What *is* the arch of time anyway?

[TalonHawk]

Why do creators create?

One possibility is the hope that their creations will surpass their Creator.

Now, if you're the creator, you plant all the seeds of what you think will produce your greatest accomplishment, then let it go where it will.

My theory is that the arch of time is simply the manifestation of the Creator's will not to interfere, which would reduce his creation to nothing more than his own image. Preventing it from ever being more than he could imagine.

In other words, TIME is what the creation needs to grow, and if the Creator reaches in, he destroys what *might* happen..

[Creator]

hmmmm.... possibly. But I would think that if it is ONLY self-restraint, the Creator could ZAP Foul with impunity.

[TalonHawk]

We know the Creator hasn't been able to "ZAP" Foul even before the Land was created.

If I'm a creator, and I have an enemy which I cannot defeat....

I would build a creation which could defeat him.

Since it, by it's very nature, must surpass what I am able to accomplish, I must stay out of it, because if I am the source of all it's creation, it CANNOT surpass me.

The most I could hope to do would be to introduce an element which has my powers in a nascent form, but which has not been molded by myself, so it has a chance of becoming MORE powerful than myself.

Oh.. and it certainly wouldn't hurt to have that element focus it's existence on fighting Foul...

[Jerico]

The tale of creation is told in LFB I think and it rings true. Only I'm not sure that Foul is the Creators brother. Maybe Foul is all the despite the Creator held and cast out of himself. He is the Creator and all things should be possible to him being who he is.

Now the question becomes does he want Foul freed to join him agian or would it be that Foul would be free to fight the Creator?

The series might hinge on TC and the rest creating another Arch to contain Foul, only this time make it a place he deserves! One devoid of life. Think of a biblical hell if you will.

I think the Arch of Time is exactly what it says. It is time. One end the begining and the other the end. Like a rainbow. Only the end is the Final Dark.

[Avatar]

Only one tale of creation. I think WayFriends thread, "Reading Runes: A Tale of Two Cosmologies" explores the alternate creation stories that we're also given.

--Avatar

[wayfriend]

The author seems to answer this question directly.

First he built the arch of Time, so that his creation would have a place in which to be, and for the keystone of that arch he forged the wild magic, so that Time would be able to resist chaos and endure.

The Arch is a haven against chaos in which the Earth can survive. That it is described as an 'Arch' with a 'keystone' is a figurative description (although, it fantasy, it could be literal). I would say that the Arch is fantasy-physics for 'a coherent system of Laws which are necessary for the Earth to exist in the form the Creator chose'.

[Zarathustra]

Wayfriend, your definition is intriguing. I, too, believe it is similar to our laws of physics, which allow order to endure for a brief time, little pockets of order in a vast sea of entropic decay. However, our laws of physics are also precisely that which allows--even demands--the decay to happen. So this is like the wild magic, the keystone of the Arch. The passions of free agents can either slow or speed the natural destruction of the universe. We can resist (though not defeat) entropy, or we can speed it up by cutting down forests, setting off nuclear bombs, etc.

I think the Arch of Time is simply the physical universe. Perhaps Donaldson should have said the Arch of Space/Time. It is the physical plane in which the struggle of chaos and order takes place.

[xiomburg]

The creator creates only to undo what he has done or to find a way to undo himself.

As an omnipotent being the whole point of your exsistence is to find a way to snuff it out. That is the reason why the creator created Lord Foul. He also placed blocks to aggrivate the Despiser, but what is the fun in killing yourself if you cant cause as much misery as you can along the way.

With that in mind, who is more evil. The Despiser or the Creator or Thomas and the others for preventing the end of all misery the creator lashed out onto the land and all other realms.

I would have to point my finger at the Creator. His intentions are masked with the despair and anguish of his creations.

Lord Foul like all other beings the Creator made, are nothing but victims of his evil plan to end himself.

[Xar]

The creator creates only to undo what he has done or to find a way to undo himself.

As an omnipotent being the whole point of your exsistence is to find a way to snuff it out. That is the reason why the creator created Lord Foul. He also placed blocks to aggrivate the Despiser, but what is the fun in killing yourself if you cant cause as much misery as you can along the way.

I highly doubt your assumptions... first of all, why are you so sure that the only reason a Creator creates is to undo himself? Or that an omnipotent being's existence should be devoted to finding a way to end it? Well, it is quite possible that if any normal person, like you or I, found himself or herself omnipotent (a status which we aren't equipped to handle), after the initial excitement wears off ennui would set in, and eventually he or she would maybe try to kill him- or herself. But a being that has always been omnipotent should find nothing inherently abhorrent in his status - any more than the whole point of a human existence would be to find a way to end it.

The Creator once compared himself to Covenant (the end of TPTP), when he explained that Covenant, being also a creator, knew how powerless a creator was to heal his creations. Obviously, he referred to Covenant's literary endeavours, which could be compared to an act of "creation". Tolkien used to describe his world-building as a "sub-creation", himself. From such a point of view, the creator of a fictional world is, for all intents and purposes, omnipotent within the confines of his creation (being able to "destroy" it, "change" it or "add" to it whatever he or she likes). Should such a creator also spend his whole existence trying to find a way to kill himself?

Anyway, the Creator did not create Lord Foul (at least, not consciously); and I seriously doubt he would consciously choose to create misery in the Land. After all, why bringing Covenant (and then Covenant and Linden) in to save it otherwise? Leave it at Foul's tender care and see how much more misery he can create!

With that in mind, who is more evil. The Despiser or the Creator or Thomas and the others for preventing the end of all misery the creator lashed out onto the land and all other realms.

I would have to point my finger at the Creator. His intentions are masked with the despair and anguish of his creations.

Lord Foul like all other beings the Creator made, are nothing but victims of his evil plan to end himself.

Of course, disagreeing with your fundamental premise, I don't find it too hard to disagree on the hypothesis you offer here. If you also add to this the fact that SRD himself, in the GI, has always classified the Creator as a "good" entity and Lord Foul as an "evil" entity, I'm afraid there is no doubt left here.

[TalonHawk]

Donaldson wrote in the GI.

"Creator questions. You could say that the Creator trapped LF within the Arch by accident. (There's some textual justification for this view.) You could say that the Creator was solving his own "problem of how to deal with evil" by putting the bad guy in prison. (I can't think of any textual evidence, but the interpretation itself is probably defensible.) Or you could say that the Creator was taking a more holistic, even Zen approach to the situation: how can a living organism (the creation) grow if it doesn't have something both to strive for and to strive against? This is an extremely risky way of being a Creator: it requires him to give up on the whole notion of "perfection," and to face the very real prospect of complete failure. But it may conceivably be the most *loving* way of being a Creator."

Just thought it was interesting that it was close to what I had said before.