[Dark Mac]

TS:

Tavore doesn't seem particularly great - not as good as T'amber or Kalam.

Empress - Afraid to take out Rel and Dom herself.

BBs - Owned by a Kell Hunter. The truly good swordsmen are Seguleh class. Even Tattersail's marines aren't half as good as Whiskeyjack.

T'amber - We see her fight when not possessed?

[Dinivan]

Ok.. i get it. I think there's no female like Karsa but...

Hetan
Hadra (must have been, i think)
Seren Pedac perhaps
I got the notion that all the heavies in the 14th were women
Detoran
Faradan Sort (Perhaps, we don't really know her)

But I do recognise that none has the calibre of Tool, or the First, or Dassem (except Aps, that is, naturally) but there are quite a few who are quite capable.

edit: ok see your point. But being slaughtered by a kell hunter after having fought a whole battle+entered a city is excusable, i think. To hadra: we really don't know if she's afraid or if she has a scheme in which the both are useful

[Tiger_sword]

Dark Mac said:

T'amber - We see her fight when not possessed?

I think in HoC see is seen practicing or teaching Tavore or something can't really remember but she is described as being talented though nothing super special i suppose

[Dolorous Menhir]

It's quite possible she was already under the Eres' influence by that point though. She seems to have at least been a source of info for Tavore since the start of HoC.

[Abyss]

Tho' presumably she was Tavore's dueling partner before that. I doubt the eres gave her the mad sword skills. Just the ability to keep going with large bleeding cuts in her body. Sort of a mixed blessing, that...

But jumping back... Hetan, your quote is noted and goes in the 'Skinner is male' slot (this will turn into another 'Hood is a Jaghut' thing, i know it...), but the soldier was rambling, so not determinative....

Back to the soldier, it may be that there were once female seguleh warriors and they were drummed out when the dudes went all cultish and ominous. They must make new seguleh somehow, but for all we know, that could be via raiding or baby tribute from non-seguleh populations on their island.

- Abyss, prefers food tribute. less work, no diapers.

[Mortal Sword]

The whole thing about hood hunting down the avowed. Seems irrelvant. Duiker takes potions to prevent reduce his age, and is probably older than most of the avowed. Mages, and others probably take these steps as well.

If there a firm figure on the number of avowed... cant be enough to really warrant hoods enimity....

I think Skinner kicked the Segulahs butt!

[tiam]

Mortal Sword said:

The whole thing about hood hunting down the avowed. Seems irrelvant. Duiker takes potions to prevent reduce his age, and is probably older than most of the avowed. Mages, and others probably take these steps as well.

If there a firm figure on the number of avowed... cant be enough to really warrant hoods enimity....

I think Skinner kicked the Segulahs butt!

Skinners martial prowess is legend as hes/she walked away from a clash with dassem. Only person to do that i think.

As for the number of avowed. although in MT there is a gruop of CGRD only one is avowed. Also someone (the errant or bugg i think) asks how may are left. iron bars claims a few hundred. There also a quote supporting this in GOTM from Crokuses viewpoint of '500 men and women and not a shiny buckle among them' i think this was when they were on there way to fight the malazan in the north so we can roughly estimate maybe 50-100 avowed died? maybe lesss maybe more but thats all the info i know on the numbers.

[Dinivan]

This 500 soldiers would be but a few companies of the CGrd I think. I don't think that the majority is Avowed.
The squad in MT is pretty unusual with a high mage in it + Avowed + several other pretty good soldiers. So its some elite squad (like the 9th BB).

Note that Bruth needs a certain companie in GotM to protect Crokus. There are some elite-Companies with Avowed and other kick-ass-soldiers and mages, but the majority of the crimson guard is quite normal. (Very good for average soldiers, though)

I'd reckon that this 500 people are not all Avowed. So they are not really a base to estimate the number of Avowed.

[Mortal Sword]

YEs, but the point is.... with all the mages and others finding ways to prolong their lives... would hood really be concerened about a few avowed? Unless the vow puts off death indeffinately.

[Tiger_sword]

Or prehaps the vow means that when they do die (eventually) they don't go to hood. Prehaps the souls go to prince Kass or something. Kinda like Karsa, i can't imagine that hood is too keen on him either.

Besides when your a really old God i guess you can be forgiven for being a little arrogent! Anyone who doesn't play by the rules is in trouble

[Dolorous Menhir]

Mortal Sword said:

The whole thing about hood hunting down the avowed. Seems irrelvant. Duiker takes potions to prevent reduce his age, and is probably older than most of the avowed. Mages, and others probably take these steps as well.

Mages seem to enjoy long lives simply as a side effect of warren use, not by using any extra methods.

If we can rely on DG & HoC info, Duiker came up through the ranks in the very early days of the Empire. This puts him somewhere between 70-100+, based on the GotM figure of ~100 year old Empire, which is very old for a vanilla human in the series - hence his reference to alchemies. Which makes you wonder if people like Nok and the Crust brothers use such means to stay young too.

Prince K'azz's kingdom was on mainland Quon, and so was presumably annexed by Kellanved very early in the Empire's expansion. If the Avowed swore their Vow immediately in response to that invasion, then they're probably of a similar age to Duiker.

[Dolorous Menhir]

That's reasonable - if he was 40 or older when Malaz annexed the d'Avore realm (does it have a name?) and that was ~100 years ago. He could easily be mid 100's by now.

[tiam]

if i remember the CGRD are from the Davore fields apparently.

[Tiger_sword]

Whats the betting that his daughter is someone we have already met! Thats classic SE

[Dolorous Menhir]

Well, how old was Seren Padec again? Wasn't young, was she.

[Dolorous Menhir]

It's refers to the Crimson GuaRD, you just can't use CG for them because it's already taken.