More Sunbane Questions : Faster v Slower ... which & why

[Landwaster]

Ok Its been a while since I read the books (approx January).

The Sunbane existed.
Sunder, Hollian, etc, did their best to manage the Sunbane.
Blood was taken from the Land to feed the Sunbane.
The idea was to slow it down, extend the length of every stage in the cycle.
(correct me if I'm wrong)

Now, what was going on again? At one stage we seemed to learn that the blood actually sped up the Sunbane, rather than slowing it down.

In addition, I believe I read somewhere that slowing down the Sunbane was actually a bad thing, that the Clave and the people of the Land were triple-crossed. Am I dreaming that? Might TC have seen it is in his soothtell?

Wouldn't it have been better to speed up the Sunbane? Get it to a point of changing suns every billionth of a second? So that the average moment, second, minute, day, etc was actually an average sun with bits of everything in it? Nothing long-lasting enough to damage anything?

(Refer Andelain, it fought off the Sunbane as well as it could after Caer-Caveral's passing, resisting, eventually losing small sections, which would of course eventually grow larger and overtake. It seems to me that a moment's Sunbane doesn't do you in, its exposure over time that wears you down. Same probably applied to all flora and fauna, and the earth itself).

The alternative, extending the length of the Sunbane, would actually just give a week's pestilence instead of a couple of days! Well, maybe it only put a stock standard of pestilence into a pestilent sun cycle. Maybe if it was a week long, the same amount of pestilence had to be spread over a longer period, and therefore the effect was diluted. Maybe the best idea was to make it one long stand where the cycles were the length of Ages, a pestilent age (couple of extra mozzies), a rainy age (bit wetter than usual), a desert age (a basic drought) and a fertile age (just a bit more photosynthesis).

Perhaps both are good results, perhaps Foul and Gibbon were hoping to maintain it at around 2-3 days, because that was the most upsetting to the Land, enough potency (not diluted over enough days), but spread enough so that resistances would have to concede.

What was the history of the Sunbane? I think from memory that eked in slowly (was this in the soothtell?) more or less like a bit of bad weather, couple of droughts and couple of etceteras, that slowly grew in potency until the very Mother Nature itself could not resist anymore, and gave in to become a vassal to the atrocity. Is that how it happened?

So what was going on? Which was the best result for the Land? Did the Clave believe they were achieving good by feeding the Banefire, in slowing the Sunbane, when actually they were speeding it up, as Gibbon knew it would make it worse?

Or was it actually slowing down the Sunbane (the blood), and Gibbon didn't realise this?

Or was it speeding it up but Gibbon thought this was bad for the Land yet the speeding up would actually eventuall become ok to exist in if it was taken to its furthest extremity, a fact not known to Gibbon nor to Foul?

Any assistance offered would be greatly appreciated!

PS : Did I mention the photosynthesis issues of recent tests in biodomes on any other threads here? It rings a bell but it might just have been me reading about it.

[I'm Murrin]

The speed of the Sunbane:

-The sunbane began as 8 or 9 day long periods of drought, pestilence, rain, fertility, etc (can't actually remember the others).
-As time went on, the Sunbane shrank to 7 or 8 days long.
-The Clave began the banefire,and told the people they would use it to slow the sunbane - to stop it getting faster and one day make it slow down. The truth is that the banefire feeds the sunbane, and helps it speed up.
-The sunbane got shorter, but each time it stayed at that length for a longer and longer time, until it seemed to stop at 3 days. People believed this evidence of the success of the banefire, but in truth it was caused because the banefire had reached a point where they could not increase the power any more, since amounts of blood were as high as they would take.
-When Covenant attacked the Clave, they redoubled their efforts and started feedig as many as they could to the Sunbane, and succeeded in reducing the time to 2 days.
-The intention was that once it reached 1 day, the sudden drastic changes between extremes would destroy the Land, and in the absolute corruption of this area, the Sunbane would be broken of it's boundaries and spread to cover the world.

Eventually the rest of the world would be corrupted, either pleasing Foul by letting him watch them suffer, releasing Foul by completely destroying the world, or this could simply have been for the sole purpose of causing Covenant to do what he almost did at the Worm of World's End.

[Landwaster]

Wow, thanks, Murrin! It all makes sense now. The bit about it remaining at each stage for longer periods was my missing link!

[aTOMiC]

I would imagine that a one day rotation would be pretty comfortable considering the circumstances provided you had a consistent order to the suns. Every fourth sun was Fertile for example. You would never have to wait more than three days for fresh food and so on. Foul would never have allowed the sunbane to be that convenient though no matter what the Clave was pretending to do.

[Landwaster]

Well yeah that's true and that is one of the things I was sort of alluding to. But apparently as stated above, if it got that quick then the Land might simply burst asunder.

[Forestal]

and that the suns were in a fairly random order... so u could end up going weeks without food if u aint lucky...

[Landwaster]

very true! they weren't fully cyclable, so you might just get similar ones for ages.

I note that they always seemed to expect that 3 days sun, 2 days rain, 3 days fertile were each full sections, whereas they could very well have been 1 day sun, 1 day sun, 1 day sun, 1 day rain, 1 day rain, 1 day fertile, 1 day fertile, 1 day fertile ... there was never a mention of consecutive suns of the same type, but how would you know if there was one?

[Forestal]

sunder says that he's only seen one "sun" of less than 3 days... (i just started re-reading TWL yesterday, got 6 chapters left to go... I'll b on TTT by tomorrow, lol...)

as a fact the sunbane started off at intervals of 5 or 6 days, but slowly got to 3 days, where the clave couldn't feed it anymore and it stayed constant, which the clave went out n said "hoorah, we stopped it at 3 days aren't we brilliant?"...

of course we know later that they feed it more dramatically and it reaches 2 days... but hey, thats life in the land post-lords for ya...

(p.s landwaster, isn't what u said just exactly the same? )

[dlbpharmd]

As I recall, it was the blood of the Haruchai that allowed the Clave to stabilize the Sundane at 3 days. When the Haruchai army came and were mind-controlled (in WGW,) their blood - and the blood of decimated Stonedowns/Woodhelvins - increased the Sunbane to a 2 day cycle.

[Forestal]

yeah, i havn't re-read most of it yet, but theres alot that i simply forgot about.... and nearly made me cry on 3 occasions (ur thinking ... already??)

[Landwaster]

(p.s landwaster, isn't what u said just exactly the same? )

I'm thinking "dozen half-dozen versus half-dozen dozen" ... same result ...

[Forestal]

oh right... i see...

[Landwaster]

Well, 3 days of rain. They all assumed that the cycle would have been one sunbane experience, 3 days long. Then we here decide 'Hey, no two sunbane cycles of the same type are ever experienced end on end!"

What I'm asking is, what's to make us think that those 3 days of rain aren't 3 cycles of the same type, experienced end on end?

[Forestal]

quantity and percentages.

[Landwaster]

Yes, yes, that's it :p

[Forestal]

yup yup

*Signed*
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