Subject: (urth) Reconciling NS Typhon with LS Typhon

From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2002 21:48:58 +0000

Personally, I have no problem reconciling the texts. People were generally
ignorant of the Whorl because it was built in orbit from a captured
asteroid. After all, how aware is the general public of the year to year
construction of the International Space Station? If one can swallow that a
land of giant monuments (and Typhon himself) could pass from memory yet his
foreboding shadow last so long that no one has tampered with his body or the
equipment, then it's not hard to accept that a li'l ol' colonization project
would not make the history textbooks. Heck, Typhon had probably made more
people than that disappear less good reason.

The scanning into Mainframe *must* have occurred last of all - since such a
flourish was a non-essential aspect of Whorl.

The fact that no one was responsible for maintaining Typhon's care and that
they were always afraid he might come back to life at any time suggests no
one but Typhon knew anything about his medical requirements or the technical
theories behind them - "Don't go back there! This could be part of the
process. He may wake up at any time, even decades later."  IMO this is
because the provider of all Typhon's super-technology which was the secret
behind his rise to power, had left on the Whorl --- Quetzal. The head was
the last thing Q provided him with before he left. Hmmm "Q"? "The name's
Typhon. Pas Typhon."

When were the kids born? This brings up an aspect of Typhon's culture that
I'm unaware of having been delved into before. The culture is clearly
paternalistic, even machoistic, since only a male heir for Typhon will
suffice - it seems that Vironese culture is probably more exemplary of
Typhon's than others in the Whorl - certainly more than Trivigaunte's. BUT
despots of all cultures usually have lots of wives and children (although
I've never heard of Stalin having children). Yet Typhon seems to have had
only one lawful wife and if he had any other children it they don't seem to
have counted at all as far as inheriting his throne.

BTW: Is 1000 years from Typhon to Severian a firmly established time span?

-----Original Message-----
From: Roy C. Lackey [mailto:rclackey at stic.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 2:44 PM
To: urth
Subject: Re: (urth) Typhon vs. Pas
If Sev's prophecy was true, then Typhon had to have already been scanned
into Mainframe and the ship launched; that or those things happened fairly
soon after Sev made the prophecy. Either way, it's hard to reconcile the NS
and LS texts. We know that Marble and the other servant chems were older
than the _Whorl_ itself, and Hammerstone told Silk that the soldier chems
were being stockpiled for twenty years before coming aboard the ship. A
painted canvas cloth at
Orchid's place was "a crude mockery of Campion's celebrated Pas enthroned."
The original showed two-headed Pas, along with a couple of mighty taluses
"still at work upon the whorl".

Now, the hollowing out of an asteroid and all the work needed to turn it
into a giant spaceship, stocking it with flora and fauna, soil, water, etc.,
would have been the work of years. At what point in the construction of the
_Whorl_ did Typhon get his second head? Clearly he had it before the ship
was launched, but did he have it before construction started? That doesn't
seem possible, because Typhon surely didn't have Piaton's body for twenty
years or more; that certainly wasn't his plan.

If Typhon underwent the operation *after* construction started, how did that
affect his original intent in building it? If the _Whorl_ took a long time
to build, as it surely did, were his seven children the product of his
original body or Piaton's?

And how is it that so massive an undertaking as the building, stockpiling,
and launch of the _Whorl_ left no lasting echoes on Urth in Sev's day, just
a thousand years later? Sev and the Commonwealth seem completely ignorant of
it.

--