Question on ceasures?

[Jerico]

SRD has said that Ceasures can only travel back to the time of the Breaking of the Law of Life which happened in the second Cron. How then did Esmer bring the Demondin forward from before that time?

[Nerdanel]

Quote? I think I would remember if I had read something like this, but I don't. As far as I remember, the caesures were supposed to go back to the beginning of the time.

[dlbpharmd]

That came from the GI, I'll try to find it.

[Warmark]

Physically there have only been there since Joans started Hitting her head, but they strech all the way back in time.

Or so i thought, if the Quote is right them im confused.

[Jerico]

There were a few quotes by SRD on the GI but I could only find one?
Feb 2005 under 'ceasure' in the search.
He says that Joan creates the Ceasures from broken pieces of time. He explains it as a cracked cliff. We see this in the book when Linden is inside Joan's head.
SRD says the cliff is broken by the breaking of the law of life and death and that Joan has 3500 years to choose from to start her ceasures. He also says that ceasures only travel forward.
So even though Joan has only been creating them for around 90 Land years she can pick a piece of 'time rock' from 3500 years in the lands past.

[Avatar]

But not before? Hmmm.

--A

[wayfriend]

But not from before the Laws of Life and Death were broken. When they were intact, Time was protected from ceasures. (Can a wound in time go back in time to a time when time was protected from being wounded? I guess the answer is no if you want readers to remain sane when they think about it.) Call the time when both Laws were broken the "LD point". This is 3500 years before ROTE, Land time.

Ceasures can be created at any time after the "LD point". It's not tied to the time it is when Joan is doing the pounding. Joan got her ring 90 years befoe ROTE, Land time. Call that the "JR point". ceasures can be created before the JR point, but not before the LD point. Even though the act that creates them is after the JR point.

They move forward of their own accord. They can be forced to do otherwise.

It's all pretty clear to me!!!

[The Somberlain]

But not from before the Laws of Life and Death were broken. When they were intact, Time was protected from ceasures. (Can a wound in time go back in time to a time when time was protected from being wounded? I guess the answer is no if you want readers to remain sane when they think about it.) Call the time when both Laws were broken the "LD point". This is 3500 years before ROTE, Land time.

Ceasures can be created at any time after the "LD point". It's not tied to the time it is when Joan is doing the pounding. Joan got her ring 90 years befoe ROTE, Land time. Call that the "JR point". ceasures can be created before the JR point, but not before the LD point. Even though the act that creates them is after the JR point.

They move forward of their own accord. They can be forced to do otherwise.

It's all pretty clear to me!!!

But the Demondim weren't around after the LD point, so how could they have arrived from before then? I think that's the question being asked.

[Jerico]

Yes Linden forced the ceasure to travel back insted of forward, but does that mean that one can be forced back before the Law of Life and Death were broken?
One must assume that is what Esmer did, but that is not what SRD said in the GI?
Esmer moving a ceasure to head towards Linden and company is one thing, but causing it to do something like move all the way back to the time of the Demondin???
Something stinks here

[Avatar]

Good summation WayFriend. As The Somberlain points out though, the demondim were around before the LD point. They were gone long before it in fact. So how did they get there?

(Unless we are to believe that they somehow survived, but that seems an easy way out.)

--A

[wayfriend]

Ah, the Demondim.

It may not have been ceasures which brough them to the time when Linden first encountered them. IIRC, they were brought there by Esmer, who may not need a ceasure.

On the other hand, the Demondim seem to be using a ceasure to access the Illearth Stone. So, somehow, the ceasure is able to reach back to before the time of the first Chronicles, before the Illearth stone was found by Drool.

So perhaps a ceasure, which is created after the LD point, and wanders forward, can be coerced into moving backwards, even beyond the LD point.

OR ...

A ceasure can be used to "access" something anywhere in time, even though the ceasure doesn't actually "exist" in that time.

So a ceasure can be used to pluck the demondim from wherever they were, and it can be used to pipeline Illearth power from wherever the Stone is, to where the ceasure is.

This is sort of where my belief lies. Because it sort of allows a way for Donaldson's statements that they are at all times at once, and that they can't go back before the LD point, to both be true. sort of.

[Xar]

Ah, the Demondim.

It may not have been ceasures which brough them to the time when Linden first encountered them. IIRC, they were brought there by Esmer, who may not need a ceasure.

On the other hand, the Demondim seem to be using a ceasure to access the Illearth Stone. So, somehow, the ceasure is able to reach back to before the time of the first Chronicles, before the Illearth stone was found by Drool.

So perhaps a ceasure, which is created after the LD point, and wanders forward, can be coerced into moving backwards, even beyond the LD point.

OR ...

A ceasure can be used to "access" something anywhere in time, even though the ceasure doesn't actually "exist" in that time.

So a ceasure can be used to pluck the demondim from wherever they were, and it can be used to pipeline Illearth power from wherever the Stone is, to where the ceasure is.

This is sort of where my belief lies. Because it sort of allows a way for Donaldson's statements that they are at all times at once, and that they can't go back before the LD point, to both be true. sort of.

I tend to believe in the second hypothesis too. Probably, the difference is that caesures after the LD point can be seen, encountered, and experienced as Linden, Anele and so on did, whereas caesures cannot directly affect time before the LD point, unless used as a conduit by something past the LD point.

Confusing? Let's see if I can make myself clearer:

Caesures after the LD point - after the point they became possible - can appear as the caesures we all know: the migraine auras, and so on. Note, this does not mean they actually existed through all the 3.500 years after the breaking of the Law of Life; as we know, they are a relatively recent phenomenon. But since they touch all points in time, once a caesure is formed, it exists through all time and manifests through all the time after the LD point as the migraine aura which plucks things out of the timestream and drops them in the future. See Anele.

Caesures before the LD point are "dormant". They cannot actively influence the past: they cannot, for instance, snatch people randomly from the past and drop them into the future. the Laws of Death and/or Life prevent them. BUT, someone from the future (from past the LD point) can use the "dormant" caesure as a conduit to reach back into the past. Imagine the caesure as a hole in the wall; a character from the past walks by the hole, but he is not sucked in if he touches it. However, someone from the other side of the wall could reach in with his arm, grab the character from the past, and pull him through.

[Avatar]

Interesting. That would allow it I guess. If it turns out like that, we'll know SRD uses the Watch to find logical answers to internal consistency mistakes.

--A

[Jerico]

SRD is a stickler for the Law of the Land! But it does seem like he likes to bend and sometimes break those laws!!

If the Demondin are only existing because of the Ceasure then stopping their Ceasure should send them back to oblivion? With the Illearth stone too! At least that is what It seems like everyone is saying?
This would be a cool way to get rid of them. If Linden and co. can figure that out?

[Xar]

SRD is a stickler for the Law of the Land! But it does seem like he likes to bend and sometimes break those laws!!

If the Demondin are only existing because of the Ceasure then stopping their Ceasure should send them back to oblivion? With the Illearth stone too! At least that is what It seems like everyone is saying?
This would be a cool way to get rid of them. If Linden and co. can figure that out?

Well, when I meant that a caesure before the LD point is dormant and it can only be used as a conduit only if someone from after the LD point actively "pulls" something out of the past. That does not necessarily mean that closing the caesure would destroy the Demondim; it could simply cause them to become stranded. It would surely cut their bond to the Illearth Stone; and this does raise a question - not strictly caesure-related, I fear. If the Demondim are intelligent and lorewise (however depraved and self-loathing they may be, if plucked from their last period), why are they so seemingly savage? Could it be just because they were plucked from their past and they don't know who is responsible, or because they are afraid, or because they think they're still fighting a war with the Old Lords? And, on this line: how comes that the first thing the Demondim do is to grab a caesure, tame it and channel the Illearth Stone? The Demondim seem quite powerful and lorewise even without the Stone (how else could they tame a caesure?) - why would they need additional power so soon after being plucked from the past?
I'm starting to wonder whether the arrival of the Demondim could not have been misunderstood - whether the Demondim are actually acting out of fear and confusion, rather than malice (especially if their lore was enough to let them know they had been brought to the future, possibly with no hope of ever going back to their time, or maybe if it had even been enough for them to realize their people were history by then, that the destiny of their race was to die out).

[Avatar]

Or somebody gave them the Stone-conduit of a ceasure to control and use as they will...

They're clearly under direction though...the question is whose I guess.

--A

[Xar]

Could be several possibilities... they may be directed by external forces (such as Esmer or Foul), by simple fear, or (in the most far-fetched case) they might even be directed by someone from the past, from whom they receive orders through the caesure... very far-fetched, I know. But I can't see why they couldn't simply be acting out of fear and confusion, and simply trying to kill those they think could be responsible for their presence there.

[Avatar]

Oh, I agree with that, but then how did they get the lore to create and control their own ceasure to tap the stone? (Maybe simply studying the one that brought them?)

--A

[Jerico]

I think we can thand Esmer for the reason the Demondin are where they now are!
He goes back to just before Kevin utters the Ritual of Destruction and tells them they are about to become toast and shows them a Ceasure and the Illearth Stone as a way to escape.
He may even tell them that they must use the Illearth stone to power the Ceasure? I mean White Gold was not even in the picture when the Demondin were last around!!
But Esmer must also do something to the Demondin that they don't want?

Plus add to all this that Esmer can travel time, but so far we have only seen Linden control a Ceasure and make it do anything but go forward!!

[wayfriend]

There was some good discussion (in the No Sex in your Violence thread) that Demondim with an Illearth Stone should have been able to defeat Linden and her company quite handilly. Instead, it's more like they drove her to Revelstone intentionally.

I think that we need to allow that the Demondim may not be "the" bad guys. They may be operating for some obscure reasons which are not ultimately inimical.

This book is going to have some plot twists! If, by the time we get to the end, we come to agree with the reasons that the Land needs to come to its end, then what appears to be "bad" can quite easily turn out to be "good" before we see how it plays out.

(I'm thinking of that movie Jacob's Ladder. At the end, there's that great line: The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and... and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.

The Demondim may be angels.)