[TaoHorror]

Ok, here's the deal, I'm sure all of you heard by now Bakker has found Jesus and has sworn off writing anything further not holy scripture. But salvation hasn't squashed that completest part of him and has asked you to write the ending of this story. He's counting on you, the fate of Earwa is in your hands! Don't let him nor the fan base down, how does this thing end?! Or does it? You decide, amaze us with your crafty intellect and creative heart and spell out how you would "finalize" this story.

EDIT: to be clear, this is not guessing how Bakker would end it ... its an exercise to see how we would.

[TLEILAXU]

The only thing I'm sure of is that the World will be shut and that some humans will survive.

[TaoHorror]

The only thing I'm sure of is that the World will be shut and that some humans will survive.

I feel like a directory pulling the art out of the actor ... will it remain shut, open back up, gods stop munching on souls, TNG defeated, any major character lives/dies, the heads, the poles ... what?

[JerakoKayne]

It was all a dream!

[TaoHorror]

It was all a dream!

A very "Usual Suspects" type of ending, JK, LOL!

Actually, you could be spot on in a way - the idea for PON could've came to Bakker in a dream ...

[TaoHorror]

oh, come on - these are the only responses? You people are no fun, why so serious? Guess you're only into a death match over the minutia of what the heck Bakker was thinking on page 388, line 14 ( what can it all mean?! ) ... don't forget to enjoy the read.

[Sausuna]

I really like his idea of featuring both The Boy and other survivors of the Ordeal. I'd probably like to focus on The Boy in regards to him stumbling upon some stuff around the east (can't remember the tribe that remained past the mountains. Occasionally receiving news about the status of the world. Perhaps discovers the rest of the world is screwed in some manner as well already.

Meanwhile feature Akka and Kayutas separately as they work to save the world. Maybe it was just me, but I really liked Kayutas, but at the same time felt his characterization wasn't too strong. Might relate to just not seeing his PoV. But more often he came off as a tool of Kellhus compared to Serwa. It'd be neat to me to see where he stands, especially in light of his Father's death, assuming he were to survive. Their narrative would revolve around rallying defenses to fight the No-God, with everything going to hell due to failing infrastructure and fear. And then somehow Malowebi and Kellhus either working with or tricking the remains of Shae in The Mutilated to lead to their deaths/downfall near the very end.

Ultimately the Dunsult manage to execute their plan! The Ark reads the code of the world, the population is reduced to the foretold number... To no avail! The Last Inchoroi and The Consult find themselves still damned! All their efforts, all their warring, a crusade across the stars for what was always a futile effort. The World cannot be shut. Fate cannot be avoided.

[TaoHorror]

I really like his idea of featuring both The Boy and other survivors of the Ordeal. I'd probably like to focus on The Boy in regards to him stumbling upon some stuff around the east (can't remember the tribe that remained past the mountains. Occasionally receiving news about the status of the world. Perhaps discovers the rest of the world is screwed in some manner as well already.

Meanwhile feature Akka and Kayutas separately as they work to save the world. Maybe it was just me, but I really liked Kayutas, but at the same time felt his characterization wasn't too strong. Might relate to just not seeing his PoV. But more often he came off as a tool of Kellhus compared to Serwa. It'd be neat to me to see where he stands, especially in light of his Father's death, assuming he were to survive. Their narrative would revolve around rallying defenses to fight the No-God, with everything going to hell due to failing infrastructure and fear. And then somehow Malowebi and Kellhus either working with or tricking the remains of Shae in The Mutilated to lead to their deaths/downfall near the very end.

Ultimately the Dunsult manage to execute their plan! The Ark reads the code of the world, the population is reduced to the foretold number... To no avail! The Last Inchoroi and The Consult find themselves still damned! All their efforts, all their warring, a crusade across the stars for what was always a futile effort. The World cannot be shut. Fate cannot be avoided.

Good schtuff, I like it - so 144,000 is not a pure extinction level event, TNG is defeated and humans can repopulate. I like the metaphysical aspects of your ending with Kellhus still at work - Bakker needs to come up with something intriguing to end this thing.

[TaoHorror]

I was waiting to post mine to allow for other input, but here goes:

Akka is hanged for being a traitor, is blamed for the failure of the GO. While he’s twitching around on the rope in the throes of death, he finally “gets” the translocation cant and transports away all the way back to the GR ( he hasn’t figure out how to direct the ship, just sail it at this point ). It’s empty, no one’s there. He looks into the IF and sees himself being tormented by Kellhus endlessly. This puts some gas into his awareness and figures he has to find Mimara ASAP to avoid his destiny. He finds a head on the belt of a salt statue of Kellhaus and takes it with him.

Meanwhile, the boy is a fast learner and on the move – he’s quickly absorbing history, culture, tactics and infiltrates the Sylvendi. He quickly moves up in rank and becomes the hand to Moe Jr. Together they meet up with Kau/Serwa ( who now looks like an undead lich, but much more powerful than she was, no longer walks but floats ) to align with Zeum and the remainder of the 3 Seas to march on Golgotterath. But now they can take the short cut up through Ishterebinth, grabbing some remaining Cûnuroi along the way. Instead of 300,000, they are a band of warriors numbered around 5,000, all on horseback making the trek logistically feasible and faster, all armed with chorea.

With the help of the head, Akka finds Mimara and his son residing in the Library of Sauglish. Mimara has been using The Eye to help her research on how to destroy TNG – she has discovered that “saving” the souls of The Consult/TNG is the path for success. By bringing the damned back into the bosom of The God, the metaphysical error of the Outside of the Outside can be resolved ( turns out all of this mayhem was due to a mathematical rounding error, The God rounded to a trillionth in lieu of googolplexian ). Akka teleports the 3 of them to the GR, but falls short and they show up at Dagliash and connect with some “survivors” who at first attack them, but The Eye shows them who they were before they mutated from radiation and warn Akka out of the area to avoid radiation poisoning ( “do not become as us” ). A few mutated sorcerers and warriors join them as they march to the horns.

Altogether ( Akka, Mimara, Kau, Serwa, Moe Jr, the boy, et al ) they meet up outside The Occlusion. The boy collaborates with the head and together are able to solve the math problem – which is whoever/whatever sent the Inchoroi on their way through the cosmos was supposed to “save” 144,000 lives on each world to redeem themselves, not reduce it to that … all of this, a big misunderstanding of rounding issues with Infinity. So what was supposed to be an epic showdown becomes a rudimentary math class with TNG. The sorcerers with the help of nuclear mutated sorcery rebuild the Ark ( the radiated sorcerers go with them to power the engines ) and send The Consult on their way to repair the damage they’ve done to the thousands of worlds they terrorized. TNG reunites with his father through the IF, which closes that portal; Mimara accompanies him/it with the hope of saving those in hell with The Eye. Earwa is released from the womb plague, Akka raises his son, Serwa seizes rulership of the 3 Seas with Moe Jr and Kau as her generals. After 20 years, with humanity normalizing, Eanna invades Earwa igniting a mass world war.

[SmilerLoki]

oh, come on - these are the only responses? You people are no fun, why so serious? Guess you're only into a death match over the minutia of what the heck Bakker was thinking on page 388, line 14 ( what can it all mean?! ) ... don't forget to enjoy the read.

My stance on it is, people would be better off focusing on telling their own stories, assuming they at all want to tell anything. Let Bakker finish his himself.

[Dora Vee]

For me, the answer is that it's just so hard to say with Bakker. I think failure probably will remain a thing, but not because of the No-God, but because people are too busy fighting amongst themselves, certain people thinking that the world is not worth anything without (insert loved one) in it, and others straight up not wanting Earwa to be saved because they don't think it's worth saving.

[TaoHorror]

oh, come on - these are the only responses? You people are no fun, why so serious? Guess you're only into a death match over the minutia of what the heck Bakker was thinking on page 388, line 14 ( what can it all mean?! ) ... don't forget to enjoy the read.

My stance on it is, people would be better off focusing on telling their own stories, assuming they at all want to tell anything. Let Bakker finish his himself.

Was just trying to come up with something fun given the hefty dialogue as late.

[Bolivar]

I would want to see the consequences of the closing off of the Outside resulting in the death of meaning, leading to a loss of consciousness and self-awareness in human beings. First people begin acting more bold without realizing it, especially timid characters, since they are no longer inhibited by their self-consciousness. Next people begin losing their faculty for language, our ability to express meaning, with characters starting to say a coherent sentence but ending in nonsense, severely hindering the communication necessary to resist the No-God. Next the norms of conduct of society completely fall apart because people can no longer process abstractions and they revert to looting and tearing eachother apart in the face of the apocalypse. By the end of the saga, humanity is reduced to an ape-like state, where they can do nothing but carry out simple biological functions and their only response to the coming of the No-God is to flee howling in terror.

While this is happening, the confluence of unlikely miracles it takes to sustain life, let alone an entire planet of biodiverse multi-celled organisms or even intelligent life, begin to break down. The grass and plants are withering rapidly, the climate becomes highly erratic, and water begins to dry up almost everywhere. Domesticated animals just drop dead because they no longer have the milennia of intentional programming that artificially evolved them into what they are. More and more poisonous gasses are released into the atmosphere, natural disasters are becoming common occurrences and comets and other space objects begin colliding into Earwa. As the planet can't take much more, everything is consumed by a major black hole event that negates all existence. With a POV in the outside of the gods watching all of this helplessly, the Outside blinks out of existence as well, as it cannot exist if it's mirror image does not.

Aurax tales off the VR headset and chastises Aurang for not making it to the end. The whole thing was a simulation, an open world game where you travel the galaxy trying to find the correct planet and end damnation by activating System Initialization. They committed such insane atrocities on an absurd scale because there were no consequences, much like any teenager blowing off steam in Grand Theft Auto. The game is populated with NPCs created using something like Bethesda's Radiant AI system, where characters can make their own decisions according to programmed behaviors and inclinations. Everything you read about what they said, thought, and felt was entirely meaningless. This challenges the readers perception about the significance of what they feel about struggles and achievements - that you can feel such powerful attachment to experiences that are not real, both in the in-world narrative of the book and your own reading experience outside of it.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

[Bhaal]

Achamian sacrifices himself with the Heron Spear to destroy the No-God. Coincidentally he is the 144,001 soul on Earwa and after his death the outside closes.

The resulting Indigo plague kills the remaining 144,000.

Kellhus pulls a Dr Manhattan and goes away to other worlds.

The End.

P.S.:Sorry I am tired, can't think of all the important details, but this sounds kewl.

[Dora Vee]

Everything you read about what they said, thought, and felt was entirely meaningless. This challenges the readers perception about the significance of what they feel about struggles and achievements - that you can feel such powerful attachment to experiences that are not real, both in the in-world narrative of the book and your own reading experience outside of it.

That would really infuriate me, to be quite honest.