Official Discussion Forum for the works of Stephen R. Donaldson
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No. The One Forest made the Colossus. It BOUND the AppointedKaosArcana wrote:
I wonder ... what if the Ravers were children of the Elohim that
was imprisoned in the Colossus? What I mean is, what if she
created them or gave birth to them to save her from her fate
as the Colossus?
This seems to directly contradicts the fact that the appointed who became the Colossus were made the Colossus to protect the one forest from the Ravers. It was the forest itself who bound her.
You know, it does make one wonder ... why did Foul stick around inBut I will leave the possibility open because it is possible that in an attempt to avoid her fate the appointed did something that caused the ravers to be born in the first place. Only one thing seems to say differently and that is that LF seems to be absent from the land at this time and this kind of would almost certainly be something that he could and would do.
And just exactly were LF when this happened?
....And what's more, the Ravers are the reason the Colossus was created in the first place:"But it was not Despite which the Colossus resisted," Mhoram resumed when his song was done. "Despite was the bane of men. It came with them into the Land from the cold anguish of the north, and from the hungry kingdom of the south. No, the Colossus of the Fall forbade another foe - three tree- and soil-hating brothers who were old in the Spoiled Plains before Lord Foul first cast his shadow there. They were triplets, the spawn of one birth from the womb of their long-forgotten mother, and their names were samadhi, moksha, and turiya."
As for the Ravers having physical bodies:In the nigh-unremembered past of the place which you deem the Land, the life was not the life or men and women, but of trees. One wide forest of sentience and passion filled all the region - one mind and heart alive in every leaf and bough of every tree among the many myriad throngs and glory of the woods. And that life the Elohim loved.
"But a hate rose against the forest, seeking its destruction. And this was dire, for a tree may know love and feel pain and cry out, but has few means of defense. The knowledge was lacking. Therefore we met, and from among us Appointed one to give her life to that forest. This she did by merging among the trees until they gained the knowledge they required.
"Their knowledge they employed to bind her in stone, exercising her name and being to form an interdict against that hate. Thus was she lost to herself and to her people - but the interdict remained while the will of the forest remained to hold it."
"The Colossus," Covenant breathed. "The Colossus of the Fall."
"Yes," Findail said.
"And when people started coming to the Land, started cutting down the trees as if they were just so much timber and difficulty, the forest used what it'd learned to create the Forestals in self-defense."
"We knew that they were named Sheol, Jehannum, and Harem, and that they lived without bodies, feeding upon the souls of others. When the Despiser was powerful enough to give them strength, they enslaved creatures or people by entering into their bodies, subduing their wills, and using the captured flesh to enact their master's purposes. Disguised in forms not their own, they were well hidden, and so could gain trust among their foes. By that means, many brave defenders of the Land were lured to their deaths in the age of the Old Lords."
(And my misspelling of temporary is, of course, completely acceptable! )Which makes me think that the Ravers themselves were one of those Banes... maybe evil avatars of the Creator, as LF himself may have been - "the brother of his heart" or something to that effect?duchess of malfi wrote:I think one of the Lords does say something about the Ravers being in
the Land before Lord Foul arrives.
Perhaps Foul stays in the Land because of the Banes? Initially because of the Illearth Stone, later because of other Banes we don't know about yet? It seems that when people speak of the Banes they do always speak of them as being plural in number.
I find this highly intriging, somewhere in the back of my head I've always thought that there has to be some deep connection between croyels and Ravers. Possesion, dark entities, hmmm...Maybe we'll travel back north in the coming booksIt came with them into the Land from the cold anguish of the north
In [u]The Runes of the Earth[/u] was wrote:Spoiler
"For a time, those who had come to the Land felled trees and charred trunks only because they knew not how else they might achieve space for homes and fields. Thus was their cruelty at first restrained. But their restraint was brutal and brief by the measure of the One Forest's slow sentience. And after those generations, humankind discovered malevolence, or was discovered by it. Then the murder of the trees was transformed from disregard to savagery.
"Hence came Ravers to the Land," the old' man rasped bitterly, "for they were the admixture of men and malevolence, an enduring hunger for evil coalesced and concentrated in transient flesh generation after swift generation until they became beings unto themselves-spirits capable of flesh, yet spared the necessities of death and birth. Thus they gained names and definition, three dark souls who knew themselves as they knew the One Forest, and who aspired above all things to trample underfoot its vast and vulnerable sentience.