[Murrin]

Dinivan said:

I'd agree with nobody.

The Deragoth were after Dejim i think and the HoS were simply carrying the last mouthful of Dejim to lure the Deragoth after them.

It was set up as though the Hounds of Shadow were used to lure the Deragoth into a confrontation with Dejim Nebrahl. Paran releases the Deragoth, Cotillion sends the Hounds after Dejim, the Deragoth start hunting the Hounds and Dejim gets killed among it all, just as planned.

[fan_83]

dinivan: fomr what is described of the deragoth.. the hos will look like puppies to them... they may run but i believe that the deragoth should eb able to follow.. otherwise why did paran warn st of the releasing of the deragoth... in order to get them moving

[GingerBreadMan]

I dont see them as puppies, but I do agree on the point that in a battle the HoD seem to be the top dogs.....The thing is, while the hounds are intelligent, they are not intelligent on the same level as "humans". Including Jhags,Imass, Kchain even though they arnt remotely human, not sure how else to catagorize them. So I will give the edge to the HoS simply because they have the intelligence and power of Dancer/Shadowthrone behind them at this point.

[Abyss]

@Hetan: Interesting catch. Maybe Dessimewhacky wasn't the only one with a pet Deragoth and a failed ritual.

Jumping back.... ok, mad speculation, herewego... way back when, a whole race of deragoth exist, domesticating eres so they don't have to clean up their own messes (can you IMAGINE the size of the pooper-scoopers!?!). Evolution being the b!tch that it is, they eventually die off. Or maybe they slaughter each other fighting over the last remaining K'chain Che'maille fire hydrant...

Fast forward to First human Empire. Dessimbelackis, mad scientist that he is, finds the last seven deragoth and 'domesticates' them (or just offers a endless supply of milk bones/small children in exchange for not eating him and occassionally doing his bidding). Dessimbelactose, trying to make himself an Ascendant, messes with a ritual involving soletaken/d'ivers, a stray chunk of shattered KEmurlahn, and his pet deragoth. Oopsy, things go wrong, rather than seven uber-bodies, he ends up in seven 'shadows', which are independant and don't recall their origins, and thus go off and hang around Meanas, eating passerbye and waiting for a master or two. The Hounds of Shadow are biologically intact, and thus can mate, spawn and so on (so poor fragmented Dessim' becomes the first Emperor to quite literally go fn$k himself). The Deragoth, damaged by the failed ritual, 'die' but actually end up trapped in statues from the days when they were worshipped, because of the link between worship, woshippers, power, etc. The statues are in a chunk of Shadow, for whatever reason.

Fast forward, Rake kills two Hounds, their spirits pass thru Dragnipur, are freed and find their way to their original bodies, having nowhere else to go. Bugger, their original bodies are currently playing statue.

Onrack shows up, 'sees', in his funky I'mass way, the two Hound spirits unhappily residing in the statues BUT not the deragoth essences also there in the other five. He frees one, who busts the other one loose, and the two newly freed 'complete' deragoth are enlisted by the CG to cause some trouble in Raraku, where Karsa neuters and fillets them.

Paran shows up, follows a path through Hood's dimesion or related to get to the chunk of the Emurlahn where the remaining statues are. Hedge frees them, and off they go, seeking to be complete by eating their shadows, the Hounds. And anyone else along the way.

- Abyss, needs a coffee now. And maybe a cigarette. Or a milk bone.

[dolfanuk]

perhaps its just a racial hatred like the imass and jhaguts.

[BeLeG]

wait ,when do we learn that the seven holy protectors are in truth the seven Deragoth?

[HoosierDaddy]

BeLeG;343189 said:

wait ,when do we learn that the seven holy protectors are in truth the seven Deragoth?

I think it's through random facts and the ideas we can connect through them. Seven Cities is where 1st Empire was. Seven Deragoth. Dessimbelackis was somehow connected to the 7 Deragoth. 7 Holy Cities of the First Empire just ties too nicely with the 7 Deragoth and Emperor Dessimbelackis not to seem true.

[D'rek]

BeLeG;343189 said:

wait ,when do we learn that the seven holy protectors are in truth the seven Deragoth?

Aside from some characters talking about them so fearfully, it's mostly this quote from HoC:

p. 794 mmpb said:

(Ghosts that Kalam sees)
"Not true Kullsan. Five of the Seven Protectors are no more. Does that mean nothin? And the sixth will not recover, now that we have banished the black beast itself?"
"I wonder, did we indeed drive it from this realm?"
"If the Nameless Ones speak true, then yes-"
"Your question, Kullsan, confuses me. Are we not marching from the city? Were we not just victorious?"

[chill]

The thing I can't figure out...
If the HoS are running away from HoD, why did they pass through jaghut death realm to find statues of HoDs? Did they wait around for Onrack to break statues so they can join with them or something (I am fairly certain that the book mentions they need to find their counterparts for whatever reason) or did they come along after the statues were broken?
I can't make sense of that HoD - HoS relationship.

[Rath'Thrash]

chill;344789 said:

The thing I can't figure out...
If the HoS are running away from HoD, why did they pass through jaghut death realm to find statues of HoDs?

I was curious about that too. What does the ancient Jaghut death realm have to do with the HoD? I'm still on my first read of the whole series so I'm a little short on those oh-so-important little details...

[Aptorian]

chill;344789 said:

The thing I can't figure out...
If the HoS are running away from HoD, why did they pass through jaghut death realm to find statues of HoDs? Did they wait around for Onrack to break statues so they can join with them or something (I am fairly certain that the book mentions they need to find their counterparts for whatever reason) or did they come along after the statues were broken?
I can't make sense of that HoD - HoS relationship.

I'm not quite sure what you're on about. The Hounds of shadows where never seen in the Nascent.

When the Deragoth left the realm they did so through warrens of their own volition. It's logical to assume that the five Deragoth, like the two that Karsa killed, would come to 7Cs first. Their native continent. ST anticipated this and made sure that the Hounds were nearby to lead the Deragoth to Dejim and Poliel.

[Bauchelain the Evil]

Abyss;74128 said:

Fast forward to First human Empire. Dessimbelackis, mad scientist that he is, finds the last seven deragoth and 'domesticates' them (or just offers a endless supply of milk bones/small children in exchange for not eating him and occassionally doing his bidding). Dessimbelactose, trying to make himself an Ascendant, messes with a ritual involving soletaken/d'ivers, a stray chunk of shattered KEmurlahn, and his pet deragoth. .

Hmm I thought that Dessimbelackis was pretty much Ascended before the Ritual

[Aptorian]

Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. It's said that some people in the first empire prefered to go soletaken rather than ascend. It was a more earthly transformation.

[Excellence]

I thought the emperor unleased a ruitual to deitify himself . . . but it went awry and the population became soletaken like a virus. The abrupt sundering of humanity into animalistic and even multiplicity caused internercine chaos overnight.

[Imperial Historian]

From what we've learned in the books it would seem that dessimblackis vanished before the ritual took place, so I wouldn't say he was responsible for it.

‘Dessimbelackis,’ Onrack whispered. ‘The founder of the human
First Empire. Long vanished by the time of the unleashing of the Beast Ritual. It was believed he had . . . veered.’ ‘D’ivers?’ ‘Aye.’ ‘And beasts numbered?’ ‘Seven.’ (HoC, Tpb, p.320)

[Excellence]

That's right. "Long since vanished" . . . so who was throning the empire at that point, I wonder. We need a trilogy on the the First Human Empire.

[Illuyankas]

That could be interesting, dealing with Dessimbelackis and the original Tanno to start with, then going on onto the Beast Ritual. Maybe Kallor could make an appearance from his Empire.