Poison used on kalam

DarkFox, on 09 February 2011 - 01:41 AM, said:

yes, pearl shot someone in the back, its fair, he IS an assassin. BUT the claw only kill their own when they turn renegade, pearl killed an ally assassin, the lone survivor of a team he prepared to fight kalam i lieu of himself because he witnessed pearl commit a crime by assassin standards. Kalam would have died but i believe the book said it would be days before he truly did.

I didn't miss the point of Pearl breaking the assassin standards by using the poison. And I don't want to justify him shooting a fellow-Claw. I just can perfectly understand why he did it. Imo it all breaks down to his mental condition in BH.

I can't really explain my point without an in-depth analysis of how I perceive Pearl as a character, but I'll try:
When he was introduced, Pearl was absolutely self-confident, over-curious, yes proud too (but he had no reason not to be) and totally eager to prove himself and make an imprint on the world (and why not?, that's not evil in itself). Nothing in DG hints on him not being ABLE, even Laseen calls him Toppers favourite Leutnant (and Topper's reaction to it tells me, she didn't mean this ironically).
With this personality he gets set on Kalam (a living legend, the one who betrayed the Claw and got away with it). – Of course that piqued his natural curiosity. And that's why he constantly wanted to crawl under Kalam's skin on board the Ragstopper. As I interpret Pearl, he genuinely wanted to figure Kalam out. Imo at that point he didn't hold any personals grudge against Kalam, and that he stabbed him was just, well… a job, something that needed doing, because Kalam doubtlessly did turn renegade.
Later on, when he fell from grace with Topper and got quasi-exiled for Kalam's survival (which wasn't Pearl's fault altogether), his pride was already dented a bit, but not too seriously. That was nothing that couldn't get fixed with a bit of luck and effort. And with all the pleasure and adventure his travelling with Lostara brought him, he still was relatively happy with his situation. It was still more or less kind of a game to him.

His personality changed drastically with Lostara's assumed death. Pearl blamed himself for it, felt himself to be a coward for not having stopped her, but, honestly now, that's just self assessment, not fact. He could have done exactly nothing to stop Lostara from charging headlong into the battle, other that tie and gag her. Therefore I can not blame him for what (assumedly) happened to her.
(And regarding his own durhang-orgy in that tent at the foot of Y'Gathan, well, it doesn't bother me in the least, that he used the drug to cool down his frustration and wallow in self-pity, after he had offered his help to Tavore and was outright turned down by her. I, for one, can accept this as an aspect of his character.
[But I realise that probably every reader has his own preferred standard-character he wants to read about… the barbarian, the mastermind, the action-assassin, the sexy warrior-princess… you get my gist. One of my soft spots, however, belongs to the more or less drug-addict, more or less talkative sneaky-assassins. I always fall for them, so nothing that comes from that direction can really bother me. That might be different for you, and that might also be the crux of the matter regarding liking Pearl as a Character or not. This type of character is a cliché too, and SE plays it very well imo.]
Of course you can argue he could have acted nevertheless and fought without permission or better "command", but imo that would have been totally out of character. Y'Gathan was essentially not his fight, he had nothing to gain by acting on his own account. And following Lostara when she came to him wouldn't have been a wise decision, taking into account that he was already drugged then. And apart from that, nobody could have guessed at the coming firestorm.)

Nevertheless, in BH it was absolutely not a game anymore. As I have said already, he lost nearly everything and his goal was to salvage what he could, and yes, revenge of course.
The most fundamental change, though, was the loss of his curiosity. He didn't care anymore, for anything.
Banaschar stirred a mild echo of this former omnipresent trait of his, but even that could not hold his attention for long, and when he was asked to confirm the command to kill Banaschar, his reaction was hardly more than 'well, whatever'. He really didn't care.

With this mindset I get back to "shooting a fellow-Claw".
He had to shoot that Claw, this witness of his lapse, when there should have been any hope to carry on as Clawmaster. And he certainly felt no remorse for it, because he felt he had the right to do it. It was HIS orgaisation in his mind, and by killing Kalam he wanted to make a clean sweep. He couldn't have let someone ruin his attempt to build a new order, no matter how grisly the last era ended.

Quote

BH, p 1144, bantam mpb:
Now, as he had intended all along, there were no witnesses left. And it was time to gather the remaining Hands.
He wished it could have been different. All of it. But this was a new Malazan Empire, with new rules.
Rules I can manage well enough. After all, I have nothing left. No-one left…

DarkFox, on 09 February 2011 - 01:41 AM, said:

Pearl did have to kill Kalam, for his prides sake, because he could have killed him but kalam survived and basically hunted the other claw. It was the right choice to make then but he definitely received full blame for it, isn't that why he was in exile later?

Yes, as I said, he could have killed Kalam in DG, but wasn't meant to at that point. So failure in (personally) killing Kalam in DG was not his reason for hating Kalam (as I don't think Pearl at any point saw this as his failure, or blamed himself for Kalam's survival).
And for the blame-taking, yes, he received full blame for the failure of the whole "mission" (that is to say: for the failure of the other Claws in Malaz City in DG to take out Kalam, wounded as he was) but that's because he was the last one standing when Topper needed a scapegoat. –This whole incident certainly didn't endear Kalam to Pearl though. (That is imo why he began to hate Kalam, because Kalam escaped the justified revenge of the Claw, and because he got unfairly blamed for it, not because he actually failed in anything himself.)
As for the pride, I'd say that's too easy. It was not only pride, that drove him on his killing-crusade. - Part of it was pride admittedly, because he (Pearl) wanted to be the best, the leader, but part of it was irrationality. Kalam became somehow "larger that life" to Pearl, the one factor he had to dispose of and afterwards all would unravel by its own accord, hence the extreme measures he was willing to take to achieve this goal.
As I said, I don't find this rational whatsoever myself, still it does fit into Pearl's mindset in BH.

DarkFox, on 09 February 2011 - 01:41 AM, said:

I believe when Laseen said she would make Kalam clawmaster, she made it Pearls choice, that's why she gave him full control of the claw. but he didn't want to "purge" the claw of their betrayers, of Korbalo and Mallick Rel, he wanted to plainly annihilate them, and I'm not sure it said anything about him happily serving under the empress either did it?

On this point I'm completely contrary to you. Laseen offered Kalam the post of Clawmaster clearly before she offered it to Pearl. And would Kalam indeed have jumped at the chance, Pearl would have had no vote in it whatsoever. Laseen definitely preferred Kalam over Pearl (because Kalam was rather Topper-like, more the action-assassin than the sneaky-assassin), only when Kalam declined she graciously offered it to Pearl, but with no real confidence in him.

And imo Pearl too (as well as Kalam ironically) genuinely wanted to purge the Claw from the Black Glove, maybe for a selfish reason, but still.

As to his loyalty to Laseen. No, I don't think that he would have happily served under the Empress, but I think he would have served, in the best interest of the empire, not that of the Empress, because imo she had already gambled away the loyalty of the Claw by her behaviour towards them, and apart from her constituting the Claw in the first place, she had imo no right to them anymore. Just because she built them, I think she could not demand blind allegiance for evermore.

That's pure interpretation of course.

DarkFox, on 09 February 2011 - 01:41 AM, said:

I can't disagree with how twisted he became after he believed his love dead but he could have gone another way with it, Lostara certainly did. he could kill kalam, even from behind at a distance, a god wouldn't try it another way, but the poisen was just sadistic. and finally, it wasn't pearl who saved anyone, it was apt who followed him, you can read it any way you want but it seamed to me pearl was there as much out of curiosity as duty.

I don't know what you mean with: "Lostara certainly did." – She never was in Pearl's situation.

However, of course it would have been possible to cope with his situation differently, but he didn't (or the Author chose not to make him, and again I think it is a matter of how far the reader is willing to follow a certain character development before dismissing the character as implausible. However, for me his development was perfectly consistent.)
As for the poison, again, I don't argue that it was sadistic, but I can still understand him using it. As I explicated above, this kill of Kalam was something fundamental to Pearl, and he used this poison to make it something unique, and yes, he certainly wanted Kalam to suffer, probably as much as he suffered himself at that point.
Still I can't blame one killer for killing another killer, no matter the means (and do you really believe, Kalam has not done his share of killing innocents, during his active Claw-time, or before, or even after… and that Topper hasn't too, or even oh so adorable Cotillion?). Might be different if Pearl had killed an innocent child (say like in: nailing 1500 children alive to tree-stumps or something similar horrible).

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(Also, do you see the doublestandard of condemning Pearl to hell and crying outrage for his killig Kalam with that poison, and at the same time treating Sorry/Apsalar like a saint for her killing Pearl the same way? Where's the justice? The one did the killing to avenge his life, the other to avenge a friend. Just cross "Kalam" out of the equation for a moment, and in his stead enter… say, "Pormqual", and the cry of outrage might well be the other way round.
Oh, and did I mention the injustice of stylizing Sorry/Apsalar to super-heroine for her oh so sexy shadow-dace through loads and loads of Claws? What did the poor Claws do to deserve this fate, being hauled into the City by the shiploads, pointed at a target, and subsequently slaughtered before they really comprehended what was going on? Is she now a criminal too? Are they? – Who is? And by what standard?
Sorry, but I just don't see what should make Pearl so morally inferior.)

Ok, pro-Pearl rant over. – Just ignore it!
(And this, as I might stress, although Pearl isn't even my favourite character, but I really find him fascinating, and I can live with his shady sides as well. I just feel the need to advocate him, the Claw in general, because there are so many Kalam-Fans out there and so few Pearl-fans. Blame my zodiac sign, Libra, I must play the devil's advocate :thumbup:

sometimes, it is my curse…)
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And when I mentioned Pearl's involvement in the night-time raid, I didn't mean he saved Duiker from the Semk demon, I know that was Apt, but there were any number of other dangerous thingies out there that night, more mundane things like enemy soldiers and so on, and however it was Duiker who found the evidence of a Claw in that area the next morning. As I said, I have no proof whatsoever, but you have none, either.
Also, I have not claimed that his curiosity did not influence his decision to get there in the first place. But he would not actually have had to fight there, if he really just wanted to witness out of curiosity, let alone prepare for a final stand against the Semk demon, which he realised himself, would cost him his life.

But, although his curiosity might not have been exactly a hindrance, I'd say the duty aspect was, what tipped the scales:

Pearl in DG, p 530, bantam mpb said:

"I'm the last surviving operative, after all. The Empress so despises idle hands…"

and on the next page

Quote

Pearl: "If help appears once, the expectation is it will appear again. The risk is dulling Coltine's edge, and by the Hidden Ones, the Wickan will need that edge in the weeks to come."
Lostara: "I am ready."
Pearl: "One thing, There's a Semk demon. Stay away from it, for while we know virtually nothing of it's powers, what we do know suggests an appalling… temper."

For me that suggests, he went there exactly to pick out this "demon", although he didn't know it would be too big a task for him when he went. But even when he realised it, he didn't shy away from his duty. The fact that he was damn glad when Apt relived him from this suicide-mission doesn't diminish his courageousness in my eyes, and that he took the time to thank her for it, before he called in his warren, makes him just all the more likable.

DarkFox, on 09 February 2011 - 01:41 AM, said:

I will take back my "ass and pus" comment. he wasn't an ass until his broken heart and he did follow the T'lan Imass into Kurald Thyrlan. but his only two redeeming acts were to placethe t'lan imass's head in a good spot and to take away Felissin Parans body.

Thank you for the first.

As for the "redeeming". What exactly did he need redeeming for? Or are we again talking of his attempted killing of Kalam (or the nameless(?) other Claw he shot)? Since there is no other "sin" that springs to my mind, that would have needed redeeming for (oh, apart from everyone else he might have killed during his career as an assassin, but killing alone cannot be such a grave sin in their world, since everyone does it, and it's widely accepted).

Other than that he seems to me quite the average, reasonably decent human being (let's neglect the supposedly quarter Tiste Andii part) with virtues and flaws alike.
I'm far from claiming he is an untouchable saint, but he is not the spawn of evil either.

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Lets just say, we cannot convince each other of our respective POVs, and leave it at that, shall we? No bad blood between us.

I really think it is a matter of interpretation and plain sympathy.

This post has been edited by Salk Elan: 10 February 2011 - 12:55 PM

Malazan Empire: Poison used on kalam - Malazan Empire