[Kanese S's]

Abyss, on 29 November 2013 - 12:13 AM, said:

We've seen name overlap elsebook... Apsalar / Apsalara, Shul / Shool, Mok / Mock etc etc, and aspect overlap (we're up to what, five Gods of War...? )... but titles like Son of Darkness or The Warlord or High King tend to stick to one very specific individual.


We don't know that it is Kallor... and tho the evidence, esp TtH and BaB, is pretty damn compelling, there is also evidence to the opposite, notably the MoI prologue curses.

Does Apsalar/Apsalara really count? I thought Apsalara was the deity that Apsalar was named after.

[Abyss]

Kanese S, on 02 December 2013 - 01:45 AM, said:

Abyss, on 29 November 2013 - 12:13 AM, said:

We've seen name overlap elsebook... Apsalar / Apsalara, Shul / Shool, Mok / Mock etc etc, and aspect overlap (we're up to what, five Gods of War...? )... but titles like Son of Darkness or The Warlord or High King tend to stick to one very specific individual.


We don't know that it is Kallor... and tho the evidence, esp TtH and BaB, is pretty damn compelling, there is also evidence to the opposite, notably the MoI prologue curses.

Does Apsalar/Apsalara really count? I thought Apsalara was the deity that Apsalar was named after.

Yes but it's still the same name for two people, hence 'overlap'. I don't think anyone is mixing those two up, or Seguleh Third Mok with Pirate Lord Not Appearing In This Series Mock for that matter.

[Blend]

worry, on 28 November 2013 - 10:40 PM, said:

I don't think anyone thinks Kallor is running around. It's just that he's the most likely character to be called High King, given how ancient he is and his apparent grudge with the Azathanai. I personally would find it most interesting if the High King is Kallor, but he's a very different (even a "good") man at this point in time. It's also true that there are other possibilities that would prove very interesting as well.

*I* think it's Kallor. I mean, the guy has to have built that Empire that he turned to dust at some point, right? I figure this is probably the part where he's building his Empire. There's no real indication on how far back the prologue of MoI is (except for arbitrary dates - the timeline is not important, the timeline is not important) so why can't it happen during these times?

There are scenes in TCG where we see Kallor talking to some Tiste Liosan about the love of his life, and blah blah blah - I figure that was teasers for something we're going to see in this trilogy. I figure it's going to be the Tiste Liosan doing whatever it is they did to Kallor that's going to push him over the edge and make him summon down The Crippled God, thus destroying his Empire.

Also another thing that sort of supports this is that at the moment in the Kharkanas Trilogy people can WALK to Omtose Phellack - it seems like everything's connected, and something is eventually going to happen to separate everything from everything else.

[Abyss]

Blend, on 02 December 2013 - 05:51 PM, said:

*I* think it's Kallor. I mean, the guy has to have built that Empire that he turned to dust at some point, right? I figure this is probably the part where he's building his Empire. There's no real indication on how far back the prologue of MoI is (except for arbitrary dates - the timeline is not important, the timeline is not important) so why can't it happen during these times?

There are scenes in TCG where we see Kallor talking to some Tiste Liosan about the love of his life, and blah blah blah - I figure that was teasers for something we're going to see in this trilogy. I figure it's going to be the Tiste Liosan doing whatever it is they did to Kallor that's going to push him over the edge and make him summon down The Crippled God, thus destroying his Empire. ...

I'm pretty sure BnB shows us that the Kallorian Empire nuked by the Fall wasn't his first empire.
If the High King refd in FoD is indeed Kallor, he's had a few, possibly a lot.

Which would also explain his claim in MoI that he was leading empires back when the Tlan Imass were eating rocks and washing their bums with leaves or whatever.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

I'll come back and actually contribute to discussion soon, but for now - Abyss, that's one of the most entertaining round-ups of anything I've seen in a while!

[Elientnation]

Abyss, on 27 August 2012 - 04:09 PM, said:

The other thing that bothered me was the level of introspective philosophizing in this book. In DG there is a lovely scene where Kalam finds a bunch of Whirlwind fanatics doing bad things and kills them to rescue some people. It's lovely and straightforward and tells us a lot about Kalam's character. FoD lacks such straightforward scenes. Virtually every scene included some deep prononciation on life, religion, society, maturity, families, honour, soldiers etc etc etc and by about halfway i was really waiting for someone to pull out a sword and stab someone else. This also diluted some fairly important things. One of the most important revelations in the book, the fact that the Azathanai created all the other races - maybe - comes from the internal monlogue of a character - Karris iirc, the scholar visiting the Bordersword village when the Legion attacks - we only see for that one seen when she should be thinking 'Holy fuck we're being attacked' and instead she internally considered the history of the world and then falls down the steps and dies. If the revelation was meant to be important than it was somewhat lost and if it wasn't important then why include it and why include it thus? I have no doubt that SE had a reason, but i missed that one.

This almost ruined the book for me to be honest. There were parts were I just skipped over as I couldn't be bother to read more whining by Kadaspala etc.

While the book on the whole was good by the end I just got tired of all the whiners in the book.

This post has been edited by Elientnation: 18 February 2014 - 01:25 AM

[PutCashInTwo]

"BEST MYSTERY - Even the Azathanai don't understand the Azath Houses that keep popping up."




Ahhh - you see, it's the best rendition of a time travel loop ever - when Cots and Kele entre the Azath, they realize the Azath Houses don't actually exist, so using their new found power, they create the Houses in the distant past, so when time loops back to their present, the Houses exist.




It's like the ultimate form of wish fulfillment

[Hood's Gate]

I just finished FoD this morning. Wow. I loved every POV and every part. The end where Arathan and Korya were looking out the window was epic. I always had a particular love for Jaghut, but this book really amped it up for me. Haut, Varandas, Hood and Gothos were all great characters, and their parts were some of my favorites.

I guess this is a mystery for a lot but in DoD, Toc seemed to recognize Varandas as female. What happened?

[Andorion]

That.... is actually one hell of a good point. I missed that one. All I can say is that there is precedent for change of gender in the Malazan world.

SPOILERS for OST

Spoiler

K'rul is shone as male in FoD and in most of the MBotF books but in OST he suddenly turns female.

Check out the OST subforum for a number of discussions on this

[HoosierDaddy]

Andorion, on 20 April 2014 - 12:17 PM, said:

That.... is actually one hell of a good point. I missed that one. All I can say is that there is precedent for change of gender in the Malazan world.

SPOILERS for OST

Spoiler

K'rul is shone as male in FoD and in most of the MBotF books but in OST he suddenly turns female.

Check out the OST subforum for a number of discussions on this

See: Orfantal, GotM, MoI, TtH

[Stoneburner]

worry, on 28 November 2013 - 10:40 PM, said:

Also another thing that sort of supports this is that at the moment in the Kharkanas Trilogy people can WALK to Omtose Phellack - it seems like everything's connected, and something is eventually going to happen to separate everything from everything else.

There have been other occasions where I've gotten the impression that some of the races on the Malazan world are foreign, or alien. Are we sure that the world in FOD is not the world that gets shattered and forces its denizens to find new world? In the mean while, they access their old "warrens" of their old world for power.

[worry]

Well it depends what you mean by world. If you mean they're on another planet then I'm not sure I can agree. Burn is here, Imass, Eres, and humans (the last tentative, based on the High King's presence) are all around. Either this is the default world we've always seen and elder warrens are created to banish the troublemakers to (particularly the Tiste), or this whole world is broken and the "real" world is also a warren too. But the latter situation doesn't explain why the real world is a planet while the rest are metaphysical planes that border each other with Chaos in-between. It could of course also turn out that "Burn's dream" isn't just a metaphor and everything exists within a dream logic.

[tiam]

upworthywort, on 10 August 2014 - 07:19 AM, said:

Well it depends what you mean by world. If you mean they're on another planet then I'm not sure I can agree. Burn is here, Imass, Eres, and humans (the last tentative, based on the High King's presence) are all around. Either this is the default world we've always seen and elder warrens are created to banish the troublemakers to (particularly the Tiste), or this whole world is broken and the "real" world is also a warren too. But the latter situation doesn't explain why the real world is a planet while the rest are metaphysical planes that border each other with Chaos in-between. It could of course also turn out that "Burn's dream" isn't just a metaphor and everything exists within a dream logic.

Yes ofcourse FOL will give us an insight to how things are shaping up on a grander scale hopefully.

At the moment I see it like this

This isnt another planet. This is the original world. You can walk to OP and everyone is within, say, continental distance with each other. Were in a sort of Pangaea state that the Azatahanai have populated with there own creations. These creations, as have already happened in the Forulkan Wars have started warring against one another on this supercontinent.

Soon enough Krul will create the warrens. This causes all the races that weve seen to become insular, inside their own realm. Jaghut get OP, Andii get Galain etc. We see in the main arc prologues that this causes massive flux and fighting between realms. Some get destroyed (KE) some get utterly weakened by invaders (OP), some become sealed off from the rest of the world (KL/KT) and some become completely empty and used up (KG). These worlds are all fuelled by the blood of dragons, entities of great power though not unkillable so they are sent away into SD to protect these realms.

As these realms become increasingly hazardous the greatest Bonecaster of the Imass, Burn, who will likely become an Azathanai in a way similar to MD, uses herself as a source, in lieu of a dragon or perhaps because even the elder dragons are not strong enough, to create Wu. A realm that can be accessed by anyone. The Azathanai perhaps help this fresh start knowing that they have been careless with their creations, some of which have grown to rival the power of the Azathanai themselves with this new gift of sorcery. Theres an initial influx with Anomander taking his small band through, along with other leaders taking theres through to escape the infighting in there own realms. Theres a second invasion from the Tiste escaping there own realm, Ruin and Bloodeye, and then a period of settling.

In the new world the Azathanai, perhaps learning from their mistakes by trying to live among there creations, move onto to different things. Some are killed, some are lost and they are only united when the High King murders a continent. At this point they are at the peak of their power, Elder Gods of their people, fat on the blood of sacrifice if they played that game of worhsip. However they know this new realm cannot take the brunt of Kallor wrath. It is too new and so Krul takes the brunt away from Burn. Kallors curses play out among these Elder Gods and effectively ends their reign. This leads to the now free races of Wu.

Now thats a weird theory and theres a few creases that im too hungover to iron out this morning but as a rough guess thats how I reconcile myself to the new infformation were getting.

EDIT- There are numerous quotes and such to support this liek the kef tanar game etc. Im too hungover to dig them up atm

This post has been edited by tiam: 10 August 2014 - 11:20 AM

[QuickTidal]

Since Abyss' posts are always best...I'm necroing it to make some comments on my re-read.

I've now read that chapter with Grizzin Farl and Brood talking and drinking and it STILL makes less than no sense to me. They have brief lucid straightforward moments...but those are interspersed between nonsensical philosophizing. Ugh. Love the characters. Hated that scene.

Also, the whole citadel/creation of Liosan/Syntara scene is still badass...and I love how it's couched between T'riss Resurrection of the Shake river god, the flooding of the banks....and the forcing of the Tiste division.

Note: Haut is EVEN better on the re-read. Knowing where the Jaghut sit at this point, and knowing who the Lord of Hate is ect. It just makes his chapters better. Also, I love the whole "these aren't weapons, they are arguments in iron" thing.

I recall enjoying the Glimmer Fate stuff better the first time....this time I found it was a tad slow.

About halfway through now, and enjoying it quite a bit.

[Gorefest]

I still have issues with the whole High King situation.


Kallor gets referred throughout MBotF as the High King, so he is the obvious suspect.

However, there are conflicting accounts or suggestions in MBotF that speak against it being Kallor. I fully appreciate that a lot of these can be reasoned away by 'distortion of memory' or 'inaccurate historical documentation/retelling' or him having multiple empires. But that kite doesn't fly in my view when the source material is accounts from people who were actually there at the time.

One of the most poignant examples is Kallor's conversation with Tulas Shorn in TtH. We know that Tulas Shorn is around during the FoD times, so surely he knows who the High King was. And you would think that Kallor himself does, too. Surely?

Tulas (speaking of the Jaghut war against Death, which we know will take place after the events in FoD): "Not even you, High King, could imagine such a sight - your empire was less than a squall to that terrible storm. [...] When you forged your empire, it was upon the dust of that time, that grand contest, that most bold assault."

I assume that in the above quote, Tulas refers to Kallor's last empire, to which the Crippled God was pulled in an attempt to destroy Kallor and which was shepparded into the 'Imperial Warren' by K'rul after Kallor obliterated it himself. But why does he refer to that one and not to the one that was concurrent with FoD times?

Am I just missing something obvious, is it again one of those 'different empires at different times' things but a bit poorly formulated, or is it a retcon by SE?

[Abyss]

Gorefest, on 30 March 2016 - 03:05 PM, said:

I still have issues with the whole High King situation.
...

Am I just missing something obvious, is it again one of those 'different empires at different times' things but a bit poorly formulated, or is it a retcon by SE?

Given that entire relationships appear to change between the Kharkanas trilo and the MBF, I think it's fair to say we have to RAFO.

[Gorefest]

Perhaps. But it would have to involve something like the whole Jaghut army travelling back in time from the events in FoD to the beginning of creation to wage their war on Death. Otherwise I struggle to see how it can ever logically be consolidated.

[edit]If that happens, I call rep for the first prediction!

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 30 March 2016 - 03:49 PM

[worry]

It doesn't conflict at all if you simply separate "kingdom" from "empire" -- and it's not an artificial distinction. From what little we get in FoD the High Kingdom is an isolated, self-contained, stable (happy?) place and the High King doesn't seem particularly acquisitive.