[Fiddler]

I could be totally off-base but I thought...

Spoiler

That the Tiste Liosan who were assaulting the Whorl were the Stormriders, they'd been at it for quite some time according to L'oric and they had the backing of his mage sister and were all practitioners of the Liosan warren to lesser degrees, (i think it was Warran who says that).

I could just be totally stupid though.

[Mob]

Fiddler, on 20 December 2014 - 02:53 AM, said:

I could be totally off-base but I thought...

Spoiler

That the Tiste Liosan who were assaulting the Whorl were the Stormriders, they'd been at it for quite some time according to L'oric and they had the backing of his mage sister and were all practitioners of the Liosan warren to lesser degrees, (i think it was Warran who says that).

I could just be totally stupid though.

That's very interesting. And the Riders are described as pale and thin, i.e. possible Liosan. It doesn't seem to fit with what we know about the capabilities of the Tiste, but it's a possibility.

My own sense at the moment, as explained in my last post, is that the Riders are probably the descendants of the original inhabitants of Korel/Fist (the fisherman seen in the first scene of the book). Given that the recurrent theme of the book is about everyone in Kore/Fistl being originally an outlander/invader, this would seem to fit with the thematic thrust of the book and some of the textual evidence in terms of the Riders looking human, speaking a version of Koreli, bleeding red and their enmity towards the Lady. Of course, how drowned humans would end up as the Riders, with their magic, is a difficult question!

ICE didn't drop enough hints about the Riders to really permit a good guess. A mistake, in my opinion. Even a close and forensic reading of the text yields little.

[worry]

Off-world souls possessing the bodies of the drowned?

[Mob]

worry, on 20 December 2014 - 03:54 PM, said:

Off-world souls possessing the bodies of the drowned?

Possibly, but again I don't see any textual evidence for it. One of the frustrating things with the Stormriders is the fact that ICE offers so little, even in the way of hints. The fact that Greymane sees himself as righting 'an ancient wrong' (Stonewielder, p. 806) in destroying the wall and allowing the Riders to swarm over it onto the land, and when this happens in a huge tidal wave, 'left behind in its passing lay an entirely new coastline, resculpted and washed clean' are perhaps significant statements from ICE; they lead me to believe that the righting the 'wrong' is connected to what happened in the first scene in the book, with the destruction of the original inhabitants with the fall of the CG and then, in the next scene, the Lady later tasking recent arrivals to Fist with building a wall to keep out the Riders.

I could be totally wrong, but I think that the Riders are Uli and his brethren from the first scene. They, being the first inhabitants, are the only non-'invaders' to the continent.

[Fiddler]

Well, I liked the book but it was really horribly bad at resolving what the Riders were.

The thing to me that makes it seem like it just about has to be the Liosan is

a) They were sending squads through the whorl to try and destroy what they named the Destroyer or whatever, I'm guessing it was TCG as he hasn't been killed yet.

The whorl changes things that go through it as per Warran.

But my quote fu is off tonight so I'll just have to live in mystery, but I don't get the sense that ICE was introducing the "Underwater Tiste" or "Tiste Scuba" or whatever, he just
doesn't do much introducing.

[heavymetaltroll]

We do know what the cripple gods followers look like, Baruk has summoned one in TtT, basically look like humans, with jade eyes.

The more I think about your theory of the stormriders being the washed away original inhabitants of Korel, the less likely I think it is. There are enough descendents of original inhabitants in the story that if they were linked it would of been mentioned by someone.

Spoiler

As to why Celeste would return to the crippled god while the Lady needed to be dragged kicking and screaming, I think thats because she had worshippers and thousands of years of blood sacrifice giving her enough power to be able to resist.

[D'iver koala bear]

I think you could be right about the inhabitants of Korel

Spoiler

in blood and bone we see skinner kill a load of crab people that the automaton brings to life at the meckros City using a part of the crippled God and they were not intelligent because they were crabs in the first place but hears my thinking

If Uli and a few other human get hit by tidal wave caused by crippled God and then get bashed up against some jaghut iceberg investing them with the ice sorcery and getting mutated by a shard of the crippled God aswell

If you are going to put spoilers from another book YOU HAVE TO USE SPOILER TAGS.

-Vengeance

[D'iver koala bear]

Spoiler

a) They were sending squads through the whorl to try and destroy what they named the Destroyer or whatever, I'm guessing it was TCG as he hasn't been killed yet.

No the destroyer was not the crippled God he was a crazy Mage from the mines in seven cities yathengar I think his name might of been and he was channeling chaos like hairlock and bellurdan end up doing

[D'iver koala bear]

Sorry on my phone and new didn't know about spoiler tags