(urth) Hethor

[mournings glory]

>On 5/5/06, Macronaut <macronaut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I remember that the towers of the citadel are revealed
> > to be ships waiting to leave Urth in the last days of
> > Typhon.  But I don't recall anything suggesting that
> > the citadel as a whole was itself one big ship.  It's
> > an interesting idea -- is there textual support for
> > that? Or am I misinterpreting?
>
>From: "maru dubshinki" <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
>
>I agree with the others. The only textual support I can possibly see
>would be the intricate tunnel systems being actually corridors and
>tubing etc. But that's pretty thin.

Totally unsure if this is relevant or not, but at the end of _Shadow_, as 
Sev and his friends approach the Nessus Wall, we are told "It is of black 
metal, like the walls of the Citadel, and for this reason it seemed less 
terrible to me than it would have otherwise--the buildings I had seen in the 
city were of stone or brick, and to come now on the material I had known 
from earliest childhood was no unpleasant thing."

Now in a resource-depleted world, walls of metal seem odd to me -- 
especially one that seems to make the Great Wall of China look like a 
child's miniature. Then again maybe/probably both walls were constructed at 
a much earlier time by the same technology and design team? Dunno.

It also seems to me that when Severian enters Nessus in _Urth_, there is no 
Wall in place. Plus Baldanders seems to imply he knows why the Wall was 
built and it's his pele tower at Lake Diuturna upon which the saucer ship of 
the Hierodules parks itself.

ehm