[Gothos]

So... the more proper way of saying it would be that they 'seem to sap the heat from their surroundings'.

[Thel Akai]

Yes. But then again they don't seem to like to be exposed to heat, so there must be a limit to how much they can sap up. We'll learn more about this in upcoming books I hope. And we'll see if I still find them to be misfits in that universe, or not

[ansible]

They probably just transfer all that heat to the ocean, which is as big a heat sink as you could ever want. Problem solved.

This post has been edited by ansible: 22 October 2010 - 02:27 PM

[Thel Akai]

Well, yes, but they still can't be _radiating_ cold :-) You can only be cooled by cold air or touching a surface, or some other medium you're in touch with. There is only infrared radiation, no anti-infrared radiation (or if there's such a thing in the Malazan world's universe then so many things would be affected that it would be a very different world, and there's no indication of that). So, meeting them, you'll notice the cold environment after a while (as they're busy heating up the ocean.. but wait, aren't they creating icebergs?) - but you'll not feel them as radiating cold.

Nah, the storm riders stroke me as a mismatch to the rest of the species and characters. I never got that feeling from hearing about Forkrul Assail, Jaghut, various demons, ghosts, three kinds of Tiste, T'lan Imass, not to mention the easy inter-species hybridisation (jhags, and a number of others). It works, for some reason. But with the SR I felt them as intruders from some other writer's universe. A very different one.

Anyway, I'll wait with hope for the next book to include them, maybe some initial problems can be fixed up so that I too can feel them as proper in the series.

[Gothos]

Could be the aftermath of some sort of ritual, similar to T'lan, or the Soletaken/D'ivers of the First Empire.

[Studlock]

They could have come from a different world thus follow different laws of reality and being magical in nature they still retain their natural state since magic seems to travel across worlds. I also find it funny that you have a problem with this yet you just agree with inter-species mating like its no big thing. They mostly come from different worlds, that evolved outside of each other (of course I have no evidence to back any of this up haha).

[D'rek]

They can totally radiate cold because nobody from Malaz City has the equivalent of a real-world high school physics education.

[Aptorian]

Frost mage throws cone of,,, uhm... heat dissipation?

[Kanubis]

I really find it hard to grasp finding that Storm Riders 'stick out' in a world that already features undead cavemen and high-technology lizards. It took me far longer to get my head round the K'Chain than the Stormriders. 

[MTS]

@Thel Akai: SE describes a certain portal as radiating cold as well, so it's not like it's just ICE's description (Ha ha, ICE. Get it?).

[Abyss]

But the key mystery, the one we know nothing about, is why the throatslashed Stormrider at the end of Nok appeared to be human, and accused the man of 'killing them'.

NOK showed us a link to OP (via Jhenna's plot and 'unreliable allies' comment),but that doesn't tell us anything in terms of their origin so much as their aspect.

I think the human clue will be key eventually.

[Thel Akai]

MTS, on 01 November 2010 - 04:58 PM, said:

@Thel Akai: SE describes a certain portal as radiating cold as well, so it's not like it's just ICE's description (Ha ha, ICE. Get it?).

I hadn't noticed that from SE.. thanks.

Abyss, on 01 November 2010 - 08:47 PM, said:

But the key mystery, the one we know nothing about, is why the throatslashed Stormrider at the end of Nok appeared to be human, and accused the man of 'killing them'.

NOK showed us a link to OP (via Jhenna's plot and 'unreliable allies' comment),but that doesn't tell us anything in terms of their origin so much as their aspect.

I think the human clue will be key eventually.

Yes, I found that part intriguing as well. In any case I thought the bits about Stormriders in NoK was better than the part in RotCG anyway. (As I understand it, the latter was actually written before the former, just released later).

[Roldom]

maybe there the souls of all the murdered ice cream van drivers, out for revenge....

I think the storm riders are a great idea, really looking forward to the stoneweilder book, especially after reading the prologue which mentions the storm riders

i think the storm riders are an excellent idea, maybe they seam so alien to the world of wu simply because they are alien to that wolrd?

i think the only link between jaghut and SR's is the use of ice, but there are other warrens that are used by 2 or more different species which have no connection to each other than they employ the same warren

as to the idea that humans are the aggressors...the SR live in the sea, which follows certain currants and tides, perhaps there attacks aon the stormwall and malaz isle are simple migration.maybe the oceans tide forces them to go certain directions at certain times and oops, someones built a bloody big wall in your way, the sea wont let you go around, so you have to go through

[Gothos]

This is totally off-topic, but your avatar is terribly unsettling, Roldom.

[Roldom]

i toned down the drawing, you should of seen the photo of my original pose....

[Steel General]

Apologies for the thread-rez, but after just finishing NoK and reading this thread an idea popped into my head.

Could the StormRiders be the T'lann Imass of the failed Omtose Phellack ritual?

Just a thought...

[sting01]

Thel Akai, on 25 October 2010 - 09:10 AM, said:

Well, yes, but they still can't be _radiating_ cold :-) You can only be cooled by cold air or touching a surface, or some other medium you're in touch with. There is only infrared radiation, no anti-infrared radiation (or if there's such a thing in the Malazan world's universe then so many things would be affected that it would be a very different world, and there's no indication of that). So, meeting them, you'll notice the cold environment after a while (as they're busy heating up the ocean.. but wait, aren't they creating icebergs?) - but you'll not feel them as radiating cold.

Nah, the storm riders stroke me as a mismatch to the rest of the species and characters. I never got that feeling from hearing about Forkrul Assail, Jaghut, various demons, ghosts, three kinds of Tiste, T'lan Imass, not to mention the easy inter-species hybridisation (jhags, and a number of others). It works, for some reason. But with the SR I felt them as intruders from some other writer's universe. A very different one.

Anyway, I'll wait with hope for the next book to include them, maybe some initial problems can be fixed up so that I too can feel them as proper in the series.

Radiating cold is a perfect choice and physically accurate, as long as you do refer to basic physics knowledge; but refer to some thing more global such a system including both mater and anti mater (anti mater produce negative gravity, mean instead of attracting other particules it will repulse them). by similarity, we can understand anti mater to radiate cold (while you are right, on earth we do radiate heat, not cold).

Another solution would be to understand magic as use of quantic physic laws, here also radiate cold would be possible (or would not be; but unless we test it we would not know).

Personnal note, I always understood magic in general as quantic physic , but with an observer who is not the usual observer , and by so producing un expected results.

[Ben Delat]

My take on them from all the bits and pieces throughout the books is that they were indeed released/created during a big ritual. Which one could be a bit harder to pin down as NoK mentions a huge Jaghut ritual that released things they didn't intend which implies Omtose, the proximity of crippled gods fall could have also released them from somewhere although in Stoneweilder they

Spoiler

seem to be fighting the last veterans of the wall who seems to be pulling their power from the blessed lady who turns out to be the crippled god using them

and again in DoD QuickBen

Spoiler

mentions the nerruse bitten thing, which I thought nerruse was another term for Maels realm, or the realm of the seas/water which made sense for them living in the ocean and watching the end of tCG when Krul and Mael are walking Geboric to the cave

It is really hard to go into detailed theorycrafting on these guys without tons of spoilers in this forum as you can see, they are just too sporadically mentioned in most books and in a very vague way, stoneweilder gives only a little more insight.

In NoK the connection I made was one of the riders that attacks the mage on the boat that is holding them off before obo and agayla arrive actually attempts to penetrate the mages sphere of power and gets hurt pretty bad, maybe like the T'lan there is a certain threshold of damage they can take before their power leaves them and they wash up in human form on a beach to have their throat slit.

The comment about killing them can be speculated as anything really, maybe they dont even know they aren't in their own realm anymore, maybe they deem the oceans as their realm from being around for so long and we are attacking them by trespassing there, maybe there is something of theirs behind the stormwall they feel they have the right to and the people on the stormwall are the wrong ones. maybe......

This post has been edited by Ben Delat: 05 January 2012 - 04:59 PM

[powerclaw]

I think that "radiating cold" is a poetic turn of phrase and shouldn't be viewed as anything else. By the same token I could say that fire doesn't really radiate much heat, its mostly convection and conduction through the fluid medium that is air. Its just not a nice way of saying it.

As for shapechanger's brains, I don't think anyone really understands how a brain stores memories and how we can actually "store" an almost infinite amount of information (even if we can't access all of it). Anyone's guess why the animals can still think, although since the person's soul is the same this can be a good explanation.

[NefaraisBredd]

The stormriders are (in my opinion) aspects of the.natural order of the world. I think they may be a physical manifestation of 'change' that represents that natural cycles of the world. Everything is thrown into question in every book, major upheaval is the result of choices that the characters make.