Talk:Commentary on the Three Charms of Ikkulu

Chris: Great, even this guy thinks these things are indecipherable. Maybe we should just bring the riddle of Stratoniche's Tomb to some Hypperboreans. There must be some scholar in poetry up there.

tcm: the last charm (hairless altar) is about Aramin and i think it points to Psoikanthe (which is in the wilderness of the Rus aka Russia). we found it already. however, if this says what i think it says, then Drelzne is not Kukuth as we had originally thought.

are there four sisters?

Kukuth killed Aramin and then Drelzne killed Kukuth, and then a fourth sister (brother) killed Drelzne?

"Kin to your killer, your victim, your avenger."-- Kukuth is kin to her killer, which i suppose to be Drelzne (because of this line

    [Aramin is] Avenged by her sister [Drelzne], risking the wrath of the Furies,
                Fratricide avenged by fratricide.")

as well as kin to her victim, which i suppose to be Aramin (again, the line above). but she is also kin to her avenger. did another sister (or possibly the son, Heracles) kill Drelzne to avenge Kukuth? there is a fourth name associated with these three and that is Stratobia. we originally though Kukuth was another name for Drelzne and Stratobia was another name for Aramin, but what if these are all different people, and they were all Ikulu's daughters?

aside from that, Heracles is Ikulu's son (whom Baba Iaga told us to seek in order to find her daughter [but which one?]) and he is in the East. now, which East will be harder to pinpoint, but the Diadocomachia says he went "east beyond the borders of the empire," which means past Alexandrine India. this could mean a myriad of places including China, Japan, and even the New World, depending on how far exactly he sailed.

Kerry: Which daughter is easily answered: Drelzne, who is on the moon. Also, Heracles is not in the New World, but rather the East.

Chris: Now, who is/are the father(s) of Ikulu's kids? Cause there could be half siblings. Didn't Alexander do the nasty in the pasty with Ikulu? I don't know much about this stuff. Thought I'd just interject.

tcm: it has been posited that Nectanebos was just Ikulu in disguise (see Olympia's Confession, and therefore Alexander could be Ikulu's son (although it seems Kukuth is also a result of this coupling), but it has also been posited that yes, Alexander and Ikulu conceived Heracles, and the charms above seem to point to that. now, it's certainly possible that both are true; it's not unheard of in the ancient world for incest to occur either accidentally or on purpose. if this is true, then it's also possible that Alexander is part of that whole fratricide bugfuck. as to other fathers/mothers, i don't believe we have any clues to that effect. only Olympia and Alexander have been hinted at thus far.

Noah: Texts, both in and out of game, seem confident that Barsine was the mother of Heracles. This would not make him any less kin to Ikulu, however, considering that Alexander was likely her son, thus making Heracles her grandson. No need to speculate incest at every turn, you sickos.

If at any point it was theorized that Drelzne was Kukuth, it seems to me now very concrete that Drelzne is/was referred to as Stratonike, Aramin as Stratobia, and Kukuth is someone else entirely, about whom we know little. A trip to the city of Dyrrachion, named in this commentary, might shed some light on this mysterious figure.

It might also help clarify things if someone were to draft a family tree, with Ikulu as the hub.

tcm: okay, but these people need to be siblings (fratricide only pertains to siblings killing siblings, right?). And Kukuth's poem points to there being four people involved in this merry-go-round situation. if Heracles is only her grandson, then we need to find Alexander in order to find the daughter (who i assume is Drelzne, what with being on the moon and all). doesn't everybody know where Alexander is? isn't he in Alexandria? no, i think Heracles is Ikulu's son, as he is the only "lost" male figure we know of. plus, he's got a poem devoted to him alongside ones devoted to Kukuth and Aramin. the more i think about it, the more certain i am that Heracles is Ikulu's son. Barsine could have been another disguise or name for Ikulu. this also means that Drelzne is not the 'evil' sister as we originally posited, but Kukuth is. Drelzne is supposed to restart the human race, so why would she be the evil one, right? poor Aramin just got the short end of the stick.

tcm: then, of course, there's this: Arabic Epitome of Greek Mythological Geneology. i guess it's possible for all these siblings to be siblings, but not all of them offspring of Ikulu.

Noah: Fratricide refers specifically to the killing of brothers, but Ikulu may be using it more loosely here (since the killing of sisters is sororicide and the killing of relations is parricide). But consider,

   Killed by Iasa, killed by Tlepolema,
   As Iason killed Pelias, as Tlepolemus killed Licymnius.

Neither of these instances counts as fratricide, except loosely. Jason didn't kill Pelias, except by prophecy and proximity to Medea (who technically didn't kill him either -- she tricked his daughters into doing the deed); anyway, Pelias was Jason's uncle, not his brother. So too, was Licymnius not Tlepolemus' brother but his father's uncle.

Kerry: The "..Iasa, ..Tlepolema" line indicates rather precisely that Kukuth was killed by her niece, as these are feminine versions of people famous for killing their uncles. This also indicates that tcm's assumption about a fourth child of Ikulu is false. As Noah points out, there are many kinds of kin, a niece being one. Kukuth's niece would be Drelzne's (aka, Stratonike's) daughter, or perhaps her granddaughter, Stratonike Jr.

Noah: In any event, Kukuth may well have been kin to her avenger, but it could be through other marital ties, here unknown. The first "fratricide" seems to be Aramin by Kukuth, the second Kukuth by Drelzne. More than that, I don't believe we have enough evidence to say.

Noah: Thanks to Kerry's assist, I believe I finally have the answer, although as often seems to be the case, it is subject to some shenanigans.

To clarify here, first, we are talking about Aramin's death by her niece or grand niece, as prefigured by the lines above. In order for this to be the case, she must have been killed by the female offspring of one of her siblings, or one of her siblings' spouses . Her siblings, that is, Ikulu's children, I believe we have conclusively demonstrated to be Alexander the Great and Drelzne.

Consider Alexander. His sole heir, Heracles, is sent off to distant lands, and although the line might continue unbroken through him, he was no longer a part of this particular story. So we can discount Alexander.

Drelzne is a bit trickier. She married Antigonus Monophthalmus and bore him Demetrius, but there is no mention of her having any other children, male or female. Maybe she did, but for reasons to follow it doesn't matter. There is also no mention of Antigonus having any children by another mother.

Demetrius married Phila and she bore him a girl, also named Stratonike, and she went on to have weird incestuous adventures with Seleucus & Son. That's pretty weird, but it seems doubtful that she would have any reason to kill Aramin. Then we get to Demetrius, who was a bit of a playboy. He took many lovers, but recalling the revelation in Olympia's Confession, one in particular comes to mind. From the Confession:

  Was his [Alexander's] father a god in the form of a snake, then, or just a snake? Am I 
  Europa or Pasiphae? But we all know the monster born of unnatural union was 
  Kukuth, the one who killed Stratobia.

What 'unnatural union' would that be? This one, from the Diadocomachia:

  In Athens, however, Demetrius showed the negative side of his character, and succumbed to a 
  life of debauchery. He had taken as a mistress Irithizon, known as the Lamia for the
  city she hailed from, and she seemed to sap from him something, many said, which made him 
  behave more foolishly than before.

Kukuth, Demetrius' daughter by Irithizon (lately slain by the Queens party), killed her great aunt Aramin, and was killed in return by her step-grandmother, Drelzne. Kin to her killer, her victim, her avenger, and Ikkulu. Voila.

That's enough to satisfy me, except for one problem: again according to the Diadocomachia, Olympias died years before Demetrius took Athens; she would have scrawled her final confession long before Kukuth was ever conceived. Could be shenanigans. Only time will tell.

...and while we're on the subject of shenanigans, I call the authenticity of the Inscription on the Monument of True Love Forever at Samothrace into question! Olympias was known only as Myrtale until after she married Philip II, and thus the inscription itself must be spurious.

tcm: I am not convinced that Alexander is Igwolf's son. Why do you think this is so? Do you have any kind of proof, circumstantial or otherwise? I'm still of the mind that Heracles is the son, what with him being missing and all, and we're supposed to find Igwolf's son. Last I checked, Alexander was not missing, right? Also, Hal seems pretty secure in the knowledge that you are way off base. He keeps snickering behind me as he reads your "answer."

Hal: "Snickering is satisfying." I asure you there are no temporal shenanigans here; honestly, it's almost as if you think I don't have my chronologies all written out. This is, of course, no guarantee that the texts you've been givenm are at all accurate....You do have a fair call on the Olympias controversy. It's probably best to take this as a translator's liberty, and assume the text actually reads "Polyxena."

Noah: If there are no temporal shenanigans, then alas, I must be wrong, despite the way things seem to add up so nicely. Brooklyn Party is headed back to Pella for other reasons; perhaps we can fish up the top of that monument to Olympias from the swamp and get a definitive year on its (heh heh) erection.

I submit to tcm that there is more evidence that suggests Ikkulu 'sired' Alexander than to suggest that she lay with him to produce Heracles. If we are to accept that Ikkulu was Nectanebos in Philip's Macedonian court (the real one dying elsewhere in obscurity), and that it was a snake he sent that impregnated Olympias (by her own, final admission)... what other conclusion are we to draw? Who was the snake if not she, herself?

I agree it isn't spelled out plainly, but then, these things seldom are.

Further, I am not asserting absolutely that Ikkulu could not be Heracles' mother as well - merely that we seem to have no evidence for it (and indeed, if we take Arabic Epitome of Greek Mythological Geneology as being correct, and we assume Alexander was her one son, we have evidence against it (although, to be fair, the epitome must certainly not include mention of the stillborn child from Igwulf's Obelisk, so we can't assume complete accuracy)).

Also, If Alexander's body isn't lost to history, perhaps you would like to tell us where it is.

Kerry: Ah, the irony. The Queens group has the only cleric that can cast Commune, but due to their distinct lack of enthusiasm regarding communication with others they lack all the information that would tell them what questions to ask. A simple "Was Alexander Igwilf's son?" would do wonders here.

I personally posit that Kukuth is Igwilf's son, born of the union of Igwilf and something monstrous, or else something female. Possibly Olympia, though the confession makes this unlikely. Evidence:

• i) It makes the fratricide reference exact and sensible. All murders (Kukuth kills Aramin, Drelzne kills Kukuth to avenge her, a niece kills Drelzne to avenge Kukuth) now make sense, or at least fall in line with the textual information.
• ii) Kukuth is referenced on the monument which references Igwilf's other dead kid, Aramin.

I further submit that Alexander is not Igwilf's son, but rather Kukuth's half-brother, possibly a fraternal twin. Igwilf set up Olympia and Philip for a reason, and Olympia may be confused baout Alexander's parentage. Kukuth is obviously a monster of some sort, and I would guess he was hidden away upon birth. Some research might turn up information on Olympia's monster children, since she seemed to get around with some wierd partners.