[Tes'thesula]

having no idea how soletaken are created, are they born or is it a skill to master with sorcery, it becomes very diffcult to answer. From the edur i get the impression that being a soletaken is very seen as holy, and that the 'uncivilized' jheck had the skill shattered a lot of trull's preceptions. So i conclude that the ritual or whatever to become soletaken has been lost from the edur

...but you could of course ask why there are so few soletaken Andii or Liosan...they only seem to be soletaken dragons...and then only a few, perhaps it is simply an attribute of the tiste races

[Folken]

Mostly cause there are so few of them left to begin with. But given taht fact, the only Tiste people to ever become Elient have been Osserc, Bloodeye, Rake, Korlat, Orfantol (i think one or two more Andii from Rake's group don't exactly remember who though), Ruin...and perhaps Andarist but tahts a debate for another thread. We've never heard of any of the other Tiste people turning Soletaken into other animals but tahts mostly because they're not from this world. AND the only Soletaken are all Elient, which they became by drinking Tiam's blood.

Other races such as Human usually become Soletaken through some sort of magical ritual. Then there is Gruntle's friend from MoI, he became Soletaken through a gift from an Elder God.

[Set'alahd Crool]

Kulp said soletaken are born. So the ritual involved would be one of rebirth. Silverfox is a good example.

[Folken]

Hetan said:

Menandore, Suk'hul, Sheltatha, are soletaken Tiste Eleint.
Sheltatha is part Edur of course....being daughter of Scabs..and her daughter Spite is then...quarter Edur? I'm assuming she is soletaken anyway...
the other interesting ones are the daughters of Osserc.. Menandore and Sukhul..who must be half Liosan at least.

forgot bout the ones from Midnight Tides...heh heh heh lol
But hey now that you mention it...Spite was in lizard form and then she veered into Dragon...hmm...well out goes my theory I suppose

[Imperial Historian]

Well a bit of thread necromancy going on here but never mind, the questions are still good ones...

1. There are very few soletaken to begin with among the tiste, only the eleint soletaken appear among them as far as we know. As far as i can gather all the soletaken tiste came about in the same period through various relations with tiam. Scabandari being who he is, I suspect he ensured that after becoming elient that no other edur would ( and the eleint tiste were sparse enough among the other tiste races after all).

2. I think that the whole cleaning teh arrow heads, and throwing the ring into the sea buisness goes something like this... the magic that holds the andii spirits to rhulad is bound to a specific area, the battlefield agaisnt the k'chain, sandolath mentions that because she fell early in the battle by the shore she was not bound, so I think the passage of water negates the effect of however the spirits are bound. By the time of MT all that is left from teh battle would be possesions of the andii, no bones or anything like that, so all that is physically linked to the andii spirits are these posessions, by cleaning them or throwing them into water, removing them from the area in which they are bound, whatever binding holds them disintegrates. Or something like that anyway.

3. I'd suggest that the empty hold is a melding of KE and KT, it's mentioned that the two were strongly linked , but i really have no idea.

4. possibly, but I'd always been under the impression that the other mistress was Mayen, with the two hodls being rhulad, mayen and rhlads supporters, and trull, seren pedac and others who oppose rhulads and the crippled gods vision.

[Agraba]

I don't think Sandalath's intent for the retrieval of the ring was to be reborn. I seem to remember her saying that she would get oblivion for it, as she so desired. The T'lan Imass wanted that same thing in the second gathering. It's a very understandable desire for someone who's been conscious for thousands of years, to no end.

Also, as I see it, the reason Rhulad wanted Lether was because the Crippled God feels that peace is a dulling of human spirit (well, not specifically human, but you know what I mean), and the only way to give meaning to such pitiful lives is to keep them at constant warfare. Whether Rhulad succeeds in taking a global empire, or the conflicting sides just destroy each other during the attempt probably doesn't matter to the CG. Should the former be the case, he'd probably just turn factions of the empire on one another.

[Tes'thesula]

couldn't the magic of the empty throne be a new warren? the maisfestation of the hungry ambition of the lethrii?

[Folken]

It's the Human Warren now. So I suppose its a new type of magic that has been created. I'm not sure, as I dodn't remember much from MT, but yeah thats what I think.