Linden and Kevin's Dirt

[Vader]

It might have been discussed before (I bet it has) but I couldn't find anything ...

In RoTE Linden wanted to find the SoL to do several things, including the removal of Kevin's Dirt. She needed white gold and the SoL for that (as far as I remember). We all know that fake Covenant and Roger kept her from using Earthpower for quite some time in FR. Fair enough, but after Covenant turned out NOT to be what he seemed to be, why didn't Linden just tried (again) to remove Kevin's Dirt before heading to Andelain?

[dlbpharmd]

At the point in time you're asking about, Linden didn't know the source or the true purpose of the Dirt and so she had no idea how to stop it. Once she does learn the true nature of it, it's possible that the Dirt would not allow her to use sufficient Earthpower in order to remove it.

[wayfriend]

Right on.

Linden doesn't learn who caused Kevin's Dirt until the battle with the many skurj. And she still doesn't know what it is or how to stop it. She only knows that it limits expressions of Earthpower.

And she can't do what she did when she stopped the Sunbane. That required both Staff and white gold. But in order to weild them both at the same time again, she needs the krill.

So she's set out to get the krill. She needs it to stop Kevin's Dirt as well as ... other things.

And if Kevin's Dirt suppresses her most extreme uses of Earthpower, there's some question as to whether or not she can muster enough power to stop it. It seems to have headed her off at the pass.

[Vader]

One question is if she could really remove it .. another is if she could at least try to.

She wanted to get the SoL to remove Kevin's Dirt but once she had it she never even tried it, even before she knew she wouldn't make it. It's not clear why she thinks the krill would help her use both SoL and white gold when she used white gold before holding he staff and having no krill.

[Orlion]

She's going to need all the help she can get. Kevin's Dirt is

Spoiler

brought about by "lunchbox" and Esmer, if she fights against that, she may be able to hold her own against Kas, but Esmer interferes with her ability to use white gold directly.

Perhaps with the krill, she'll be able to access the white gold indirectly.

[Demondime-a-dozen-spawn]

I thought the purpose of the Krill was to be able to use the Staff of Law and Wild Magic in concert, as opposed to seperately.

[Orlion]

It's a use that could be used by the user who wishes to use...


Anywhos, though that may be what Linden wanted to use it for originally, she may be able to use it in other matters (not that I could see her using the krill in any other way .... you win this round, Demondim-spawn!

[hearthrall antonicus]

It might have been discussed before (I bet it has) but I couldn't find anything ...

In RoTE Linden wanted to find the SoL to do several things, including the removal of Kevin's Dirt. She needed white gold and the SoL for that (as far as I remember). We all know that fake Covenant and Roger kept her from using Earthpower for quite some time in FR. Fair enough, but after Covenant turned out NOT to be what he seemed to be, why didn't Linden just tried (again) to remove Kevin's Dirt before heading to Andelain?

In my opinion,and please dont roll your eyes at this...(ah.. what the hell,roll away) the way it was written was like, Linden had just had a ton of grief shoved down her throat. Her son was found out to be a monsterous thing.Her only love was found to be false.(covenant) She had nothing left to give at the time of her return to Revelstone. The only balm to her pain was her friends being around her. Even then they were like "What do we do? What do we do next?" She needs to know herself what to do next in order to guide her pals. Frankly if all this mess was occurring to us as the main character in the book, I think we would be bashing our heads against the ground in despair.

[SleeplessOne]

upon Esmer's revelation as to whom created the 'Dirt, SRD gives a hint that Linden may have formed an idea of a way in which to overcome the fug..
.. Seemingly her insight centres around the powers or alliances of the three beings with which the 'Dirt was created ...

[Vader]

I may have worded my point poorly, but I was not about why she wasn't able to remove Kevin's Dirt. I wanted to know why she changed her plan.

First she says she needs the SoL to remove Kevin's Dirt.
Then she has the Staff but can't do it because of Covenant and Roger.
Then she comes back from the past and all of a sudden thinks SoL and WG are not enough and she starts her quest for the krill.

Why does she suddenly know her power is not enough without even trying? Why the krill? Who told her she needed it to control WG and SoL together?

The logic way would have been trying to fight Kevin's Dirt after her way back to Revelstone and then after failing thinking about what else could help.

[hearthrall antonicus]

Master Vader... after I read through the book I kinda got a feeling from the background inferences in the text that she changed her priorities with regards to Kevins Dirt and getting Jeremiah. My take is that at this point,she needs Covenant because she is basically been beaten down. In WGW she molded Vain and Findail together with white gold to make the staff . Also, she heard Covenant state in his white gold(spirit?) form tell her.."Linden, I don't want to be resurrected. He s also told her to "Do something that they dont expect "In my mind she already knew what she was going to do after meeting up with powers like the Skurj and the Harrow. Yeah , like you stated above,logically knock down the dirt at Revelstone. Masters however could ve overpowered her though.Because they dont want any use of earthpower. Or jacked her friends up .Her friends would have valiantly tried to fight them off as she began the "cleansing " process of the dirt, but against how many scores of Haruchai? I hope my take helps...thanks -H

[wayfriend]

First of all, the Staff of Law was just one thing that she needed to defeat Kevin's Dirt. Just because she had it, it doesn't mean that she was ready to accomplish it. She still didn't really have any clues as to how to defeat it.

Roger and Jeremiah changed her plans. When they came around, they dragged her off.

But when that was over, Linden's whole life was changed. Having Covenant by her side, even the wrong one, made her realize that she needed him, and that she could find him. Finding him then became her highest priority.

I think she cooked up that idea to find him right after she got back to Revelstone from the past. But the Mahdoubt, and Caerroil, and even Roger himself planted the seeds of that idea. As well as Covenant, of course.

As for how she knew the krill would be needed, and why it would be needed ... I think we have to allow a bit of a mental leap here. It actually was mentioned way back in the First Chronicles. We have to assume that somehow Linden obtained and retained this information. And it's not implausible if you recall that she had plenty of opportunity to examine the krill with her perceipience, during the Second Chronicles.

That all being said, I think that the comments that Linden should have done more about Kevin's Dirt are a bit unfair. It's not like she doesn't care. She just hasn't gotten to it YET.

It's rather a staple of this kind of fiction that you don't get the answers until near the end, at the climax.

Covenant left the Sunbane alone to find the One Tree. It wasn't that he didn't care. Or was being selfish. It was that persuing the issue of the Staff of Law came first for him. Should Linden get more criticism from readers about not (yet) handling Kevin's Dirt than Covenant got for not handling the Sunbane in similar circumstances?

[Rigel]

The Krill was supposed to solve a very fundamental problem for Linden, one that she wasn't even aware of until she'd already retreived the Staff... the fact that the Staff and Ring are antithetical to each other (or, rather, Wild Magic and Law are antithetical).

She was able to do what she did against the Sunbane only because she was already half-way translated back to her own world... if she'd attempted it before then, she would have been destroyed by the conflicting powers she was trying to wield.

Once she retreived the Staff in the Last Chrons, she found that using one type of power precluded the other. And the Staff itself doesn't necessarily grant power, but rather allows for the expression of an individual's strength. Linden herself was too weak to challenge Kevin's Dirt directly, so she needed the strength of the Wild Magic combined with the structure of the Staff of Law.

So, she sought out a method of using both at the same time, namely, the Krill. Mhoram realized in the first Chrons that it had been formed to channel immense power, so it was ideally suited for such a task.

However, fighting Kevin's Dirt was, at this point, merely a smokescreen. It was the explanation she gave because she was afraid of how others would react if they knew she would attempt to break the Law of Death again.

[Anima Corrupt]

I think Kevin's Dirt is the dirt on TC's grave, the fog of time and fading memory that separates the living from the dead.

It was his Land, his feeling... and he is dead. Linden can fight the fog with various coping skills and expenditures of energy, life, law, memory, to keep him alive in her heart, but she still has to "remember he's dead."

[hearthrall antonicus]

I think Kevin's Dirt is the dirt on TC's grave, the fog of time and fading memory that separates the living from the dead.

It was his Land, his feeling... and he is dead. Linden can fight the fog with various coping skills and expenditures of energy, life, law, memory, to keep him alive in her heart, but she still has to "remember he's dead."

Very insightful and well put, Anima,the only diagreement at all I would have with your take is that

Spoiler

Esmer and Kastenessen got together and conjured the dirt up and Covenant had no active hand in that event because he was dead

[Wheelwash Whitecap]

Even though LA loathes Kevins Dirt, She and Liand are able to remove the ill effects with the SOL and the orecrest stone, which is ok for now. I'm sure at a later time she will remove it from the Land permanently, especially since now she has the knowledge of who made it and the Krill to help her do so.

[wayfriend]

Even though LA loathes Kevins Dirt, She and Liand are able to remove the ill effects with the SOL and the orecrest stone, which is ok for now.

They can remove one of the ill effects, the health-sense suppression.

They can't. as far as I know, eliminate the Earthpower-limiting effect. The one Linden encountered fighting the skurj near the end of FR.

Unless using the krill and wild magic and Earthpower together contitutes a means of overcoming this effect.

[sherifffruitfly2]

I don't have the text handy, but I thought the problem-resolution process went something like:

1) The SoL would suffice on its own, if it weren't for Kevin's Dirt, stops her from getting enough juice out of the staff.

therefore

2) She needs to use the ring along with the staff.

but

3) Ring won't work with Esmer around (damn him)

so

4) She needs the krill to force the ring to work, so she can tell Esmer to foad.

[Anima Corrupt]

I got a new thought on kev's dirt.

It's more to do with her inability to heal her son in the 'real' world. She sort of healed herself in the 2nd crons. And with that healing, comes the reward, she was placed in charge of the hospital, got the life she wanted, but now she's got to invoke some bad karma, reach back onto her old pain and feel it again before she can help Jer. The old, unhealed, self-hating linden could have done it, but she dropped her baggage off in the 2nd Chrons, and part of that emotional baggage was what gave her the ability to touch the power. So she's trying to re-live that stuff to be effective again.

She got too comfortable in her little life being mommy, she loved and accepted the kid 'with' catatonia, did not attack his condition with the same passion she used to have, and as she slowly realized he was trying to say something, on came the old cold pricklies of guilt, and thus another trip into the land to sort this out.

Or something?
Now, she's tearing shit up and threatening her new stability, because the stability makes her less empathetic. Relief and mental comfort makes you less of a projector, and the kid needs help. She can see that now, with the croyel, and now she's going to do anything, destroy her own life, to save his.

[Shelt]

I'm not sure I remember in Runes where removing Kevin's Dirt is her objective. It seems to me that her main objective has always been finding Jeremiah, and that after realizing that Jeremiah is being used and abused by the Croyel, that desire becomes even more urgent.

She's had a feeling of inadequacy from the beginning, and that feeling becomes more acute after her trial with Roger and the Croyel.

Maybe I need to read Runes again (I just finished re-reading FR).