Coldfire Reread 2021: Black Sun Rising - Chapter 12

[alice_montrose]

Welcome to chapter 12 - and if you thought the previous chapters were info dump, well guess again. Fae info, evolution on Erna (with focus on rakh evolution), a detailed explanation from Ciani on how adepts See (and not just that)... and Senzei getting dumped to end it all. XD

Plot summary
Damien and Senzei visit the cathedral's archive, and Damien explains the evolution of the rakh - the part he knows about, anyway. They start plotting how to get into the rakhlands. Ciani despairs over the loss of her adeptitude, but Damien convinces her that they need to go together. And when Senzei tells his fiancée that he's going with them, Allesha breaks up with him - though more because of his obsession with the fae than because of the journey.

Quotes

• Damien shook his head. "No. Before that. As near as I can tell, it started right after the Sacrifice. But when Rakhi declared that this species was man's Erna equivalent - that but for man's presence, the species would have developed advanced intelligence and complex dexterity and eventually taken to the stars - the pace picked up alarmingly. Such is the power of the popular imagination."


• "Of course, now we understand what happened. Now we know that evolution is a very different process here than it was on Earth. Here, if trees grow taller, the next gaffi calves are born with longer necks. If lakes dry up, the offspring of underwater creatures are born with rudimentary lungs. Their need affects their DNA, in precise and perfect balance. To us, it seems wholly natural; several adepts have even managed to Work the process, giving us our un-Earth species. But we understand this all now, after centuries of observation. Imagine what it must have meant for our ancestors, to see this happening before their eyes!"


• "Wholesale slaughter of an innocent species. And the unwitting creation of a host of demons, as byproducts of man's most murderous instincts. All feeding on his hatred, all savoring his intolerance. Is it any wonder that human society nearly devolved into total chaos? That the rigid social patterns of the Revivalist movement seemed to be man's only hope of maintaining order?"


• "You don't understand," she whispered. "You can't possibly understand." A tear gathered under her lashes, but lacked the substance to free itself; her body was too dehydrated to spare that much fluid. "What it's like to live with the fae. Like adepts do. Zen thinks it's like a constant Seeing, but it's not that at all." Her brow furrowed as she struggled for words. "It's everywhere. In everything. There are so many different kinds that I don't even have names for them all, some so fleeting that they're just a spark out of the corner of your eye - a flash of light, of power - and then they're gone, before you can focus on them. And the currents flow through it all - everything! - not just around it, like he Sees, but permeating every substance on this planet, living and unliving, solid and illusory. Sometimes you'll be looking at the sky and the tidal-fae will flux for an instant and there it is - like a flaw in a crystal that suddenly catches the light, a spectrum of living color that's gone before you can even draw a breath. And there's music, too, so beautiful that it hurts just to listen to. Everywhere you look, everything you touch, it's all permeated with living fae - all in a constant state of flux, changing hourly as the different tides course through it. And the result is a world so rich, so wonderful, that it makes you shiver just to live in it ..." She drew in a shaky breath. "Do you understand? When I touch a stone, what I feel isn't hard rock - I feel everything that stone has been, everything it might become, I feel how it channels the earth-fae and how it interacts with the tidal fae and how the power of the sun will affect it, and what it will be when true night falls ... do you understand, Damien? That bit of rock is alive alive - everything is alive to us, even the air we breathe - only now-" She coughed raggedly, and he could hear the tears come into her voice. "Don't you see? That's what they took! It's all dead now. I look around, and all I see are corpses. A universe of corpses. Like everything I see is sculpted out of rotting meat ... except it's not even rotting; there's life in corruption, you know, even carrion has its own special music ... and here there's nothing. Nothing! I touch this bed -" and she grasped the bedframe with her free hand, and squeezed it until her knuckles were white with the pressure, "- and all I feel ... gods, there's no life in it ... can you understand? It wasn't me they drained, it was the whole of my world!"


• "Thus speaks the guardian of peace."
  "There's nothing in my Order's charter about peace. Or in the Church's Manifesto, for that matter. That's post-war PR."


• "I mean the fae, Zen. I mean your hunger for something you can never have. Don't you think I see how it eats at you? Don't you think I can feel it in you every time I'm with you? Every time we touch? Feel it in you every time we make love - how you wish it could be more, how you wish you could experience it on all those different levels - don't you think I can sense your frustration? Your distraction?"

No thoughts this time, because 1) it was that kind of a day, and 2) I'd like to hear from you all regarding all of this. I'll add my thoughts in the comments as well, as soon as I read the chapter with a fresh mind tomorrow morning and try to arrange them all in a coherent text.

Edit: Please read rekishi's very well-written comment on evolution below, it's fascinating and she deserves all the kudos and replies!

Link to the previous discussion post (imported from LiveJournal).

On Monday we conclude Book 1, with chapters 13 and 14.

Comments

[rekishi]

I have so many thought on the evolutionary aspect that I can't articulate them all even.

Here, if trees grow taller, the next gaffi calves are born with longer necks.

This is basically textbook Lamarck: the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also called the inheritance of acquired characteristics or more recently soft inheritance.

And it is very interesting that we see this here (and makes me wonder what exact evolutionary pressures Gerald put on the xandu to evolve them into unhorses and horses).

Another point: Erna has native mammals. Mammals! Even on Earth, milk-nursing evolved only once, as marsupials are also mammals and we share common ancestors.

This whole evolutionary aspect is *gestures* incredible. We don't even need to start on First Impression (though, that, too is....amazing, that man would evolve other species even subconsciously but not themselves in the same fashion).

Erna had supplied us with a competitor, and one cast in our own image. We had accepted it as such.

What's interesting here is that ecological niches exist in various places per continent. In a geologically as active planet as Erna, we would expect that continents come together and separate far more than would be the case on earth, so they probably have a higher exchange of species. So what happens in Earth is, usually that if two species inherit the same niche either they merge (think Neanderthal and Homo sapiens) or the one that is least fit for the niche vanishes eventually because their competitor has an advantage for the niche being occupied.

(In turn fun fact btw, if a niche is basically unoccupied by what would fit there, often another species evolves into that niche. Red foxes, for example, in Europe occupy a niche that in other places is occupied by mid-sized felines. These mid sized felines don't exit, lynxes are too big and wild cats are too small, so a popular meme is that foxes run cat software on dog hardware.)

Anyhow, on Erna post man-induced-evolution, you know who would be more fit for the 'human niche'? The rakh, because the fae respond to them naturally and don't need to be Worked in order to fulfill their need. And in turn, the rakh would not actually Work the fae but simply put their impressions on them and the fae would respond to that need (we see that nicely in the xandu later). In intelligent species like humans and rakh this shouldn't lead to hostilities, but considering the fact that human already don't get along with their neighbours of course it had to lead to genocide.

But it's a whole...I have no words for you, this whole thing as fantastical as it is, with Ciani's explanation of that fae it's not wholly off. (Though I have so many questions about that since we need to consider it a force of nature like gravity? Or is it something more akin to waveparticles of light which is also absolute but can be manipulated? Or something wholly different, because I know Ciani talks about living fae, but it's not actually alive as a living breathing organism would be, it's just the best analogy for it.)

We also need to talk about adeptitude but maybe we can do that once we've met Gerald properly.

[alice_montrose]

I was hoping you'd comment, because I was really interested in your perspective. What Friedman describes makes so much sense to me, only Ernan evolution is generation-to-generation rather than small adaptations over hundreds and even thousands of years.

Another point: Erna has native mammals.

They do say that Erna was the colonists'last option that was most similar to Earth, at some point later (was it in in WTNF?). And even so, it is so different from Earth!

I wonder how much research Friedman did on this stuff. Because to me it's amazing overall.

Speaking of Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens merging, a friend recently gave me this link to an article you might find interesting (if you have not read it). Leaving aside the title *cough cough*... I had a look at some of the papers it links to, also. It all made for an interesting Friday evening read.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210112-heres-what-sex-with-neanderthals-was-like

[rekishi]

I have so many feelings about evolution and science on Erna, it's not even funny. I understand that aspect of Gerald so well it's a bit scary. Given limitless time and resources, god what a feat.

They do say that Erna was the colonists'last option that was most similar to Earth, at some point later (was it in in WTNF?).

It's later in BSR as well, I've been reading ahead a bit. But that was due to the geologic activity on Erna, which is borderline acceptable only. Erna had been surveyed for 90 years (instead of 5-10 was was usual).

But mammals! I know, I know. But mammals are so...it's such a complex evolutionary system that led to mammals that we don't even know all of it yet! Look at platypus genetics alone! (yes, the platypus is a mammal)

Evolution is. Idk for some reason at least on earth it favours crabs, so likely our first contact with an alien species will probably be a hyperintelligent crab. So to have mammals in Erna is...unexpected. Erna should be populated by crabs. Hesseth should have an exoskeleton rather than fur.

Well of course we had sex with Neanderthals. And Denosovians. I'm actually more surprised that this still surprises people. Srsly, every year countless people are brought to the hospital because they, in some fit of sexual experimentation, put something up their arse or into their urethra that they can't retrieve anymore (remember kids, the intestine paristalsis and so does the urethra). Of course they would have sex with Neanderthals. To this day humans will approach anything that doesn't outright eat them and wonder if it will let them pet it. Heck, they will do it even if the thing will potentially eat them. Humans will pack bond with a roomba! Neanderthals ? Pfffft. The question was never: Would they have sex given the opportunity? (Opportunity being an overlap in time of occupation of the territory.) The question was always: Will their genetics be compatible? Answer: Yes.

That said, given all of the above it's almost more surprising the early colonists didn't take rakh as pets. Their genetics would likely not be compatible (Erna does convergent evolution) but so maybe that's a point there.

[alice_montrose]

Well, everyone needs hobbies. Gerald's are simply stranger and more complicated than the average human's. I'm still in awe he managed to bring about such great changes in just a few generations, back when he was still human. (This level of multitasking must've been insane!)

Remind me to poke you about cross-species reproduction when we get towards the middle of CoS and discuss the Iezu. *snickers*

Yeah, humans will have sex with anything given the opportunity, and that's a fact. ^^;;;

That said, given all of the above it's almost more surprising the early colonists didn't take rakh as pets.

We don't know that they didn't. Though I figure it would be mentioned, if this were a wide-spread practice. Or perhaps the author didn't plan this far ahead/found it was not relevant to the plot.

[rekishi]

I understand Gerald. Not the murderous aspect of him (although.....well, not for my own gain, let's put it that way), but the whole other thing. Gerald just want things to work neatly. In a way that is reliable. That's something I can get down with.

And to think he was at most 30 when he died is.... Yeah. Yeah, I know. That guy.

The Iezu are an interesting topic. I'm still trying to make sense of all that.

We don't know that they didn't. Though I figure it would be mentioned, if this were a wide-spread practice.

As a species, they would have been Impressed differently then though, at least if it had been widespread. And once Rakhi went along and said behold, a man-like being. Well.

[trobadora]

This is basically textbook Lamarck

Yes! I wonder if that's the origin of this worldbuilding - if Friedman at some point went "but what if it really worked that way?"

[rekishi]

Possibly, at least the evolutionary aspect of it. It's too close not to be considered an influence.

[rekishi]

"There's nothing in my Order's charter about peace. Or in the Church's Manifesto, for that matter. That's post-war PR."

Can we talk about this? Are we talking about Gannon's wars or are we talking about the Holy Crusade against the Forest?

Damien's Order (Gerald's order) is older than the wars, so how much was added to the holy books post-wars? And by whose hand?

[alice_montrose]

Can we talk about this?

We definitely can. And I think we are talking in general, if as I suspect the Order's charter was drafted by Gerald and there were not many alterations done to it over the centuries.

And if the Revival was the response to pulling them out of the dark ages, as it were, they would have needed warriors strong in the faith. It stands to reason that tradition would have been maintained, and likely the knights would have fought in the Holy Crusade.

But overall, if the purpose of the Church is to transform Erna on such a deep level that the fae no longer reacts to humans, then there's a reason there's nothing about peace. Because sorcerors and those of other faiths would not give up Working easily, would they? "Gods" would fight this, too. It would be messy.

My best guess, the post-war PR is post Holy Crusade, when they got their asses handed to them. Because, to quote Damien from an earlier chapter:
The Church once tried to master it by massive applications of faith - that was the last of the Great Wars, as I’m sure you know - but all it did was give them back their nightmares, with a dark religious gloss. Such power prefers the guarded secrets of the unconscious to the preferences of our conscious will.

[prettyarbitrary]

Much later, Jenseny is going to have a vision of the young knight who first carried Damien's Fire. And as I remember, he is a member of Damien's Order. So that was the Crusade against the Forest.

That also seems to be when Damien's Order died out in the east--and what killed them all.

(That young man tells Jenseny, "Some things are worth dying for" and it wasn't until this reread that I realized how much he paralleled Damien.)

[trobadora]

I thought it referred to the crusade against the Forest.

[shadaras]

The moment that really stands out to me in this chapter is when Senzei and Damien are talking about Calling a rakh and Ciani shows up. Even without her vast array of knowledge, the core personality trait that led her to be a loremaster still shows up when she asks "How do we know that?" and forces Damien to admit they were assuming things.

It's such a good moment, both for showing her strength and will, and for characterizing the men by their reactions: Senzei, who parrots things he's been told to try and comfort her with knowledge; and Damien, who looks more closely and admits fault and thereby gives greater comfort by acknowledging the wisdom of Ciani's question.

I also love Damien's pragmatism and sense of humor here, as they talk about Calling a rakh:
[Senzei] "It may not like us."
"We may not like it," Damien said dryly. "That's life."

[rekishi]

Well, a rakh would not be the only member of the party Damien doesn't exactly like.

(Making italics on the phone is a pita)

[shadaras]

This is very true! xD And iirc they get pretty lucky with the rakh they do find, since the antagonism isn't really personal.

[alice_montrose]

I think he prefers the rakh over the adept, at times. XD

[shadaras]

xD Probably! Damien's feelings about the rakh are definitely simpler/less tangled than his feelings about the adept, if nothing else!