[petete]

I just finished reading Assail, and while I liked it, I didn't understand the point of the pact. I mean, if they didn't reach an accord, would the FK have killed everyone in the continent? why stop there, why not try the world (and be utterly destroyed)?

We are told that there was a previous accord, the "ancient founding of the peace", so why didn't they take action before? I mean we have J vs TI, FK fanatics who will wipe everyone else, KN waging ware against the KMalle (okay, maybe they don't count as they are the same race essentially), so why didn't they react before? just because they were sleeping? so this new pact is not binding, as the judges and executioners are hibernating?

Just that

[worry]

Hey they like to work on the down low. It's an underground movement. They ain't about to cave to anyone. If they feel like hibernating, you'll just have to bear with them. Don't be so tunnel-visioned.

[Abyss]

petete, on 22 July 2015 - 01:17 PM, said:

I just finished reading Assail, and while I liked it, I didn't understand the point of the pact. I mean, if they didn't reach an accord, would the FK have killed everyone in the continent? why stop there, why not try the world (and be utterly destroyed)?

We are told that there was a previous accord, the "ancient founding of the peace", so why didn't they take action before? I mean we have J vs TI, FK fanatics who will wipe everyone else, KN waging ware against the KMalle (okay, maybe they don't count as they are the same race essentially), so why didn't they react before? just because they were sleeping? so this new pact is not binding, as the judges and executioners are hibernating?

For one thing, the FA are absolutely certain that they could purge the entire world of everyone, if they decided to.


For another, based on TCG and Assail, no one can say with absolute certainty that they couldn't. Not even Silchas, and he wiped out whole cities of them.

Point being, way back whenever, when the FA told the three other races 'sign this or else', they decided signing was a better idea. Then it seems like most of the FA went to sleep and the other races went about whatever they were going to get up to anyways.

But it appears that none of that went on on Assail, so the 'pure' FA had no reason to get annoyed, while the remainder were either imprisoned (Calm, Serenity), killed (dead cities in RG), or went about their long-term plan to kill everyone, culminating in TCG.

[gandrin]

Still not impressed with their ability to kill everyone. I think they would have been sorely disappointed. Possibly devastating, but unsuccessful

They needed an army of non-FA in TCG, and still barely made it outside of one small area despite having a piece of TCG for much of the time.
The group of children escaped from them, and like resistant bacteria developed an immunity to their scream attack.
Yedan, and QB+Kalam could dispatch them quite well (not Ascendants, but obviously not normal people either, but isn't this world literally filled with "not normal people" and Ascendants?). Mappo Runt did OK, and with Oblala killed yet another. That's 3 battles, 3 dead FA, one dead Trell and 4 survivors.
Silchas (Ascendant/Soletaken) killed cities of them. But remember the Bonehunters nearly killed HIM, much to his surprise.


So by my count, with the main characters all fighting against an exterminating FA force small enough to live in those caves, I'm not too worried. Lots of casualties, but not a big problem.

Even if we limited it to small groups, I'd almost take Dassem's Seguleh or the Moranth straight up. Add in some Mott Irregulars + some mages?

One underrecognized recurring theme is that the new races really hold up quite well to the superpowers of the past (e.g. Mok and Tool, Bole and the K'Chain 'demon', Yedan and FA, The Shards and Crimson Guard, Bonehunters and Silchas-dragon, etc).

This post has been edited by gandrin: 11 August 2015 - 07:32 PM

[Andorion]

gandrin, on 11 August 2015 - 07:29 PM, said:

Still not impressed with their ability to kill everyone. I think they would have been sorely disappointed. Possibly devastating, but unsuccessful

They needed an army of non-FA in TCG, and still barely made it outside of one small area despite having a piece of TCG for much of the time.
The group of children escaped from them, and like resistant bacteria developed an immunity to their scream attack.
Yedan, and QB+Kalam could dispatch them quite well (not Ascendants, but obviously not normal people either, but isn't this world literally filled with "not normal people" and Ascendants?). Mappo Runt did OK, and with Oblala killed yet another. That's 3 battles, 3 dead FA, one dead Trell and 4 survivors.
Silchas (Ascendant/Soletaken) killed cities of them. But remember the Bonehunters nearly killed HIM, much to his surprise.


So by my count, with the main characters all fighting against an exterminating FA force small enough to live in those caves, I'm not too worried. Lots of casualties, but not a big problem.

Even if we limited it to small groups, I'd almost take Dassem's Seguleh or the Moranth straight up. Add in some Mott Irregulars + some mages?

One underrecognized recurring theme is that the new races really hold up quite well to the superpowers of the past (e.g. Mok and Tool, Bole and the K'Chain 'demon', Yedan and FA, The Shards and Crimson Guard, Bonehunters and Silchas-dragon, etc).

In TCG there were only a handful of pures. And most of them were very hard to defeat. Hood got 2. Ublala ith the ancient armour got 1, but in a surprise attack. The children managed to turn the wrath of the fragment FA god on a couple of pures. It took the combined effort of 5 Imass to take out 1.

In Assail all of them were pures. They would have been almost impossible to defeat. Sure, Seguleh Island or Mott Wood might have repulsed them, but most of the world would have fallen before them. Remember TCG was a convergence with a number of heavyweights concentrated in Kolanse. In normal circumstances large parts of Wu would have no protection.

[D'iver koala bear]

there was a lot of forkrul in assail and they were all pure unlike over at kolanse where there was only 6-8 pures who were probly very old but I'm guessing that the purrs in assail are the oldest and most powerful and if jaghut think its a bad idea to go up there and protect it from the ignorant I'd say that the assail are very powerful

[Abyss]

There's sort of the key point in the last two posts... eight pure FA took over a continent and almost destroyed the world.

Imagine what a few hundred could do.

Those humans and ascendants who have shown they can take out individual FA can't be everywhere. That leaves the dragons.

[Andorion]

Abyss, on 12 August 2015 - 08:29 PM, said:

There's sort of the key point in the last two posts... eight pure FA took over a continent and almost destroyed the world.

Imagine what a few hundred could do.

Those humans and ascendants who have shown they can take out individual FA can't be everywhere. That leaves the dragons.

Who are mostly massive dicks

[Nevyn]

The point of the pact is that there was one before, and while there was provocation by some tyrants, the Imass broke it when they set out to annihilate the Jaghut.

The new 'big 4' races, plus representatives of others, are present, and silverfox wants to end the Imass war anyway, so they take the opportunity to renew the 'vow'

I don't think the FA were in any special way meant to be the enforcers of the first vow. They didn't 'take action' because they were not disturbed (these ones anyway). They are a judgmental and very dangerous race, but they were not the arbiters of the peace, merely one of the founding races that made it.

Their threats are a separate matter (although like others, I think these FA could do a lot of damage), and probably something you just have to navigate around as a powerful being having any sort of contact with them whatsoever.

[worry]

That's a good point about the FA just being one of the four founding races and not really the "judicial branch" in any formal sense.

They do have a sanctifying air about them, but the real reason traveling to them would still be important for a second vow is simply making sure they are part of it, as a defensive measure. Who knows what they would have decided to do if they were left out of a vow that superseded the first one?

[Mob]

The Forkrul are clearly incredibly powerful, as evidenced by the fact that other scary forces are cautious of them/positively intimated by them, but they are not invincible. Their arrogance and conceit is their biggest problem, as is stated in Assail and witnessed in The Crippled God.

It's interesting that the new Founding by the Four Races did not include people speaking explicitly for the humans. It was an update of an old pact. Its relevance to the broader, modern, world was ambiguous - especially beyond the continent of Assail. Humans aren't really party to it, and are clearly too warlike to be peaceful. I doubt we'll see Forkrul in the books again, but my own sense of the likely historical direction of events moving forward is that [1] considering human warlike behaviour [2] the Forkruls' judgemental, cruel, arrogant and at times totalitarian tendencies, as well as [3] the fact that the mantra of the series might be 'don't mess with the mortals', at some point in the future humans and Forkrul will come into serious conflict. The Forkrul like to play the role of arbiter, while we humans won't suffer anyone telling us what to do. The possibility of a clash is obvious. And the Malazans now have a foothold on the continent, and will presumably seek to conquer it at some point.

Ultimately, whatever their power, the Forkrul are actually far less likely to survive in a world dominated by humans than the other old races. They reflect the worst, most arrogant and vicious aspects of human nature. War seems inevitable. And while they are allotted a major role by the older races out of respect, I do wonder how collectively bright/intelligent they are. Are they cunning enough to deal with humans? I can't help but feel they are on the endangered species list.

This post has been edited by Mob: 09 January 2016 - 05:16 PM

[Malaz Mule]

gandrin, on 11 August 2015 - 07:29 PM, said:

Still not impressed with their ability to kill everyone. I think they would have been sorely disappointed. Possibly devastating, but unsuccessful

Agreed. I know its not the done thing to compare the two authors, but this kind of mistake by a previous big, old, scary force is a classic Erikson trope. He would have loved to see the Forkrul storm out of the north laying waste only to be sent packing by a motley alliance of ne'er do wells. He would probably have had more than 100 people in each army while he was at it... :|

Thinking on it, this is probably how it should have gone. Theres a new power structure now and "the pact" of oldbies not including humans isnt relevant in this glorious new dawn.