[HiddenOne]

Are you sure this wasn't Anomander Rake's warren being unveiled? It's always described in a similar way.

[NikitaDarkstar]

I doubt it, since Rake uses Kurald Galain and the first time that warren is described as unveiled is at Coral.. and it stuck around. Now it's been a while since I read those specific books, but I doubt it was Rake's doing.

I too thought it was Sorry and Cotillion, but the new twist is interesting, since Quick is pretty much 12 mages rolled up into one, that should be noticable. (Especially as he was just considered a squad mage then.)

But lets also remember this is GotM we're talking about.. and well GotM is gotm, lets take it with a grain of salt.. or two.

This post has been edited by NikitaDarkstar: 27 August 2010 - 12:49 AM

[HoosierDaddy]

In context it is Sorry/Cotillion. It's fairly obvious. I don't want to quote the entire thing, but let it be. The God of Assassins very much so has the breath of death around him, and for a very good reason: He is the god of assassination.

[Veilside]

Tattersail, on 06 August 2010 - 11:32 AM, said:

amazing quick ben speculation, as far as we know the deck of dragons has not been wrong, when Fiddler does his thing we all know who certain characters are, QB being Magus of Dark, which is such a great thing to be, such a powerful thing to be and this not being fulfilled beggars belief. Of Course he is alive!! Not all BH's die either, I think a lot of them survived!! Go Quick Ben!!

On a seperate but almost related note, we could come full circle and have ST and Cot as Emperor' and chief assassin of the empire of Gods, with whiskeyjack head of his army and quick ben as head of his mage cadre!!!

QB isn't the Magus of Dark. He's just acting in a capacity which fulfills that role. It's a clear distinction which has to be made.

[D'rek]

Veilside, on 28 August 2010 - 09:43 AM, said:

Tattersail, on 06 August 2010 - 11:32 AM, said:

amazing quick ben speculation, as far as we know the deck of dragons has not been wrong, when Fiddler does his thing we all know who certain characters are, QB being Magus of Dark, which is such a great thing to be, such a powerful thing to be and this not being fulfilled beggars belief. Of Course he is alive!! Not all BH's die either, I think a lot of them survived!! Go Quick Ben!!

On a seperate but almost related note, we could come full circle and have ST and Cot as Emperor' and chief assassin of the empire of Gods, with whiskeyjack head of his army and quick ben as head of his mage cadre!!!

QB isn't the Magus of Dark. He's just acting in a capacity which fulfills that role. It's a clear distinction which has to be made.

Not even that. He is just predicted to perform actions or have motivations that the Deck has decided are most similar to those reflected by the Magus of Dark card.

[Theotendo]

This has been my concern with the Deck since the beginning. We know some of the cards have fixed aspects bound to specific individuals, but we are never really given clear descriptions of what each card signifies. As with tarot, each card must have a meaning beyond the character described on the card itself. An example would be with Throne (I could be wrong, memory is dodgy), that signifies judgement - either clear or skewed, depending on its relation to other cards and placement on the current field. His being dealt that card could mean any number of things from him actually BECOMING the Magus of Dark to making babies with Mother Dark herself.

[bobbo]

I personally doubt QB is dead. Its hard to believe that he doesn't have some massive masterplan to "defeat" the Crippled God seeing as he knew what he was up against since MOI.

[Glory Goat]

I was just re-reading TBH the other day, and here we are, Quick Ben pre-stretching against three dragons, before standing off against the Edur Fleet - and Telorast and Curdle are crapping their deranged pants over facing him. I have to dash so I'll quote fu later, but two souls (not yet known as Dragons!!!!) that frighten Hounds of Shadow, basically urge her to try to kill him, or avoid him as he will annihilate them

Now, I know they're crazy, but if that doesn't set up his creds when you find out what they are later on, what does?

[Tattersail_]

they could be being foolish, or they may not have gained their powers properly after being recently released?

[Glory Goat]

Yes, but not long after that they are challenging Hounds with Apsalar, so its a push. Anyway its not a large point, I was just saying its some earlier nudges about the badassery of the man challenging Torvald Nom for king badass

Edited to include quote (UK paperback, p.515)

"Terrible news, Not-Apsalar!" Telorast cried. "Three terrible men await us, should we continue this course. If you seek to destroy them, well then, that is fine. We wish you well. Otherwise, I suggest we escape. Now."

-skip forward 6 lines, Curdle agrees with Telorast, Apsalar points out they've been seen, walk on, etc-

"They will annihilate us!" Telorast hissed. "I can tell - oh, that mage, he's not nice, not at all"
The two small creatures raced for cover.

At which point Apsalar then muses on how its possible they could annihilate her, as Kalam is there and past animosity. Which is all feasible, and fits. I just also like that at that point, we don't know they are dragons, later on we see them make the Hounds flinch (Still not knowing they're dragons), and they're running from QB! And then later, later, later -they're dragons! And QB wipes the floor with Soletaken dragons.

This post has been edited by Glory Goat: 13 September 2010 - 08:44 PM

[saint trull]

I still can't see Quick as dead. That magus of dark card is going to play some significance. I kinda agree that either Tay saved him or he saved himself somehow. i mean Quick is like more powerful than some gods so i don't see him as dead.

[Steve Halter]

I thought readers here might be interested in part of one of Steven Erikson's answers from the Tor reread:
...

Quote

Quick Ben is always scheming. Even his schemes consist of schemes. As he'll tell you given the chance, he's a genius who knows more than he ever thought he knew. [ ref a different question, from Karsa_Orlong ... Soletaken of D'ivers? Shapeshifting? When has QB not shapeshifted? Go back to the meaning of those two invented words: Soletaken, to change from one shape to another; D'ivers, to change from one to many. Making sense yet? QB shape-changes with every time you meet him, and at least one of him utters corny lines -- thankfully the others killed that one off soon thereafter).

...
This doesn't particularly say where QB is, but I think it has some relevance to what he is.

[Tattersail_]

Steve Halter, on 14 October 2010 - 06:50 PM, said:

I thought readers here might be interested in part of one of Steven Erikson's answers from the Tor reread:
...

Quote

Quick Ben is always scheming. Even his schemes consist of schemes. As he'll tell you given the chance, he's a genius who knows more than he ever thought he knew. [ ref a different question, from Karsa_Orlong ... Soletaken of D'ivers? Shapeshifting? When has QB not shapeshifted? Go back to the meaning of those two invented words: Soletaken, to change from one shape to another; D'ivers, to change from one to many. Making sense yet? QB shape-changes with every time you meet him, and at least one of him utters corny lines -- thankfully the others killed that one off soon thereafter).

...
This doesn't particularly say where QB is, but I think it has some relevance to what he is.

he is a soul taker. A gatherer of souls?

[Excellence]

Has Erikson given the game with that response?

Quick Dude takes souls. Sole-taking. Soletaken.

That's an extremely ingenius look at it.

[poeg]

Why does everyone think QB expands his abilities as things go on? Its a certainty that he's not gaining bugger all but letting more come to the surface. We've been told from day one he's an inverted d'ivers wherein someone major has been squatting. So out of all the chatter found in the series thus far, who is spoken of often and never represented in the current timeline? Who just buggered off one day never to be seen again? Therein you find the secret to QB.

[Mcflury]

poeg, on 17 October 2010 - 05:59 PM, said:

Why does everyone think QB expands his abilities as things go on? Its a certainty that he's not gaining bugger all but letting more come to the surface. We've been told from day one he's an inverted d'ivers wherein someone major has been squatting. So out of all the chatter found in the series thus far, who is spoken of often and never represented in the current timeline? Who just buggered off one day never to be seen again? Therein you find the secret to QB.

Are you claiming Father Light is one of the personalitys inside QB? I find that hard to believe actually, but can't give any argument as to why that wouldn't be true except for "f*ck sake, if that were true, probably nothing could ever stop QB"

EDIT: I just found a meagre reason why father light couldn't be one of the souls inside QB. The excuse is that FL went missing long before all souls got gathered in QB. Of course, one could counter this argument by saying "well, FL might just have gone awol a long time already, but eventually ended up in QB", which would be possible as well. My response would be then that surely, if the malazans were chasing FL in the desert, he would've had a ton more options to escape besides jumping inside QB's body. So as I said, very thin argument.

This "jumping inside QB's body" made me think about the term soletaken though... QB is a soletaken (according to SE in the Tor site comment thingy)... Taker of Souls... so what if the souls inside QB didn't gather there because they wanted to, but Aedephon Delat (or however you spell it) somehow FORCED their souls inside himself. Sure, this would hint that Aedephon Delot was a lot stronger than we're lead to expect uptill now, since if this is the case he was capable of forcing and locking up quite some powerful people inside himself, but it seems like an interesting idea to me. Of course, as usually is the case, I'm probably way off what is true

This post has been edited by Mcflury: 17 October 2010 - 07:05 PM

[SiriusL]

Mcflury, on 17 October 2010 - 06:25 PM, said:

This "jumping inside QB's body" made me think about the term soletaken though... QB is a soletaken (according to SE in the Tor site comment thingy)... Taker of Souls... so what if the souls inside QB didn't gather there because they wanted to, but Aedephon Delat (or however you spell it) somehow FORCED their souls inside himself. Sure, this would hint that Aedephon Delot was a lot stronger than we're lead to expect uptill now, since if this is the case he was capable of forcing and locking up quite some powerful people inside himself, but it seems like an interesting idea to me. Of course, as usually is the case, I'm probably way off what is true

The spelling problem notwithstanding (unless he's stealing fish...or shoes), why wouldn't QB's collection of souls be explained by a reverse d'ivers ritual? We saw in RotCG and with Dejim Nebrahl that d'ivers can have independent entities (Ryllandaras or that weird guy in RotCG) or have one governing soul (Dejim). It's possible in my mind that QB's "soul-shifting" is really just a type of soletaken/d'ivers ritual, where rather than split a soul in five pieces, he brought 11 other souls into his body.

I'm not convinced some superhero is hiding in there, just because that would be pretty cheap at this point, and there's no real indication of it in the conversations between WJ and Rake. I will say that I wonder if QB has collected any more souls since Raraku...

[champ]

SiriusL, on 20 October 2010 - 09:37 PM, said:

I will say that I wonder if QB has collected any more souls since Raraku...

ST does call him

Quote

"That horrid little thousand-faced wizard..."

who knows!

[Mcflury]

champooon, on 20 October 2010 - 09:41 PM, said:

SiriusL, on 20 October 2010 - 09:37 PM, said:

I will say that I wonder if QB has collected any more souls since Raraku...

ST does call him

Quote

"That horrid little thousand-faced wizard..."

who knows!

Then again, someone who betrays his friends is also often referred to as "two-faced". ST might just want to imply that QB would betray anyone, making him "thousand faced" (if everyone meant 1000 people of course)

I guess we'll just have to read and hope some day we get the answer to the riddle that QB is

[Steve Halter]

SiriusL, on 20 October 2010 - 09:37 PM, said:

Mcflury, on 17 October 2010 - 06:25 PM, said:

This "jumping inside QB's body" made me think about the term soletaken though... QB is a soletaken (according to SE in the Tor site comment thingy)... Taker of Souls... so what if the souls inside QB didn't gather there because they wanted to, but Aedephon Delat (or however you spell it) somehow FORCED their souls inside himself. Sure, this would hint that Aedephon Delot was a lot stronger than we're lead to expect uptill now, since if this is the case he was capable of forcing and locking up quite some powerful people inside himself, but it seems like an interesting idea to me. Of course, as usually is the case, I'm probably way off what is true

The spelling problem notwithstanding (unless he's stealing fish...or shoes), why wouldn't QB's collection of souls be explained by a reverse d'ivers ritual? We saw in RotCG and with Dejim Nebrahl that d'ivers can have independent entities (Ryllandaras or that weird guy in RotCG) or have one governing soul (Dejim). It's possible in my mind that QB's "soul-shifting" is really just a type of soletaken/d'ivers ritual, where rather than split a soul in five pieces, he brought 11 other souls into his body.

I'm not convinced some superhero is hiding in there, just because that would be pretty cheap at this point, and there's no real indication of it in the conversations between WJ and Rake. I will say that I wonder if QB has collected any more souls since Raraku...

I think that thinking of QB's soul taking as a type of d'ivers ritual is a part of what SE was getting at in his answer. So, in a way you can think of QB as the Sole form of a diverse (d'ivers) set of individuals. QB is a bit more complicated than the "ordinary" d'ivers.