[Lisheo]

I personaly think that he was being manipulated by the CG or someone else the whole time... They needed the Awl to rise up so that the Bolkando alliance would become real and attack Lether, for what reason I can't yet work out, but lots of shizz seems to be happening in Lether... Including the now king-less Hold of the Dead, ripe for usurping.

[Blend]

Urizen, on Oct 9 2008, 07:36 AM, said:

Jude, on Oct 9 2008, 01:03 AM, said:

Yeah I think Clip WOULD win for the biggest loser in the Malazan books if not for one other character that comes to mind. As much as I hated him in RG (being a bigger dick than everyone in Team Fear Sengar is pretty hard to do) I think I liked him even less in TtH. That's not to say I didn't like his character. I just loved to hate him. And I didn't find MUCH of a change in TtH except for that he seemed a little less sassy and sarcastic and just more unhappy and arrogant.

Anyway, completely off topic, the guy who DOES win the "Biggest Loser Award" for me has to be Redmask. He sucked SO bad.

Why does eveyone hate Redmask? I sort of liked him (early on at least), Warrior coming back to save his people from the selfish sanctiomnious Letheri and all that. What messed things up was the ending. No explanation why the KCCM first followed him, only to turn later? Was Redmask a Letheri himself? then who was he and how did get the Awl knowledge and skills.

While she might not displace Clip for the "Biggest Loser Award", high on the List (top 5 at least) you have to put Antri- Preda Bivatt, Redmask's oppnent.

I think the general consensus is that Redmask is the son of an Awl womand and the Letherii guy who owns the land (Factor?) that the Awl are trying to get back. He was abandoned by his father, and sent to live with the Awl where he was raised. The Awl sent him away for being Letherii, he disappeared into the wilderness where he finds the KCCM, and one assumes that he has made some kind of pact with them in order for him to have a Matron skin mask and two followers. He comes back, and to get back at his father for abandoning him, he uses the knowledge he collected of the Awl while he was being raised in order to take over the Awl. Only one man among them was old enough to remember who Redmask really was, and no one else even knew that he wasn't Awl.

I think the KCCM turned on him because, as mentioned above, he let his pride/hubris control him, and sent his people against the Letherii, something that would be tactically impossible. The KCCM thought him noble and thus followed him without issue until he sent them on a suicide mission. Then they realized he was not, in fact, worthy of leading them, so they took him down.

[Jude]

yeah as much as I like the idea of his mask getting muddy I have to agree with blend in this. it seems the best explanation. I like how the clip thread turned into the redmask thread.

[Malaclypse]

Jude, on Oct 15 2008, 11:20 PM, said:

yeah as much as I like the idea of his mask getting muddy I have to agree with blend in this. it seems the best explanation. I like how the clip thread turned into the redmask thread.

I agree as well. Some parts of Blend's theory are obviously true, imo. The rest is more than plausible

And proper moderation in the book forums went out the window years ago

[Traveller]

Blend makes a good point, but I'm not totally convinced... the k'ell hunters in MOI are controlled by a trapped matron; I don't see why the ones in RG would have followed Redmask if he hadn't got the Matron skin. I'm not absolutely certain, but I think there's a line where Redmask states that he himself doesn't know why they followed him in the first place.

Could be that he dug into a barrow in the 'wilderness', trying to find something to replicate the mask of the Awl legends, but unwittingly made it out of Matron skin - which drew the Hunters. They kill him both as he fails in battle, and as the mask is ruined, so it's a bit difficult to tell why exactly - both seem likely.

Back to Clip.... biggest loser? Yep.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 28 October 2008 - 08:04 AM

[dawnkiller]

Traveller, on Oct 28 2008, 03:03 AM, said:

Blend makes a good point, but I'm not totally convinced... the k'ell hunters in MOI are controlled by a trapped matron; I don't see why the ones in RG would have followed Redmask if he hadn't got the Matron skin. I'm not absolutely certain, but I think there's a line where Redmask states that he himself doesn't know why they followed him in the first place.

Since one of the K'ell hunters is on its way to maturing into a female (and presumably future Matron), it could be just a natural stage on the KCCM's development to strike out on their own before establishing a new colony. If Redmask did kill a Matron, that may explain why one of them has been "allowed" to become female, and to a degree why they're still following him -- if he was strong enough to kill a Matron, he might be a good resource if you're exploring unfamiliar territory for the first time. That's the "truly sentient race" theory, where he never had their blind obedience -- it only looked to him like he did. Alternately, maybe they just had it in them to imprint on the strongest presence, like young animals, and so they followed Redmask until they'd matured enough that the natural conditioning had been grown out of.

Personally, I sort of lean towards the KCCM using them for their own purposes. Considering all the sentient demons and even dragons we've seen, it seems unlikely the KCCM, who we know established their own society, we're following him solely based on what even Toc thought was a hillariously thin "disguise."

[Traveller]

I thought that he might have taken it from a dead matron in a barrow, and the power was through scent or somesuch, rather than the sight of it. But yes, we know KCCM are clever (well, some varieties) so they may have been 'humouring' him all along. Although it would be funny to finally get a KCCM POV and find out they think like Kruppe....
'Watch me eviscerate this one, the crimson cloud erupting beautifically into the air around ones proud, but formidably-toothed visage - the scatter of scalps and curious but amusingly still twitching limbs is such a wonder to behold...'

This post has been edited by Traveller: 28 October 2008 - 01:17 PM

[dawnkiller]

Traveller, on Oct 28 2008, 08:17 AM, said:

Although it would be funny to finally get a KCCM POV and find out they think like Kruppe....
'Watch me eviscerate this one, the crimson cloud erupting beautifically into the air around ones proud, but formidably-toothed visage - the scatter of scalps and curious but amusingly still twitching limbs is such a wonder to behold...'

Considering that after their original appearance in MoI we eventually got the world's most boisterous Seguleh in the Second and then TtH, and then the two skeletal lizard/dragons that tagged along after Apsalar for a time, I have to say that seems like an inevitability. : )

(Though as an aside, one of the things I love about Erikson is that the members of his races/occupations are actually allowed to have very different personalities. There's a welcome difference between "All mages are weird" and "All mages are weird." "No, that's just Randall the Fuscia, he's got Tourette's." ...uh, for instance.)