What lead to the failure of the New Lords?

[Thorhammerhand]

I am placing this topic in this section due to my reply coming from FR.

I believe the greatest failure to be the oath of peace.

The Theomach gives Berek and Linden the Seven Words, those are passed down verbatum to Kevin and, presumably, stored in one of the wards he left after ROD.

However the New Lords have 'lost' "Harad" an in it's place has come the oath of peace.

After the effects of WGW the New Lords abandon Kevin's Law and find thier own power.

[Loresraat]

True, the Oath of Peace held them back--and it IS interesting how the oath compares to the definition of Harad--but when the rise of the Clave is discussed, it is implied that the New Lords were ultimately victims of their own success. In the centuries following Mhoram, the Lords worked wonders, but they didn't have to struggle for their victories, so they weren't prepared when the next crisis crept silently up on them.

[wayfriend]

True, the Lords following Mhoram had things easy. But part of that was due to the destruction of the Staff of Law, which caused the weakening of Law. So "victims of their own success" may not be an entirely fair comment.

They also made the mistake of believing that Foul would never return. And so they let down their guard more than seems wise, in twenty/twenty hindsight.

[SoulBiter]

I always figured it was a domino effect as well. As they continued to have success that made the next success come easier and the next and the next. If Mhoram or perhaps any lord within 10 generations of the 'fall' of Lord Foul at the end of TPTP, had seen how easily things had come they would have figured it out. But it was probably several hundred years before this was perceivable. When you think about it they might have been dismantling...corrupting the law themselves and making it easier for LF to corrupt it later on.

If only Mhoram could have forseen this but I believe his ability as seer had been lost by this time.

[Loresraat]

I could see Mhoram having the wisdom to "foresee" such a danger even without having an oracle's power anymore, but even if he could recognize it, there is really very little he could have done. It is human nature to forget over time. Even individual people will forget, for example, what it was really like when they were younger, or went through a difficult time. With foresight, Mhoram might have been able to slow down the inevitable decline, but I doubt anyone would have been able to stop it.

[SerScot]

I forget, when Satansfist's army disolved before Revelstone did Mhoram think Foul was defeated forever or simply deminished for a long period of time. That would have to factor in the later subversion of the council of Lords into the Clave, wouldn't it?

[SoulBiter]

No..I dont think he thought that Foul had been defeated forever but he knew it would be beyond the present age of the Land before he would come back.

The fierce echo of battle within the krill of Loric shows us that the white gold has done combat with the Illearth Stone, and has emerged triumphant. That is cause enough for celebration. Enough? My friends, it will suffice for us and for our children, while the present age of the Land endures.

I think that over time the council had forgotten or perhaps they treated the story of TC defeating LF as some sort of 'story' or folklore. They had forgotten 'ravers' and having not had to deal with evil they lost the ability to see it easily when it was not obvious.

[SerScot]

Well the sunbane appears to have grown in power over time. Perhaps the loss of health-sense was gradual to such an extent that people did not realize it was gone until people didn't know what it was. After all Sunder and Hollin quite clearly did not have Health-sense. I speculate that is due to exposure to the Sunbane.

[High Lord Tolkien]

I believe the greatest failure to be the oath of peace.

"failure" is subjective"
The New Lords didn't call it a failure.
They were horrified to learn that it was neutering the emotions need to open up Kevin's lore completely.
Or to put it in terms Austin Powers would understand, it took away their mojo.
When they learned that the Oath was what was keeping them from understanding Kevin's Lore they never rejected the Oath.

Kevin and, presumably, stored in one of the wards he left after ROD.

Not necessarily.
The 6th Word might have been in the 2nd Ward and the 7th Word could have been in the 3rd or another Ward.

However the New Lords have 'lost' "Harad" an in it's place has come the oath of peace.

I don't understand you.

After the effects of WGW the New Lords abandon Kevin's Law and find their own power.

You mean tPtP?
What "effects"?

[wayfriend]

Mhoram had learned that the Oath of Peace had inhibited their ability to master the Old Lord's lore, as conveyed by the Wards. He also knew why.

And, most importantly, he knew how to fix the problem. He had learned a knowledge of power, and he had also learned how to use that power without forgoing the Oath. He learned how to bypass the limits that the Oath had inadvertantly set.

The Old Lord's lore was only one path. There are other paths to lore and knowledge and power. Mhoram saw his choices, and saw that another path would allow them to keep their Oath and at the same time not be limited by it.

It was like: Oath, Wards, Power: pick two. I think that forgoing the lore of the Wards was the bravest choice of the three possible choices.

[DrPaul]

What we're discussing is a period of about two thousand years in which the increasing ease with which the Lords were able to get results, and thus the weakening of the Law, would have been incremental, and the fact that those results were clearly beneficial in the short term would have been what impressed them most. Thus by the end of two thousand years of incremental drift from what Mhoram and his contemporaries knew and believed, whoever was in the Council of Lords at that time would have been receptive to the further revision of their lore at the instigation of the first few generations of na-Mhorams who had been, in SRD's words, "cunningly mastered" by samadhi Sheol. The Sunbane, as we recall from "Soothtell", didn't begin to appear until samadhi had sufficiently subverted the Council/Clave to the point where none of them could understand what was really happening.

Also, if we think about it, what the Lords during that first two thousand years were doing was not all that different from what industrial societies have been doing in our world for the last two hundred years - securing continuous improvements in material living standards in the short to medium-term by doing things (such as burning fossil fuels) which undermine our ecological and biophysical environment - i.e. corrupt our own Earthpower - in the long term. Given that decision-makers in societies such as the US, Canada and Australia have been ignoring the warnings of our scientists about these problems, we're not really in a position to be too critical of the post-Mhoram Lords!

[wayfriend]

You had me. until you began to imply that the Lords and their works contributed to the corruption of Earthpower.

[The Dude]

How was it that the Lords were unable to recognise the Raver when it first took over the High Lord? Did their health sense gradually diminish? Perhaps the biggest mistake was Mhoram's abandonment of Kevin's Lore, which he did because it had the power to harm as well as heal. Is not all power that way? The greater it is the greater it's potential for harm. Even medical knowledge can be put to evil means. In abandoning Keven's Lore they cut themselves off from the great heritage of the Old Lords from Berek to Kevin, nor is there evidence that the New Lords after Mhoram compiled any new lore of their own. It's likely that they forgot that Ravers had ever existed.

[wayfriend]

Well, if your position is that abandoning Kevin's lore was a mistake, you can certainly blame anything that happens subsequently on abandoning Kevin's lore. But I don't see any reason to lay the blame there.

Earthpower was corrupted. Health-sense was withdrawn. This is all that was necessary for the infiltration of the Ravers.

You might ask, how could the Lords not notice that the health-sense was withdrawn? Well, if it happened very slowly, over centuries, it might not be noticed.

But I don't see that abandoning Kevin's lore was wrong. It was a choice that allowed them to also keep their Oath of Peace. Which wasn't wrong either.

If anything, the people in the Land were beholden to a forgotten age of the Old Lords, and spent their time trying to get back to it rather than trying to move forward. Breaking with the past seems somehow better for them. If nothing else, it turns their eyes around 180 degrees and points them towards the future.

[The Dude]

Unless the next two books shed some light onto that time in the Land's history it'll remain speculation, but I do think that it was a mistake to abandon Kevin's Lore. Things got too easy for them after Covenant defeated Foul the first time, so after a while they no longer felt the need to create new lore or to watch out for evil.

Having said that I don't blame the Lords for losing their health sense, I'm not sure if anything could have prevented that with Foul corrupting the Earthpower.

[wayfriend]

Well, the text says that they did at some point they believed that Foul would not return, and gained confidence.

And at last the Lords began to believe that Lord Foul would never return, that Covenant had driven Despite utterly from the Earth. Paradise seemed to be within their grasp.

But if you believe that this made them lazy or lax, I think that's an interpretation you have added.

It does say that things became easier ... but that was also the work of corruption.

As [Foul] gained stature, the Law sickened. The first result of this decay was to make the work of the Council more easy;

Perhaps you could say that, as their work got easier, and the coast stayed clear, they may have in turn become weakened, by way of not needing to maintain their strength. A "lack of exercise" thing.

Would Kevin's Lore have preserved them here?

[Relayer]

How was it that the Lords were unable to recognise the Raver when it first took over the High Lord? Did their health sense gradually diminish?

Earthpower was corrupted. Health-sense was withdrawn. This is all that was necessary for the infiltration of the Ravers.

Remember that when Foul himself infiltrated Kevin's Council, they were unable to recognize his evil with their healthsense.

[Ur Dead]

Never understood this. The lost word(harad) was always available to the New Lords after Kevin.

Seems no lord ever thought to ask the question.

The Bloodguard knew the seven words. They must have hear it hundred if not thousand of times when they were serving Kevin and the Lords of old.

The Bloodguard didn't use lore but they were serving the new lords like they did Kevin. And that , with their otah , they would have told the New Lords the entire phrase if questioned.

If they could relate (Bannor) the name of the 7th ward (Power of Command), they would surely know the 7 words.

Maybe the Bloodguard were designated as one of Kevin's wards.

[wayfriend]

If you recall, Bannor only revealed what he knew about the 7th Ward after Covenant twisted his arm. He really, really didn't want to say anything, until Covenant basically laid it out that he spills or else he's not serving perfectly.

Up until that time, no one had ever connected the dots and realized that the Bloodguard must know some things that Kevin knew. And even if they suspected it, they considered it an afront to the Bloodguard to ask. And the Bloodguard weren't volunteering.

The New Lords were probably better off this way. The dangers of unearned knowledge and all that.

[Rigel]

The basic problem seemed to me to be time.

No matter what people learned from Mhoram or his successors, we're talking about close to a hundred generations of Lords between the first and second chronicles.

How much you know of what your Grandfather learned? How about his father? And that's only going back 3 generations... would you mind telling me about your family's exploits even 10 generations back?

There was plenty of opportunity for the Lords to be corrupted over that time span.