[ritchiediaz]

Isn't such a bad bastard as he is being painted IMO...

Some quotes from TTH:-

About Rake in Dragnipur...

Quote

'Consider this,' said Hood, 'a request for forgiveness'

Quote

Staring upward he whispered, 'You ask my forgiveness? When you unravel what I have done, what I did so long ago? When you heal what I wounded, when you mend what I broke?' He raised his voice to a shout. 'Rake! There is no forgiveness you must seek - not form me, gods below, not from any of us

Then this wee exchange with the One-eyed River Eel:-

Quote

Be at ease, Toblakai. You are reminding me some things in this world remain worthwhile

A wee theme in DoD is humility - take this, Udinaas on humility:-

Quote

There really should be more of that. Why, if I was the god of all gods, it's the only lesson I would ever deliver, as many times as necessary.

Is Draconus really that much of an evil bastard after what happened after a wee dose of humility? I think not.

This post has been edited by ritchiediaz: 15 September 2009 - 08:16 PM

[Illuyankas]

Hell, they made the point back in MOI that Draconus had changed. I'm just surprised everyone's forgotten that the people going OMIGOD DRACONUS IS BACK AND HE WAS A TOTAL BASTARD are the people who haven't been able to contact him or anyone for millenia.

[Morgoth]

he did have a couple of hundred thousand years to dwell on his flaws of character after all.

[Tiste Simeon]

I think it is very clear from TTH and his scenes in DOD that he isn't the same evil elder god that went into Dragnipur. With the small exception of his arrival wiping out two armies of course...

[ritchiediaz]

Tiste Simeon, on 15 September 2009 - 09:21 PM, said:

I think it is very clear from TTH and his scenes in DOD that he isn't the same evil elder god that went into Dragnipur. With the small exception of his arrival wiping out two armies of course...

But possibly his arrival was a bit of a lesson in humility.

Hell, Maral Eb needed it!

Maybe that is his purpose now, on first read I thought Sekara got off light, but on a re-read I'm not so sure - she saw true horror, and for her I think that was being seriously humbled.
Draconus, New Elder God of Humility?

[bubba]

The best entrance ever......I think people next door heard me yell when I read it.

[Abyss]

The old days draconus is a bit vague...
We know he was an elder god and thus linked to blood sacrifice.
We know he was aspected to darkness.
We know he initially made Dragnipur as an experiment and went around killing ascendents with it just because he could.
When Kallor destroyed his own Empire, Drac was offended enough to act.
His daughters really, really didn't like him.

... the RCG prologue is the closest we really get to determining that he was really not a nice person.

- Abyss, ...and yeah, that was a hell of an entrance.

[MTS]

Not exactly, Abyss. Draconus tells us Dragnipur, while an experiment, was a tool with which to act as an arbiter of conflict before the Ascendants destroyed everything with their meddling. Liossercal destroyed the Azath because he could, and was curious about its nature. Draconus didn't just go around killing Ascendants because he could. He just had a fucked-up, and incredibly cold, way of dealing with the power of the Ascendants. So, he was arguably altruistic in his motives for Dragnipur.

This post has been edited by Mappo's Travelling Sack: 16 September 2009 - 02:18 AM

[Abyss]

I don't read the prologue of RCG that way. It's a fair interpretation, but i had the sense that at that time Drac was looking to acquire power by adding ascendent souls to the warren in the sword. Eventually he turns the sword to the purpose of frustrating the KC Matron death spell, but that's later. It seems the RCg prologue takes place before the Fall, and by the time we see Drac with Krul and SisCold, he almost seems less aggressive. he may have started to mellow even before Rake took his sword away and kebab'd him with it.


- Abyss, notes carrying around the (mistaken) key to saving the universe could do that...

[MTS]

Maybe it's both. Draconus does say Liossercal's 'essence will be a fine addition.' So, perhaps not altruism, more...opportunism in problem solving.

[HoosierDaddy]

I'd note that characters seem to differ in how they behave in Erikson's and Esslemont's books. Whose, do you think Abyss, is more applicable to Dust of Dreams and The Crippled God?

[Hetan]

It's just a question of interpretation really.
It's like reading an excerpt from a POV in history written by two different viewpoints - it doesn't have to exactly tally and that is what frustrates me about comparing the two.

Oh yes, Draconus is a bad-ass

[Tiste Simeon]

Hetan, on 16 September 2009 - 07:36 AM, said:

It's just a question of interpretation really.
It's like reading an excerpt from a POV in history written by two different viewpoints - it doesn't have to exactly tally and that is what frustrates me about comparing the two.

Yeah I agree... Its a good way of looking at it - no-one will ever view one character the same way and the reason all those other people are a bit afraid of Drac is possibly because they remember what he was like before dragnipur...

[The_Saviour]

I think an aeon dragging a gigantic cart across a wasteland is enough to humble the best of Gods.

[chaosek]

Doesn't he apologize after he makes his entrance? He says something like 'sorry, my love' (referring to MD I suppose). Besides you probably can't judge the nature of an elder god on the people he kills. Most consider ST and Cot to be 'good' guys but they slaughter a lot of people through the hounds in GoTM and ddon't mind sacrificing 1300 childern to defend a useless throne.

I think Drac has changed, but that doesn't necessarely mean he's nice to us lowly humans now.

[Silencer]

It's a big difference between niceness and humbling, that's true. Humble means he lacks arrogance. Nice means he doesn't kill people. The two are not required to be together.

[Mael]

Silencer, on 02 October 2009 - 10:55 AM, said:

It's a big difference between niceness and humbling, that's true. Humble means he lacks arrogance. Nice means he doesn't kill people. The two are not required to be together.

Humble or not, we're in agreement that Draconus is Father Light correct?

[Illuyankas]

What? No, Father Light supplanted Draconus in Mother Dark's affections. They're not the same person.

[Mael]

Illuyankas, on 06 October 2009 - 09:42 PM, said:

What? No, Father Light supplanted Draconus in Mother Dark's affections. They're not the same person.

I figured this was what was being alluded to in DoD when they spoke about father light disappearing when Mother dark did (ie: they both ended up in the sword) and then later when they were speaking about their conjoining and having both return (mother dark and draconus) and then having draconus wielding a sword of pure darkness upon his return (ie: light and dark together).

[Sinisdar Toste]

ah, no, i don't think that father light could just walk out of the woods all "hey there my names draconus!" and not completely upset the balance of the universe. the birth of light in kharkanas, ie: father light coming into contact with mother dark, was catastrophic and world changing. way above what draconus arriving in kharkanas caused, and probably way worse than draconus' entrance in DoD