You mean to tell me they ALL died? All of them everywhere?

[SleeplessOne]

Frankly considering the time period that SRD wrote LFB I assumed that the ROD was a reference to 1960s fears over a possible nuclear holocaust. Considering that I've always thought of the ROD to be a lot like an atomic blast, complete with fallout and contamination that would keep living things away for a thousand years.

it always gave me a Hiroshima/Nagasaki vibe too ..

[emotional leper]

Frankly considering the time period that SRD wrote LFB I assumed that the ROD was a reference to 1960s fears over a possible nuclear holocaust. Considering that I've always thought of the ROD to be a lot like an atomic blast, complete with fallout and contamination that would keep living things away for a thousand years.

it always gave me a Hiroshima/Nagasaki vibe too ..

I guess it was a necessary life-saving measure on Kevin's behalf.

He also seems to be as liked as Truman.

[Bran Pendragon]

I don't mind Truman - reckon he's underrated in general.

[Blackhawk]

Kevins most trusted were sent to their deaths...but everyone else was warned that something was going to happen so he must have been thinking somewhat rationally to have warned all the people of the land..foamfollower was born on the ships during the desecration..kevin Evacuated the land even the Haruchai, Ranyhn stonedownlors Woodhelvin Ramen all went ..so that would have to show that it was premeditated..or was it just precaution? even the Giants had to take their Ships and go offshore until it passed.....OK..now how did the forests not burn? if they did they couldnt be part of the one forest ..they would be new forest with no ancient hatred ..or maybe the forestals were able to protect the majority of each remaining forest..that would make more sense. and i dont think all knowledge went out of the land..the new lords had only remnants of what was...so someone had to still be practicing the lore ..and wouldnt Revelstone itself be protection from the desecration so long as it wasnt happening inside Revelstone itself? i dont remember any slagged walls from heat..and the Giants still thought it was a work of art..desecration would have done some major damage to the intricacies of Revelstones face & tower making it unreadable..lots of places to hide in the deep gutrock passageways.

[Mr. Broken]

Desecration is far too complicated , and simple to fathom until after the fact. It is a paradox , as intense as a nuclear blast, and benign like a crumpled up page in Donaldsons waste basket.

[Zal Remmos]

I always imagined the RoD as Kevin & Lord Foul unleashing immense powers [be it bolts of power, "rays" (i.e. continuous streaming of power)] directed toward each other in a contest to best the other's power - such as when Covenant destroyed the Illearth Stone. The fallout of such powers eradicated not only life from the land, but life from the very soil itself.

Since it was performed in Kiril Threndor, it's disasterous effects couldn't reach Revelstone, so it was spared (I assume Kevin was sure, because although the Giants had the First Ward and the Second Ward was found in Mount Thunder, the Third Ward and Loric's Krill were hidden deep in Revelstone).

Glimmermere was out of the affected area (it is west of Revelstone, thus even further away), thus it remained unscathed; also it was and is replenished from underground springs, which have some Earthpower in them too.

The Forests of the Land were saved (again I must assume) due to the Forestals. Don't forget, these were powerful beings created by the combination of Communal mind of the last vestiges of the once Great Forest descimated by man, Earthpower and the Elohim. They were around long before even Berek, the first of the Old Lords.

As for Andelain, it is the Heart of the Land; rife with Earthpower - I think it was able to withstand the RoD (perhaps with the help of the Forestals) in much the same way it resisted the Sunbane.

I don't think that the Giants had to leave; the RoD was performed while most of them were out in their ships looking for a way Home again, as was the their custom.

The people of the Land didn't run to Seareach and Giant Woods, because it couldn't support so many people, plus the Giants were the ones who knew how to navigate the Sarangrave Flat safely; the people of the Land pretty much stayed in the Upper Land.

Finally, I again have to assume that the peoples of the Land (along with the Ramen, Ranyhn and the Haruchai) fled the land as no one knew for certain that Andelain would be spared, and when Kevin decided to invoke the RoD, he had the Haruchai go to the mountains as he felt there wasn't enough time to have them go to Revelstone for safety, much less have them herd the population of the Land to Revelstone. Also, although Revelstone is vast, and they have fields for farming, it wouldn't suffice for the Land's entire population, so the next best thing is to leave the land.

[matrixman]

i dont think all knowledge went out of the land..the new lords had only remnants of what was...so someone had to still be practicing the lore

The way I understood it was that the people regained knowledge of Kevin's Lore only because the Giants brought the First Ward with them. If that hadn't happened, I assume the people would still have been just scraping by on the barest lore that had allowed them to survive in the mountains or wherever. So I think knowledge was wiped out in the Land for all intents and purposes. The Forestals had knowledge, of course, but forget about them sharing any of it with the silly humans. (At any rate, Forestal knowledge probably wouldn't have been applicable in any meaningful way to humans.)

..and wouldnt Revelstone itself be protection from the desecration so long as it wasnt happening inside Revelstone itself? i dont remember any slagged walls from heat..and the Giants still thought it was a work of art..desecration would have done some major damage to the intricacies of Revelstones face & tower making it unreadable..lots of places to hide in the deep gutrock passageways.

People may be safe from the RoD were they to hide in Revelstone, but I think the Keep would become one gigantic coffin for them. Once the food stores run out, that's the end. They couldn't go outside - assuming the very air was made foul by the RoD, the people would have suffocated on it.

I think some (maybe many) of us are getting to the point of painting the Ritual as being not quite all-out devastation, and that's understandable. When we encounter the Land for the first time in LFB, the realm has already been greatly healed (albeit with sore spots), so it's hard to picture exactly how awful or widespread the Desecration was. The only thing we have to go on is that little bit of post-Ritual vision Covenant gets of the Land during Lena's speech. I assume SRD declines to go into specifics about Kevin's RoD because he feels it's unnecessary to the story, but obviously a lot of inquiring Chronicles minds want to know. It's like mentioning that the 20th century had two world wars but then saying very little else about them. What? Wait! Back up for a minute!

[Blackhawk]

':oops:' hehe forgot the giants had the first ward. and i suppose that rock could get pretty hot without melting.

[Kevin BeerDrinker]

Interesting to think that there may be a colony of folk somewhere outside the land that have at least some of the old lore.

[Blackhawk]

look at Kaseryn..if he hadnt been so greedy he could have created his own council of Ring wieilding lords. even yellow gold was so rare itself it had the power to contain and multiply covenants blast back at him,he had to have findail finish it for him, i dont remember foul even being able to do that with the Illearth stone. but Kaseryn was damned by the Croyel so his power and knowledge came through evil. lots of other power out there..and what happened to Kaseryns Golden rings. someone has to have picked those up..eventually after they dig and rebuild the sandwall and towers maybe.

[SoulBiter]

I was reading some of this yesterday (Ive been re-reading from LFB forward....again) and Foamfollower mentions that the giants werent even in Seareach when the RoD happened. They were out on their ships and thats what saved them.

[shadowbinding shoe]

When Kevin enacted his ritual of desecration, what happened to all the other old lords that lived in the land at the time? Did they all die at the Treacher's gorge? Did Kevin kill them himself by doing his ritual of desecration (because they became mini dark lords or just because)? Did they gradually die out during the long exile from the Land in the Earthpower-barren lands? What?

[amanibhavam]

Hi,

something similar is/was discussed in this topic:

kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14565

[shadowbinding shoe]

Hi,

something similar is/was discussed in this topic: ...

Oops. Well I see someone annexed our posts into this thread.

Now that I thought about it a little more, I think there were survivors to the old Lords. The Lumillianlor (spelling?) masters retained a bit of the lore Kevin and his fellow lords had. They use wood stuffs like the lords which got it themselves from Berek's stuff of Law. But their lore diverged from the old lore and became a somewhat independent thing. Or is it that they retain different parts of Kevin's lore?

The Gravelingases on the other hand seemed to be a new thing developed by the post desecration exiles in the barren wastes in the south. (doesn't Lena say as much in the beginning of LFB?) If they had any lords amongst them they must have had problems functioning when there were no trees to make stuffs from.

[Seeker of Truth]

From what I remember Kevin warned those around him to leave the land - Kevin sent the bloodguard away into the mountains, the giants left on their ships & those of the Land made their way out of the Land to places like Doriendor Corishev etc. Perhaps the Ranyhyn used their "pre-science" to avoid the ritual of desecration.

I imagine the ROD to be a force of power that killed all living creatures but left buildings etc intact. A kinda magical neutron bomb!

[Aleksandr]

I do not find it strange. Look what happened to the English language in the span of 1000 years.

In a good deal less time than that the spoken languages of the former provinces of the Roman Empire became early versions of today's Romance languages after the Empire collapsed and civilization was reduced to bare survival. This process took only a few generations. Of course Spanish, Italian etc. look a lot like Latin, and like each other, but just because you're a native speaker of one of these languages doesn't mean you can pick up the works of Virgil and Cicero and just read away.