Kevin's Watch

Shelt wrote:I'm not sure I remember in Runes where removing Kevin's Dirt is her objective. It seems to me that her main objective has always been finding Jeremiah, and that after realizing that Jeremiah is being used and abused by the Croyel, that desire becomes even more urgent.

She's had a feeling of inadequacy from the beginning, and that feeling becomes more acute after her trial with Roger and the Croyel.

Maybe I need to read Runes again (I just finished re-reading FR).

Yeah, I believe you are correct. I also believe that she is beginning to understand that saving Jeremiah is going to be a stepwise operation... but it may still be too late to realize that.

Welcome, Shelt! Why not introduce yourself over in the Summonsing forum, so you can get a real welcome to the Watch?!

Shelt wrote:I'm not sure I remember in Runes where removing Kevin's Dirt is her objective

Your memory seems correct as far as I can tell. Yes, saving Jeremiah is her overriding concern, but there's plenty of evidence to show that she's also trying to save the Land. But elimination of the Dirt, while nice, isn't attacking the real problem it represents. First Foul and Kastenessen need to be stopped. Then the Dirt can be taken care of.

Only at the very end of FR do we learn something that might mean that Kevin's Dirt needs to be taken care of as a prerequisite to stopping Foul or rescuing Jeremiah. I'm referring to the Dirt's ability to limit Linden's full use of Earthpower. It's unclear yet whether or not the krill would be an adequate workaround.

wayfriend wrote:Welcome, Shelt! Why not introduce yourself over in the Summonsing forum, so you can get a real welcome to the Watch?!

Shelt wrote:I'm not sure I remember in Runes where removing Kevin's Dirt is her objective

Your memory seems correct as far as I can tell. Yes, saving Jeremiah is her overriding concern, but there's plenty of evidence to show that she's also trying to save the Land. But elimination of the Dirt, while nice, isn't attacking the real problem it represents. First Foul and Kastenessen need to be stopped. Then the Dirt can be taken care of.

Only at the very end of FR do we learn something that might mean that Kevin's Dirt needs to be taken care of as a prerequisite to stopping Foul or rescuing Jeremiah. I'm referring to the Dirt's ability to limit Linden's full use of Earthpower. It's unclear yet whether or not the krill would be an adequate workaround.

I don't know about that. One of the overiding themes of the story so far is her feeling of powerlessness and inadequacy. She didn't think she was powerful enough or adequate enough to save the Land or find her son. That's why she wanted to find Covenant. She even says it at the end of FR (which I just read last night). She says to Covenant, "No you're the one who saves the Land! I just want to save my son!" (or something like that)

Covenant goes out of his way to tell her to "Find me", but to "Remember I'm Dead." That's why she wanted to go to Andelain in the first place.

Unless I'm totally off base, removing Kevin's Dirt doesn't enter her mind until that big battle with the Skurj in FR.

I'm going to start a Runes re-read tonight. Maybe I'll find something I missed.

Shelt, do you know that SRD gave us all a teaser on his website?
He posted the first chapter of AATE.
Check it out if you haven't already.

www.stephenrdonaldson.com/

Shelt wrote:I'm not sure I remember in Runes where removing Kevin's Dirt is her objective. It seems to me that her main objective has always been finding Jeremiah, and that after realizing that Jeremiah is being used and abused by the Croyel, that desire becomes even more urgent.

She's had a feeling of inadequacy from the beginning, and that feeling becomes more acute after her trial with Roger and the Croyel.

I agree. I don't know why everyone here is saying she needs the Krill to get rid of the Dirt. The reason she needed the Krill was because she was trying to break a Law and so couldn't use the staff for it while wanting to do it in a proper way and not a hamfisted one, so the Staff WAS needed to give proper guidance.

The Krill solved this problem of breaking a Law without breaking everything down.

For the Dirt no such problems exist. It is an unLawful phenomenon that the Staff is built to combat. Knowing everything about it is not necessary when you have the Healthsense. The lack of Healthsense was the reason why Covenant was disqualified from healing the Sunbane in the second chronicles. As we see Linden manages to cleanse the Dirt from her body and the bodies of her friends by returning them to their natural undirtied state. She doesn't need to understand everything about the Dirt. A similar solution (on a larger scale) would cleanse the dirt from the atmosphere.

Would it's power-limiting effects deter her from achieving this? I don't think so. I can imagine her filtering the air around her with the Staff gradually sucking more and more of the Dirt until it's gone. As soon as she begins doing it her environment begins to cleanse and the limitations on her Staff fade.

But I wouldn't hurry to do it because I have no idea how this dirt affects the Skurj. I have a suspicion that since the Skurj feed on Earthpower, they would want to eat the clean and clearly seen Earthpower even more than the dirty and obscure Earthpower we have at present. So Kevin's Dirt is very possibly a control mechanism put by Kestenessen and Esmer to prevent the Skurj from being too voracious and eating everything in the Land before Linden even got there.

Whew, now that was one spooky speculation...

Shelt wrote:
Would it's power-limiting effects deter her from achieving this? I don't think so. I can imagine her filtering the air around her with the Staff gradually sucking more and more of the Dirt until it's gone. As soon as she begins doing it her environment begins to cleanse and the limitations on her Staff fade.

But I wouldn't hurry to do it because I have no idea how this dirt affects the Skurj. I have a suspicion that since the Skurj feed on Earthpower, they would want to eat the clean and clearly seen Earthpower even more than the dirty and obscure Earthpower we have at present. So Kevin's Dirt is very possibly a control mechanism put by Kestenessen and Esmer to prevent the Skurj from being too voracious and eating everything in the Land before Linden even got there.

Just one problem. While they may have put the "dirt" there, it was not their idea. The original idea came from Jehannum raver. And its limitation power is directed on Linden even though it may affect others. In other words, if there was no Linden Avery the "dirt" would serve no purpose. And that purpose is always the same: to force Linden to avail herself of powers more dangerous than Health-sense, namely, white gold.

TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote:

Shelt??? wrote:
Would it's power-limiting effects deter her from achieving this? I don't think so. I can imagine her filtering the air around her with the Staff gradually sucking more and more of the Dirt until it's gone. As soon as she begins doing it her environment begins to cleanse and the limitations on her Staff fade.

But I wouldn't hurry to do it because I have no idea how this dirt affects the Skurj. I have a suspicion that since the Skurj feed on Earthpower, they would want to eat the clean and clearly seen Earthpower even more than the dirty and obscure Earthpower we have at present. So Kevin's Dirt is very possibly a control mechanism put by Kestenessen and Esmer to prevent the Skurj from being too voracious and eating everything in the Land before Linden even got there.

Just one problem. While they may have put the "dirt" there, it was not their idea. The original idea came from Jehannum raver. And its limitation power is directed on Linden even though it may affect others. In other words, if there was no Linden Avery the "dirt" would serve no purpose. And that purpose is always the same: to force Linden to avail herself of powers more dangerous than Health-sense, namely, white gold.

Is that a Raverish sort of thinking? The Ravers that saved the hall of gifts in Revelstone for thousands of years so they could make Thomas Covenant destroy it or kept the stores of goodly arcane knowledge so that it might gather dust while everyone treated it as forbidden, or that used despair to attack the armies of the Land in Revelstone and Doriendor Corishev (in TPTP and TIEW) seem more keen on inducing mental despair than to just encourage wholesale destruction.

I would think they would push the Dirt idea more for its power to steal the sense of wonder the healthsense gave to everyone than just for its power-limiting mechanics.

My suppositions about how it would affect the skurj also follows this line of thinking. The goodly Healthsense would become inextricably linked to the wrongness and destruction of the Skurj that would follow from any attempt to get rid of the Dirt.

Though its linkage to Kevin is interesting. Could they have used remnants of his despair and desecrative emotions from the time of his death during the Ritual of Desecration to create 'Kevin's Dirt'? Another sly barb by the ravers at the Lords and what they represent.

shadowbinding shoe wrote:

TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote:

Shelt??? wrote:
Would it's power-limiting effects deter her from achieving this? I don't think so. I can imagine her filtering the air around her with the Staff gradually sucking more and more of the Dirt until it's gone. As soon as she begins doing it her environment begins to cleanse and the limitations on her Staff fade.

But I wouldn't hurry to do it because I have no idea how this dirt affects the Skurj. I have a suspicion that since the Skurj feed on Earthpower, they would want to eat the clean and clearly seen Earthpower even more than the dirty and obscure Earthpower we have at present. So Kevin's Dirt is very possibly a control mechanism put by Kestenessen and Esmer to prevent the Skurj from being too voracious and eating everything in the Land before Linden even got there.

Just one problem. While they may have put the "dirt" there, it was not their idea. The original idea came from Jehannum raver. And its limitation power is directed on Linden even though it may affect others. In other words, if there was no Linden Avery the "dirt" would serve no purpose. And that purpose is always the same: to force Linden to avail herself of powers more dangerous than Health-sense, namely, white gold.

Is that a Raverish sort of thinking? The Ravers that saved the hall of gifts in Revelstone for thousands of years so they could make Thomas Covenant destroy it or kept the stores of goodly arcane knowledge so that it might gather dust while everyone treated it as forbidden, or that used despair to attack the armies of the Land in Revelstone and Doriendor Corishev (in TPTP and TIEW) seem more keen on inducing mental despair than to just encourage wholesale destruction.

Donaldson answered the question of the Aumbrie in the GI.

Personally, I think that destroying the contents of the Aumbrie is just too obviously EVIL for an organization that evolved from the Council of Lords, claims moral authority over the Land, and still has true believers (Memla) among its members.

In other words, it would have been out of character since it was a Raver posing as a descendant of the Lords, supposedly a "good guy" and not a "bad guy." That is not to say that Raverish thinking wouldn't enjoy the wanton destruction of the Aumbrie given a good enough excuse for destroying it.

shadowbinding shoe wrote:I would think they would push the Dirt idea more for its power to steal the sense of wonder the healthsense gave to everyone than just for its power-limiting mechanics.

That may have been true in the days before Covenant first entered the Land with white gold. Hindering the senses of the Land's inhabitants, who are mere play-things for beings such as Ravers, seems a rather trivial goal these days. And besides, such a ploy would not play a role in this story, or with Foul's intentions, indeed it has nothing to do with any of it:

Linden -

"Then tell me how I can get enough Earthpower from my Staff to hold off those monsters."

Esmer -

"You cannot," he said as though he feared her in spite of her helplessness. "That is the true purpose of Kevin's Dirt."

So the text reveals that the true purpose of Kevin's Dirt is to hinder Linden's abilities with Earthpower.

shadowbinding shoe wrote:My suppositions about how it would affect the skurj also follows this line of thinking. The goodly Healthsense would become inextricably linked to the wrongness and destruction of the Skurj that would follow from any attempt to get rid of the Dirt.

Though its linkage to Kevin is interesting. Could they have used remnants of his despair and desecrative emotions from the time of his death during the Ritual of Desecration to create 'Kevin's Dirt'? Another sly barb by the ravers at the Lords and what they represent.

That's speculative, but I don't see why a being such as Esmer would have a use for any such remnants, even if it was possible to find emotions just floating around somewhere in the Land or in Mount Thunder. In fact, I have never heard of such a thing in any of the Chrons.

Aren't the Masters the ones who gave it the name "Kevin's Dirt"? (though I don't remember why they did)

wayfriend wrote:Welcome, Shelt! Why not introduce yourself over in the Summonsing forum, so you can get a real welcome to the Watch?!

Shelt wrote:I'm not sure I remember in Runes where removing Kevin's Dirt is her objective

Your memory seems correct as far as I can tell. Yes, saving Jeremiah is her overriding concern, but there's plenty of evidence to show that she's also trying to save the Land.

What evidence?

Relayer wrote:Aren't the Masters the ones who gave it the name "Kevin's Dirt"? (though I don't remember why they did)

It was first called that by Anele on pg. 105, RoTE. I don't remember much more about who called it Kevin's Dirt first, though. You may be right.

TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote:

wayfriend wrote:Welcome, Shelt! Why not introduce yourself over in the Summonsing forum, so you can get a real welcome to the Watch?!

Shelt wrote:I'm not sure I remember in Runes where removing Kevin's Dirt is her objective

Your memory seems correct as far as I can tell. Yes, saving Jeremiah is her overriding concern, but there's plenty of evidence to show that she's also trying to save the Land.

What evidence?

Circumstantial [meaning I haven't looked up relevant passages but this much I recall] Linden denies the Harrow, who can take her there. She may not believe him, or suspect other things, but if Jerry is the only goal, she should have taken him up on it.

Vraith wrote:

TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote:

wayfriend wrote:Welcome, Shelt! Why not introduce yourself over in the Summonsing forum, so you can get a real welcome to the Watch?!
Your memory seems correct as far as I can tell. Yes, saving Jeremiah is her overriding concern, but there's plenty of evidence to show that she's also trying to save the Land.

What evidence?

Circumstantial [meaning I haven't looked up relevant passages but this much I recall] Linden denies the Harrow, who can take her there. She may not believe him, or suspect other things, but if Jerry is the only goal, she should have taken him up on it.

More or less, this is how I was going to reply. Jeremiah may be her primary goal, but I think as a whole her actions have represented at least some desire to save the land. Maybe her opinion will change now that Covenant is back, though.

Vraith wrote:

TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote: What evidence?

Circumstantial [meaning I haven't looked up relevant passages but this much I recall] Linden denies the Harrow, who can take her there. She may not believe him, or suspect other things, but if Jerry is the only goal, she should have taken him up on it.

I'm not so sure. Right now she doesn't feel she's powerful enough to free Jeremiah even if she was taken to him. There's Roger, there're the ravers, there's Kestenessen and Lord Foul and of course there's the croyel as well. If she barely held her ground against Roger and the croyel when there was no Kevin's dirt and she had the power of the Blood of the Earth at her disposal she would be easy meat for them now.

To me it's pretty clear that Linden does care about the Land, but because she fears that caring for the Land would prevent her from saving her sons she tells herself (and everybody else) that she doesn't and tries not to get too attached to it so that the decision would be easier at the moment of choice.

shadowbinding shoe wrote:

Vraith wrote:

TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote: What evidence?

Circumstantial [meaning I haven't looked up relevant passages but this much I recall] Linden denies the Harrow, who can take her there. She may not believe him, or suspect other things, but if Jerry is the only goal, she should have taken him up on it.

I'm not so sure. Right now she doesn't feel she's powerful enough to free Jeremiah even if she was taken to him. There's Roger, there're the ravers, there's Kestenessen and Lord Foul and of course there's the croyel as well. If she barely held her ground against Roger and the croyel when there was no Kevin's dirt and she had the power of the Blood of the Earth at her disposal she would be easy meat for them now.

To me it's pretty clear that Linden does care about the Land, but because she fears that caring for the Land would prevent her from saving her sons she tells herself (and everybody else) that she doesn't and tries not to get too attached to it so that the decision would be easier at the moment of choice.

On the first part: that's without using wild magic, which she does have at her disposal, but does not use...for a number of reasons, one of which is your second paragraph.
I believe you are precisely correct. The reason she is/has become/has MADE herself so hard is because she sees either save the Land OR save Jeremiah. It's "Sophies Choice" to the nth power.
And whatever other benefits to the bad guys of Kevin's Dirt, pushing the use of wild magic is one purpose.

Vraith wrote:

shadowbinding shoe wrote:

Vraith wrote: Circumstantial [meaning I haven't looked up relevant passages but this much I recall] Linden denies the Harrow, who can take her there. She may not believe him, or suspect other things, but if Jerry is the only goal, she should have taken him up on it.

I'm not so sure. Right now she doesn't feel she's powerful enough to free Jeremiah even if she was taken to him. There's Roger, there're the ravers, there's Kestenessen and Lord Foul and of course there's the croyel as well. If she barely held her ground against Roger and the croyel when there was no Kevin's dirt and she had the power of the Blood of the Earth at her disposal she would be easy meat for them now.

To me it's pretty clear that Linden does care about the Land, but because she fears that caring for the Land would prevent her from saving her sons she tells herself (and everybody else) that she doesn't and tries not to get too attached to it so that the decision would be easier at the moment of choice.

On the first part: that's without using wild magic, which she does have at her disposal, but does not use...for a number of reasons, one of which is your second paragraph.
I believe you are precisely correct. The reason she is/has become/has MADE herself so hard is because she sees either save the Land OR save Jeremiah. It's "Sophies Choice" to the nth power.
And whatever other benefits to the bad guys of Kevin's Dirt, pushing the use of wild magic is one purpose.

At the beginning of Runes:

If the old man appeared, she would have to choose between the Land and Jeremiah. She could not challenge Lord Foul in the Land's defense without abandoning her son; and that she would not do. No matter how many people died, or how much beauty was destroyed.

The old man did not appear. However, she is translated to the Land against her will and has to make a choice. In the past, it was the old man who chose Covenant, and then Linden Avery. In this case, it was Foul who chose Avery. I believe she was well-Chosen.

TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote: The old man did not appear. However, she is translated to the Land against her will and has to make a choice. In the past, it was the old man who chose Covenant, and then Linden Avery. In this case, it was Foul who chose Avery. I believe she was well-Chosen.

Certainly LF chose her, cuz he believes he's got all he needs to manipulate/coerce her into doing what he desires. But, for reasons I've already explained [probably a lot], the Creator has also chosen her, believes she will make choices HE approves of.
Kevin's Dirt is just another of LF's snares/manipulations.
The Creator has picked his fighter, LF thinks the fix is in but, to mix the metaphor, he's counting his chickens, the fat lady ain't singing yet.

Vraith wrote:

TheWormoftheWorld'sEnd wrote: The old man did not appear. However, she is translated to the Land against her will and has to make a choice. In the past, it was the old man who chose Covenant, and then Linden Avery. In this case, it was Foul who chose Avery. I believe she was well-Chosen.

Certainly LF chose her, cuz he believes he's got all he needs to manipulate/coerce her into doing what he desires. But, for reasons I've already explained [probably a lot], the Creator has also chosen her, believes she will make choices HE approves of.
Kevin's Dirt is just another of LF's snares/manipulations.
The Creator has picked his fighter, LF thinks the fix is in but, to mix the metaphor, he's counting his chickens, the fat lady ain't singing yet.

Kevin's Dirt was Jehannum's idea.

Linden made her choice involving a bargain at the beginning of Runes. Her bargain was that if the old man appears to her she will choose Jeremiah over Desecration. The old man didn't bother. Why would he? Linden is Foul's future wife.

It's going to be a long 3 1/2 years until the completion of the story. I can hardly wait to see LF get a taste of his own medicine when Roger, learning that he's been betrayed, blasts him with wild magic.

Remember, Lord Foul chose Covenant as well as Linden, for the same reasons.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now that we know how Kevin's Dirt was made, in what way is it "a fine riposte", as Lord Foul called it???? He also implied he had no hand in it, but if it's Raver-born, surely he did???