutual. She says "WE thought it would make me live." They waited until Cytherea was on her deathbed and made the decision together. Cytherea and Loveday got something Mercy never got.

All things considered, I might have hated her, too.

Who Was Loveday Heptane?

Maybe Loveday was angry but civil.

Maybe she had a bad attitude and never made friends.

Or maybe nobody thought about her twice until they were grieving themselves and it became too easy to make her an enemy for telling the truth.

We don't know who Loveday was in life, and the odds are good that we never will. She only survived as the death of light - the gleam in a monster's eyes.

But she was also the companion who was brave enough to accompany her necromancer to the grave. She was probably the person who filled Cytherea's lab with stunning, dreamy, pastoral frescoes, cozy cushions, and embroidered quilts, so she'd never have to know discomfort. She was the last cavalier standing when the pressure was high and mounting and did not give in until she didn't have a choice.

Augustine tells us that Cytherea loved unguardedly. She was a patient soul who loved the unlovable. And she loved Loveday Heptane: the good, bad, and ugly.

Somehow, all things considered, I can't help but love her, too.

okay i was thinking about that post you made about what random house citizens are thinking and you know what would seem so suspicious? the state of the corpses (or lack thereof) that the houses receive back. the missing bodies, the cremated remains, the gruesome ones seemingly attacked by a monster, or perhaps even most suspicious, one body killed by a rapier to the thought. like im sure at least some of this info leaks to the general public and im sure to theories are intense.

Fourth House Tisis Reps getting Jeannemary "crucified on a bed" Chatur and Baron Isaac "colander boy" Tettares's bodies back like:

like they'd be used to getting fucked up and weird remains back, sure, but from the First House?? from the Lyctor trials?????

Imagine being the poor Third House guy who has to break the news that Ianthe's ascended but Coronabeth, the Crown Princess and heir is in fact dead but no you're not actually going to get any remains oh why? there was nothing to salvage :) so sorry for the inconvenience. you just KNOW they had a week of mourning. you just KNOW it was the topic of choice at every party for MONTHS. crazy theories. most people do believe she got eaten and are enthusiastic abt telling you.

Hi Trentham officials :) here's Lieutenant Dyas's remains. mhmm. yes, she did get turned inside out, what a bummer. We Could Not Recover Captain Deuteros's Remains. Everyone running the mile for the next fortnight is like "i mean yeah, judith was a chickenshit, stuck up nepo baby *spits* but uh, how can there have been NOTHING TO RECOVER??"

Would not wanna be the person who has to write down "mysterious post-mortem incision to large intestine" on Abigail's autopsy report. Yeah, no clue what happened at the First House but i do think it was a kind of Jigsaw Trap and unfortunately us Fivers are fucking weaksauce competitors who die first and get used as CHESTS

We already vaguely know abt the Sixth's response to getting pieces of a shattered skeleton and Cam's empty coffin (as fuckin if she wouldn't leave an equally dope corpse) (also shout out to whatever psychometrist studied Pal's bone fragments for a few hours before looking up and having to say that the explosion came from inside the Palamedes, must've been a tough gig, dude), but now i am thinking abt Rhodes recieving two urns and also this severed head :). that sucks. pressing F to pay respects to Mia and the kids, they deserved better than that.

truly believe the Eighth house had a distinct crisis of faith after recieving Colum and Silas's bodies. what the fuck else could you do. Silas was very clearly stabbed with Colum's sword and Colum has no eyes now. That does not bode well at all.

This TLT character should have been at the club, that TLT character should have been at the club...

These people are feudal nobility who practice semi-arranged marriages in their early 20s. Abigail Pent, who at age 17 dumped her boyfriend at a ball and then spent a decade in higher education honestly doesn't get enough credit.

The Nine Houses must be absolutely terrifying to fight.

And not just because their invasions start with a drop ship full of pimply 14 year olds inexplicably armed with zweihanders whose entire remit is to cause a mass casualty event for necromantic purposes...

We're mostly introduced to the schools of necromancy at the beginning of GTN, before we have broader context beyond "ooh, new magic system." But if you think about it in light of what we later learn about the Cohort:

Second House: they can literally drain your life force to power up their cavaliers. "It’s said they all die screaming"

Third House: that pile of corpses in no man's land? They're being used as a power up. Also, someone's just rearranged your face; your arse is on backwards.

Fourth House: that pile of corpses in no man's land? They're bombs now. And if you corner a Fourth House necro, they're a bomb too!

Fifth House: at best, they're the weird technicians for the Houses' horrifying blood and monolith based FTL system. At worst, it doesn't matter if you kill yourself to avoid capture or if you hold out under interrogation until you expire, they can still interrogate your ghost.

Sixth House: drop a cigarette or shed a hair on a clandestine operation? These guys now know your age, shoe size, and approximate location. They know what you had for breakfast. They know what you held in the last 12 hours.

Seventh House: that pile of corpses in no man's land? They're armed and marching on you now.

Eigth House: why is he glowing? WHY IS HE GLOWING?!

Ninth House: the guy next to you's bones just became an IED.

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ok so I'm obsessed tonight about THIS John&Gideon parallel here:

NtN John 1:20 ->

HtN ch 48 ->

John and Gideon both begging and pleading to be USED, to be taken, to be a conduit for greater things. and this was originally going to be a "girls when they are like their father" kind of post but the thing is, what immediately follows each quoted section is where Gideon DIVERGES from John. John begs to be used, and when there is no answer he lashes out. he gives up

he *lets go*, he lashes out, he hurts her, framing the rest of this sequence like it's NOT his fault when it 100%, absolutley definitely IS. "one little nuke" like there even is such a thing. and nefarious use of the passive voice here, like all these nukes just... happened, like oh well. SAM sites opening up like wildflowers and not humans making decisions. he's throwing in the towel!! nukes into nukes into nukes, like it wasn't his fault the first one fired!!!!

which is UNLIKE, of course, Gideon, who when Harrow did not come back, did NOT lash out. she did not give up, instead reaffirming her devotion and drive to protect Harrow, even when she wasn't there. even if Harrow may never come back. even if she still felt thrown away and betrayed.

and yknow, I've posted before about how Gideon's suicidal devotion to Harrow is bad for her and it truly is SO bad for her but also like. she is already dead here. anyway Gideon Nav is her father's daughter in so many ways but she is not like him in this!!! she is BETTER!!!! like what if John didn't give up. what if in his rage and pain and grief he was able to do what his daughter did. what if he said ok, beloved, I'll keep the home fires burning. what if he let the trillionares go. always your sword. whenever you're ready.

anyway

everyone in the fandom thinks gideon is lesbian jesus. but nobody understands, griddlehark is jesus! they’re jesus TOGETHER! see, when harrow was a child she was a prodigy prophesied to lead her people to salvation, just like *gunshot*