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Purpose of Hounds of Darkness

#21 User is offline   worry 

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Posted 05 October 2014 - 07:47 PM

You must own your Confusion. You must lay it down at your own feet. You must kneel, place your hands around its throat, and squeeze till it expires. You cannot obligate another to this task -- nay, not even an author. You must do that dirty work personally. Manually. See the light go out of its eyes and feel it travel into yours as Understanding ignites.
They came with white hands and left with red hands.
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#22 User is offline   Abyss 

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Posted 06 October 2014 - 04:28 AM

View PostK, on 05 October 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

If I can't understand the motivations of characters then yes, it needs to be explained better. Obviously there are twists and turns in writing a plot that need to be covered up so they are more impactful (ex. Vader is Luke's father) but I need to who's on who's side, and why they oppose each other, or no impact is made period. In this situation, all I know is that Paran wants to get the Dark Hounds to kill Dejim Nebrahl. I don't know what the hell Poliel has to do with this, I don't know why the Hounds of Shadow can't be used when supposedly Paran and Shadowthrone are on the same side, and another thing, I have no clue what importance there was of including that Jaghut woman Ganath when all she does is get killed a couple hundred pages later.


It doesn't need to be explained better, rather, you don't want to drill down for the explanation, but hey, that's what we are here for....
Poliels been on the scene since MoI, but not active. With the whirlwind devastating 7C she took the opportunity to try to cleanse the continent with plague, which is her aspect and what she does and is spelled out at least twice in the sequence btw.
Paran wasn't powerful enough to kill her himself and Shadowthrone wouldn't risk a direct battle, or losing any of the remaining Hounds, but they could act together to weaken her and put the deragoth in a place where they would do the job for them.
Ganath had nothing to do with this. She had left Paran by then. If you're asking what her importance to the story was, she was one of those random characters SE throws in for history and color. Also, Paran needed her help and his MoD mojo drew them together. Finally , her death showed us that the KN are back on the scene.

View Postworry, on 05 October 2014 - 07:47 PM, said:

You must own your Confusion. You must lay it down at your own feet. You must kneel, place your hands around its throat, and squeeze till it expires. You cannot obligate another to this task -- nay, not even an author. You must do that dirty work personally. Manually. See the light go out of its eyes and feel it travel into yours as Understanding ignites.


Or there is this.
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#23 User is offline   Serenity 

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Posted 08 October 2014 - 12:38 PM

View PostK, on 05 October 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

(ex. Vader is Luke's father)


He is?? Holy shit . . . Posted Image
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#24 User is offline   Abyss 

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Posted 08 October 2014 - 03:20 PM

View PostSerenity, on 08 October 2014 - 12:38 PM, said:

View PostK, on 05 October 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

(ex. Vader is Luke's father)


He is?? Holy shit . . . Posted Image


Also, Dil is a girl, Verbal is Kaiser Soze, Crowe was dead the whole time, so were Grace and the kids, and Ferris Bueller wins.
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#25 User is offline   Serenity 

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Posted 08 October 2014 - 03:23 PM

View PostAbyss, on 08 October 2014 - 03:20 PM, said:

View PostSerenity, on 08 October 2014 - 12:38 PM, said:

View PostK, on 05 October 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

(ex. Vader is Luke's father)


He is?? Holy shit . . . Posted Image


Also, Dil is a girl, Verbal is Kaiser Soze, Crowe was dead the whole time, so were Grace and the kids, and Ferris Bueller wins.


Well you've gone and ruined everything now! :D
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#26 User is offline   Abyss 

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Posted 08 October 2014 - 03:36 PM

View PostSerenity, on 08 October 2014 - 03:23 PM, said:

View PostAbyss, on 08 October 2014 - 03:20 PM, said:

View PostSerenity, on 08 October 2014 - 12:38 PM, said:

View PostK, on 05 October 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

(ex. Vader is Luke's father)


He is?? Holy shit . . . Posted Image


Also, Dil is a girl, Verbal is Kaiser Soze, Crowe was dead the whole time, so were Grace and the kids, and Ferris Bueller wins.


Well you've gone and ruined everything now! :D


The dinosaurs get free, so does Slimer, the shark eats Quint, someone feeds the Mogwai after midnight, Kong dies, so does Cujo, Ripley blows it out the airlock, Jason, Freddy and Michael all come back...
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#27 User is offline   Serenity 

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Posted 08 October 2014 - 08:57 PM

View PostAbyss, on 08 October 2014 - 03:36 PM, said:

View PostSerenity, on 08 October 2014 - 03:23 PM, said:

View PostAbyss, on 08 October 2014 - 03:20 PM, said:

View PostSerenity, on 08 October 2014 - 12:38 PM, said:

View PostK, on 05 October 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

(ex. Vader is Luke's father)


He is?? Holy shit . . . Posted Image


Also, Dil is a girl, Verbal is Kaiser Soze, Crowe was dead the whole time, so were Grace and the kids, and Ferris Bueller wins.


Well you've gone and ruined everything now! :D


The dinosaurs get free, so does Slimer, the shark eats Quint, someone feeds the Mogwai after midnight, Kong dies, so does Cujo, Ripley blows it out the airlock, Jason, Freddy and Michael all come back...



La la la. Not listening. Not listening! :p
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#28 User is offline   Abyss 

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Posted 08 October 2014 - 09:36 PM

View PostSerenity, on 08 October 2014 - 08:57 PM, said:

View PostAbyss, on 08 October 2014 - 03:36 PM, said:

View PostSerenity, on 08 October 2014 - 03:23 PM, said:

View PostAbyss, on 08 October 2014 - 03:20 PM, said:

View PostSerenity, on 08 October 2014 - 12:38 PM, said:

View PostK, on 05 October 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

(ex. Vader is Luke's father)


He is?? Holy shit . . . Posted Image


Also, Dil is a girl, Verbal is Kaiser Soze, Crowe was dead the whole time, so were Grace and the kids, and Ferris Bueller wins.


Well you've gone and ruined everything now! :D


The dinosaurs get free, so does Slimer, the shark eats Quint, someone feeds the Mogwai after midnight, Kong dies, so does Cujo, Ripley blows it out the airlock, Jason, Freddy and Michael all come back...



La la la. Not listening. Not listening! :p




...Rambo surrenders, Matrix kills everyone and saves his daughter, Braddock kills everyone and saves the POWs, Omega Force wins and then flying motorcycles and dancing, Snake gets the President out, Judd Nelson makes out with Molly Ringwald...
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#29 User is offline   Egwene 

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Posted 09 October 2014 - 08:40 PM

Urgent request to MODs:

Please add to the title 'Spoilers for all Books and Films you may read/see may be included'!!!!


I am off to erase all knowledge acquired whilst reading this thread :smoke:
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#30 User is offline   K'chain Paladin 

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Posted 18 October 2014 - 04:52 PM

Finally, thank you for giving me what I want. Clarity. And I don't think that's too much to ask given the size of these books.

View PostAbyss, on 06 October 2014 - 04:28 AM, said:

View PostK, on 05 October 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

If I can't understand the motivations of characters then yes, it needs to be explained better. Obviously there are twists and turns in writing a plot that need to be covered up so they are more impactful (ex. Vader is Luke's father) but I need to who's on who's side, and why they oppose each other, or no impact is made period. In this situation, all I know is that Paran wants to get the Dark Hounds to kill Dejim Nebrahl. I don't know what the hell Poliel has to do with this, I don't know why the Hounds of Shadow can't be used when supposedly Paran and Shadowthrone are on the same side, and another thing, I have no clue what importance there was of including that Jaghut woman Ganath when all she does is get killed a couple hundred pages later.


It doesn't need to be explained better, rather, you don't want to drill down for the explanation, but hey, that's what we are here for....
Poliels been on the scene since MoI, but not active. With the whirlwind devastating 7C she took the opportunity to try to cleanse the continent with plague, which is her aspect and what she does and is spelled out at least twice in the sequence btw.
Paran wasn't powerful enough to kill her himself and Shadowthrone wouldn't risk a direct battle, or losing any of the remaining Hounds, but they could act together to weaken her and put the deragoth in a place where they would do the job for them.
Ganath had nothing to do with this. She had left Paran by then. If you're asking what her importance to the story was, she was one of those random characters SE throws in for history and color. Also, Paran needed her help and his MoD mojo drew them together. Finally , her death showed us that the KN are back on the scene.

View Postworry, on 05 October 2014 - 07:47 PM, said:

You must own your Confusion. You must lay it down at your own feet. You must kneel, place your hands around its throat, and squeeze till it expires. You cannot obligate another to this task -- nay, not even an author. You must do that dirty work personally. Manually. See the light go out of its eyes and feel it travel into yours as Understanding ignites.


Or there is this.

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#31 User is offline   worry 

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Posted 18 October 2014 - 05:45 PM

You're welcome.
They came with white hands and left with red hands.
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#32 User is offline   Adjunct 

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Posted 12 May 2015 - 04:31 AM

View PostAbyss, on 01 October 2014 - 08:57 PM, said:

As of TB, we do not see gods acting directly against other gods. There are threats and plots... aspected mortals clashing ...even ascendants and mortals challenging gods, but at no point in the books so far has one god walked up to another and said 'It's on. BRING IT!'.


Doesn't Mael beat the snot out of the Crippled God in MT?
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#33 User is offline   Abyss 

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Posted 12 May 2015 - 02:50 PM

View PostAdjunct, on 12 May 2015 - 04:31 AM, said:

View PostAbyss, on 01 October 2014 - 08:57 PM, said:

As of TB, we do not see gods acting directly against other gods. There are threats and plots... aspected mortals clashing ...even ascendants and mortals challenging gods, but at no point in the books so far has one god walked up to another and said 'It's on. BRING IT!'.


Doesn't Mael beat the snot out of the Crippled God in MT?


Mael say's he's going to do that, but for all we know he left Withal, walked up to CG, said some mean stuff, maybe gave him a wedgie and walked away.

More importantly, by then Withal had already disrupted the CG's plans and power base. Mael was being opportunistic, and note he didn't kill or free or even really slow down the CG even so.
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#34 User is offline   worry 

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Posted 12 May 2015 - 05:32 PM

That was personal anyway, not political.
They came with white hands and left with red hands.
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#35 User is offline   Herrick The Younger 

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Posted 18 July 2016 - 08:38 PM

How does Paran release those Hounds?

View PostK, on 05 October 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

I have no clue what importance there was of including that Jaghut woman Ganath when all she does is get killed a couple hundred pages later.



When did she die? I don't remember her dying. I finished my second read of this book last week. I thought she just goes away...like how that one T'lan Imass woman in Memories of Ice just shows up, lays a kind of big reveal on us readers, then disappears.
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#36 User is offline   Coltaine - 

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Posted 19 July 2016 - 05:24 AM

View PostHerrick, on 18 July 2016 - 08:38 PM, said:

How does Paran release those Hounds?

View PostK, on 05 October 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

I have no clue what importance there was of including that Jaghut woman Ganath when all she does is get killed a couple hundred pages later.



When did she die? I don't remember her dying. I finished my second read of this book last week. I thought she just goes away...like how that one T'lan Imass woman in Memories of Ice just shows up, lays a kind of big reveal on us readers, then disappears.


Hedge blows the statues up where they were bound into. Similar to what Onrack did in HoC.

Somewhere in the second half of the book, as she returns to the place where Paran met her first. Cause of death: K'Chain Nah'ruk.
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#37 User is offline   Kanese S's 

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Posted 21 July 2016 - 11:14 AM

View PostK, on 28 September 2014 - 02:45 AM, said:

I'm about over halfway into the book and I don't get why Paran is going to all the trouble of releasing the Deragoth to kill Dejim Nebrahl. Why not just ask Cotillion and Shadowtrone to sic their hounds on them? Seeing as Karsa Orlong was able to kill two of them in HoC, there should be no reason why the Hounds of Shadow couldn't get the job done. I'm thinking some plot thread will appear later that requires the Deragoth presence, but I can't see it yet.

There's no kill like overkill. Also, you've seen scenes before in this series where people have to negotiate with Shadowthrone. The guy drives a hard bargain, and Ganoes may have wanted to avoid that.


View PostAndorion, on 28 September 2014 - 03:24 PM, said:

View PostK, on 28 September 2014 - 02:45 AM, said:

I'm about over halfway into the book and I don't get why Paran is going to all the trouble of releasing the Deragoth to kill Dejim Nebrahl. Why not just ask Cotillion and Shadowtrone to sic their hounds on them? Seeing as Karsa Orlong was able to kill two of them in HoC, there should be no reason why the Hounds of Shadow couldn't get the job done. I'm thinking some plot thread will appear later that requires the Deragoth presence, but I can't see it yet.


Well it could be because Paran hates being manipulated by Gods and prefers to do the work himself. Also Deragoth are way more effective than HOunds of Shadow. Also you do not just borrow Shadowthrone's puppies

Precisely. I wouldn't want to owe Shadowthrone a favor big enough to secure the help of his hounds.


View PostK, on 30 September 2014 - 05:06 AM, said:

The problem with these books being so big is that I often have no clue what the more obscure characters' motivations are, but surely there is no benefit for Shadowthrone to allow Dejim Nebrahl to continue existing? Seeing as the Nameless Ones are his enemy?


Yes, but Shadowthrone has a monopoly on Hounds of Shadow and so can essentially set whatever he wants as the price for their help. Ganoes knows this and so doesn't want to ask for Shadowthrone's help unless it's absolutely needed.


View PostK, on 01 October 2014 - 06:27 PM, said:

Pshaw, I have no fear of spoilers, I read it anyway. Though by the time of writing this, I had gotten to the part with Paran
Spoiler
.
But anyways, if that's the case, then I want to know how Paran know, and why exactly wouldn't Shadowthrone and Cotillion not want to take down Poliel anyway since she's on (assumedly) the Crippled God's side?

He didn't kill her with the otataral. He only pinned her in place so that she couldn't escape when the Deragoth arrived.

As to why Shadowthrone and Cotillion don't confront her directly? Because that would trigger a convergence, which is a very dangerous situation for gods to be in. Since she's the Crippled God's ally, that would possibly draw in all the other ascendants on that side and ST and Cots would stand a significant chance of getting killed. Beyond which, even if none of the other ascendants allied to the Crippled God came to help Poliel, she's a pretty powerful deity in her own right, quite a bit older as an ascendant than Shadowthrone and Cotillion, and so they might not have been sure they'd even win, or at least not without substantial weakening.

View PostK, on 04 October 2014 - 03:18 AM, said:

Gah, like I said before, motivations need to be clear here, and the nature of the alliances as well.
Before anybody asks why I am still reading this books six novels in, its because my enjoyment of the characters and the world building outweigh my dislike of not being able to know everything.

Motivations are clear. So are most of the alliances. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to explain them. It's pretty apparent if you just think about what you're reading and connect the dots. :blink:


View PostK, on 04 October 2014 - 06:40 PM, said:

If I don't know how things affect each other, then I have no reason to care about them. I mean, Poliel is pretty much introduced only two hundred pages before she's killed off and I have no idea what her ultimate endgame was, so I neither care that she died, nor that Paran survived, (since I pretty much hate him anyway).

Poliel has been known of for several books now. It's fairly well established that she's probably not nice by the time she's centrally featured. Not everything is going to be spoon fed to you. Characters will only rarely offer lots of exposition in one big chunk because long expository explanations are not generally how people talk to their peers. At least not in person.

Not everyone that wanders in and out of the story is a central figure in it. Ganath is an example of this.

Also why do you hate Paran?


View PostAbyss, on 06 October 2014 - 04:28 AM, said:

View PostK, on 05 October 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

If I can't understand the motivations of characters then yes, it needs to be explained better. Obviously there are twists and turns in writing a plot that need to be covered up so they are more impactful (ex. Vader is Luke's father) but I need to who's on who's side, and why they oppose each other, or no impact is made period. In this situation, all I know is that Paran wants to get the Dark Hounds to kill Dejim Nebrahl. I don't know what the hell Poliel has to do with this, I don't know why the Hounds of Shadow can't be used when supposedly Paran and Shadowthrone are on the same side, and another thing, I have no clue what importance there was of including that Jaghut woman Ganath when all she does is get killed a couple hundred pages later.


It doesn't need to be explained better, rather, you don't want to drill down for the explanation, but hey, that's what we are here for....
Poliels been on the scene since MoI, but not active. With the whirlwind devastating 7C she took the opportunity to try to cleanse the continent with plague, which is her aspect and what she does and is spelled out at least twice in the sequence btw.
Paran wasn't powerful enough to kill her himself and Shadowthrone wouldn't risk a direct battle, or losing any of the remaining Hounds, but they could act together to weaken her and put the deragoth in a place where they would do the job for them.
Ganath had nothing to do with this. She had left Paran by then. If you're asking what her importance to the story was, she was one of those random characters SE throws in for history and color. Also, Paran needed her help and his MoD mojo drew them together. Finally , her death showed us that the KN are back on the scene.

View Postworry, on 05 October 2014 - 07:47 PM, said:

You must own your Confusion. You must lay it down at your own feet. You must kneel, place your hands around its throat, and squeeze till it expires. You cannot obligate another to this task -- nay, not even an author. You must do that dirty work personally. Manually. See the light go out of its eyes and feel it travel into yours as Understanding ignites.


Or there is this.

Pretty much. Make people sick is pretty much what Pol does, so getting to inflict an entire subcontinent with plague likely makes her giddy, or at least if she is cool with her aspect it does. Shadowthrone and Cotillion don't want an all-out fight at this point (and in fact their general MO seems to be to avoid them), so it's much better to have the Master of the Deck, a supposedly neutral party, bait the Deragoth, another neutral party, into taking out Poliel instead.
Laseen did nothing wrong.

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