I’m not just talking cruelty in terms of their goals, but also how they went about achieving their goals

  • @constnt@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    The Crippled God from Mazalan Book of the Fallen. I should probably spoiler this. And trigger warning.

    spoiler

    The High King Kallor once ruled an empire. And he did so with a cold hard iron fist. Some Elder Gods decided that he was to be dethroned, and set off to confront the High King. Kallor had gotten wind of this before the confrontation and so had all his mages begin a ritual. One that would summon an alien force from beyond the known universe. They were successful and pulled an entity of such power that it destroyed Kallor’s entire empire. As the Gods approached the High Kings throne they found him there, emporer of only ash.

    The power Kallor summoned was so alien and anthemic to the universe it needed to be destroyed. But they found it couldn’t be done. So instead they crippled and chained the power. This power came to be know as the Crippled God.

    It’s hard to pinpoint exactly the cruelty that the Crippled God did himself. See, the crippled god worked in the shadows from his tent on the beach. He lifted others up to enact his broken visions. Granted them slivers of his alien power, and whispered promises of power or revenge into their ears. One such figure was the Pannion Seer.

    The Seer was a holy figure who led an massive army, the Pannion Domin, on a crusade against the world. This was a holy war and such his followers where blindly devoted. His most devoted where called Tenescowri. The Tenescowri where purposely starved. Given no rations, no water, no food. They had to subsist on what they were able to find. And what is the most common thing found after a battle? Dead bodies. The Tenescowri was an army of forced cannibalism.

    It gets a bit darker. The most powerful of the Tenescowri where the Children of the Dead Seed. During battle the fervent women would take dying men, and force them to copulate. Filling their wombs with the seed of a dead man. These children would grow up to be unholy warriors.

    I think it was said the Tenescowri were 100,000 strong led by Anaster the Fist Born of the Dead Seed.

    • Neato
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      38 months ago

      How is this series? I only glanced at the spoiler but some of the last bit was…a lot. Do most of the books receive that trigger warning or is that more of a endgame thing?

      • @constnt@lemmy.world
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        48 months ago

        As Llamapacolypse said, it has it’s dark moments. What I wrote above is some of the darkest. It never goes into too much detail when it involves some of the more triggering things. Just a fade to black.

        That said it’s such an intensely human series. So much love and compassion litered throughout the whole thing.

        It’s also such a unique experience. Most fantasy books have huge massive reveals that shock and take you by surprise. Malazan has these things. But it also does it in reverse. You’ll read something and then a book or two later it changes context entirely, completely blowing your mind.

      • llamapocalypse
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        38 months ago

        The series is fantastic but it does get quite heavy in a lot of ways. Very heavy on the ways people and societies are shitty to each other, but the central theme of it really is compassion.

    • Bebo
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      28 months ago

      Glad to read about Malazan 😊 here