tinamd part 2, Quinn god to the end.

Part 2 chapter 3 Quinn god

There's an egg shaped stone with an ancient god inside that people in the Antimemetics Division come to talk to from time to time.  It's a good hang.  The downside is that it eats your memory of how to ride a bicycle. Hakuna matata,  the Division will teach you how in 1 to 3 hours.

This chapter is a flashback to a time Quinn talked to the egg.  The egg suggests a number of self care approaches. My favorite was Quinn quitting her job and becoming a goat herder.  The one she acts on is going home to be with her husband. 

.part 2 chapter 4 green and red.

There's a memetic treat they call green.  The man at the center of it, they call red. He's broadcasting his memetic on the internet. Its already infected 100,000 people.  There's a big man from the memetics Division come to end the threat.  One letter difference from a treat.  He gets into the room with red where hes attacked with a soldering iron.   No bother.  He disables red and starts what he calls memetic chemotherapy. The goal is to get whatever memetic is inside to go back home. This seems to be going well.  Then red asks the agent what happened to his partner. The agent has forgotten about his partner.  His partner is screaming in the living room. 

 The agent isn't capable of handling the red threat.  He's not trained for this as Red is an Antimemetic threat.  After Red takes care of the agent he sets his sites on the executives in the Memetics Division. Pretty soon they forget about Red all together and Red can spread unopposed. 

Part 3

Chapter 1

I dont remember what this was

Chapter 2

Andy Quinn is on tour as a concert violinist.  He has a deep emptiness in his life.  He's touring with the new England philharmonic. It's their last performance on the tour.  Andy will he happy to get off the road.  Except that Red has spread green all around the world. He seems to be the only person not infected. 

Why?  Sunshine.

He's getting mobbed by the infected and they cut off a couple fingers and they leave him for dead.

But sunshine finds him and directs him to a library so he can read the encyclopedia and sunshine can eat his thoughts.

Chapter 3 5:50:03

Sunshine leads Andy to the base. And eventually to Marie's body.  

Chapter 4

Andy goes into the u 3125 room. He watches all the videos and reads all the notes and comes up with a theory that Marie was right about her theory that the weapon to push good thoughts into u 3125's dimension must already exist because she would have wanted to build it ASAP.  WHERE he sees what she didnt is that it was built at their previous base.  Andy figures out where that is and decides to go there. 

The second hes out of the base Red is there to harass him.  Andy shoots him dead.  He's worried 😟 he might have also shot sunshine.

Chapter 5 6:38

part 2 just to Your last first day There Is No Antimemetics Division

 I'm audio booking this so no page numbers, just hour and minutes.

part 2 Escapee 2:02

chapter 1 in memoriam

Marie Quinn is doing a thing with Ollie Morgan.

After a while at the Antimemetics Division you are given the drugs and do their thing and they can see the giant stone spire.  Going up into the giant stone spire is part of initiation.  Did I mention that Marie Quinn has a mimetic friend that helps her?  It can't come with them.  Somehow the walk up the stone spire stops them from going up.  There's a part in the spire where there's equipment.  Computer, generator, etc.

This thing is a memorial.  Morgan asks how many memetics wars there have been.  Morgan is an Egyptologist.

Marie tells Morgan that whoever built this memorial was built by an ancient advanced civiliation.  That whole civilization is completely gone AND there's enough antimemetic stuff about it that normal people just can't see it.

Quinn only knows about 1 antimemetics war.  Quinn tells Morgan that there's a U-4929B that isn't dangerous anymore but they think it was active during Egyptian times.  Nobody knows hyroglyphs anymore so the idea can't possibly be that infections so no big worry.  But Morgan knows hyroglyphs and then a giant monster made of spiders starts to fly at them out of the sky.  Also there's a skinny man with shaggy hair that's been shot.  We know this is the same monster Quinn ran into at the lake.  But Quinn doesn't.  Long story short, it kills Morgan and Quinn doses herself with amnesia juice so she forgets about the monster and thus it forgets about her.  

Chapter 2: Where have you been all my life

Quinn lives way out in the forest.  She doesn't live anywhere near a big city.  The logical thing to do would be find a place away from the headquarters in the direction of a big city.  But she did the opposite.  Someone has broken into her house.  She's gonna investigate while backup comes.  But whatever she's gonna do she figures it'll be over before said backup arrives.  

There's a man coming up the stairs and Quinn gets the jump on him.  It's her husband.  She's forgotten her husband.  His name is Adam.

Adam used to be in antimemetics.  He was there when Quinn domesticated her imaginary friend. 

 There's a flashback to another mission that they were on together where they narrowly escape from being "eaten" by a glob monster.  It eats Adam's shoe as they climb to safety.

hour 3

No, this isn't a mission.  Not for Adam, he was an innocent bystander.  Marie tells him about the organization.  Bestest part is that in this flashback she tells him that they've been doing this for 200 years.  Something we know that she doesn't know anymore.  Also that she's not with the FBI and even if she was, what would the FBI doing in England.  Marie starts complaining about how she didn't like the FBI tv show.  The years of will that won't they is ridiculous.  In the real world, you know if you want someone or not kinda right away.  She knows she wants him.

Back to the modern day.  Adam continues to be kept in jail.  I think he thinks it's cause the organization doesn't trust him.  I think the organization is total happy with Adam and it's Marie that doesn't trust him.  When she finally comes, he goes to hug him, but she shuts that shit down HARD.  She doesn't know him at all.  But he hasn't forgotten about her.  It's hella sad.

And like Onyx said in the musical masterpiece Slam "but wait it gets worse"  She's gonna wipe his memory and relocate him and also wipe everyone's memory of him.  It'll be like he never existed.  

Chapter 3: 3:37 case colorless green

Marie "finds" a secret lab that is setup specifically to combat the thing that killed morgan and the old man.  The idea is that you only work on your theories about the thing while in that room and then you leave all your evidence there and then you purge your memory so you don't remember it so it doesn't come kill you.  There's old video that she left herself.  She's so worried about Adam back then.  Cause the two of them just sorta clicked, which indicates to her they had similar minds and the monster if it got to her would get to Adam through her due to said similarity.  There's a bit of a history of the "war" they had with this monster.  The war is pretty much over.  There used to be dozens, maybe hundres of antimememtic organizations around the world.  Now there's just this one and the headquarters we know isn't even the real headquarters.  That got destroyed and the one they're in now that seems way too big is I guess the backup headquarters and that's only got 90 people.  The war is over, the enemy is just moping up their remains.

But there is a giant engineering lab deep below.  Her hope is someone built a weapon to fight the monster there.

Lee is ther and he is infected by the monster.   Marie runs away.

Chapter 4: 4:08 Your last first day

It's chaos.  Everyone is either infected by or killed by U-3125.  Marie has a super cool ray gun and cuts through people to get to the big lab deep down.  She finds an anti-memetic bomb like the old man in part 1 chapter 3 was talking about.  She knows it won't help anything long term.  It'll erase this base and kill everyone.  It will slow down U-3125 in that all the people it has infected today will go away.  But it won't directly injury it.  It'll come back and eventually destroy humanity and replace it with something much worse.  But Marie sets off the bomb anyway.  Why not?  She's gonna die anyway.

Ends 4:32:13

part 1 There Is No Antimemetics Division

Preamble:

UO055

Yew oh zero zero five five

It's a monster thing.  It's not invisible but its got brain powers where if you look at it, you kinda don't see it and even if you do it makes your forget.  This is the least dangerous of this kind of monster.

Ch 1

There's a lady who's been summoned to what feels like a superior's office.  The superior's assistant points a gun at her and they explain that she must be a super spy as she has access to everything but there's no official record of her.  She explains that she's part of a secret department and based on the way its set up, if you're not part of it, you cant remember it exists.  The superior has special pills for this so he can remember.   The lady finds the pills and the superior takes it and he starts to remember. The lady shoots the assistant in the head.  He wasn't really a person even though he looks like a person.  He's a monster that made the superior forget and was trying to get the superior to kill the lady.  

Why would this monster want to kill this lady?  Becuase she's not just some lady.  Shes the head of the Antimemetics Division.

Ch 2

Joe is from New York city.  He works for the Antimemetics Division, which is in England.  He's in a giant cafeteria but there's only a handful of people here.  Joe seems to be a bit confused. Where is everyone?  Joe figures its his first day and things will be explained.  Shouldn't there be more people here?  There's a man in an expensive suit and fancy watch.  Joe figures he must be an executive. Why would an executive be in the cafeteria?  He figures the man must be lost and he's going to help him.  But the man isn't a man.  He's a memory monster like UO0055 but much worse.  Joe figures out he's the only one that can see the man and furthermore no one can see Joe.  Now Joe cant remember his own name because the monster is eating his memories.  

The monster calls itself Gage.  Joe figures maybe there's info about this monster in the database.  So he takes gage and turns it into telephone numbers and looks up UO4243 and he finds an entry with all the people that have been targeted and killed by Gage.  Joe tries to hurt Gage and it doesnt really work.  Until he hits Gage in the head with his phone.  Joe keeps reading the Gage file and figures out the way to kill Gage is by "feeding" it too much information at once than it can handle.  So what Joe does is grabs some hard drives and some computer cables and kinda creates an information mace and it works.  He bashes Gage's head in.  

Remember the lady from chapter 1?  Shes back and she's congratulating Joe on his competence.  Joe isn't new, he's been here for a long time.  He's actually an instructor. Lady explains that this sort of thing happens all the time and Joe will be back to normal in about a month.

This seems like a bad place to work.

It reminds me of the Lonely island I run NY song

https://youtu.be/W9PoshXXA7M?si=JXUfpKIhX4mJKD1t

Ch 3

There's an old man, he lives in an old folks home.  He's out at a lake he used to vacation at.  He thinks maybe he's been brought here to die happy in a place full of happy memories. The lady from chapter 1 and 2 shows up again.  She's probably the main character of the book.  Maybe I'll learn her name.

The old man has information she wants.  She gives him a drug that makes him temporarily younger. Hoping he will remember the thing she wants to know.

Excerpt about the drug.  If you go back more than 18 months, the snapback kills you.  So this old man is gonna die.

The pill   He tells her a fascinating tale about how the Antimemetics Division started in world War 2.  They viewed the idea of Naziism as a kind of mind virus and they were trying to build a psychic bomb that would make people forget about it and end the war.  It's kinda worked in that they did a test and it successfully deleted an idea.  Unfortunately it was the idea of the bomb itself that was deleted. Having had their idea removes they once again looked at rhe horrible war and had the idea that it would be cool if they could just make everyone forget about the ideas of Naziism.  They build the same bomb as before but by then the war is over.  It just sits in Storage until one day there's a cult in California that's becoming problematic. This time somehow they remember not to test the bomb cause it'll erase all memory of itself and they just bomb the cult and its as if they never existed.

There are side effects.

Also there's a but of what I would call sexual chemistry between lady and old man that's temporarily not that old.

That very quickly doesnt matter as he's being possessed by a monster.  He describes it as "if you're can see it, it can see you and it HATES being seen."  This monster cam after the organization in the 60s and the only solution was to self destruct in the 70s so nobody remembers the monster.  Until someone discovers the monster again and it kills everyone that knows about it.  

Marie Quinn is the lady's name.  

Ch 4 1 h 52 m, I think, this audio recording didn't say the chapter number, but this is a different story so it makes sense that it would be a new chapter

U2256, it's described like it's the loch ness monster.  In the fifties we started studying them and broke through their anti-memetic capabilities and almost killed them all.  So in 2003 we scaled back studying them.  They died out in 2006.  But their anti-memetic qualities censor the file for it.

2 hours 2 minutes is the beginning of part 2.

city of stairs ch 16 pg 370 to the end.

ch 16 pg 370  family ties

The man that abducted Shara is Vohannes's brother.  People thought he was dead.  He claims he went up a mountain with a bunch of other dudes who all died.  He claims he found god or whatever and now he's gonna do magic to bring one back.  Also, he's building airplanes with the magic carpet and yheyre gonna go destroy shara's country.

Sigrud is on a plane.  He's got a plan.  Kill the captain,  kill everyone else on board.  Use this plane to shoot down the other planes.

VO's brother does some cool magic and makes temper underground temple rise to the surface 

Ch 17 pg 389 what is reaped.

Holy shit, Vo's brother did it.  He brought back Kolkan. Who immediately is offended by the lack of fire and birds and kills everyone.  Except shara who casts an invisibility spell.  But Kolkan doesnt care.  Bigger fish to fry.

Kolkan creates a magical army and attacks city hall.  Shara takes a pill and she's in tune with the magical world and can do some magic against the magic army.  

Sigrud shows up with his flying gun ship with a Greyling flag  and kills a ton of magic army guys.  Then he angles to ship and jumps off and the ship crashes into kolkan.  

Shara goes to have a heart to heart with Kolkan.   The great reveal is that kolkan is actually Kolkan and Jukov mushed together.  The other gods put Kolkan in a prison and Jukov hid in that prison.  The Jukov that the Raj killed was a fake Jukov made. 

The mushed god is just very sad.  Shara uses the black blade to put it out of its misery.

Ch 18 pg 419 what is sewn

Everyone is recovering in the hospital 

A monk god comes to visit shara and says a friend of a friend wants to talk.

That friend of a friend is the one remaining divinity Olvos.  The kaj was her grandson.  Which means Shara is part divine.

She goes to Mulaghesh and tells her she needs to stay in Bulikov cause Shara is gonna take over the government and make everything better for everyone. Also she's being promoted to general so she'll have plenty of money to go on vacations to the island nation she wanted to retire to.

Shara goes to Sigrud and tells him his vacation is over he's the prince of Greyling and its about time he went home to.his wife and kids and killed all the pirates that are fucking up his homeland.

Shara's on a boat (Motherfucker, don't you ever forget.) And she uses magic to call her aunt and they talk about stuff.

1. Shara knows she killed Efrem because Efrem knew about the Kaj's lineage. 

2. Shara's coming home.

3.  Shara's taking over the government. 

4. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.  I suppose we'll find out in book 2.

city of stairs ch 11 pg 213 to pg 369

Ch 11 pg 213 survivors

A man is on a journey to find Jukov (who im thinking is one of the divinities.)

Instead he finds what u would describe as a party so cool I'm would never be invited to it.  There's an old man he talks to.  I think said old man is joking because he takes off all his clothes and his face and goes into a tent.

The governor goes for a long run cause I guess she wants to punish herself for not previously dying in battle.  She returns to her office and there's a 20 pag2 list of stuff in the warehouse.  It scares her cause its Devine and if there's still a divine alive all that stuff could become infinitely more dangerous. 

Shara is trying to find out how the men disappeared. She does all sorts of stuff with the intention of discovering divine intervening.  One cool thing happens , a silver coin turns to lead.

Sigrud and smShara go to a place where the rich guy that demanded the release of the maid was seen to have dropped off the maid.  They go inside and its empty.  Except Sigrud hears a child laughing.

They find the room with the sound of child laughing. It's a trap.  The thing isn't a child, its a monster.  Specifically a Mhovost, a thing created by the divinity Jukov.  Pretty sure that dipshit Wiclov sent Mrs. Torskeny in here to be eaten by the monster. Also that an affeminite man was here with Wiclov.  Shara lights the Mhovost on fire.

Ch 12 pg 240 recreations

The monster was blocking a door.  The door goes to a tunnel that slopes down.  It goes to what turns out to be the cathedral of the gods.   What they called the seat of the world.  Thers a magic doorway that goes to a door that's in the warehouse.  This is how the rebuilders get in so they could steal stuff.  There's a booby trap abd all of a sudden everything is on fire.  They get the hell out of there and they cave in the tu nel so no one else can go down there.

Something powerfully magical is released from its prison in the warehouse.

Ch 13 pg 264 you will know pain.

KOLKAN made demi gods to spy on people and punish them. 

The monster that escaped from the warehouse is making quite the scene

A drunk man sees him dive into the frozen river.

He eats two ice fishermen

He destroys a tea house and eats all the people inside.

Shara and company go out to the bridge to witness the monster.  She says it is Urav the punisher.

Sigrud says he can kill it.  It's a thing of the water.  He has killed things of the water before.  He just needs a ton of rope, a halberd, strong fishing spears and gallons of fat, preferably whale.  Best of all, a good fire so he can warm up after as he will likely need to be nude.

He's like Finn the human.  An excellent fighter, especially so when nude.

This next part is awesome.  Not that one needs it.  You could have just cut to Sigrud killed the thing and that would have been fine.  But the basic plan that unfolds is that sigrud spears Urav and said spears are tied to the bridge and urav get itself all tangled up and Sigrud slashes its belly with the halberd.  This plan goes basically perfectly until Urav decides to destroy the bridge.  Cant be tangled up in ropes supported by the bridge of there's no bridge. Urav then swallows Sigrud. He tries to do some sort of psychic damage but it turns out Sogrid already has an open wound on his hand that was given to him by the God Kolkan.  Cant make a man suffer worse than the open wound that the god that created you gave him I guess.  Sigrud stabs his way out and Urav is dead.

Ch 14 pg 301 Salvation 

There was a saypur town where the continental colonizers executed a simple girl.  The town rose up and overthrew the colonizers.  The continentals came back in force and destroyed the town.  The Raj lived in the town next door.  The destruction of the town inspired the Raj to do the science that eventually led to him developing the gospel killing weapons.

Sigrud won't let the doctors do their job and they're scared of him so they just leave.

Sigrud tells shara the horrify8ng backstory of how he got the mark of kolkan.  We get the story of how Shara met Sigrud.  She got him out of prison and his family out of harms way.  She says she just wanted for his intelligence. But he ended up becoming whatever it is he is to her now with the promise that some day he would be reunited with his family. 

Mulaghesh is the governor lady.  She enjoyed seeing Sigrud naked before the horrible fight with Urav.

Vohannes is telling Mulaghesh they gotta strike while the iron is hot.  They're famous for killing the monster and they've gotta take advantage right now.

Shara and  Vohannes have sex.

Or maybe they dont.  They seemed to try and it was awkward and im not sure if they did or not.

When Shara awake Vohannes is gone and mulaghesh is there with the paper and a story about how Sigrud saving the town from the monster.

The article also outs her as the Kaj's great grand daughter.

They figure it was Vohannes that leaked that info to the paper.  A paper that goes out to the whole continent. 

Her aunt calls her via the magic window.

Shara's punishment is to make her the official Saypur Ambassador to Bulikov.  Shara tells her aunt that she has proove that a god is still alive.  Her aunt doesnt care. 

Shara thinks her aunt must be somehow compromised. 

Ch 15 pg 329 journal of efrem pangyui

723 is the year when the devinities decided to get together and  make peace.  The part that's is interesting to Efrem is that a little before that there was a lot of documentation on pro peace talk in all six states.  

The Raj killed the divinities with some sort of black metal.  He found this metal because he had a jin as a pet and he tested different things on it until it died.

Then shara, after reading this, is all Its all a lie, everything is a lie. I don't know why she'd say that.  This largely seems like stuff I already knew.

Ch 16 pg 341 the divine city

Jukov does not forget.  By which I think that means Jukov will get revenge.

Shara does some science with coins near the spot the rejuvinators disappeared.  She narrows it down to coins with three gods on their heads she tells Sigrud to get the clothing of some of the men he killed.  The police love Sigrud cause he saved the city from Urav.  So theyre happy to give it to him.  Shara finds tokens to kolkan in the neck and wrists of the clothes.  

They put them on and walk through the spot and are transported to the Bulikov of old.  Giant beautiful buildings.  In one of these buildings Shara finds the Kaj's god killing gun.  They get to somewhere and go through another magic rift and theyre out in the desert somewhere. They find a work camp where tons of dudes are bulding metal boats. Shara tells Sigrud to stay and watch. Shes gonna go back to the real Bulikov and send the army here.

Shara gets a letter from Vohannes saying to meet her.  She figures out what the rebuildingers must have stolen from the warehouse is the magic carpet.  They're taking it apart and using the loom works to weave it with normal fabric to make magical airplanes. 

Sigrud sees the fabric spread out like wings and decides now is the time for action.

Shara goes to meet Vohannes and its not him, its a guy that looks a lot like him.  She is kidnapped.

city of stairs pg 87 to 215

Ch 5 pg 87 to do what he does best

There's a party some people, assuming these are members of the shady organization we assume killed the old man, do a terrorist attack. I think they want to capture Shara's college boyfriend Vohannes, who she just calls Vo.  But that doesnt work out for them as Sigrud kills them.

Ch 6 pg 118 a memory engraved 

KOLKAN is a good listener. 

They're at the police station. 

They have one the restitutioners in a cell

Shara drugs him to get info

It works pretty well in that she finds out theyre trying to build an airplane and they need metal to do so and Vohannes has plenty of metal.  So the plan was to kidnap him and get him to give them metal.

This questioning is in darkness

The boy says he needs light

She opens the prison door food slot and when she does theyre transported to another place and someone is telling her to come closer and she walks the way the voice is coming from and the next thing she knows she sorta snaps out of it as the boy is on fire.

Why did the boy light on fire?  Divine possession.  So there must be at least one divine still alive.  So thats really scary.

Ch 7 pg 143 dangerous honesty

After Saypur killed the divinities and before it started colonization there was a twenty year period on the continent where every country suffered from plague, famine, etc.  It was hella bleak before they came back to rebuild.

Shara calls her aunt to talk about her investigation.  Her aunt admits she knew about the where house and that Emit had been sent there to resesrxh the deviniti3s and fogure out how to kill one if a new one sprung up.  

Shara doesnt tell her aunt about the divine possession or admit that she wants what emit put in the bank's self deposit box even though her aunt seems to know what's happening there.

Ch 8 Pg 164

According to the Kaj's lutenent there wasn't much fighting on the continent. The gods were already dying. The kaj was the only one that knew how the weapon he used to finish them off worked.  The most fighting was against the demigods. But they died and their boddies burned just like normal people.

Shara kidnaps the old maid they think might have been involved in the murder.  She tells her that she would copy his papers and show these men copies.  She does t know what they said.  She doesnt know how to read.  Shara is pretty sure from the description that the papers the men were interested in were warehouse inventory papers.

They were followed.  Ernest Wilcov shows up and demands she be released.  It's a whole thing. 

Ch 9  Pg 180 what history tells us.

In 1700 the Dreyling people, Sigrud is Dreyling, were sad about their dead king as he was the glue that held their society together.  Now, they've all resorted to savage piracy.

Shara doesnt know what to do so she cooks and they talk about history. Primarily the killing of the gods and the two gods they dont have a record of the killing.  They specifically talk about kloshan and his antiwomen bullshit. The beliefs that most in this city, which is right smack in the .middle of the co tinent, follow to this day. 

Ch 10 pg 198

Vo is homosexual in a place that's basically fantasy world Moscow. It sucks.  He wants it to suck less.  Giving Shara the info necessary to destroy Ernest Wilcov will help do that.  Even if it ends up hurting Vo when it comes out he helped a foreign power against his rival.

This section really ends on page 213

city of stairs pg 1 to 86

Ch 1 someone even worse pg 1

People are doing war in Avlos's name and Avlos does not approve.

We are in a land that Avlos's followers have taken over.  It is against the law to make any mention of the religion that was previously practiced in this land.  A hat maker has a sign that's similar to the old religion symbol.  He is fine 15,000 drekels (which my tablet autocorrects to sheckles)      for this crime.

A messenger comes to tell them court there's been a murder.  At this point the judge feels like this case is stupid and let's the hat maker go with warning.

Who was sent to investigate the murder?  A tiny lady with a HUGE assistant. 

Ch 2 pg 19 We must civilized them.

The guy in charge is a dick about d the tiny lady here to investigate the murder, named Shara, tells him she's truly in charge here and he can go ahead and fuck off forever. 

Shara investigates the body of the murdered man and finds a secret message in his tie.

  Shara uses magic to video chat with her aunt, named Vinya, who's the minister of foreign affairs.  Shara is hoping one dau Vinya can one day become prime minister and if that happens shara can come home.  There was some sort of scandal 16 years ago and since then shara has continued to be a foreign operative and not been allowed to come home.  Turns out Shara is the one that trained the murdered man and its a big time comflict.of interest for her to investigate his murder.  Vinya says she has a week.

Ch 3 pg 41 unmentionables

"Anything is possible "

Kevin Durant

Shara is talking to the governor, a lady named Mulaghesh..  The governer agrees to help Shara if shara can get her a nice tropical beach appointment. Mulaghesh is sick of all the violence and politics and wants to spend her last 20 year somewhere nice and peaceful.  Shara says she can do that.  Mulaghesh drops a some real dangerous knowledge about the murdered man Yamgyui.  He was here to access something they call the unmentionables warehouse.  It's where they store all sorts of forbidden knowledge and magically items and whatnot.  Stuff the public is sure was destroyed hundreds of years ago.  That's probably what got him killed.  

Also, there's some rich guy Shara is familiar with that might be useful. 

Shara's assistant  Sigrud is a very large man.  He's following a guy.  I personally wouldn't have had someone so remarkable try to follow someone, but he feels like he's doing a good job.  The city is still very war torn.  Specifically there's a bunch 0f staircases that go to nowhere because the building they went to was destroyed.  The man Sigrud is following goes up such a staircase and appears to jump off.  There's no sign of him.  But just for a millisecond out the corner of his eye Sigrud doesnt see a city of bombed out buildings.  He sees a city of emense slender white and gold sky scrapers.  

Maybe we're getting to some magic stuff.

Ch 4 pg 67 dead languages 

When Saypuri developed a weapon that can kill a divinity they kinda figured it would be smooth sailing and advanced to colonizing. But before the ships even landed they killed another divinity. Turns out that divinity was the one that built most.of the country.  So when he died everything he built disappeared with him. 

Shara and Sigrud talking about strategy and what not.  I didnt really get a sense that there's a firm plan, but maybe I just didn't understand. 

Flashback to when Shara was in college.  She and this rich guy were an item.  They're both wicked smart and good at board games and they end up doing lots of sex.  Lots of cultural differences that make that relationship really hard