Jeremiah's Quellvisk Bone Construct

Book 3 of the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

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Flasharino
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Jeremiah's Quellvisk Bone Construct

Post by Flasharino »

What was the purpose of the construction Jeremiah made from the Quellvisk bones and his race car? What did it accomplish?
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Are you looking for something more than "it allowed him to break out of his autistic isolation and interact with the others?"
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Post by Flasharino »

To be honest, while reading, I considered that to be more of a side-effect. I associated his constructs with more physical results. I would have thought that there was more significance to the collected bones of genocidal remains of the Elohim work.
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Re: Jeremiah's Quellvisk Bone Construct

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Flasharino wrote:What was the purpose of the construction Jeremiah made from the Quellvisk bones and his race car? What did it accomplish?
I haven't read Last Dark yet...and couldn't post about that here if I had...so I don't know of later aspects revealed, if any.

But what we saw of it is that Jerry had built a wall or ward inside himself to keep the croyel from taking over/controlling/corrupting his true self. Unfortunate side effect [though perhaps necessary] was that it severely limited his connection with people/things outside of himself.
Interestingly, there is a real condition like this, though luckily very rare...people who seem totally comatose/non-responsive, but are in fact perceiving everything happening to them/going on around them.

Anyway, the construct freed him from that ward. [I think of it as a kind of forbidding like the Lords used to do, a mental/spiritual variation] The Earthpower gifted him by Anele enabled him to build it, I'm pretty sure...the final ingredient he needed. My impression, anyway.
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Post by Zarathustra »

Vraith, what are you waiting on? :)

I thought the bone construct was pretty random. Jer had a talent for contructs, so that had to be worked into his act of freeing himself, since that's his personal talent. Perhaps there's a connection to the graves of his mind where he has hidden himself, and the bones. Death metaphors mixed with "rebirth." Elsewhere, I've described it as constructing his own womb from bones, from which he was born once again back into the world.

I have no idea what the Land connection is ... which is probably deliberate, since these creatures aren't mentioned (prominently) anywhere else. It's a random detail that was "mined" by SRD to make his rebirth seem firmly connected to the rest of his fictional world. Beyond that, it didn't seem relevant enough for SRD to draw any deeper connections, so I just assumed we knew everything we need to know about it. It's about Jer's character, and nothing else.
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Post by Vraith »

Zarathustra wrote:Vraith, what are you waiting on? :)
A relative, who shall remain nameless cuz comes here though not a member, bought me the damn thing for Christmas...then had to tell me cuz I was about to buy it myself, but FORBID me to "open" it till xmas eve.
It's a cold hard world when people closest to you enjoy perpetrating such purely evil and torturous acts.
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the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
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Post by Flasharino »

Oh, it's goooooooood...
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Post by dlbpharmd »

Zarathustra wrote:Vraith, what are you waiting on? :)

I thought the bone construct was pretty random. Jer had a talent for contructs, so that had to be worked into his act of freeing himself, since that's his personal talent. Perhaps there's a connection to the graves of his mind where he has hidden himself, and the bones. Death metaphors mixed with "rebirth." Elsewhere, I've described it as constructing his own womb from bones, from which he was born once again back into the world.

I have no idea what the Land connection is ... which is probably deliberate, since these creatures aren't mentioned (prominently) anywhere else. It's a random detail that was "mined" by SRD to make his rebirth seem firmly connected to the rest of his fictional world. Beyond that, it didn't seem relevant enough for SRD to draw any deeper connections, so I just assumed we knew everything we need to know about it. It's about Jer's character, and nothing else.
You know, it really didn't have to be Quellvisks. The Ranyhyn could've taken them to a valley full of Ranyhyn bones. The outcome would've been the same.
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Post by wayfriend »

dlbpharmd wrote:You know, it really didn't have to be Quellvisks. The Ranyhyn could've taken them to a valley full of Ranyhyn bones. The outcome would've been the same.
Yes, and no.

I think Jeremiah needed a very specific material, which had a very specific shape. But I think that the materials which provide those shapes have no logical connection to what is accomplished.

Consider witches spells. One can imagine that the ingredients for a love potion are bats wings and frogs eyes, for example. Those specific ingredients would be needed to make the spell. But it would be pointless to wonder what bats and frogs have to do with love.

(As opposed to sympathetic magic, where a love potion might require something once loved, for example.)

I think that an allusion to this kind of magical spell is being made here. The ingredients are very specific, but there is no imaginable connection to the result.

So, I think Jeremiah might have needed Ranyhyn bones as likely as he needed Quelvisk bones. But if he needed Ranyhn bones, Quelvisk bones would not work.

That being said, Quelvisk bones are rare enough that the finding of them added to the plot. Does that make them McGuffins?
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Post by dlbpharmd »

But, Jeremiah used marrowmeld, which meant that he could shape the bones however he wanted. There wasn't any need for fixed shapes, as with his other constructs.

If the construct had been made from Ranyhyn bones, it would've worked just as well in the story, and we never would've known the difference.
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Truth

Post by Flasharino »

It would seem to me that the only person who would know the definitive answer to that question would be SRD.
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Post by Vraith »

dlbpharmd wrote:But, Jeremiah used marrowmeld, which meant that he could shape the bones however he wanted. There wasn't any need for fixed shapes, as with his other constructs.

If the construct had been made from Ranyhyn bones, it would've worked just as well in the story, and we never would've known the difference.
Nifty thought...but it doesn't follow.
Recall the SIZE of the bones...nothing about marrowmeld that we know suggests they could turn a finger's-length of bone into a massive rib.
Consider the nature of the critters [as it relates to the material of their bones]...they were "made" of materials fundamentally altered/created by a magic unrelated to Earthpower [something called "contingent magic" IIRC].
That is "materially" different from a Rany, or its remains.

On a speculative/tangential thought: Jerry might well know what kind of thing he needs...but how would he know if and where it was in the Land?
Well...he had "spirit meetings" with Insequent IIRC. Nothing would suit them better than mating Jerry's role with something that would horrify the Elohim. The RANY, in turn, know that the Q. site is where Jerry can heal his mind because of their Time knowledge, and that site is in range of Jerry's actual location at the moment he needs and is capable of breaking his mental isolation. [whether or not they give a damn about the Insequent, or if they are relevant at all].
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"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
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Post by wayfriend »

dlbpharmd wrote:But, Jeremiah used marrowmeld, which meant that he could shape the bones however he wanted.
Oh, I see what you're getting at.

Perhaps it was that he could shape any bone, but he needed quelvisk bone for this specific construct, it having some subtle difference.

Or perhaps the marrowmelding could be used to join bones together, but could not be used to create the large bones he needed from smaller ones. (okay, yes, that's what Vraith is saying as well.)
Vraith wrote:On a speculative/tangential thought: Jerry might well know what kind of thing he needs...but how would he know if and where it was in the Land?
I don't think he did. I think the Ranyhyn somehow new. Infelice should have trusted the Ranyhyn, I think.
Flasharino wrote:It would seem to me that the only person who would know the definitive answer to that question would be SRD.
Well ... yeah. Absolutely. But that's true in every discussion! :D
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Post by Zarathustra »

I think if the explanation mattered at all, it would have been in the story. Since it's not there (assuming that's true), it's kind of like arguing how many Elohim can fit on the head of pin.

Not that I care if people argue about it. I'm just adding my perspective to the debate. I pick an answer similar to TC's solution to belief/unbelief quandary: it doesn't really matter. As dlbpharmd said, it wouldn't have impacted the story whatsoever if the bones had been something else. We wouldn't have known the difference.
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Post by DrPaul »

Another thing to consider is that the quellvisks were created (or at least developed from natural stock) by theurgy, whereas Ranyhyn are natural.
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Post by Cord Hurn »

DrPaul wrote:Another thing to consider is that the quellvisks were created (or at least developed from natural stock) by theurgy, whereas Ranyhyn are natural.
This likely made them unique in many ways, including in the material their bones were made of. I believe the Elohim gathered the bones of all the quellvisks in this one spot of the Lower Land, so that these bones could be found nowhere else in the Land's world.
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Post by dlbpharmd »

Cord Hurn wrote:
DrPaul wrote:Another thing to consider is that the quellvisks were created (or at least developed from natural stock) by theurgy, whereas Ranyhyn are natural.
This likely made them unique in many ways, including in the material their bones were made of. I believe the Elohim gathered the bones of all the quellvisks in this one spot of the Lower Land, so that these bones could be found nowhere else in the Land's world.
Interesting point. I assumed the bones were there because the final battle against the Elohim occurred there.
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Post by wayfriend »

In [i]Against All Things Ending[/i] was wrote:"In a distant age, they were destroyed. Their bones we deposited here, in Muirwin Delenoth, which signifies the resting place of abhorrence, as an emblem of our disdain for such affronts."
So Cord Hurn has the truth of it.
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Post by Cord Hurn »

wayfriend wrote:
In [i]Against All Things Ending[/i] was wrote:"In a distant age, they were destroyed. Their bones we deposited here, in Muirwin Delenoth, which signifies the resting place of abhorrence, as an emblem of our disdain for such affronts."
So Cord Hurn has the truth of it.
Every now and then I get lucky, lol.
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Post by Lazy Luke »

Cord Hurn wrote:
wayfriend wrote:
In [i]Against All Things Ending[/i] was wrote:"In a distant age, they were destroyed. Their bones we deposited here, in Muirwin Delenoth, which signifies the resting place of abhorrence, as an emblem of our disdain for such affronts."
So Cord Hurn has the truth of it.
Every now and then I get lucky, lol.
Good show and well done. :)
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