[WinterPhoenix]

I have quite a lot of this book left to read, I am only about 300 or so pages into a 1200 page tome, but I was struck by something Quick Ben said to the Adjunct after having seen the dozen or so Skykeeps inside the 'Imperial Warren'. Thus far in my reading of MBotF I have come to regard QB with some measure of authority, that is to say I tend to read his musings and theories as worth my time and heavy regard. I was struck by his comments about the KCCM and the Imperial Warren though, because I found myself thinking that, that cannot possibly be the case. We see the creation of the Imperial Warren in the prologue for MOI, do we not? When K'rul forms a place within himself for the ravages visited upon Jacuruku by Kallor's hand, allowing for the land itself to heal over time. If seeing him do this wasn't enough proof, we also have Kalam's discovery of Kallor's symbol within the warren as evidence that they are one and the same place. The KCCM are long 'extinct' by this time (or thought to be so, certainly much diminished in numbers at any rate), in fact it is Kallor himself that tells us in MOI that it was the 'sorcery' of the KCCM matrons that prevented the Elder Gods from coming to this world - from Starvald Demelain presumably - how Kallor possesses such knowledge is itself a mystery, he certainly cannot be as old as the KCCM, the immortality was a curse placed upon him long after their presumed extinction. So by the time we read the scene in the MOI prologue, enough time has passed since the apparent extinction of the KCCM to allow the Elder Gods to gather a goodly amount of worshipers, and the attendant powers, and then for these worshipers and powers to begin to wane, thus the Imperial Warren K'rul seemingly creates cannot possibly have been the warren of the KCCM?

I guess as well this creates all sorts of questions as to how long warrens have actually existed for, not to mention that if K'rul physically created warrens (with some help it seems from aspected dragons of some kind, though i'm sure I'll learn more as to that as I finish this book) then where did the Elder Gods exist before then? Did they all exist in the same place? Togg, whom we also see in the prologue to MOI disappears into what I assume is the realm of chaos at the end of said prologue, and if I had to guess I would assume that the Skykeeps we have seen in this book had spent some indeterminate time in Chaos before appearing in the Imperial Warren, else I can't see why they hadn't already been discovered. Safe perhaps to assume then that Chaos predates the coming of the Elder Gods, but is Chaos actually a warren? It is referred to as such in GotM, but from the manner in which it has been spoken of since (admittedly very sparsely) I always assumed this was simply a discrepancy caused by the fact that GotM predates the rest of the series by a number of years. Similarly do the Jaghut and the T'lan Imass and their warrens predate the coming of the Elder Gods? Certainly the KCCM seem to have been long gone even when we see Pran Chole in MOI, but we have no way of knowing how long the Imass or the Jaghut had been around using Tellann and Omtose Phellack by that point, so if they predate the coming of the Elders that causes another problem. And of course there is all the Kurald's and how they fit into the whole grand scheme, especially pertinent regarding Draconus, who's particular heritage I'm not really sure of, Eleint, Elder God or both? I'm guessing alot of this will have been answered by series end, but also from the manner in which warrens are talked about by people who have read all the books, I don wonder how much the reader is still in the dark.

Anyway to revisit my original question, the Imperial Warren cannot be the racial warren of the KCCM, can it? In that vein do we ever actually find out for sure if the KCCM had a racial warren, or whether or not their sorcery was somehow different in origin? I know we get that very oblique reference to their sorcery (as Kaschan I think) by Fear, when he and his brothers visit the site of Scabbandari Bloodeye's shattered skull in MT, I was never very sure how much of that scene was truthful or simply Tiste Edur mythology though.

This post has been edited by WinterPhoenix: 11 January 2016 - 12:11 AM

[worry]

I don't really want to answer any of your questions (and btw, you mention a QB quote sparked this thread but don't ever actually provide it), but I will pose some: Why assume the presence of sky keeps in the Imperial Warren means anything to do with ownership/aspect of a warren? I mean, Quick Ben is there too. Why not ask whether the Imperial Warren is HIS racial warren?

[WinterPhoenix]

worry, on 11 January 2016 - 12:24 AM, said:

I don't really want to answer any of your questions (and btw, you mention a QB quote sparked this thread but don't ever actually provide it), but I will pose some: Why assume the presence of sky keeps in the Imperial Warren means anything to do with ownership/aspect of a warren? I mean, Quick Ben is there too. Why not ask whether the Imperial Warren is HIS racial warren?

Ah sorry, I made an assumption that people would remember the quote I am referring to, stupid assumption, it might have been a very long time since people on here read this book, even with regular re-reads.

Basically, I am referencing the conversation QB has with Adjunct Tavore, and QB never says that the Imperial Warren 'IS' the racial warren of the KCCM, simply that it could be. The manner of the conversation suggests he believes it to be a distinct possibility, otherwise why mention it to his superior, however, we as the reader seem to have knowledge that makes it an impossibility. Put simply QB's level of knowledge thus far leads me to have faith in his suppositions - at least as far as you can have faith in any suppositions within the MBotF. My point being, that I, the reader am not making any assumptions about the presence of skykeeps having anything to do with the aspect of the warren, quite the opposite. It is QB himself who seems to be doing that, and that's what confuses me, after all I have made my peace with the fact that certain characters in MBotF always know more than they let on.

Anywho, I found the page again, so here is the conversations I am referring to, at least the important section anyhow:

"'It's an old warren, effectively dead and abandoned, although, of course, not nearly as dead or abandoned as it first seems. Now, there is no known warren attributed to the K'Chain Che'Malle , but that does not mean one never existed.'
'You believe the Imperial Warren was originally the K'Chain Che'Malle warren?'
The High Mage shrugged. 'It's possible, Adjunct.'

Now don't get me wrong I realise that this isn't exactly him expounding knowledge he is certain of, not nearly, however the context of the conversation lends a certain gravity to his saying it, he has enough of a belief in the possibility to reveal that to his superior, the Adjunct - certainly he might not like, or trust her, but the nature of the Malazan empire leads me to believe he wouldn't outright lie or mislead.

[worry]

Ah, thank you for posting that. Okay, what I'm getting out of that is QB's supposition -- in a thinking-out-loud kind of way -- is that the Imperial Warren as we know it (the remnants of Jacuruku) is simply new wallpaper on an old warren (the KC's old one), rather that one made out of whole-cloth for the Imperial Warren. In other words, K'rul has taken an old, dusty, seemingly abandoned warren and given it an Extreme Warren Makeover.

But despite being a pretty smart dude, QB thinking aloud, of course, still ≠ SE feeding us word-of-God information.

[WinterPhoenix]

worry, on 11 January 2016 - 01:12 AM, said:

Ah, thank you for posting that. Okay, what I'm getting out of that is QB's supposition -- in a thinking-out-loud kind of way -- is that the Imperial Warren as we know it (the remnants of Jacuruku) is simply new wallpaper on an old warren (the KC's old one), rather that one made out of whole-cloth for the Imperial Warren. In other words, K'rul has taken an old, dusty, seemingly abandoned warren and given it an Extreme Warren Makeover.

But despite being a pretty smart dude, QB thinking aloud, of course, still ≠ SE feeding us word-of-God information.

Yes, I suppose that is a possibility, certainly I don't assume QB's thoughts to be SE's omniscient information, however, I do lend him a level of credibility that I do not give to most characters in the universe. If he has an opinion or theory, I listen. Anyhow, if K'rul didn't create the warren there and then, and it was an abandoned warren of the KCCM (or possibly of some other as yet unmentioned group) that creates the problem I referred to in my first comment. K'rul created the warrens, or so we have been lead to believe. Here is the exact sentence with K'rul's fashioning of the warren in the MOI prologue:

"They merged their power to draw chains around a continent of slaughter, then pulled it into a warren created for that sole purpose, leaving the land itself bared. To heal."


The way the sentence is written is a little ambiguous, that is you can't be certain whether the warren was created there and then for the sole purpose of 'drawing chains round a continent of slaughter' - which is what I took from the scene when I first read it, and honestly what I still believe is the intention behind the sentence - or whether he is pulling the continent of slaughter into a warren created for the sole purpose of slaughter, i.e a warren that already existed dedicated to killing, an idea that certainly seems to fit the K'Chain so far as we know them. So you could argue that we are not told directly that he created the warren right there and then, long after the extinction of the KCCM, if this then is the case then either K'rul did not create all warrens, or contrived to create a warren for the sole purpose slaughter. Either is possible I guess, though if we believe Kallor's comments later in MOI, that is was the KCCM Matron's sorcery that kept the Elder Gods from entering the Malazan world, it's somewhat harder to believe that K'rul is the progenitor of said sorcery. So I should assume that believing K'rul to be the source of all warrens is a simplification of the truth, perhaps he merely imposed a certain level of order on something that preexisted his own influence. For what it's worth my prevailing theory is that either the K'Chain or the Forkrul Assail have something important to do with Chaos, currently leaning towards the K'Chain, seeing as what little I know of the Forkrul so far suggests that are obsessed with order.

[worry]

All very interesting thoughts. All I can say to that is: hurry up and finish the series!

[WinterPhoenix]

I will certainly be making all endeavours to do just that, I'm already reading in most of my free time, which unfortunately is not a good a percentage of my time as I would like :/

[Gorefest]

Just keep in mind that a Warren is not the same as a Hold. K'rul is only said to have created the Warrens. As we learn in MT, Holds have been superseded by Warrens almost everywhere apart from Lether, where Gothos' ritual held time back. So QB and Tavore probably would not think of racial Warrens as Holds (or QB would not use that term when talking to a non-initiate even if he himself would know about the term Holds). They'd probably call it something like elder warrens or racial warrens. Try not to get too hung up on the terminology, as you are dealing with unreliable narrators combined with a rather ambiguous and poorly defined magic system from an in-world perspective. It'll become (a bit) clearer as the series progresses, I think.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 11 January 2016 - 01:15 PM

[Aptorian]

My assumption was always that the reason why the Nahruk showed up in the Imperial Warren was because of Jacuruku. We see that ancient machinery is buried in the warren, most likely the ruins of older KCCM civilizations that were situated on the continent once.

There might be some ancient connection that only makes sense to the Nahruk. Like an old black box or number station buried in the ashes of the Imperial Warren.

[Abyss]

I always figured it was just a convenient strategic place to wait/gather/hide... barely travelled, travellers frequently end up dead or disappeared, and easy access to everywhere else if you have the power to open gates, which they do since they got there in the first place.

[Andorion]

As Apt remarked, the ancient machinery is a pointer that the K'chain probably had ancient dealings in Jacuruku. The Nahruk probably found the backdoor open.

[worry]

All well and good, but WP's concern isn't what QB has just seen, it's QB's theorizing about the history of the warren. It's part timeline question, part history, party mythology. And no answer is going to be satisfying until he's done w/ the series and perhaps even the prequels.

[WinterPhoenix]

worry, on 11 January 2016 - 08:49 PM, said:

All well and good, but WP's concern isn't what QB has just seen, it's QB's theorizing about the history of the warren. It's part timeline question, part history, party mythology. And no answer is going to be satisfying until he's done w/ the series and perhaps even the prequels.

Yeah As Worry points out, I have no trouble understanding that the K'Chain have found there way to the Imperial Warren, in fact I had come to the conclusion that it was quite possibly something to do with ancient K'Chain dealings upon the continent of Jacuruku, we are told that the K'Chain had a presence on most continents in the scenes withing Raraku's Memories in HoC - and that they were rebuffed time and again in Seven Cities by the Deragoth. I had made the connections between the machinery and the K'Chain, especially after the scene where Icarium examines a KCCM machine underneath that underground pool, before he and Mappo find Sorrit's dead body.

I think Worry is probably right, insofar as I am going to chew on the questions I was asking in this thread right up until such time as I am finished the series, hopefully this wont take me very long now, at least I finally own every book in the series - with the exception of the novellas, which I'm not sure whether to buy or not.

Gorefest makes a point which throws what understanding I thought I already had into some disarray, I was under the impression that the effect of Gothos' ritual had prevented the peoples of Lether from moving to Houses from Holds, but that both concepts exist within warrens, I can't say as I'd even considered that Holds were separate from warrens, and this in itself leads to more questions. Thinking about it now, I have a feeling the Crimson Guard mage in MT does say something about trouble accessing warrens on Lether, I believe I have somehow failed to see the larger consequences of this. I can't say as it is not mightily confusing, after all the throne of the Beast Hold is within a warren, no? Anywho these are questions I could spend much time asking and debating the answers, perhaps this is time better spent reading towards a greater clarity, however.

Btw, Worry, I absolutely love the concept of 'Party Mythology' sounds like the name of an episode of Community tbh

This post has been edited by WinterPhoenix: 11 January 2016 - 10:39 PM

[Gorefest]

Just to clarify, I didn't say they were separate, just that they aren't necessarily the same thing.

[Gorefest]

Okay, that was perhaps a rather odd definition of 'clarify'. Looking forward to seeing your observations on the nature of magic in mbotf when you've digested it all, you are throwing up some really nice points that are food for thought.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 11 January 2016 - 11:37 PM

[Kanese S's]

Quick Ben is a smart dude in series. However, he is not an author avatar with absolute knowledge.

Also, Kallor is even less reliable a narrator. Even if what he says is true, was it necessary for the KCCM to be entirely gone for the Elder Gods to come, or just less powerful than they once were?

A lot of this has to do with how the prologue of MOI is worded. Whose perspective is it actually from? The vast majority of this series is from various characters' perspectives, even though it's 3rd person narration.


Anyway, sorry I don't have any solid answers for you. Keep reading.

[WinterPhoenix]

Gorefest, on 11 January 2016 - 11:36 PM, said:

Okay, that was perhaps a rather odd definition of 'clarify'. Looking forward to seeing your observations on the nature of magic in mbotf when you've digested it all, you are throwing up some really nice points that are food for thought.

'The winter clarity that clouds my mind', it seems as though such odd definitions of clarity are certainly an MBotF thing

Kanese S's, ya I realise that QB is not an authorial avatar possessed of omniscient knowledge, that is to say that when I claim to hold his theories and comments in high regard, that regard is still contextual within the MBotF series, i.e believe none of what you see and even less of what you hear lol

I just found it odd to see a relatively intelligent character expounding a theory I knew, or as has been made clear, thought I knew to be categorically false, based on inferences and outright statements of the narrative up till that point. In all other instances I had made my peace with the fact that QB is far more knowledgeable than me the floundering reader, in this case it felt, and still feels, as though this particular theory is at odds with my, obviously incomplete, understanding of the wickedly complex magic system that these fantastic novels posses.

Perhaps I shall have more to say once I have completed this tome (not to mention the further tomes), I need more hours in the day alas :/

This post has been edited by WinterPhoenix: 12 January 2016 - 01:26 AM

[Gorefest]

You're hoping for insights after your first read, do you?

Who wants to gently broach the subject of rereads to WP?