Found this forum yesterday - wow!!
I offer the following thoughts - the info that it is based upon pretty much all comes from the first 2 trilogies and it is all speculative!!! Any thoughts?
I saw a thread on this forum which said something along the lines of:
“It is likely that Foul had no interest in the Land until the Lords gained his attention” (search the GI for ‘Raver’). Now if this is true, it raises some questions:
So what happened at Doriender Korishev? And who spoke to Berek? The assumption has always been that it had to be the earth/earthpower. (Certainly, Berek believed it was the Earth, but then Kevin, who was much more in-tune with the earthpower than Berek was, was fooled by none other than Foul, so it is entirely possible he was mislead) In fact, all that Berek did in ‘serving the Earth’ was set in motion a series of events which threaten the Arch of time.
It was Berek who foresaw whitegold coming to the land and the power it would have. He was a seer and oracle – but who gave him the sight? If it was someone from the future who was manipulating him they could easily have planted the ideas of whitegold in order that Berek would do the very things necessary to allow it to be summoned. Of course, he would never have done something intentionally to threaten the Land, so he would have had to be mislead or manipulated into believing that he was saving the Land.
So, he creates the staff of law which fulfils a variety of roles, one of which is to make itself so much part of the natural law that when it was destroyed, the law itself would be weaker than if it had never been made. It would also attract Foul’s attention (if he had not noticed the Land yet). And it allows the lords to summon white gold to the land (in the Power that Preserves, it does not require the staff to do this, but by then the knowledge of how to summon someone has already been gained, with the help of the staff and Foul).
As for Foul, we tend to think of him as an evil being. But he is not. He is the Mr Hyde of a personality: all of the venomous, nasty bits and as you cannot destroy evil (see the threads from the GI), how do you stop Foul? If he is part of a split personality, then the solution is surely (as many a good therapist will tell you) to repair the personality; to make it whole so that the sides balance out.
Someone has written on another thread here that TC surrendered to Foul at the end of WGW. He did not!! He merely accepted a truth that Foul cannot/will not see. ‘He and I are one’. TC believes that Foul is the other part of himself, (although he does at one point suggest he is part of the human psyche, he usually associates Foul with himself) not necessarily in a physical sense, but certainly a psychological one – and it is TC’s mind, not his body that goes to the land. Also, look for the threads on how TC’s state of mind affects Foul. (Or TC’s quote to the effect of ‘What do you do for an encore Foul, rape children?).
Therefore, the obvious way to repair the personality is for TC and Foul to merge into a single, whole being. Now, who is likely to want this to happen? Surely not Foul, who is scathing of TC and sees him as weak and puerile – all the bits he doesn’t want! Therefore, presumably at some point, TC or someone close to him (Linden the psychologist?) must realise the need.
But in order for it to happen, TC MUST be summoned to the land in the first place. Therefore, Foul must be able to manipulate the holder of the Staff of Law, Berek must go to Mount Thunder and ultimately, there must be a civil war in Doriender Korishev (sp?). So who causes the war? If Foul shows no interest in the land until after Berek/the Lords get his attention, then it wasn’t him.
In the third series, we see the ability to go back in time and the Despiser is attacking time itself to escape his prison. But, that which is the perfect tool to break the arch and set him free is also the perfect thing to preserve the arch. So, as ever, Foul has to gamble that he will not end up screwing himself (yet again.).
It leaves us with a series of interesting possibilities:
1 That I have completely misread the whole situation and am talking bo**ocks.
2 Somewhere in the 3rd series, someone is going to draw Foul’s attention to Doriender Korishek – remember, Foul manipulates others to do his work, we do not see him get his own hands dirty!
3 One of the ‘good guys’ either causes the war, or manipulates the situation to ensure that Berek fulfils his role.
But, if (and it is a big ‘if’), Foul does not show a personal interest in the land until the Lords (Berek?) get his attention, then option 3 or 1 are the most likely. Add to this the fact that the people most likely to want to summon TC to the land (to repair Foul’s personality) are TC himself or Linden, and bearing in mind that the Staff of Law and whitegold have already called down the fire lions once (LFB), it is very possible that it was TC or Linden who spoke with Berek and set things in motion!!
As to who starts the war in Doriender Korishev, a raver going back in time would certainly have no reason to love Berek and would enjoy the wanton destruction of a peaceful kingdom. Or, how about Nom? He didn’t kill the raver, he merely rent it. Could he have some serious indigestion?
A final question (I do not have the books on me, and my memory is not what it was). When did TC get leprosy? Would it have been about the time of the civil war? He must have been pretty traumatised when diagnosed. Was he already in some way connected to the land at that point?
