malazan

People of civilized countenance made much of exposing the soft underbellies of their psyche - effete and sensitive were the brands of finer breeding. It was easy for them, safe, and that was the whole point, after all: a statement of coddled opulence that burned the throats of the poor more than any ostentatious show of wealth.

Now get going. You'll find a way of calm through.""And you, Mael?""I'll drop in later. I've things for you to do, Withal. But for now," he faced inland, "I'm going to beat a god senseless.

A civilization can easily drown in what it knows as in what doesn't know. Consider,' he continued, Gotho's Folly. Gotho's curse was in being too aware - of everything. Every permutation, every potential. Enough to poison every scan he cast on the world. It availed him naught, and worse, he was aware of even that.

The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysfunctional in its extremities; whilst the latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny.'- Traveller

The closest I ever got to Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms was when I bought the box game set for the latter (I think this was before the novels came out). I well recall this__e were living in James Bay, in Victoria. We opened the box up and took out the maps while sitting in a Mexican restaurant. Ten minutes later I was as close as I have ever been to publicly burning someone else__ creation_What bothered us was the reworking of every fantasy cliché imaginable, all in one package now, and none of it made sense.

Dour music has its own beauty, for the song of ruin is most fertile.

Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us.

Silence!_ Korbolo snapped. He eyed Duiker. __ou are the historian who rode with Coltaine.__he historian faced him. __ am.___ou are a soldier.___s you say.___ do, and so you shall die with these soldiers, in a manner no different-___ou mean to slaughter ten thousand unarmed men and women, Korbolo Dom?___ mean to cripple Tavore before she even sets foot on this continent. I mean to make her too furious to think. I mean to crack that façade so she dreams of vengeance day and night, poisoning her every decision.___ou always fashioned yourself as the Empire__ harshest Fist, didn__ you, Korbolo Dom? As if cruelty__ a virtue_

She watched with morbid fascination as they gathered at the stumps at the ends of the man's wrists, the old scar tissue the only place on him unclaimed by Fener, but the paths the sprites took to those stumps touched not a single tattooed line. The flies dance a dance of avoidance - but for all that, they were eager to dance.

What makes a Malazan soldier so dangerous? They__e allowed to think.