Spoiler clearance: not sure, let’s say The Bonehunters
I love Moranth munitions. Especially cussers. Yet, I have to admit something. These explosives kinda completely spoiled the sappers for me. I mean the original sappers. We have never really seen them do their thing – the work they used to do before the Malazans ever met the Moranth. Digging tunnels beneath enemy walls. Punching holes through huge foundations. The whole Vimy Ridge experience. The galleries and counter-galleries. Being twenty-five feet underground, with pike and shovel, and suddenly hearing some digging sounds (and German accents) coming up from further down.
Awesome shit. World War One certainly was no place for wussies.
Hedge, Fiddler, Spindle, Cuttle and the others, could do all this stuff, for sure, I know. But they don’t do it anymore. There is no use. They just drill some hole and plant a cusser or two – or three, if it’s done by mister Jamber Bole, who belongs in the loony bin –, and that’s it. Ka-boom!
At Pale, right before the Enfilade, there were lots of tunnels, yes. But we don’t see them. We only hear about them after the fact. After the collapse. We don’t venture into the darn things like we do at Y’Ghatan. But that’s another story altogether.
Those Moranth, they are mysterious, to say the least. Barring Twist, there’s no individual characters in there. We only know the Moranth as a community. They stay put in Cloud Forest, that remote area on the coast of Genabackis , and never cause any trouble. Hood knows, they could easily conquer that entire continent! Overthrow the Malazans in Genabaris. Destroy Darujhistan (drop one flamer into one gas main, and... there’s nothing left). The Moranth could even annihilate the Seguleh. Fly over their island with a few squadrons of those winged beasts – then carpet-bomb it with eleven thousand cussers. Bye bye, First, Second, and the rest.
But no. They don’t do it.
As I said. Mysterious.
