[Verjigorm]

Hi all,

I finally convinced one of my friends to pick up this amazing series. He's like 150 pages in and likes it already. Today we talked and he mentioned something that I couldn't place. After Paran is enlisted by Lorn she sends him into a village to investigate regarding the vanishing of Sorry and her father.
He described that everybody seemed to be killed by pigeons/crows and said that there was a sentence like: "Death came with pigeon/crow wings".
I was surprised and couldn't really remember that part.
So my question is, if the inhabitants were really killed by birds (I speculated that it were just other hound killings) and if the way they were killed had a relevance for later events. As I can't remember the scene, I hope it wasn't to significant, but I'm also a first time reader, who just finished MT and NoK and is about to start TB, so I might've missed something.

[Vengeance]

Those killings were done by Shadowthrone to give Cot/Sorry a head start. The hounds didn't kill them instead Shadowthrone used crows and pigeons. All it means is that it would take Paran and Lorn longer to determine who had survived the Hounds Massacre. It isn't really relevant for other events. Just kind of explains why it took Paran and Lorn so long to track Sorry down to the bridgeburners.

This post has been edited by Vengeance: 01 April 2010 - 04:21 PM

[Verjigorm]

Thanks.

[Vengeance]

Sure any time.

[Cobbles]

Wasn't it that village where Sorry enlisted? IIRC she explicitly asked the recruiter to join the Gennabackis campaign and Whiskeyjacks command which raised some eyebrows. I agree it was to cover tracks.

[Wampyry]

Cobbles, on 01 April 2010 - 06:53 PM, said:

Wasn't it that village where Sorry enlisted? IIRC she explicitly asked the recruiter to join the Gennabackis campaign and Whiskeyjacks command which raised some eyebrows. I agree it was to cover tracks.

Minor update. Sorry enlisted in Kan, capital of Itko Kan. The Sorcery occurred in Gerrom, a Market Town.

[Lousy]

I don't believe Sorry was placed with the Bridgeburners right away, was she? Some time elapsed after her enlistment, IIRC..

[Wampyry]

Lousy, on 02 April 2010 - 03:52 AM, said:

I don't believe Sorry was placed with the Bridgeburners right away, was she? Some time elapsed after her enlistment, IIRC..

Can't help you much here as timelines can be complex in MBoTF as you may
have read elsewhere. Here are some knowns, my opinion on Gerron and a few dunno's. You or other forum members may piece together what happened and when.

Fishergirl is possessed in 1161bs. Sometime in 1163 she is with the Bridgeburners in Pale, in fact she was in the tunnels when they collapsed.
Between 1161 and 1163, Whiskeyjack and his squad, including Sorry was in Nathilog. She calmly and mercilessly tortured some prisoners there. At one point she muses about her killings: Paran, The Claw Master who gave the 39 surviving Bridgeburner a b/s story about patriotism, duty, etc. Sorry garotted him. She killed some others, but only when necessary she thinks. She was minutes away from garotting Crokus when Cotillion left her body. Cotillion likes the Garotte.


Paran goes to Gerrom in hopes that the Constabulary Headquarters will be able to supply the names of the missing fisherman and his daughter. He finds dead bodies who look as if they were suffocated. There was a panic flight of the townspeople - not mass killings which would be Shadowthrone's solution to the problem.

I think Sorry killed the Constable and the men in the office by garroting them, thus the suffocating look. What was the sorcery - dunno.

When Paran is viewing the bodies he thinks, a conjuring of birds to keep mocking vigil. Dark humor's not to my liking anymore Erikson's italics. What this means another dunno

Hope I helped some

[DarkFox]

The crows were just some dark joke, the adjunct also said if they used any necromancy to find out what the dead know, all they would get were pigeons. I'm pretty sure it was magik that killed them, Garotte murders are really messy on the account that they tighten a thin wire around someones neck... i assume this didn't happen cause Erikson like to describe bloody deaths...

[Tatterdemalion]

Shadowthrone sent pigeons to fill teh constabulary and then emit shadow magiks, killing them all, to keep the trail cold.

This is just a quirky, early-books ditty from Erikson.

[beautiful apple]

Wow. Interesting posts everyone. I had not thought that deeply into that scene...

[Gatekeeper]

Why did they need to cover their tracks at all? Who was going to miss a fishergirl and her father anway?

[worry]

I miss them.

[Verjigorm]

Gatekeeper, on 28 May 2010 - 01:53 AM, said:

Why did they need to cover their tracks at all? Who was going to miss a fishergirl and her father anway?

I think it wasn't like they were missed (except for worry^^). Surviving the Itko Kan event makes them suspicious and connects them to the event. Ascendants or other powerful people interested in the Itko Kan events might like to hear what happened and how they survived from them. Therefore ST needed to cover the tracks of his and Cot's doing.

[Jonny]

I understood that particular village to be where Sorry was recruited, specifically asked for a 2nd army posting under Dujek, which suprises the recruiting officer, how a 13 year old girl from a "backwater town" knows thinks about a campaign underway a continent away.
So ST kills everyone in the recruiting office through some means of magical asphyxiation, and then puts pigeons there to stop the dead from talking to anyone if a necromancer should happen by, this isn't really explained but I gathered from Lorn and Paran's back and forth, that pigeons somehow prevent necromancers from doing what they do best

[hawkeyye]

Jonny, on 14 June 2010 - 01:12 AM, said:

I understood that particular village to be where Sorry was recruited, specifically asked for a 2nd army posting under Dujek, which suprises the recruiting officer, how a 13 year old girl from a "backwater town" knows thinks about a campaign underway a continent away.
So ST kills everyone in the recruiting office through some means of magical asphyxiation, and then puts pigeons there to stop the dead from talking to anyone if a necromancer should happen by, this isn't really explained but I gathered from Lorn and Paran's back and forth, that pigeons somehow prevent necromancers from doing what they do best

Im reading the book for the first time. I just read this part. This is exactly how I believed it to be, as far as it being the town where the recruitment took place. By the way, contrary to many myths about gotm..I'm loving the book, I don't feel confused, and I don't find it boring in the least!

[Sinisdar Toste]

hawkeyye, on 16 June 2010 - 12:05 AM, said:

By the way, contrary to many myths about gotm..I'm loving the book, I don't feel confused, and I don't find it boring in the least!

i like this guys style. this should be our slogan

[D'rek]

Jonny, on 14 June 2010 - 01:12 AM, said:

I understood that particular village to be where Sorry was recruited, specifically asked for a 2nd army posting under Dujek, which suprises the recruiting officer, how a 13 year old girl from a "backwater town" knows thinks about a campaign underway a continent away.
So ST kills everyone in the recruiting office through some means of magical asphyxiation, and then puts pigeons there to stop the dead from talking to anyone if a necromancer should happen by, this isn't really explained but I gathered from Lorn and Paran's back and forth, that pigeons somehow prevent necromancers from doing what they do best

As already pointed out, they are two different places. Sorry went to the recruiting office in Kan, while the pigeon'd office was in Gerrom. Recruiting offices don't need extensive background stories so no one there would know Sorry's even from the little massacred town, nor care. The office at Gerrom had a census of the local towns, though, and the Malazan investigation could've used the info there to figure out what bodies from the town are missing and get their description, or some such thing.
Gerrom office got pigeon-massacred. Nothing happened at the Kan recruiting office except for Aragan getting a headache

Spoiler

(as usual)

.

This post has been edited by D'rek: 07 July 2010 - 04:40 PM

[Abalieno]

I was discussing this in the Tor re-read and there's some controversy.

My interpretation is here: http://www.tor.com/b...-4-and-5#117968

Basically I noticed that Kalam says that the other slaughter at Gerrom wasn't done by ST, but by the Claws, and Kalam, having been a Claw, could be reliable about this.

Why does this make more sense?

Because we know that Laseen/Lorn DO pick the trail and identify Sorry, so ST plan wasn't all that successful. There were good motivations for Laseen wanting to wipe the place after getting all possible clues, and it was specifically so that no one else ended on the same trail (and the Bridgeburners discover it).

But in the end it all lies in the "pigeons". They are the only sign that could reveal ST or the Claw (Topper most likely) fingerprint. Sadly it doesn't tell me much. (well, maybe the pigeons used their "claws"?)

Anyone knows what kind of warren Topper can use?

This post has been edited by Abalieno: 24 July 2010 - 05:24 AM

[HiddenOne]

Abalieno, on 24 July 2010 - 05:22 AM, said:

Anyone knows what kind of warren Topper can use?

Kurald Galain, he's part Tiste Andii