were the death rattles good for something?

[king of nowhere]

people near death saw glimpses of the future. the silent gatherers collected thousands such death rattles for the purpose of informing the diagram.

and yet, none of those rattles were in any way clear. even us, with the benefit of knowing all the plots, can only figure out the meaning after the fact happened. much less try to use the rattle to influence the events in an informed way.

so, besides the general vague feeling of dread and imminent catastrophe pushing for the need to act, was there any actually useful information that the death rattles did provide to the diagram?

[Through the Living Hopper He/Him]

6 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

so, besides the general vague feeling of dread and imminent catastrophe pushing for the need to act, was there any actually useful information that the death rattles did provide to the diagram?

They were most likely used to test to see if the Diagram would be correct in the future.

[Returned he/him]

I always thought of it as being information that was slightly more reliable and slightly more accessible than what was contained in the Diagram, and that they were used as extra context to help interpret the Diagram's contents. Like, "we think this section of the Diagram means X, we're pretty sure, and then 'independently' of that we have this death rattle that seems to support X as well, so we're more confident of X than we would be from the Diagram alone". Most of the death rattles presented in the epigraphs seem like they were a selection for readers of the novels rather than the Diagram's conspirators, but there must have been many, many more in the set and some of those might have been more practical. The ones we saw were thematic and dramatic, but I agree it's hard to see that they would have been useful in this way.

[king of nowhere]

On 6/27/2026 at 8:44 PM, Returned said:

I always thought of it as being information that was slightly more reliable and slightly more accessible than what was contained in the Diagram, and that they were used as extra context to help interpret the Diagram's contents. Like, "we think this section of the Diagram means X, we're pretty sure, and then 'independently' of that we have this death rattle that seems to support X as well, so we're more confident of X than we would be from the Diagram alone". Most of the death rattles presented in the epigraphs seem like they were a selection for readers of the novels rather than the Diagram's conspirators, but there must have been many, many more in the set and some of those might have been more practical. The ones we saw were thematic and dramatic, but I agree it's hard to see that they would have been useful in this way.

would actually be a pretty good theory.

except for the "Above silence, the illuminating storms—dying storms—illuminate the silence above." which is noted to be particularly relevant. if the gatherers give special attention to this one, it means most are similar.

the one given by taravangian's mother was passable, though