wayfriend wrote:It doesn't make sense to me either, Blackhawk.
Early in LFB, Foul says, "He searches for the Illearth Stone." It doesn't sound there like Foul has the Stone. And if Drool found the Stone, how is it that he only ended up with a piece of it, and Foul the rest? Later, in TIW, Elena said, "Drool possessed the Staff, and with it unearthed the buried bane, the Illearth Stone. By reason of these powers, the Despiser was at Drool's mercy while the Cavewight lived." That doesn't sound like Foul could take away Drool's Stone. In fact, Foul would not be at Drools mercy if he had the main part of the Stone while Drool had only a piece.
In TWL, when Sill says, "He has the Illearth Stone," Hyrim replies, "No ... That is only a fragment of the Stone! The Illearth Stone itself - is much larger!" So we know that the Lords know how big the Stone is. But why then did they never comment about the Stone they saw in Drools hand? The didn't notice it was a fragment, and they never even suspected that splitting the Stone was possible until they met the Giant Raver.
Pah!
Drool had the whole Illearth Stone in his hand. If it's size in LFB is a bit inconsistent with it's size in TPTP, I don't really care.
You know ... before Drool emerged from Mount Thunder, he had been swimming in the cold Soulsease river which flows beneath the mountain. That was why he was crying "There was shrinkage!!!" when everyone noticed the size of his Stone.
Yes, my understanding was that LF wanted TC to take his message to the Lords so that they would recover the Staff of Law because DR was potentially a threat to LF at that stage. LF was still not sufficiently powerful at this point to control DR. Ergo, it doesn't really make sense that he could simply ensure that Drool only takes a piece of the Stone when he unearths it, keeping the rest for his own use.
Interestingly, however, in the Fantasy Bedtime Hour (you might have noticed that I'm a fan...!
) SRD posits a different reason for LF wanting the Lords to obtain the Staff from Drool. He doesn't say, "Well, Drool was too powerful at that stage for LF to control him....". What he says is that LF wants the Lords to be sufficiently powerful that the eventual battle (and their eventual failure) is sufficiently epic to serve his purposes. He isn't specific, but it seems the idea is that the eventual battle needs either to be sufficiently apocalyptic to threaten the arch of time (combined with the summoning of white gold) or at least to lead to a second Desecration?
So perhaps we are misled by the Lord's interpretation of the circumstances. Perhaps it is they that posit that LF needs them to stop Drool, but in reality LF does have sufficient control over Drool? After all, he takes TC from him, he does not tolerate Drool's threat and he must have known that Drool would be poisoned by the use of the Staff to the point of weakness such that he would not be a long term threat to LF.
Thinking about it I'm inclined now to go with this misinformation theory. LF did in reality have enough control over Drool from the outset to take the Illearth Stone from him when he found it (allowing him to retain only a small piece). The real reason that LF needed the Lords to obtain the Staff from Drool was not to prevent Drool threatening LF but to ensure that the ensuing meeting of force between the Lords and LF was sufficiently monumental to meet LF's greater purposes.
!!!
