Is the Worm a song?

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

What is symbolic, a Word, but also flows and, in musical notation anyway looks, like a river, a Worm? And the magic of the Forestals is musical, the magic that can refuse the end.

Maybe the lights at the One Tree were notes. They're described as motes, anyway.

The power of the Seven Words is precedent for the idea that something semiotic has natural and extreme force in the Land. The Worm might be a living river of structures like the Seven Words, in other words.

With all the true names and Words in these stories, I think it's plausible to think that the Laws of nature in the Land are similar to laws of physics as equations, only essentially written in the runescript/corresponding speech known by, say, Caerroil Wildwood. This world is a story, after all. Stories are written or spoken in languages. What better candidate in the Land than the true language of the Land's Earth?

And if the awakening of the Worm is connected to the breaking of the Laws of Life and Death, if it embodies those broken Laws somehow, then maybe it is the song that states those Laws through itself.

EDIT: maybe the Wraiths know the song of refusal. They used white gold's power reflected through the krill to refuse all interlopers in Andelain, after all. Imagine all the Wraiths infused with the light of the krill, trying to hold back the Worm. It is the size of a range of hills, and the Wraiths are in the Andelainian Hills. Okay, that last one's a stretch of wordplay logic... Anyway, the line, "No one will stand to offer, 'Nay,'" from the Wraiths' song at the end of FR also indicates familiarity with the principle of standing up to something and saying no to, refusing, it; and in this case, "it" is also said to be the end of the world.

[SkurjMaster]

This is very philosophical. I like it. Mathematics says what is in reality without being the reality. But, mathematics has something of a life of its own. So, I think that it may be both.

[High Lord Tolkien]

"The Worm is a song"......i love that!

[deer of the dawn]

I'm liking it too!!

[earthbrah]

Yeah man, as far as semiotics goes, the shape and form of a worm is like "a living river of structures" or symbols. The written word is composed of signs and symbols that mean something, that stand for something beyond themselves. We can also include the spoken word, which is really nothing more than vibrations, sounds that indicate or refer to things not contained within themselves...

This is fantasy after all, and we already have the Word/Weird/Würd/Worm connection laid out for us. I like the idea too, but SRD is gonna have to confirm it in TLD.

[Mega Fauna Blitzkrieg]

I kind of have this assumption too, or at least if they use Jeremiah to trap it like the Harrow suggested, that they will trap it in some non-physical way. I mean how could you build a prison physically big enough for some kind of Ouroboros?

On second thought though, doesn't someone in book 8 or 9 discuss the worm as a physical being? Covenenat, or the Elohim? I have this vague recollection of the worm being mentioned as being physically huge, like as big as an island or more?

I think it is during the discussion of, and in reference to the worm hunting down and eating the Elohim one by one?

Regardless if it has a physical and uh, meta-physical component, I don't think the resolution will involve it's physical parts. I mean can you imagine Stave trying to stab the worm with the Krill?

[Savor Dam]

Is the krill an apt weapon for his hand? Haruchai normally do not wield any physical extensions, preferring their own unenhanced competences. The krill especially is a tool that seems to require the wielder to channel some other power through it in order for it to be effective; otherwise it is a beautiful dagger with a dull blade.

Perhaps you anticipate Stave coming into some as-yet unrevealed power?

[Akasri]

"The Worm is a song"......i love that!

Freebird!!!

Oh, wait... Freeworm!!

*waves a lighter around*

[Mega Fauna Blitzkrieg]

Is the krill an apt weapon for his hand? Haruchai normally do not wield any physical extensions, preferring their own unenhanced competences. The krill especially is a tool that seems to require the wielder to channel some other power through it in order for it to be effective; otherwise it is a beautiful dagger with a dull blade.

Perhaps you anticipate Stave coming into some as-yet unrevealed power?

No, just more because the characters drop like flies in book 9. Stave was randomly selected as my example to emphasize the point that they probably won't get on a giantship, fish the worm up to the surface with fishing poles, and start hacking away at it physically with swords and staff fire.