(urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?

[David Stockhoff]

On 5/20/2011 6:32 PM, James Wynn wrote:
>
> To me, it seems to be not even much of a puzzle that the 17 
> Megatherians are names for the powerful giant aliens that do rule 
> and/or have been ruling Urth.
>
> The other options are that megatherians refers to a line of human 
> rulers that have ruled under Abaia's authority or a line of human 
> rulers that have fashioned themselves as being like Abaia or all the 
> undersea powers. But the various occurrence of '17' in Ascia and in 
> the Commonwealth simply has to be related. And I think we have enough 
> information to put the pieces together:
>
> ...
>
> Anyway, so it seems to me.
>
> J

Could "17" not have its own meaning as a number? It's several types of 
prime, and perhaps more to the point, it is a number that is not a 
traditional Magic Number: 3, 7, 9, 12, etc. It is a number that makes a 
great very cool fragment of knowledge that may be part of a lost whole: 
it is dramatic and mysterious.

Given the multifarious mythologies Wolfe is mixing up in TBOTNS, there 
are many numbers he would want to avoid using. 17 may simply be the 
anti-magic-number. It's not susceptible to the usual approaches to 
eschatological numerology.

However, this can't explain why he used it three times---why not the 
Group of Nineteen?


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