All things Worm-y

[SkurjMaster]

Maybe I missed something (that's entirely possible).

Where exactly did the Worm wake up? The mythology tells us that the Earth was formed around the Worm. We also know that it eats stars and has the potential to eat all of the Elohim. So, shouldn't its waking up have destroyed the Earth, or at least huge chunks of it? Why does it eat stars now? Why not go straight for Melenkurion Skyweir first? Is it so that it is trapped within the Arch? If it is, how could drinking the Earthblood make it 'puissant' enough to destroy the Arch? I thought only White Gold could do that?

[thewormoftheworld'send]

Nobody knows (yet) where exactly the Worm was when it woke up. The text in a past book indicates that its location, slumbering though it is, shifts over time. But we know where it is now: somewhere in the Sunbirth Sea and fast approaching the Land, and for all practical purposes that's really what matters.

The original Worm tale stated that the Worm ate huge swaths of stars, became full and fell asleep. The Earth then formed around the sleeping Worm. But nobody has stated anything about the Worm's size until Infelice said it was about the size of a range of hills. Perhaps it shrank over the millennia, and is now growing back to full size again as it eats.

In the past here I have asked how the Worm could destroy the Arch. Drinking the EarthBlood seems to be another method besides using Wild Magic. Apparently anything with enough magic within it is potent enough to destroy the Arch, whether that magic is Wild Magic or Earthpower.

[Vraith]

I thought, and still do, with only one thing I remember for evidence, the worm was under the Isle of the One Tree. I took the tree and worms "connection" to be closer than simply mystical/metaphysical. That is the direction it's coming from now...as I said elsewhere, Isle and Elemesnedene were both in that direction.
Edited to add: that's why Isle OT sank...the worm stirred in its slumber, then when it settled back in, the Isle went down.

[thewormoftheworld'send]

I thought, and still do, with only one thing I remember for evidence, the worm was under the Isle of the One Tree. I took the tree and worms "connection" to be closer than simply mystical/metaphysical. That is the direction it's coming from now...as I said elsewhere, Isle and Elemesnedene were both in that direction.
Edited to add: that's why Isle OT sank...the worm stirred in its slumber, then when it settled back in, the Isle went down.

The Worm was not necessarily in that direction, being in a slumbering state it would have moved around moreso now than in the past. I don't see why the question matters. But when asleep or slumbering it always sticks to the ocean areas for some reason.

I thought the Sunbirth Sea scene was eerie, with Donaldson teasing his reader with some end-of-world special effects, a harbinger of what the next book is going to be like.

[aliantha]

How literally are we to take this idea of the Worm of the World's End? (The nemesis in the Chrons, that is, not the Watcher of that name. )

There are several different creation stories afloat in the Land; not all of them reference TWotWE.

What if the Worm isn't really a worm? What, then, are we up against? *Some*thing's eating the stars. What's going on?

[thewormoftheworld'send]

I thought, and still do, with only one thing I remember for evidence, the worm was under the Isle of the One Tree. I took the tree and worms "connection" to be closer than simply mystical/metaphysical...

At first, many years ago, I thought the Worm was mythical. After all, in the "real" world, such stories are known to be mythological, allegorical.

It seems however that everything mythical to us is real, very real, in the Land's universe. If a Creator story states that the stars in the sky are the Creator's children - then that's what they are. And the Worm is just that, probably not a giant nightcrawler, maybe not even a Frank Herbert sandworm, but something more vermiform than not.

Every Creation story tells a variation on the truth, and any apparent contradictions between them will find reconciliation.

[earthbrah]

TC states on pg. 46 that "Old stories--I mean the really old stories, like creation myths--are always true. Not literally, of course. Words aren't good enough. And people always change the stories to suit themselves. But the stories are still true."

[aliantha]

TC states on pg. 46 that "Old stories--I mean the really old stories, like creation myths--are always true. Not literally, of course. Words aren't good enough. And people always change the stories to suit themselves. But the stories are still true."

Sure. But it seems to me that he's talking about the inability of humanity to adequately describe phenomena that are too vast for us to get a grip on -- like anthromorphizing the concept of God/gods into an old man with a flowing beard. There's an underlying truth there, but people have changed the details into something they can understand, and then begin to believe that their description is reality.

[earthbrah]

I agree. Fully.

And yet, there seems to be an actual Worm that is going to devour the Earth and all of creation. So this Worm is either in line with the creation myth about it, or we're in for a surprise as to what the Worm actually is...

[aliantha]

My money is on SRD doing something we don't expect.

[Nerdanel]

I think the Worm is going to be a black hole or a close analogue. It's currently a very tiny black hole, smaller than a pinprick, but its mountainous mass is still enough to severely disturb the environment around it and suck in a vortex of matter. Because the Worm is currently so small it has been growing only slowly, but that's going to change as it gets bigger and develops an even higher gravitational pull.

The Worm was much bigger in the Creator's universe, big enough to count as a quasar when it was active. Later on it went quiescent because it had sucked in all the matter near it. The stars that fell into the Worm passed through an Einstein-Rosen bridge (a.k.a. a wormhole) to the Land's universe. After that it becomes fuzzy as I'm not sure how much SRD knows about physics and if he was aware of Hawking radiation when he came up with the Worm.

The Worm was stirred awake when it absorbed a great deal of ambient magic from Linden's resurrection of Covenant. (Presumably magic has considerable mass in the Land's universe, which is also why the Worm goes after the Elohim first.) The tsunami originated from the earthquake that happened when the Worm punched through the sea bottom on its way to the Land.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

"Worm" is also a term that has been applied to dragons before, but that would be too stereotypical for Mr. Donaldson. "The Worm" might not even have a physical form, but may be some sort of coalesced field of energy.

Wasn't the Worm described in The One Tree as having curled up to sleep and the world formed around it, except now its focus was curled up around the base of the One Tree itself? Didn't that Isle sink into the Sea becuase of the nascent Worm beginning to wake up? If so, then the Worm would have risen out of the Sea.

I need to reread them this year, but if the Worm seeks out power and devours it, becoming stronger, then I wonder what power sources it was devouring before making a beeline for The Land, the source of the greatest power?

[Ananda]

I need to reread them this year, but if the Worm seeks out power and devours it, becoming stronger, then I wonder what power sources it was devouring before making a beeline for The Land, the source of the greatest power?
[/color]

Didnt they say in the second series that the worm ate the stars before falling asleep? Also, I think it was mentioned that the island of the tree moved and after sinking it will be somewhere else? The ... Cant remeber how they are called.. Infelices people... They are its true or preferred food, didnt they say?

[wayfriend]

It's a good day to when you can find Nerdanel discussing Creator questions!

I certainly was suprised to find that the Worm was so small. Certainly that's necessary to create a window of time in which our cast of characters can operate. And I do think it will get more puissant as it consumes more ... "it will feed and grow mighty". I don't know if it will get physically larger, but it just might.

I share the notion that the Worm is more metaphor than real. And so I have been surprised that it is so "real" in this last book. Then again, just like in The One Tree, we haven't actually seen anything.

But I have a good theory about why it's a Worm, and not say a Dragon or a Turtle. It's because it's long, thin, and curved-- like an Arch, or a Rainbow. I have always felt that this was a clue that the Arch and Rainbow and Worm were metaphors for the same thing.

Yes, the Worm and the Würd both supposedly consumed stars and thereby became slumborous - but it did not actually put them entirely to sleep.

And yes, there was a mention that the Worm likes Elohim particularly well. "The Worm must feed upon us. Only when it is sated with Elohim will it turn to the accomplishment of its greater purpose."

If you think about the Elohimfest, you can see the connection between Elohim and stars. So it is no surprise that the Worm chooses this particular favorite snack!

[Zarathustra]

I don't see why, in a fantasy story where the main character confronts facets of himself in an externalized, personified form, that we shouldn't expect for the "mythical" to be entirely literal. The Worm is real *and* a metaphor. Just like Foul. We just have to keep the levels straight.

Earthbrah, that quote from TC about the old stories being true--though not literally true--was a prelude to talking about She-Bane, which turned out to be real and literal. I don't think we can conclude that the Worm isn't literal from that quote.

[wayfriend]

I don't see why, in a fantasy story where the main character confronts facets of himself in an externalized, personified form, that we shouldn't expect for the "mythical" to be entirely literal. The Worm is real *and* a metaphor. Just like Foul. We just have to keep the levels straight.

If we keep the levels straight, then if the Worm is a myth to the people of the Land (and hence is metaphorical), wouldn't it then require that it would only be Real in an alternate reality that people from the Land are summoned to?

[Zarathustra]

I don't see any reason to treat the myths of people in the Land as strictly metaphorical in the Land world, much less literal or real in our world. (In fact, that's pretty much the opposite of what I'm saying, and the opposite of keeping the levels straight.) That's not to say that they don't have some symbolic element to the people of the Land itself, but every myth we've seen in the Land has a literal counterpart in the Land world. The Creator. A-Jeroth. Diassomer Mininderain. The Arch. These are real entities in the Land world. They symbolize things in our world. Maybe they also symbolize these very same things to the people of the Land, but in our world they aren't literal beings or entities.

The myths of a "mythical people" in a "mythical world" aren't like our own myths. These stories are also part of the myth world itself, where the metaphorical walks the earth in literal form.

[Edit: the Creator is the one entity which seems to blur this line, because he seems to appear as a real, literal person in our world ... however, since this is in the Mother of All Spoilers territory, it would be premature to say anything absolutely about it. Donaldson certainly seems to bristle at the idea of the Creator treated too literally ... hmm some essential mystery about this work of fiction seems to lie in this distinction, and the inability of the Creator to enter his own world. His entering that world in a literal form would destroy it. But what if this is what Covenant was all along? The way the Creator enters his own world? Needs thought.]

[Hashi Lebwohl]

The other question we are not asking here is this: since events in our world translate over to the Land (the bullet hole in Linden's shirt, for one) and, apparently, events in the Land translate back to our world (Jeremiah is able to build a Lego version of the structure in the Viles' ancient home) then...

...what does that mean now that Linden has brought Covenant back to life in the Land?

Or is he now wholly in the Land only and cannot translate back to our world?

Clearly, though, the Worm is real enough to make some stars go out; however, its essential nature and still the subject of myth because it is different things to different people.

[wayfriend]

Oh, I agree the Worm now seems very real [in the Land's reality]. But that's the source of my comment - I had thought it was mythical and metaphorical [in the Land's reality] and not literally real [in the Land's reality].

The Arch and the Rainbow didn't seem to be literally real [in the Land's reality] either.

Some things keep me from totally believing the Worm is literally real [in the Land's reality]. One is my stubborn refusal to concede the point. Another is that we've never actually seen it, not in the Second Chronicles, nor in the Last. And finally, there is the exact point you mention Hashi - how could something so small, apparently confined to the Earth, make the stars go out? This points to there being more than we've been told.

Do I think that the stars winking out is connected in some way with Elohim being devoured? Assuredly.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

For all we know, the Worm could exist both inside and outside the Arch, perhaps even in between the Land and our reality.

Also, the lights in the night sky of the Land might not be actual stars--balls of plasma light-years distant--but could merely be representations of Elohim who live on the Land's Earth. As the Worm "eats" them, their starry avatar goes out.

I wonder if there is any relation between the Worm and Jormungand? There have to be some--both coiled around the base of the World Tree, after all--but I think there the similarities end.