[Bonecaster]

Just stuff I really love. And since I just finished HoC again, here's some from there...

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'Were there bonecasters among them?'

Monok Ochem answered from behind them. 'All Eres were bonecasters, Trull Sengar. For they where the first to carry the spark of awareness, the first so gifted by the spirits.'

...

'The Eres did not fashion holy sites of their own,' Monok Ochem said, 'but they understood that there were places where death gathered, where life was naught but memories, drifting lost and bemused. And, to such places, they would often bring their own dead. Power gathers in layers - this is the birthplace of the sacred.'

'And so you have transformed it into a gate,' Trull Sengar said.

'Yes,' the bonecaster replied.

'You are too eager to credit the Imass, Monok Ochem,' Onrack said. He faced the Tiste Edur. 'Eres holy sites burned through the barriers of Tellann. They are too old to be resisted.'

'You said their sanctity was born of death. Are they Hood's, then?'

'No. Hood did not exist when these were fashioned, Trull Sengar. Nor are they strictly death-aspected. Their power comes, as Monok Ochem said, from layers. Stone shaped into tools and weapons. Air shaped by throats. Minds that discovered, faint as flickering fires in the sky, the recognition of oblivion, of an end to life, to love. Eyes that witnessed the struggle to survive, and saw with wonder its inevitable failure. To know and to understand that we must all die, Trull Sengar, is not to worship death. To know and to understand is itself magic, for it made us stand tall.'

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In the oldest, most fragmentary of texts, will be
found obscure mention of the Eres'al, a name
that seems to refer to those most ancient of
spirits that are the essence of the physical world.
There is, of course, no empirical means of
determining whether the attribution of
meaning - the power inherent in making
symbols of the inanimate - was causative, in
essence the creative force behind the Eres'al; or
if some other mysterious power was involved,
inviting the accretion of meaning and
significance by intelligent forms of life at some
later date.

In either case, what cannot be refuted is the
rarely acknowledged but formidable power that
exists like subterranean layers in notable
features of the land; nor that such power is
manifested with subtle yet profound efficacy,
even so much as to twist the stride of gods -
indeed, occasionally sufficient to bring them
down with finality...

PREFACE TO THE COMPENDIUM OF MAPS
KELLARSTELLIS OF LI HENG

[worry]

Copyright infringement.

[Bonecaster]

MEMORIES OF ICE

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'Before the Houses, there were Holds. Before the Holds, there was wandering. Your own words, yes? But you were both right and wrong. Not wandering, but migration. A seasonal round - predictable, cyclical. What seemed aimless, random, was in truth fixed, bound to its own laws. A truth - a power - I failed to recognize.'

This post has been edited by Bonecaster: 14 July 2011 - 02:56 AM

[Bonecaster]

worrywort, on 13 July 2011 - 12:26 AM, said:

Copyright infringement.

No, it's cool.

SE said:

No, it's not a problem. Quote away (since attribution is implicit)

[Beezulbubba]

From TBH. When I first read this it hit me that this passage supports the series namesake.

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And so we weep for the fallen. We weep for those yet to fall, and in war the screams are loud and harsh and in peace the wail is so drawn-out we tell ourselves we hear nothing.

And so this music is a lament, and I am doomed to hear its bittersweet notes for a lifetime.

Show me a god that does not demand mortal suffering.
Show me a god that celebrates diversity, a celebration that embraces even non-believers and is not threatened by them.

Show me a god who understands the meaning of peace. In life, not death.

Show -

'Stop,' Gesler said in a grating voice.
Blinking, Fiddler lowered his instrument. 'What?'
'You cannot end with such anger, Fid. Please.'

Anger? I am sorry. He would have spoken that aloud, but suddenly he could not. His gaze lowered, and he found himself studying the littered floor at his feet. Someone, in passing - perhaps Fiddler himself - had inadvertently stepped on a cockroach. Half-crushed, smeared into the warped wood, its legs kicked feebly. He stared at it in facination.

Dear creature, do you now curse an indifferent god?

This post has been edited by Geekstad Nerdhammer: 14 July 2011 - 01:58 AM

[Bonecaster]

GARDENS OF THE MOON

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Tool looked at her. "Adjunct. What we seek to accomplish is the freeing of a Jaghut Tyrant. Such a being, should it escape our control, or defy our predictions, is capable of destroying this continent. It can enslave all living upon it, and it would do so if permitted. If, instead of me, Logros had selected a Bonecaster, and if the Tyrant was freed, that Bonecaster would become enslaved. A Jaghut Tyrant is dangerous alone. A Jaghut Tyrant with an Imass Bonecaster at its side is unstoppable. They would challenge the gods, and they would kill most of them. Also, I am without a Clan, thus my enslavement - should that event befall - would not enslave blood kin."

This post has been edited by Bonecaster: 14 July 2011 - 02:56 AM

[Bonecaster]

DEADHOUSE GATES

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As the wind and sun did to the sand and stone, Raraku shaped all who had known it. Crossing it had etched the souls of the three companies that would come to be called the Bridgeburners. We could imagine no other name. Raraku burned our pasts away, making all that came before a trail of ashes.

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"The Bridgeburners are remembered here in Seven Cities. A name that is cursed, yet admired all the same. You were honorable soldiers fighting in a dishonorable war. It is said the regiment was honed in the heat and scorched rock of the Holy Desert Raraku, in pursuit of a Falah'd company of wizards. That is a story I would like to hear some time, so that it may be shaped into song."

Fiddler's eyes widened. A Spiritwalker's sorcery was sung, no other rituals were required. Athough devoted to peace, the power in a Tano song was said to be immense. The sapper wondered what such a creation would do to the Bridgeburners.

The Tano Spiritwalker seemed to understand the question, for he smiled. "Such a song has never before been attempted. There is in a Tano song the potential for Ascendancy, but can an entire regiment ascend? Truly a question deserving an answer."

[Daemonwolf]

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"You two," Hood said as he turned away "are worse than advocates, and you don't want to know what I do with the souls of advocates" a heartbeat later the lord of death was gone.
Menandore frowned "Shadowthrone, What are advocates"
"A profession dedicated to the subversion of laws for profit," he replied, his cane inextricably tapping as he shuffled back into the woods "when i was emperor, I considered butchering them all"
"So why didn't you?" she asked as he began to fade into a miasma of gloom beneath the trees.
Fainted came the reply "The Royal Advocate said it would be a terrible mistake"

[Bonecaster]

DEADHOUSE GATES

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The county of losses was a numbing litany to war's futility. To the historian's mind, only Hood himself could smile in triumph.

The Weasel Clan had awaited the Tithansi lancers and the godling commander who led them. An ambush by earth spirits had taken the Semk warleader down, tearing his flesh to pieces in their hunger to rip apart and devour the Semk god's remnant. Then the Weasel Clan had sprung their own trap, and it had held its own horror, for the refugees had been the bait, and hundreds had been killed or wounded in the trap's clinical, cold-blooded execution.

The Weasel Clan's warleaders could claim that they had been outnumbered four to one, that some among those they were sworn to protect had been sacrificed to save the rest. All true, and providing a defensible justification for what they did. Yet the warleaders said nothing, and though that silence was met with outrage by the refugees and especially by the Council of Nobles, Duiker saw it in a different light. The Wickan tribe held voiced reasons and excuses in contempt - they accepted none from others and were derisive of those who tried. And in turn, they offered none, because, Duiker suspected, they held those who were sacrificed - and their kin - in a respect that could not survive something so base and self-serving as its utterance.

It was unfortunate for them that the refugees understood none of this, that for them the Wickans' silence was in itself an expression of contempt, a disdain for the lives lost.

The Weasel Clan had, however, offered yet another salute to those refugees who had died. With the slaughter of the Tithansi archers in the basin added to the Weasel Clan's actions, an entire plains tribe had effectively ceased to exist. The Wickans' retribution had been absolute. Nor had they stopped there, for they had found Kamist's army, arriving late to the battle from the east. The slaughter exacted there was a graphic revelation of the fate the Tithansi sought to inflict on the Malazans. This lesson, too, was lost on the refugees.

For all that scholars tried, Duiker knew there was no explanation possible for the dark currents of human thought that roiled in the wake of bloodshed. He need only look upon his own reaction, when stumbling down to where Nil and Nether stood, their hands gummed with congealing sweat and blood on the flanks of a mare standing dead. Life forces were powerful, almost beyond comprehension, and the sacrifice of one animal to gift close to five thousand others with appalling strength and force of will was on the face of it worthy and noble.

If not for the dumb beast's incomprehension at its own destruction beneath the loving hands of two heartbroken children.

[Daemonwolf]

Though I'm not going to quote the whole thing, I also recall that i liked Bugg/Mael's dissertation to Seren Pedac on power and how it truly operates. As a side benefit, anyone that could easily transcribe it, would have the end all passage to reference whenever people have pissing matches about who is stronger. Much like when K'rul tells Raest in GotM that in this new time, even a mortal is capable of killing him.

[Bonecaster]

Do you mean Corlo?

MIDNIGHT TIDES

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The Acquitor found herself riding alongside the mage Corlo. 'I have been wondering,' she said. 'The sorcery you use. I have never heard of magic that steals the will from its victims, that reaches into their minds.'

'Not surprised,' he said in a grunt. 'Here in this backwater, all the sorcery is raw and ugly. No subtlety, no refinement of the powers. Yours is a land where most of the doors are closed. I doubt there's been any innovation in the study of sorcery in the past ten thousand years.'

'Thank you for those admiring sentiments, Corlo. Maybe you'd care to explain things for my ignorant self.'

He sighed. 'Where to start?'

'Manipulating people's minds.'

'Mockra. That's the warren's name.'

'All right, bad idea. Go back further. What's a warren?'

'Well, even that's not easy to answer, lass. It's a path of magic. The forces that govern all existence are aspected. Which means-'

'Aspected. In the way the Holds are aspected?'

'The Holds.' He shook his head. 'Sitting in a wagon with square wheels and complimenting each other on the smooth ride. That's the Holds, Acquitor. They were created in a world long gone, a world where the forces were rougher, wilder, messier. The warrens, well, those are wheels without corners.'

'You're not helping much here, Corlo.'

He scratched at his beard. 'Damned fleas. All right. Paths of aspected magic. Like forces and unlike forces. Right? Unlike forces repel, and like forces hold together, you see. Same as water in a river, all flowing the same way. Sure, there's eddies, draws and such, but it all heads down eventually. I'll talk about those eddies later. So, the warrens are those rivers, only you can't see them. The current is invisible, and what you can see is only the effect. Watch a mob in a square, the way the minds of every person in it seem to melt into one. Riots and public executions, or battles, for that matter, they're all hints of Mockra, they're what you can see. But a mage who's found a way into the warren of Mockra, well, that mage can reach deeper, down into the water. In fact, that mage can jump right in and swim with the current. Find an eddy and step back out, in a different place from where he started.'

'So when you say "path" you mean it in a physical sense.'

'Only if you choose to use it that way. Mockra's not a good example; the eddies take you nowhere, mostly. Because it's sorcery of the mind, and the mind's a lot more limited than we'd care to think. Take Meanas - that's another warren. It's aspected to shadows and illusion, a child of Thyr, the warren of Light. Separate but related. Open the warren of Meanas, and you can travel through shadows. Unseen, and fast as thought itself, nearly. And illusions, well, that reveals the sisterhood to Mockra, for it is a kind of manipulation of the mind, or, at least, of perception, via the cunning reshaping of light and shadow and dark.'

'Do the Tiste Edur employ this Meanas?' Seren asked.

'Uh, no. Not really. Theirs is a warren not normally accessible to humans. Kurald Emurlahn. It's Shadow, but Shadow more as a Hold than a warren. Besides, Kurald Emurlahn is shattered. In pieces. The Tiste Edur can access but one fragment and that's all.'

'All right. Mockra and Meanas and Thyr. There are others?'

'Plenty, lass. Rashan, Ruse, Tennes, Hood-'

'Hood. You use that word when you curse, don't you?'

'Aye, it's the warren of Death. It's the name of the god himself. But that's the other thing about warrens. They can be realms, entire worlds. Step through and you can find yourself in a land with ten moons overhead, and stars in constellations you've never seen before. Places with two suns. Or places filled with the spirits of the dead - although if you step through the gates in Hood's Realm you don't come back. Or, rather, you shouldn't. Anyway, a mage finds a warren suited to his or her nature, a natural affinity if you like. And through enough study and discipline you find ways of reaching into it, making use of the forces within it. Some people, of course, are born with natural talent, meaning they don't have to work as hard.'

'So, you reach into this Mockra, and that gets you into the minds of other people.'

'Sort of, lass. I make use of proclivities. I make the water cloudy, or fill it with frightening shadows. The victim's body does the rest.'

'Their body? What do you mean?'

'Say you take two cows to slaughter. One of them you kill quick, without it even knowing what's about to happen. The other, well, you push it down a track, in some place filled with the stench of death, with screams of other dying animals on all sides. Until, stupid as that cow is, it knows what's coming. And is filled with terror. Then you kill it. Cut a haunch from each beast, do they taste identical?'

'I have no idea.'

'They don't. Because the frightened cow's blood was filled with bitter fluids. That's what fear does. Bitter, noxious fluids. Makes the meat itself unhealthy to eat. My point is, you trick the mind to respond to invisible fears, unfounded beliefs, and the blood goes foul, and that foulness makes the fear worse, turns the belief into certainty.'

'As if the slaughterhouse for the second cow was only an illusion, when in truth it was crossing pasture.'

'Exactly.'

[Daemonwolf]

No, I meant Mael. There's a passage when he is protecting her with the two other old gods, when he gives a dissertation on power to Seren Pedac. When I get back to the books, I will try to transcribe it.

[Daemonwolf]

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Bugg Sighed, 'A conviction I am slowly coming to accept. People do not understand power. They view it exclusively as a contest, this against that; which is the greater? Which wins, which fails? Power is less about actual conflict-recognizingas it does the mutual damage conflict entails, with such damage making one vulnerable-less about actual conflict , then, than it is about statements. Presence, Acquitor, is power's truest expression. And presence is, at its core, the occupation of space. An assertion, if you will. One that must be acknowledged by other powers, lesser or greater, it matters not.
'I am not sure i understand you''
'Kilava would have invoked her presence, Acquitor. One that embraced you. Now, if you still insist on simplistic comparisons, then I tell you, she would have been as a stone in a stream. The water may dream of victory, may even yearn for it, but it had best learn patience, yes? Consider every dried stream bed you have seen, Acquitor, and judge who was the ultimate victor in that war of patience.'

I was mistaken, this part is not from Reaper's Gale, but from Dust of Dreams. If that created some of the confusion, i apologize. I for some reason had it in my head that this took place at the end of Reapers Gale, instead of being at the beginning of Dust of Dreams. In my US Trade Paperback edition it begins on page 117 and ends on page 118.

Part of why I like this passage is because it really does explain the way power in this series works (possibly how power works in general, since a CEO of a big corporation wields power, but doesn't necessarily wreak wholesale destruction with it as much as provide a presence and a sense of importance and power of position.... i dunno)

The way I interpret what Mael is saying, is that power is almost akin to the willpower of the individual wielding it. If he refuses to give ground or back down from what comes after him, his 'presence' alone will deter and demoralize the attacking power by his sheer force of will. Much like Anomander Rake refuses to back away from the tasks he see's as important, his sheer power of will <if I may> sees him through it, maing those ranged against him unable to complete, unless they carry similar or superior power of will.... no telling really, but I'm sure it would be a debatable topic all on its own. Regardless its still one of my favorite passages.


just my two cents....

[Bonecaster]

Ah! Excellent! I didn't remember that at all.

And you're certainly right about will. I imagine you remember Vengeance - T'an Aros - the sword Rake forged, which Andarist called Grief - K'orladis, and which Dassem used to kill Rake.

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"The power of Grief lies in the focused intent in its creation. The sword demands a singular will in its wielder. With such a will, it cannot be defeated."

[Daemonwolf]

Good point. Right before Mael was giving his above 'power' speech is the part where Fiddler confronts the Errant. Which in itself is interesting because Fiddlers self assured presence, deck of dragons, and force of will scare Errastas off.

[Bonecaster]

Alas, with my reading pace, I'm a long way from that in my reread. Can't wait!

Hey, where the heck is the part where Mael and those two Elder gods (God of Beer, or something?) were protecting her? That's what I first thought when you said Mael telling her about power, but I couldn't find it. RG, isn't it? Do you know what chapter?

[Daemonwolf]

Its in Dust of Dreams, Somewhere around page 110 in the US Trade Paperback edition. Part of Chapter 3. I think the reason I was thinking about Reapers Gale being that point was because of Bugg's helping her with that stone at the end of the book.

This post has been edited by Daemonwolf: 16 July 2011 - 09:05 PM

[Bonecaster]

Thanks! I didn't realize it was that late. I was looking for this.

DUST OF DREAMS

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'Acquitor, these two are the remnants of an ancient pantheon, worshipped by the original inhabitants of the settlement buried in the silts beneath Letheras. In fact, Ursto and Pinosel are the first two, the Lord and the Lady of Wine and Beer. They came into being as a consequence of the birth of agriculture. Beer preceded bread as the very first product of domesticated plants. Cleaner than water, and very nutritious. The first making of wine employed wild grapes. These two creations are elemental forces in the history of humanity. Others include such things as animal husbandry, the first tools of stone, bone and antler, the birth of music and dance and the telling of tales. Art, on stone walls and on skin. Crucial, profound moments one and all.'

'So,' she asked, 'what's happened to them?'

'Mindful and respectful partaking of their aspects have given way to dissolute, careless excess. Respect for their gifts has vanished, Acquitor. The more sordid the use of those gifts, the more befouled become the gift-givers.'

[Daemonwolf]

That makes me think of the passage (which book I have no idea) where the story is told of the people who bickered over what their god wanted, and then sent a group of their strongest to ask the god directly. only to find their god had died with the first shedding of blood in his name,

Updated: It comes from "The Bonehunters" and is a tale told from Greyfrog to L'oric

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"Modest Relevance. I would tell yo ua tale, brother. Early in the clan's history, many centuries past, there arose, like a breath of gas from the deep, a new cult. Chosen as its representative god was the most remote, most distant of gods among the pantheon. A god that spoke naught to any mortal, that intervened never in mortal affairs. Morbid. The leaders of the cult proclaimed themselves the voice of that god. They wrote down laws, prohibitions, ascribances, propitations, blasphemies, punishments for nonconformity, for dispute and derivations. This was but rumor, said details maintained in vague fugue, until such time as the cult achieved domination, and with domination, absolute power.
"Terrible enforcement, terrible crimes committed in the name of the silent god. Leaders came and went, each further twisting words already twisted by mundane ambition and the zeal for unity. Entire pools were poisoned. Others drained and the silts seeded with salt. Eggs were crushed. Mothers dismembered. And our people were plunged into a paradise of fear, the laws made manifest and spilled blood the tears of necessity. False regret with chilling gleam in the centre eye. No relief awaited, and each generation suffered more than the last."
"What happened?"
"Seven great warriors from seven clans set out to find the silent god, set out to see for themselves if this god had indeed blessed all that had come to pass in its name."
"And did they find the silent god?"
"Yes, and too, they found the reason for its silence. The god was dead. It had died with the first drop of blood spilled in its name."
"I see, and what is the relevance of this tale of yours, however modest?"
"Perhaps this. The existence of many gods conveys true complexity of mortal life. Conversely, the assertion of but one god leads to a denial of complexity, and encourages the need to make the world simple. Not the fault of the god, but a crime committed by its believers."
"If a god does not like what is done its name, then it should act."
"Yet, if each crime committed in its name weakens it... Very soon, I think, it has no power left and so cannot act, and so, ultimately, it dies."
"You come from a strange world, Greyfrog."
"Yes."
"I find your tale most disturbing."
"Yes."
~Greyfrog and L'oric, pg. 457

This post has been edited by Daemonwolf: 17 July 2011 - 02:08 AM

[Bonecaster]

Nice one.