(urth) Lupiverse(s)

[Andrew Mason]

Marc Aramini wrote:

> We really can't get to the bottom of that one - I do think that there are echoes of Christ everywhere in New Sun, from the myths of the conciliator to Sev reenacting the temptation in the desert, almost as if even if you didn't ever hear of Him His story is still living.  HOWEVER, Sev going back and actually living the life of the conciliator kind of shoots some holes in that, so I think it is ultimately ... ambiguous.  Say it ain't so!
>

I think the Conciliator is meant from the start to be Severian -
Typhon seems to recognise him, for one thing, and there's the thing
with the Claw at the end. But it doesn't seem that the legend of the
Conciliator derives only from Severian's brief visit in _Urth_; we are
told at one point that he disappeared and reappeared over a period of
thousands of years. This could just refer to other, unrecorded,
appearances of Severian (either in his Apu-Punchau body or on further
trips from Ushas), but alternatively it could mean that the
Conciliator is a composite figure, in which case Jesus or his
counterpart might be the first to contribute to the composite.