[Hellian's Keg Lid]

Well it does say somewhere, that the Nah'ruk were so bred down to be devoid of independent thought - by either Stormy or Gesler, to Gunth Mach, to which she responds something along the lines of hope for their eventual *someday* recovery.

And my two cents, I liked the various povs, added depth, showed the fragmentation of the army, and when we get TCG and see Tavore and Fiddler with their five and a half men, I will cheer all the more when someone thumps her for it.

[beru]

beru, on 13 October 2009 - 09:39 AM, said:

since they are hive mindes you cant get the pov of a shorttail without having all their plans and history sumed up into one massive pov
snip

see
and it was QB ho gave us this information

[HoosierDaddy]

Well, they also didn't rebel everywhere (the Nah'ruk that is), they were fighting along with the K'Chain at the beginning of Midnight Tides yes? Those were skykeeps, not dragon fortresses in the air.

[Hellian's Keg Lid]

Point I was trying to make was for a point of view to be given, you technically need an individual on which to base it... And what I said was the Nah'ruk were quoted as devoid of independentt thought.

Which means - you could have had a random page of a non-personal view from drone 114/1000 - who has no personal observations, and has no reason to be thinking anything since its a mindless drone. *kill walk kill walk eat zap with my magic mace continue*

You don't even get a pov, really, from your average Che'malle. Gunth Mach says she enhanced Sag Churok's mind specifically, somewhere, or gave him more history in an attempt to break free of old failures. Gu'rull isn't your average either.

Also, bad guys generally don't get a PoV, call me dense. Maybe later on, yes, but initial first reading of them, Crippled God, Raest, Pannion, others - Kallor, Rhulad, list is endless, we've never had a pov from their side, until afterwards.

Edited for my decrepit spelling

This post has been edited by Hellian's Keg Lid: 13 October 2009 - 09:27 PM

[HoosierDaddy]

Until after what?

[Sixty]

We've had a PoV of Kallor right from the start. And we've yet to, to my understanding, see a PoV from TCG.

[Hellian's Keg Lid]

Ehm... Not an indepth PoV until TtH, the way it was being discussed - as in history, full motivations, etc etc. And that was the point... Will shuffle back to reader mode now...

[blackzoid]

What?
We have had multiple bad guy POV!
We have had Raest, Kallor (in MoI), Bloodeye, multiple evil characters on the Lethereas continent (in both MT and RG, their names excape me. You know the head of the secret police,his main underling, the chancellor), Leoman in TBH, Poliel before she gets killed, that lizard cat thing in TBH, Karsa's POV in HoC when he was NOT a nice guy etc

And we have had POV of an Ox in TTH, the group mind of the lizard cat in TBH, wolf Ascendents in MoI etc
Why should a hive mind of Short-tails be any problem for SE? It doesn't have to be a continuing POV throughout the book, just one passage, like Silchas Ruin at the end of RG, or Fear at the end of MT. Those passages tended to redefine the entire book, because it showed a counterpoint to what came before. Why could we not have had something like that for the Short-tails?

[Sinisdar Toste]

there's a reason. don't doubt that. there's a reason SE doesn't give us a POV from the nah'ruk. maybe its because a nah'ruk POV is the POV of the entire race? seperating out one lizard is useless and boring, they don't engage in independent thinking. there would be no characters, no individuals.

[blackzoid]

Hmm, maybe I guess. i'm thinking of something like that group lizard cat thing but on a huge scale.
It would be very difficult, but I think it could be done.
Of course I'm not the author and maybe he (or ICE) are not finished with the Short Tails.

This post has been edited by blackzoid: 14 October 2009 - 04:46 PM

[Sinisdar Toste]

dejim nehbrahl is a good example, the difference being that dejim is cunning, and each kin on its own is just as cunning. overall the nah'ruk are one mind, thousands and thousands of simpletons creating a single will. how is that composed? how does the conglomerate create intelligence? tough question, i'm guessing that SE and ICE have pondered that for a long time.

This post has been edited by Sinisdar Toste: 15 October 2009 - 03:27 PM

[blackzoid]

Do we know that the Nahruk are a single mind?
Kidna like the Borg? (before the Borg Queen idea came on the scene)

It would be a nice contrast to the Long-Tails if they were.

[beru]

QB says so before the epic battle of epic doom, so yes

[Hinter]

Lister of Smeg, on 13 October 2009 - 11:33 AM, said:

I love all the different POVs from the army. In most stories, you only get to know the commanders so if the army gets massacred it's just numbers that are lost. With the Bonehunters, all these soldiers are shown as real people, with real lives and real motivations. I think SE's done a wonderful job in creating a cast of so many soldiers in the same army while still making them different enough that I care about each and every one of them. When the Nah'ruk started slaughtering them I felt it a lot more than I would have if we had only met Fid's squad, for example.

Just been revisiting a few threads that I started aeons ago.

Firstly, I agree with you Lister - that's why we love SE's work, but are a few characters not becoming a bit "safe"?

My original point was that SE has certainly shown that no one major character was safe from grisly death, in the early books at least. However, now there do seem to to be some characters that will survive no matter what is thrown at them, and to me that creates a safety zone for these characters and lessens the tensions when they are knee deep in trouble.

I want to mention Joe Abercrombie's books which a friend recently lent me and I thoroughly enjoyed, but my visits have been infrequent recently and I can't remember how to spoiler stuff!! What happened to the BB code help button???

[HoosierDaddy]

Hinter, on 01 January 2010 - 03:48 AM, said:

Lister of Smeg, on 13 October 2009 - 11:33 AM, said:

I love all the different POVs from the army. In most stories, you only get to know the commanders so if the army gets massacred it's just numbers that are lost. With the Bonehunters, all these soldiers are shown as real people, with real lives and real motivations. I think SE's done a wonderful job in creating a cast of so many soldiers in the same army while still making them different enough that I care about each and every one of them. When the Nah'ruk started slaughtering them I felt it a lot more than I would have if we had only met Fid's squad, for example.

Just been revisiting a few threads that I started aeons ago.

Firstly, I agree with you Lister - that's why we love SE's work, but are a few characters not becoming a bit "safe"?

My original point was that SE has certainly shown that no one major character was safe from grisly death, in the early books at least. However, now there do seem to to be some characters that will survive no matter what is thrown at them, and to me that creates a safety zone for these characters and lessens the tensions when they are knee deep in trouble.

I want to mention Joe Abercrombie's books which a friend recently lent me and I thoroughly enjoyed, but my visits have been infrequent recently and I can't remember how to spoiler stuff!! What happened to the BB code help button???

They'll survive as long as SE wants them in the story. Trull? Whiskeyjack? Kalam? Rake? How about Logen Ninefingers. He's worst than the damned rest of Malaz multiplied by a billion. Any comparison here with Abercrombie fails at every level known to man.

[Sinisdar Toste]

H.D., on 01 January 2010 - 04:23 AM, said:

Hinter, on 01 January 2010 - 03:48 AM, said:

Lister of Smeg, on 13 October 2009 - 11:33 AM, said:

I love all the different POVs from the army. In most stories, you only get to know the commanders so if the army gets massacred it's just numbers that are lost. With the Bonehunters, all these soldiers are shown as real people, with real lives and real motivations. I think SE's done a wonderful job in creating a cast of so many soldiers in the same army while still making them different enough that I care about each and every one of them. When the Nah'ruk started slaughtering them I felt it a lot more than I would have if we had only met Fid's squad, for example.

Just been revisiting a few threads that I started aeons ago.

Firstly, I agree with you Lister - that's why we love SE's work, but are a few characters not becoming a bit "safe"?

My original point was that SE has certainly shown that no one major character was safe from grisly death, in the early books at least. However, now there do seem to to be some characters that will survive no matter what is thrown at them, and to me that creates a safety zone for these characters and lessens the tensions when they are knee deep in trouble.

I want to mention Joe Abercrombie's books which a friend recently lent me and I thoroughly enjoyed, but my visits have been infrequent recently and I can't remember how to spoiler stuff!! What happened to the BB code help button???

They'll survive as long as SE wants them in the story. Trull? Whiskeyjack? Kalam? Rake? How about Logen Ninefingers. He's worst than the damned rest of Malaz multiplied by a billion. Any comparison here with Abercrombie fails at every level known to man.

i must say though, despite SE's severe culling of the cast in DoD there still is a select group that have so far been relatively untouchable. granted it is a very select group and i don't even know why its an issue, but so far there has been a group of survivors that SE keeps pulling through.

i guess thats why they call them survivors

[Hetan]

Hinter, on 01 January 2010 - 03:48 AM, said:

I want to mention Joe Abercrombie's books which a friend recently lent me and I thoroughly enjoyed, but my visits have been infrequent recently and I can't remember how to spoiler stuff!! What happened to the BB code help button???

If you wish to use the spoiler tags do it like this [spoiler ] whatever you want to say [ /spoiler] leaving out the additional spaces in the brackets.

[Kurt Montandon]

I'm amazed that people are still at least somewhat complaining about how major character deaths seem somewhat meaningless, since they can just come back in some form in any case.

That's been the rule all along. That's the foundation of the Malazan universe - there are so many spiritual facets to every living thing, and so many powerful beings running around messing with that spirituality, that nothing ever really dies.

I mean, GotM, how many people got killed and came back to life? How often was it beat into us, from BOOK ONE, that even when people die, they're spirit almost always travels to Hood's realm, meaning they still exist - and in some cases, that soul is preserved in the real world through manipulations. The wax witch, Paran getting killed by Sorry, Tattersail getting torn to shreds, Cotillion and Ammanas both having been killed before the book even started, Hairlock dying in the Enfilade, Rake's victims being chained in Dragnipur, Raest not being concerned about losing his mortal body, the T'lan Imass being a bunch of immortal dust zombies ... and that's just in the first damned book, and I'm probably forgetting a few.

Erikson has been very, very consistent about this from the first chapter of the first book - people just don't really die in his world, unless they rather aggressively seek out oblivion.

[KeithF]

Assorted thoughts:

1) I had the impression the Nah'ruk were basically a blind force bent on revenge/general KCCM killage, a bit like the Pannion army in MoI. Hence there's not much for a POV to convey. Their plot function seems to be to throw a spanner in the works of the Bonehunter/Perish/Khundryl/Letheri/Bolkando/Gilk alliance, which otherwise might have looked too strong and unstoppable for Erikson's liking.
2) I agree that truly wiping out (or even killing 90% of) the Bonehunters would be a very gutsy decision (in addition to culling the list of minor characters), but I also think it would be a step too far not to leave at least some characters alive whose storylines would basically have been cut off with no payoff. Tavore is the most obvious example - we still have basically no clear idea what's going on in her head.
3) Further to the above, if the Bonehunters really are (nearly) all dead except a tiny remnant (Quick Ben, Brys, Lostara Yil, etc.), I propose that this was JUST AS PLANNED by Tavore, or someone backing her like Shadowthrone or the Eres'al. They'll all ascend in some way and finally be badass enough to take on the Forkrul Assail lurking in Kolanse, along with all the gods and anyone else who shows up for the party.

[WhiskeyJackDaniels]

Why would the Bonehunters ascend? A lot of things had to happen for the Bridgeburner's to ascend, Tanno Spiritwalker song and everything that happened in Raraku, being blessed by Paran, and being the most feared and respected army of the most formiddable Empire on the planet for a number of years.

The Bonehunters had the marines topple a crumbing empire, and a small number survive a large firestorm in Y'ghatan. Hardly worthy of an army-wide ascension.