Forge of Darkness Spoilers and Speculation: Been thinking about this a lot lately, and Ive voiced a lot of it here in bits and pieces, but heres my entire theory on ancient Wu. Bear with me, huge wall of text: - - - - - - Forge of Darkness takes place during the birth of sorcery, before and during the actual creation of the Holds. The Azath houses must already exist at this point and somehow correlate with Kruls gift. Azath houses are still a huge mystery so we will ignore them for now. So Krul has used his own blood to gift sorcery to the world. Before then, blood was given to the Azathanai for their sorcery, so this is kind of a reversal of Azathanai magic. In doing this he creates the Holds. As we know from MBOTF, the Holds predate the warrens (which were a result of Krul dealing with the Eleint), and that they bordered on each other. This means that literal regions of the world are Holds. Draconus gives the Terondai to Mother Dark and creates the Hold of Dark (in the original Tiste country of Kurald Galain), and also due to Trisss meddling helps create the Tiste Andii race. Meanwhile, the Liosan must at some point build their own city Saranas at some point, on the other side of Dorssan Ryl. This will be the Hold of Light, Kurald Thyrllan. The neutral Tiste who follow Scara Bandaris will migrate to their own region, which will be Kurald Emurlahn. The other holds are pretty obvious: Bareth Solitude is the Azathanai land, and so it is the Azath hold. They already have their own sorcery. The Beast Hold is the land of the Jheleck/Jheck. Their sorcery may or may not be Soletaken forms. We dont know much about them. Olar Ethil was supposedly the first Soletaken, so maybe she is involved with them, or she could have been lying. There is also their ancient god The Pack who appeared in Midnight Tides who may have something to do with them. Overall, theyll probably remain a mystery. The Jaghut city of Omtose Phellack becomes the Ice Hold. To our knowledge at this point there is no ancient Azathanai progenitor of the Jaghut. They were extremely powerful even before magic was born, so it could even be that they develop their own Teron and create the sorcery of ice for themselves. Possibly perpetuater by Hoods war on death? The Eleint that appear at the end over the Vitr and occupy Glimmer Fate make up the Dragon Hold. They have their own sorcery as well Id guess, and probably came from the actual warren/dimension known as Starvald Demelain. The Dog Runners are Imass, and their lands may or may not be a Hold. Tellann is always considered a Warren in MBOTF, but we also cant be sure that we had all the information then. It is quite possible that there was a Hold of Fire, that it originated in Dog Runner lands, and that the sorcery was very likely granted to them by Olar Ethil. There was an unaligned fulcra tile for Fire. The Forulkan, Forkrul Assail, we dont know much about. They live close enough to Kurald Galain to have a war between them and the Tiste, the Assail are a kind of priest caste, and in the present they have a sorcery of the voice which seems to be aspected to domination. Im guessing they may live in a city called Akhrast Korvelain? And that their sorcery was provided to them by Kilmandaros or Sechul Lath, but then there was also their unknown god who was destroyed and became the Divers in the Glass Desert. Im guessing only the Assail become immortal and gain the power of the voice. Again, not sure if it actually is a hold, a fulcra, or if their powers were granted to them later in the time of warrens. We dont know if the Thel Akai were ever aspected to a Hold or Azathanai. Their land could be related to an ancient forgotten Hold, another fulcra, or they could be completely unaspected. The Errant has his own tile, and likely his own realm which he flees to at some point. Likewise, Mael had an Elder Warren of Denaeth Rusen, probably aspected to water or the ocean, which is probably where hes at during FoD. Kchain Chemalle dont have a warren, but I think that hare-brained theory of them coming from the moon might not be so crazy after all. They are the actual invader race. They may also be somehow related to Eleint and Starvald Demelain. There is also some relation between the Kchain and the Shake children (Shake children with Kchain taint were drowned). Well have to wait and see more about this. Ok, so we have all these regions governed by aspects/holds, but how does it translate to MBOTF. How do they evolve into Warrens? What the hell world is FOD in? Heres what I think: Krul must at some point make the warren creating deal with the Eleint, either through necessity (because using his blood for the Holds is killing him) or pragmatism (to stabilize the sorcery). The ability to create Warrens is immensely game changing, because as Krul has shown, he can even take an existing landmass like Kallors ruined Jacuruku and put it in its own dimension. We also know that Burn exists in this world along with many other familiar faces, so it must be Wu in some older form and not the Tiste world. Or it could be that the world of Tiste, Azathanai, Jaghut, and so on was somehow merged with another world, the world of the Eres, and possibly even the Kchain. Im speculating that some catastrophe takes place and the world of FoD is broken. Krul saves what he can by placing the Holds into Warrens and rebuilding the world from that. Remember the line about how Kallor scarred a young world and that it may not recover. Well, if that was in fact in the days of the First Empire and that young world was in fact an Azathanai creation, it makes some sense. Furthermore, why is Lether the only place in Wu where the Holds are still active? And whats with the heavy concentration of Azathanai and ancient races there? The Jheck are there, the Edur, the Assail, the Chemalle, Tarthenals, and even old Jaghut ruins and ancestral Imass lands. When the Tiste returned to Wu after being in their Warrens for however long, they came to Lether. I believe that the continent of Lether is a remnant of the FoD world, and the rest of Wu is made up of new lands. This is all speculation and I wont even get into Kallor right now because Ive already been there and done that a few times. This is just a culmination of many thoughts on the entire world of Malazan after reading FoD. I can only hope the other Kharkanas books give me as much insight.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 03:16:57 +0000
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