Kevin's Watch

Danlo wrote:jehannum! You're mean!!!

Duh, he's a raver!

Well if we all have to be our characters then I should suffer him only to emerge stronger and you Forestal! Shouldn't you be killing him or something? Duh!

Landwaster wrote:Also, the Bloodguard/haruchai spoke as thought the language was alien to them (eg, making effort to find the words, and probably having an accent). I usually assumed duh, they're another people from another country ... but maybe its because they almost never spoke out loud at all, back in Haruland.

I also thought that - until I read Gilden Fire:

... Lord Shetra said squarely to Korik, "Grimmerhorde Forest has never harmed the Lords of its own will. What is your choice Bloodguard? Shall we attempt passage?"
Korik suppressed the tonal lilt of his native tongue to speak the language of the Lords flatly, so that what he said was both a decision and a promise. "We will pass through."

To me it seems that the Bloodguard know what they are doing... After 2000 years they should be able to speak without any accent if they wanted to. At least they have had plenty of time to practise.

Jehannum 2000 wrote:

Have you ever read books called The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant?

Yes, I have. Please, Jehannum 2000, there is no need to get hysterical. I frankly admit that I had totally forgotten (or possibly repressed since it did not fit in with my original interpretation) about that passage in the second chrons, but I will still stand by my belief that the Haruchai were very good at reading even the smallest movments of all creatures around them (how do you otherwise read your enemies moves?).

Jehannum 2000 also wrote:

They're not just 'in touch' with each other's emotions, like a group of gay men

What do you mean by this?

Oh, tish tish ... I wasn't being hysterical! Just a little mild sarcasm to make the point. I suppose I should start using those smiley things.

It's just that, when I first read your post, your description of Haruchai communication reminded me of the in-touch, in-tuneness of lesbian groups and some gay men... just being silly, really. My image of these tough, fighting men didn't quite square with the sensitivity needed from your description.

Peter.

I am not a haruchai, infact i am not in the land, i have nothing to contribute to this topic except..... There was something about those Haruchai that suggested they could communicate in a way other than "normal"

Offhand I'd say that their telepathy didn't weaken their spoken language. Bannor recites something in hsi own tongue to get the skiff on the Earthblood moving while Elena is fighting Kevin... It doesn't necessarily follow, but it implies (at least to me) that their spoken language was still frequently used, at the very least to share some epic poem or religious literature or something along those lines.

Perhaps the spoken language is only used in the presence of other non-haruchai, so that the people wont feel left out? or am i just being too nice again?

I don't know about telepathy, but I think I can shed light about the inability of the Bloodguard to tell stories. I think this is a flaw that the Bloodguard slowly would take on as they lived under the Vow: basically, that not only the Vow had made them "ascetic, womanless and old", in Covenant's own words, but it also made them so single-minded in their fulfillment of the Vow - especially after what happened with Kevin - that they slowly would lose any ability not directly related to the protection of the Lords. Consider what is told of Tull in TIW, when he finds Mhoram and Hile Troy on Kevin's Watch and relates the tale of what they had found in the Grieve: before he begins, it is stated clearly that he had yet the ability to relate stories without awkwardness ( as it was instead the case with Runnik, earlier, when he spoke of Lord Shetra's death ), because he had not been long bound to the Vow. Personally, I think that the Vow impoverished the Bloodguard of anything that could not be used to defend the Lords: telling stories is useless for a guard, or at least so rarely useful that it could just as well be useless, and so the longer the Bloodguard lived under the Vow, the more atrophied would that skill become. For some, those who had lived beyond the normal life span of men, that skill probably had atrophied to almost nothing; for others, like Tull, who had been Bloodguard for less than four decades ( Tull replaced a Bloodguard who had died during Mhoram's first meeting with a Raver, in the forty years before Covenant's second summoning ), the skill was still alive.

By the way: the fact that the younger Bloodguard could tell stories seems to suggest that the Haruchai did in fact use spoken language between themselves, regardless of the presence of absence of telepathy...

Excellent post, Xar. (Sheesh, I'm going to be saying that a lot, I think.)

Really, I think you've got it. It's the 'use it or lose it' idea: it makes perfect sense that the Bloodguard's verbal skills would atrophy over time--2000 years worth of time!--because they don't contribute in any way to the physical defense of the Lords. Plus the Bloodguard's aloof and somewhat intimidating presence doesn't encourage people to strike up a conversation with them, thus isolating them even more. No one to talk to, and no need to talk. A sad tale indeed, as the Giants might say.

Yikes, Xar, that's profound. I'd long been mystified by why most Haruchai are such lousy narrators, and I think you've hit the core reason. The Vow creates a sort of tunnel vision, but I'd thought of it mainly in the cognitive and moral domains. If the Vow progressively devours all faculties not directly needed for Vow-keeping, that makes
Covenant's initial reaction to Bannor ("as if he suffered from a rare form of leprosy") much more understandable!