Kevin was stupid for doing the ritual of desecration

[Dirty Whirl]

I'm not just talking because he killed the land and all that, but because I don't see how lord foul could have beaten him. Heres why

Kevin and his lords knew how to be really powerful. We can assume this would be even stronger than when after Mhoram discovered the secret to kevins lore, because they had staffs which could channel that power, as well as things like the staff of law and the krill. Mhoram took on hundreds of ur viles and other creatures, so unless ur viles were alot stronger (which is doubtful because they seemed to survive the sunbane without a great lessening of their lore, so the RoD shouldn't have done it I dont think), kevin and the lords should have been able to rip through thousands of lord fouls creatures.

Lord foul didn't have the illearth stone or the broken law of death, so he couldn't have used half the magic attacks that were used against revelstone, so revelstone's gates couldn't be breached like they were. Also, kevin had the staff of law, so there would not have been any winter, so no starvation. Lords keep would be invincible.

Without the illearth stone, lord fould couldn't warp creatures for the vast majority of his armies. This means that the people of the land could beat him in a fair fight, even without the massively more powerful lords.

So anyway, I think Kevin must have been pretty depressed and stupid to do the RoD. What do you guys think?

[Nerdanel]

Um, I disagree.

1. Lord Foul is the smartest character in the series (possibly excepting the Creator). By far. (So rare for a fantasy dark lord...)

2. Lord Foul had infliltrated the Council of the Lords, learned all of their secrets, and had had time for a lot of "subtle treachery" of unknown content.

3. Based on the number of Lord rooms in Revelstone, there were only 15 Old Lords at a time. 7 of those were killed in the ambush at Treacher's Gorge, and Lord Foul was number 8. That leaves 7, including Kevin.

4. There really were a lot of ur-viles back then. Their numbers and lore knowledge never fully recovered from the Ritual of Desecration. It is unknown if there were Stone-warped monsters, though, but they were cannon-fodder anyway.

5. The state of war lasted for a century. Kevin put up a significantly tougher opposition than the New Lords.

6.

Spoiler

There were Demondim. People who have read The Runes of the Earth have an idea how tough they were. (One Demondim is said to be roughly as powerful in magic as one Lord, presumably an Old Lord.) It is unknown if any of the Old Lords ever managed to get permanently rid of a single Demondim.

7.

Spoiler

Not everyone agrees with me, but I think compelling evidence points to the Demondim having wielded the Illearth Stone in the war. I've written more about this on the Runes forum.

[Dirty Whirl]

You make pretty good points, though im still sort of unconvinced. 7 lords including kevin, the staff of law and the krill are a massive force to be reckoned with, but I suppose we dont know what 'subtle treachery' lord foul did. And 100 years is enough to drive even kevin into despair.
I'm still sort of unconvinced though because somewhere in the books mhoram says something to the effect of "Lord foul never being this strong", and everyone loves mhoram so im inclined to believe him.

Spoiler

As for the demondin, Kevin had the krill , and while I think it was used to end the peril of the Viles, not the demondim, it was still an effective tool against the demondim. They say something like that in the second chronicles, about it being an insurance against vain. But again, we wont know the full story till (hopefully) the third chrons come out

[hierachy]

The war went on for 100 years... any prolonged state of war would only benefit Foul. He would just keep pumping in his endless supply of new forces while the people of the land were slowly worn down.

There is no way at all that even the old lords could have won any prolonged battle with Lord Foul.

[Alsem]

I'm not just talking because he killed the land and all that, but because I don't see how lord foul could have beaten him. Heres why

Kevin and his lords knew how to be really powerful. We can assume this would be even stronger than when after Mhoram discovered the secret to kevins lore, because they had staffs which could channel that power, as well as things like the staff of law and the krill. Mhoram took on hundreds of ur viles and other creatures, so unless ur viles were alot stronger (which is doubtful because they seemed to survive the sunbane without a great lessening of their lore, so the RoD shouldn't have done it I dont think), kevin and the lords should have been able to rip through thousands of lord fouls creatures.

Lord foul didn't have the illearth stone or the broken law of death, so he couldn't have used half the magic attacks that were used against revelstone, so revelstone's gates couldn't be breached like they were. Also, kevin had the staff of law, so there would not have been any winter, so no starvation. Lords keep would be invincible.

Without the illearth stone, lord fould couldn't warp creatures for the vast majority of his armies. This means that the people of the land could beat him in a fair fight, even without the massively more powerful lords.

So anyway, I think Kevin must have been pretty depressed and stupid to do the RoD. What do you guys think?

I think what drove Kevin to RoD wasn't the lack neither of sheer force and power nor of the will to fight but the stung of betrayal and loss. I compare his act with what the Giants did in the Grieve. They did not lack power to fight back yet they chose not to.
And paradoxically I think that he must have seen the future bad deeds of Foul, and in desecration he had hoped to eliminate him utterly even to the cost of what he loved most, the Land!

[Zarathustra]

Alsem, you make some good points. Over and over, people with power despair. Bloodguard, Giants, Kevin, Trell, etc.

Perhaps the fact that Kevin realized he'd been tricked by Foul, that even he could be fooled, that the Council could be tainted, helped to drive him over the edge. His service wasn't "pure." Just like when the Bloodguard and the Giants see one (or three) of their members corrupted, they think it repudiates them all. They can't stand their own corruptibility, can't live with their own guilt and culpability. They can't stand thinking they are not perfect, so they think, what's the point?

In the end, we will all fail. It's how we respond to life up to that point of failure that counts.

[TIC TAC]

If Kevin's last act accomplished nothing else, he was able to end the war with Foul as it was being waged at that time. Sure the Land was turned into a post A bomb Hiroshima for a while but the people that survived and were sent into exile were given a break from fighting Foul if only for a thousand years or so. It wasn't a complete waste of time in the sense that the ROD created a period of relative peace lasting generations. I wouldn't dream of arguing that the cost of that peace was entirely too high and had no chance of lasting beyond Foul's ability to restore himself. IMHO.

[Alsem]

Alsem, you make some good points. Over and over, people with power despair. Bloodguard, Giants, Kevin, Trell, etc.

Perhaps the fact that Kevin realized he'd been tricked by Foul, that even he could be fooled, that the Council could be tainted, helped to drive him over the edge. His service wasn't "pure." Just like when the Bloodguard and the Giants see one (or three) of their members corrupted, they think it repudiates them all. They can't stand their own corruptibility, can't live with their own guilt and culpability. They can't stand thinking they are not perfect, so they think, what's the point?

Exactly tha's how I also understand it

[Relayer]

In the end, we will all fail. It's how we respond to life up to that point of failure that counts.

Ah, but it's also how we respond after we fail that counts too. Failure is not always death, and we see in the Chrons how many times people or groups fail, and then still have opportunities to take actions after that. Bannor went home, but couldn't get the Ranyhyn out of his mind. Foamfollower refused to accept the fate his people chose. And look at all the people who recognized that they would fail, actively chose that path, yet made a positive difference through that act - Brinn, Caer-Caveral (and Troy himself), TC...

[tonyz]

We also need to remember that "Law is not the opposite of Despite"; not even the full power of the Blood of the Earth, the greatest power which the Old Lords knew, can so much as touch the Despiser, who lived before the Arch of Time was forged. He might be affected, but he was before the Earth was made; nothing in all the Earthpower can unmake or defeat him.

Damelon could help the Giants; Loric could defeat the Viles; Kevin was more than either of them, but still pitifully less than Foul. Kevin was only human, and in the face of the Grey Slayer he chose despair, and to cling to despair rather than seek hope. "It is the habit of despair which damns, not the despair itself."

[stonemaybe]

I've always looked at it like this -

If you were Foul, what would you enjoy more - destroying the Land and the Lords through superior armies, or causing the High Lord to destroy the Land himself? It's got to be the latter. And if this is the case, then Foul's whole reason for the war was to cause Kevin to despair, NOT to win the physical war. The Lords were concentrating on fighting Foul's creatures, not on guarding against emotional attacks, so they didn't mount effective defence against his real attack. And so they lost, Kevin despaired, and did RoD.

Hope that makes sense.

[Dirty Whirl]

Yeah it does, thanks. It sort of goes along with my argument though, that the old lords could have sustained the 'physical' war for a very extended time, due to their laore and power, if Kevin hadn't succumbed to despair.

Has it ever seemed wierd that kevin lived for a thousand years and yet didn't have any children? Did he have any brothers or sisters who would have passed on the berek lineage?

[Nerdanel]

Perhaps Kevin did have children, and they died... It's impossible to say anything about that subject really.

About the Demondim:

Spoiler

Even though we know that there were never very many Demondim, the forces we saw appeared to have more than 7 of them. And while the material bodies of the Demondim could get destroyed, the Demondim themselves would keep coming back, very much unlike the long-lived but mortal Lords. So it sure seems like that, not counting armies and accessories on either side, the Demondim were more powerful than the surviving Lords. And if my theories about the Illearth Stone were correct, the Demondim were sharing the distant Stone just like in Runes even in Kevin's time, while Kevin with the Staff was the only one person wielding that awesome power...

So sure the Old Lords and Kevin in particular were capable of god-like things, but what really matters is how powerful and cunning the opposition was. For every finite level of power, there is a higher level of power that can beat it.

[Fist and Faith]

I could be wrong, but didn't it say somewhere that Kevin was gay? I'll have to look through my books again.

[Nom vs. Vain]

I've always looked at it like this -

If you were Foul, what would you enjoy more - destroying the Land and the Lords through superior armies, or causing the High Lord to destroy the Land himself? It's got to be the latter. And if this is the case, then Foul's whole reason for the war was to cause Kevin to despair, NOT to win the physical war. The Lords were concentrating on fighting Foul's creatures, not on guarding against emotional attacks, so they didn't mount effective defence against his real attack. And so they lost, Kevin despaired, and did RoD.

Hope that makes sense.

Right on, Fouls true power isn't in his knowlege of lore or the forces he commands, but rather the despair he creates. By causing Kevin to despair and commit the RoD he destroyed his enemies and only wounded himself. He knows he'll be around again, the land is not free of despair its another part of human nature, and thus they can never really be free of the despiser.

[hierachy]

I could be wrong, but didn't it say somewhere that Kevin was gay? I'll have to look through my books again.

Hahaha... Gay Lord Kevin

[stonemaybe]

Hahaha... Gay Lord Kevin

I think the term is "Gaylord", isn't it?

[Fist and Faith]

As for DW's actual question (welcome, btw ), we have a couple sources of information. Of course, SRD usually says, "How do you know you can trust that source?" But it's all we have.
From Foul:

"Then there was war between us, war that blasted the west and threatened his precious Keep itself. The feller fist was mine and he knew it. When his armies faltered and his power waned, he lost himself in despair - he became mine in despair."

Maybe Foul didn't have the personal lore to cause extraordinary physical destruction. But the size of his armies and the power of his creatures could easily be something beyond what we've ever seen.

From Mhoram:

"That long conflict went on battle after death-littered battle without hope. High Lord Kevin fought bravely. But he had sent his friends into ambush. Soon he began his midnight meetings with despair - and there was no hope."

It would seem guilt consumed Kevin. As far as we know, until Foul declared war, his rule was extremely uneventful. We are unaware of any tests to his armies, personal power, or - most important - inner strengths. The only confrontation of any sort that we're aware of is the invading Haruchai, and they were not remotely in his league. So when the first bit of actual grief and guilt Kevin ever faces is BIG, he has no idea how to fight his own despair.

(To speculate, it's possible that Foul was responsible for the ease of Kevin's tenure. Maybe he understood how amazingly powerful the Old Lords could be when Loric did his silencing act. Aside from causing despair being what he knows and loves best, maybe Foul knew that his victory was much less assured if Kevin wasn't a basket case. So he made sure Kevin was untried - aka weak - so that such an event, at just the right time, would make him useless in the long run of the war.)

[Vain19]

also, kevin was kinda like anele. i'm sure he felt gigantic pressure to live up to the greatness of his ancestors, after all, his father was mostly responsible for destroying the Viles.

[Relayer]

(To speculate, it's possible that Foul was responsible for the ease of Kevin's tenure. Maybe he understood how amazingly powerful the Old Lords could be when Loric did his silencing act. Aside from causing despair being what he knows and loves best, maybe Foul knew that his victory was much less assured if Kevin wasn't a basket case. So he made sure Kevin was untried - aka weak - so that such an event, at just the right time, would make him useless in the long run of the war.)

Interesting theory. It makes me think of what we're told of the rule of the Lords after Mhoram's victory... that they were able to accomplish many things because the strictures of Law had been weakened, but they didn't realize that this was making it so easy for them. Over time they lowered their guard, and this made it easier for them to be taken over and corrupted into the Clave.