[Khellendros]

It's been a while since I read Deadhouse Gates, so this may not be entirely accurate, but from what I remember, the story which appears to be about Hood in that book contradicts what we see in FoD.

I'm talking about Corporal List's visions concerning the dead Jaghut family. In them, the family comes together in order to try and fight the T'lan Imass but eventually they're all killed, and the father is the one who gives List the visions (and his is the face which Duiker appears to see just before he dies, strongly suggesting that the Jaghut is Hood).

But in FoD, we see Hood's wife killed by the Errant, rather than T'lan Imass.

Personally, I have always found that story in DG very moving, and it would be a shame if it has been swapped out for this new version, which doesn't have near the same impact (we never hear anything about Hood's mate, so it's impossible to feel anything about her death at the hands of Errastas - yes, Hood is so overwhelmed that he has to be chained down, but we're never shown or told why).

I suppose that it can be explained away by saying that the Jaghut seen in DG is NOT Hood, but again it would take away something special from that particular tale if it was ascribed now to a random Jaghut, never seen or heard from again.

[Kalahinen]

Hmm, the author clearly makes changes to the story as it proceeds. But that's no news. Still, I was personally quite surprised to notice how many strings Erikson pulled together in this book. So much is apparently happening at the same time, even though in the MBotF they were suggested to be totally unrelated and happened in different periods of time.

[Aptorian]

Is a Jaghut actually seen in DG. Doesn't he just sense the Jaghut and recall the deaths that the Jaghut remembers? I never connected that Jaghut with Hood. I just reckoned it was a random Jaghut spirit that lingered in the area. Maybe it was still trapped somewhere beneath the ground, broken and bound, but unable to die.

[Hocknose]

Yeah I'm pretty sure it's not Hood. I believe it is just the ghost of a Jaghut father buried nearby.

Have you got any quotes to suggest it is Hood?

[D'rek]

Hocknose, on 18 September 2012 - 03:57 PM, said:

Yeah I'm pretty sure it's not Hood. I believe it is just the ghost of a Jaghut father buried nearby.

Have you got any quotes to suggest it is Hood?

There's a bit about List seeing the dead Jaghut's face as/when he dies, I think, and also Heboric's "does anyone hear a god laughing?" bit, but neither are very concrete.

[Aptorian]

The god laughing bit I always assumed referred to either Shadowthrone or the Crippled God. The Crippled God particularly I am sure would find the fate of the 10,000 crucified soldiers "amusing".

[Siergiej]

Laughing at death seems like a last thing Hood would do. But we learn this only as far as Toll the Hounds and Forge of Darkness, so who knows.

This post has been edited by Siergiej: 18 September 2012 - 05:23 PM

[Aptorian]

Hood seemed to despise...or maybe despair... at his own aspect. Laughing at death seems like just the kind of thing a Jaghut would do. Especially one who waved a war against it. "HA HA HA HA" Quoth the 14 undead Jaghut.

Still don't think he is Lists Jaghut.

This post has been edited by Aptorius: 18 September 2012 - 05:29 PM

[blackzoid]

Khellendros, on 18 September 2012 - 08:10 AM, said:

I suppose that it can be explained away by saying that the Jaghut seen in DG is NOT Hood, but again it would take away something special from that particular tale if it was ascribed now to a random Jaghut, never seen or heard from again.

There has never been any consensus that that Jaghut was Hood. I've certainly never taken it to be Hood, even before Forge of Darkness.
Especially since Hood attained the Throne of Death ages before the Imass undertook the Ritual. And the T'lan Imass were not aware of the war against death (bar that one guy mentioned in TCG and that was set before the Imas became undead)
If we take the guy in DG being Hood, than the convoluted progression is, Hood becomes God of death, than backtracks to somehow have a Jaghut family while still being a god.

This post has been edited by blackzoid: 18 September 2012 - 08:55 PM

[Dragnipurake]

The Jaghut in Deadhouse Gates is not Hood. If i remember correctly, that particular jaghut's children were buried under stones by the t'lan. Hood's body is found by Hedge on the Ice throne, surrounded by the bodies of his ?family in the refugium in Reaper's Gale.

[Khellendros]

Dragnipurake, on 18 September 2012 - 10:31 PM, said:

The Jaghut in Deadhouse Gates is not Hood. If i remember correctly, that particular jaghut's children were buried under stones by the t'lan. Hood's body is found by Hedge on the Ice throne, surrounded by the bodies of his ?family in the refugium in Reaper's Gale.

Has reading Erikson not taught you anything about the dangers of certainty? This is like saying Harllo is not six, because there is no way that he could be considering everything else. But, well, ultimately, he is, and that's that.


I fear that many of these responses are taking a far too rigid stance when it comes to interpretation.

No, the scenes in DG are not explicit...but then neither are the references to Hood being a Jaghut in MoI or RG, but you can infer. Here's the thing: SE writes in a very 'cinematic' style, often including scenes or events which are highly memorable, but don't necessarily conform to what we've seen gone on before. Hence all the issues with the timeline.

So, knowing that, what's to say that when Erikson first wrote the scenes with the Jaghut and List in DG, he wasn't thinking of a first way to introduce Hood? After all, which Jaghut would be most interested in following an event such as the Chain of Dogs, where people were falling and dying every single day, than the Lord of Death himself?

But then when SE got around to writing RG, he thought of another great scene to write which is both poignant and strongly suggests Hood is a Jaghut also. And then, when he got to writing FoD, he decided he wanted to include the War on Death within it, and needed yet another way to introduce it.

@ Dragnipurake:

Your answer is dependent on SE knowing exactly what he was going to do with each successive book, and didn't depart from/change/forget anything. It is clear to me, and I think surely to most people who post in this forum, that while we can try to explain some things, in quite a few cases it is simply a matter of the author changing his mind and/or forgetting a previous detail. That's not a criticism, it's just a fact of life when it comes to a series this huge, and SE is just one man in the end.

@ Apt:

I always interpreted the laughter as hollow and despairing, laughing at the hopelessness.

[Kalahinen]

Khellendros, on 20 September 2012 - 02:52 PM, said:

Dragnipurake, on 18 September 2012 - 10:31 PM, said:

The Jaghut in Deadhouse Gates is not Hood. If i remember correctly, that particular jaghut's children were buried under stones by the t'lan. Hood's body is found by Hedge on the Ice throne, surrounded by the bodies of his ?family in the refugium in Reaper's Gale.

So, knowing that, what's to say that when Erikson first wrote the scenes with the Jaghut and List in DG, he wasn't thinking of a first way to introduce Hood? After all, which Jaghut would be most interested in following an event such as the Chain of Dogs, where people were falling and dying every single day, than the Lord of Death himself?

But then when SE got around to writing RG, he thought of another great scene to write which is both poignant and strongly suggests Hood is a Jaghut also. And then, when he got to writing FoD, he decided he wanted to include the War on Death within it, and needed yet another way to introduce it.

@ Dragnipurake:

Your answer is dependent on SE knowing exactly what he was going to do with each successive book, and didn't depart from/change/forget anything. It is clear to me, and I think surely to most people who post in this forum, that while we can try to explain some things, in quite a few cases it is simply a matter of the author changing his mind and/or forgetting a previous detail. That's not a criticism, it's just a fact of life when it comes to a series this huge, and SE is just one man in the end.

Very well phrased, Khellendros.

This post has been edited by Kalahinen: 20 September 2012 - 07:21 PM

[Dragnipurake]

Khellendros, on 20 September 2012 - 02:52 PM, said:

Has reading Erikson not taught you anything about the dangers of certainty? This is like saying Harllo is not six, because there is no way that he could be considering everything else. But, well, ultimately, he is, and that's that.

One can never be certain of course. But then you can decide how you pronounce tiste or jaghut and you can decide how you interprete the author's work. I have never been bothered (luckily) by the issues with time line, harllo's age, orfantal's age, caladan brood being azathanai etc etc. The story and the storytelling are incomparable and that is enough for my entertainment.

I do agree with you regarding SE significantly building upon characters and scenes from earlier books (eg, the significantly beefed up effects of dragnipur in TTH compared to GOTM or MOI, the errant becoming an azathanai etc). This is my only misgiving, for lack of a better word, about this series. But this is the natural 'evolution' of the story from the author's perspective, and it cannot be written in any other way.

having said all that, I have no problem in believing that based on what we know so far from the books, rather than the discussions on the forum, the Jaghut family in DDG is not Hood's

[Use Of Weapons]

FWIW, I never thought the DG Jaghut dad was Hood until I read this thread. And now, having read it, I still don't think it. I also don't find it adds any extra pathos to the scene if Hood is the spirit face seen by List at the end of his vision.

[champ]

Use Of Weapons, on 21 September 2012 - 09:44 AM, said:

FWIW, I never thought the DG Jaghut dad was Hood until I read this thread. And now, having read it, I still don't think it. I also don't find it adds any extra pathos to the scene if Hood is the spirit face seen by List at the end of his vision.

This ^^

[tiam]

D, on 18 September 2012 - 04:03 PM, said:

Hocknose, on 18 September 2012 - 03:57 PM, said:

Yeah I'm pretty sure it's not Hood. I believe it is just the ghost of a Jaghut father buried nearby.

Have you got any quotes to suggest it is Hood?

There's a bit about List seeing the dead Jaghut's face as/when he dies, I think, and also Heboric's "does anyone hear a god laughing?" bit, but neither are very concrete.

Isnt it Duiker who actually sees the face as List is killed just before Bult is and we dont get a list POV deathscene?

As for the Jaghut hes likely not Hood and is likely the father of the pinned children.

[Crow Clan Baby]

It's maybe easy to forget this, but back when we first got Deadhouse we didn't know that Hood was Jaghut. So the inference that the Jaghut in that scene was Hood can only be a product of either later re-reading or of spoilering yourself.

That aside, and this must be clear to everyone by now, we are most definitely not reading anything even remotely like an encyclopaedic history containing hard facts here. This is more akin to Gilgamesh, or the Iliad, so there's a core of history but it's been filtered through myth and the embellishments/omissions of a storytelling tradition. There are no "facts", everything is mutable, and much depends on context, the person telling the tale, and the people witnessing.

And that aside, who's to say that Hood didn't remarry? The story isn't over yet.

[Puck]

I see the Jaghut in DG more like a subtle hint at Hood's nature, not as Hood himself.

[Salt-Man Z]

It's pretty obvious to me that you're supposed to think the Jaghut face List sees when he dies at the end of DG is that of the Jaghut father from earlier, when in reality it's Hood. It's a classic bit of SE misdirection and clue-planting.

[blackzoid]

Maybe...
I guess having it be 2 seperate Jaghuts in DG does sidestep any thorny timeline issue of Hood backtracking to have a family after he became a God, but it seemed out of place (to me) for SE change a small theme of the book at such a late stage. We can read it as Hood laughing but it just makes more sense to flow with the whole story of the Jaghut family to have it be the father laughing. Though I guess you could argue that throughout the book there is repeated references to Hood (beginning with the fly-priest in the prologue), so maybe Hood is laughing at the entire books wastage of life? Hood's laughter is closing out the entire theme of the book?
I dunno.

This post has been edited by blackzoid: 04 October 2012 - 05:32 PM