[Abyss]

Aptorian;168640 said:

...Hell the arrow could by accident have hit the TTT in the eye.....

Waitasec... was it the T3 that was taken out by the arrow? I thought it was a different, human keeper???

- Abyss, fires up the Vaiski-signal.

[Set'alahd Crool]

Abyss;168794 said:

Waitasec... was it the T3 that was taken out by the arrow? I thought it was a different, human keeper???

- Abyss, fires up the Vaiski-signal.

[Peers about cautiously. Sees no sign of Vaiski]

Ahem. The relevant quote is....
"A soldier on the battlements fired a warning arrow. It ricocheted off a rock and grazed Icarium's left leg, then sank deep into the throat of his companion - the poor bastard drowned in his own blood - and so Icarium's rage was unleashed."
That's Heboric to Cutter.
No mention of the companion's race.

[Runs away to hide again]

[Abyss]

Hmm... not unthinkable, but it seems unlikely that a ricochet arrow to the throat would take out a T3... hell, the height factor alone doesn't make sense...

Ok, this is bugging me now...

There was a ref somewhere else, i think it was HoC, to a T3 companion...

...and i vaguely recall it was to the effect that when Iccy was trashing the Azath House in the Odhan, he did a lot of damage before the T3 could knock him out...

...which would imply that either this was just a buddy hanging out with Iccy while he was trying to free his dad,

OR

that the NOs already had a watcher on Iccy BEFORE he damaged the Azath...

...which in turn would mean either Iccy was nuts before the Azath episode, or the NOs were already manipulating him at that point and the Azath thing just happened... or both, or...

- Abyss, my head hurts now.

[Trotts]

Based on what you said Abyss, I would imagine that the Nameless ones were grooming him to be the "pet" they needed.

[Dolorous Menhir]

I don't buy that the Nameless Ones manipulated Icarium into the initial Azath assault. How could they possibly have known he would become the insane killing machine that he did?

Perhaps they made it happen in the expectation that Icarium would either

(a) destroy the Azath and be fine

or

( fail and be captured

either of which may have fitted their plans, but I don't see how they would predict

© destroy the Azath and become a Chaos-infected amnesiac force of nature.

Icarium assaulted the Azath in the first place to free his father. Perhaps the NO's had a hand in getting him to do it, but not with the actual outcome as their aim.

[Set'alahd Crool]

Isn't it said that Icarium got....infected(?) by wounding a warren, not an azath? It could be that these are two seperate incidents, with the warren-wounding occuring before the azath-killing.

[Mael]

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Isn't it said that Icarium got....infected(?) by wounding a warren, not an azath? It could be that these are two seperate incidents, with the warren-wounding occuring before the azath-killing.

Icarium destroyed an Azath and wounded the warren associated with it. The results shattered his mind aswell leaving him with no long term memory and rage issues. I'm still trying to figue out the shattered warrens thing. We know there are 3 of them.

Kurald Emurlahn = shattered during the Tiste Invasion by scabby (inadvertantly?), repaired by Rake and Kilmandaros (maybe)
mystery warren #1 = shattered when Icarium destroyed the azath house trying to "free" his father
mystery warren #2 = shattered during Desembelakis' failed soletaken ritual

So...one (or both...that poor poor warren) of the 2 mystery warrens was most likely KE being shattered a second time since it was repaired after the first sundering. Maybe the Azath Gothos took residence in with his new scabby finnest was aspected to KE, or maybe even a large fragment which was shattered further.

[Abyss]

Trying not to go too far OT, but i always thought that was a ref to the Azath's warren - ie, like the space Fid and co. ended up in walking the PoH to Tremolor, or the way Iccy's arrows have warrens. A warren can just be a power, or a power source, so saying he wounded the House's warren is like saying he wounded the House. The Azath House's warren and the House are one and the same, to an extent. Consider the relative size of spaces concerned, ie: the space Fid and co found inside inside Tremolor is obviously bigger than the size of the House, which was itself in a warren which interesected the Path of Hands which itself interesected that memory warren Sorno, Kulp and Duiker fought d'ivers early in DG...

But before we drift, bring this back to Iccy - in order to free Gothos (not knowing Gothos is very happy where he is), he attacks the Azath House in the Jhag Odhan. One way or the other A warren is damaged. Iccy ends up nuts, or more nuts than he was, and Gothos moves to some other Azath condo complex.

- Abyss, notes that all things considered, Warren Zevon was easier to understand...

[Hark but Soft]

Don't K'chain matrons make a similar sound (keening) when they are doing their thing? Aren't the K'chain from chaos? If Icarium's mother was a matron... no?

[Dolorous Menhir]

I really hope Icarium isn't half KCCM, but can we rule it out? We genuinely don't know how old he is, and we know Gothos was around when living KCCM were...Icarium could easily date from such ancient times.

[Abyss]

I figure he was a slave of the KC at some point hence his sort of high-tech know-how.

Cuz the logistics of him being half KC are just ew even for a world where inter-species sheboingage is taken for granted.

- Abyss, Gothos, you sick fnck... how drunk WERE you...i mean, seriously, a KC Matron... ew.

[Mael]

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Don't K'chain matrons make a similar sound (keening) when they are doing their thing? Aren't the K'chain from chaos? If Icarium's mother was a matron... no?

this is a very good catch. In MT when Trull, Fear and Rulad are visiting scabby's skull before they found the sword, Fear describes the KCCM warren, or Kashan as they refer to it. He also explaines how the KCCM sent thier warren into KG like a "plague", sealing the gate from KG to every other realm and forcing mother dark to the very core of the abyss where she will eventually devour all matter and thus be destroyed.

Quote

"Edur sorcery", Fear said after a time. "is born of sounds our ears cannot hear, formed into words that loosen the bindings that hold all matter together, that hold it to the ground. Sounds that bend and stretch light, as a tidal inflow up a river is drawn apart at the moment of turning. With this sorcery, they fashioned fortresses of stone that rode the sky like clouds, with this sorcery they turned darkness in upon itself with a hunger that no one who came too close could defy, an all-devouring hunger that feeds first and foremost on itself"

Its kind of an odd description. The sounds, as he describes them, are used to manipulate the gravitational forces binding matter. Reading back on the events in BH when Icarium is assaulting the Throne with the Edur, knowing this kind of puts the effects of his "magic" on those defending against it into an interesting perspective.

It could be quite possible that Icarium is half KCNR. I would say KCCM but we know that they have a single mother per brood, who all the KCCM of said brood share thier power with. KCNR on the other hand did not share this practice and may have had the standard male/female individual family society that most of the races do. Maybe a female KCNR slave that gothos fell in love with or some such thing. Being half KCNR would explain Icarium's techical knowhow aswell.

Either that or he is half KCCM and Gothos likes his ladies BIG!! Maybe one got a hold oh him a created the entire Jhag race in one big birthing...ewww.

A little off topic but reading further in the quote above:

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"Kashan sorcery was sent in to the warren of mother dark, like a plague. Thus was was sealed the gate to Kurald Galain to every other realm. Thus was mother dark drivin into the very core of the abyss, witness to an endless swirl of light surrounding her - all that she would one day devour, until the last speck of matter vanishes into her. Annihilating mother dark...."

Sounds to me like mother dark may be at the center of (or in fact is) the gigantic black hole sucking up jade giants.

/using gravitational forces to turn KG in upon itself...yep thats an implosion.

[Dolorous Menhir]

MD certainly does appear to be a black hole.

Do we know for sure that the KCNR had a "male/female individual family society"? I hadn't really thought about it but just assumed they were using a hive set-up similar to the KCCM.

[Morgoth]

I don't know.. but the KCNR seem much more... like individuals than does the KCCM.. But then again, I have difficulties seeing how a Hive race like the KCCM could possibly evolve from a none hive race.

Also, aressing the point made earlier by Abyss regarding the TTT companion who was with him at the attack of the Azath, there seems to be three options. The first is that Iccy simply had a traveling companion which is hardly unheard of. But then, listing him as one of the keepers would not make sense. The other option would be that Iccy already was a berserker and that the breaking of the warren fragment only destroyed his memory. Berserkers after all are not particularly uncommon.

The final option I suppose would be that the NO already were manipulating him and that the consequences of the breaking of the fragment was a -for them- happy fluke. Perhaps the NOs wished to free something or someon imprissoned by the Azath and manipulated Iccy into believing he could free his father.

[spiralx]

Morgoth;169079 said:

I don't know.. but the KCNR seem much more... like individuals than does the KCCM.. But then again, I have difficulties seeing how a Hive race like the KCCM could possibly evolve from a none hive race.

I suggest you read Coalescent by Stephen Baxter which how a eusocial (basically hive-like) system could evolve in humans given evolution and a certain set of selection pressures - basically when you have a lot of interbreeding and very little space you end up with everybody related to each other and just like in ants it makes evolutionary sense to specialise with "queens", "breeders", "workers" and so on... and intelligence is an evolutionary adaptation that gets lost.

Quite a freaky idea, but it makes sound evolutionary sense, even in a sapient species. If the KCNR set off in their sky keeps for thousands of generations that would pretty much provide the situation required...

[Morgoth]

well, I think that SE has read Baxter if i remember my nerd-trivia

[Abyss]

Mael's point is a good one - i had missed that it was MD herself who might be doing the devouring.

Tho i suspect in some repects this is all one big analogy. Basically, the KC Mtarons did something that results in an ultimate state of entropy, a universal dead end, if you will.... hmmm... must needs contemplate. Or drink lots.

Back to the Iccy/KC question, i'm not sure it's fair to link the Matron in MoI's 'keening' to Iccy's sound effects, BUT his whole turn-everything-around-me-to-confetti COULD be sideways linked to gravity, which we've theorized is the KC warren/aspect/science. It could, on the other hand, just be a chaos effect on whatever warren he properly channels, or the TB rumoured T3-becomes-own-warren thing.

- Abyss, or maybe it was the one-armed man....

[Mael]

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I don't know.. but the KCNR seem much more... like individuals than does the KCCM.. But then again, I have difficulties seeing how a Hive race like the KCCM could possibly evolve from a none hive race.

They could have been a single species that became 2 divergent species due to a continental divide or other barrier with one conquering the other at a later date. We know that the individual KCNR were very powerful, most likely more powerful and intellegent then the individual KCCM. The way i see it is this: you have 1000 individual KCNR worth 2 points each (for lack of a better medium) and you have 1000 KCCM worth 1 point each. The KCCM give all 1000 points to the matron while the KCNR keep thiers. So now you have a single KCCM matron worth 1000 and 1000 KCNR worth 2000. I would assume the matron would be able to dole out her power in the manner of breeding in selective traits. K'ell hunters recieve 5 points, workers recieve 0.1 points, queen keeps 100, etc.

This combined with a single Hive purpose is how i had assumed the KCNR were destroyed by the KCCM before they were ressurected and enslaved.

Quote

Do we know for sure that the KCNR had a "male/female individual family society"? I hadn't really thought about it but just assumed they were using a hive set-up similar to the KCCM.

We don't know for sure. I have assumed as much due to thier reluctance to share thier power with the KCCM matron after thier ressurection, resulting in thier subsequent enslavement. After all, how does one hive mind enslave another? And more importantly, would it be possible for an enslaved hive consciousness to rise up and throw off the chains of slavery if they had been?

[Dolorous Menhir]

If you were working out which race was individual and which was hive-like from what we know for sure then you would probably come to the wrong conclusion.

By which I mean, we know the KCNR were the order-aspected ones, per Ganath's dying words.

The KCCM were chaotic in nature.

So you would natural assume that

order = hive
chaos = free individuals.

I would still like to see someone actually provide some evidence from the books that the KCNR are a race of individuals. Perhaps it's in Kallor's monologue on the KCCM history?

The only living KCNR we've seen didn't say a single thing, they just attacked the nearest character (Karsa & Ganath). Not much to go on there are as far as social structure is concerned.

[Kage-za]

Just caught up on this thread, but fortunately my idea is already out there.

I don't buy the Mother=Matron or any other KC idea, but I do think that Iccy's power has something to do with the KCCM or KCNR. Abyss's slave theory could work, or there could be an even stranger link. The time-aspected machinery, the fact that he can read the KC writing, and the crazy keening seem to point that way. And off in crazy theory land I can see a clueless but helpful Icarium bringing that technology somehow to Kallor...

As for the side note on MD and the Matron Death Cry/black hole, I do think this is somewhat distorted. However the MD/Kashan vortex sounds very much like what is chasing Draconus's wagon inside of Dragnipur.