mystery of the guild

David Stockhoff · 13 Feb 2009, 02:22 · from 2009-February.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:22:48 -0500
Subject: (urth) mystery of the guild
In-Reply-To: <mailman.1.1234476497.19114.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
References: <mailman.1.1234476497.19114.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <4994D978.2070304 at verizon.net>

True. Although where the Inquisition grew in power, and power can corrupt anything, we're talking about an order that must have shrunk in power and gained little from its practices. And there's no other hint in TBotNS that the guild used to be *that* powerful---it always served the monarch.

But anything could have happened in the minimum of 20,000 or so years Wolfe has put between Severian and ourselves. And Urth is a wide place, where the RCC could have survived in strength in a pocket somewhere to await its return to global power, many times. The name "Commonwealth" suggests as much. That is, its immediate predecessor might have been located elsewhere on the planet. Nessus does not appear to be *that* old.

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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:25:21 -0500
From: Daniel D Jones <ddjones at riddlemaster.org>
Subject: Re: (urth) mystery of the guild
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <200902111825.21746.ddjones at riddlemaster.org>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"

On Wednesday 11 February 2009 11:18:13 David Stockhoff wrote:

> > I am skeptical that something as vast as the RCC could ever "become"
> > something as tiny and obscure as the Guild, but there are certainly
> > correspondences and connections. The Guild could be a fragment of the
> > Church, perhaps descended from some actual monastic order. But which one?
> > They all seem pretty benevolent to me.
>   

The history of the Inquisition suggests that it's certainly plausible the 
Guild could have descended form _any_ existent monastic order.  Current 
benevolence and altruism of any degree is no guarantee of future actions.

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