#I really do wonder what Alecto is like in comparison to Nona

[lady-harrowhark]

I’m more asking for confirmation than anything else since I don’t have a copy of htn or ntn I can check, but do we have any concrete evidence that John is still capable of performing full resurrections? Or were the original resurrections the kind of thing that were only possible in the aftermath of 10 billion deaths + 9 planets worth of thanergy being released (much like how harrow’s parents supposedly performed a type of resurrection in the aftermath of murdering 200 children)

I've been paging through, and I don't think we do have any concrete evidence... I also don't think we have any concrete not evidence though either...

I think most relevant to this question is this passage from when John is showing Harrow the 500 he's going to send to the Ninth:

No, I haven't truly resurrected anyone in ten thousand years. But at that time... I set many aside, for safety... and I've often felt bad about just keeping them as insurance. They've been asleep all this myriad, Harrow, and it's frankly a relief to my mind to wake them up.

So if we take this at face value (never a given with John), he resurrected them back ten thousand years ago, but will be waking them up now.

Which, of course, aligns with what he says in John 5:4 of NtN, "...resurrection is different from waking up."

That difference is something I've been mulling over since I first read it, and I don't have any great takes at the moment. It's definitely something I have flagged to keep an eye out for on my next reread though! I think your point about needing that massive amount of thanergy sounds very reasonable, especially compared to Harrow's conception, which he also refers to as a type of resurrection.

Also just as I was typing this I got curious and went back to the avulsion trial scene, where it says Gideon "died" and then pulls the "gotcha!" (except in hindsight it seems it was not a "gotcha!" at all lmao). Very interesting wording here, no?

"Ha-ha," said Gideon, "first time you didn't call me Griddle," and died. - Well, passed out. But it felt a hell of a lot like dying. Waking up had an air of resurrection, of having spent a winter as a dried-out shell and coming back to the world as a new green shoot. A new green shoot with problems.

So we've clearly got this resurrection vs waking up thing again, but I'm really curious about the comparison to the "green shoot," with green being so heavily associated with Alecto (e.g., Varun calls her "green-and-breathing thing"). And especially because it's used with this context of "A new green shoot with problems," because that particular turn of phrase sounds very much like Camilla's description of Nona getting dressed looking like a "worm with problems." (Is this anything? Am I reaching? Am I having fun while reaching?)

I'll also just throw in the verbiage around John saying he "switched [Alecto] off" as compared to, say, the NtN epigram poem's "sleep, I'll wake you in the morning" (and further: "Annabel, good morning.")

I feel like things are kind of coalescing around the difference between a true death and being brought back to life vs a sleep or suspended animation state in which one isn't actually dead, and therefore is simply waking up (I can't let myself go down this tangent right now but it does sound suspiciously like the whole cryo project... moving on!). It makes me wonder if it's not so much that John hasn't resurrected anyone in ten thousand years as much as it is that no one has truly died in ten thousand years for him to resurrect; therefore he can only wake them.

Which seems incompatible with necromancy at first, but is it? We know something's fucky with the River. Perhaps crossing the River (or whatever verb we want to use for that) constitutes a true death, and if something's stopped it up, the thanergy stays pooled up and accessible for necromantic purposes rather than crossing or being cycled back into the River or dispersed or whatever happens to it. A death magic dam, essentially. And if a soul can't finish its journey to a true death, he wouldn't be able to resurrect them, hmm.

I don't know how well that meshes with the 200 dead Ninth children, though, if that's also a resurrection, other than what Harrow says during the pool scene: "The infants alone generated enough thanergy to take out the entire planet. Babies always do - for some reason." The incomplete explanation is conspicuous here, but so is the reference to "taking out the entire planet", now that we know what we know. So that may actually track. (Is John's baby finger bone crown meant to be like... a tribute? Thank you for your service and all that? Yuck.)

Two more incomplete musings and then I really will stop! I've been harboring some thoughts about whether the Ninth (and specifically the Tomb) may have a more direct connection to the River (and the barathron specifically) than other locations do, and if that's the case, perhaps that's also at play in achieving a resurrection, whatever form that may take.

The other thing I'm thinking about here is the whole Alecto/Anastasia/tomb-keeper line situation. If the tomb-keeper line is carrying a bit of Alecto's soul, is this more of a direct, one-to-one passage down the line? Or, over the however many thousands of years since that vow, has it branched out from that central family tree and dispersed amongst the generations? What I'm getting at here is essentially, if many or all of the 200 Ninth children housed a bit of Alecto's soul, taking any/all of them out would be a small scale planetary death... which could account for why babies generate so much thanergy (again, the phrasing of "enough to take out the entire planet" seems significant). It feels reminiscent of the way Lyctors flip planets as well, turning them thanergetic... if killing a planet creates thanergy, could killing bits of a planet (and the children carrying them) create a necromancer?

I swear when I sat down to answer this, I only had the first two quotes in mind and then I just kept pulling at threads and ended up unraveling a whole sweater, so apologies from getting away from what you were asking. But thank you for providing some good food for thought!

[abigail-pent]

who is she: a theory roundup

In no particular order:

Nona = Anastasia Anastasiabod/Nona Bodybod: I think these two could be the same. Black hair, check; gold eyes, check. Seen this body before: we’ve seen a photo of Anastasia’s body in the Second House lab in GTN; all of the faces in the photo were scribbled out, but technically everyone was in view. Also this makes sense under the Body = Anastasia theory. Named Nona: something to do with Harrow being the eighty-seventh Nona of her house, who would have been the 311th Reverend Mother. Anastasia could well have been the first Nona of her house. Also, the fact that Mercy compares Harrow to Anastasia in terms of looks (“you’re not as pretty as Anastasia”) suggests that they do look a bit similar, which does make sense, as Harrow is meant to be Anastasia’s descendant.

Nona = Alecto Bodybod: black hair, check; gold eyes, check. I don’t buy this so much because of all the times Alecto is described as unable to act like other humans, and I think the people on the epilogue planet would notice that. But I do enjoy this post and it would be cool if it came true!

Nona = Nona Alectobod: as in, Alecto’s body with someone else at home. Black hair, check; gold eyes, check. I don’t buy Alectobod because the body was certainly buried, whether in Canaan House or in the Tomb on the Ninth. Unless… it wasn’t buried after all? Is everything a big lie? That’s actually possible, because we basically only have John’s word for it and he is a Big Liar. He says he built the Tomb with Anastasia, and clearly in the memory of the Ninth she did guard it for the rest of her days; but like… what if Anastasia was guarding an empty Tomb the whole time. And John just told her that Alecto’s body was in there. More plausible than I initially thought!

Nona = Gideon Harrowbod or Nona Harrowbod: black hair, check; gold eyes, check. On the one hand, this makes sense because Pyrrha is with Nona and Pyrrha was last seen with Harrow’s body. On the other hand, the HTN epilogue has Nona doing press-ups and chin-ups for most of her day, but with Harrow’s noodle arms? I don’t think so! I also think it’s likely that Gideon is no longer in residence in the Harrowbod after being pulled out of the River. And that’s before getting into any of the physical comparisons between the Harrow and Nona covers. I don’t want to get all into this again, but I continue to believe that if Nona is Nona Harrowbod, then the Nona cover is very whitewashed or lightwashed.

Nona = Gideon Bodybod or Gideon Alectobod or any other bod: I refer you to this wonderful post by @cristabel-oct. 

Nona = Nona Silasbod: Absolute galaxy-brain take by @chaoticrushu, who helpfully reminds us that there’s no reason a flesh magician couldn’t trans their gender. As a corollary, I offer: if this is true, then there’s also no reason a flesh magician couldn’t change other aspects of their appearance. In which case, Carl’s statement that “we’ve seen this body before” literally doesn’t rule anybody out. It could be ANYONE. 

Nona = Nona Gideonbod: I think the cover made it really clear that we’re not looking at a Gideonbod situation. Also, since AYU, I’ve been pretty sure that the Gideonbod is considered a military asset by BOE, so I’d doubt they’d release it into the custody of a bunch of “wizards” they don’t trust.

Nona as in nona your business: Nona is Anon spelled backwards. We’re all being trolled, and we’re never going to find out.