#csestriim

In the "Ask Me Anything" Part II video Brian Staveley answered a question regarding Cestriim’s emotion. We asked about it since Ran il Tornja seemed to act sometimes motivated by emotion (especially in the last mortal bond).

The Csestrim don’t have natural emotion since they were born before the young gods (of emotion). However, they have been alive during thousands of years while the new gods have been in the world so emotion is starting to seep into them.

Long story short

As years go by the Csestriim get bit by bit rotten.

The birds are indigenous to a part of the world that is very, very hard to reach. The Annurians managed to get their hands on some eggs hundreds of years back (thanks to il Tornja), and the rookery on the Islands is the only one in this part of the world. As far as the Annurians using them for more than war--no emperors have wanted to risk the birds falling into hostile hands. As long as they remain on the islands, no one else can get at them. There's also a problem with the birds crossing the equator--they can't fly above a certain temperature...

I will allow myself to repeat it.

Ran il Tornja is the one who found and domesticated Kettarls

(as far as those birds can be domesticaded. I’m pretty sure there’s some better word to decribe it but I’m not  a native speaker)

Ran il Tornja and Kettarls is the content we need. 

I have found a great question on goodsreads. The author explained different approaches to the same dilemma between the Csestriim, as well as, people in vaniate.

The crucial variables, at least as far as I see it, are intellectual capacity, factual knowledge, and the nature of the dilemma. For instance, a simple, soluble dilemma (say, a math problem) would find the same answer from anyone inside the vaniate. Most dilemmas aren't so simple, however--hence the fact that the Csestriim can play stones. The game hasn't been solved--if it had, there would be no game, just a memorized series of optimal moves--and so the Csestriim take different approaches. Even a Csestriim with superior intellectual ability won't always win because there's not a single optimal play at any given move. Of course, real-life dilemmas (warfare, for instance, or politics) are even more complex, and so Csestriim can disagree. No two Csestriim have lived the same life, so no two will be bringing the same set of facts and experience to bear on the dilemma itself. While their lack of emotion obviates one potential form of disagreement, there are other reasons to disagree

The doran’se are only mentioned once in the Prologue of The Emperor’s Blades. With a little information we get about the Csestriim it seems to be a noteworthy element.

“Father,” Faith pleaded, unable to proceed past that single word. “Daughter,” Tan’is replied. “You don’t…,” she gasped, glancing over her shoulder toward the ditch, toward where the doran’se went about their work, steel flashing in the sunlight. “You can’t…”

Being curious creatures we are - we asked the author Brian Staveley, and here’s what he answered with:

They're a group of Csestriim specifically charged with hunting down and killing humans...

We found an old answer to questions about gods and their links to the Csestriim.

One of the principles governing the theology of the world is balance. As a result, the old gods came into being (no one in the word knows or understands how--the theology varies from religion to religion and region to region) in pairs: the Blank God, then Ae (nothing and something), Pta and Astar'ren (chaos and order), Hull and Intarra (Darkness and Light), etc. When the universe swings too far toward on pole, a countervailing force arises to balance things out. The Csestriim and the Nevariim, were both created by Bedisa (goddess of Birth), and created to balance each other out. The Csestriim--rational, cerebral; the Nevariim, instinctive. When the Csestriim destroyed the Nevariim, there was a major imbalance, and some speculate that the young gods (and hence the humans) emerged in response to that imbalance...

source

The author hasn’t fully considered it before.

The provisional answer is yes.

“What’s the point?” Is a question that often haunts people. Some struggle to find the purpose of life and find their source of motivation. Csestriim is an emotionless creature ruled by mind and logic. We asked the author about what keeps them going. Here is what he said:

I'd say that the Csestriim, while devoid of human emotion, have something I think of as a curiosity instinct.  

Whatever impulse it is in *humans* that makes us want to look over the horizon, to take things apart, etc, is hypertrophied in the Csestriim and untethered from emotion.  So while a human explorer might want to cross an ocean for several reasons, 1) curiosity 2) fame 3) wealth 4)etc, the Csestriim just have that curiosity on steroids... 

There is no "point" for them, no end goal (and this is where the Shin teaching overlaps with the Csestriim way of life). The process is the point.

curiosity on steroids