[Aptorian]

Well, the fact that new Jaghut could be born and grow to become tyrants is a threat. Which is why they needed to be hunted down.

The Andii and Edur didn't need to be culled seeing as they were self destructive, fighting amongst themselves in the civil wars and the sundering. The Tiste weren't anywhere near as dangerous as the Jaghut either. They had leaders and settled to make small stagnant civilizations of their own. While it would seem that they all have some affinity for magic, they didn't use it in anyway that can be compared to the strength of the Jaghut.

One single Jaghut Tyrant could do what would take thousands of Andii to accomplish and difference was that the Andii were not so inclined. The Jaghut threw up continent wide glaciers just becaus they could.

[Mentalist]

As was said several times here, I also enjoy the lack of "the ultimate evil that's so black-hearted you feel nothing but disgust + hate towards it". SE did a very good job in giving us characters that have reasons to be the way they are--be it their upbringing, their beliefs, etc. HE stayed away quite purposefully from the "evil for the sake of evil" type characters. I love that about MBotF, because i can no longer stand the straight up 'good vs evil" type stories..

[tiam]

I see your point but Rake (speculation but going off the GOTM theory that Raest and Rake are equal) could level a continent if he wanted. i know your saying he wouldnt be so inclined but thats simply him not in a situation were he has to.

Probably a btter example is Scabby thoughts when entering the Wu realm when thinking about who can stand up to them. It seems Scabby had domination in mind and if he hadnt been stopped then his domination would have been akin to Raest or the KCCM. Scabby had no intention of making a small stagnant civilisation he wanted true godhood in Wu.

Also on the different species inclination weve never really seen a race pushed as far as the Jaghut. They dont simply throw up glaciers for fun and destruction they did it as a defence mechanism against the Imass. The KCCM doomed all existence which maks what the jaghut did seem insignificant.

[Mentalist]

Well, we are also told that " K'Chain to the Jaghut were what the Jaghut Tyrants were to the Imass"

[Cain]

Whoa whoa, it might of sounded like it but im not asking for some like, "Final Boss" "Unstoppable Evil" character just someone that....sort of like Karsa, says "screw the rules" and does what he wants. But has magic ability plus melee capability and is fairly well respected when he shows his prowess squaring off against say, Rake or someone.

*Edit: And said being proves to be a actual Malevolent being doing it just for the fun of it, or just wants to see all life perish, for personal power etc etc. You can still flesh out a character like that and not ruin this storyline come on : P

Im not certain where you people are getting this idea that people can't be pure evil. Wow thats just upsetting seeing how there are plenty of people out there, especially in our real world that are sadistic hateful evil bastards.
Khadafi, Hussein, Stalin, Hitler. These people tortured others for the pure fun of it, and while yes I have had evil thoughts Im not going to lie to myself and say, "Oh well, in MY mind I thought I was doing or thinking the right thing." Hell no, Im completely cognizant of and realize that action is in of itself evil, making what I do or say in that regards evil itself.

[Nequam]

Cain;314103 said:

*Edit: And said being proves to be a actual Malevolent being doing it just for the fun of it, or just wants to see all life perish, for personal power etc etc. You can still flesh out a character like that and not ruin this storyline come on : P

I think it might.

Cain;314103 said:

Im not certain where you people are getting this idea that people can't be pure evil. Wow thats just upsetting seeing how there are plenty of people out there, especially in our real world that are sadistic hateful evil bastards.
Khadafi, Hussein, Stalin, Hitler. These people tortured others for the pure fun of it, and while yes I have had evil thoughts Im not going to lie to myself and say, "Oh well, in MY mind I thought I was doing or thinking the right thing." Hell no, Im completely cognizant of and realize that action is in of itself evil, making what I do or say in that regards evil itself.

No they didn't. They tortured people to show that they will not tolerate opposition to their rule. They did it for punishment, they did (well I should say ordered it) it because they felt the people they were torturing deserved to be tortured. They surely, surely did not believe they were evil people.
And I'm not trying to say that people don't do bad things and know they did a bad thing, because that happens every day. Every day people do something they consider bad, and are sorry they did it. They also think bad things, but doing and thinking bad things doesn't make you evil. Even people who may do bad things every day I might not consider evil. Most criminals had horrible up-bringings and learned no other way to live in society than by commiting crims that will in the end bring them money. Which they want just to better their lives. Most (if not all of them) don't do it for the fun of it (unless they happen to mentally unstable, in which case I still don't regard as evil because, well they are insane and chances are also don't think they are doing bad things).
The closest thing to an evil person in real life that I can think of at the moment is a mass rapist, who isn't mentally unstable, but likes the feeling of raping people. Either way, even if their there are such things as evil people in our real world, I sincerly hope Erikson doesn't spend time on such a one-diminsional character like that in his books.

I'm not so sure why you are getting the idea that a cliche, boring, predictable, idiotic "pure evil" character will in any way add a benefit of any sorts to the series.

[Aptorian]

Cain;314103 said:

Im not certain where you people are getting this idea that people can't be pure evil. Wow thats just upsetting seeing how there are plenty of people out there, especially in our real world that are sadistic hateful evil bastards.
Khadafi, Hussein, Stalin, Hitler. These people tortured others for the pure fun of it, and while yes I have had evil thoughts Im not going to lie to myself and say, "Oh well, in MY mind I thought I was doing or thinking the right thing." Hell no, Im completely cognizant of and realize that action is in of itself evil, making what I do or say in that regards evil itself.

I think you're about to completely derail your own thread here, if people get into that discussion

Very few people exist or have ever existed that are "pure evil". The only one I can actually think of is that "ice man" guy that worked for the mob in the United states.

Hitler, Stalin, etc. aren't pure evil. They just did things that are pretty much unimaginable by our standards of ethics and moral today. They were merely building on ideas and trends that existed everywhere in the western world at the time. Euthansia, human experiments, genocide and persecution wasn't something they invented in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. They were ideas that were toyed with everywhere.

If you look at the Malazan world, there isn't really any characters that are motivated by "pure evil" like for example Shai'tan/Ba'alzamon from WoT or Sauron from lotR.

The CG is broken and in pain. He wants deaths release or to break the world and let everyone feel the pain that it's inhabitants cause him. He's insane and acts like it. For him it's either to die or be realed.

Kallor strives to rule and acts like any medieval king might be expected. I'm actually counting on Erikson to reveal more on the High Kinds personality in TtH.

Korbolo Dom belives that he could be a better First Sword or even Emperor and therefore he does what he does to reach his goal.

Mallick Rel want to destroy the empire for what it did to his people, and possibly he also just wants to control the empire.

Panion. Driven by grief and pain.

Rhulad. Driven by ambition and blind idealism.

In most creatures and realistic characters, you can find white in the dark. A reason for why they are like they are. Redeeming qualities etc.

[Cain]

I dunno, I just think imo that all of those reasons can drive a person to be pure evil. Hate, suffering yadda yadda. When you commit heinous acts such as genocide and torture, (torture for the pleasure of it i mean) you cross a threshold into the realm of evil. Its just well, my opinion though.

*Edit: Like those people in Hostel 1 and 2, you cant tell me that is not sadistcally evil : P

[Nequam]

Cain;314354 said:

I dunno, I just think imo that all of those reasons can drive a person to be pure evil. Hate, suffering yadda yadda. When you commit heinous acts such as genocide and torture, (torture for the pleasure of it i mean) you cross a threshold into the realm of evil. Its just well, my opinion though.

*Edit: Like those people in Hostel 1 and 2, you cant tell me that is not sadistcally evil : P

Sorry, I keep forgetting that this is only your opinion and not something that might actually happen if people agree with you. But it seems our definition of evil is different. Which would of course cause these arguments. In my mind, pure evil is someone who was not driven to any point in order to commit heinous acts. They just did, because they wanted to. People who in their right mind, not driven by desperation or pain of their own, cause suffering and death. Peopl who have no cause they are fighting for, no goal they want to reach which they think is worth the doing bad things for.
You consider people evil if they do what you consider evil things.

I was kinda ranting in my explaining. But I my point is, I don't want an evil person. You can give me 'villains' but don't give me 'evil'. I like desperation and pain causing the creation of those 'villains' but no joy for sadistic acts.

And yeah that is pretty evil, but it is a movie. (Although I heard it was based off of some people in...uh some country in south east asia that I can't rmember the name of. Anyway aparantly these people kidnapped people and charged others a fee, who then were given a shotgun and were aloud to shoot them in the head. Just to see what it feels like to kill people I guess.

[Abyss]

Note that the OTHER reason for the Imass Ritual was that Jaghut glaciers were making it impossible for the Imass race to survive.

Oh, and it occurs to me that per TB, while under the influence of the CG, the Edur were sailing around, raiding villages and doing this whole brutal 'make the women watch while they cut off the men's limbs so they bleed to death slowly, then rape the women while the men watch, make the women kill the children while the men watch, kill the women while the men watch' thing that might, arguably, fall into the absolute evil category Cain is looking for here, and that brings us back to the CG. Poor misunderstood victim my ass.


And even Hitler didn't sit in his palace going "Hey, Goebbles, y'know what? Let's invade Europe and kill a few million Jews in camps and hey, throw the gypsies and homosexuals in there while we're at it. Why? WHY? Because we're evil, you dolt! Evil! EEEEEEE.Vil. Gimmee an 'E'. Gimmee a 'V', Gimmee an 'IL'. What's that spell? EVIL!!!! Look it up. It's in the dictionary, tho i had it rewritten to read 'See: Hitler'. Go look. I'll be over here kicking puppies and practicing my evil laugh until you're done. Mwaahaahahahahahahaaawheee... dance for me, Eva.".

- Abyss, wil make an exception for Dr. Evil, because HE. Is Evil.

[O'lee]

Do you think the Edur thought of humans as something as valuable as themselves? They might just look at humans as we look at cattle or ants. From our viewpoint what they did was evil, but they might just have thought of it as culling or doing the world a favor.

And then they went home to cuddle their kids.

[Aptorian]

Not like cattle or ants. Like the conquistadors thought of indians.

[Cain]

Hmmm..............................



RG pg. 658

Quick-Ben:

'And now there's more of you damned fools wandering around. Hood take you all, Hedge, there were some real nasty people in the Bridgeburners. Brutal and vicious and outright evil-'

[Nequam]

O said:

And then they went home to cuddle their kids.

:eek: Now that's evil!






But Cain, that is just one character in the Malazan world calling someone else evil. Doesn't mean they were the type of character you are asking for. (the boring one I don't want I mean) It's the same as someone in our world calling someone evil, even though they might not be.
Most likely the guys he was talking about were some mean bastards who might of raped of few people during their conquests. Easy enough to call one of them evil if you knew them. Not in the true sense of the word (to me), but it gets your point across that you didn't like them.

[Cain]

Sounds to me though that his meaning of "outright evil" translates into pure evil, no repressed childhood beatings or anything of the like.

[Nequam]

I am not denying that Quick Ben's definition of outright evil may be like yours (though I think he was just implying that those BB's were not pleasant people to know). But my whole point is that I do not want a totally malevolent ascedant killing people and pissing in their cookie-batter when their not looking, as a character in the series. I don't mind bad people.

So QB says some guys are evil. Great. Books are still good, no crazy-evil ascendants. I'm happy.


Oh, and I hope you don't think that I believe every person who does something 'evil' had a repressed chilhood or somehting and can be excused of it. Just clearing that up, I was only using an example.

[Cain]

[Nequam]

Haha, that's funny.
But I would have gladly stopped, and I surely am now. But you are the one who brought it up again.

[sphish]

Shayed;313720 said:

Kallor NOT evil?! Before he was cursed he incinerated an entire continent and its people just because he didn't want to relinquish it to the Elder Gods.

Speaking of Kallor, what is he exactly? He said he was already there when the Imass were but 'children' so he can't be human, can he?

Let's not forget that Kallor was the reason the Crippled God was brought down in the first place.

[Aptorian]

That wasn't Kallors fault. Not his problem that the Cirkle had to cheat