TC is the worm.

[Unfettered One]

Ok, I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, but I couldn't find it.

I was reading this thread Reading Runes: A Tale of Two Cosmologies and it got me thinking...

If the Worm of the World's End is the Arch of Time, and Covenant is the Arch of Time, then Covenant is the Worm of the World's End.

This actually explains a lot.

1. The Worm was aroused by the resurrection of TC at the end of FR

2. The chronology of the land closely follows TC’s life.

3. At the end of WGW, Foul tries to destroy TC, not the Arch.

I'm sure there is a lot more, so please give me your thoughts. I haven't fully fleshed out this theory myself, as it came to me "epiphany" style while reading that other thread.

[Relayer]

I've suggested something similar in another thread (don't remember which). Although I don't think point 3 is accurate; Foul attacks the Arch, which TC then acts to protect. But in doing so, he becomes the Arch.

Other than that, I think you're on to something. Metaphorically speaking, the Arch and the Worm are analogous. And TC essentially is the Arch. Therefore TC is also essentially the Worm. When Infelice says "you have awakened the Worm" she may not be referring to some being far away, deep within the earth, or in a somewhat 'different level of existence.' She may well mean the person standing right there in front of them.

Here's a couple of links:
coming at the creation stories from a different direction

Reading Runes: A Tale of Two Cosmologies

Here's a link to BBCode... scroll down to learn how to link

[teaser]There's also another tangential level to this, which if I ever get the time I'll post in a separate thread... [/]

[Unfettered One]

Thanks for the link help... I think I got it.

Regarding point 3, I think he was trying to destroy the Arch, but TC got in the way and blocked it. He couldn't have done that if he wasn't the arch, and Foul continued to try to destroy TC instead of ignoring him. I don't get the impression that this was because Foul was enraged and not thinking clearly... TC would have been destroyed by the destruction of the Arch.

[Relayer]

I'll have to reread but I do have the impression that Foul was totally enraged... "I just killed you, and you're STILL in my way?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!"

[wayfriend]

I'm not so sure that Covenant *IS* the Arch. I think he and the Arch have achieved some sort of metaphysical relationship, to be sure.

Do you remember when Linden first met the Theomach? He told her she "was" the Arch of Time during that time. It wasn't literal, but it was more a way of saying that Linden represented the Arch for certain intents and purposes. It's a little contrived, but I think that SRD is trying to establish on the page what this "is the Arch" stuff really means.

Also, I think about the Staff of Law. In a way, the Staff of Law "was" Law. Being used to express and enforce Law, it and Law sort of merged together, the lines became blurred, they were unified in some sort of way I can only call "spiritual" or "metaphysical". So unified that, when the Staff was destroyed, it weakened the Law, as if a chunk of it had been ripped away.

I think Covenant is like that. Just like with the Staff, Covenant's use of wild magic made he and wild magic one, not literally, but in some sort of spiritual unity, the lines between them got blurred. I think that Covenant is somehow joined at the hip to the Arch now, and partakes of its powers. He may even have become sort of a conscious extension of the Arch. He would represent the Arch for certain intents and purposes. For example, Time Law Enforcement.

Still, I agree that he should very well have that same relationship, to whatever degree it is, with the Worm as well as the Arch -- if all the theories hold true. He may not literally be the Worm, but he may be so connected to it that he could rouse it ... or quell it.

I don't know how Donaldson can go much further in the story without shedding some light on all this. He put us off for two books so far ... maybe just to delay that event as much as he could.

[Bran Pendragon]

TC and the Worm merged after TC took the dare to finish a bottle of tequila on a weekend south of the border.

[Endymion9]

It has been several years since I reread WGW, but I too was under the impression that TC was the white gold protecting the arch and not that he became the arch.

However, in the last chronicles it does seem to imply that he and at times LA *are* the arch.

So don't know if that's more of SRD's thinking since he finished WGW or I'm not remembering WGW clearly. But I don't remember any passage saying he was the arch. Just that he would always be there to protect the arch.

[emotional leper]

It's very simple.

TC is the White Gold.

The White Gold is the Keystone of the Arch of Time -- the Keystone being the most important part of an arch as without it, the entire arch collapses.

TC is the Keystone of the Arch of Time.

A == B == C, therfore A == C

[Endymion9]

It's very simple.

TC is the White Gold.

The White Gold is the Keystone of the Arch of Time -- the Keystone being the most important part of an arch as without it, the entire arch collapses.

TC is the Keystone of the Arch of Time.

A == B == C, therfore A == C

Please help my foggy memory, as I'm on the 2nd book of the Gap series and it will be awhile before I reread the 1st and 2nd chronicles. Before the Last Chronicles, was it ever said that White Gold = The Arch? I only remember white gold being able to raise wild magic that could break the arch. No comment that White Gold is the Arch.

Thanks,

[emotional leper]

In the 1st Chronicles, Lord Mhoram tells TC that he is the White Gold.

We also learn that the keystone of the Arch of Time is made of White Wild Magic Gold.

If TC is the White Gold, then it therefore follows logically that he is the Keystone of the Arch of time -- the Time Warden. He supports the rest of the Arch. He is what stops the Arch -- Time -- from collapsing.

[Seppi2112]

If TC is the White Gold, then it therefore follows logically that he is the Keystone of the Arch of time.

So TC becomes Timewarden in the 2nd chronicles.

Being Timewarden doesn't begin at one point in time though... therefore if TC BECOMES the Timewarden he always was and always will be the Timewarden.

Therefore, when Mhoram says "you are the white gold" and "the arch is built on white gold," those statements are only true because of the events at the end of WGW.




Maybe.

[emotional leper]

If TC is the White Gold, then it therefore follows logically that he is the Keystone of the Arch of time.

So TC becomes Timewarden in the 2nd chronicles.

Being Timewarden doesn't begin at one point in time though... therefore if TC BECOMES the Timewarden he always was and always will be the Timewarden.

Therefore, when Mhoram says "you are the white gold" and "the arch is built on white gold," those statements are only true because of the events at the end of WGW.




Maybe.

You're starting to get the hang of it.

[Bran Pendragon]

Nah, I think as someone said earlier, it was TC's merging with the White Gold, in the Banefire, that changed things so he became the Timewarden. The analogy with the Staff of Law is apt - it changed what had gone before, becoming a key support of the Law, but at the same time, making Law in some senses dependent upon it. Time and the Arch obviously existed before TC became an alloy with White Gold, but once he merged with the wild magic, he became forever a part of it (or maybe forever, until Linden perhaps did the equivalent of destroying the Staff of Law).

[wayfriend]

Nah, I think as someone said earlier, it was TC's merging with the White Gold, in the Banefire, that changed things so he became the Timewarden.

I don't think the merging happened in the Banefire; I think it was long ago, hence Mhoram's admonition.

The Banefire didn't *add* anything; it just stirred up and refined what was already there. In a sense, it made Covenant's pieces more inseperable. It made him more stable, at the cost of his being more committed.

[Seppi2112]

I agree with the analogy between the Staff *becoming* law Pendragon and TC/White Gold *becoming* the Arch, except there's only one problem... there was a time when the Staff WASNT a part of the law. TC/White Gold always has been a part of the Arch because (due to the nature of a timeless Timewarden) the TC/Arch merging always was/always is/always will be, even in times when it hadn't truly *happened* yet.

[emotional leper]

This is why Paradoxes are Paradoxical.

[Bran Pendragon]

Actually I disagree, but my head will hurt and words will fail before I can properly explain it. Suffice to say that, to me, time is defined by everything NOT happening at once, so to say that after something happens, it has ALWAYS happened/being happening, is not accurate. Or otherwise, just because TC *maybe* became time-loose, doesn't mean that he became time-less. But as I said, that's not explaining it properly. Still, I think that time was different after the events of WGW to what it had been before, and that when Linden and co travel back to pre-WGW, it's that old version of Time they are inhabiting. SRD will probably answer some of this in the coming novels, you'd think.

[wayfriend]

This is why Paradoxes are Paradoxical.

Wouldn't it be more Paradoxical if Paradoxes weren't Paradoxical?

I agree with BP that Time does move from a beginning to an end and not everything that ever was always was.

I don't think that TC always was the white gold either. I don't think it began until he got married, and accepted the ring and the symbolism that goes with it, and didn't get locked in until he began to weild it.

[Unfettered One]

I would add that the Banefire merged Venom with White Gold, not White Gold with TC.

[ff7hero]

Regarding the end of WGW, Foul's first blast of Wild Magic was directed at and killed Covenant. After the initial blast he lets loose on the Arch, but Covenant as Timewarden is able to absorb/deflect/whatever those blasts, something a living/envenomed Covenant would have been unable to do. Covenant says at one point that if Foul has gone right for the Arch, it would've been Game Over.