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Foxfire_ posted:Magnus and Abigail aren't teeth. They're tiny bits of bone from different sources and Palamedes is cut off before he can say what that implies. Harrow's pod isn't teeth either, it's one single piece of shaped bone that dissolves into chips and pebbles (which Palamedes finds fascinating for some reason). The one other place we have seen lots of teeth is in Dulcinea's ward outside avulsion, which was a spiral of teeth
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Sep 2, 2020 23:01
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Anyone still reading/speculating or can we move forward?
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Sep 3, 2020 04:55
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I wanna move forward.
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Sep 3, 2020 07:19
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Okay, then! Go ahead and read to the end of Chapter Twenty-Nine. (There will be one more reading segment before I ask you to lock in your theories.) Rand Brittain fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Sep 3, 2020 |
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Sep 3, 2020 12:29
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Heard a rumour there are prizes on offer if we guess right.
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Sep 3, 2020 13:52
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Idaholy Roller posted:Heard a rumour there are prizes on offer if we guess right. You get strangers on the internet to acknowledge that you were right, which is truly the greatest prize of all. One last guess before I read the new stuff At some point, Naberius will duel Gideon-with-a-longsword. He will be snobby and smug about her choice of weapon, then he will get wrecked, and it will be funny.
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Sep 3, 2020 16:52
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Best fighter is the one who did that handflip. Dude who beat the other dude from the second.
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Sep 3, 2020 18:04
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Camilla's cool, no doubt about that. Scattered thoughts on chapters 26-29 follow. Suffering while dying makes you a font of thanergy. Ianthe's power didn't come from a single near-death experience, then, but from her body's suffering after the fact? Kinda ruins my theory about how Harrow was forced to undergo a near death experience to get her bone magic powers, since unless she's expertly concealing a cancer diagnosis she seems to be in fine health. "If you lie I'll mummify you." Guess Protesilaus is technically a mummy, not a zombie. Dulcinea wants to win, thinks she'll win, but gave up her keys. Does she not need them anymore? Gideon's got lots of bone fragments embedded in her, just like Abigail and Magnus. Plausible that the Bone Monster killed them too, although with blunt force instead of piercing trauma. Silas talked with Glaurica who presumably spilled the beans on everything. He's known from the beginning that Gideon was fake and the Ninth is a shell, then? Dominicus has a planet closer than the First (the 3rd planet from the star) that has a) polar caps and b) a "light side" possibly indicating tidal locking. Doesn't fit either Mercury or Venus, so my "First is actually a dead Earth" theory looks dead in the water. Palamedes says ascension is a megatheorem combining all the spells so far. Harrow says ascension involves tapping into whatever power source is keeping these spells running. Both can be true! Isaac sensed an incredible amount of death in Sanitizer, even more than the rest of the First (which is generally full of death), which would explain how they started the spells up originally. But it's been ~ten thousand years since and the spells are still running. Hypothesis: the original Lyctors were researchers trying to kickstart a perpetual necromancy engine. They killed some huge number of people to start up the necessary spells, which are now interacting in a synergistic manner that causes a net production of thanergy. Since Dulcinea told us that slow, painful deaths produce thanergy and the trials involve siphoning from conscious minds, it's entirely possible that the ghosts of the test subjects are trapped as fuel for the dynamo somehow. That would be horrifying enough to keep secret -- the Lyctors, and thus the Empire, are ultimately powered by the eternal suffering of countless former subjects.The haunting of the lower floors is caused by a slow leakage of ghosts from the dynamo, gone mad from pain, who now want nothing more than revenge on the scions of the Empire that thrives on their torment. Some combination of the dynamo slowing as ghosts escape and Lyctors falling prey to their conscience means that the Emperor now needs some new people who are okay with participating in the maintenance of an artificial hell to revitalize the spells powering his infinite energy source. A Lyctor jammed a lock with "perpetual bone"? Either the priests are Lyctors (and are playing dirty by interfering with the game) or somebody's already won, already found the power source, and is having a laugh. Harrow says both Third princesses are middling. Is she intentionally trying to mislead Palamedes? Or is their deception that good? That meeting with Silas and Colum was incredibly tense. We were supposing that Gideon was blackmailing Harrow about the death of the children, but she believes they all died of a flu? Who set the bomb? Why? Was it supposed to kill Gideon, or targeted at Ortus and Glaurica? Somebody on the Ninth can't risk anybody going out into the broader empire, still has secrets to protect. Crux, Aiglamene, or the two silent Sisters? Silas willing to kill Gideon for her keys. Is Silas also willing to kill other people who he thinks have sinned, have expressed too powerful of an interest in ascension? Teacher being weird and suspicious again. "We" never intended this to happen. Talking with Gideon like she's an old friend. Teacher & the priests being undercover Lyctors feels more and more plausible. Coronabeth can't -- mustn't -- do something physical, nor can she talk to Gideon about it. Harrow's keeping Protesilaus' head in a box. Gross. Dulcinea didn't burn Pro to escape the duel, then, since his head serves as evidence enough of her deception. Harrow killed Protesilaus, burned the body, kept the head. Or someone else did and is trying to frame Harrow (and managed to circumvent her wards in the process -- same way the Bone Monster got around Isaac's wards?). Harrow knowing that Dulcinea cheated by bringing a puppet is reason enough to want to keep Gideon away from her, but why not tell everyone and have her kicked out? Steely Glint fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Sep 4, 2020 |
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Sep 3, 2020 20:31
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I should check TBB more often; glad there’s a second mystery read along  some random thoughts:Building off the dead souls powering horrible things idea...maybe that’s why the other 200 kids were killed? It’s a suspiciously round number. I can’t help but think that whatever’s in the locked tomb is related. I have suspicions that Harrow killed Jeanne and maybe Isaac. Early on, there’s an incident when Gideon is digging through her overcoat and realizes that there’s bone fragments in there, which Harrow can make use of. I’m thinking that that’s a good way of making Jeanne’s locked room death not locked. Isaac I’m less sure about because the construct isn’t something we’ve seen her do before but she’s been around them enough. I mean, hosed up necromancy is also an option but that’s not really satisfying is it  I’m down with Teacher being a Lyctor choosing his successors. My initial thought was that someone was trying to frame Harrow but her actually killing Pro as blackmail makes sense, especially if he’s not human. Agreed that it’s weird she wouldn’t just bring it up, although I guess she’s not exactly a cooperative sort. And if he’s not human...why would Teacher let her ship dock? Does it balance out given the three from Third House? At this point, Corona is either a really good necromancer or not one at all. What does it accomplish to bring her to the first house if she’s not a necromancer though? Is it just a facade they have to keep up.
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Sep 4, 2020 01:53
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My guess is the murderer is Dulcinea. Head definitely a frame job. Harrow could have just lobbed it in the sea couldn’t she. Idaholy Roller fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Sep 4, 2020 |
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Sep 4, 2020 12:13
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Initial reactions: Dulcinea is still my primary suspect. Having Protesilius's head be in the closet makes it less likely his body was in the incinerator. There was at least one tooth burned up, so to be in the incinerator, it would need one of: - He was killed instead of suicided. The thing that killed him left some teeth embedded in the non-head parts of the corpse. i.e. a necro brought in teeth in their bonestash (from someone who died before they arrived), animated a construct from it, and left a tooth embedded in body - He is a frankenstein and suicided. He is built from parts from many bodies and includes teeth in the non-head portion. Dulcinea saves the head to plant somewhere. Head in closet: - If Harrow killed him, she would not save the head without some reason. Either ditch it wherever the body went or huck it out the window into the ocean that's right there - Harrow's closet had no wards. If she has never been warding it, day 1-2 Harrow was running an actual risk of a bored Gideon messing with her stuff. If someone was going to plant the head, they would expect to have to bypass the room wards, but wouldn't have been expecting a 2nd pettiness ward. Harrow would notice though, so a plant would need someone to find the head fast. Or the closet has just never been warded. Shuttlebomb: - This seems unlikely to be Harrow aiming at Gideon. Either of them actually killing the other seems out of character to me, plus it would need to be backup plan #5 (Crux threats -> Aglemane cajole -> Bribe with Cohort commission -> Duel). Planning for if she loses the duel doesn't seem Harrow-like. We also saw the shuttle land, so the only time it was available for 9th people to mess with is after Harrow already knows Gideon isn't going to be leaving on it - If Gideon's blackmail isn't child death ritual specifically, 'numbers' could be the 9th's general lack of people making it vulnerable to absorption by another house. Orteus and his mom could be bombed to prevent that from leaking. Bonelock: One of these: 1) Someone independently knew regenerating bone from before they arrived 2) Teacher is a researcher/Lyctor and did it 3) Someone with access to the red theorem room/Harrow's notes did it [Harrow counts] 4) Someone figured out enough from observing the regenerating construct to do it 5) Some other theorem is close enough to regenerating bone The room is from the key Dulcinea started with. My guess is that she jammed it after accessing it to try to make it worthless to the others, and that's why she doesn't really care about giving up the key. Unjamming it when neither of them has the grey key seems kind of dumb from Harrow & Palmedes since it's possibly giving the 8th a new room. Missing key: - If someone has it, my guess is Ianthe. Camilla overheard the 3rd saying they didn't have it, but Ianthe lying to Corona/Naberius isn't implausible. Coronabeth/Ianthe: - Gideon thinks Harrow means Corona is in charge. She doesn't actually say that, she says the big one. Need to go reread their stuff to see which one is the 'I' twin and which is the 'we' twin. Corona doesn't seem dominant in any of their interactions we've seen. Overall Murders: - Metawise, Harrow being responsible for the important-to-Gideon murders (Magnus, Abigail, Issac, Jeannemary) messes up the impact of having her and Gideon talking past each other in this set of chapters. She could still kill Protesilius, especially if he's a zombie or Dulcinea is the ultimate culprit. - As she dies, Dulcinea is supposed to be getting more and more necromantic power, so is a good candidate for high power magic murders The other candidates: * 2nd: they seem mostly out and we haven't seen them much, if they're the big culprits it's going to be based on future text * 3rd: Corona&Ianthe have some mysterious thing going on, so they have stuff to do in the story. Ianthe has been menacing and looming, so she's still a good option * 4th: Almost certainly actually out. They don't have any dangling plot or ghosty powers * 5th: Out with the caveat that Abigail has ghosty powers * 6th: Possible * 7th: Most suspcious * 8th: If Colum wouldn't go along with beating up Gideon for her keys, it doesn't seem like he'd be down with proactively murdering the 4th and 5th for no therem keys. Silas might, but it needs him to have expected that Colum wouldn't go along with it & do it secretly. He was surprised in this set of chapters, so this seems unlikely. * 9th: If Harrow is murdering people to win, it seems like she'd be going after theorem keys, not just knocking out low-probability hypothetical competition. Issac&Jeannemary didn't seem like they were any threat to beating her to the keys, and killing them makes Gideon less focused, not more Mecca-Benghazi posted:
Why wouldn't Teacher let the ship dock? If he's just animated meat, he's not different from Harrow's skeleton parade. She needs to argue for landing without having a real cavalier (either that the zombie counts or that she'll poach one of the others), but that's a handicap for her not an advantage so Teacher'd probably be fine with it. Foxfire_ fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Sep 5, 2020 |
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Sep 4, 2020 20:04
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I went back through looking for Coronabeth/Ianthe conversations. There are barely any; my impression is that usually Corona speaks for the group and Ianthe speaks for herself. So I could believe that Harrow's version of 'the big one' is Ianthe, but not conclusive. I did find a bit at the dinner party where Dulcinea is asking Abigail all about her research on Lyctoral history. Abigail is very excited to be in Canaan House and thinks she's found some communique's between ---. At which point Gideon decides the conversation is boring and stops listening  So some motive for going after Abigail specifically maybe?
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Sep 5, 2020 05:27
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Foxfire_ posted:I did find a bit at the dinner party where Dulcinea is asking Abigail all about her research on Lyctoral history. Abigail is very excited to be in Canaan House and thinks she's found some communique's between ---. At which point Gideon decides the conversation is boring and stops listening I marked that down as evidence that Dulcinea had investigated the tunnels, but didn't think to use it as motive. Abigail talked with Dulcinea, then "one of the Second", then Silas, then Teacher. Gideon overheard the first conversation and Harrow the third. It's not hard evidence, but if we assume no conversations or notable interactions were elided from the text (admittedly a dicey assumption with Gideon narrating) , then the people who knew Abigail and Magnus were headed to the labs were 1, 2, 7, 8, and 9, which leaves 3 and 6 as being less likely to commit the first murders. Mecca-Benghazi posted:I have suspicions that Harrow killed Jeanne and maybe Isaac. Early on, there’s an incident when Gideon is digging through her overcoat and realizes that there’s bone fragments in there, which Harrow can make use of. I’m thinking that that’s a good way of making Jeanne’s locked room death not locked. Isaac I’m less sure about because the construct isn’t something we’ve seen her do before but she’s been around them enough. I mean, hosed up necromancy is also an option but that’s not really satisfying is it At first I wondered if they might have been planted by Dulcinea while she was getting Gideon's hands all over her so I went looking for exactly when Gideon found the chips in her coat for the first time. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it (no ctrl+f in the physical edition), but I did find Harrow removing some fragments from Gideon's coat when she low-key threatens Dulcinea after exiting the entropy field in the siphoning trial. So Harrow definitely knew they were there! Having Harrow stash the murder weapon/spell on Gideon does solve the locked room quite handily... Foxfire_ posted:Shuttlebomb: re: shuttlebomb. Reread the early chapters looking for who had access to the shuttle and it's just two people as far as I can tell. Once the shuttle arrives, Harrow asks Aiglamene to tell the shuttle pilot to wait around. After that, everybody's present for the mustering in the chapel, then Harrow sends Crux to escort Ortus and Glaurica off-planet. Aiglamene has the best opportunity but has the least motive. Crux would have to be sneaky about it but he clearly voices his hate for all three potential shuttle riders. re: Eighth. I could also read Silas's surprise as being more like "You've already helped murder four people. Why in the world are you refusing *now*?". The thing that makes me rank the Eighth low on the suspect list is Silas's outspoken dogmatic dislike of bone magic. He studies only the holiest of spirit theorems and wouldn't be caught dead raising bone monsters.
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Sep 5, 2020 21:40
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Okay, it's time for the home stretch! Read to the end of Chapter Thirty-Three. I will now ask you to lock in your final answers to the mystery: Who killed Magnus Quinn, Abigail Pent, Isaac Tettares and Jeannemary Chatur? Who, if it was related, killed Protesilaus Ebdoma, Ortus Nigenad, and Glaurica Nigenad? Who, if anybody, is in the furnace? WTF is up with absolutely everything?
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Sep 6, 2020 03:17
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Initial guesses I still want to go check/fill in things on Dulcinea killed the 4th and the 5th - She is still lying about Protesilus. Her explanation is okay for why there'd be one body predating their arrival. It's pretty crap for explaining two bodies with simultaneous death dates that predate their arrival. She was passed out from zombie feedback / 'slipped and fell' while everyone else investigated the incinerator and doesn't know they found the 2nd body. - The grey theorem room was the one she had access to. The corkboard is implying that the typical skeleton is powered by 3 souls, some are 5-6, the backup priests are dozens, and teacher is hundreds. She kills Magnus and Abigail, then binds their souls to power the big construct that kills Jeannemary and Issac. This is why none of the necromancers could call back any of the ghosts (presumably someone tried & failed with the 5th while Gideon was out). She doesn't kill Gideon because she like Gideon / needs a flesh-and-blood cavalier and she's her best shot at getting one. Naberius kills Protesilus. - Blade in the heart is something he's good at - Ianthe can't do it by herself since she has noodly necromancer arms and wouldn't be able to get the bodies up to burn them - No one in the sickroom meeting claims credit for the kill(s) or calls out Dulcinea about the 2nd body. Elimination: - The 2nd seem like general fuckups and would have announced it - The 6th would have either brought it up there or when talking to Harrow+Gideon afterwards - Dulcinea doesn't know about the 2nd incinerator body or she'd lie better So 8th or 3rd, and 3rd seems more likely quote:Judith: "Does anyone else want to take this opportunity to admit that they're already dead, or a flesh construct, or other relevant object? Anyone?" e: Bonus Thoughts The 7th house did not actually go all in on a mostly dead necromancer and an all-the-way dead cavalier. Dulcinea is not supposed to be here. She was supposed to be sidelined into a sickroom to die while the next-in-succession necro and their cavalier went. She gets on their shuttle, kills them both simultaneously, then animated Protesilus. The other body is his actual necromancer. Have to go see if the timing works out, but we've got an extra body that died at the same time as original recipe Protesilus, so either from the 7th somehow or someone's having coordinated cross-planet 'accidents'.  Why are Ortus & Glaurica on the mysterious list? Unless its Crux blowing them up on orders instead of just being petty, there doesn't seem to be anything there. Most of the cast don't even know they exist.Foxfire_ fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 20:18
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I kind of feel like the Second might deserve more credit for taking the tack of "okay, it's time to stop treating this as a teaching exercise and start treating it as a horror movie or we're all going to die," which turned out to be absolutely correct even if they hosed up the execution.
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Sep 6, 2020 20:27
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My copy of Harrow arrived today! Unfortunately, as the book was packed with the back cover facing up, I've been spoiled on blurb contents were here, really sorry about that. No clues as to any of our immediate mysteries, though. I agree with the general thrust of the ideas presented so far. Thoughts on the incinerator puzzle: There's two corpses in the incinerator. Protesilaus is one of them. I can't see how the second corpse could be a mysterious 21st person in Canaan House, especially since that one also died 3 months ago. Therefore, Protesilaus is a Franken-mummy, having had a second body incorporated as part of the beguiling corpse ritual. Who's the second victim? Time to build a theory off of a single line. p374, Teacher gets some mysterious last words in. "Oh, Lord--Lord--Lord, one of them has come back--". There's two corpses from the Seventh house. Someone, presumably from the experiments ten thousand years ago, has come back. Ergo, Dulcinea is not actually Dulcinea but actually an incredibly powerful shape-shifting Lyctor who killed both Dulcinea and Protesilaus. She needed to incorporate Dulcinea into Protesilaus to pass some sort of magical orbital scan that looked for the signature of a particular House bloodline. This explains how the titanic bone constructs were created and given malicious sentience, why she doesn't die from the shock of having Protesilaus undone, how she's got the stamina to spend massive amounts of thanergy to commit murders despite apparently dying, how Protesilaus could have a sort-of will (since he's like the bone monster; a revenant rather than a construct). Admittedly, shape-shifting hasn't been foreshadowed at all, so this is pretty unlikely to be 100% accurate. But it'd be neat! edit: extra final speculation on the nature of lyctorhood and a potential motive We've seen perpetual regeneration, siphoning, coterminous spells from the trials. Teacher has 50 (100?) souls stuffed inside him. Countless people sacrificed in this house. An eternal power source keeping the trial spells running despite there being significant distance between them. I believe that Lyctorhood is the process of tapping into the vast self-sustaining reserves of thanergy beneath the house created by the sacrifices 10,000 years ago. Each cavalier needs* to go into the basement and interface with the soul-dynamo, taking in countless ghosts into their body. Coterminous spells of regeneration and entropy cause the retainers to die without meeting death, full to bursting with the life energy of ten thousand souls, generating huge quantities of thalergy. Necromancers then siphon this source of thalergy to become Lyctors. This requires the cavalier willingly condemn themselves to a fate of perpetual suffering to empower their Lyctor, which is why Palamedes is so strongly against it. This provides a motive for a potential hidden Lyctor. They can't open the way to the basement with the soul dynamo and all the old cavaliers by themself, so they need the ritual to proceed in a certain way to open the final hidden locked door. They need to get into the basement to find and kill the cavalier-batteries before Teacher catches onto them, because after ten thousand years they regret the decision they made and want to give their cavalier a peaceful death. Murders are to speed up the process: Abigail was a historian and discovered communiques containing information on the truth of Lyctorhood, but if everyone knew then they'd take their time and deliberate and argue about whether or not it's right and so on and so forth. Isaac and Jeannemary... eh, actually, I've never been able to make a motive for these murders fit. Maybe they've got a grudge against the OG Fourth House? * page 222: you can't move thanergy from place to place, you need to siphon thalergy Steely Glint fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 21:03
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Steely Glint posted:My copy of Harrow arrived today! Unfortunately, as the book was packed with the back cover facing up, I've been spoiled on Harrow's victory and Gideon's death. No clues as to any of our immediate mysteries, though. No one click that first spoiler. Ruined the end of the book for me.
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Sep 6, 2020 22:35
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Sorry about that! On second thought, I'll remove that text. People who've read the back of the book know how I've been spoiled and can weigh my speculation appropriately without me paraphrasing the blurb.
Steely Glint fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 22:46
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Guess the Second hadn't been doing much but dang, what a way to go. Can't really blame them, it would've been sensible in a different genre. The story behind the death of the 200 kids was even more hosed up than I thought! Gideon surviving not-on-purpose is weird; I'm thinking she's descended from somebody super special via her mom? It'd be more interesting if it wasn't something along those lines but I have a sneaking feeling. Okay, time to mess this up royally: Rand Brittain posted:Okay, it's time for the home stretch! Read to the end of Chapter Thirty-Three. The most recent chunk is really pushing us towards the Third isn't it? We can rule out the Second and the Fourth as having done it, they didn't have keys (and I think they were the only groups without keys to the hatch from asking Teacher, at least at that time?). We know it wasn't the Ninth, Gideon is the narrator and I'm not sure Harrow is good enough to be stealth murdering people while occupied with the imaging puzzle. I assume we can rule out suicide. Sixth had me with his fake confession in this chunk for a second there, but he seemed really genuine. The bit about him helping Camilla hide the body if she killed anyone was certainly weird but I can't think of a reason for her to off them on her own. I don't think the Eighth did it for reasons of...moral consistency? This leaves Third, Seventh, Teacher and the other priests, and unknown necromancy shenanigans as the remaining options. Now the key being gone from Abigail's body is making it look like Third attacked them for the key, Abigail hid the key from them by swallowing (?), and now they've got it back by going into the morgue. I can't decide if I'm over or underthinking this. Why would they choose now and not as soon as possible to get into the morgue? Figured they'd watch the other participants and snatch up the goods all at once? As to who in the Third did it if they did it... If I'm recalling correctly, when they were all together and taking count of the keys, it seemed like Ianthe had gotten a key separately from the rest of the Third. But I think later on it was revealed that Nabs the cavalier had asked Teacher? Am I making that up? So they just faked that whole scene in front of the rest of the Houses? And then there's the whole one twin says "we" the other says "I" bit. Assuming I'm not making up the whole scene faking thing up, I say Ianthe and Nabs at a minimum, I'm torn on Coronabeth. Like, it seems too easy that her role is just as a decoy necromancer but do I only think that because of the nature of the readalong? Were I reading this on my own I'd be blazing through chapters very quickly. quote:Isaac Tettares and Jeannemary Chatur? Going all in on Harrow. She has no motive but nobody else does either and it's the neatest way of solving the locked room  Gideon was kept alive because she likes/needs Gideonquote:Who, if it was related, killed Protesilaus Ebdoma, Hmm, as was mentioned, the fact that Dulcinea seems to imply that Pro is only one body is odd. I mean, maybe there was another body already in the furnace completely unrelated to current events, but that seems rather unsatisfying. So she's either fudging the truth and Pro's body was multiple people or someone else did Pro and someone else in and burned the bodies in the furnace. Metagaming a bit, fudging the truth wouldn't be important to the mystery if it was just a nobody from Seventh House. But Foxfire's theory of Dulcinea not being the original intended wannabee Lyctor but her forcing her way in with a franken cavalier certainly qualifies as important and Dulcinea doesn't know that they found a second body so why not keep things simple to explain. Multiple people has the issue of who else was even around to be killed a few months ago and chucked in the furnace. So I guess Dulcinea quote:Ortus Nigenad, and Glaurica Nigenad? Crux but now I'm gonna also about their inclusion on the listquote:Who, if anybody, is in the furnace? The original necromancer from Seventh House, very ready to be wrong on this quote:WTF is up with absolutely everything? I don't even know. Like, the whole thing seems set up to be a cooperation game so all Eight Houses can make it but why not just say that it is? If it's not a cooperation game, you'll just end up with horrible Lyctors at the end of it. Unless that's the point but what's the point of having horrible people be Lyctors? I suppose that could be a side effect of the nature of how necromancers get their powers. If the cavaliers and other anonymous souls have to be human batteries for the whole thing to work, you might as well go for the backstabbing from the start.
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Sep 7, 2020 03:03
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Final guesses: Dulcinea kills Abigail and Magnus as above. Less sure she killed Jeannemary and Issac. If not her, Ianthe. Dulcinea: (+) If she kills Abigail and Magnus and binds their souls for necrojuice, she can make the big bone monster (+) She plausibly spares Gideon (+) Harrow thinks the bone bits mean they were killed in the same was as the 4th (-) She's in a sickroom with Harrow and Palmedes guarding her, so she'd have to somehow do it remotely Ianthe: (+) The taunting messages sound a lot more like Ianthe than Dulcinea (+) Ianthe and Corona have lingering plot that has to do something (+) Better at bones than Palmedes since she recognizes the incinerator has two bodies (-) No theorems to give her any special necromancy for making big monsters, not triggering Issac's wards, or getting into locked rooms (-) No motive. Dulcinea at least could nab their souls for powering something I guess I will stick with Dulcinea and an ending flow of "Confront 3rd => Drama => Explanation of Corona/Ianthe and the stabbing of Prosilaus/other body => Confront 7th => Endgame" For the incinerator, the timing doesn't work out for Dulcinea to kill Pro + actual 7th necro on the shuttle unless they have a much longer flight. Ianthe says 3 months, Palmedes say she's 8 weeks wrong, so deaths are 1 month prior to that. I don't have anything better though, so Prosilaus + original 7th necro is my final guess. Crux kills Ortus, Glaurica, and a random shuttle pilot. Assorted WTFs: Gideon is some sort of preserved experiment (she is originally in a biotransport case). 'Gideon, Gideon, Gideon' is not intended to be a name for a baby and the women holding the case is not her mom. She does an unconscious thanergy -> health conversion. She was unkillable in a room full of dead children and recovers too fast from Avulsion (Caanan house is full of dead things). But she is beatupable and one of her escape attempts was foiled by poisioning in everyday 9th life. The trial was intended to be collaborative. Teacher is upset about the dueling and all the old researcher fragments we've seen are collegial. The trial was set up without explicit "Don't murder the other participants" rules, because what kind of crazy people need that to be explicitly stated? Teacher is unwilling to lie about what the Emperor said the rules were, even if it was an unstated assumption.
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Sep 7, 2020 08:47
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Locking in these. Magnus Quinn and Abigail Pent were killed by Ianthe Tridentarius (and Dulcinea Septimus, indirectly) with the Bone Monster. Isaac Tettares and Jeannemary Chatur were killed by !Dulcinea with the Bone Monster. Protesilaus Ebdoma was killed by Dulcinea Septimus originally, and then re-killed by !Dulcinea. Ortus Nigenad and Glaurica Nigenad were killed by Crux with a bomb. The corpses in the incinerator are those of Protesilaus and Dulcinea. Explanation: Dulcinea Septimus and Ianthe Tridentarius teamed up to commit the first murders. Dulcinea is a necromancer with a vast reserve of thanergy she can't safely use, and Ianthe is a brilliant necromancer with a serious complex stemming from her family spurning her in favor of Coronabeth. They decide to work together, Ianthe channeling the thanergy that Dulcinea can't safely use, to achieve Lyctorhood at any cost. Ianthe wants to prove that she's better than everybody else, and Dulcinea doesn't want to die. Ianthe starts helping Dulcinea keep up the beguilement on Protesilaus's corpse. Together, they solve a theorem room containing a theorem for bones or something that lets them summon an angry revenant in the form of the Bone Monster. Dulcinea hears that Abigail's found some interesting old letters that she recognizes as containing big hints toward the Lyctor ritual and sends the Fifth House down into the labs so Ianthe can murder them. Then, a Lyctor appears. Invoking a mysterious 21st person X is bad form on my part, but there's no plausible way to explain the second corpse without an additional person and Teacher's last words strongly indicate the presence of a Lyctor in Canaan House. This Lyctor kills Dulcinea and shape-shifts into her, becoming !Dulcinea. She learns about the duel and kills Protesilaus to avoid the duel with Colum (since she's a Lyctor, she doesn't need a mummy bodyguard any more and having Protesilaus revealed as a mummy would bring unwanted attention from Teacher). The discrepancy in death times (3 months, 4 weeks) can be explained by the times of death being different for the two corpses and the Lyctor doing advanced thalergy-draining on Dulcinea to fuel the shape-shifting magic and further obscure things. !Dulcinea surreptitiously takes control of the Bone Monster and proceeds to kill Isaac and Jeannemary out of pity -- she doesn't want children undergoing the Lyctor ritual. Being a Lyctor allows her to do things like bypass wards and teleport bones around. She spares Gideon because one of the original Lyctors is named Gideon and she's sentimental. Her plan is to get a small, manageable number of people to complete the Lyctor ritual so she can step in at the peak and use its power to unmake herself, having tired of living off of hell energy some time in the past 10,000 years. I think Ianthe has cottoned on to !Dulcinea and has a plan to attack her. Coronabeth and Naberius know, and Coronabeth nearly told Gideon before Naberius stopped her.
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Sep 7, 2020 18:45
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Read to the end after we make final guesses?
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Sep 7, 2020 20:51
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I think we can go ahead and read to the end, yes.
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Sep 7, 2020 21:41
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Finished. Lyctor ritual is less colossal in scope but somehow more tragic than I had expected. Those last fights were gruesome. Happy to have called a Lyctor being involved, not super happy that Ianthe's innocent (well, of the original murders. RIP Naberius) and now a demigod. Not how I expected Gideon to die. Harrow had better live up to the faith Gideon's placed in her. Where was Dulcinea's corpse hidden before Cytherea burned it, if she had been dead along with her cavalier since Rhodes? Why didn't Cytherea make a more convincing attempt at animating Protesilaus, given her limitless necromantic ability? Might have more thoughts if I can put Harrow the Ninth down.
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Sep 7, 2020 23:45
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Steely Glint posted:Why didn't Cytherea make a more convincing attempt at animating Protesilaus, given her limitless necromantic ability? If Prot did get caught out, he needed to be something believably within the capabilities of Dulcinea and the Seventh House, not a masterwork that immediately points to a Lyctor.
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Sep 7, 2020 23:52
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It's mentioned in passing in the second book that Cytherea could absolutely have done better than that her zombie Protesilaus wouldn't have fooled anybody who knew the real guy for a second, and that her lovely reanimation just demonstrated how lazy and contemptuous she really was.
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Sep 8, 2020 00:04
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Ianthe is such a colossal dick. Look forward to enjoying / hating them even more in book 2. On her tumblr, Tamsyn Muir responded to a fan question a while back that was basically "who if anyone would have succeeded in becoming a Lyctor if not for all of Cytherea's bullshit throwing a spanner in the works?" and her answer was Ianthe and absolutely no one else.
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Sep 8, 2020 00:09
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Entropic posted:Ianthe is such a colossal dick. Look forward to enjoying / hating them even more in book 2. Yeah, definitely not the fourth, fifth, or sixth. The second only if there was some stronger implied duty/necessity (if she was even good enough), and no idea about the eighth, but it seems against his moral stance.
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Sep 8, 2020 00:40
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Speaking of Taz Muir's blog, she posted a pronunciation guide (an expanded version of which also shows up at the end of the Kindle edition now) and am I the only person who mentally pronounced it Sigh-THEER-ee-ah rather than KITH-er-AY-ah? I'm obviously not up on my Greek mythology. And speaking of Greek mythology: Steely Glint posted:Protesilaus shares his name with the first Greek to die in the Trojan War. I desperately want this to be deliberate, and he can only be the first person to die in Gideon if he was ~dead all along~ Tamsyn Muir posted:Prot-eh-sil-OW-us. "Prot" rather than "prote." All the back-matter at the end of the Kindle edition is worth reading btw.
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Sep 8, 2020 01:06
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Entropic posted:Speaking of Taz Muir's blog, she posted a pronunciation guide (an expanded version of which also shows up at the end of the Kindle edition now) and am I the only person who mentally pronounced it Sigh-THEER-ee-ah rather than KITH-er-AY-ah? I'm obviously not up on my Greek mythology. I went with Sith-err-ay-ah, but I certainly wasn't trying to be consistent on my mythology linguistics. ...time to go through that pronunciation guide.
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Sep 8, 2020 01:56
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Finished. Complaints/dangling things below but I generally liked it - Unless I'm misremembering, no one ever actually takes credit for/has a motive for rekilling Prosilaus? - Having the locked room & bone monster be solved by outside necromancer seems a bit like cheating - Also having Teacher not identify Cytheria + go along with treating her as Dulcinea for inscrutable soul construct reason. Especially since her plan relies on it happening, but her explanation is "Dunno, he's weird". If Teacher flipped out when she came out of the shuttle, was she just going to wing it and kill everyone? - Why hide the key in Abigail's body? She doesn't need anything in the room and can apparently go through locked Lyctoral doors anyway. If she didn't want anyone getting in, just destroy it. - Why was Naberius upset that Corona was sparring with Gideon? I guess Corona is still possibly sequel relevant (assuming all of Gideon's birth/powers are sequel fodder) - Someone said at one point that all the trials needed a cavalier. Wasn't the one Palmedes described just "Go find the skeleton this tooth came from and ask nicely" and Camilla's only contribution to tell him to stop obsessing over the tooth's history like a nerd? Entropic posted:
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Sep 8, 2020 04:39
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Foxfire_ posted:
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Sep 8, 2020 05:50
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Entropic posted:My interpretation of that was that Babs is in on the con of Corona not actually being a Necromancer and was worried about her giving it away. Maybe? I assume Babs is in on it, but doesn't really seem like anyone would worry about Gideon going "Aha! You are arms are insufficiently noodlly!" She and Gideon are also the ones that haul Colum up the hatch ladder after the 5th's deaths
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Sep 8, 2020 06:05
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My locked room theory, I thought I was so clever  Foxfire_ posted:
All necromancers are nerds, pulling them away from the brink is among a cavalier's most important duties Is the next book in the series a mystery like this one or should I plan to read it on my own time?
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Sep 8, 2020 06:06
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The closed room being solved with Lyctor superpowers was quite disappointing, I'll admit. Still overall good enough to binge through the sequel and leave me stuck waiting until 2021 for Alecto  Mecca-Benghazi posted:Is the next book in the series a mystery like this one or should I plan to read it on my own time? Harrow isn't very much like Gideon. It does contain mysteries but the focus of the book is elsewhere.
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Sep 8, 2020 06:27
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Very excited for the next whodunnit. Enjoyed this one a lot.
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Sep 8, 2020 11:39
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Steely Glint posted:The closed room being solved with Lyctor superpowers was quite disappointing, I'll admit. Still overall good enough to binge through the sequel and leave me stuck waiting until 2021 for Alecto The central mystery of Harrow the Ninth is “why are half these chapters in second person, why do these flashbacks make no sense, what the gently caress is even going on here wait how does the River work again ow my brain hurts”
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Sep 8, 2020 15:14
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Is it not very good? I can’t see how it could be an improvement considering we’ve lost Gideon’s humour.
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Sep 8, 2020 19:14
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Idaholy Roller posted:Is it not very good? I can’t see how it could be an improvement considering we’ve lost Gideon’s humour. It's very different. It's less locked-room and more cosmic horror from the point of view of a narrator with schizophrenia, and I say that advisedly because Tamsyn Muir alludes to personally having a psychotic disorder of some kind in her afterword and the book seems to be a good presentation of what living with that is like.
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Sep 8, 2020 19:30
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