[Felisin Fatter]

After reading all the books one question keeps haunting me, and it is very disturbing:

When they performed the ritual, what did the Imass do with their children?

Were they also forced into the ritual, only to quickly end up as cannon fodder? Is there a mass-grave filled with tiny bones somewhere in that dead valley? Was there an Imass version of the snake, 300000 years ago? Why doesn't Erikson ever mention these children, as they fit exactly with one of his central themes? Or did I miss something?

[Aptorian]

I can't recall it ever being stated but I can think of some scenarios.

One scenario is that the children of the Imass are the ancestors of the humans. We know Kilava is probably one such ancestor. Even though we hear that the call came for everyone to take the ritual, we know that some refused. We could probably also imagine that some Imass, maybe the oldest, were left behind to take care of the youngest.

Another one would depend upon just how bad it had become by the time they underwent the ritual. We know that the Imass has overhunted and killed of a lot of their normal prey. We also know that the Jaghuts ice rituals were making it harder and harder for the Imass to survive in the increasingly harder climates. I can't recall it ever being mentioned that the Imass actually did any kind of farming, despite the talk of empires, so if the didn't have any food sources, no storages of corn to weather years of famine and the climate was killing them... well, either the kids died first from malnutrion and exposure or maybe the adults simply stopped breeding or couldn't breed because of malnutrition.

I don't believe the Imass would use their own children in their rituals.

This post has been edited by Not Brent Weeks: 09 December 2013 - 01:07 PM

[Tarthenal Theloman Toblakai]

i second that there were probably no, or very little children at the time of the ritual. Maybe the children were spared or excluded the ritual. Maybe there just weren't any children left at all.

After the war had ravaged the imass population in general there must have been far fewer children anyway and those that were born probably ended up dying young due to malnutrition and exposure to cold

Also during times of war mating isn't usually a main priority so the only imass children of the time were most likely few and located in caves with their parents who didn't wage war and didn't answer the call to the ritual.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

Aside from the hunter/gatherer shortcomings, let's follow the logical path that includes children. The ritual is performed. Obviously, the dessication and mummified appearance of the T'lan Imass at the time of MBotF did not occur immediately. That is due to a deteriorrationthe span of time from the Ritual until the present. In that case, the children would have been made somewhat immortal, yet retained their bodies. There is also a certain apathy of spirit and lack of compassion that encompasses the ritualized Imass, which may not have been immediate, but was there nonetheless. When the battles were fought, the children that were present, were more than likely not excluded from the fighting. Due to the relative inexperience with fighting and the lack of size and strength of the immature Imass, they wouldn't have lasted long once the fighting began.

Lacking a true inside knowledge of how the T'lan Imass clans actually operate as a collective, attrition can really be the only answer. The weaker ones didn't survive the wars.

[Aptorian]

The Ritual site we see in Reapers Gale suggests that the life force of the Imass was drained in process. The ritual consumed all life in a gigantic area around the site that never grew back because the ritual took everything. If it did that to the land I bet it would have taken the Imass's lives as well. All though you could theorise that all that power was put inside the Imass instead. Or into the T'lann warren.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

Not Brent Weeks, on 09 December 2013 - 02:50 PM, said:

The Ritual site we see in Reapers Gale suggests that the life force of the Imass was drained in process. The ritual consumed all life in a gigantic area around the site that never grew back because the ritual took everything. If it did that to the land I bet it would have taken the Imass's lives as well. All though you could theorise that all that power was put inside the Imass instead. Or into the T'lann warren.

You're referring to the dessicated appearance, right? You make a good point. I was using the idea of the Crimson Guard performing a similar ritual and their gradual deterioration as evidence, but that was all in my own head and the CrG ritual has not been concretely synonymized with the Tellan ritual as of yet.

[D'rek]

I don't think there's any reference saying that the Imass became desiccated corpses immediately upon enacting the Ritual of Tellann, is there? I always pictured it as they do this big Ritual, and once it's done everyone pretty much still looks exactly the same, though they might feel a bit different. It's only after years and then millenia of continued un-life with accumulating injuries and general wear and tear that the T'lan Imass' eyes fall out, skin gets torn and rotten, etc and they eventually become zombie-skeleton monsters.

If that's the case, then there's also possibilities like {a} children below a certain age were not included in the Ritual, and could still be raised by their now-T'lan parents who weren't really all that different for the first decade or so until those kids were old enough to live on their own as mortal Imass, or {b} even after the Ritual the children continued growing to adult size despite being undead.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

D, on 09 December 2013 - 03:39 PM, said:

I don't think there's any reference saying that the Imass became desiccated corpses immediately upon enacting the Ritual of Tellann, is there? I always pictured it as they do this big Ritual, and once it's done everyone pretty much still looks exactly the same, though they might feel a bit different. It's only after years and then millenia of continued un-life with accumulating injuries and general wear and tear that the T'lan Imass' eyes fall out, skin gets torn and rotten, etc and they eventually become zombie-skeleton monsters.

That's what I thought, too.

[Aptorian]

I guess that might work as well. Before the connection was drawn between the Crimson Guard and the Imass, it never occurred to me that the transformation might have been a gradual process that took ages.

Maybe the final Esslemont novel will give us some information. It would be spooky if Kilava (if that was her on that hill) shows up on Assassail and tells them that one day they will be weathered corpses as well.

Allthough probably not because the vow doesn't seem to have been as extreme as the ritual.

[Abyss]

Odds are by the time the original Clans attempted the Ritual, most of their kids were dead or dying of starvation due to the Jaghut Ice Ages.
We know some Imass were off with the T3 on the ocean and missed the Ritual (MoI).


We also know there were whole Clans that weren't involved in the Ritual for whatever reason (DoD/TCG)... so either they stayed out of it, weren't around, or....
...the few surviving kids were sent away, possibly with a few guardians, and became those later Clans that attempted the second Ritual ref'd in DoD/TCG.

[D'rek]

Abyss, on 09 December 2013 - 08:13 PM, said:

Odds are by the time the original Clans attempted the Ritual, most of their kids were dead or dying of starvation due to the Jaghut Ice Ages.
We know some Imass were off with the T3 on the ocean and missed the Ritual (MoI).


We also know there were whole Clans that weren't involved in the Ritual for whatever reason (DoD/TCG)... so either they stayed out of it, weren't around, or....
...the few surviving kids were sent away, possibly with a few guardians, and became those later Clans that attempted the second Ritual ref'd in DoD/TCG.

The Brold explained in DoD that they deliberately refused the Ritual in the hopes of going with Kilava, but she wanted to be alone. Still, as you say I'm sure there would be plenty of others who for one reason or another were not part of the Ritual, especially given that the Imass were spread across at least 3 continents at the time of the Ritual and had no internet to help every one of them coordinate the timing of it all

[Kanese S's]

Lots of good ideas here.

I like the note that the Imass may have been too starved to successfully reproduce at that point, in particular. With the climate chaos that the Jaghut ice fields would have caused, it's not hard to believe that they would have had trouble getting enough to eat, especially while waging an all out war. So there may not have been many young children for a few years by the time of the ritual.

[Dolmen 2.0]

Piggyback question...does magic not have a part to play in fertility? The Eres witch had some kind of ability in this regard if I recall? Could the imass not have magicked themselves fertile?

[Aptorian]

Maybe, or they could have made a deal with a god if they didn't hate gods so much at this point. Something like that is probably the whole reason why they underwent the ritual. Olar Ethil manipulated them into it.

But why would they? Why birth more children into a world that was dying? Born only to starve or freeze to death or succumb to what ever sickness was probably ravaging them.

[Kanese S's]

Also Not Brent Weeks, on 10 December 2013 - 04:18 AM, said:

Piggyback question...does magic not have a part to play in fertility? The Eres witch had some kind of ability in this regard if I recall? Could the imass not have magicked themselves fertile?

It's actually somewhat an advantage to be less fertile when malnourished.... if you don't have enough food to feed yourself, how the hell are you going to sustain a zygote/embryo/fetus for nine months, and then feed a child after that?

[Felisin Fatter]

I thought of all the kids starving + infertility. Yet in the days before the ritual Onrack is happily painting caves, and cheating on his wife (okay, maybe not happily... but they al seem pretty energetic). I need to look for that scene, see if it mentions anything about families.

It would make sense actually if the ritual only involved the warriors (probably aboout 90% of the population by that point) and the rest hid away in a cave somewhere far away. A few of them survived, mixed with some other race to create humans or whatever, a few became the later living clans. I can go with that version. Surprisingly 'nice' story actually, which makes me doubt it a little It's also way more reassuring to think this way of Kilava 'killing her entire clan', if only the combatants were present at the time...

[Aptorian]

Actually, considering this is a people that live in a very primitive stage of society, even with the existance of healing magics, you have to expect a high degree of infant mortality and generally low life expectancy up until the kid reaches 5-6 years or so. Even then the Imass probably didn't naturally live longer than 40-50 years if they are like us.

So logically, in a time where they weren't starving or freezing, there would still have been few old people but a ton of children. Like women constantly pushing kids out every year or two for a decade or so at least.

Of course, we can't really guess what the whole sex, children, family dynamic was like in a fantasy neanderthal society but logically there would be a lot of children born in a tribe.

EDIT: My point was that the percentage of fightingable Imass was probably not 90%.

This post has been edited by Not Brent Weeks: 10 December 2013 - 02:58 PM

[Felisin Fatter]

It wouldn't usually be 90%, sure. But there's an ice age that's getting worse and a constant war. So old or wounded people get left behind, pregnancy is avoided because the women are also fighting and kids are quickly trained to be able to defend themselves(or they die). Everyone between 10 and 50 with two legs and two arms is at this point a combatant. The Imass were pretty desperate, basically dying as a species, or they wouldn't have done the ritual.

[Aptorian]

Ah, I see your point.

[Kanese S's]

Felisin Fatter, on 10 December 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

I thought of all the kids starving + infertility. Yet in the days before the ritual Onrack is happily painting caves, and cheating on his wife (okay, maybe not happily... but they al seem pretty energetic). I need to look for that scene, see if it mentions anything about families.

It would make sense actually if the ritual only involved the warriors (probably aboout 90% of the population by that point) and the rest hid away in a cave somewhere far away. A few of them survived, mixed with some other race to create humans or whatever, a few became the later living clans. I can go with that version. Surprisingly 'nice' story actually, which makes me doubt it a little It's also way more reassuring to think this way of Kilava 'killing her entire clan', if only the combatants were present at the time...

Just because they were malnourished doesn't mean that they would have stopped fucking, or stopped painting. Low fertility doesn't mean people don't fuck, it means that the chances of getting pregnant from doing so are significantly reduced.