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"As crazy as it sounds, fantasy is also founded on that loss. With Descartes, remember, it is God that assures the integrity of nature’s message. The world is a kind of communication. Of course, everything will ‘make sense,’ or ‘turn out for the best,’ because we are living a kind of story, one where punishment and reward will be dispensed according to the villainy or heroism or our role. The death of God, Nietzsche points out, forces us to abandon all such assurances, to acknowledge that the world makes no narrative, or moral, sense whatsoever.

And that those who insist that it does are probably living in a fantasy world…"

From one of Bakker's blog posts. Now, Scott has said numerous times that the world of Earwa conspires.

I've taken that to mean that the world sets up narrative arcs, the clever coincidences such as when Cnauir manages to find Kellhus. But this quote makes me wonder, if the people of Earwa are living in a kind of story, does this mean there will be punishment and reward but this will be absurd by our modern moral standards?

Or perhaps Lil' Moe is right, and his adopted father has apprehended the God. Could Kellhus actually be a Messiah, but then why the conversations with Proyas?

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What I wonder is if this story making world eclipses the gods or not. Is the story making world bigger than jesus? Ie, the gods are caught up in it's story machinations as well?

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Something on this note. The Ordeal is moving closer and closer to the World's deepest Topoi. That is a clear example of the World about to conspire, yeh?

Though I completely agree that your idea is something Bakker is consciously exploring. I believe it will have to do with some kind of Nietzchian Ubermensch/Adorno's Messianic Moment.

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Two things to add to this, the first is a non-diagetic invocation of a muse of Bakker's and seems to go along in the same headspace with the above referenced blog post  about living in a fantasy world, the second is a diagetic hint that the world>gods, and/or possible that fate=world:

The heavens, the sun, the whole of nature is a corpse. Nature is given over to the spiritual, and indeed to spiritual subjectivity, thus the course of nature is everywhere broken in upon by miracles.
—HEGEL, LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY III

The world has its own ways, sockets so deep that not even the Gods can dislodge them. No urn is so cracked as Fate.
—ASANSIUS, THE LIMPING PILGRIM

If Akka is the avatar of fate and fate is the world what does that indicate? 

If fate is a whore and fate is the world what does that indicate about Esme and Mimara?

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I like where your head is at here, lockesnow.

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Yeh, interesting possibilities.  Perhaps the Whore is concerned with the fate of men and the fate of the world is somehow separated?

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If Akka is the avatar of fate and fate is the world what does that indicate? 

So, what, the whole prophet of the past thing in the books could actually link up to something other than Akka indulging his ego, or Kellhus malware?

Probably not an avatar of fate, but of what has been. What the future/what fate rests and grows upon. Perhaps somewhat like a mother role...

If fate is a whore and fate is the world what does that indicate about Esme and Mimara?

And somewhat like a father role...

Okay, I was kinda throwing the genders in there for high concept kicks. But if it turns out I'm right in some way, I'll say I was dead serious about the claim all along!

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This is great stuff.

I'll add two items that seem relevant to me, though I can't articulate the connection. Perhaps the board will see better than I how they relate to "the world conspires."

First, there's this Kellhus POV from TTT:

“I know you can hear me,” he said to the world, dark and sacred. “I know that you listen.”

A sourceless wind pulled the grasses into streamers, drawing them to the southwest. Against the constellations, dead branches clacked and creaked without rhythm.
     
“What was I to do?” he replied. “They attend only to what lies before their eyes. They listen only to what pleases their ears. Things unseen, things unheard … they trust to you.”
     
The wind subsided, leaving an unearthly silence in its wake. He heard the pasty hiss of maggots squirming through the gut of a dead crow some five paces to his right. He heard the chatter of termites seething beneath the bark of the surrounding oaks.
     
He tasted the sea on the air.
     
“What was I to do? Tell them the truth?”
     
He stooped, pulled a twig from the straps of his right sandal. He studied it by moonlight, followed the thin, muscular branchings that seized so much emptiness from the sky. Tusk sprouting from tusk. Though the trees about him had died seasons previously, the twig possessed two leaves, one waxy green, the other brown …
     
“No,” he said. “I cannot.”

(The whole POV is my single favorite passage in Bakker's work, btw).

Second, to follow up on lockesnow's ideas, there's this from the TTT glossary:

Kahiht—The name given to so-called World-Souls in the Inrithi tradition. Since the God manifests himself in the movement of historical events in Inrithism, to be Kahiht, or a world historical individual, is considered sacred.

I wouldn't be surprised if a Kahiht is central to _Unholy Consult_, In WLW, Achamian says:

"No. I tell you this because I truly know very little. The Judging Eye is a folk legend, like the Kahiht or the White-Luck Warrior, notions that have been traded across too many generations to possess any clear meaning..."

A book titled _Kahiht_ probably wouldn't sell very well (though it's still better than _When Sorcerers Sing_). So maybe it'll turn out Aurang is Kahiht, thus forcing Inrithi scholars into a great deal of revisionist history. (-:

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ahh, kahiht, something that jumped out at me when I read all the glossary but I"d long forgotten about until you sparked it.

That Akka quote from WLW is RSB waving a big giant "look at me!" flag, for sure.

If Akka is kahiht, Jaqen H'ghar is a grumkin (they grant three wishes).  Dammit.  mixing fantasy series theories/references is worse than mixing metaphors, innit?

A book titled _Kahiht_ probably wouldn't sell very well (though it's still better than _When Sorcerers Sing_). So maybe it'll turn out Aurang is Kahiht, thus forcing Inrithi scholars into a great deal of revisionist history. (-:

And a better title than those or The Unholy Consult is the title: The World Soul.

I notice how there's a linguistic connection here between the phrase 'worldborn men' and 'world soul'.  Could there be a connection between the phrase "Self-Moving Soul" and Kahiht?

Did Nil'Giccas found the Dunyain in an attempt to breed Kahiht into men, to harness the ineffable that made men like the Anasurimbors conquerers, leaders and makers of history? 

Did Nil'Giccas found the Dunyain to try and mold a man who would be to men what Cujara Cinmoi was to cunoroi?  Was he trying to craft a Kahiht?

Thinking about things sideways for a moment: isn't the Dunyain-Gesserit breeding experiment a sort of base (lacking science) way of approximating the genetic engineering of the Inchoroi?  Was Nil'Giccas trying to fight fire with fire and engineer humans into Dunyain as an anti-Sranc force?

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Esmenet also mentions Kahiht and World-Souls in TDTCB, I believe. I'll look it up later.

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And a better title than those or The Unholy Consult is the title: The World Soul.

Agreed.

Like you, I can't believe Scott didn't have something in mind when he mentioned those three "folk legends" together.

Now, it doesn't have quite the symmetry it would if all three AE books were taken from Akka's quote. But "The World-Soul" would make a good title for the final series. Prince of Nothing --> Aspect-Emperor --> World-Soul might just be the path Kellhus walks.

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Esmenet also mentions Kahiht and World-Souls in TDTCB, I believe. I'll look it up later.

Dug this up for you! It doesn't really shed any new light on the issue, though.

It's in chapter 18, when Esmi first sees Kellhus and Cnaiur:

Most everyone around the fire was unknown to her, but the man whose corded arms were ribbed by scars, she realized, had to be the Scylvendi everyone was talking about. Did that mean the blond-bearded man, the one who sat next to the breathtaking Norsirai girl, was his companion? The Prince of Atrithau who claimed to dream of the Holy War? Esmenet wondered who else she might be watching. Was Prince Proyas himself among them?
She watched wide-eyed, a sense of awe squeezing the breath from her lungs. She stood, she realized, at the very heart of the Holy War, fiery with passion, promise, and sacred purpose. These men were more than human, they were Kahiht, World Souls, locked in the great wheel of great events. The thought of striding into their midst beckoned hot tears to her eyes. How could she? Awkwardly concealing the back of her hand, instantly branded for what she was by their far-seeing eyes...

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Thanks, Borque. What a great passage.

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@lockesnow: That would indicate that any child from the two would be the World Soul. (explaining why Mimara has the judging eye, being mother of the incarnation).

Which, is of course why it had to be sustained on Qirri (the ashes of the Norman kahiht - Cu'jara Cinmoi)