3rd Chrons ... Exponential Exotic?

[Landwaster]

Just through my excitement about the pending 3rd Chronicles, I was attempting to discern what might be the raw base material for the plotline.

I started thinking that we could be running along some theme of movement. Most of us would have read the familiar v exotic thesis that SRD had at the end of The Gap Into {something or other} : The Real Story, whe he talks about the (can't remember exact terms) familiar v exotic instruments of creation being used to provide TCoTC.

My references to familiar and exotic as follows are NOT the same uses SRD used. They are more thematic and less individual. So in case you get confused, take it from me that I simply couldn't think of phrases that were more apt.

The 1st Chrons we were in the Land.
Basically it had the familiar as far as a Land, people, good and bad, all the elements.
It had some spiffy exotic stuff, oft-found in fantasy : magic, odd species, good and evil (as opposed to bad).

In the 2nd Chrons, the exotic was ramped up. Nature wasn't as it should be. Basically, that was it. Nature operated under completely different terms.

So in the 3rd Chrons, well, we dunno what's gonna happen, but we DO hear that SRD has been playing around with time. We don't know to what extent, but we know its something.

I'm suggesting that in attempting to anticipate what is in store for us, perhaps we should compare the exotics of the first 2 chrons, and use that as a pointer towards the exotic of the third.

I very much doubt that SRD will introduce us to time travel, flashbacks or time-dilation. He tends to get a little wierder than that.

Perhaps, if time itself is corrupted, everything happening around a character may be a mix of some things occurring in the present, some in the past, some in the future. TC (or whoever it will be now) might have to have interaction with someone who is, at that moment, not at that moment

I dunno, I have no idea, really. If someone had told me prior to my reading the 2nd chrons that Foul has corrupted nature, I still would never have been able to guess anything like the Sunbane. So perhaps its pointless to speculate.

But its enjoyable, none-the-less.

Anyone got any ideas?

[Fist and Faith]

A possibility I thought of is that Covenant, in his dead/wild magic/possibly-part-of-the-Arch state of being, suddenly sees that things are not as they should be. And when he looks into the past that he experienced, he sees that they were not what he remembers them being. He knows that something must have been changed even further in the past.

But his problem is that he doesn't know the Land's history perfectly. Meaning that he would be surprised if he looked back to the times of the 1st Chrons and Mhoram did not exist, but he would have no idea what Lords should or should not exist in Damelon's time. And so, he can't look back and say, "Ah! That's where it all started!" and change it back. So he has to try to reason, based on what he does know of the past, what would happen if he made some slight change, and hope it puts things back to normal.

[Mistweave]

Perhaps, if time itself is corrupted, everything happening around a character may be a mix of some things occurring in the present, some in the past, some in the future. TC (or whoever it will be now) might have to have interaction with someone who is, at that moment, not at that moment

This thought reminds me of the Oversoul Seven novels by Jane Roberts. Basically the first novel tells how this oversoul is incarnated in four different time periods, the prehistoric past, the 17th century, now and the future. Time, from a souls point of view, is not a flowing river, but a spacious Now. So what occurs to one incarnation bleeds through to affect another incarnation as they are both connected via their greater self. The skills learnt in one life color another life. An experience in the second life provides the answer to a problem in a third.

And the bleedthrough also occurs in one lifetime. An adult experience bleeds through to the child and triggers an interest/hobby.

Kind of like a complex Star Trek timeline story. (just had to use that emoticon somehow!)

[Landwaster]

Yeah those are the sorts of things I'm getting at ... obviously TC having the power to sneak to any time and change an event would be unworkable. Success would be too easy.

Maybe TC, using a form of time travel Bill & Ted style, ages a number of eons, becomes jaded, tainted and finally evil, and then transports himself back to the Land at earlier ages and IS Lord Foul! His younger self battling against his older self?

Maybe we find that Foul only exists in one moment, but that moment is cross-time-dimensional. Perhaps he has only even performed one act, but that act happened at many times, and caused all these different banes per the people's responses at the time?

The possibilities are endless ...

[Fist and Faith]

Beause of the end of WGW, we now sort of think of Covenant as being the Arch of Time. But he was not always the Arch of Time, and I assume it still exists seperate from him, and would survive if he was removed from it. Maybe he "becomes" Foul in a similarly vague way, rather than the absolute way that immediately comes to mind.

[Furls Fire]

I am mesmerized by the title of the second book "Fatal Revenant"

rev·e·nant ( P ) Pronunciation Key (rv-nnt)
n.
One that returns after a lengthy absence.
One who returns after death.

Okay, who does that bring to mind? I don't think we are going to see Covenant until the second book, or at the very earliest the end of the first. the word "fatal" in front of it conjurs up all sorts of dark thoughts in my mind. I don't like the idea of Covenant becoming some evil agent, or literally becoming Foul. I'm holding out hope that he will "become" Foul to rid the Earth of him.

We know that Time and History is going to be corrupted in some way. Some horrible way, much like the Sunbane corrupted nature. Covenant is going to be in the center of that I'm sure, considering he is now the Keystone of the Arch of Time, he is white gold/wild magic incarnate, and Donaldson himself said "there is no reason why Covenant can't come back." My question is, and I think I've mentioned this before, if Covenant is the keystone of the Arch and Time itself is corrupted, will he also be corrupted? And will it be Linden who has to destroy him? Therefore, destroying the Arch and the Earth?? I shudder at that thought.

The last two titles "Shall Pass Utterly" and "The Last Dark" ring like a bell of Desecration. Donaldson is a genius, I'm sure we are going to be shocked and overwhelmed with what he's going to come up with.

[I'm Murrin]

I'd like to see the third chrons doing a bit of a 'sword of truth' on us - After each book the characters defeat one evil, only for it to turn out that the way they did this just gave them another, worse, more-difficult-to-defeat threat for the next book... The mention of that title just gave me the idea.
'Fatal Revenant'. Perhaps Linden works out that the only way to win is to use the corrupted Time to bring back Covenant at the end of 'The Runes of the Earth', but in Fatal Revenant it turns out she's ruined everything by doing this and its up to them to fix it...

[Landwaster]

Perhaps Fatal Revenant means that everybody has to die, in fact the whole Land has to die, for it to enter a form of being capable of winning whatever battle is placed before it?

Maybe the entire story takes place in the halls of the dead! Maybe time is skewiff there, as it probably would be (the term 'eternity' doesn't fit on a ruler)!

Yeah if TC is now basically the AoT, then maybe the corruption of time is the corruption of TC. Maybe its a new slant on the venom theme, maybe TC has to continue fighting evil, while corrupt! Maybe Corruption turns out to be the answer to the Land's ills!

[UrLord]

gawd...I need to reread the chronicles again...get back into this mode of thought...Right now I'm thinking in "sword of truth" mode, and see SRD's statements as a form of prophecy that are true, but only in some weird, abstract way...perhaps TC simply accepts his own dark side and in that way "becomes" Foul, and could be said to have destroyed the Land...as for time craziness, I surely hope that it won't be "Chrono Trigger" style hopping from age to age to stop some cataclysm that occurs at one point in time, but knowing SRD that's probably something I don't have to worry about. Bah! The horrible waiting!