Speculation on the ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol

Post by **Fist and Faith** » Mon Jan 06, 2003 2:48 am

Anybody got any? Nothing can be answered, but I just wonder about some things.

-Does he eat? Is there anything to eat on The Isle? Or does he fish?
-If not, does Earthpower provide all of his nourishment?
-If so, why doesn't it keep him young, like it did for the Bloodguard? Or rather, young-looking, since he sure didn't act old.
-I guess he just sits there and meditates for centuries. Although maybe he practices martial arts too. At least as well as you can without someone to spar.

Wouldn't it be great to learn his origin? Was he the first (still the only?) of the Haruchai to have "mastered all skill and prowess that we desire, all restraint and calm"? And when he "became perfection" in this way, the Earthpower joined with him, kind of the way it joined with the Bloodguard?

And hmmm, to really speculate, maybe the Earthpower recognized his perfection, and also the Vow's perfection, and that is why it joined with him and them in such extraordinary ways. Or maybe not that they were perfection, but absolutes. Maybe it was the absolute nature of Berek's situation - the fact that he was THE LAST of the good guys, that good was about to be entirely wiped out by evil - that the Earthpower reacted to. Maybe it recognizes when living beings achieve something that is as certain as a law of nature, like gravity, and checks to see if it wants to do something about it.

OK, how far off my rocker am I?

Post by **Fist and Faith** » Mon Jan 06, 2003 2:50 am

Ha! Ok, so html doesn't work on the Topic field, eh?

MokshaTuriyaSamadhi Raver · Mon Jan 06, 2003 5:05 am

When I read that part the impression I get is that he's slightly the same as the Guard Of The Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade - sustained by the surrounding power but not really much more.

Post by **amanibhavam** » Mon Jan 06, 2003 8:08 am

Fist and Faith wrote:Ha! Ok, so html doesn't work on the Topic field, eh?

instead of html you get to use BBCodes from the top of the message window

Post by **Skyweir** » Mon Jan 06, 2003 1:39 pm

yeah I agree with MTSR .. and I think the Keeper of the Holy Grail .. is a very good analogy .. since we dont have any information to get a better idea!

Post by **Satansheart** » Wed Jan 08, 2003 10:00 am

I think he's like the Haruchai sensai, the Haruchai great leader etc.

Wed Jan 08, 2003 3:11 pm

I have thought a lot on this subject and have to agree with both camps. He is liek the Indy Jones grail guards and a Haruchai sensei. However He must be bound by earthlaw to the one place to recieve his powers. I cannot help but wonder what he felt when Brinn pulled him over the cliff.

Post by **Fist and Faith** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 4:55 am

I think we need to consider the following passages:

"There is a tale among the Haruchai, a legend preserved by the old tellers from the farthest distance of our past, long ages before our people encountered Kevin Landwaster and the Lords of the Land." -Brinn (before becoming ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol)

"I am who I am. ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. The Guardian of the One Tree. Brinn of the Haruchai. And many other names. Thus am I renewed from age to age, until the end." -Brinn (after becoming ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol)

"The Worm was not made restive by [Berek's] approach, for he did not win his way with combat. In that age, the One Tree had no Guardian. It was he himself who gave the Tree its ward, setting the Guardian in place so that the vital wood of the world's life would not again be touched or broken." -Findail

I see two possible scenarios:

1) Kenaustin Ardenol only mastered all skill and prowess that the Haruchai desire, all restraint and calm, and became perfection, thus earning the "supreme Haruchai honorific" of ak-Haru, just before Berek took him to the One Tree. That way it could be, as MTSR put it, that it is the surrounding power of the One Tree that sustains him. At least it sustains him sufficiently for him to live until another comes along and renews him the way Brinn did. (I assume only Haruchai can renew him?) This means that Brinn, et al, were not the first to visit the Isle since he was put there by Berek.

2) Kenaustin Ardenol achieved his ak-Haru status before meeting Berek. Berek found him somewhere else that the Haruchai would describe as "the edge of the Earth", and took him to the One Tree. In this scenario, he could have been "renewed" before or after he got to the One Tree, or both. But, considering the fact that the Haruchai didn't know where he was, and had to stumble upon him accidentally, he couldn't have been renewed all that often. Therefore, he always happened to be near one big source of power or another (for the "sustained by the surrounding power" idea), or he has a connection to the Earthpower that does not depend on location.

In any and all scenarios, I wonder why the Grail/God and the One Tree/Earthpower didn't do a complete job of keeping the Knight and ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol young. Although ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol seemed to be less than perfectly vital in appearance only.

Brinn of the Haruchai wrote:I cannot help but wonder what he felt when Brinn pulled him over the cliff.

I suspect pride and joy!!!

Post by **Skyweir** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 5:14 am

wow! really great research! .. that was great to read!

thanks F&F

Post by **Fist and Faith** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 5:34 am

Skyweir wrote:wow! really great research! .. that was great to read!

thanks F&F

Why thank you

Post by **amanibhavam** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 9:23 am

Ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol is a jerk. A pompous jerk. He lives across the street here in the city on Alpha Centauri where I also live, and all he does each day is boasting at the local pub in the evenings how he will beat me one day i three-dimensional space-chess, which day never will dawn of course, 'coz I can run circles around him any time, but he is just too obsessed to know. Ah, Haruchai...

OK, I have to go, my keeper tells me.

MokshaTuriyaSamadhi Raver · Thu Jan 09, 2003 9:41 am

You lie!

He could beat all 4 of the Ninja Turtles at once... well maybe not Leonardo because he's got that brooding ninja hero thing going on...

*goes to take a cold shower*

Post by **Satansheart** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 9:44 am

Hey, amanibhavam, you're thinking of the wrong dude dude. You're talking about Ken Austin Ardenol, he is a jerk, you're right there but he's carp at 3 dimentional chess anyway, you've got no worries. Kenaustin Ardenol is a character out of a book and doesn't exist.

Post by **Nav** » Sun Jan 12, 2003 3:07 am

I doubt that ak-Haru is actually flesh-and-blood like the Haruchai, more like whoever defeats him becomes something a bit like the elohim.

There's one thing I need clearing up though, I know the Bloodguard didn't age, but did the Haruchai in the second chronicles? I know they still didn't sleep, but Bannor had said that he had grown old and required sleep and hot food to sustain him. If they do age, is it not possible that the Haruchai who had defeated ak-Haru before Brinn had been old?

Post by **Fist and Faith** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 5:40 am

Navarino wrote:I doubt that ak-Haru is actually flesh-and-blood like the Haruchai, more like whoever defeats him becomes something a bit like the elohim.

Ah! Great bit of speculation there! I wonder. Certainly possible.

Beside him, even Cail appeared frangible and limited.

This seems to be saying that something more is happening than merely getting a new body, since one Haruchai never appeared frangible (breakable) and limited when compared to another before.

Navarino wrote:There's one thing I need clearing up though, I know the Bloodguard didn't age, but did the Haruchai in the second chronicles? I know they still didn't sleep, but Bannor had said that he had grown old and required sleep and hot food to sustain him. If they do age, is it not possible that the Haruchai who had defeated ak-Haru before Brinn had been old?

That last thought is an amazing one!! That never crossed my mind! I suppose it's possible. We don't know nearly enough about the Haruchai to know how many old ones there are, if any. "Brinn or Cail might have looked like that if the intensity of their lives had permitted them to reach extreme old age" doesn't, I suppose, mean that none ever have.

As for aging and sleeping, the Haruchai did both, and the Bloodguard did neither. I don't remember anything in the 2nd chronicles that suggests otherwise. What passage am I forgetting that says they don't sleep in the 2nd? I know we're never actually told that they are sleeping, but we're never told about anyone other than Linden and Covenant sleeping, are we? If they took turns sleeping, their mind-speech could easily wake the sleeper. And I'm sure they would have absolutely no difficulty staying awake for days at a time if necessary. And considering the extremely good physical shape they're in, they doubtless need less sleep than us in the first place.

Post by **Nav** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 8:29 pm

Without looking, the only part in the second chronicles that suggested to me that they didn't sleep was when Mistweave was trying to match the Haruchai by staying awake all night whilst guarding Linden on the Quest's return to The Land.

KaosArcana · Post by **KaosArcana** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 11:15 pm

The Haruchai are literally superhuman in their endurance and
strength. They can stand toe to toe and slug it out with giants
(remember Brinn and Honninscave's first meeting).

I also remember when Mistweave tried to serve as a
Haruchai subsitute for Linden Avery in _White Gold
Wielder_ he wasn't able to match Cail's stamina.

On the other hand, didn't Cail go delirious when he was
suffering from Sunbane fever in _The Wounded Land_?
And didn't Brinn fall asleep when hit with the Kemper's
magic dust?

I think they CAN sleep. They just don't have to do it very
often, and we never see them do it.

Post by **Reisheiruhime** » Sun Jan 19, 2003 12:56 am

Yes, both Brinn and Hergrom got knocked out by that dust that Lady Alif blew into their faces.
And yes, Cail did go delirious when he was suffering from Sunbane fever and Courser poison.

~Drool~

Post by **Damelon** » Sun Jan 19, 2003 1:29 am

My thought has been that the Haruchai, like the Giants, are beings of a lesser degree of Earthpower. According to Triock, who was mastered by a Raver; too strong to be mastered, and too weak to be masters.

That the Earthpower is in them isn't in doubt. Gibbon in TWL refers to Haruchai blood as "precious".

Yet they can be corrupted, as Korik's encounter with the fragment of the Illearth Stone showed.

ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol always seemed to me to be a creation of a different kind of vow than the one that the Bloodguard made. It seems that when the Haruchai make an oath, the Earthpower takes notice.

As to sleep, Bannor mentioned the need for sleep after the Bloodguard abandoned the Vow. They just seem to need less of it.[/i]

Post by **Fist and Faith** » Sun Jan 19, 2003 5:58 pm

I absolutely love gathering quotes and trying to come to a solid conclusion about something that SRD never flat out said one way or the other. Even if that conclusion is solid only in my mind.

A psychologist might have something to say about my need to have everything answered so clearly, but... Anyway, here's my conclusions on this topic.

The Haruchai need sleep.

Aside from Bannor needing sleep after the Vow was abandoned, in LFB, he said:

"No Bloodguard has slept since the Haruchai swore their Vow."

There's no way to interpret that other than that the Haruchai sleep. It seems to me that the Haruchai do everything they do out of the extremity of their emotions, or out of need. So they sleep because either it is a deeply meaningful act to them, or they need to sleep. I'm going with need.

Navarino, you may be right that they don't sleep in the 2nd Chronicles. (Or at least Cail doesn't sleep after Brinn becomes ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. It's always possible that they took turns sleeping when Ceer and Hergrom were alive. I imagine they could wake each other easily enough with their mind-speech.) The specific passage that I assume you're referring to is:

Mistweave lay felled in his canvas cover as if during the night his desire to match Cail had suffered a defeat. Only Cail, the Demondim-spawn, and Findail were on their feet.

Technically, we don't know that Cail didn't sleep. It's conceivable that he slept, but for less time than Mistweave, and woke up first. And we don't know about other nights either. But since Cail is grouped with Vain and Findail (I don't imagine anyone suspects they sleep) in contrast to Mistweave, I think SRD wants us to think that Cail doesn't sleep.

So the question is, why doesn't Cail need to sleep? Has there been a change in the Haruchai since the 1st Chronicles? I doubt it. I think such a fundamental change would have been pointed out. Covenant would have been made aware of it - maybe Brinn would have said, "The Vow removed the need for sleep from the Bloodguard. Now, no Haruchai need sleep" - and we would have heard him talking or thinking about the difference/implications/horror of the situation.

It's possible that they were in a kind of mini-Vow situation, and the Earthpower took away their need for sleep again, as it did for the Bloodguard. But we probably would have witnessed something like "the rocks on which they stood thundered, and fire ran through them, sealing their bones to the promise they had made" if that was the case. And Covenant certainly would have I given us a "Hellfire!" if that had happened.

I think Cail just decided to not sleep. As I said last time, being such extraordinary physical specemins, I'm sure the Haruchai don't need nearly the sleep we do. And that's even if they didn't have a strong connection to the Earthpower. (Which, as Damelon reminds us, they do. I love it when Mhoram said, "In their way, they know the name of the Earthpower more surely than any Lord.") As I see it, the absolute nature of their character, the way they commit completely to a course of action (I love phrases like "out of the extremity and innocence of their hearts" and "extravagant Haruchai"), allows them to put off sleep for loooooong periods of time. It must become more and more difficult as time goes by, but we would, of course, never see any sign of their effort.

Damelon wrote:ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol always seemed to me to be a creation of a different kind of vow than the one that the Bloodguard made.

My thinking is that this guy named Kenaustin Ardenol became ak-Haru by attaining perfection. The Haruchai definition of perfection, that is. I never thought that he took any vow to become the Haruchai legend that he is, just that he is the ultimate example of all they desire. And it was when he achieved perfection that he gained the abilities, presumably granted to him by the Earthpower, that the other Haruchai do not have. Although you could be right. It could be a vow of some sort. This thread is called "Speculation" after all.

[I guess he made a vow to Berek though. But I think he was ak-Haru before he met Berek. More speculation.]

Damelon wrote:It seems that when the Haruchai make an oath, the Earthpower takes notice.

Whether or not ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol took any vow, that's a big AMEN!

Sooooooooo, there's my latest overthinking of, and rambling on about, the Haruchai.

I can live with these answers.

Kevin's Watch

Kevin's Watch

Speculation on the ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol

Speculation on the ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol