This article is about the current Gods. You may be looking for Elder Gods.
The Gods of the Malazan Empire were mostly Ascendants who had gained control of a Warren, accessed its power through a Throne, and were worshiped by mortals. While the gods were described as "immortal", immortality did not in fact last forever. According to the Elder God K'rul, "Every god falls at a mortal's hands. Such is the only end to immortality."[1] Gods who lost their worshippers remained Ascendants, but were emasculated in power unless worship was somehow renewed.[2] Once their names were no longer remembered, they vanished and died.[3] If a God was annihilated, nothing could bring them back.[2]
While worship gave a god power, it was a double edged sword. If the will of the god's worshipers was strong enough, the god could be forced to submit to their followers' desires unless they chose to make war upon their own worshipers.[4] If acts committed in the god's name were sufficiently antithetical to the god's ethos, they could cause harm or even death to the god.[5] Altars acted as a tool for attempts to chain their chosen gods.[6]
The gods were sometimes called new gods to distinguish them from the Elder Gods. They were also collectively referred to as the pantheon.[7]
Apart from the pantheon worshiped by members of the Empire, there were others. The Barghast for example, had their own pantheon who were ascended spirits which had emerged from the Hold of the Beast and who were said to be primordial in their aspect.[8] The Dal Honese had a bizarre menagerie of disgusting deities.[9] Sailors of Lether were known to pray and make propitiations to the Sea spirits particular to the dangers of their profession.[10] Spirits who had been forgotten and lost their power could sometimes be renewed in strength simply by recalling or rediscovering their names.[2]
Ganoes Paran thought that uncertainty was one of the few things the Gods feared.[11]
Some of the Gods were associated with Houses in the Deck of Dragons. See the individual houses for further details.
Gods (new) mentioned in the books[]
- Apsalar, the Lady of Thieves
- Beru, the Lord of Storms
- Cotillion, the Rope
- The Crippled God, the Chained One
- Dessembrae, the Lord of Tragedy
- D'rek, the Worm of Autumn
- Fener, the Boar of War
- Gedderone, the Lady of Spring and Rebirth
- Hood, the Lord of Death
- Jhess, the Queen of Weaving
- Mowri, the Lady of Beggars, Slaves and Serfs
- Nerruse, the Lady of Calm Seas and Fair Wind
- Oponn, the twins of chance
- Poliel, the Queen of Disease
- The Redeemer, a new God in Coral
- Shadowthrone, also known as Ammanas
- Soliel, the Lady of Health.
- Trake, the Tiger of Summer and Battle
- T'riss, the Queen of Dreams, or the Enchantress (note that she could debately be named an elder goddess due to being an azathanai.)
Trivia[]
- Contrasting the religions of the real world with those in the novels, Steven Erikson says modern gods tend to be "omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent" and they do not directly appear before their worshippers. "In the Malazan world the gods are simply ascended beings and so they are more Olympian than they are anything else. So they have personalities, which means they have flaws, and they are present." Crimes committed in the name of a real world religion are generally not seen to impugn the deity, but are attributed to its flawed mortal worshippers. "There's no feedback between the mortals and the gods...guilt cannot be passed upward, as it were. So in the Malazan world, this is a very different scenario. It's one in which there is efficacy to both the believer and the believed, and so there's a biofeedback mechanism at work and one affects the other, and vice versa. One has a greater power individually, but numerically the other has greater power, so you've got this tug of war that's between the two. And the [Malazan] gods are flawed and they have personalities. They have to try to manage their own sense of self with the belief systems that are built up around them. And so I always just found that an interesting sort of approach to things where it becomes a true dialogue as opposed to an entirely internal one, which exists in our world."[12]
- Asked if there are atheists in a world where gods can talk to their worshippers, Erikson says, "Oh, yeah, yeah...It's a different kind of atheism. It's an individual who acknowledges the existence of these gods but refuses the notion of worship. In other words, it's recognising the fallibility of at least these entities that are self-identified as gods. And simply, it just says, 'You're just a little bit higher on the hierarchy, but something extends beyond that that you have no control over.'...It's not a question of not acknowledging their existence, which would be silly because if they're there, they're there, but not giving them any credence in terms of having control over your life. So, it's a different kind of atheism. But it's certainly a rejection of one's place in an imagined, or real, hierarchy."[13]
Notes and references[]
- ↑ Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 7
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 The Bonehunters, Chapter 10, US SFBC p.439
- ↑ Midnight Tides, Chapter 6, US SFBC p.203-204
- ↑ The Bonehunters, Chapter 16, US SFBC p.651
- ↑ The Bonehunters, Chapter 14, US SFBC p.567
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 18, US HC p.553
- ↑ Memories of Ice, Chapter 18, UK MMPB p.747
- ↑ Memories of Ice, Chapter 18, UK MMPB p.716
- ↑ The Bonehunters, Chapter 7
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 6, US HC p.139
- ↑ Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 4, UK MMPB p.139/140
- ↑ Ten Very Big Books podcast - Reaper's Gale - Conversation with Steven Erikson - See 35:15
- ↑ Conversation on Malazan with Steven Erikson and AP Canavan (aka A Critical Dragon) - Green Team of the Legendarium - See 1:08:50