Agia's Weapons

Lee Berman · 21 Dec 2011, 20:18 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:18:05 -0500
Subject: (urth) Agia's Weapons
Message-ID: <SNT123-W530595D5268BDDF7378EEDCFA50 at phx.gbl>

>>It would be as if Dionysus became aware of this new guy, Jesus coming up 
>>and decided to tempt him in the desert and make an ally of him or replace him 
>>or something like that.

>David Stockhoff: As did Satan and Typhon, yes. But it's hard to see death as a form of 
>temptation. Do they seek to discover weakness they can turn to their advantage?

Perhaps. If they managed to kill off Severian and prevent the New Sun from coming, I'm
sure they wouldn't lament.  But I think they know he can't die. There will always be 
reality shift or time shift or eidolon-making or something from above (yep, deus ex
machina) which will resurrect Severian.  Perhaps sometimes, as with Juturna, they hope to 
garner favor or loyalty by performing a (unneeded) rescue.

Trying to kill him isn't a form of temptation. I'd guess Agia (lust) or Dorcas (love)
or Typhon (power) are the temptations. But I think the baboon guy was checking 
Severian's always-fatal avern wound to try to figure out how the heck he did that.
Same with the Old Leech's presence. And perhaps Ceryx with his challenges to 
Severian. They want to learn what they can about his divine power.

>Understood. What I'm missing is a definition of success for the Plan.

My first thought on reading that was.."Plan? What Plan? Plan of Pas maybe?" But perhaps
that is not really so far off the mark, eh?

I would think the Plan of Inire is similar to the Plan of Pas- maintain the  little world
which has been created for the purpose of entertaining the demiurge, pitting humans 
against each other in wars and tangled love affairs. Pas had a smaller stage to work with
than Inire but both were after stasis and stifled growth and against evolution. They liked the 
nasty little world they had created and didn't want it washed away. Naturally this is
allegory to our earth.

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