[paladin]

the first book is hard to take in.. erikson likes to reveal things slowly. make sure you thumb the appendix.. it will help a lot. anyways, there is no alignment. the series is basically order vs chaos. warrens are more or less order.

there are warrens that humans can access and ones they cant, this is revealed in the books and would rather not say.

anyways, book 2 is a great book and has the best storyline of the series as far as i care.. sit back and enjoy it. you will get the information in time

[Aptorian]

Menino;169036 said:

Hello I'm a new poster. I love GotM, but it's really kicking my arse with the magical alignments. I'm sure these things will be revealed after I read the next 3,000 pages that Erikson has written but I would like to get a bit of a head start if I may. I can tell all the Warrens are not equal, but I was wondering if there's any kind of hierarchy to the human-accessible ones (Shadow, Dark, Land, Light) and if they're on some sort of opposition (ie Dark v. Light, Land v. Sea) or affinity (Dark and Shadow go together, Land and Stone, etc.). Also, is there some kind of affinity between the Racial Warren of Darkness (Kurald Gain) and Rashan, human-accessible one? Is there any significance to the fact that there's only one human-accessible Warren (Rashan) that lines up with an elder Warren? I also get the impression that all life came from the Warrens before it populated the planet, meaning the Tiste Andii are just late comers to the planet in the pantheon of the Elder Races, not really an 'alien' race. Am I right on this? I understand if this is too much to delineate in a forum, but this guy really makes my brain hurt. Thanks in advance.

Welcome to the forum.

This question isn't that tough, you'd be surprised at the minute things people get into page long discussions over on this forum.

This is the book forum for the first book so it's hard to get into specifics with out revealing some things. The charm of reading SE's books is the slow trickle of information letting the reader get a sense of the vast world he's made.

When you advance to the Bonehunters and Reapers Gale forum, you'll find pretty much anything discussed to death seven times over.

To put it simple:

There's the warrens humans generally channel through the Houses. Who made these houses is revealed later. They aren't in any real opposition, rather they're in a system of order that creates a balance.

Then there's older warrens channeled through the Holds, these are mostly used by The Elder Races. They are a cruder, more raw version of some of the warrens humans use. The Holds and The houses have a link, theories are plenty on this subject.

There's also priests who channel their god or ascendants power - this isn't necessarily power from a warren of the houses.

Finally there's also things that fall outside, things like earth magic, spirit conjuring, sympathetic magic, chaos, etc.

Read on and it will all come clear... sort of.

[mmdw45]

paladin;169051 said:

there are warrens that humans can access and ones they cant, this is revealed in the books and would rather not say.

Actually, is this even true? Even in GotM, we have Quick Ben doing Kurald Galain magics to transfer Hairlock's soul into the puppet body, and he's a human. MoI spoiler:

Spoiler

And Haradas's compatriots are able to access Tellan. Silverfox treats this as an impressive feat of cleverness, but not as a physical impossibility.

Erikson's all about individual accomplishments, anyway, and I don't see racially-deterministic magic as being part of Wu anyway. That is, sure Jaghut are powerful and use Omtose Phellack, but some of them use other warrens and some humans are just as powerful, etc. MoI spoiler:

Spoiler

Just look at the Seguleh! Beating up the First Sword of the T'lan Imass!!!

-Max

Edit: corrected spelling.

[paladin]

but who else uses omtose phellack?

i am "simplifying" a bit, but there seem to be limits 99% of the time, with exceptions like taychren(sp?) and such