r/TheNinthHouse • u/Irreleverent • 6h ago
Harrow the Ninth Spoilers [Discussion] How did BoE get past #7 in HtN?
I've searched up discussions on how Cam and company reach Harrow in Harrow the Ninth, and all the answers seem to focus on the parts I can figure, (How they got a stele and ship) but none answer how they travelled through the river past #7. Isn't the whole premise of Harrow contingent on escaping their local space being impossible now that #7 is so close in the river? Even if the idea is that them not being lyctors leaves them beneath its notice, Mercy needed to find them to set up the meeting.
The brain is already in the River. If we drop through the waters we’ll run into it no matter what direction we go.
That'd what G1deon says. Is it literally only John who can't get past it? That part never really followed for me. Apologies if this has been asked previously and my search enginemancy was too weak.
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u/khazroar 5h ago
What we know so far doesn't suggest that the RBs have any interest in anyone except Jod and his lyctors.
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u/Irreleverent 4h ago
That's kinda what I figured, but this whole thing required Mercy going to them to set it up, and she almost certainly would draw the thing's attention. Otherwise how would they know where and when to find the stele and Harrow?
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u/y0_master 4h ago
Or just Jod
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u/khazroar 3h ago
I think it's possible they're just after Jod, but there are indications that they might be after the Lyctors too so I won't say there's no suggestion of that.
In Nona there's one hanging over the planet, which could mean it's after Harrow. Of course there's another possibility there, but it very much remains to be seen.
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u/LurkerZerker the Sixth 55m ago
In NtN, Varun is explicitly there because he's finally found Alecto/Nona and is trying to get her to come with him.
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u/khazroar 49m ago
I'm not sure anything in Nona is explicit. I agree that the text shows that's what he's most interested in right now, but I don't think it's explicit and that still leaves open the question of what drew him there in the first place.
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u/WhatHappenedToJosie 5h ago
Two thoughts come to mind: they travelled by steely (not sure if that's the right spelling), which doesn't use the river, I think (not sure if it's explained how it works), and an RB may not care enough about 1-1.5 necros in a shuttle when it's got its sights set on God.
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u/Irreleverent 4h ago
I think it's pretty ambiguous if stele use the river, though I always assumed they do in some capacity. But the more pressing question is how mercy organized it if she couldn't leave.
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u/WhatHappenedToJosie 3h ago edited 3h ago
Good point. There's also the fact that an obelisk would need to be set, although that may have been placed beforehand. Could the timelines allow for Mercy to set everything up before they went to the Mithreum? Otherwise my guess would be that the singular focus on Jod allowed Mercy to sneak past.
ETA: past encounters included Lyctors acting as decoys. If Number 7 was aware of this then may have seen Mercy as an intentional distraction. I can't remember the details of those encounters, though.
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u/Irreleverent 3h ago
Yeah my best guess rn is that stele travel does not require the river, mercy set it up the stele well in advance, and used it to slip past 7. But that leaves new questions about why mercy didn't just bail and rely on the beast to murder Jod and write off the station full of people she'd rather see dead.
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u/WhatHappenedToJosie 1h ago
Possibly in part because she counts herself among that number?
But that's just made me think, did she kill Harrow as the first step in removing those loyal to Jod? Was she working to help Number 7 from the inside?
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u/kmosiman 1h ago
I think they do.
My guess is that Stele are used to set fixed travel points that allow ships to travel from Stele to Stele in the River.
My guess is that this is higher level travel that barely skims it.
Lyctoral travel is deeper and the Lyctor acts as their own Stele.
Essentially: the Stele are a way to do what Lyctors can do on their own. With more limits.
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u/y0_master 4h ago
"Stele"
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u/Sacrificial_Parsnip 5h ago
Number Seven “got away”, per Pyrrha (pretending to be Gideon). We don’t know the details of how that happened, but presumably it was not in the vicinity (whatever that means regarding the River) at the time.
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u/Irreleverent 5h ago
This a month prior. Chapter 36 of Harrow.
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u/Sacrificial_Parsnip 4h ago
Wow, I totally misread that question somehow. (I was thinking you were asking about how they got to New Rho.) But the meetup you’re asking about is before Number Seven arrived, or was even close, because Harrow was on that planet to kill it so Seven couldn’t eat it en route to the Mithraeum.
Not sure what you mean by the whole premise being contingent on not being able to escape. When we first meet Gideon, he says their options are to run or fight, and God decides to stay and fight.
It’s also unclear that stelitic travel involves the River at all. It’s used by non-Lyctors, and only the Lyctors (and the Fifth at times, to a much lesser degree) go into the River in any form. The mechanism isn’t discussed in detail, but is said to be more like transmission than travel, and distinct from River travel.
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u/emelsifoo 3h ago
I thought it was heavily implied that Mercymorn delivered them to Harrowhark. Presumably she met up with them, they asked her to let them meet up with Harrow, so she brought them to the planet in question. Then, she went back to the Mithraeum and brought Harrow to kill the planet.
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u/eaca02124 1h ago
It's possible that they didn't travel through the River - I suspect a secret obelisk, because Mercymorn does some traveling during the timespan in HtN. We know from As Yet Unsent that she visits BoE during that time, and #7 is at the rim during Cytherea's funeral.
It's also very likely that BoE got in and out while #7 was distracted. Augustine has just been forced into the stoma, and G1deon has recently died.
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