Matron (Morn)

A K'Chain Che'Malle Matron was the insane prisoner and adoptive mother of the Pannion Seer. She had once been imprisoned within the Rent at the dead city of Morn.Memories of Ice, Chapter 1, US SFBC p.57
The Seer kept the shrieking, crying creature chained in a cave and gave it prisoners to "mother" in her crushing arms. His control over the Matron gave him control of the hundreds of undead K'ell Hunters that had been her children.Memories of Ice, Chapter 22, US SFBC p.785-786Memories of Ice, Chapter 12, US SFBC p.426Memories of Ice, Chapter 15, US SFBC p.502
She was giant, bloated, and reptilian, with folds of fat-layered flesh, and a flabby, pebble-skinned breast-less bosom. Dead skin sloughed from her massive, leathery arms, whose immense strength could crush bones while her claws could gouge hatch-marks in stone. Her body exuded an acrid oil and the breath from her fanged snout smelled like sugared milk.Memories of Ice, Chapter 17, US SFBC p.555-556Memories of Ice, Chapter 22, US SFBC p.782Memories of Ice, Chapter 25, US SFBC p.912
==In Memories of Ice==
After being captured by the Pannion Seer at Outlook, Toc the Younger became the latest of the Seer's prisoners to be given to the Matron to hold within her embrace. Her great strength crushed his bones repeatedly, but he was always kept from dying through magical healing. The healing was imperfect so he became broken and deformed by the Matron's rough handling. The Matron fed Toc and licked him clean when he fouled himself. Whatever measure of sanity she still maintained was horrified by the Seer's wars.
The Seer sent her K'ell Hunters to accompany his armies against Capustan and the other cities to the north of the Pannion Domin. Many perished at the Siege of Capustan.Memories of Ice, Chapter 14, US SFBC p.467
When Outlook was threatened by Lady Envy and her companions, the Seer fled to Coral bringing Toc and the Matron.Memories of Ice, Chapter 17, US SFBC p.555-559 As High Fist Dujek Onearm's forces besieged Coral the Seer stole the Matron's power and captured them within a Finnest shaped like a lizard's egg. He fled to the keep's roof with the now mindless and soul-stripped Matron in time for the surprise appearance of Moon's Spawn. Anomander Rake's skykeep crashed into the keep crushing the Matron in falling stone.Memories of Ice, Chapter 25, US SFBC p.912-913/934/943
Quick Ben then convinced the Seer to release the Matron's soul back into the Rent in order to free his sister.Memories of Ice, Chapter 25, US SFBC p.964
==In Toll the Hounds==
Seerdomin passed through the tunnels beneath the Old Palace and found himself in the chamber where Toc the Younger had once been chained within reach of the Matron who had served as the Pannion Seer's monstrous mother. The room still reeked of her.Toll the Hounds, Chapter 10, US SFBC p.403-404
==History==
The Matron remembered a time when she had once been a true mother surrounded by her loving brood.Memories of Ice, Chapter 19, US SFBC p.694-695 But the Matrons had resurrected an old breed of short-tailed K'Chain Che'Malle known as the K'Chain Nah'ruk, and these willful children had betrayed them. In the uprising that followed, the short-tails used their Skykeeps and sorcery to wage war on the Matrons. The Matron at Morn may have created the Rent as a gate to the Warren of Chaos in an attempt to harness its power for the war.Memories of Ice, Chapter 15, US SFBC p.500-504 In the end, her soul was imprisoned within the Rent, sealing the gateway, while her body was buried in a warded tomb surround by the barrows of her children.
Around 300,000 years before the Siege of Pale, the Imass Bonecaster Kilava Onass mistakenly thought the Rent a gateway to Omtose Phellack, the Jaghut Warren. She rescued a Jaghut boy and girl from their Imass pursuers and sent them through the Rent ostensibly to safety. But the Bonecaster Pran Chole informed her that she had actually sent the children to a prison of eternal pain and suffering while releasing the soul of the original captive.Memories of Ice, Prologue, US SFBC p.24-26
The Matron's soul returned to her nearby body, but she took considerable time (possibly hundreds of thousands of years) extricating herself from her tomb and recovering from her ordeal. She found her world had turned to dust, and without her, her children had withered, died, and been buried in the barrows around her. Then several decades before the events of the Malazan series she found the Jaghut boy and adopted him as her son, showing him his power so that he could re-create her world. She raised her undead children from their barrows and attempted to rebuild the dead city. But the delusion led only to madness.
The Pannion Seer took the Matron with him as he founded the Pannion Domin.
==Trivia==
Steven Erikson says the matron's "mindless maternal need" was inspired by the character of Grendel's mother in John Gardner's novel Grendel. Thematically, she also served as a counterpart to the Mhybe.DLC Bookclub Special: Our 2nd Interview with Steven Erikson, author of Memories of Ice - See 58:50
==Notes and references==
Category:Females
Category:K'Chain Che'Malle
Category:Matrons