[KruppesDonkey]

Hello everyone, first time poster here.

Rake's sacrifice of himself to bring back Mother Dark makes sense to me. He merges his essence with hers, transporting the heart of Kurald Galain out of Dragnipur (where he was) to the temple in Black Coral (where her vessel was). Presumably, Rake had to wait for the right moment when the vessel was there, in Black Coral, in the temple, where the connection to Kurald Galain was strongest to spawn her back into existence. Or somesuch...feel free to tell me I've got it wrong.

What I don't understand is why it was necessary for Hood and his armies to be there as well...unless Rake had some massive crisis of faith when it came to murder (which I have some trouble seeing).

With Dragnipur we get all kinds of characters continually commenting on how Rake has stopped killing, so they move slower and slower and Chaos is catching up. As a result, they need Hood to die, and bring his armies with him in Dragnipur to delay Chaos.

But what if Rake hadn't stopped killing? There are MORE than enough wars and causes for him and his Tiste Andii to take up (and a part of me wonders if his continued "search for meaning in the causes of others" served an easy dual purpose - giving the Tiste Andii something to hang onto when Mother Dark left...and also to conveniently feed Dragnipur).

Couldn't Rake have just kept on occasionally killing people until Mother Dark's vessel arrived in Black Coral...and then rigged Dragnipur to fall on his neck? When he places it in its stone niche in Black Coral it's obvious that the weight is IMMENSE.

Why does it require that Dessembrae "kill him" (He's still holding the sword himself).

Is it the massive convergence of Ascendants and Gods surrounding Dragnipur that somehow weakens the barriers of the dimension and allows the Gate of Kurald Galain to escape? Is Hood's entry into Dragnipur "stretching the seams" as it were?

I'm just trying to figure out why it had to happen the way it did...because it seems like there were easier solutions.

Thanks for helping me wrap my head around this! I loved the book...just have some niggling curiosities

This post has been edited by KruppesDonkey: 20 August 2014 - 04:55 PM

[Inane Babble]

There is some Read and Find out here, once you have finished the series things may make a bit more sense.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

As far as why didn't he just keep killing and wait, I think its twofold.

One, he didn't want to subject anyone else to the essential torture that was Dragnipur. That would be compassion, and he learned that from Whiskyjack in MoI, at least as far as it concerns this specific aspect. And who is to say that it would have been enough to hold Chaos Army off? They nearly defeated Hood's army as it was. Are a few more Tenescowri going to be up for it? No, he needed an ultimate final plan, that had to have everything go right.

Which brings me to my second point, that some Rube Golberg contraption designed to to iflict a Dragnipur wound on Rake would just be ludicrously silly and terrible writing, and the way SE wrote it as a convergence of ultimate awesomeness (Don't forget about the creation of the child god that killed Kadaspala and himself in the wagon) is just fine with me. Also, I don't think the weilder of Dragnipur can harm themselves with the sword. As we know it, only three people were ever in possession of the damn thing anyway - Draconus, Rake and Brood - so obviously not just anyone can slice and dice with the Big D.

[Abyss]

Time for this again...

 Abyss, on 28 March 2009 - 12:08 PM, said:

Ask, and ye shall receive... from Jan 5 2009

Quote

I've discussed this elsethread, but hey, why not once more...


WHY DID IT HAVE TO HAPPEN IN DARUJHISTAN?

Because it would have been fucking boring in the middle of the desert with no one around.

NO, REALLY, WHY DID IT HAVE TO HAPPEN IN DARUJHISTAN?

Couple of reasons...

Hood had to manifest fully. Due to whatever twists and turns of magic are involved, he can't just do a 'poof, here i am' thing, probably because thre is more power in the actions of human worshippers than in gods acting of their own accord. In other instances where Hood has manifested outside a temple, collecting Baudin or Apsalar's father, he may have been present, but that was for a purpose of collecting a soul, and probably linked to the death taking place and his role as gatekeeper. In MoI he manifests when QB follows the link thru Talamanadas, and at the end in his own temple, - both instances where his power is involved. TtH is different - for the overall plan to work, Hood has to die and yet carry the totality of his power into Dragnipur so he can bring in the armies of the dead. Even with Dragnipur weakening, that can't be easy, so something more complex is called for.

So Hood sets up this very elaborate scheme, investing power in that guy with no fingers, who becomes a (not 'the'... 'a') Soldier in HHDeath, and his wife who becomes Mason for the duration of the ritual, not permanently. Fingerless goes around killing people, basically gathering souls to power the ritual. His wife prepares the ritual itself and then kills him - there is power in souls and power in sacrifice and this was both - so Hood is pulled, entirely, into Darujhistan.

Think about that for a moment - in anything other than a big city, Soldier and Mason would not have been likely to accomplish this.

OKAY, WHY ELSE?

Shadowthrone and Cotillion were in on this from the start, and given Pallid and Lock's appearance, they knew other players would get involved. A massive city, with all the powers likely to be present in a convergence, offers more opportunity for distraction. Thus, the Hounds of Shadow could keep Pallid and Lock away. Thus Iskaral, ST's own High Priest, could be on the scene and try to seize the sword, and thus Baruk and Brood - arguably the only two ascendents Rake trusted - could be present. Plus other elements like Cutter - an agent of Cotillion - bringing the Second's spear to the scene to provide a link the Second, now Hood's Knight, could follow to arrive in time. And finally, Karsa was there. Look at Karsa's meeting with ST and Cot and consider whether by telling Karsa to stay away, they weren't making damn sure the toughest motherfucker on the planet wouldn't be right there watching Dassem's back when the shit went down hard.

Also, the city itself is loaded with power and history and that is another element that comes into play in convergence and ritual in these books.

SO DAS IS BETTER THAN RAKE, RIGHT?

No. Rake was fighting with the magical weight of more or less an entire mini-world in his sword, and he set up the hit so that Das struck Dragnipur into Rake and killed him. Rake wins.

LAME! RAKE SHOULD HAVE JUST GIVEN HIMSELF A PAPER CUT!!!

Wrong again. See above - power requires sacrifice. Rake was about to move the gate to the primal womb of the universe out of the sword warren it had been sitting in for a few thousand millenia and into a city on the other side of the continent which also sat in a transported chunk of elder warren. Cutting your finger isn't sacrifice. Killing the god of death and then tricking the god of sorrow into smashing your own sword into your own face and thus denying him the revenge he's spent the last hundred years or so chasing, and killing a few hundred innocent bystanders to set up the entire thing (fingerless' victims, people caught by the ripple in Hood's passage thru the city, and the others taken out in the Hounds' fights), and using up the post-death souls of several million or so... THAT is SACRIFICE.

WHY DID THEY NEED ALL THE DEAD SOULS TO DO THIS?

Because the wagon had to stop, and Chaos would have just jumped on it if someone wasn't in place to delay it, and the chained souls were too weak, AND had to be eliminated in case it all worked and the more dangerous ones would be released.

HOOD WAS DEAD - WHAT'S DASSEM'S PROBLEM?

He's spent a hundred years trying to get back at Hood for what happened to his daughter at the last Chaining. Now someone else - one of the few people Das actually respected - has killed Hood, and then used Das' fury to commit suicide. He's been denied, tricked out of the one thing that's been driving him for a century. He's a little messed up just then.

IS HOOD REALLY DEAD?

We don't really know for sure. Everyone seems pretty certain at the end of TtH that Draconus is going to re-emerge, and that means powerful souls chained in Dragnipur are coming back to the world, in some way. Logically that would include Hood, but then, Hood already 'died' once before when he ascended to take on the role of Hood (assuming that was his bodysicle Hedge found in RG). Draconus died for the first time when Rake took Dragnipur from him.

It does seem clear Hood is no longer 'Hood' - whatever comes next, he's given up his aspect of death which it seems he held since the Jaghut race's failed war against death that Kallor discussed with the undead dragon.

Basically, it could go either way. Trust in SE. SE is good. SE is great.

SO DASSEM CAN BEAT ICARIUM?

Shut up and die.


- Abyss, pro-crastinator.

- Abyss, at your service, except when he's not...

[worry]

Can we get the FBI involved with this pro-mass murder thread?

[Abyss]

 worry, on 20 August 2014 - 09:30 PM, said:

Can we get the FBI involved with this pro-mass murder thread?

CIA. It took place outside of the US.

[KruppesDonkey]

Thanks Abyss...I hadn't considered that the wagon would need to stop. With that requirement, a stalling force absolutely becomes necessary, and the rest falls into place for me.

This post has been edited by KruppesDonkey: 21 August 2014 - 12:54 PM

[theocean]

his and whiskeyjacks interaction where WJ killed those instead of forcing Rake to is the most important sequence for this. That was such a big part of the story of the entire malazan series.