Try our affiliated browser extension - redirect to BreezeWiki automatically!

Eleint

Estideein eleint by dejan delic

The Eleint [ee-LAINT][1] were an ancient and powerful race of pure dragons,[2] not to be confused with Soletaken Eleint, whose home was the Elder Warren of Starvald Demelain.[3]

They were the spawn of T'iam, but more like fragments of the goddess than children. Their histories and bloodlines bound them together, but their rage against their splintered natures drove them to mindless clashes with each other.[4]

Physiology

Eleint were enormous, scaled, reptilian monstrosities with long, sinewy necks, webbed wings, terrible fanged jaws, and deadly taloned hands.[5] They possessed more than one heart.[6][7]

Draconean blood was such a potent force of Chaos that it altered anything it came in contact with. Anyone who absorbed dragon blood took on draconean traits[8] and at least temporarily acquired the dragon's memories.[9]

Reproduction

Dragons took husbands and wives for centuries, mating in violent couplings in the sky. Once sated, the dragons separated and the female sought a solitary place to heal and lay her eggs.[10] Males crushed the eggs of their rivals before attempting to mate with the same female.[11]

In Gardens of the Moon

Soletaken eleint by dejan delic

The Eleint, Silanah, resided in Moon's Spawn and was a companion to Anomander Rake.[12] When the Malazan Empire freed the Jaghut Tyrant Raest from his barrow to challenge Rake, the Son of Darkness asked Silanah to help delay the Tyrant's march on Darujhistan. She was supported by four Tiste Andii Soletaken in the form of black dragons.[13] Silanah was badly injured by Raest in the process, but he spared her life.[14]

In House of Chains

Pearl and Lostara Yil came across an enormous Eleint spiked and chained onto a wooden X-shaped cross as large as a four-storey building. Pearl noted that the still living dragon was aspected to Otataral, although its aura was safely contained within its prison, and was part of nature's strive for symmetry and balance. By devouring magic and consuming warrens, the otataral dragon was an answer "for every other dragon that ever existed, or ever will."[15]

Lostara stated that all the oldest legends of dragons in Seven Cities started by saying that they were the essence of sorcery.[16]

In The Bonehunters

Three Eleint, Ampelas, Eloth, and Kalse, imprisoned in Kurald Emurlahn revealed much to Cotillion about their race's connection to the Warrens. The Elder God K'rul asked them to shape his blood to create Warrens, Elder and new, and for each Warren an Eleint was aspected to it. Once the work was complete, the Eleint "were compelled to return to Starvald Demelain. As the sources of sorcery, they could not be permitted to interfere or remain active across the realms, lest sorcery cease to be predictable, which in turn would feed Chaos—the eternal enemy in this grand scheme."[17]

Chained in Shadow by Noah Bradley

Further complicating matters were the Soletaken Eleint. They possessed the blood of T'iam and thus her powers, but were free to travel as they pleased and interfere as they wished. Additionally, K'rul assigned the same aspects to the Soletaken Eleint forcing the Eleint to share power.[18] The Eleint despised Scabandari Bloodeye, Draconus, and Olar Ethil, and dismissed their own Silanah for falling for Anomandaris' charms.[19]

The three chained Eleint attempted to heal the fractured Kurald Emurlahn by seizing the Throne of Shadow, but were stopped by a vengeful Anomandaris and his Tiste Andii. Rake was determined to see the Throne remain unclaimed.[20]

In Reaper's Gale

Feral dragons were among the creatures warring in Kurald Emurlahn as the Elder Warren began to die and fragment. The Elder Goddess Kilmandaros defended the warren, battling those who sought its Throne or scavenged its fragments to claim as their own. While travelling through the Warren she encountered the carcasses of six dragons strewn in a row on a plain. Where their blood spilled out onto the dirt, wraiths gathered like flies, tasting the blood and becoming entrapped by it: "The ghosts writhing and voicing hollow cries of despair, as the blood darkened, fusing with the lifeless soil; and, when at last the substance grew indurate, hardening into glassy stone, those ghosts were doomed to an eternity trapped within that murky prison".[21] The blood sank into the ground and fell through world after world, solidifying in other realms depending on the blood's aspect.[22]

While travelling through the Bluerose Mountains, Silchas Ruin, Seren Pedac, Fear Sengar, Udinaas, Kettle, and the Shadow wraith Wither discovered the shattered remains of an ancient K'Chain Che'Malle city. Ruin observed that it had been destroyed by the powerful Starvald Demelain sorcery of at least a dozen dragons. Wither revealed that the dragons had acted against the K'Chain Che'Malle to stop them from vengefully annihilating all existence as their race slid into extinction.[23]

Ruin and the others were later guided by Clip through Kurald Galain to a shattered gate of cyclopean proportions that led to Starvald Demelain.[24] After passing through the gate, they found a world of black volcanic ash beneath a vast nearly black sky. Even the three blazing suns could barely cut through the darkness.[25] The air was lifeless and foul, bearing a taint of immeasurable grief that seemed to drain the strength from the body and spirit.[26] The rough plain before them was covered with the bodies of hundreds of dead dragons.[27] Although the dragons' bones were shattered and their skin and sinew was desiccated and contracted, none showed any sign of wounds. They had all died of old age, not violence, and perished where they settled facing another gate that led to the Refugium. Udinaas compared the sight by the Refugium gate to blue flies dying on the sill of a window which remained closed despite the flies' attempts to escape.[28]

Beak observed that Stormy and Gesler were "re-forged in the fires of Tellann". He then went on to say: "Telas, Kurald Liosan, the fires, the ones dragons fly through to gain immunities and other proofs against magic and worse".[29]

In Toll the Hounds

Baruk read from a book by Dillat given to him by Anomander Rake. Among other subjects, it recorded a war among the dragons when all the First Born (but one) had bowed their necks to K'rul. The children of the dragons, bereft of their inheritance, rose in battle to reject the First Born. Rake and Osseric had already tasted the blood of T'iam and others came to do the same. War raged upon all the Realms as long as the Gates of Starvald Demelain remained open. Crone told Baruk that Rake was amused by the book's inaccuracies.[30]

Spinnock Durav recalled that some time before the arrival of Silanah, Anomander Rake had warred with the pure-blood dragons when they had broken from their long-standing servitude to K'rul to grasp power for themselves. Spinnock was unclear as to Rake's motivation for opposing the dragons.[31]

Nimander Golit fell through a gate of Omtose Phellack in a former Azath House occupied by Gothos. The Tiste Andii found himself in a world of ash surrounded by the hostile spirits of Tiste Andii, Tiste Edur, and Tiste Liosan who fell in the first wars, when dragons burst through every gate to slay and die. The pumice and ash that had been the breath and blood of the dying dragons had trapped the spirits as if in amber. Nimander convinced Elder, the mason also trapped there, to build an Azath House from the dragons' stony remains. Elder found it a fitting grave marker and Gothos later commented that there was now an Azath in the blood of dragons.[32]

In The Crippled God

Sandalath Drukorlat remembered how long before the rise of human empires, the Hold of Starvald Demelain, home realm of the dragons, was cut off from them by the Hust Legion, on Anomander Rake's orders. Whilst Rake was going to fight them beyond the Rent, denying them the Throne of Shadow, the legion was ordered to march through the gate and fight the Eleint until only five of the legion remained. Those five were ordered to then seal that wound (the rent presumably). The Eleint stopped coming for a long time thus buying Rake and the other Andii time.[33]

A few dragons were left to wander the Holds and human realm when the Elder God K'rul struck a deal with them. He proposed that each should take upon themselves a certain aspect of a new type of magic. These aspects would manifest as Warrens, a new, more ordered kind of magic. It should be noted that it was not clear what K'rul offered the dragons in return.[citation needed]

After this aspecting, many of the dragons were hunted down and chained, as killing them would cause the magic in the Warrens aspected to them to disappear. In addition, one dragon, Korabas, was Otataral aspected, a necessary ingredient in order to counterbalance the appearance of this new magic.[citation needed]

In Forge of Darkness

(Information needed)

In Fall of Light

(Information needed)

Language

For a list of known Eleint words and phrases as well as translations please visit the Eleint Language page.

Eleint

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Gardens of the Moon - Chatting with Steven Erikson, part 2 - As pronounced by Steven Erikson at 1:20:48
  2. ↑ Midnight Tides, Chapter 15, UK MMPB p.588
  3. ↑ The Bonehunters, Glossary
  4. ↑ Fall of Light, Chapter 5, US HC p.125
  5. ↑ Fall of Light, Chapter 5, US HC p.127/129/132
  6. ↑ Toll the Hounds, Chapter 16, UK HB p.600
  7. ↑ Fall of Light, Chapter 5, US HC p.133
  8. ↑ Gardens of the Moon - Chatting with Steven Erikson, part 2 - See 35:00
  9. ↑ Fall of Light, Chapter 5, US HC p.133-134
  10. ↑ Fall of Light, Chapter 5, US HC p.125/133-134
  11. ↑ Fall of Light, Chapter 5, US HC p.133-134
  12. ↑ Gardens of the Moon, Dramatis Personae, UK MMPB p.xv
  13. ↑ Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 22
  14. ↑ Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 22, US MMPB p.592
  15. ↑ House of Chains, Chapter 12, US SFBC p.472-473
  16. ↑ House of Chains, Chapter 12, UK MMPB p.566
  17. ↑ The Bonehunters, Chapter 2, US SFBC p.77-78
  18. ↑ The Bonehunters, Chapter 2, US SFBC p.79
  19. ↑ The Bonehunters, Chapter 2, US SFBC p.78-79
  20. ↑ The Bonehunters, Chapter 2, US SFBC p.76
  21. ↑ Reaper's Gale, Prologue, US HC p.19-20/23
  22. ↑ Reaper's Gale, Prologue, US HC p.20
  23. ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 2, US HC p.52-53
  24. ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 21, US HC p.662
  25. ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 21, US HC p.664
  26. ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 23, US HC p.721-724
  27. ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 21, US HC p.664
  28. ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 23, US HC p.721-724
  29. ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 22, BCA edition p.734
  30. ↑ Toll the Hounds, Chapter 1, US SFBC p.52-54
  31. ↑ Toll the Hounds, Chapter 2, US SFBC p.75
  32. ↑ Toll the Hounds, Chapter 8, US SFBC p.330/332/334
  33. ↑ The Crippled God, Chapter 15, UK HB p.431/432
List of abbreviations • Paginations • How to reference an article
Races
Founding Races Forkrul Assail (WateredH → ShrivenH) • K'Chain Che'Malle (K'Chain Nah'ruk) • Jaghut (IcebloodsH • JhagN) • Eres → Imass (T'lan Imass) → [ Barghast • Humans • Moranth ]
Thel Races Thel Akai (Fenn / Tarthenal / Teblor / Thelomen Toblakai / TrellN)
Tiste Races Tiste → [ Tiste Andii (Bluerose) • Tiste Liosan • Tiste Edur (Rulhun'tal ven'or) • ShakeH ]
Demons From Aral Gamelon: Galayn • Kenryll'ah / Kenyll'rah • Korvalahrai    From Kurald Emurlahn: Aptorian • Artorallah • Azalan • Dinal    Others: Khalibaral • Sirinth • Venath
Other Races Azathanai • Deragoth • Eleint • Great Ravens • Jheck • Stormriders • T'rolbarahl
( ) = Sub-set of parent race    → = Evolved into    H = Human hybrid with parent race    N = Non-human hybrid