I first saw the idea of Mourning Glory's mention of Purn as Hethor and Gunnie as his paracoita in Robert Borski's Solar Labyrinth. Perhaps Mantis is in agreement on this idea. I believe the logic is that Hethor is a shape shifter, taking the form of a half-bird, half-deer creature called a peryton. Severian sees the peryton/Hethor over him during his escape into the mountains but eventually decides it is a constellation.
Hethor is presumed to be in this form when Agia, riding a winged creature with claws, later snatches Severian from the evzone soldiers. So peryton becomes Purn (shades of Dragonriders of Pern?). Both in Severian's earlier dream and during the snatching the winged creature is noted to have a mitre of bone on its head, suggesting the dinosaur-era pterodon. But it also is supposed to have the head of a hag which sends things into a mythological slant I won't pursue here.
Like Roy, I don't find the Purn-Hethor connection satifying. It is all based on the name Purn and that he is a sailor. There is no physical resemblance nor psychological resemblance to twisted, mysterious Hethor. To me Purn seems to represent the simple, average Urth resident who would instinctively fight to save Urth without much care or thought to deeper issues or personal demons. Also, Gunnie has dark eyes, not violet, and is a very big, strong, aggressive woman. Hardly a good candidate for a poppet doll with small hands who lays in a lemonwood box all day waiting to spend the night with Hethor. (But perhaps a childish version of Thecla is...)
However, Hethor as a shape shifter is satisfying to me for a few reasons. Even Severian wonders how Hethor is able to transport his larger pets around. There are some interesting early (SotT) statements Hethor makes to identify himself. Stammering, he says something like "I the old captain, the old lieutenant, the old cook, feeding the dying pets." I take this to be a true description, though I can't tell whether Hethor is describing a series of promotions or demotions on the ship. But I think he was, at some point, captain.
In UotNS we find in Tzadkiel, another ship captain, an angelic, shapeshifting being (as is the angel in Melito's story). I think this lends credence to the idea of captain Hethor also being a winged, shape shifting creature, perhaps the obverse of Tzadkiel...a fallen angel?
Hethor also describes himself as serving on the Quasar, and on a ship with a hundreds masts and silver sails. He also says he served as the captain of the "limping ship". In the time of BotNS's writing I think quasars were theorized to be white fountains, the compliment to black holes. So I think the Quasar is likely (what we later learn to be) Tzadkiel's ship because its primary literary purpose, in the first 4 books, was to carry the New Sun back to earth.
So what was the limping ship Hethor was the captain of? Some suggest it was the ship that crashed leaving the ancestors of the antechamber prisoners and that Hethor's real name is KimLeeSoong. This could be the case, but then he would be a normal human not a shapeshifter.
There is another ship which looms very large in BotNS but seems so far to have avoided attempts at explanation through all these years. This is The Citadel. I take The Citadel to be a ship on a par with the Quasar due to its large size and irregular shape (contrast to the Hierodule's ship which is like a flying saucer). I think the Citadel ship is an alternate version of the Quasar, with Hethor as its captain. This ship was apparently poorly captained, flew too close to Urth (to retrieve his stolen paracoita?) and got stuck.
bsharp
I remember that the towers of the citadel are revealed
to be ships waiting to leave Urth in the last days of
Typhon. But I don't recall anything suggesting that
the citadel as a whole was itself one big ship. It's
an interesting idea -- is there textual support for
that? Or am I misinterpreting?
Macronaut
113 quoted lines
--- b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com> wrote:
I first saw the idea of Mourning Glory's mention of
Purn as Hethor and
Gunnie as his paracoita in Robert Borski's Solar
Labyrinth. Perhaps Mantis
is in agreement on this idea. I believe the logic
is that Hethor is a shape
shifter, taking the form of a half-bird, half-deer
creature called a
peryton. Severian sees the peryton/Hethor over him
during his escape into
the mountains but eventually decides it is a
constellation.
Hethor is presumed to be in this form when Agia,
riding a winged creature
with claws, later snatches Severian from the evzone
soldiers. So peryton
becomes Purn (shades of Dragonriders of Pern?). Both
in Severian's earlier
dream and during the snatching the winged creature
is noted to have a mitre
of bone on its head, suggesting the dinosaur-era
pterodon. But it also is
supposed to have the head of a hag which sends
things into a mythological
slant I won't pursue here.
Like Roy, I don't find the Purn-Hethor connection
satifying. It is all
based on the name Purn and that he is a sailor.
There is no physical
resemblance nor psychological resemblance to
twisted, mysterious Hethor. To
me Purn seems to represent the simple, average Urth
resident who would
instinctively fight to save Urth without much care
or thought to deeper
issues or personal demons. Also, Gunnie has dark
eyes, not violet, and is a
very big, strong, aggressive woman. Hardly a good
candidate for a poppet
doll with small hands who lays in a lemonwood box
all day waiting to spend
the night with Hethor. (But perhaps a childish
version of Thecla is...)
However, Hethor as a shape shifter is satisfying to
me for a few reasons.
Even Severian wonders how Hethor is able to
transport his larger pets
around. There are some interesting early (SotT)
statements Hethor makes to
identify himself. Stammering, he says something
like "I the old captain,
the old lieutenant, the old cook, feeding the dying
pets." I take this to be
a true description, though I can't tell whether
Hethor is describing a
series of promotions or demotions on the ship. But
I think he was, at some
point, captain.
In UotNS we find in Tzadkiel, another ship captain,
an angelic,
shapeshifting being (as is the angel in Melito's
story). I think this lends
credence to the idea of captain Hethor also being a
winged, shape shifting
creature, perhaps the obverse of Tzadkiel...a fallen
angel?
Hethor also describes himself as serving on the
Quasar, and on a ship with a
hundreds masts and silver sails. He also says he
served as the captain of
the "limping ship". In the time of BotNS's writing
I think quasars were
theorized to be white fountains, the compliment to
black holes. So I think
the Quasar is likely (what we later learn to be)
Tzadkiel's ship because its
primary literary purpose, in the first 4 books, was
to carry the New Sun
back to earth.
So what was the limping ship Hethor was the captain
of? Some suggest it was
the ship that crashed leaving the ancestors of the
antechamber prisoners and
that Hethor's real name is KimLeeSoong. This could
be the case, but then he
would be a normal human not a shapeshifter.
There is another ship which looms very large in
BotNS but seems so far to
have avoided attempts at explanation through all
these years. This is The
Citadel. I take The Citadel to be a ship on a par
with the Quasar due to
its large size and irregular shape (contrast to the
Hierodule's ship which
is like a flying saucer). I think the Citadel ship
is an alternate version
of the Quasar, with Hethor as its captain. This
ship was apparently poorly
captained, flew too close to Urth (to retrieve his
stolen paracoita?) and
got stuck.
bsharp
_______________________________________________
I remember the Citadel being not a ship, but a spaceport with any number of the towers being "landers" as Silk calls (though the nomenclature and descriptions in the BotNS makes it pretty clear that the towers are old spaceships repurposed when the age of space flight (at least the part coming from Urth) came to an end- walls being added, stone structures and extensions slowly accreting through time.
I can claim no authoritative positon without the books at hand to reference, but I remember nothing to indicate the whole Citadel being a massive ship on par with the Quasar, rather than Nessus old space port.
124 quoted lines · 1–2 deep
On 5/5/06, Macronaut <macronaut at yahoo.com> wrote:
I remember that the towers of the citadel are revealed
to be ships waiting to leave Urth in the last days of
Typhon. But I don't recall anything suggesting that
the citadel as a whole was itself one big ship. It's
an interesting idea -- is there textual support for
that? Or am I misinterpreting?
Macronaut
--- b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com> wrote:
I first saw the idea of Mourning Glory's mention of
Purn as Hethor and
Gunnie as his paracoita in Robert Borski's Solar
Labyrinth. Perhaps Mantis
is in agreement on this idea. I believe the logic
is that Hethor is a shape
shifter, taking the form of a half-bird, half-deer
creature called a
peryton. Severian sees the peryton/Hethor over him
during his escape into
the mountains but eventually decides it is a
constellation.
Hethor is presumed to be in this form when Agia,
riding a winged creature
with claws, later snatches Severian from the evzone
soldiers. So peryton
becomes Purn (shades of Dragonriders of Pern?). Both
in Severian's earlier
dream and during the snatching the winged creature
is noted to have a mitre
of bone on its head, suggesting the dinosaur-era
pterodon. But it also is
supposed to have the head of a hag which sends
things into a mythological
slant I won't pursue here.
Like Roy, I don't find the Purn-Hethor connection
satifying. It is all
based on the name Purn and that he is a sailor.
There is no physical
resemblance nor psychological resemblance to
twisted, mysterious Hethor. To
me Purn seems to represent the simple, average Urth
resident who would
instinctively fight to save Urth without much care
or thought to deeper
issues or personal demons. Also, Gunnie has dark
eyes, not violet, and is a
very big, strong, aggressive woman. Hardly a good
candidate for a poppet
doll with small hands who lays in a lemonwood box
all day waiting to spend
the night with Hethor. (But perhaps a childish
version of Thecla is...)
However, Hethor as a shape shifter is satisfying to
me for a few reasons.
Even Severian wonders how Hethor is able to
transport his larger pets
around. There are some interesting early (SotT)
statements Hethor makes to
identify himself. Stammering, he says something
like "I the old captain,
the old lieutenant, the old cook, feeding the dying
pets." I take this to be
a true description, though I can't tell whether
Hethor is describing a
series of promotions or demotions on the ship. But
I think he was, at some
point, captain.
In UotNS we find in Tzadkiel, another ship captain,
an angelic,
shapeshifting being (as is the angel in Melito's
story). I think this lends
credence to the idea of captain Hethor also being a
winged, shape shifting
creature, perhaps the obverse of Tzadkiel...a fallen
angel?
Hethor also describes himself as serving on the
Quasar, and on a ship with a
hundreds masts and silver sails. He also says he
served as the captain of
the "limping ship". In the time of BotNS's writing
I think quasars were
theorized to be white fountains, the compliment to
black holes. So I think
the Quasar is likely (what we later learn to be)
Tzadkiel's ship because its
primary literary purpose, in the first 4 books, was
to carry the New Sun
back to earth.
So what was the limping ship Hethor was the captain
of? Some suggest it was
the ship that crashed leaving the ancestors of the
antechamber prisoners and
that Hethor's real name is KimLeeSoong. This could
be the case, but then he
would be a normal human not a shapeshifter.
There is another ship which looms very large in
BotNS but seems so far to
have avoided attempts at explanation through all
these years. This is The
Citadel. I take The Citadel to be a ship on a par
with the Quasar due to
its large size and irregular shape (contrast to the
Hierodule's ship which
is like a flying saucer). I think the Citadel ship
is an alternate version
of the Quasar, with Hethor as its captain. This
ship was apparently poorly
captained, flew too close to Urth (to retrieve his
stolen paracoita?) and
got stuck.
bsharp
_______________________________________________
agreed. the 'towers' were individual spaceships, from what I gathered.
128 quoted lines · 1–3 deep
On 5/5/06, Rex Racer <rex.racerx at gmail.com> wrote:
I remember the Citadel being not a ship, but a spaceport with any number of the towers being "landers" as Silk calls (though the nomenclature and descriptions in the BotNS makes it pretty clear that the towers are old spaceships repurposed when the age of space flight (at least the part coming from Urth) came to an end- walls being added, stone structures and extensions slowly accreting through time.
I can claim no authoritative positon without the books at hand to reference, but I remember nothing to indicate the whole Citadel being a massive ship on par with the Quasar, rather than Nessus old space port.
On 5/5/06, Macronaut <macronaut at yahoo.com > wrote:
I remember that the towers of the citadel are revealed
to be ships waiting to leave Urth in the last days of
Typhon. But I don't recall anything suggesting that
the citadel as a whole was itself one big ship. It's
an interesting idea -- is there textual support for
that? Or am I misinterpreting?
Macronaut
--- b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com> wrote:
I first saw the idea of Mourning Glory's mention of
Purn as Hethor and
Gunnie as his paracoita in Robert Borski's Solar
Labyrinth. Perhaps Mantis
is in agreement on this idea. I believe the logic
is that Hethor is a shape
shifter, taking the form of a half-bird, half-deer
creature called a
peryton. Severian sees the peryton/Hethor over him
during his escape into
the mountains but eventually decides it is a
constellation.
Hethor is presumed to be in this form when Agia,
riding a winged creature
with claws, later snatches Severian from the evzone
soldiers. So peryton
becomes Purn (shades of Dragonriders of Pern?). Both
in Severian's earlier
dream and during the snatching the winged creature
is noted to have a mitre
of bone on its head, suggesting the dinosaur-era
pterodon. But it also is
supposed to have the head of a hag which sends
things into a mythological
slant I won't pursue here.
Like Roy, I don't find the Purn-Hethor connection
satifying. It is all
based on the name Purn and that he is a sailor.
There is no physical
resemblance nor psychological resemblance to
twisted, mysterious Hethor. To
me Purn seems to represent the simple, average Urth
resident who would
instinctively fight to save Urth without much care
or thought to deeper
issues or personal demons. Also, Gunnie has dark
eyes, not violet, and is a
very big, strong, aggressive woman. Hardly a good
candidate for a poppet
doll with small hands who lays in a lemonwood box
all day waiting to spend
the night with Hethor. (But perhaps a childish
version of Thecla is...)
However, Hethor as a shape shifter is satisfying to
me for a few reasons.
Even Severian wonders how Hethor is able to
transport his larger pets
around. There are some interesting early (SotT)
statements Hethor makes to
identify himself. Stammering, he says something
like "I the old captain,
the old lieutenant, the old cook, feeding the dying
pets." I take this to be
a true description, though I can't tell whether
Hethor is describing a
series of promotions or demotions on the ship. But
I think he was, at some
point, captain.
In UotNS we find in Tzadkiel, another ship captain,
an angelic,
shapeshifting being (as is the angel in Melito's
story). I think this lends
credence to the idea of captain Hethor also being a
winged, shape shifting
creature, perhaps the obverse of Tzadkiel...a fallen
angel?
Hethor also describes himself as serving on the
Quasar, and on a ship with a
hundreds masts and silver sails. He also says he
served as the captain of
the "limping ship". In the time of BotNS's writing
I think quasars were
theorized to be white fountains, the compliment to
black holes. So I think
the Quasar is likely (what we later learn to be)
Tzadkiel's ship because its
primary literary purpose, in the first 4 books, was
to carry the New Sun
back to earth.
So what was the limping ship Hethor was the captain
of? Some suggest it was
the ship that crashed leaving the ancestors of the
antechamber prisoners and
that Hethor's real name is KimLeeSoong. This could
be the case, but then he
would be a normal human not a shapeshifter.
There is another ship which looms very large in
BotNS but seems so far to
have avoided attempts at explanation through all
these years. This is The
Citadel. I take The Citadel to be a ship on a par
with the Quasar due to
its large size and irregular shape (contrast to the
Hierodule's ship which
is like a flying saucer). I think the Citadel ship
is an alternate version
of the Quasar, with Hethor as its captain. This
ship was apparently poorly
captained, flew too close to Urth (to retrieve his
stolen paracoita?) and
got stuck.
bsharp
_______________________________________________
Hethor is presumed to be [shape-shifted] when Agia, riding a winged creature with claws, later snatches Severian from the evzone soldiers. So peryton becomes Purn (shades of Dragonriders of Pern?). Both in Severian's earlier dream and during the snatching the winged creature is noted to have a mitre of bone on its head, suggesting the dinosaur-era pterodon.
Pterodon does yield the letters to form the homologous snippet, p-e-r-n. But perhaps even more interesting the word "purn" itself means "bone, skull" in proto-Dravidian. I'd been looking for a Korean or Chinese linguistic connection, and never mentioned the proto-Dravidian "purn" before because I couldn't connect it with Hethor/Purn until you brought up the "mitre of bone" angle. My thanks.
2 quoted lines
Like Roy, I don't find the Purn-Hethor connection satifying. It is all based on the name Purn and that he is a sailor. There is no physical resemblance nor psychological resemblance to twisted, mysterious Hethor.
However, Hethor as a shape shifter is satisfying to me for a few reasons. Even Severian wonders how Hethor is able to transport his larger pets around.
I'm not crazy about the evidence for shape-shifting (such creatures populate Wolfe's universe like ants), but if it is so beguiling to you, you should have little trouble accepting the fact that one could appear as either small and gray-haired (Hethor) or more solidly-built and blond-haired (Purn).
In regards to Mr. Lackey's earlier disastisfaction with the Purn=Hethor theory, I find it sound and well-reasoned. However, the fact that Wolfe brings up the beast-summoning mirrors in front of Purn and implies he is somewhat jealous when Gunnie bestows a kiss upon Severian suggests he wants us to at least consider the parallels between him and Hethor. Perhaps the nameless, but mysterious, little gray-haired man also noted to be aboard the Quasar simply overhears Sev talking about the mirrors, as well as sees Burgundafora kissing him, and it's he who's actually Hethor.
[snip]
1 quoted line
Some suggest... that Hethor's real name is KimLeeSoong.
Never quite understood the tenuous connection here -- mostly because I don't understand how, in the concatenation of names, one arrives at "Hethor" from "KimLeeSoong."
1 quoted line
There is another ship which looms very large in BotNS but seems so far to have avoided attempts at explanation through all these years. This is The Citadel. I take The Citadel to be a ship on a par with the Quasar due to its large size and irregular shape (contrast to the Hierodule's ship which is like a flying saucer).
I believe the Quasar could easily contain the Citadel in one of its smaller bays, but now that you mention it once wondered if the Wall around Nessus might not have been an ancient spaceship cradle -- perhaps built to hold the early stages of Typhon's Whorl?
em
agreed. the 'towers' were individual spaceships, from what I gathered.
In the visionary section at the end of the Long Sun books, the Matachin Tower is described as "the Malacic Transport" or some such thing. I can't remember the exact word but the implication is clearly that the Citadel is a spaceport and the towers are individual ships.
I always assumed the Whorl was constructed entirely in orbit around Urth. Though I realize now this assumption was not based on anything actually stated in the books.
3 quoted lines
On 5/5/06, mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com> wrote:
I believe the Quasar could easily contain the Citadel in one of its smaller bays, but now that you mention it once wondered if the Wall around Nessus might not have been an ancient spaceship cradle -- perhaps built to hold the early stages of Typhon's Whorl?
Actually I believe it was mentioned, or apparent from context.. I seem to remember Mamelta maybe telling Silk about the landers coming and going (Why don't I just get a second copy of them all here for my office?!) . It is a hollowed out asteroid, so it would seem almost senseless to bring it down, fill it up and launch something like a small moon into orbit. The mind boggles alone on the energy required to get something of that size to 7miles/sec (escape velocity)
And the Wall around Nessus? Well- it is probably just a wall (though a feat of engineering that one could live their whole life in). Wolfe hides things in things, very, very true, but sometimes I think too much is read into things that just are themselves.
7 quoted lines · 1–2 deep
On 5/5/06, pthwndxrclzp <aquastor at gmail.com> wrote:
I always assumed the Whorl was constructed entirely in orbit around Urth. Though I realize now this assumption was not based on anything actually stated in the books.
On 5/5/06, mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com> wrote:
I believe the Quasar could easily contain the Citadel in one of its smaller bays, but now that you mention it once wondered if the Wall around Nessus might not have been an ancient spaceship cradle -- perhaps built to hold the early stages of Typhon's Whorl?
Rex Racer wrote:
I can claim no authoritative positon without the books at hand to reference,
but I remember nothing to indicate the whole Citadel being a massive ship on par with the Quasar, rather than Nessus old space port.<<
That is correct. The Citadel was the old space port. See, URTH, chapter XXXV, p-251.
-Roy
Actually I believe it was mentioned, or apparent from context.. I seem to remember Mamelta maybe telling Silk about the landers coming and going (Why don't I just get a second copy of them all here for my office?!) .
Perhaps Mamelta said so, but I seem to remember a flashback from Maytera Marble, too (instead?). She was herded onto the lander and has a clear memory of admiring one of the chem soldiers who was standing guard. I think that was in Lake or Calde otLS
Tristan
tristan_davenport at hotmail.com
11 quoted lines · 1–3 deep
It is a
hollowed out asteroid, so it would seem almost senseless to bring it down, fill it up and launch something like a small moon into orbit. The mind boggles alone on the energy required to get something of that size to 7miles/sec (escape velocity)
And the Wall around Nessus? Well- it is probably just a wall (though a feat of engineering that one could live their whole life in). Wolfe hides things in things, very, very true, but sometimes I think too much is read into things that just are themselves.
On 5/5/06, pthwndxrclzp <aquastor at gmail.com> wrote:
I always assumed the Whorl was constructed entirely in orbit around Urth. Though I realize now this assumption was not based on anything actually stated in the books.
On 5/5/06, mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com> wrote:
I believe the Quasar could easily contain the Citadel in one of its smaller bays, but now that you mention it once wondered if the Wall around Nessus might not have been an ancient spaceship cradle -- perhaps built to hold the early stages of Typhon's Whorl?
Rex Racer wrote:
I remember the Citadel being not a ship, but a spaceport with any number of the towers being "landers" as Silk calls (though the nomenclature and descriptions in the BotNS makes it pretty clear that the towers are old spaceships repurposed when the age of space flight (at least the part coming from Urth) came to an end- walls being added, stone structures and extensions slowly accreting through time.
I can claim no authoritative positon without the books at hand to reference, but I remember nothing to indicate the whole Citadel being a massive ship on par with the Quasar, rather than Nessus old space port.
The Wall, with the peculiar positioning of the guardsmen inside it, could be a huge, grounded spin-gravity generation ship, similar to the Whorl, but hollow on the inside and roofed over. During flight gravity would be outward, along the radius, rather than along the axis, so some furnishings and fixtures would be seen as pointing the wrong way, or swiveling crew compartments could likewise be worth remarking on.
Any sizable ship landing under thrust would clear the ground for some distance around, so its possible that you have a circular ship forming the wall around Nessus, only it landed far outside of town, then the town grew out to meet and enter it. Or it could merely be the wall of the Citadel, created when smaller ships landed inside it to avoid blasting the countryside or to be convenient to the other ships and shared utilities.
On 5/5/06, Macronaut <macronaut at yahoo.com> wrote:
I remember that the towers of the citadel are revealed
to be ships waiting to leave Urth in the last days of
Typhon. But I don't recall anything suggesting that
the citadel as a whole was itself one big ship. It's
an interesting idea -- is there textual support for
that? Or am I misinterpreting?
Macronaut
I agree with the others. The only textual support I can possibly see would be the intricate tunnel systems being actually corridors and tubing etc. But that's pretty thin.
~maru
On 5/5/06, Macronaut <macronaut at yahoo.com> wrote:
I remember that the towers of the citadel are revealed
to be ships waiting to leave Urth in the last days of
Typhon. But I don't recall anything suggesting that
the citadel as a whole was itself one big ship. It's
an interesting idea -- is there textual support for
that? Or am I misinterpreting?
From: "maru dubshinki" <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
I agree with the others. The only textual support I can possibly see would be the intricate tunnel systems being actually corridors and tubing etc. But that's pretty thin.
Totally unsure if this is relevant or not, but at the end of Shadow, as Sev and his friends approach the Nessus Wall, we are told "It is of black metal, like the walls of the Citadel, and for this reason it seemed less terrible to me than it would have otherwise--the buildings I had seen in the city were of stone or brick, and to come now on the material I had known from earliest childhood was no unpleasant thing."
Now in a resource-depleted world, walls of metal seem odd to me -- especially one that seems to make the Great Wall of China look like a child's miniature. Then again maybe/probably both walls were constructed at a much earlier time by the same technology and design team? Dunno.
It also seems to me that when Severian enters Nessus in Urth, there is no Wall in place. Plus Baldanders seems to imply he knows why the Wall was built and it's his pele tower at Lake Diuturna upon which the saucer ship of the Hierodules parks itself.
ehm
Thanks to Macronaut and mourning's glory for those posts on Hethor. So it seems we have two contenders for Hethor on Tzadkiel's ship. Is one a red herring?
One is big blonde Purn (if only he was Pern...) who feeds the dying pets (though seems unlikely to be a cook). And the other is "a little man with dirty gray hair like Hethor" who might be a lieutenant...to a captain of the jibers, who is subsequently killed...elevating Hethor to captain? Would Wolfe be so devious as to disguise Hethor with a simile?
Also that little gray guy is in a very weird scene which I forgot about.
Sev is alone after scaring off Zak when a forcefield seems to catch and hold him. He is captured (or maybe killed again?) by a group of jibers and forced to watch a movie clip showing a "semblance" of himself as autarch in his court. He is told to imitate the semblance or be killed.
What is all this about and why is this "semblance" so important as to rate its own chapter?
Friday, May 5, 2006, 3:41:10 PM, you wrote:
There is another ship which looms very large in BotNS but seems so far to have avoided attempts at explanation through all these years. This is The Citadel. I take The Citadel to be a ship on a par with the Quasar due to its large size and irregular shape (contrast to the Hierodule's ship which is like a flying saucer). I think the Citadel ship is an alternate version of the Quasar, with Hethor as its captain. This ship was apparently poorly captained, flew too close to Urth (to retrieve his stolen paracoita?) and got stuck.
bsharp
Citadel is not a ship, but a starport. Some of the towers (Matachin Tower, but not the witches' tower) are ships, or better - atomic rockets.
Best regards,
Stanislaus mailto:sbocian at poczta.fm
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