[QuickBen1291]

Can someone please explain what happened to Icarium in Dust in Dreams?

Re-reading now and am still confused on his plot line.

[Sinisdar Toste]

well, which part is confusing to you? the fact that he has the personalities of several letherii inside his body, or his new warrens that are linked to those and his personality? or is it the whole end bit where he uses his new warren/aspect w.e you want to call it, root, to take the errants eye and make an azath tree over the gate in the wastelands. or maybe its where he went after that? either way, yes, it is pretty confusing.

[QuickBen1291]

Maybe we should start when he first arrives in Letherii!

[Siergiej]

He arrives in Letheri. Ground shakes.

He opens new warrens. People die.

He becomes a moonspawn-like fortress.Nah'ruk die.

[Aptorian]

Icarium was a broken man. Broken in mind and soul. If we're going with the BH interpretation he was most likely tainted by a chaos virus or something that infected him when he broke the old 7C Azath and shattered a shadow fragment.

When he came to Lether he re-discovered an old machine that he built long ago. We're talking way. way back in time, probably in the days when he was living among and learning from the KCCM and TTTs.

What exactly the machine was supposed to do is uncertain. From some of the hints we get in RG it sounded like the machine was assimilating information, more important, when activated it began sucking up things and people. absorbing their minds. But we don't really know if it was working properly, it didn't seem like it. It was old and seemed to be lying in pieces and may have malfunctioned. Originally we were assuming that the machine was supposed to heal Icarium and make his mind whole again.

But there seemed to be another process in the working. From the thoughts of Mael, about a young Icarium with out a father figure coming to K'ruls tempel, it seemed that Icarium was trying to recreate a ritual K'rul used in connection with the fashioning of the Houses. Warrens/power rooted in the earth using blood. Just like the aspects of the dragons became the houses that are rooted in Burns flesh via the blood that runs through Kruls veins.

What ever was supposed to happen it fractured Icariums mind. Or did it? I think we need to take a look at every Icarium passage in DOD to get the full meaning.

My interpretation is that the people of Lether that the machine mind sucked, became aspects of a new magical system inside Icarums own head/body. I may be misremembering that. I can't quite recall why the Grall was killing them.

Anyway, when Icarium, using the eye of the Errant got sucked into the new Skykeep Azath, he basically injected the fledgeling mini-magic system into the Azath system, making it stable and sustainable. Like the House of Chains was created and set free by the Cripple God, so seems this new Magic system to be set free to live or die. It may fail or it may become a rival to K'ruls system.

There is something that suggests that K'rul and his magic system of Houses may not survive the pantheon war. And so Icariums warrens will take over.

[nacht]

Hey. Recruits are not supposed to ask such tough questions. Dont' you know that there is a gentlman's agreement to stay away from the questions that reallly really confuse us.

I think this will need major quote fu from MT, Reapers gale and DoD and even then the answer will be incomplete till tCG arrives, so why not wait for one more month.

I can give MT quote fu soon. I am in the middle of Reaper's Gale (taking notes this time).

BTW, I think Ramjet has got most of the MT stuff. The machine is under Letheras. This is the one that Rautos is studying. The machine parts have no obsvious means of connecting to each other and Mael mentions that the parts are connected by Engery (likely something Icarium provides). He also mentions that Icarium approached Krul/'s templed, asked for help and tried to do the same thing that Krul did which is to open up him veins/arteries and create some kinds of paths/warrens.

[Tattersail_]

The Crippled God will add more for you to understand I think. It is very complex but I am holding out, until next month like Nacht

[Abyss]

SIMPLIFIED VERSION:

Icarium is immensely powerful. He's also very smart. He may have learned about mechanisms from the KC.

Way back when, he tried to break open an Azath. It went bad and he got chaos insanity in his thinkymeatz. As a result, his rage can turn entire civilizations into cole slaw, and his memories of virtually everything mostly fade.

The Nameless Ones tried to set him up to wipe out the Letherii Edur/Leth Empire.
The Eres interferred and cured his rage, but not his memories.

He arrived on Leth and found one of his old machines. It was broken, but he didn't know that.

Icarium tried to use the machine to re-shape his memories the way Krul shaped the warrens bringing order to chaos.

This didn't work out so well. Icarium absorbed the minds of random passerbye and loose souls, his own mind was knocked loose from his body, and off he went to wandering.

A side effect of the machnie misfire caused new warrens to come into existance. The warrens are loosely based on Iccy's power and personality. Very loosely.

His wandering multi-minded body found the KC city and started to re-activate it. His mind started to heal and he re-absorbed the personalities.

He took over the city, powered it up himself, and flew it to relieve the KC who were under attack from the KN, mostly because the Gate the KN had opened was a real threat to the world.

He didn't have enough power to fight the Skykeeps, until Feather Witch's leftover mind gave him her link to the Errant. Cue HUGE powerboost, and Icarium triggers an Azath that pops up, wraps around the city and seals the gate.

And there is much rejoicing.

[Siergiej]

Wasn't it stated somewhere in RG, that the machine was broken and didn't work properly?

[Tattersail_]

Abyss, on 31 January 2011 - 05:22 PM, said:

SIMPLIFIED VERSION:

Icarium is immensely powerful. He's also very smart. He may have learned about mechanisms from the KC.

Way back when, he tried to break open an Azath. It went bad and he got chaos insanity in his thinkymeatz. As a result, his rage can turn entire civilizations into cole slaw, and his memories of virtually everything mostly fade.

The Nameless Ones tried to set him up to wipe out the Letherii Edur/Leth Empire.
The Eres interferred and cured his rage, but not his memories.

He arrived on Leth and found one of his old machines. It was broken, but he didn't know that.

Icarium tried to use the machine to re-shape his memories the way Krul shaped the warrens bringing order to chaos.

This didn't work out so well. Icarium absorbed the minds of random passerbye and loose souls, his own mind was knocked loose from his body, and off he went to wandering.

A side effect of the machnie misfire caused new warrens to come into existance. The warrens are loosely based on Iccy's power and personality. Very loosely.

His wandering multi-minded body found the KC city and started to re-activate it. His mind started to heal and he re-absorbed the personalities.

He took over the city, powered it up himself, and flew it to relieve the KC who were under attack from the KN, mostly because the Gate the KN had opened was a real threat to the world.

He didn't have enough power to fight the Skykeeps, until Feather Witch's leftover mind gave him her link to the Errant. Cue HUGE powerboost, and Icarium triggers an Azath that pops up, wraps around the city and seals the gate.

And there is much rejoicing.

Can I swear? Can I swear? This is Fucking awesome, you have put into words what I couldn't even come close to. Excellent!

[nacht]

[

Abyss, on 31 January 2011 - 05:22 PM, said:

SIMPLIFIED VERSION:

Yeah!. Yeah! Way to go. May you get 100 reps, Abyss. (this is a blessing btw). The link to the K'Chain is awesome. Didn't think of that. Looks like he apprenticed under some serious tech gurus.


But what happened after that. Will Mappo and Icarium have their reunion, maybe at a Letheras tavern and go over the goood old times. Who was his Toblakai mother?
Crppled God, we are waiting for deliverance.


BTW, didn't Icarius raze that azath in Jhag Odhan.

I forgot bue is he back to his physical form at the end of DoD(or is he doing spiritwalking)
He did go go schizoid for a while.

[Bauchelain the Evil]

At the end he understood that all the others existed only in his head and recovered. A while after that he mysteriously disappeared after creating an Azath with the Errrant's eye as a Finnest.

This post has been edited by Bauchelain the Evil: 31 January 2011 - 07:37 PM

[Abyss]

Bauchelain the Evil, on 31 January 2011 - 07:37 PM, said:

At the end he understood that all the others existed only in his head and recovered. A while after that he mysteriously disappeared after creating an Azath with the Errrant's eye as a Finnest.

They couldn't have 'just' existed only in his head, because FW/Breath gave him her link to the Errant, and a fake personality couldn't have done that.

It's possible FW/Breath was an exception, being a Ceda/High Mage who had died a bit before Iccy triggered the machine, but
i say the souls were 'real' and when he no longer needed them he expunged them, the possible exception being Veed, who seemed to be a construct Iccy created to eliminate the other minds.

[Bauchelain the Evil]

Abyss, on 31 January 2011 - 07:44 PM, said:

Bauchelain the Evil, on 31 January 2011 - 07:37 PM, said:

At the end he understood that all the others existed only in his head and recovered. A while after that he mysteriously disappeared after creating an Azath with the Errrant's eye as a Finnest.

They couldn't have 'just' existed only in his head, because FW/Breath gave him her link to the Errant, and a fake personality couldn't have done that.

It's possible FW/Breath was an exception, being a Ceda/High Mage who had died a bit before Iccy triggered the machine, but
i say the souls were 'real' and when he no longer needed them he expunged them, the possible exception being Veed, who seemed to be a construct Iccy created to eliminate the other minds.

Technically they did exist in his head. The machine absorbed their consciousness or souls or whatever and transmitted them in Icarium's body.

[Aptorian]

nacht, on 31 January 2011 - 07:34 PM, said:

But what happened after that. Will Mappo and Icarium have their reunion, maybe at a Letheras tavern and go over the goood old times. Who was his Toblakai mother?
Crippled God, we are waiting for deliverance.

Icarium was using up himself to power the skykeep and sealing the rent into chaos. It is not explicitely stated but it seems he may have been "used up". His soul could have gone the way of Anomander Rake torn to to pieces as a sacrifice.

How ever, Icarium is physically and spiritually linked with the New Magic System. It still exists. So maybe he still exists as well. But probably not in the shape he once was in.

It would be typical of Erikson to deny his characters closure or a fond farewell.

[Ceda Cicero]

Roger Ramjet, on 31 January 2011 - 08:00 PM, said:

nacht, on 31 January 2011 - 07:34 PM, said:

But what happened after that. Will Mappo and Icarium have their reunion, maybe at a Letheras tavern and go over the goood old times. Who was his Toblakai mother?
Crippled God, we are waiting for deliverance.

Icarium was using up himself to power the skykeep and sealing the rent into chaos. It is not explicitely stated but it seems he may have been "used up". His soul could have gone the way of Anomander Rake torn to to pieces as a sacrifice.

How ever, Icarium is physically and spiritually linked with the New Magic System. It still exists. So maybe he still exists as well. But probably not in the shape he once was in.

It would be typical of Erikson to deny his characters closure or a fond farewell.

It's not precisely clear what happened to Icarium after the KC convergence and Azath sprouting in DoD, but Sinn does tell Gesler et al that she no longer senses his presence in or around the Azath, and IIRC she delivered this line with a (characteristic) degree of slyness. It could very well mean that he was "used up," or it could mean that he just went elsewhere. Seems like there's plenty of room for the latter explanation since we don't have a real sense of his corporeal form post-RG (if he has one at all.)

For my two cents, I'm not entirely sure what kind of closure we'll get for Mappo and Iccy, but I think there's definitely more Iccy to come in tCG, probably in a big way that we'll all be smacking ourselves on the forehead over.

[ShadowRaven]

The way I understood that passage was that maybe Icarium just went through the gate before it sealed. Considering the Imperial Warren (and thus the Otataral Dragon) is on the other side of that gate I'm really hoping for an awesome Icarium vs. Korabas/Tiam/Elder Gods showdown in tCG

[epicfantasynerd]

If you have not read the tCG excerpt on Tor - please disregard this spoiler.

Spoiler

In the excerpt - it is clear that Icarium got free of Kalse Rooted before the Azath was done doing it's thing and that is why Sinn doesn't sense anything but the Errant's eyejuice powering the Azath. Calm - the Forkrul Assail that bitch slaps Karsa back in HoC - basically restrains and bleeds Icarium's unconcious body as a pre-emptive measure since an awakened Iccy would be too dangerous to her her motives.

[bonzihunter]

ShadowRaven, on 31 January 2011 - 08:50 PM, said:

The way I understood that passage was that maybe Icarium just went through the gate before it sealed. Considering the Imperial Warren (and thus the Otataral Dragon) is on the other side of that gate I'm really hoping for an awesome Icarium vs. Korabas/Tiam/Elder Gods showdown in tCG

That would be hella awesome! I hope so too. Icarium's definitely not dead. Erikson has no problem killing off characters but I think by this point we all know that if a major character dies he'll come back from the dead in some form or another. We'll see him in TCG for sure.

[worry]

I think either he escaped the Azath, or has become something of an Artificial Intelligence within the workings of the Azath. It is a KCCM Rooted after all. And something of what Sulkit observes gave me that idea, though I'm not particularly keen on it.