Kevin's Watch

Yes I know the THOOLAH people would love to sliced and diced Linden physically. But that isn't the premise for this thread.

She like any other person has strengths and failing. But you must admit the character has weilded some tremendous powers with very paramount results. She has shown what some people (myself included)could consider a Lore. This would encompass a channeling of Earthpower and Wild Magic thru pure will.

She considered herself weak in reguards to the others around, whom have repeatively poured forth their own abilities and she was awed by it.
But in a real comparison I don't think the Elohim could hold a candle against her when she sets her mind to a task. And we have see that in the Second and these two books of the Last Chronicles.

Her health sense is beyond any character or legends the Land offered. The gift she received on her first tranlation, along with her doctors training gave her the ability to heal human condition as so to retrieve a person from the brink of death. Almost as good a hurtloam itself. Her healing of the Land against the Sunbane was a feat never done before. Along the thought of a reverse RoD.
Her health sense is so keen that she see the smallest of details. (How much could she heal if she was put in placed instead of the unfettered that healed Thomas when he has broken his ankle and was delirious?)
Her actions on healing is legendary and I don't see anybody who can argue that Linden as a healer is lacking. Berek couldn't, nor could his healers during that war. So lets go on.

She can preceive post contact specific minds or persons from a distance away. Ravers are a good example, Esmer is another. I don't think that this is an all encompassing ability but it's an ability. Maybe she developed this after the raver took control of her in the second chronicle. But later on she developed the ability to clamp down or drive out the raver from possesing her. It is also why they havn't tried to posses her in the last chronicles.

She has used Wild Magic almost as much as TC has. Abeit she can't just called it up like Thomas could when he was with venom. Or like Hile Troy did or when Foul tried to destroy the Arch. She needs a trigger like an event or a device to start the process. But she has done something no one else has done. She has combine both Earthpower and Wild Magic together to cause an effect. She resurrected Thomas back to the mortal realm. But she did it using her own will.

She has the power to posses other. ( a Raver's gift ) She doesn't like it but she has that ability and has shun the use.

She has created one ceasure. (Joan speciality) And she can destroy a ceasure using the staff and focusing her mind. ( on 3 occations) She channels Earthpower thru the use of her will to enact what she had preceive as Law and the vortex goes away faster than it normally would.

There are probably other instances I can't remember now but Linden has created a lore for her needs in a very short time in the Land.
It took the High Lords thousands of years to develop their lore, but never in the time that Linden had. Not so fast and with power that she has shown. She has done this thru strenght of will. A wanting to do good but dented by a tragic past and tempered by an uncertain future.

This is what I call Linden's Lore. It's unconventional but it has worked.

I won't even try to jump in on the main premise (good post, btw ) ... I'll let THOOLAH and Linden's Army fight it out.

Ur Dead wrote:She considered herself weak in reguards to the others around, whom have repeatively poured forth their own abilities and she was awed by it.

But I will add... this sounds very much like how Anele describes his feelings of astonishment. That he couldn't live up to his parents. In the same way, Linden doesn't think she can live up to her image of Covenant.

Indeed, good post.

Her health sense is so keen that she see the smallest of details. (How much could she heal if she was put in placed instead of the unfettered that healed Thomas when he has broken his ankle and was delirious?)

It's true that with the Staff Linden can heal practically any condition. I don't recall a specific example in which she fused bone together the way that the Healer did with Covenant's ankle in TPTP, but I suppose she could. But, Covenant's illness went much deeper than just a broken ankle, and the Healer had to give her life to save Covenant's, and with the Staff Linden wouldn't have had to sacrifice herself. We've seen limits to what even hurtloam can do; Stave was healed from his injuries after the confrontation with Esmer, but he still had to reduce his dislocated hip himself, and he had pain from that for several days.

But I agree with the main point of your post, in that Linden is by far the most powerful human in the Land's Earth. I've always presumed that she would be. In fact, if she had the same attitude about white gold now that she had at the end of WGW, she would be practically omnipotent.

On her power of possession, I have always felt that it is just an interpretation of the same power the New Lords called the Meld.

Remember the description of Covenant's sensation when Elena attempted to meld with him - it was virtually identical to the description of Linden's possession It had essentially the same effect on Covenant - on an instinctive level he rebelled against it.

That's a very excellent way to start a thread, Ur Lord. But I'm going to disagree with you.

In a nut-shell, Linden has no lore. Her power comes from other ways.

First, I will attempt to explain what I think "lore" is. I've always said that lore is, simply, knowledge + experience + wisdom + talent. In the dictionary, lore is defined as "something that is learned". But I think Donaldson loads the term with something more.

Lore is equated with magical ability -- a.k.a. power. The Waynhim and ur-viles are created by lore, for example. But it is not power itself: "Lore may give access to power, but it isn't power: it's knowledge that tells you what you can do with your power; or how to accomplish your goals." [GI].

And the essential fact of lore, that it is learned, is also critical. "Knowledge is dangerous unless it has been *earned.*" [GI]. And so the responsible teaching of lore always includes imparting experience and wisdom as well as knowledge. It includes training, and testing, to ensure that the lore is not given to one who cannot use it responsibly. All of which implies a codification and a system which surrounds and encompasses lore.

Finally, not anyone can acquire lore. Some people are just not apt, as Atairan was. Either the power or the training or the talent is lacking. Lore cannot be embodied in an individual without these things.

Donaldson sums it up best for me here:

In the Gradual Interview, Donaldson wrote:I'm inclined to say that "lore = knowledge + training + comprehension (which is not at all the same thing as knowledge or training) + passion/energy/commitment." I like karate analogies. Knowing what the techniques are, and practicing their execution, does not make an effective martial artist. Understanding of the techniques (on every level, from body dynamics to a multiplicity of applications to the judgment necessary for appropriate use) is also required. But in addition, the prospective martial artist has to *care*--and care in the right way (both passionately and selflessly). Ultimately the energy, the magic, comes from within its wielder. The various disciplines of lore enable the energy to emerge effectively.

(02/01/2006)

Another way to say it is: lore is the learned skill in the responsible and effective weilding of one's innate power.

And now I think anyone can see why I don't think Linden (nor Covenant) have much in the way of lore.

Sure, Linden has innate power. But she did not have any training. She was tested only by the exigencies of her experiences, but was not carefully guided by a mentor. She never belonged to a system in which lore is acquired responsibly, she never had access to the codified wisdom of predecessors.

But if you look at it another way, that's precisely what the story requires, even what the Creator requires.

Linden, like Covenant, comes into her power through trial. Her journey to power is also her personal journey to self-understanding. They are one and the same, they cannot be seperated. Only when her spirit becomes strong does her power become strong. And in the end, her power is who she is. Not because she is only her power, but because her power is ultimately the expression of herself. You are the white gold means that the power *is* you.

No one in the Land could teach her that, even if they wanted to.

And if they could, then Linden's journey would be trivial, and there'd be no story.

Without lore, Linden is a wild card. She has no wisdom passed on from others to guide her choices. She is, in that sense, alone, and ultimately responsible.

But to counterbalance that, we know that she is the Chosen. The Creator trusted her. In a way, that means that the Creator saw what she could become, and it was the right thing. Her choices would be the right ones, because the come only from her, and she is the right one.

There are a myriad people in the Land who have lore, but none of them are the right one. If they were, Linden would not have needed to be chosen. It's a given in this story that only someone from outside the Land can save the Land. And the fact that such a person would be without the benefit of lore is part of that calculation.

In fact, it may be that being without lore is an advantage. Covenant said as much. [ Need a quote here. ] Everyone from the Land cannot help but believe that Foul is indestructable, it's a condition of their existence. Their lore would be founded on this premise; their unconscious belief would pervade the wisdom that they codify into the system. Which would hobble it; it would be doomed to fail. The Oath of Peace is an example of this.

Finally, consider when Linden created the new Staff of Law. It was created without runes, which signifies the lorelessness of it's creation. (Runes can only be added with lore, and so are symbolic of the lore that is behind them.) Linden had no lore, and so she had none to add to the Staff when she created it. (Neither, it turns out, did Berek. The lore, and then the runes, came much later.)

Also pointing to Linden's lack of lore:

In [u]Fatal Revenant [/u]was wrote:Then all or some of the black tendrils repeated, She has lore. And others insisted, It is not lore. It is given knowledge. She has been taught. She merely holds powers which surpass her.

You make a strong point WF.. But.. If she has no lore...

How did she bring TC back to life?

Could any of the old High Lords do that if those laws were broken?
What would be the difference.?
Her powers are earned. She earned them back in the second Chronicles when she healed the Land.
She has the talent for healing, becoming a doctor take a certain talent alot of people do not have.
She does have the knowledge. (from medical school)
She is experience as a doctor and her healing others is proof.
After all those years as a MD, she would have to gain wisdom in treating a number of people.

You have said:

Lore is equated with magical ability -- a.k.a. power.

It can't be denied that she doesn't have power.
And her experience, wisdom in treating people that brought back TC.

Those arguements you presented, no person or creature of the Land has any lore. But it's generally accepted that the powers they wield is lore.

The Lords wield power in a specific way. They were generalists. They make a number of things happen.

The three known unfettered from the first Chronicle:
One knew about he wraiths and could dismiss and maybe even summon them. Not much was explained about him.

Another could see and read dreams. Powers dealing with the mind.

The third was an empathic healer. Linden falls into this line of the unfettered. She doesn't need to create a damge organ or body part, then heal herself. She can directly heal the patient thru the use of the Staff and Earthpower. She can command the intensity of the fire to provide a desired result.

She uses her healing ability to achieve other feats that a normal unfettered couldn't do. I don't think Berek developed all of his Lore by asking the Theomach. There had to be a time after the he got the staff, that he had to try different methods of using it. The Theomach would have gotten his aims and departed from Berek. Linden fall into this area when she tries to use her ability, her knowledge, experience and talent to get results from problems she has encountered.

To bad that she wasn't around using that type of power in the first Chronicles. I bet the Lords would have accepted her as a Lord in her own right.

Maybe it might be a question for SRD in the GI.
What I am proposing is that she has a lore. A lore that isn't known or experience in the Land before.

Personally, I think she does have "lore".

She is an M.D., which requires a considerable amount of schooling, training, and experience to achieve. I believe that is her base "lore", and everything she achieves is because of it. Her health sense is more acute because she can identify what she sees. Also, she knows what to do with the information that is presented to her.

We have no evidence that any one else from TCs world has that level of education.

This makes her closer to an Insequent than to a normal "everyday" person of the Land.

Edit: Just read Ur Dead's post, and he makes many of the same points. Sorry, I was thinking about this all last night, and just came in and posted without reading everything. Won't happen again.

In order to have lore -- in order for ones magical powers to be lore-based -- you can't just apply any old knowledge. It has to be the knowledge that corresponds to the power. The knowledge has to shape and guide the power when you use it.

Yes, Linden has lots of medical knowledge. But that isn't in and of itself lore. Because when Linden is battling Ravers and Cavewights, creating ceasures or erasing them, etc. she is not using her medical knowledge to weild her power. That's not the knowledge that signifies. Knowledge of combat techniques, knowledge of ceasures is what signifies. If she had such lore, she probably could blast the Harrow out of the water. If she had such lore, she could probably manipulate a ceasure like the Demondim could.

When she is using her medical knowledge and Law or wild magic together to heal someone, then it approaches lore. It's almost there, but not quite. Because she can't (yet) codify that and pass it on to someone else. When she was with Berek's army, she could not show anyone how to weild earthpower to heal -- she could only pass on mundane, unmagical knowledge such as how to sterilize bandages. She can teach them how to find hurtloam and slap it on - maybe that's a tiny bit of lore. But if her power to heal with the Staff or the ring were a lore, she would be able to share that knowledge with others.

(Is being able to teach it important? I think so. I don't think you can claim to have lore unless you understand it well enough to explain it to someone else. Because it means you're able to understand what you are doing so that it isn't instinctual or gut feel any more.)

How did she bring TC back to life? Wildwood added the necessary lore to the Staff. Linden did not have it.

My take on LA's "lore".

It's a writer's device. Reminds me of Lyndon Hardy's Five Magics series, where he set up rules that required a lifetime to master, but we readers would be bored to death if the hero/heroine took that long to become a master. Plus the story requires them to learn more than one lore to beat the evil entity. So his hero masters five magics in a short time frame.

The writer has no choice but to come up with some circumstances (health sense, etc.) that allow our hero/heroine to quickly master lore(s) and we the readers agree to suspend our logic for the sake of storytelling.

I personally have no problem with that suspension of logic. I always prefer good storytelling to textbook type logic, rules of science, etc. in stories.