[Blend]

From what I gathered from Bonehunters, the bridge that Paran crosses with Ganath and the Trygalle Trade Guild is the bridge into the Hold of Death. If that's so, and we take into account that it's the bridge that the Hounds of Shadow ended up on when they escaped Dragnipur through that portal in the wagon, I understand this all to mean that Dragnipur is a sword invested with the power of or linked to the Hold of Death, and it's stated throughout the novel that Hold Magic is stronger, more primal than house/warren magic.

The way I see it, Draconus created the sword and linked it to the Hold of Death, perhaps accidentally (or purposely) usurping it from whoever was in control of it at the same time (which might explain why there is nowhere for the dead to go on the Letherii continent, seeing as they haven't discovered the Magic of Houses, and thus Hood's Realm). The Hold of Death is old magic, and so I would assume that it wouldn't work the same way as, say, Hood's warren (House of Death) would work nowadays... So perhaps we have a wagon, and your punishment in death is to pull that wagon for eternity.

So now we come to that wall of nothingness that is catching up with the people pulling the wagon. If Rake doesn't feed the sword, there are no souls going into the Hold of Death. If there are no souls going into the Hold, there is no worship. Hold is old magic, old magic (elder magic) often uses blood to stay alive. Blood in K'Rull's tower is what brought the Elder God K'Rull back into the fold, for example. So, by not killing anyone with Dragnipur, thus quenching the Hold of Death's need for blood in order to survive or adding souls to the train of people dragging the wagon away from the nothingness, the Hold of Death is slowly ceasing to exist. The nothingness, therefore, would be a sort of material form of the cessation of the Hold's existence.

Incidentally, this may explain why Draconus believes the sword Dragnipur needs to be shattered. Perhaps he did not understand the full ramifications of what he was doing when he was creating the sword (even gods are fallible in the Malazan world, after all) and only came to understand that by linking the sword to the Hold of Death he essentially initiated the eventual death of the Hold after Anomander Rake killed him, thus banishing him into the sword.

Just random conjecture, I guess. Make any sense? Am I reading into that whole thing wrong?

[Dark Mac]

I believe that the object chasing the KG Wagon is stated to be Chaotic, not Death-aspected. The portal in the Wagon is supposed to be the Gate to Kurald Galain, so I'm not sure exactly why the HoS ended up going to the Hold of Death. There's some sort of link between KG and the Hold of Death, but I don't think your theory is quite it.

Personally, I believe that the Chaos chasing the Wagon is the spell the Matrons created as their last counterattack against the Tiste, the spell that will eventually kill Mother Dark herself and end all of creation. It certainly fits with the Chaos-aspected nature of the KCCM.

Perhaps the spell also eliminated the Hold of Death, somehow? Was Hood already around during MT's prologue? If he wasn't the Lord of Death then, it fits that that's when he would've taken that position.

[Blend]

Well, how do you destroy magic? Chaos right? Whatever is not magic is chaos, so it's not a terribly long logical leap to think of chaos as antithetical to the warrens/holds. So, the wall of Chaos, rather than the wall of nothingness, could still signify the Hold of Death dying, I bet.

[Midnight]

In Midnight Tides it is stated that the Edur call the dark oceans Gailan and that it is their underworld, which supports the theory that Death and KG are linked. Perhaps Hood's realm is another gateway to KG...since KG is one of the first warrens (and one doomed to mortality) it makes sense that people's souls will return to the original place of birth.

[Aptorian]

Dark Mac said:

Perhaps the spell also eliminated the Hold of Death, somehow? Was Hood already around during MT's prologue? If he wasn't the Lord of Death then, it fits that that's when he would've taken that position.

I think some one pointed out that Ruin mentions Hood after he was freed from the barrow under the dead Azath. The theory being that if he remembers Hood, even though he's been burried for +300-400.000 years, then Hood must be OLD.

Other people criticise this saying that Ruin seems to have knowledge of resent events like the fall of the CG. Thus meaning that Ruin has been able to view the world events even though he’s buried. Meaning that Hood doesn’t have to be that old.

But then again, who was looking after the hold of death or that old realm of death they visit in BH, if it wasn’t Hood?

[Dolorous Menhir]

Raest called Hood "the Death wanderer" or something like that, and he was imprisoned pre-Ritual. This makes Hood older than the Ritual, but becoming King of HHDeath after that/after Raest's imprisonment.

[Abyss]

Midnight said:

In Midnight Tides it is stated that the Edur call the dark oceans Gailan and that it is their underworld, which supports the theory that Death and KG are linked...

Not exactly. This was an example of edur mythology being skewed by time and influence of other forces...

KG and the Andii are naturally opposed to KE and the edur. And Just as they thought that the shadow wraiths were ancestral spirits (they were Andii), and that Father Shadow had three daughters (he had Sheltana, Menandore and Sukul were Osserc's, they got it wrong.

- Abyss, frequently manipulates history for his own advantage. Now kneel before Genghis Khan's better looking descendent!

[Cause]

I thought it was stated that gothos ritual trapped the souls on letheri?

[Folken]

Well not directly but it was mentioned by the Ceda in a conversation with Brys that an Elder God had played a role in casting the ritual (which would be Mael), but that even the EG could not have known the consequences of the ritual. So yes Gothos's ritual was a direct cause.

As for the Hold of Death...well since there is a House of Death there is no longer a need for the Hold to exist and thus it became dormant. As you will notice there is no Hold for Life, Dark, Light, etc. So such Holds would probably have existed before until the Houses were created. Until the whole issue with the Azath house dying in Mightnight Tides and the Nameless Ones meddling, perhaps in association with Hood, the Hold of Death...or perhaps atleast just another manifestation of the House or entrance to the House of Death did not exist (or had remainded dormant).
Now it may have been called the Hold of Death in Midnight Tides because no one knows of the existance of Houses, example when Iron Bars tells Seren of the Hold of Darkness because she would not have understood House/Warren. Kettle does say that someone, most likely a servant of Hood, came to tell her that the Azath would no longer need a guardian as Death already has a master. So it could just be another entrance into the House of Death.

As for Blend's theory.
Firstly no one but the two Hounds and Paran have ever left the Sword so one can discount the whole souls going into the Hold of Death business...plus it would defeat the purpose of the sword's creation. Dragnipur was created to keep the Gate to KG away from Chaos. The more souls that are present the faster the cart moves away from Chaos. The problem now is that Chaos is catching up, for some unkown reason, perhaps because of what the KCC did who knows, hence the sword needs to be shattered to return everything back to its natural order, which was wandering. Draconus says taht he has made a grave mistake, by trapping the gate in dragnipur he caused the very thing he was trying to avoid. So shatter the sword and return the balance and Chaos will never catch up to KG. But then there IS that whole voodoo magic that the KCC did when their entire civilization went to hood's gates...but according to Nightchill and Draconus shattering the sword should solve that problem atleast

[Aptorian]

I don't think that shattering Dranipur will save KG, it will just give them more time. All the stories we here tell us that mother dark is doomed, no matter what they do, Mother dark will be eaten up by light, chaos or what you want to call it.

Bringing the mythical end of the world

[Jheral]

Jen said:

The problem now is that Chaos is catching up, for some unkown reason, perhaps because of what the KCC did who knows, hence the sword needs to be shattered to return everything back to its natural order, which was wandering.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't what Draconus said in the prologue of MoI indicate that he hadn't finished Dragnipur yet? iirc that was many years after the KCCM Matrons deathspell, so it couldn't have made that Chaos thing in the sword 'catch up'. I think that it is more likely that it is that deathspell that is chasing the gate.

[Folken]

yes....and with less and less souls to pull the wagon Chaos will catch up...hence the need to feed Dragnipur.

[Abyss]

Is the question basically whether the 'thing' chasing the KG gate is aspected to chaos, or death?

Because for my $0.02CAN, it seemed pretty clear from various comments in the books that the Matrons tried to use Chaos to strike at either Scabby and/or Ruin, the KN, or a failed experiment.

And the result of that failed effort was a threat to all existance by chaos eating either KG, Mommy D, or some aspect thereof that's fundamental to the universe.

Draconus' error, and Rake's, is in thinking that there was something unnatural about chaos trying to eat Order/darkness, and that a god had to step in to ensure the universe wouldn't end by placing the whole mess into a sword where captured souls had to power the effort, rather than leaving darkness to migrate by itself.

So back to death...
Chaos/entropy is inimical to death... if there's no one around, no one dies, ergo, no death. I suppose Hood is working against the CG's efforts for this very reason, amongst others.

- Abyss, trying to use 'ergo' in every post today.

[Dark Mac]

"Lady Envy’s sorcery...As in legends of old, hers was a power that rolled in broad waves, stripping the life from all it swept over, devouring rank upon rank, street by street, leaving bodies piled in their hundreds."

Is it possible that Envy uses the Hold of Death? The description of her magic certainly fits with how one would expected Death magic to look, and it would make sense for her to have an aversion to her Soletaken form if it looked like Death. Is their any description of how Spite looks as an Eleint? Perhaps Spite is a beautiful dragon, as a counterpoint to Envy being a terribly ugly one.

[Blend]

Calaban said:

Is it just me or did the bridge seem to lead into the Nascent? I could be very wrong but Trull and Onrack were in the Nascent when they came across the statues to the hounds of shadow. Paran and the group found the statues after crossing the bridge. Although with that there would be no need for Hedge so I'm thinking I may just be somewhat confused.

Goes into the Nascent on one side, and what I'm thinking is the Hold of Death linked to Dragnipur in the other direction as far as I could tell.

According to Paran, the Hounds that escaped the sword came out on one end of the bridge, killed the Trygalle Trade Guild wagon that they found on the bridge on their way across, then ended up in the Nascent where the two recently escaped Deragoth "joined" with them, or some such thing, to be made whole. Anyway, so yes, you're right, it does go to the Nascent, but I wanna know what exactly is at the other end of the bridge...

Another idea just popped into my head though... The Nascent is a piece of what used to be Kurald Emurhlan, and most people here believe (probably correctly) that Dragnipur is connected to Kurald Galain, and so that chaos chasing the wagon is destroying Kurald Galain. Perhaps the bridge was an old pathway, so to speak, between the two warrens?