Can we characterize SE's writing as Stream of Consciousness writing (Ah, that's unfair but sometimes it pisses me off)
Ok, I am going to quote this long sequence on the Warrens in Reaper's gale. Always felt that it is very significant in explaining the warrens but never really understood it. I give my half-baked interpretation. Hop
I think in this situation, Seren Pedac had experienced an AHA! movement. Something clicked in her brain that made her understand how the Warren's work.
Quote
Are any warrens alive? Most would say no. Impossible. They are forces. Aspects. Proclivities manifest as the the predictable - oh, the Great thinkers who are long since dust worried this in fevered need, as benefits the obsessed. But they did not understand.
So warrens are not simply forces or some other aspect of physical laws.
Quote
One warren lies like a web over all the others, and its voice is will necessary to shape magic. They (the great thinkers)* did not seek it. Not for what it was. They though ... chaos , a web where each strand was undifferentiated energy, not yet articulated, not yet given shape by an Elder God's (Krul..)* intent.
So the warrens don't exist within Chaos, might actually be unrelated to Chaos, they actually have a common pattern, which is that they all need to follow the syntax rules specified by Mockra.
The warrens are not physical, they arise from consciousness. Each warren has it's own rules that are specified using Mockra. A user of a warren might understand the structure (sort of like an chemist being able to understand his field by reading chemical equations)
Quote
But K'rul understood. Spilled blood is lost blood, powerless blood in the end. It dies when abandoned. Witness violent death for proof of that. For the warrens to thrive, coursing in their appointed rivers and streams, there must be a living body, a grander form that exists in itself. Not chaos, Not Dark, nor Light. Not heat, Not Cold. No, a conscious aversion to disorder. Negation to and of all else, when all else is dead. For the true face of Death is dissolution, and in dissolution there is chaos until the last mote of energy cease its wilful glow, its persisten abnegation. Do you understand?
.
Chaos, Dark (Kurald Galain), Ligh (Kurald Liosan), Heat (Tellan), Cold (Omtose Phellack) are too simple (maybe they are the "physics" warrens) for the new (Krul's) warrens. The warrens need a grander form (a much more complicated basis). The warrens truly are the anti-thesis of dissolution (which is total death, a complete lack of ordering of any kind). So the warrens are essentially Information (patterns)
Quote
There is another way, then, of seeing this. K'rul realized he could not do this alone. The sacrifice, the opening of his veins and arteries, would mean nothing, would indeed fail. Without living flesh, without organized functionality.
'Ah, the warrens, Seren Pedac, they are a dialogue. Do you see now!"
I guess K'ruls sacrifice would mean nothing unless they were real people organzing themselves, continuing dialogue among themselves. To create order, you need people.
Quote
Disregard the vicious crowd now, the torrent of sound overwhelming the warrens, the users, the guardians, the parasites and the hunters, the complicit gods elder and young. Shut them away, as Carols taught you. To remember rape is to fold details into sensation, and so relive each time its terrible truth. He told you this would become habit, an addiction, until even despair became a welcome taste on your tongue. Understand, then -- as only you can here -- that to take one's own life is the final expression of despair. You saw that. Buruk the Pale. You felt that, at the sea's edge (referring to Seren trying to kill herself), Seren Pedac, K'rul could not act alone in this sacrifice, lest he fill every warren with despair.
'Dialogue. Presupposition, yes , of the plural. One with another. Or succession of others, for this dialogue must be ongoing, indeed, eternal. Do I speak of the Master of the Holds! The Master of the Deck! Perhaps - the face of the other is ever turned away - to all but K'rul himself. This is how it must be. The dialogue, then, is the feeding of power. Power unimaginable, power virtually omnipotent, unassailable ... so long as that other's face remains ... turned away.
From you. From me. From all of us.
'The dialogue, however, can be sensed if not heard -- such is its power. The construction of language, the agreement in principle of meaning and intent, the rules of grammar -- Seren Pedac, what did you think Mockra was! if not a game of grammar? Twisting semantics, turning inference, inviting suggestion, reshaping a mind's internal language to deceive its own senses?
'Who am I['
'Why Seren Pedac, I am Mockra'
So here is the most confusing part. What is SE trying to say.
Maybe that there is a dialogue within our brain. A continuous evaluation of information from various external sources (BTW, this is apparently how Mockra works when confusing people). This dialogue is powerful. If we succumb to despair, it would end and when the whole humanity succumbs to it, there will be complete dissolution, an end of "order". Maybe better reframed as
Keep talking, you will make progress. Don't go nuclear in despair as this will only end everything.
Nacht .. Dazed and Confused and needing help.
Help
(I'm really having fun with these smileys. didn't even realize half of them were there)
