[Rheyah]

And yet here you summed them up so beautifully in two simple paragraphs.

"Oh, who are we but simply those who were meant not to understand, even though we understand thus so..."

And anyone who has half a clue about life knows there is absolutely NOTHING to be afraid of if the universe ups and ends itself tomorrow. The simple fact is that it's completely out of your control either way, so the only reaction is to whine like a little girl on the Nagari General Discussion forums until the Shivans whip up a ban and shut you up...

There's a difference between exposing oneself to the idea of the concept and actually witnessing it.  If you assume that the Nagari process filters part of its information so as to be comprehensible to the human mind, then suddenly the Great Darkness or whatever it is switches that off.  I'm trying to imagine what kind of reaction that would give to the average human mind (thinking about it is enough to give me chills) but the scale of calamity coupled with the overwhelming sense of KNOWING that a link with such an entity would provide..  Well.  It'd be far beyond Lovecraft.  It would be an existential threat of a scale no god could feel.  Far beyond Hell and beyond suffering, simply oblivion.

A universal scale intellect is almost certainly going to be concerned with the ultimate end of the universe

[qwadtep]

Nagari doesn't filter anything, it just dumps thoughts into your head for your mind to translate. When Laporte pokes too deep and nearly drives herself insane asking about the Shivans, the Shivans cut her off. The Great Darkness is something beyond Shivan control, something that lurks in the collective unconscious of the universe, that is so fundamentally alien that it undermines a human's most basic grasp on reality. It's like telling a computer that two equals one; the logical incongruency is simply too great.

I wonder if even the godlike intellects of the Shivans and Vishnans can properly understand it, or if Universal Truth wasn't a near-miss for more than just Laporte.

[Hopeful]

I wonder if even the godlike intellects of the Shivans and Vishnans can properly understand it, or if Universal Truth wasn't a near-miss for more than just Laporte.

Ya know, the way aKen goes 'DAMAGE CONTROL FULL-BURN THINKOFSOMETHINGELSERIGHTNOWKID!' seems to imply that.. well he didn't panic, he couldn't really express PANIC, or at least it didn't come through on dialogue alone, certainly implies that was also a very near-miss for Ken. He mentions when you finally reach him that [Noemi] could've gone mad, been discovered or somehow miraculously killed at any point but fortunately had not, so that brings to mind her death could've easily happened at any point.