[SmilerLoki]

I wish I knew what Bakker was driving at with Wert's History of Earwa. That the Nail is relatively new, astrologically speaking, seems to be significant... But there's no way to really ferret out why.

Yeah, it seems to be really, really vague, intentionally so. And correlation isn't causality.

[stuslayer]

Inri's birth date being so vague is another pointer to me, that he was an Inchie plant. Given that there are a number of other historical figures from the period whose dates are well known, the fact that Inri is a rough date from around the end of the Years of the Crib is suspicious, and suggests that he was inserted by the Consult following the NG's failure, which prompted a new strategy from the Consult, to control from behind the veil rather than outright confrontation.

On another point, it has been mentioned elsewhere hasn't it, that the Nail arrived a short while before the arrival of the Inchies? Thought I'd read that somewhere. Perhaps the Nail is a mothership and the Ark was only a drone, being monitored from afar, and in actual fact the failure of Ark will prompt a further intervention from the mothership...

[Wilshire]

Yeah its in Wert's History of Earwa that mentions the arrival of the Inchoroi, preceded by a huge blast (before the ark crashed down), which itself was preceded by the Nail appearing.

Inri came from humble origins though, during a time of relative chaos, so its not unlikely that his exact birth date is not known.

Unfortunately, the Inchoroi having access to whatever the Nail is so recently would not make much sense. There's just no way only a few thousands years ago the Inchoroi could call down either a laser strike or a teleportation beam, or even simply a spotlight, from something in geostationary orbit above Earwa.

But just because it appears to have originated from the Nail doesn't mean it did. I think some airborne Gnostic Cants might have made things appear like a person was ascending into heaven. A simple Bar of Heaven creates a beam of light from the ground to the sky. Another Cant cast within the light be be rather obscured, to where a flying Inchoroi could vaporize the body within...

I'm not sure that's any more or less likely that Inri going full Jesus and ascending into the Heavens to sit at the right hand(s) of Whatever God(s). Neither explanation is satisfactory to me.

[stuslayer]

Agree on the overly destructive firepower and the possibility of confusion.

To clarify, my thought was not that the Inchies of the Ark were still in contact with the NailShip (as I am now calling it, because it sounds rock hard), rather that they had been sent on to 'prepare the way' by reduction to 144k, closing the Circle, before the Nailies come down to take over. As a sort of test of their commitment perhaps. It doesn't require them to have a direct link back to the NailShip, a brutal race can use brutal techniques with each other as well as their victims.

[H]

Well, I think that it is, in no small part, an allusion by Bakker to the ancient idea of asology, in the sense that there was a belief that celestial events (like supernovea, comets and so on) marked "portenteous, or ominous" events in history.

So, there might well be some reason to be made that the pole star suddenly going (super)nova and increacing in brightness that actually is related to the Ark's arrival, or it could just be the the literary allusion to to the idea that it simply "must be" the case.

Also, it might possibly be an inversion of the idea of Star of Bethlehem, alluded to in the Hebrew bible, as what is called the Star Prophecy:

I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.

— Numbers 24:17

In this case though, the star signals the arrival of the exact opposite of the savior, in the Ark.  And, "coincidentally" is the place to which an "alleged savior" ascends, rather than has marking his arrival.  In the end, it's likely a "trick" to get us to ascribe "meaning" based on the historical precedents of these events in our cultural history.