[Ozymandiac]

I'm curious, what were your expectations previous to this book as to the locations in this book? And after? I looked around but didn't see anyone else discussing the case below, but it was an eye-opener for me. Maybe this was obvious to others, maybe not everybody saw it. So here goes.


Before FoL

I always thought the Tiste were invaders from another realm. They fled their homeworld due to some disaster and arrived in waves to the world we call Wu, mostly to the continent of Lether.

Then I started eading Forge of Darkness, and nothing changed that presumption. The realm of Kurald Galain was expanded by showing a map of the Jaghut lands etc that were to the west/north/south/whatever. I explained that away, arguing that the Jaghut were perhaps present in all world, were explorers in their solitude, whatever. Everything still fitted with my asumption that the Tiste were drived from their homeworld and were forced to flee to Wu.


After FoL

Then I started with Fall of Light, and several revelations dawned on me:
- Dog Runners = Imass (don't laugh, I only realised that when I started FoL)
- blue skinned Ilnap = Napans

I began thinking that a LOT of species were already present in the world of Kurald Galain and its surroundings. In fact, everybody was already here except the humans. I got suspicious at that point.

And then a passage came up in FoL, regarding the dying Azath House in Omtose Phellack. 11 Seregahl are sent by Hood to weaken a god trapped by the Azath House. The god and the company of Seregahl weaken each other:

Quote

Gethol spat mud from his mouth, and then coughed and looked over to the Seregahl. 'Five went down', he said. 'That should do.'

Compare that to what happens in Midnight Tides, when trouble comes up at the Azath House in Letheras, also dying/dead:

Quote

Round a mud-smeared barrow, over a fallen tree, to come to a halt ten paces from what had once been an extensive, elongated mound now torn apart and steaming, mud sliding down as five huge figures dragged themselves free. [...] We are the Seregahl,' the lead Toblakai said.

So: both Azath houses are dying/dead, both hold 5 Seregahl. This was mindblowing for me, because this means Omtose Phellack is located exactlywhere Letheras is 1000s of years later. This means the entire map showing the Jaghut realm is located on Lether, and by extension also the Tiste realms, since people travel by mundane means from the one map to the other. In turn, my whole view of Tiste invading the Malazan world was disproved. Am I the only one psyched by this?!

[Coltaine -]

Yeah, Letheras is build on Omtose Phellack. Nice WTF moment.

I already thought that something must be wrong with the whole Tiste Invasion stuff in FoD. Or at least their origin story. A city named Omtose Phellack near Kharkanas? And nearly everyone lives there?

My best guess is that K'rul will do what he has also done to Jacuruku. Putting the realm of Kurald Galain, and the others, somehow in different warrens so that the land can heal. Or the Tiste can't kill each other anymore.

[Adulation]

Mind-boggling discovery. It is interesting to also note that these Azath can interconnect even wider spans of land than what's on the planet they reside on. I remember a passage in DG where Fidler and co. are mesmerized by the maps depicted on the Azath's walls, they actually interpret them as a vaster network, far vaster than they can imagine. Spoilers?! Up high to the Crippled God who comes from something outside the Warrens.

[Ozymandiac]

Coltaine93, on 31 May 2016 - 04:11 PM, said:

Yeah, Letheras is build on Omtose Phellack. Nice WTF moment.

I already thought that something must be wrong with the whole Tiste Invasion stuff in FoD. Or at least their origin story. A city named Omtose Phellack near Kharkanas? And nearly everyone lives there?

My best guess is that K'rul will do what he has also done to Jacuruku. Putting the realm of Kurald Galain, and the others, somehow in different warrens so that the land can heal. Or the Tiste can't kill each other anymore.

Sweet, I was thinking I was the only one getting all excited about that. And yes, I was also thinking the same thing about some Krulesque warren move. My guess is that some warrens are memories aspected to elemental forces. So... what I mean by that is that several races (Tiste, Jaghut) seem to draw power from something that is also a location, a realm (Kurald Galain, Omtose Phellack). And when you see the Shake using Gallan's Road to go to Kharkanas, it is my guess they go back to the place that was removed from Wu and deposited in a separate warren. Does this make any sense? Seems like wargarbl when I read my own post

Adulation, on 31 May 2016 - 05:26 PM, said:

Mind-boggling discovery. It is interesting to also note that these Azath can interconnect even wider spans of land than what's on the planet they reside on. I remember a passage in DG where Fidler and co. are mesmerized by the maps depicted on the Azath's walls, they actually interpret them as a vaster network, far vaster than they can imagine. Spoilers?! Up high to the Crippled God who comes from something outside the Warrens.

You just mentioned my favorite scene, in probably the entire series That scene really showed us that the handfull of Azath houses are not enough to fill a map like Wu, so the sky's the limit!

This post has been edited by Ozymandiac: 31 May 2016 - 05:52 PM

[worry]

Someone guessed the Lether connection just from FoD, which I found impressive. I forget who, unfortunately. Before that I thought maybe it was 7 Cities, due to the Jaghut Odan and cuz I thought the Vitr might be where Raraku is now. But w/ Lether in mind reading FoL it got a whole lot of potential confirmation with the Azath and the location of the High King.

[Coltaine -]

Ozymandiac, on 31 May 2016 - 05:50 PM, said:

Sweet, I was thinking I was the only one getting all excited about that. And yes, I was also thinking the same thing about some Krulesque warren move. My guess is that some warrens are memories aspected to elemental forces. So... what I mean by that is that several races (Tiste, Jaghut) seem to draw power from something that is also a location, a realm (Kurald Galain, Omtose Phellack). And when you see the Shake using Gallan's Road to go to Kharkanas, it is my guess they go back to the place that was removed from Wu and deposited in a separate warren. Does this make any sense? Seems like wargarbl when I read my own post

Yes, you are not the only one.
It actually makes mostly sense. Not sure about the memory aspect. But removed from Wu and deposited in a warren is propably right I think. Hopefully we will see it in Walk in Shadows.

[nacht]

I was excited about this connection too. I had planned to overlay the Lether maps from Reapers Gale on the FoD maps but didnt quite get to it.
If I remembered Reaper's Gale correctly, the path that Silchas and company take seemed to take them from Lether to Bluerose to KG to SD.

If this hypothesis is correct, then Kharakanas is somehwere near Bluerose Mountain range.

[Ozymandiac]

nacht, on 31 May 2016 - 09:46 PM, said:

I was excited about this connection too. I had planned to overlay the Lether maps from Reapers Gale on the FoD maps but didnt quite get to it.
If I remembered Reaper's Gale correctly, the path that Silchas and company take seemed to take them from Lether to Bluerose to KG to SD.

If this hypothesis is correct, then Kharakanas is somehwere near Bluerose Mountain range.

I played with the old and new maps for a while, but it didn't get me anywhere. The thing is, the Kharkanas trilogy shows 2 maps, but it's not 100% clear where one is compared to the other... But I agree/hope that the Tiste lands are somewhere around Bluerose.

[Felisin Fatter]

I concluded from FoD and the MoI prologue and some wiki surfing that it was Genabackis, based on:
- Location of Imass / dog runners, Giants, oceans etc.
- Place names like blackdog / greydog
- The fact that Scabby knew nothing about Lether/Bluerose but was aware of the situation around Morn.
- Presence of Boles (Varandas' creations) in the area
- Location of Raest's tomb and presumably his empire

My assumption was also that K'rul stripped the Elder Warrens away somehow, isolating them.

Linkt to my earlier post: http://forum.malazan...nd-other-books/

But this Azath house sounds like the kind of evidence that's hard to reason away. The invasions also came through a specific gate (Gallan's road?) makes sense that it would be fixed in a related location. I just can't make sense of the K'chain having such a large presence at the time.

Or it might be all wonky, due to the shattering of Emuhrlan, maybe pieces of geography were scattered likewise? That would explain a lot...

This post has been edited by Felisin Fatter: 01 June 2016 - 08:26 PM

[worry]

Re: the K'chain, Skillen tells K'rul "they are coming" so their invasion is still down the line.

[Felisin Fatter]

And what about Quon Tali? It has a city named Purage, also Fenn in the North and those deep black Dal Honese, Li Heng with its Liosan (?) influences and the Nap isles...

[Siergiej]

What if the invasion on the Malazan world happens and all races migrate to the K'Chain realm along with Azath Houses? We were shown that Houses can travel through realms when they're completed. Maybe they're not limited to that?

As for people, I have hypothesized elsewhere that they're already around but on a different continent. I think Kallor already rules a human empire. Trell are around too and Barghast will join soon but we haven't heard about them yet from anyone else than Vix, so they probably also live across the ocean.

[qcp]

I think the ritual Gothos performs in the prologue of MT is what brings the Azath house to Wu rather than Omtose Phellack and Lether being the same place on the same world. If he fully unveiled the power of Omtose Phellack so is it too much to assume that part of that realm would manifest in that location? Look what happened to Coral when the Tiste Andii unveiled Kurald Galain.

[Biofeedback]

Hi, I'm new to this, but this is my take on it:

Like on earth 300 000 000 years ago, all the continents were one big masse (Pangea), then they started to fragment into smaller parts. Mr. Erikson being an Archiologist and all, is using this in his story.
So it wouldn't surprise me if 7 cities was Omtose, Letheras was KG, etc.

I started picking up on this when I was reading MBOTF, and the names, places and customs, reflect certain aspects of the "old" world.

[Siergiej]

Seven Cities is larger than the whole world exposed in Khakrkanas trilogy so far. It takes days to travel between holds. In FoD Borderswords take Arathan through Bareth Solitude and then come back and need like what, a couple of weeks? The Chain of Dogs spent a year crossing 7C and that's just a subcontinent.

[Amby Bole]

Hmmm... maybe its just me, but i thought that the torn warren at Morn ( Chaos ) had something to do with this 2 "realms" being conected.

Acording to Kalyth the Rent was a consecuence of the war between the Assails and "the other races"... i don't know what other races existed on earth aprox 400.000-500.000 years before burn's sleep, but we also know that the Assail started to invade Kurald Galain and there was a big war against them before the civil war. Its also pretty clear that the K`chain were the dominant race of the malazan world back then.

So my theory is, this "Rent", this breach on Chaos itself was the cause of the 2 worlds being connected. I see it like all the worlds/realms were separated by chaos and when chaos was breached it started advancing on the other realms. Draconus tried to contain it with dragnipur but it was not enough, and with chaos itself broken, it was possible now to move between the worlds.

So the assail started their invasion on Kurald Galain but were defeated, and so the other races began its move towards the malazan world.

And the Azath houses, well i see them as a form of stabilization between this 2 realms now connected, trying to keep chaos at bay, allowing some stable doors, etc.

On the theory about the azath house on lether being the same azath of the jaghut, i don't think is that simple. For me is related to the "Azath Forest", the one mentioned in RotCG and Blood and Bone. This forest trapped every living being the same way the azath grounds, and it was located in Shadow/KE. So probably when an azath house is created, its grounds overlaps ( shadow ) with the azath forest, thats why it seems the same place but is not. Basically, every single one being trapped by an azath is at the same time trapped in the azath forest, the 2 places are the same but at the same time are not.

Well, its my 1st post, hope somebody find it interesting.

This post has been edited by Amby Bole: 03 August 2016 - 10:42 PM

[qcp]

I think the forest you're talking about wasn't exactly an Azath forest but just something akin to how an Azath house works. I just re-read the section in RotCG where it's mentioned and they only bring up Azath houses as a metaphor to describe what the forest does. Many powerful beings are trapped in a variety of ways in Shadow. I think that forest is just one of those ways and has a side effect of trapping anything else that ventures in there.

As for the Azath houses being stabilization points between two connected realms I think it's a bit more complicated than that. There are, very probably, Azath houses in every realm/hold/warren and while they do act as pathways between the realms for those that know how to use them they are also traps for beings of great power and for all we know their existence in each realm helps anchor the realities and characteristics of that realm. We know the builder(s) build and then the houses are transported away by something/someone, perhaps initially it's the Azathanai using them to make new realms they create "real" and others pop up as needed à la the one at the end of GotM. Of course this is all wild speculation...

[Amby Bole]

qcp, on 04 August 2016 - 03:19 PM, said:

As for the Azath houses being stabilization points between two connected realms I think it's a bit more complicated than that. There are, very probably, Azath houses in every realm/hold/warren and while they do act as pathways between the realms for those that know how to use them they are also traps for beings of great power and for all we know their existence in each realm helps anchor the realities and characteristics of that realm. We know the builder(s) build and then the houses are transported away by something/someone, perhaps initially it's the Azathanai using them to make new realms they create "real" and others pop up as needed à la the one at the end of GotM. Of course this is all wild speculation...

Well, I think pretty much the same about the Azath houses. See here:

http://forum.malazan...ost__p__1246102

The Azath Forest was named that way in Blood and Bone, when Murk was chased by Skinner and his unvowed. Can't remember the exact chapter but was close to the end, he also mentioned that the jungle did not attack them probably because of Edgewalker, so it also implies that the Azathanai have some control over it.