[worry]

I dunno. The oldest dragons could shape chaos into its various aspects according to their personal interests (or according to how Tiam determined them perhaps), while younger dragons become acolytes of the various aspects...and this is all way before humanoids actually start accessing these aspects for the purposes of magic or sorcery. I mean a dragon's interest in any given element may have zero to do with why a humanoid would be interested. But once humanoids start accessing magic in its wilder forms, it becomes clear that they have to do something to avoid major catastrophe, so K'rul strikes a bargain with dragons to shape the warrens. I see no reason that any particular dragon, beyond its own willingness and interest (or birthright) in particular elements/aspects, should automatically be the one to help K'rul with a particular path. I mean all the dragons (but one I guess) are all basically in on the plan, but it doesn't have to be so linear from ultimate holder/maker of an elder aspect to which individuals shaped which of the new paths for humans.

[WhiskeyJackDaniels]

Sinisdar Toste, on 31 March 2010 - 05:41 PM, said:

i have to agree with d'rek on this one. the idea of dragons being born aspected to a certain warren feels wrong in my mind. in the absence of sufficient evidence thats what i'm going with.

Have we ever seen a dragon use anything but SD? I know we've pretty much only seen soletaken, but if the dragons were naturally aspected and not just the power K'rul drew on to make the warrens, then it would make sense that we see them use their own aspected powers, which I can't remember seeing.

[chaosek]

What if Tiam was Soletaken ánd D'Ivers? Could account for multiple slayings and births. The T'roll D'Ivers could regenerate bodies as well. Maybe the Oratal dragon is the last of Tiam.


Just a drunk brainwave.............

[Sinisdar Toste]

the only pure dragon we have seen in action is silannah. in GotM, and in TtH when various people remember her being active in the blackdog campaign. can't recall what she was spouting in GotM, but in the Blackdog instances everyone talks about a fire that burned without need for fuel. that doesn't sound like SD to me.

edit: @ chaosek - i've actually thought that same thing before. mainly due to sukul ankhadu's comment that all the soletaken are "tiam's squalling heads, rearing up over and over again, yet nothing changes" or w.e the exact quote is

This post has been edited by Sinisdar Toste: 01 April 2010 - 12:19 AM

[MTS]

Quote

'The fools who pulled him down are long dead, K'rul. Vengeance is just an excuse.
The Crippled God is driven by ambition. Lust for power is the core of his rotten,
shrivelled heart.'
'Perhaps, perhaps not. Time will tell, as the mortals say. In any case, you defied the
summons at the Chaining, Lady Envy. I will not brook your indifference a second time.
'You?' She sneered. 'Are you my master, K'rul? Since when—'
Visions flooded her mind, staggering her. Darkness. Then chaos, wild, unfocused
power, a universe devoid of sense, of control, of meaning. Entities flung through the
maelstrom. Lost, terrified by the birth of light. A sudden sharpening - pain as of wrists
opened, the heat spilling forth - a savage imposition of order, the heart from which
blood flowed in even, steady streams. Twin chambers to that heart - Kurald Galain, the
Warren of Mother Dark - and Starvald Demelain, the Warren of… Dragons. And the
blood - the power - now sweeping in currents through veins, through arteries, branching
out through all existence, and the thought that came to her then stole all warmth from
her flesh. Those veins, those arteries, they are the warrens. 'Who created this? Who?'
Dear Lady, K'rul replied, you have your answer, and I will be damned if I am going
to countenance your impertinence. You are a sorceress. By Light's Wild Mane, your
power feeds on the very blood of my eternal soul, and I will have your obedience in this!
Lady Envy staggered another step, suddenly released by the visions, disorientated,
her heart thudding in her chest. She drew in a sharp breath. 'Who knows the… the truth,
K'rul?' That, in striding through the warrens, we travel through your very flesh. That,
when we draw upon the power of the warrens, we draw your very blood? Who knows?'
She felt a casual shrug in his reply.
Anomander Rake, Draconus, Osric, a handful of others. And now you. Forgive me,
Lady Envy, I have no wish to be a tyrant. My presence within the warrens has ever been
passive - you are free to do as you choose, as is every other creature who swims my
immortal blood. I have but one excuse, if you will. This Crippled God, this stranger from
an unknown realm...Lady Envy, I am frightened.

I think K'rul makes it clear that dragons were not aspected before his shaping. This account is admittedly up for debate since the Chaos comes after Darkness reigned alone, but that's a question for another day. The way I see it is that these entities, 'lost, terrified at the birth of Light', are the dragons, and the 'wild, unfocused power' is presumably the power of the Eleint; SD - the First Warren - is said to be quite chaotic (somewhere I can't quite remember). And so K'rul and the dragons filtered that power, as it were, through his blood. They shaped it in their own fashion, demarcated it from the others, thus creating order, balanced forces in opposition.

There are holes, I realise, but without more evidence we will never really know.

[worry]

So the shaping of the paths is purely a dragon affair? Where do the differentiations between Elder Warrens, the pre-Holds, the Holds, and then the modern Warrens all fit in, in terms of humanoid/Wu access? And it also seems that Rake's fight against the feral dragons has to do with their rebellion against K'rul? That would give him a good reason to become a Soletaken dragon and off Tiam (and take down Korabas) if the dragons were breaching the bargain with K'rul and therefore endangering everyone. But MD seems less jealous than disappointed that Rake would take that route, since she understands that Rake opened up a can of worms by taking in that bit of chaos. Perhaps she turned away for the same reason Burn would wipe everything out...she thinks everything is doomed, she can wait out the end of the universe, and create something new...but unlike Burn, she's more sentimental, a devastated mom...finally she sees Rake's sacrifice in Dragnipur and changes her mind. Perhaps Rake pinned down Tiam and drank from her, and others followed in his wake, and this gradually killed her (rather than a single or series of instant slayings for her blood). Though I guess that wouldn't account for all the sex she had.

Also, I wonder if Olar Ethil exists as a balance to Tiam's resurrections. Korabas exists in answer to all other dragons' power, so perhaps OE is the balance in that other way. I may be totally off, and I don't remember the specifics, but I thought it was said at least once that Olar Ethil disappears for long chunks of time and reappears too? That could have been somebody else.

Now Gothos has a relationship with the Azath who also have a stake in forcing order upon sorcery. And Icarium misunderstands their purpose and their relationship to Gothos, and goes bonkers. But he also creates an even newer set of warrens within himself. Which leads me to wonder if he's on the same mission as Gothos, but with a more twisted mind. And we see that the CG frightens K'rul, who believes himself to be the ultimate prize of everything that's going on in the series. That's their conjecture of the CG's motives, but I doubt he'd mind having such power.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 01 April 2010 - 01:56 AM

[WhiskeyJackDaniels]

Sinisdar Toste, on 01 April 2010 - 12:17 AM, said:

the only pure dragon we have seen in action is silannah. in GotM, and in TtH when various people remember her being active in the blackdog campaign. can't recall what she was spouting in GotM, but in the Blackdog instances everyone talks about a fire that burned without need for fuel. that doesn't sound like SD to me.

Could just be a GoTmism then but when fighting Raest she is using SD. It talks about SD and KG battling OP.

[Malaclypse]

Let nothing I say here reflect on Hetan, who has been an absolute paragon of virtue in this farcical conversation but...

I do wonder what you lot will have to say when the Encyclopedia is published. Playing Devil's Advocate is not an intellectual position. Make something work in your own mind and try to deal with the things that don't support your position. Simply playing Devil's Advocate is not useful; never has been, never will be. Watch this space.

[WhiskeyJackDaniels]

Malaclypse, on 01 April 2010 - 02:31 AM, said:

Let nothing I say here reflect on Hetan, who has been an absolute paragon of virtue in this farcical conversation but...

I do wonder what you lot will have to say when the Encyclopedia is published. Playing Devil's Advocate is not an intellectual position. Make something work in your own mind and try to deal with the things that don't support your position. Simply playing Devil's Advocate is not useful; never has been, never will be. Watch this space.

How is the topic different from any other on this site where people are throwing out theories? I'm pretty sure rhetoric and dialectic (which is closer to what I think has been going on here than merely devil's advocate) have been used as a method of discovering truth in argument for centuries.

[MTS]

Malaclypse, on 01 April 2010 - 02:31 AM, said:

I do wonder what you lot will have to say when the Encyclopedia is published.

We were wrong?

Btw, bit harsh Amph

This post has been edited by MTS: 01 April 2010 - 04:13 AM

[amphibian]

MTS, on 01 April 2010 - 04:12 AM, said:

Malaclypse, on 01 April 2010 - 02:31 AM, said:

I do wonder what you lot will have to say when the Encyclopedia is published.

We were wrong?

Btw, bit harsh Amph

I don't think it's harsh. The questions and answers haven't been repetitive and have resulted in Hetan laying out the role - or at least what she believes to be the role - of dragons in the Malazan world's magic. That's extremely positive and not something to be called "farcical". At least not without explaining why exactly it's farcical. Or referring to a currently non-extant source. Without this discussion, which has been respectfully conducted by many people here, we wouldn't have these ideas and concepts out in the open where others can read it.

[Jorram]

Totally not sure how any of this is playing the devil's advocate...

The point of the creation of the warrens has always been extremely shaky. By book 9 i'm certain even Bottle's animal spies are well aware that K'rul created the warrens. In book 3 not even Lady Envy knows.... In book 6 we learn that dragons helped Krul shape the warrens (human warrens, new warrens, holds, what? remember that the humans of the First Empire used holds) but by book 3 it is kinda obvious that SE didnt really have it in mind.

It's never been clear when does this event happens, which warrens in particular it involves, what is its relationship to ascendants and magic wielders of the time before it (are there such at all? K'rul seems to imply Envy's sorcery, too, is on his warrens, though she is indoubtedly Elder, given that she has been born at the time of the MT prologue - more specifically she is mentioned by Menandore and Sukul to Osric shortly after Silchas is buried in the Azath).

In my mind there is a distinction between Paths vs (Elder) Warrens on one side (though it gets more and more meaningless with time, as more and more human seem to be able to readily access the warrens); and Houses vs Holds on the other side. Houses and Holds signify a concept, an aspect. The House of Dark involves Kurald Galain, as obviously neither Rake, nor MD use Rashan or somesuch. But it could also involve Rashan, I mean Rashan wielders, if able enough and ascended, would qualify for this House. So the organization into Houses seems to impose more order on the order. Did K'rul do that, too? We don't know. Because of speeches concerning more "organized" warrens and the general messup of the terms warren, elder warren, house, hold in SE's narrative, it's virtually impossible to tell.

In conclusion, what would happen when the Encyclopedia comes out? Well, obviously we MIGHT have some explanation on all of these, and it is likely to contradict a lot of what we know and we will have to live with it. This wouldnt make the people who went along with what eventually is written in the Encyclopedia, somehow more right or more perceptive than the rest. They would just have been lucky, by picking maybe the most likely but still very contradictory outcome.

Anyway it's just a not very consistent book, and it's just theories so lets chill

[Vesper]

I would like to posit that it is entirely possible that "the blood of Tiam", metaphorically speaking, would flow through the veins of her children. Should any of them have bled, it could circumvent the strange timeline issues.

(Yes, I know, I said a bad word. Must... not... obsess... over... timeline...)

[D'rek]

Malaclypse, on 01 April 2010 - 02:31 AM, said:

Let nothing I say here reflect on Hetan, who has been an absolute paragon of virtue in this farcical conversation but...

I do wonder what you lot will have to say when the Encyclopedia is published. Playing Devil's Advocate is not an intellectual position. Make something work in your own mind and try to deal with the things that don't support your position. Simply playing Devil's Advocate is not useful; never has been, never will be. Watch this space.

Using evidence that is not directly supporting of theory A to disprove the legitimacy of theory B is not playing devil's advocate because {1} theory A and theory B are mutually exclsuive; and {2} we're working under the assumption that either theory A or theory B is correct.

[lobo the wolfman]

Point One: I also don't think that the dragons where born to a certain aspect, other wise how could K'rul have "forced them to share power'. (Cotillion's words, so he could be wrong but I don't think he is)

Point Two: K'rul didn't just shape the human warrens but the elder as well, remember that the 'twin chambers of his heart' are Kurald Galain and Starvald Demelain. It wouldn't make any sense if he contained two elder warrens but left out the rest. The human aspects of the warrens could have come about by K'rul's blood degrading or weakening over the thousands of year since the bargain.

My theory is that K'rul gathered the migrating powers (e.g. Darkness, Light and so on) in a growing living system, in order to make therm stronger against Chaos and thus they became the Holds, and to do this this he needed the dragons and his own blood to 'Anchor' them in place. Them as years came and went K'rul's blood weakened or changed in order to accommodate the new fast growing race (humans) as part of the cycle the Draconus explains to Paran in MOI (MD turning from Chaos to crate Light and so on). The reason that Draginpur was such a danger was that unlike the system that K'rul had crated, Draconus's sword could not change and grow to fight Chaos, it's Gate was fixed where the warrens in K'rul where not.

Plus when K'rul made the bargain with the first born dragons, humans were not really around so why would he go all out to made magic usable just for a race that hadn't come yet?


@ Worrywort: Rake's fight against the feral dragons was because they stared killing everything they could, since the First Born Dragons bargain with K'rul denied them something, what l don't really know, ( this is all from the book titbits from TTH), also the only time we the readers really see or hear about Rake taking part in the battles against the ferals was when him and Killandros went into Shadow to stop them them from tearing apart the wounded realm after Bloodeye stared the sundering. The chaining of Eloth and the other two that Cotillion talked too happened then as well.

And Rake only killed and drank Taims blood to gain the power needed to stop the Tiste Andii civil wars, which l think is before K'rul's shaping of the warrens, not to war against the feral dragons.

[worry]

That's pretty interesting. I'm bad with the timelines, even the stuff that makes sense (have done no re-reads yet). I guess I just have it in my mind that the major events of the past are clumped together in an unknown number of previous convergences...and will culminate for the most part in the Crippled God...and I still think that's true, but I was underestimating their number and so was clumping too many events together.

[Hood's Legacy]

worrywort, on 01 April 2010 - 10:02 PM, said:

That's pretty interesting. I'm bad with the timelines, even the stuff that makes sense (have done no re-reads yet). I guess I just have it in my mind that the major events of the past are clumped together in an unknown number of previous convergences...and will culminate for the most part in the Crippled God...and I still think that's true, but I was underestimating their number and so was clumping too many events together.

Ladies and gents, just conjecturing here.. We hear that the first sons (dragnipurake,osserc,..) have actually tasted Tiam's blood and are also soletaken dragons.
What if by 'tasted Tiam's blood' they actually mean that they have fought chaos and survived/ bloodied chaos' nose and not literally drank her blood?
The soletaken are usually driven to power at the brink of madness. What if the first sons basically consider it to be a matter of pride that they have fought chaos as soletaken dragons (by aiding K'rul in shaping the warrens, holding back chaos) ,to survive the process and not driven by it's madness? Could it be possible that the diver's and soletaken disease actually emnated from chaos as opposed to the other warrens emnating from light,dark and other elemental aspects and in fighting it, the dragons or the other aspects had to take a bodily form, become dragons and then acquire the disease to combat it? We have been told by 'the fat lady' that chaos is actually sort of a warren that exists between all the warrens. It is possible that 'shaping of the warrens' could actually mean that order was created out of chaos, but chaos could not be completely removed and exists in between the worlds/warrens.I mean, how do you actually embody chaos as a physical entity? It's more of a state where everything's unwieldy and in a flux. Chaos leaves everything devastated in it's wake.. What if Krul's actually the embodiment of the universal balance (and not the one true 'creator', don't mean to offend anyone here) and he is asking all the forces to work together to stop chaos? About the crippled god, he might want to come in possession of balance, as he wants to upset it (K'rul). He is one full of malice, and wants his followers to end up like him broken, bitter and incomplete thereby adding to chaos.

[Hood's Legacy]

Hood, on 07 April 2010 - 09:17 AM, said:

worrywort, on 01 April 2010 - 10:02 PM, said:

That's pretty interesting. I'm bad with the timelines, even the stuff that makes sense (have done no re-reads yet). I guess I just have it in my mind that the major events of the past are clumped together in an unknown number of previous convergences...and will culminate for the most part in the Crippled God...and I still think that's true, but I was underestimating their number and so was clumping too many events together.

Ladies and gents, just conjecturing here.. We hear that the first sons (dragnipurake,osserc,..) have actually tasted Tiam's blood and are also soletaken dragons.
What if by 'tasted Tiam's blood' they actually mean that they have fought chaos and survived/ bloodied chaos' nose and not literally drank her blood?
The soletaken are usually driven to power at the brink of madness. What if the first sons basically consider it to be a matter of pride that they have fought chaos as soletaken dragons (by aiding K'rul in shaping the warrens, holding back chaos) ,to survive the process and not driven by it's madness? Could it be possible that the diver's and soletaken disease actually emnated from chaos as opposed to the other warrens emnating from light,dark and other elemental aspects and in fighting it, the dragons or the other aspects had to take a bodily form, become dragons and then acquire the disease to combat it? We have been told by 'the fat lady' that chaos is actually sort of a warren that exists between all the warrens. It is possible that 'shaping of the warrens' could actually mean that order was created out of chaos, but chaos could not be completely removed and exists in between the worlds/warrens.I mean, how do you actually embody chaos as a physical entity? It's more of a state where everything's unwieldy and in a flux. Chaos leaves everything devastated in it's wake.. What if Krul's actually the embodiment of the universal balance (and not the one true 'creator', don't mean to offend anyone here) and he is asking all the forces to work together to stop chaos? About the crippled god, he might want to come in possession of balance, as he wants to upset it (K'rul). He is one full of malice, and wants his followers to end up like him broken, bitter and incomplete thereby adding to chaos.

Ok, I just finished reading book 3 and realised that all that I conjectured was in vain.Most of my questions were answered in book 3.. (albeit some things still don't make sense). A gentle request to all the folks on this forum, a guiding hand, a gentle prod (or even a directional finger) would help with these vexing questions. This would prove benficial to all the folks/noobs/starters who join this community. Thanks.