earthbrah wrote:Dang, Worm, that's quite a flurry of responses! Nice.
TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote:
Why is there wild magic graven in every rock?
I'll bet Anele can answer that question. Or rather, Anele can read the answer in the very rock of the Earth...
I suspect that the answer to the very beginning of things will be found at the very end, thus the circularity of the novels, the history of the Land, which has already been hinted at by LA's time-traveling adventure to the age of Berek Halfhand. Her very presence there should have been enough to unravel time, which indicates that it was already a historical fact, although unknown.
Yeah, I had the same thought about Linden's presence in the past. It would definitely hold water to say that her ability go back there was already part of the script of Time, which is why her very presence with Berek didn't shatter everything.
And preesh the quotes about wild magic, Worm (you don't mind if I just call you Worm, do you?). Not having the texts with me here in Tashkent, it's nice to have folks like yourself out there to provide for those of us in need.
Hail, Worm!
As long as I'm not confused with bad ol' Drool Rockworm.
I don't have the texts on hand either, I had to Google for the quote. And in fact that's far easier than flipping through hundreds of pages of a book, but it's limited to whatever text is posted out there on the net.
The question of what SRD means by an Arch of Time remains a mystery. Originally, according to the legend of white gold, it was "the Arch of Life which spans and masters Time." Thus there was an "Arch of Life" and presumably a "Law of Time." The Arch of Life apparently "masters" Time, but in what way SRD never explains. And soon anyway these two features of the Land (or Laws transcending the Land, as it were) were melded by SRD into one concept: the Arch of Time.
This is one of SRD's many inconsistencies, however this one does tend to simplify matters and so these inherent Laws become easier to understand.
The Land is largely a group of metaphors, these metaphors taking on "dream reality" and becoming its invisible structure.
Going beyond the text here:
Time itself is the Law which governs to Sequence as one corollary, but let's not forget Simultaneity as it is actually a two-pronged Law. Sequence governs to the Law of Causality (one-to-one relationships), Simultaneity governs to the Law of Reciprocity (relationships forming a matrix of causal events occurring at the same time, forming what we call Nature).
The Arch of Time is a metaphor for the Order of Nature. Lord Foul is an unnatural, or supernatural, being trapped in a natural order of things, a prison from which he cannot escape.
Sounds rather unpleasant, which might explain his capacity for evil, although the legend of the Creator suggests that LF was not a good spirit to begin with. This is why, in a sudden (and human-seeming) burst of outrage which He soon regretted, the Creator cast Foul down to the Land in the first place, and then created the Arch to keep him there. Thus the laws of nature were created simultaneously with the appearance of Lord Foul. And so without Foul, indirectly as it were, there wouldn't be any Land as we know it.
In the "real" world, the laws of nature have no inherent reality, they are simply ways in which we come to understand the world. But since the Land only exists in someone's dream, these Laws become the metaphorical structure of the dream, holding the dream together, not physical yet actual, active, living elements of the Land. The Land is, literally, a living thing, as living as the mind that dreamt it up, but not living as a person or animal or tree is alive. A mind, after all, is not a corporeal thing, but it is a living, purpose-driven activity governed by definite subconscious, psychological rules.
Wild magic, however, is not an actuality, it is merely a potentiality -- a creative potential, a seemingly lawless spontaneity that springs from the subconscious, that creativity responsible for creating dreams -- or novels. Consider the fact that, since you made up the dream from your subconscious, you are also capable of breaking any "laws" which fashion the dream and make it cohere. The difficulty involves being able to tap into that well-spring of creativity as a means, and then being able to channel it into some kind of productive end (such as a painting or a novel).
Consciousness, as a rule-governed activity, is governed universally to us all, so the Land is a manifestation of a universal subconscious. Thus, as long as there are humans in the "real" world, the Land cannot die. It may change its forms, but the substance, the unconscious metaphor, remains. In terms of the Land, the Arch cannot be destroyed by someone within the Land, not even Foul, but only by someone from outside, such as Linden or Covenant. Only the dreamer can do away with the source of dreams, and Foul is only one element of a dream. And Foul, as a metaphor for evil, cannot be destroyed as long as the Land exists.
Sometimes dreams can manifest in the form of hallucinations, which is how the Creator appeared to Covenant and Linden. Remember that, for Linden, the crazy old beggar whom she saved literally appeared to vanish before her eyes as he walked off into the distance.
