[moonsilver]

After reading the last lines of dust of dreams where the undead Jaghut are talking ot Hood, Occured to me that hes coming alive in his undead body in the Hold of omtose phelack, where Hedge was walking as a ghost. When the Jaghut kept saying what war, and they kept laughing, i started to think what the war actually was.

As i recall the Jaghut waged war against Death, seeing that Hood a jaghut sits on the throne of death, makes me believe they won the war. So i wondered who sat on the throne before Hood? Only one other person who i know of who created and possibly commanded an army of the dead. Olar ethil created the ritual of telann, that is why i think she used to sit on the throne.

Then another thing came to mind, When remembering Onos toolans thoughts and the other tlan imass thoughts on the war against the jaghut, they all seemed to claim that they never understood why they were fighting the jaghut, they all said, why are we not fighting the humans? or the kemain chemelle.

What if Olar Ethil wants her throne back, thats why she created the ritual of telann to to wipe out the jaghut as vengence. Also indication that Hodd betrayed the army of the jaghut, maybe his betrayel was that he never killed Olar ethil, when he should have done. Thus resulting in the death of his own kind or at least majority of them.

what do u guys think?

[worry]

An interesting thought. And there are a few points that brings up:
Maybe she was the first Elder God (of Death) displaced by a terrestrial Ascendant.

Also, being a dragon, she has a connection to Chaos which may be where the dead went before the Jaghut War on Death and Hood's Realm was carved out.

I'm not sure how that meshes with the Jaghut having their own "afterlife" world even though they apparently don't believe in souls, but on the other hand, "souls" seem to be pretty sentient individuals after death (totally different from our notion of an afterlife), so maybe the Jaghut are right -- in other words, they believe in an afterlife, but not "souls" in the traditional sense, since these souls are sentient self-aware beings who just happen to be in another realm. And if that's what they are, that might make OE's and/or Chaos's afterlife a crime worth fighting against, even if the Jaghut weren't fighting strictly for their own benefit, which seems to be the leading sentiment. I'm still not quite sure if Chaos is "evil" or neutral or what, but it certainly seems to have a purpose.

That might also explain why OE seems to have such a possessive sentiment towards humans/Imass/etc.

I'm also not sure how that squares with the evidence, pretty overwhelming, that Jaghut Tyrants did exist, were a threat to Imass, and perhaps even the world at large.

It's interesting to say the least, right or wrong.

[WhiskeyJackDaniels]

 moonsilver, on 10 November 2010 - 10:16 PM, said:

After reading the last lines of dust of dreams where the undead Jaghut are talking ot Hood, Occured to me that hes coming alive in his undead body in the Hold of omtose phelack, where Hedge was walking as a ghost. When the Jaghut kept saying what war, and they kept laughing, i started to think what the war actually was.

As i recall the Jaghut waged war against Death, seeing that Hood a jaghut sits on the throne of death, makes me believe they won the war. So i wondered who sat on the throne before Hood? Only one other person who i know of who created and possibly commanded an army of the dead. Olar ethil created the ritual of telann, that is why i think she used to sit on the throne.

Then another thing came to mind, When remembering Onos toolans thoughts and the other tlan imass thoughts on the war against the jaghut, they all seemed to claim that they never understood why they were fighting the jaghut, they all said, why are we not fighting the humans? or the kemain chemelle.

What if Olar Ethil wants her throne back, thats why she created the ritual of telann to to wipe out the jaghut as vengence. Also indication that Hodd betrayed the army of the jaghut, maybe his betrayel was that he never killed Olar ethil, when he should have done. Thus resulting in the death of his own kind or at least majority of them.

what do u guys think?

First of all, the T'lan Imass know exactly why they fought the war against the Jaghut. It was because Jaghut Tyrants had risen up and enslaved mortal Imass for a very long time. Most of the time the Imass didn't even know they were being manipulated, they worshipped the Tyrants as gods. The reason they sometimes mention that they should have fought the humans as well is that they also had tyrant leaders. (Although I don't remember anything about the K'Chain Che Malle being mentioned now that I think of it)

About the Throne of Ice that we see...The dead body on it was Hood, he never really died, he seemed to have sat down on the throne and then released his life so that he could become the God of Death (presumably).

The undead Jaghut keep saying "What was that war again?" "Who was our leader?" and then laughing because of the irony of the situation. They were soldiers in the Jaghut war on death. Hood was their leader. We don't really know what happened, but it appears that Hood switched sides at the end, or accepted some kind of a half-measure in which he became the God of Death, and all the Jaghut that were fighting were killed.

This post has been edited by WhiskeyJackDaniels: 10 November 2010 - 11:38 PM

[moonsilver]

I don't believe thats true whiskeyjack daniels. I remember a Jaghut talking about how they teamed up with Tlan Imass to fight against other Jaghut tyrants, then after the jaghut tyrant was killed. The tlan imass killed the Jaghut that helped them. If it was solely about killing the Jaghut tyrants, why did they proceed to try to wipe out the entire Jaghut race? The Jaghut as a whole did not build empires, they did not have armies, they did not build cities. Only the Tyrants did, they were just as much as a tyrant to the other Jaghut as they were to the Imass.
The quote is somewhere in Dust of Dreams where one of the newly awakend tlan imass following Onos, talks about how the kechain chelle would hunt them down and use htem as food, as he is remembering them killing his family. In fact none of these new tlan imass had anything to do with jaghut war, let they all speak highly of the Jaghut. If the Jaghut were so cruel tyrants why would these Imass that existed before the war on the Jaghut talk about them as if they were harmless???

I may be completely wrong about olar ethil, but the Jaghut have always been protrayed throughout the series as being Noble and gentle and friendly, The tlan imass were also used to wipe out everything, Olar ethil even mentiond she had a part in destroying the first empire, is like she wants to kill everything once and for all.

I have a feelign the telann ritual was created for one purpose, to give olar ethil power, like when that guy in durahstan killed people to give Hood the power to come into the world of the living.
Maybe it was the same with olar ethil.
If someone could remeber the curse kallor gave to Burn, maybe it would help understand what olar ethil is.

[champ]

 moonsilver, on 11 November 2010 - 09:32 AM, said:

If it was solely about killing the Jaghut tyrants, why did they proceed to try to wipe out the entire Jaghut race?

because Tyrants weren't a special breed of Jaghut, they were Jaghuts who had a thirst for power...

what better way to eliminate that potential future problem by eliminating all Jaghut... abit extreme yes but you have to remember that they seriously pissed off the tlan by pretending to be their gods and enslaving millions of them...

This post has been edited by champooon: 11 November 2010 - 10:15 AM

[alt146]

 champooon, on 11 November 2010 - 10:14 AM, said:

 moonsilver, on 11 November 2010 - 09:32 AM, said:

If it was solely about killing the Jaghut tyrants, why did they proceed to try to wipe out the entire Jaghut race?

because Tyrants weren't a special breed of Jaghut, they were Jaghuts who had a thirst for power...

what better way to eliminate that potential future problem by eliminating all Jaghut... abit extreme yes but you have to remember that they seriously pissed off the tlan by pretending to be their gods and enslaving millions of them...

The irony of Imass's actions in light of how peaceful 99% of the jaghut are has been brought forth a couple of times throughout the series. The thing to remember here is that this isn't a case of the Good T'lan Imass destroying the Evil Jaghut, it's the story of a race who made retribution a cultural trait and gave up almost everything that defined them as a people in order to continue to genocide an entire race as punishment for the transgressions of a few. It was more than a little extreme.

[Ulrik]

Imass decided that Jaghut are too dangerous to be left alive, when anyone of them could become another Tyrant (some kind of with hunting, its natural). 

The whole part with luring "why Jaghut, why not humans and CheMalle" is simple. Jaghut werent their rivals in evolution. Humans was. (iirc the notion of KCCM went from Imass with eternal hatred to KCCM who killed his wife). Humans in this evolution rivalry defeated Imass (partly because of Telann ritual) and thats why their kind extinct. And thats why OE hates or rather loathes humans - they made her favourite race to fall.

And its all leitmotif of DoD - its Dust of Dreams of races (Imass, KCCM), clans (barghast, Awl)...forever predatoring, survival of the fittest. And extinct ones are just dust.

[WhiskeyJackDaniels]

 moonsilver, on 11 November 2010 - 09:32 AM, said:

I don't believe thats true whiskeyjack daniels. I remember a Jaghut talking about how they teamed up with Tlan Imass to fight against other Jaghut tyrants, then after the jaghut tyrant was killed. The tlan imass killed the Jaghut that helped them. If it was solely about killing the Jaghut tyrants, why did they proceed to try to wipe out the entire Jaghut race? The Jaghut as a whole did not build empires, they did not have armies, they did not build cities. Only the Tyrants did, they were just as much as a tyrant to the other Jaghut as they were to the Imass.
The quote is somewhere in Dust of Dreams where one of the newly awakend tlan imass following Onos, talks about how the kechain chelle would hunt them down and use htem as food, as he is remembering them killing his family. In fact none of these new tlan imass had anything to do with jaghut war, let they all speak highly of the Jaghut. If the Jaghut were so cruel tyrants why would these Imass that existed before the war on the Jaghut talk about them as if they were harmless???

I may be completely wrong about olar ethil, but the Jaghut have always been protrayed throughout the series as being Noble and gentle and friendly, The tlan imass were also used to wipe out everything, Olar ethil even mentiond she had a part in destroying the first empire, is like she wants to kill everything once and for all.

I have a feelign the telann ritual was created for one purpose, to give olar ethil power, like when that guy in durahstan killed people to give Hood the power to come into the world of the living.
Maybe it was the same with olar ethil.
If someone could remeber the curse kallor gave to Burn, maybe it would help understand what olar ethil is.

Yea, as has been said they didn't go kill a Jaghut because that specific one was a Tyrant. They killed all the Jaghut they could find because each of them carried the potential to become a tyrant, and they couldn't allow that to happen again. The reason that they underwent the T'lan ritual was because they were losing their war against the Jaghut. The remaining Jaghut had begun raising huge icebergs and turning entire lands into frozen tundra in order to stop the Imass from killing them. Since there was no food in such an environment, and mountains of ice are difficult to cross, the Imass underwent the Tellann ritual to become the undead T'lan Imass that we know today.

We see as far back as GotM that Jaghut Tyrants were rare, and that most Jaghut were content to be left alone in nature. Tool tells Lorn that they Tyrant they came to release had been imprisoned by both Jaghut and T'lan Imass. That was because the T'lan Imass couldn't do it themselves, and the Jaghut also hated the idea of Tyrants.

The T'lan Imass we see in DoD were descendants of a group that didn't participate in the ritual. The reason they weren't consumed by hate for the Jaghut is that at the time they lived, there were almost no Jaghut left, as their predecessors had come close to wiping them out. They had the ritual because they were in a war with humans and about to be killed themselves. The ritual failed when they tried it, but Olar Ethil somehow completed it and then awoke them all in DoD to give Tool an army.

Finally: I'm not sure what you are referring to when you mention the curse that Kallor gave Burn, and how it would give an understanding to Olar Ethil? Kallor never cursed Burn. He cursed K'rul, Draconus, and the Sister of Cold Nights. Other than the fact that they are all Elder Gods, I don't think there's any special connection between them and Kallor. Or Olar Ethil.

[moonsilver]

guess i got burn mixed up with the sister of cold nights then.
Then again something else confuses me now. If olar ethil might actually be Burn, which i had assumed she was not. Kinda makes me rethink whether that polio goddess was telling the truth in that she was helping burn, since if olar ethil is burn, shes pretty evil. Unless olar ethil is just Ex high prietess of Burn. Did mention somewhere that the Imass gods died.

Now i'm confused now, guess i remembered the 3 elder gods part meeting with kallor wrong, kinda messed up my theory now, that i is cold nights and not burn.
Nvermind.

[KingTeholBeddict]

Well, if i remember correctly from GotM, it seems to me that Jaghut Tyrants are born with a lust for power and dominion over others, so in my opinion, the Imass Jaghut wars were to prevent the Jaghut from having any children, thereby eradicating the threat of Jaghut Tyrants.

[lobo the wolfman]

 moonsilver, on 11 November 2010 - 04:37 PM, said:

guess i got burn mixed up with the sister of cold nights then.
Then again something else confuses me now. If olar ethil might actually be Burn, which i had assumed she was not. Kinda makes me rethink whether that polio goddess was telling the truth in that she was helping burn, since if olar ethil is burn, shes pretty evil. Unless olar ethil is just Ex high prietess of Burn. Did mention somewhere that the Imass gods died.

Now i'm confused now, guess i remembered the 3 elder gods part meeting with kallor wrong, kinda messed up my theory now, that i is cold nights and not burn.
Nvermind.

It could be possible that Olar Ethil is one awake and aware aspect ( or maybe even the more primal) of the 'Mother' that Denuth the Child of Earth speaks of in the ROTCG prologue, and that Burn the sleeping goddess is another, more evolved, aspect of the same being. The same could be said of the the 'Enchantress' that Ereko mentions, they all could be parts of the one goddess that contains the Malazan world.

Or more likely that Olar Ethil was just talking out of her undead ass.

It was mentioned in MOI mostly, and a few other books as l recall, that the Imass did outlive their gods though the ritual of T'lan. And that the original gods of the Imass where also the gods of the Beast Hold which Togg and Fanderay then took over. Which also explains how they out of all the other Elder Races could become Soletaken, besides Draconian soletaken of course which l believe is similar but different.

[worry]

Alls I know is Olar Ethil is gonna have a lot of explaining to do to Tiam, Kilava, and/or the Eres, if not also her fellow Elder Gods.

[WhiskeyJackDaniels]

 worrywort, on 13 November 2010 - 08:59 PM, said:

Alls I know is Olar Ethil is gonna have a lot of explaining to do to Tiam, Kilava, and/or the Eres, if not also her fellow Elder Gods.

You left out Tool...probably the most pissed at her.

[Bauchelain the Evil]

 WhiskeyJackDaniels, on 13 November 2010 - 09:00 PM, said:

 worrywort, on 13 November 2010 - 08:59 PM, said:

Alls I know is Olar Ethil is gonna have a lot of explaining to do to Tiam, Kilava, and/or the Eres, if not also her fellow Elder Gods.

You left out Tool...probably the most pissed at her.

Not so sure about that. The only thing Tool knows is that after his best friend denied him a place in the afterlife he became once more a T'lann Imass.

[worry]

Well I meant that in the context of her claims of motherhood. She's got a whole host of problems and potential enemies outside of that issue too.

[D'rek]

 lobo the wolfman, on 13 November 2010 - 10:14 AM, said:

 moonsilver, on 11 November 2010 - 04:37 PM, said:

guess i got burn mixed up with the sister of cold nights then.
Then again something else confuses me now. If olar ethil might actually be Burn, which i had assumed she was not. Kinda makes me rethink whether that polio goddess was telling the truth in that she was helping burn, since if olar ethil is burn, shes pretty evil. Unless olar ethil is just Ex high prietess of Burn. Did mention somewhere that the Imass gods died.

Now i'm confused now, guess i remembered the 3 elder gods part meeting with kallor wrong, kinda messed up my theory now, that i is cold nights and not burn.
Nvermind.

It could be possible that Olar Ethil is one awake and aware aspect ( or maybe even the more primal) of the 'Mother' that Denuth the Child of Earth speaks of in the ROTCG prologue, and that Burn the sleeping goddess is another, more evolved, aspect of the same being. The same could be said of the the 'Enchantress' that Ereko mentions, they all could be parts of the one goddess that contains the Malazan world.

Or more likely that Olar Ethil was just talking out of her undead ass.

It was mentioned in MOI mostly, and a few other books as l recall, that the Imass did outlive their gods though the ritual of T'lan. And that the original gods of the Imass where also the gods of the Beast Hold which Togg and Fanderay then took over. Which also explains how they out of all the other Elder Races could become Soletaken, besides Draconian soletaken of course which l believe is similar but different.

Ereko's Enchantress = Queen of Dreams, pretty sure it's given explicitly at some point (which is an interesting topic in and of itself, as though the Thel Akai are descended of 'The Mother', Ereko seems to serve the QoD instead)

[MTS]

 D, on 16 November 2010 - 03:03 PM, said:

 lobo the wolfman, on 13 November 2010 - 10:14 AM, said:

 moonsilver, on 11 November 2010 - 04:37 PM, said:

guess i got burn mixed up with the sister of cold nights then.
Then again something else confuses me now. If olar ethil might actually be Burn, which i had assumed she was not. Kinda makes me rethink whether that polio goddess was telling the truth in that she was helping burn, since if olar ethil is burn, shes pretty evil. Unless olar ethil is just Ex high prietess of Burn. Did mention somewhere that the Imass gods died.

Now i'm confused now, guess i remembered the 3 elder gods part meeting with kallor wrong, kinda messed up my theory now, that i is cold nights and not burn.
Nvermind.

It could be possible that Olar Ethil is one awake and aware aspect ( or maybe even the more primal) of the 'Mother' that Denuth the Child of Earth speaks of in the ROTCG prologue, and that Burn the sleeping goddess is another, more evolved, aspect of the same being. The same could be said of the the 'Enchantress' that Ereko mentions, they all could be parts of the one goddess that contains the Malazan world.

Or more likely that Olar Ethil was just talking out of her undead ass.

It was mentioned in MOI mostly, and a few other books as l recall, that the Imass did outlive their gods though the ritual of T'lan. And that the original gods of the Imass where also the gods of the Beast Hold which Togg and Fanderay then took over. Which also explains how they out of all the other Elder Races could become Soletaken, besides Draconian soletaken of course which l believe is similar but different.

Ereko's Enchantress = Queen of Dreams, pretty sure it's given explicitly at some point (which is an interesting topic in and of itself, as though the Thel Akai are descended of 'The Mother', Ereko seems to serve the QoD instead)

Yep.

Quote

Within the shelter of boulders he sat and waited for sunrise. The man lay insensate, almost dead from exposure. Yet he was undoubtedly much more than a man. Ereko’s sight, while nowhere as penetrating as that of his ancestors, told him that. And then there was the attention of his Enchantress, whom some now named the Queen of Dreams.

Personally I think there's at least a tiny bit of truth to Olar's ramble, but I'm not exactly sure how the metaphysics of it would work. In any case, I'm skeptical of conflating her with being this uber mother-goddess figure, and then lumping in people like T'riss (who was mortal) as being one of her 'avatars', as it were, as I think there's also a bit of exaggeration in her ramble. It's possible she is Burn though, but my head is hurting thinking about the metaphysics of it all.