Did Covenant Break the Law?

[High Lord Tolkien]

I'm sorry that I missed your post WF.
I'd like to respond to your post and expand on mine but it seems silly to have two threads like this.
Can one of the Gods...er...I mean Mods do some fusing please?

[dlbpharmd]

Done.

[Demondime-a-dozen-spawn]

But wasn't Joan under raver influence all the way back at the beginning of The Wounded Land? That was after the Law of Death had been broken, but before the breaking of the Law of Life, Covenant trying with Wild Magic to return Linden to our world or Covenant's placing himself in the Arch of Time.

Wouldn't it be the Creator's bridging of the two Worlds in the first place that enabled Foul to reach across himself? I don't see how Covenant can be responsibe for any "feedback loop" from the Land to our reality.

[Ur Dead]

Demondim-spawn hit the nail on the head. Bridging the gap was done by Drool under Foul's guidence. It was preformed by the staff. (Which made it easy to do) But it was the power of Earthpower that caused the summoning.

TC was summoned four times in the first Chronicles.
Drool was first. Using the SOL.
Elena was the second. Using the SOL.
Morham was Third ( and released by him ) Using maybe multiple power from the Lord's Staffs.
Triock and Foamfollower were the fourth. Using the lorillmar rod and a Giant (Whom I havn't detemined their entire abilities yet.)

As stated before during the IEL, TC was told he had the power to send himself back. (But he didn't have the knowledge to invoke the Wild Magic)
Wild Magic transends or susperseeds Earthpower. In the Second Chroncles he may have come to realize the power and how to use it. So he was able to try to send Linden back.

During the second Chronicles, Foul needed a conduit on TC end to complete a transfer. So he has his followers in TC's worlds and they were the anchoring point so Foul could use what power he had to make the transfer. Otherwise from Point a to Point B.
Remember that Foul is IN PRISON. But that don't preclude the knowledge he has. He was suposingly on equal footing with the Creator. He knows of TC world and what is needed to make a translation. He may be hindered of his full might but he is the number one bad boy. He uses others to complete task that are either below his stature or takes the least amount of resistance. He even implied that. He's a Cosmic being and if he wasn't good at what he is, then he wouldn't be in that position very long.

[wayfriend]

But wasn't Joan under raver influence all the way back at the beginning of The Wounded Land? That was after the Law of Death had been broken, but before the breaking of the Law of Life, Covenant trying with Wild Magic to return Linden to our world or Covenant's placing himself in the Arch of Time.

That's a really good point. Joan was "possessed" by Foul. Certainly a number of other townspeople were also possessed, or at least influenced, by Foul.

But I can respond by saying, that's not the same thing. It didn't involve anyone from Covenant's real world being in the Land.

So perhaps we have a progressive breakdown.

Donaldson says as much in the GI.

Annie Wood: How did Lord Foul get ahold of fanatics in Thomas Covenant's world? I remember reading how they "invoked" Foul by putting their hands in the bonfire, but don't remember if it was stated how he was able to communicate with them in the first place. [...]

• I suppose you could say that "like responds to like": those fanatics were already Despiser-surrogates of a sort, so they were easily influenced. Or I suppose you could say that the barriers between realities are breaking down, thanks to LF's original abuse of Drool and the Staff of Law. Or I suppose you could say that some things are better left to the reader's imagination. <rueful smile>
  
  (09/27/2007)

So... the barriers between worlds began to break down from the time of LFB. By the time of TWL, it was worse (with the breaking of the Law of Death and the corruption of Earthpower being some components that made it worse). And after WGW, things were broken down enough to allow for people to visit the Land who weren't even summoned.

Wouldn't it be the Creator's bridging of the two Worlds in the first place that enabled Foul to reach across himself? I don't see how Covenant can be responsibe for any "feedback loop" from the Land to our reality.

Well, if you consider Donaldson's remarks in the GI relevant (and some don't), I will go back to it for this question.

Ryan (from Australia): Dear Mr Donaldson,

I recently re-read 'The Illearth War' to confirm that Hile Troy never met the beggar/creator before going to the land. I was wondering whether this was because of the nature of his summoning, or if there was some other reason for this.

Thanks Greatly,
Ryan.

• Well, both. From Troy's perspective, his summons was too sudden--and his life too hermetic--to permit an encounter like the one Covenant "enjoyed". From the Creator's perspective, he has to let Atiaran make her own choices. Asking him to foresee actions like hers is rather like asking him to control what happens within the Arch of Time. And from her perspective--I don't know how else to put this--her efforts were simply too ignorant to accomplish what she intended. She was after Covenant: she didn't mean to summon Troy. In contrast, Drool/Lord Foul knew exactly who they wanted *and* exactly how to get him.
  
  Another way to look at the whole situation is that the Creator is only "free" to encounter/affect someone like Covenant when Lord Foul is actively engaged in breaching the barrier between realities. Since LF had no intention whatsoever of summoning Troy, the Creator was--inevitably--"out of the loop".
  
  (10/03/2006)

This seems to say that Foul is the one who initiates the bridging between two worlds.

(P.S. I didn't think your thread was identical to this one, or that it needed to be merged, HLT.)

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

Drool/Foul didn't pick TC, they only summoned white gold. Creator chose whom would be sent.

[Orlion]

I don't know about that anymore, Jacob... right now, to me, there's one of two options:

1)The Creator and Foul are manifestations of the same being. Whether this is TC or just a Creator/Foul hybrid, who knows... I doubt even the Shadow has an inkling...of what's going on...damn my english...

2)Foul picked TC and the Creator found out about it and was checking TC out to see if he was up to snuff. He was, so instead of shanking him, he decided, "Sure, I'll choose TC as well." Of course, this would make Lord Foul a liar (maybe), and I'm under the impression that he (Foul) has never been caught lying... decieving, but not lying...

[wayfriend]

Donaldson has stated that Lord Foul chose Covenant, not the Creator. Which I frankly don't get.

The Creator in this story is supposed to be a humane guy. We know this because he does things like offer Covenant a life in the Land--and because he doesn't *Appoint* anybody (he doesn't deprive people like Covenant, or the people of the Land, of their right to make their own choices). He didn't pick Covenant: Lord Foul did. If Covenant is enabled to live out his life in the Land (complete with white gold), LF would eventually have to come up with entirely new strategies, strategies in which the Creator might have no "say" at all--and I would be writing an utterly different story. The Creator certainly wouldn't go around *Appointing* new champions.

(10/19/2007)

[Foul] doesn't--indeed, he can't--"make" Covenant rape Lena. On that level, his plans depend on Covenant's character rather than on the micro-manipulation of events. He chose Covenant because he believes that Covenant--by his very nature--will become a Despiser himself. And just in case there's a chance that Covenant might fall on the other side of the fence, Lord Foul exerts as much pressure as he can

(05/23/2005)

[wayfriend]

Hole troy was summoned without the Staff of Law, and that was when the Staff was in the Lords possession, and the Law of Death was not broken yet. Taking this into account, I think we can say this; there's more than one way to skin a cat... And summon people to the Land.

The form of Atiaran's demise in fire, although it could be explained as the same fire that was burning for Hile Troy, seems more likely to me to be a form of Ritual. Why would fire translate to the Land? I like the idea that Atiaran went the same way as Trell -- in her despair she tapped into the same power as Trell, power enough to summon the Unbeliever, but at the same time creating a small Desecration which destroyed her.

And she did go back to Revelstone ere she died. Apparently with a fascination to learn everything she could about Covenant and summoning Covenant. So she was learned, in a way, in the lore surrounding the ritual of summoning.

So she had the power and the lore to do it. That made it possible. But her lore was imperfect, and her motive was tainted, and so it went awry.

Summoning is lawful. And so the Staff makes it easier, and thence possible. But that doesn't mean that there aren't hard ways of doing it. I think Atiaran found one is all.

It occurred to me that Hile Troy, like Covenant, was dying at the time Atiaran summoned him. Mhoram had realized, Covenant had been so vulnerable to the summons because he was dying. I feel sure that Troy dying in the far was partly the reason why Atiaran was able to summon him.

In the Second Chronicles, Covenant was dying when he was summoned. In the Final Chronicles, Joan, Linden, Roger, and Jeremiah were all dying when they were summoned.

[ninjaboy]

Joan and Roger and Jeremiah.

All three have been influenced by events in the Land before they even got there?
How is this possible?

Jeremiah I get, he was part of the Ritual that summoned TC. There was some contact between worlds that could have influenced his mind.

But Joan was subject to Ravers in this world?
Did I read that right? They were the cause of her madness when she was committed?
She told Roger that TC traveled to the Land, that he was powerful there.
And that if she failed Roger would have to take her place?
How the heck does she know that?
I think there is more revealed in that quick exchange that anyone guesses.
But how can Foul or a Raver reach across the worlds at all?

Wasn't it stated that Joan was in the Land "mentally" before the the physical translation that brought her body along with Linden?

And Roger is a stinker in our world because........he was also influenced by Foul?

Am I correct in any of this?

Oh yeah.. I'd actually noticed a fair bit of Fangthane's influence in the Real World going on for a while now.. I think even as early as the end of the First Chrons.. Though I have loaned the entire text to a friend so I cannot check to be sure.. But that whole group who put their hands into the fire at the beginning of the 2nd Chrons (if that's when it was) definately seemed under the render's control.

I was not in the least surprised when it was revealed that Joan and Jeremiah had been experiencing elements of the Land through their seperate circumstances..

As to how it's possible.. I guess perhaps if not just because the 'law of summoning' is diminished, or that due to their conditions both Jeremiah and Joan are in a weakened position (and as discussed in a different post, it seems the weaker / closer to death / unconsciousness you are, the easier it is to translate you), but that Foul seriously has that many minions he can sacrifice that he can easily get the power to do what he does - be that interact with people in their dreams or whatever, or summoons or whatever..

[tomposer]

I hope this is relevant to the current discussion...

Why is TC in particular so relevant to The Land? It seems to me that various things in the land represent his psychological condition... When he is facing a crisis, so to is something monumental happening in the land which gives rise to his summoning (although this isn't exactly true of every summoning). So, if I'm right about this, The Land and TC's mental state have some sort of connection, or part of what forms the reality of The Land is somehow the mental state of TC. I've always imagined that is why he is particularly important in the unfolding of events in the land.

But there are things which go against this... most plainly, others gain an involvement with the land; although you could say for the most part they have an important connection with TC, and perhaps consequently their connection with the Land ensues... what's more, those character's mental states also seem to culminate in real aspects of the land - Joan's episodes are the land's Ceasures, for example.

Hile Troy is a random factor, which throws my idea about the TC psychology being formative in the reality of the land into some doubt... it's things like this which lend the land a lot more possibility for being concretely real, as it seems life there - summonings and so forth - goes on quite independent of TC and his mentality.

[wayfriend]

SRD says that he writes about people that need what happens to them to happen to them. And he also considers fantasy to be externalization of internal problems so that they can be identified and solved. So the Land is certainly to some degree designed by the author to be a reflection of Covenant and Covenant's needs. (Covenant has leprosy; the Land is the opposite of leprosy.)

That's the explanation of the author's choice. The in story explanation is the whole dream/real paradox. If Covenant can never tell, then on the one hand he never has to wonder why everything revolves around him (it's his dream) but at the same time he has to learn to care about the Land (because it's real). This gives the author a plausible way to write a story that meets his requirements.

[halfhanded]

Hello, new here and this topic caught my eye. Thought I'd give my "two cents"....

I believe in The Power That Preserves, Covenant was summoned by Triock and Foamfollower just using a piece of High Wood and some lore. Yes, Covenant was close to death, but I think the explanation was that the destruction of the Staff of Law made certain things more "attainable". As if it "released" something into the Land, making things like a summons more possible.

I don't think Covenant broke any Laws when he sent her back, as in that same book he told her how he resisted Mhoram's summons in TPTP. Wild Magic isn't limited by Law.

[wayfriend]

Welcome to the Watch, halfhanded. I'm glad this thread intrigued you enough to jump in. Why not introduce yourself in the summonsing, so that we can welcome you in style?

I'll have to look up that part that you mention.

[sammadhi]

this might be a little long.....sorry

Before TC was summoned into the land, lord foul was unable to affect the arch. in FR, TC was brought back from the dead. if you read the 1st chapter of AATE, you'll see that foul was simply manipulating the peoples of the land. words and council were all he had but he had no actual ability to do anything substantial. until, that is, old drooly.

lord foul put the bug in drool's ear about the power of white gold. hfoul had drool summon it. but what foul didn't expect was covenant. that was the creators little jab back at foul.

if you remember, covenant gave his ring to the creator. the creator tested TC with a few questions and then handed it back to him. a remote possibility is creator altered the ring for TC's benefit, although that's speculative.

when TC "arrived", drool got pissy and wanted to steal the ring and kill the human. foul realized that error in doing so. we all know that free will is a B**ch.

the first summoning was the beginning. like tearing 1 thread out of a quilt. seams small enough until more and more get pulled and your left with tatters.

however, that 1 little tear was enough to allow for troy. Atiaran was already lore wise before she went to the lords for the summoning of TC. grief is a powerful tool. it gave Kevin power. Trell used it. hell, it even gave Mhoran the ability to transcend his limitations. with this information, we could lend weight to the fact that Atiaran's rage may have given her the power she needed to pull yet another thread from the arch.

by the time triock and saltheart summoned TC, did they really need a lot of power or lore to get the job done? what with Mhoran and elena summoning him and then elena breaking the law of death, then elena changing the weather for foul like she did, i could have summoned TC with a tuning fork and a 9volt battery.

in the second chronicles, the banefire might have been for more purposes than just feeding the sunbane. who's to say that foul, or his ravers couldn't have used it's power to "bridge the gap" and manipulate those followers. we saw fouls malice in the bondfire at havenfarm. those fires may have been the link for the summoning that foul required.

in the last chronicles, joans ring is my concern. we've seen what she was like before her summons, she adored roger. practically worshiped her son. why didn't she just hand it over to roger. i realize she's a little loony but she had lucid moments with roger. it might stand to reason that TC's ring was "enchanted" by the creator and his ring is the only one that can get the job done.

this is of course my own interpretation of it but think on it.

[wayfriend]

Donaldson in the GI has said something similar to what you are saying. That when Drool summoned Covenant in LFB, that was the first thing that began to weaken the barriers between the worlds.

I've speculated before that Atiaran's summons of Troy was a despair-driven act that was almost a Ritual of Desecration. That she died in the process of summoning, by fire, seems to point in that direction.

Joan is controlled by a Raver now. So she can't give up the ring even if she wanted to. That's how I see it, anyway. Foul has other nice toys for Roger, like skurj-hands. And the ring, I feel certain, is more powerful in Joan's hands than Roger's: her claim on her ring is as strong as Covenant's is on his.

I don't think the Creator enhanced any rings. That would be the kind of interference, I think, that he was trying to avoid.

But I think that Thomas's and Joan's relationships with their rings is important. For Thomas, the ring meant stubborn persistence to principals. For Joan, it must mean something like promises unkept and faith broken. This would somehow play into how they use their rings.

[sammadhi]

i like that. hadn't thought in those terms......interesting

[thewormoftheworld'send]

I don't think the Creator enhanced any rings. That would be the kind of interference, I think, that he was trying to avoid.

I don't know. I liked the rest of your comment. But avoid? What's there to avoid? Foul is about to be freed (or so the Creator thinks), and I'm sure he's doing a lot of preparing for that momentous event rather than fiddling around, or avoiding fiddling around, with someone's magic rings.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

In the Gradual Interview was wrote:
Annie Wood: How did Lord Foul get ahold of fanatics in Thomas Covenant's world? I remember reading how they "invoked" Foul by putting their hands in the bonfire, but don't remember if it was stated how he was able to communicate with them in the first place. [...]

I suppose you could say that "like responds to like": those fanatics were already Despiser-surrogates of a sort, so they were easily influenced. Or I suppose you could say that the barriers between realities are breaking down, thanks to LF's original abuse of Drool and the Staff of Law. Or I suppose you could say that some things are better left to the reader's imagination. <rueful smile>

(09/27/2007)
This is an excellent question - but one not likely to be asked of, say, Stephen King who writes similar fantastic material. Nobody questions Stephen King on such supernatural events occurring in the "real" world.

Notice that Donaldson did not give a precise answer but only three possibilities.

I think his actual answer should be: the world of Covenant is not our world, apparently "magical" things happen there for which there is no scientific explanation, and for which no explanation is necessary. But consider a "natural" explanation that would be held plausible in Covenant's world. Covenant is dreaming, Linden is dreaming, and the cult members were sharing in a mass hallucination. We can't prove that Linden and Covenant shared a dream since Covenant died and cannot relate any intersubjective proof by consensus that they indeed shared a dream. Those in the "real" world can't prove that the carious eyes in the flames were anything but a weird combination of the flames in motion and religious hysteria. We've all been around campfires and witnessed some weird effects in the flames, and coupled with religious hysteria those effects could plausibly seem like something supernatural and demonic. After all, flames are associated with Hell even in Covenant's world.

Perhaps, from the Land's perspective, the effect of entering the "real" world resembles something from the subconscious mind to the people in the "real" world. In Covenant's world, there really is a shared universal Jungian unconscious which takes the form of the Land. The beings in that unconscious world believe in their own reality, but they are really nothing more than mental entities. And their struggles in the unconscious realm affect the struggles of people in the "real" world, sometimes even to such an extreme that they can seem to become quite real to people in Covenant's world.

That is why the burning down of TC's farmhouse has entered Linden's unconsciousness and will become a reality in the Land, when the Earth itself is devoured by the skurj. If, let's say, Linden witnessed the destruction of the Land's Earth, and then came back to consciousness and witnessed the destruction of the farmhouse, she could perhaps be said to have prophesied its destruction. If, let's say, Linden had dreamed that Lord Foul blasted her in the chest with her own wild magic, then woke up to be shot in the chest later by Sheriff Lytton, that would be a kind of dream prophesy too. But, to be realistic, there are no prophets in the "real" world. That would be backward to the way things work out in the Chrons where things first occur in the "real" world and then occur symbolically in the unconscious world of the Land.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

Hello, new here and this topic caught my eye. Thought I'd give my "two cents"....

I believe in The Power That Preserves, Covenant was summoned by Triock and Foamfollower just using a piece of High Wood and some lore. Yes, Covenant was close to death, but I think the explanation was that the destruction of the Staff of Law made certain things more "attainable". As if it "released" something into the Land, making things like a summons more possible.

I don't think Covenant broke any Laws when he sent her back, as in that same book he told her how he resisted Mhoram's summons in TPTP. Wild Magic isn't limited by Law.

TC was easily summoned because he was close to death. The Staff of Law was not destroyed at this point.

If TC was able to send Linden back it was because Laws were already broken.