The dominating, arbitrary violence of the hakuma, the pervasive presence of nueer after so much killing and the arming of the gojam all had consequences for the cosmic polity. While the large-scale offensives of the government demonstrated their superior god-like powers, the proliferation of guns again had the potential to spread this power, effectively turning the armed youth into a multiplicity of deities – of beings with the ability to kill with impunity. The irrelevance of nueer challenged the ability to demand restraint and impunity. However, as this chapter has shown, the cosmic consequences of the post-2013 wars were not conclusive. Instead, contestation has continued and the Nuer prophets have continued to play a significant role in the post-2013 cosmic polity. Nuer prophets have asserted their power to physically limit and challenge guns. Importantly, they have also demanded the continuity of the significance of nueer and the possibility of a solution to its deadly dangers. While soldiers drew on the cultural archive, and remade it, to use the bitterness of spent bullet cases to solve nueer, the prophets offered a less ambiguous solution by again offering cattle sacrifices as a way to ease the demands of nueer and allow peace to be possible. This reinforcing of nueer was primarily popular with the armed youth who most brutally faced the consequences of unrestrained violence. The Nuer prophets continued to be popular with the armed youth and, therefore, also gained power through this military might. When TILING seized Geng, a key part of the making of his authority was a moment of collective scarification, invoking centuries-old histories of the prophets’ controlling processes of initiation.
In 2022, government forces appeared to achieve their last major offensive against the SPLA-IO forces in Ler, Koch and Mayendit, ending the previous eight years of SPLA-IO presence in the area. The region was fully back under government control again. During the years of war, the prophets have remained oddly united, possibly brought together by the extreme opponent of the hakuma and the gun in the cosmic polity. If this is now a moment of hakuma unity through government victory, it is unclear the impact this will have. Maybe it is now that we will see the return of larger prophetic rivalries.