[Gratillonius]

After finishing the book I have many questions, but the three I find the biggest are the following:

1. Did the Crippled God died? or Did they killed his body and used Heboric's jade hand to send him to his followers and back to his world?

2. What happened with the Eleint? They where supposed to destroy the world, unleashing the powers of chaos after Korabas was chained again.

3. At the end, in a conversation between Shadowthrone and Cotillion, it is said that all the gods that survived are mad at them. How many gods died? I thought only Olar Ethil and Kilmandaros died. That doesn't seem to be many. Besides I thought Drek, K'rul, Mael and some others agreed with the plan. Besides wasn't Olar Ethil Burn? If she is dead, shouldn't the world be dead too?

This post has been edited by Gratillonius: 10 June 2011 - 06:05 AM

[HoosierDaddy]

Gratillonius, on 10 June 2011 - 05:50 AM, said:

After finishing the book I have many questions, but the three I find the biggest are the following:

1. Did the Crippled God died? or Did they killed his body and used Heboric's jade hand to send him to his followers and back to his world?

2. What happened with the Eleint? They where supposed to destroy the world, unleashing the powers of chaos after Korabas was chained again.

3. At the end, in a conversation between Shadowthrone and Cotillion, it is said that all the gods that survived are mad at them. How many gods died? I thought only Olar Ethil and Kilmandaros died. That doesn't seem to be many. Besides I thought Drek, K'rul, Mael and some others agreed with the plan. Besides wasn't Olar Ethil Burn? If she is dead, shouldn't the world be dead too?

1. I think they released him from that form to travel to the Jade Giants. Whether that "destroyed" him or not, I don't know. But, it did get him off the planet.

2. T'iam formed and was fought by Silchas, Tulas, and the 3 Dragons from Shadow, but I believe once Korabas was re-chained, it forced the dragons back to Starveld Demelain, as forces in opposition.

3. Setchul Lath died. Fener died. Fandery or Togg died. Treach pretty much died. Olar Ethil was full of shit because she was crazy, and not Burn.

[Binder of Demons]

I'm sure other more knowledgeable folks will post here soon but I'll try and answer a couple of your questions.

1. yeah, the Crippled God "died", in that his now mortal body was killed to allow his soul to return to his worshipers (and thereby stopping the Jade Statues from destroying the planet).

2. I'm still hazy on the details about the Eleint.

3. Well Fener died too. But others have died along the way like Poliel. Again, it will depend on your definition of a God. And Olar Ethil isn't Burn.

The reason ST & Cots say all the Gods will be mad at them is because they didn't tell them they were going to kill the Crippled God at the end. The way I read it was, many of the Gods aligned themselves to either rechain the Crippled God and stop his malign influence, or to rechain him to be able to tap into his power (as the Forkrul Assail tried). ST & Cots joined forces with those seeking to stop the negative influence of the Crippled God, but then chose to deny anyone the chance to further abuse the CG's power.

[Kanese S's]

That's how I read it, too. He had to die, once given a body, to release his soul.

Not sure what happened with the Eleint exactly.

Quite a few gods died during the series, especially at the end.

[Kanubis]

More on 3: Mael & K'rul were indeed in on it, but were largely exceptions. Both had essentially learned to stop thinking like Elder Gods traditionally did - whereas the Errant and his posse were affronted by the progress of humanity and it's effect on them, those two decided to go with it and find the value in it. Hood as well of course, but I guess he was effectively de-goded by then. Not that it seemed to reduce his badassery at all... (my favourite scene in the entire series is still him bringing the city guard guy back to life in TTH.)

I think D'rek was an unknown quantity, it was only the compassion shown by the Adjunct and others that humbled her in to supporting their cause by the end.

I think the scene with Dessembrae and the other bellend gods was meant to demonstrate the 'majority' that would be pissed at ST & C.

[Gratillonius]

Thanks for the answers.

I think, only the Eleint matter is still unclear in my mind.

As I understand things, the arrival of the Eleint had to do with the weakness and finally dying of the Kettle Azath House, which opened the door of Starvald Demelain. On the other hand Korabas was released in order to use the coming of the Eleint to destroy her and with it magic, so that the old gods would reign again. Cotillion and Shadowthrone used Korabas to free the Crippled god and chained her again with Heboric's Otataral hand. Once Korabas was chained again the remaining Eleint were free to do whathever they wanted, which apparently is destroying everything. By the way, this destroying madness I didn't understand either, because Silanda remains most of the time very quiet and not destroying things. So the door remained open, wht didn't they continue destroying things?

This post has been edited by Gratillonius: 10 June 2011 - 02:00 PM

[Sanctume]

From what I understood, Otataral Dragon (Korabas) killed many of Eleints (Fiddler's it's raining dragons), and once there were not Eleints left to fight Korabas, Tiam would manifest to counter this imbalance. But before Tiam could fully manifest, Korabas was chained again--so no need to manifest, there's no imbalance anymore.

As far as Silanda, and Silchas--they are Ancient Dragons who I think for the most part have some control to keep chaos at bay. Something also relating to the Storm they create--that 3 dragons can maintaint their own storm, but more than that can lead to chaos.

Chaos in terms of the other Eleints, non Ancient dragons, from what I read are those (Soletaken including) are the ones who lost their own control and basically succumb to he madness / crazy of being a dragon, chaos, destroying everything, even not trusting other dragons to form cooperative units or society.

[Shansteeth]

Sanctume, on 10 June 2011 - 03:56 PM, said:

From what I understood, Otataral Dragon (Korabas) killed many of Eleints (Fiddler's it's raining dragons), and once there were not Eleints left to fight Korabas, Tiam would manifest to counter this imbalance. But before Tiam could fully manifest, Korabas was chained again--so no need to manifest, there's no imbalance anymore.

As far as Silanda, and Silchas--they are Ancient Dragons who I think for the most part have some control to keep chaos at bay. Something also relating to the Storm they create--that 3 dragons can maintaint their own storm, but more than that can lead to chaos.

Chaos in terms of the other Eleints, non Ancient dragons, from what I read are those (Soletaken including) are the ones who lost their own control and basically succumb to he madness / crazy of being a dragon, chaos, destroying everything, even not trusting other dragons to form cooperative units or society.

It is never fully explained why or how Silanda keeps her wits when she really shouldn't.



There is a scene when Silchas leaves Rud where he explains this pretty well - from what he says it makes it appear that only from our narrow perspective and the narrow time-frame of these books are him and Rake and others really keeping control - or at least they really only recently(in andii terms) really figured out how to keep control. Keep in mind silchas has been buried for a very long time.

From what Silchas implies, it was in question whether or not he would betray Rud, for no other reason than his Eleint blood.

Plug in all the other epic disasters, near-disasters, world-changing events that have happened, and you could easily infer that Rake, Silanda, Ruin etc. in fact do NOT have control over is there eleint side.

The only reason shit really hasn't hit the fan before this is because the gate to SD was sealed, so there were not enough dragons to go ape-shit crazy to do any world-destroying.

Rake takes Draconus' sword

Ruin is stabbed in the back by scabandari

Clearly Andaris and Rake could not stay in the room together

The Fall of Kharakanos(sp)

The blood of the Eleint is chaos, which inherently means betrayel, which in all of the soletakens and ancients lives is more or less a constant thing.


They were able to resist becoming part of the swarm of dragons trying to destory Korabas of course, but you could argue that is as much because of the chaos in their blood and their chaos nature.

I personally believe their exposure and time in our world is what more or less made them able to make a choice(which the SD dragons clearly did not seem to have) about Korabas as oppossed to just going all out and destorying her.

[Ilona]

Just a minor nitpick. Silanda is a ship. Silannah is the dragon.

And yeah, Silannah's deal is a bit of a mystery - she took orders from Rake when he was alive, but in TCG the more-than-half-mad Sandalath was able to command her as well? Also Silannah is a true Eleint, not a soletaken like Rake/Ruin/Bloodeye & co. Anyway, in TTH she's also described as having infinite patience, when she's perched on the top of the tower or whatever, so still for so long that humans thought her a statue. From this I kind of took it that she's ancient enough to have a great measure of control. Can't remember if anything Silchas says in later books directly contradicts that.

Also, I think Bloodeye's betrayal of Silchas & the Tiste Andii had less to do with draconean thinking than with general differences between the Edur and the Andii... From Midnight Tides prologue:

Quote

Scabandari Bloodeye crouched down over him. "It is the way of brothers, alas," he murmured. "One must rule. Two cannot. You know the truth of that. Big as this world is, Silchas Ruin, sooner or later there would be war between the Edur and the Andii. The truth of our blood will tell. Thus, only one shall command the gate. Only the Edur shall pass. We will hunt down the Andii who are already here - what champion can they throw up to challenge me? They are as good as dead. And so it must be. One people. One ruler."

edit: Or I guess such territoriality could be the result of draconean blood. Do we actually ever encounter any of these major draconean soletaken before their becoming such? In a flashback or anything?

This post has been edited by Ilona: 12 June 2011 - 08:51 AM

[worry]

Shansteeth, on 12 June 2011 - 03:29 AM, said:

I personally believe their exposure and time in our world is what more or less made them able to make a choice(which the SD dragons clearly did not seem to have) about Korabas as oppossed to just going all out and destorying her.

I think we've got a crazy person on our hands! Crazy in a good way though.

[Shansteeth]

worrywort, on 12 June 2011 - 09:07 AM, said:

Shansteeth, on 12 June 2011 - 03:29 AM, said:

I personally believe their exposure and time in our world is what more or less made them able to make a choice(which the SD dragons clearly did not seem to have) about Korabas as oppossed to just going all out and destorying her.

I think we've got a crazy person on our hands! Crazy in a good way though.

Wait, you mean this isn't a non-fiction book!?!?

[Sanctume]

Silannah is bound to the throne of dark so perhaps she can't just go off and join swarming Korabas.
That's similar to the 3 dragons bound to the hust sword Ruin received from Shadowthorne--they're bound to something.

This post has been edited by Sanctume: 13 June 2011 - 09:37 PM

[worry]

The thing that separates Silannah from the rest though is that she seems to have voluntarily accepted that subjugation, in exchange for whatever it is Anomander Rake offered her. We simply don't know what went into their bargain, just that they seem to have been truly fond of each other beyond whatever deal they made. Maybe it's that deal that allowed her to avoid merging with other Eleint.

[Use Of Weapons]

I wonder whether the pure blood Eleint are blinded to the taint of their blood that prevents them from collaborating? Perhaps Silannah's accommodation with Rake (see what I did there ) was something like teaching her to control the territoriality that comes with her Draconean nature.

[D'rek]

The chaos that undoes all draconean partnerships can only be beaten by one thing - LOVE! That is why Ano and Silanah get along, because they are so mooshymooshy in love. No, I have no evidence to support this.

[Kanese S's]

I dunno, D'rek, they are described as being pretty close. Maybe not hard evidence, but possibly not far off from the truth. If not in love, they certainly seem to have the whole 'platonic life partners' thing going.

This post has been edited by Kanese S's: 16 June 2011 - 06:47 AM

[MillionSpots]

IIRC from TtH, Rake addresses Silannah as 'love'.

[Bauchelain the Evil]

And in TCG Nimander actually says she was his father 's lover in draconean form.

[Use Of Weapons]

Yeah, I never got the impression that their relationship was platonic. Didn't some character say at one point that Rake had gone '[...] to seek solace in Silannah's fiery embrace' or something like that?

[LordofTheFallen]

Ok from the top, when Korabas was released all the eleint were compelled to kill her, like they were hypnotized. The ancient eleint (Silannah, Silchas, Tulas, the three chained dragons in shadow, Olar Ethil, ect) were powerful enough to resist the compelling to form a "storm" and hunt her. However, once enough eleint were killed that their power matched Korabas' (at her full strength, not her present state) they would manifest into one super dragon named T'iam, much like Gruntle and his guys semble into the Tiger. The only way to stop T'iam, who was Korabas' opposite, from forming was to either kill Korabas, and end all magic, or imprison her again. And we all know that she was imprisoned.

Now Silannah, being one hell of an old dragon, was more or less able to ignour the summoning completely (unlike Silchas and Tulas who mentioned how it was straining against them and they had to hold it back) but had T'iam sembled completely, more or less, Silannah too would not have been able to resist. That's widely why she wasn't mentioned, she was too powerful to be that affected by the early stages and the whole thing was resolved before it got too far.