Kevin's Watch

Quick thread .

Longwrath was a Giant who was made to bear the cost of the exchange for the 'Gift of Toungs' won from the Elohim [I thought they won it in exchange for the tale of 'Baghoon the Unbearable, but there you have it....] and was placed under a 'geas' to search and destroy this unknown [to him] female on the otherside of the World.

To this end the [what were they called this time] 'Search mark II' set out to find this woman - or at least to try and solve the mystery of Longwrath's compulsion. On arriving in the Land he leads the Search II to Linden and then trys to kill her. On being thwarted he flee's of into the Land to await a better opportunity to do the deed toward which his geas drives him. We don't see him again untill chapter 9 of TLD where he rears out from behind a crater, chops of Kastennessen's [Rodger] hand and is killed.

Presumably he had come in search of Linden, had spotted one of the Elohim who had enslaved his mind and was sufficiently pissed at the eldritch beings to decide to take a poke at one of them while he had the chance. He weakened Kastennesen a bit so that TC could force him into the 'fain' without a fight. Was that it - have I got it all or did I miss something? There are shades of Anele's less than spectacular demise here if I'm not mistaken. Both charachters seem to me to have been 'bigged up' beyond the significance of their final acts.

[aside; Infelice's comments after the demise of Longwrath imply the Elohim had the power of foresight of future events in the laying on of the geas. If soo I think they could have chosen a hell of a lot more simple ways of getting to their desired endpoints than the ways they did - and how could they not also see that Linden and Jerremiah would turn out good for them - none of it stacks up.]

For me the terse disposal of Longwrath was one of the more puzzling events of the whole series.

What had he been doing for the last who knows how long?

Longwrath's motivation for chopping off Kastenessen's hand is still a little odd to me, I probably need to re-read that part again.

It was a bad deus ex machina for a series which put its players in for the long game.

As you say, if Infelice had the power of clarivoyancy, she would have seen that Jeremiah was working in their favour. The ease with which she is persuaded not to Jeremiah was also puzzling. Findail showed previously that the Elohim were impervious to most ordinary attacks - even a gang of giants possess only physical power.

Forgive my memory - did Longwrath even indicate why he wanted to kill Linden? I can't remember. . .

Well, to be grudgingly fair to SRD, it is made vaguely clear late on that the primary purpose of the elohim laying their geas upon Longwrath was for him to slay Linden before she could bring back Covenant from the dead at the end of FR. Once she'd managed to do so, the geas (or at least that part of it) was invalidated and no longer applied - not that any of the characters could establish this, since the flambrege-wielding maniac promptly goes AWOL for nigh on a thousand pages.

Then - and this another example of all that I object to, narratively speaking - SRD suddenly pops Longwrath back onto stage all of a sudden, just to chop off Kastenessen's grafted-on human hand and then the author just as quickly kills him off. The whole episode from Longwrath's reappearance to his death takes a mere 18 lines of text. There's another loose end tied off, then - SRD can cross that one off his tick list

Pete, you're right that Infelice does give some mystical claptrap, some burbled retconning post-event justification after the Giant's bought the farm:-

Infelice wrote:You think ill of us, Giant, and you have cause. But we are not as dark as you deem. For this also we laid our geas upon your kinsman. For this also he acquired his blade. Failing one purpose, he has served another.

Okay I suppose that there was no need for SRD to have given Longwrath a mystical sword, forged by Kasreyn of the Gyre, unless he kind of had something like this in mind - let's face it, he wouldn't have needed a magic weapon to kill Linden. But it's another example of slapdash, hurried and careless narrative treatment - as I've said elsewhere, I'm pretty sure by now that throughout the Last Chrons and in the second half of TLD in particular, SRD placed way too much interest in allegory and far too little in seamless narrative completeness.

I agree that Longwrath's speedy death does have problematic stylistic similarities to Anele's sudden demise. His whole narrative purpose seems to have been to give Jeremiah Earthpower, but unlike Longwrath, at least he stayed around on stage.

Again I concur that the whole of the Last Chrons are full of overblown events and characters, people and things who are built up by the author to the point where we're all thinking "Gee, I wonder what the significance of that is going to turn out to be?". But we're all too often disappointed. Here's an undoubtedly incomplete list:-

1. Longwrath - he's here. He's not. He's back. He's dead. Is that it?
2. "It may only be forbidden by wood and stone". Really? In what respect? What wood? The Staff of Law? What stone then?
3. The damn grass marks on Linden's jeans. Earned lines upon lines of mystical "ooo eee ooo eee" description. A meeting with Caerroil Wildwood is clearly the detergent that's needed to get rid of those nasty stubborn ground-in stains, but what the Hell were they for? TC says rather anilely that perhaps they were a map that she no longer needs. Great.
4. Speaking of Wildwood, the runes he etches on the Staff of Law. Turns out that these were a plea for restitution, as Jeremiah manages to read after being possessed by moksha Raver. Really? Is that it? No more than a "please make it all right" message in a bottle across time?

Oh and I suppose that the problem of the foresight of the elohim that you mention could be explained away by their own admission right at the end that they were after all capable of being mistaken - and on more than one occasion.

Must be as a result of all that innominate surquedry of theirs, I guess...

... weaken Kastennesen a bit so that TC could force him into the 'fain' without a fight

Actually, Infelice talked him down and into the Fain. I dont think TC had anything to do with it, did he?

Well, TC drove him backward toward the fain and brought about his diminishment then, upon which Infelice was able to clasp his wrist and draw him in. As you say TheFallen - must have been all to do with that inominomnom....err.....

I 've been thinking a good bit about what I see as the structural problems in the LCs. One such is the Roger/Kastenessen/skurj axis. I remember that when I first came across the skurj I was utterly underwhelmed, ditto Kastenessen, and ditto Roger (actually I'd have much preferred if Roger had been called Ditto in the LCs, at least then there might have been a bit of humour (and thus some purpose) to his presence in the story). Personally, I now think that bringing Roger into the Land at all was a big mistake. I do not believe that he added a single extra element to the LCs and his presence necessitated a number loose ends/creatures/sub-plots that only clogged up the plot. Roger could easily have been used to lure Linden into the Land and then been left, in whatever state, back in 'reality'.

Longwrath was another complete non-entity, as his disappearance for vast tracts of the LCs demonstrates. His only real contribution is to bring Linden and the Giants together. If SRD felt the need of Giants then he could have used Kevin's Dirt/curiosity stoked by the Masters' behaviour/caesuras or any number of other things to introduce them into the story. This is the kind of thing that SRD normally does seamlessly.

Another feeling I have about Longwrath's story is that it was a way to tarnish one of the miracles of the 2nd Chrons: the Elohim bestowing the gift of tongues for a story. While it was a clever twist to put onto that gift it casts the Giants in a less kindly light (and it smacks of retconning as there was no hint of this in the 2nd Chrons).

u.

Actively the opposit in fact u. - thus as you say are even the Giants diminished.