Foul's successes in between the first and second chronicles are due in part to the destruction of the staff of law and the breaking of the law of death; the first of these seems improbable to happen without Elena summoning Kevin, and the second seems pretty much impossible for anyone on the side of the lords to do without someone else going and using the Earthblood (and presumably it would be broken already if Foul or his allies were able to). Things get very hypothetical even if we imagine the law of death being broken but no loss of Elena and the staff, or a loss of the staff and Elena but not in the process of breaking a law of the land, let alone something that seems to be a straightforward positive or more good than bad. All the same, unless the staff was not only lost but destroyed, the sunbane is impossible, and it's hard to imagine the Clave being effective without the spectre of the sunbane, too.jonnyredleader wrote:All very good ideas and effective in the short term but the lords already had a precedent with Kevin. He'd caused big problems for foul for thousands of years and then foul pops up again and puts the land at the brink again. Covenant destroys the illearth stone then a few thousand years later the land is in a worse state without fouls ability to use that power.
Foul tried many schemes to destroy the world before he even came to the land, ravers are small fry however poisonous they are. Even dead Elena controlled them easily and they certainly weren't 100% loyal to Foul
Remember that during Lord Foul's Bane and The Illearth War, the principle reason Foul began an all-out offensive against the land was his acquisition of the Illearth Stone. It's not clear to what extent he could have marshaled an organized army without the ability of the stone to control his menagerie. We never really get a clear sense of the results of the past campaigns the lords have apparently fought, at least initially lost, and then survived against Foul. Troy talks about how the Lords always fight in the same place and always lose; does this result in a pillaging of the heart of the land and a temporary retreat, then return, from it by its regular inhabitants? It's not clear to me why Revelwood would have survived until TPTP, that being the case, since it's apparently not easily defended.
Also, with the past offenses, which were identified with lord foul, in mind, it's worth keeping in mind that Lord Foul didn't just "pop up" at the beginning of LFB with no prior activity against the Land in between the start of LFB and the Desecration.
The Ravers might be called small fry some of the time from the readers' perspective, but as giant ravers with shards of the illearth stone they are quite devastating even from our perspective as enemies of the land. Of course I'm not sure that Elena actually knew about the giant ravers or the stone shards at the time of drinking of the Earthblood.