[The Hound]

I salute you Malazanians! Other than Star Wars and Tolkien, I am new to fantasy but am in these books of the Malazan world - living there at the moment. Can someone out there give me a brief explanation of the High Houses, the Deck of Dragons and the ascendants and how that works? The House’s and Deck: is there some link similar to that of Taro cards; I mean I don’t even know how Taro cards work.



As I understand it in the world of Malaz people, ascend in their powers and then become gods. Then other people worship the people who ascended. Then some gods can move between worlds and some cant; some men are part god and part man and still ascending. Then at some point they ascend and take their place in the official hierarchy and then a card is created of their position in the deck. (Paran for example in MOI – explain the card under the table). In addition, there are positions open in the houses. How do you get to take a position? Who decides on that? (In MOI Kallor is offered a position by the Jaghut messenger?). Does this all link back to some overriding idea in fantasy that appears in magic books etc.



Thanks

[The Hound]

Oh Tarot! That's how you spell it...

[Harvester]

Quote

Silverfox: 'The Deck of Dragons. A kind of structure, imposed on power itself.

Brief enough?

Aww, I am too tired to elaborate right now, sorry. The Encyclopedia Malazica is a good place to gather information by the way. Click

//edit

I don't know how far you're into the Malazan books right now, much of this information is RAFO. The Encyclopedia Malazica may contain heavy spoilers.

This post has been edited by Harvester: 22 June 2010 - 07:43 PM

[D'rek]

Well, this is the kind of thing you may be a lot better off just reading through and figuring out your own opinions on. It's not like anything in this regard is ever outright explained. And if any character says its one way you can be sure another character will contradict them later. So you might be better off with that. But, if you really wanna know...

















well the forum here has largely collectively agreed that a Deck reading doesn't confer any sort of powers or relationship upon/between the person who gets a certain card. The Deck is quite simply a divination tool about people's behaviour - so if Kalam gets The Rope as a card in a Deck reading, it doesn't mean he *is* The Rope or that The Rope is even nearby or involved, it just means that Kalam is going to act like an assassin sometime soon. The Deck typically uses cards based on the High House positions and some unaligned, but that's just how it is and there's no reason the Deck couldn't all be "The Farmer", "The Assassin", etc like a human tarot card - it would achieve the same thing, I guess using the High House positions is just cooler.
(minor spoiler)

Spoiler

Some Deck users create their own cards to symbolise particular people/places/things in their readings

Righto, now on to High Houses. This bit is going to have some info from later books so I'll spoiler it. It's not any big revealing stuff, but it is things that you wouldn't learn yourself until later otherwise (so maybe just skip it and go RAFO!)

Spoiler

High Houses are really just an organization of some gods' aspects. Generally the High House has a leader(s) (the King or Queen usually) and they usually dictate who has what position. There's no evidence to suggest that having the position gives you anything, but of course if you're powerless the King/Queen will probably grant you some of their own power else you'd be pretty useless to them and then why would they want you in that position? There's lots and lots of gods that aren't in any High House, and plenty of positions in High Houses can and will be occupied by non-gods. Then we get into the debate of whether multiple people can exist in the same position, like a god and a mortal both being Champion of High House ____ for a time, or some such. And of course, all the figures in a High House are usually of similar aspect and, if not working together, at least allied together. But it's not an exclusion and there can still be other gods/figures of that aspect that aren't part of the High House...

and then there's Mortal Sword and Shield Anvils... complicated no?

[The Hound]

D, on 22 June 2010 - 08:43 PM, said:

Well, this is the kind of thing you may be a lot better off just reading through and figuring out your own opinions on. It's not like anything in this regard is ever outright explained. And if any character says its one way you can be sure another character will contradict them later. So you might be better off with that. But, if you really wanna know...

















well the forum here has largely collectively agreed that a Deck reading doesn't confer any sort of powers or relationship upon/between the person who gets a certain card. The Deck is quite simply a divination tool about people's behaviour - so if Kalam gets The Rope as a card in a Deck reading, it doesn't mean he *is* The Rope or that The Rope is even nearby or involved, it just means that Kalam is going to act like an assassin sometime soon. The Deck typically uses cards based on the High House positions and some unaligned, but that's just how it is and there's no reason the Deck couldn't all be "The Farmer", "The Assassin", etc like a human tarot card - it would achieve the same thing, I guess using the High House positions is just cooler.
(minor spoiler)

Spoiler

Some Deck users create their own cards to symbolise particular people/places/things in their readings

Righto, now on to High Houses. This bit is going to have some info from later books so I'll spoiler it. It's not any big revealing stuff, but it is things that you wouldn't learn yourself until later otherwise (so maybe just skip it and go RAFO!)

Spoiler

High Houses are really just an organization of some gods' aspects. Generally the High House has a leader(s) (the King or Queen usually) and they usually dictate who has what position. There's no evidence to suggest that having the position gives you anything, but of course if you're powerless the King/Queen will probably grant you some of their own power else you'd be pretty useless to them and then why would they want you in that position? There's lots and lots of gods that aren't in any High House, and plenty of positions in High Houses can and will be occupied by non-gods. Then we get into the debate of whether multiple people can exist in the same position, like a god and a mortal both being Champion of High House ____ for a time, or some such. And of course, all the figures in a High House are usually of similar aspect and, if not working together, at least allied together. But it's not an exclusion and there can still be other gods/figures of that aspect that aren't part of the High House...

and then there's Mortal Sword and Shield Anvils... complicated no?

Hey thanks! This does help. But I see that it's left rather open ended - ther's a bit of a mystery to it. As it's been said: you get to form your own opinion of it. That is obviously what is seperating Erikson as a writer from all the rest. This ambiguity, not over explaining - which instead of pushing his readers away is drawing them in.

Thanks all.