Kevin's Watch

now that i am halfway through the illearth war i have notice lines like....

"coals of the fire"
"troy threw an armful of kindling on the fire"
"troy piled wood on the fire so that he could see better"

even LFB mentioned something about campfire embers...

am i missing something? did i misread all those years ago?

thanks ahead

I missed (or just don't remember) those items.
My impression is that the company would not use any Lore or Earthmagic as so
not to draw any attention from the Ur-viles or Ravers.
(Burning wood? Oh, how horrid that would be to the Lords! But it IS survival.)

cheval wrote:I missed (or just don't remember) those items.

IEW page 214 (near bottom)
page 217 (near top)

Sergio wrote:

cheval wrote:I missed (or just don't remember) those items.

IEW page 214 (near bottom)
page 217 (near top)

WOW... you are right!!! I never caught that before!!!!!

I wonder if that is a gaffe...

Maybe it's a gaffe...

But the Lorewardens, Lords Mhoram and Amatin, and High Lord Elena were there, too. Would they allow a consuming fire to take place? My opinion is that this is a misunderstanding of the scene. Allow me to counter your assumption with mine: yes, there is a fire--but I assume it's a smokeless fire. The wood gives heat and fire without being consumed. That's what the wood-lore is for. As for Troy throwing wood onto the fire, well, I don't think that changes anything. I compare it to graveling: if more heat and light is needed, one throws more into the mix.

To me, this has been a point of some confusion for some time. The best answer I've ever been able to get is that the people of the Land did burn old, dead wood in fires. Re-read the Healer chapter in TPTP for more information on this.

IEW page 235:

"The fire had died down to coals..."

I don't know, it seems to be a gaffe.

I have to agree with dlb's post above. It's deadwood. For one thing, not everybody in the Land could know wood or stone lore, and being that dependant on others for survival would not lead to the relatively happy, free society that we see in the Land. No, I assume that all burnt wood would be dead wood.

I think the more likely gaffe was Covenant's astonishment at seeing wood burn in the 2nd Chrons without knowing if it was cut from a tree or not.

Good points from dlb and Sylvanus. But does this mean that wood-lore and stone-lore were the exception in the Land, not the rule? I had thought all who had returned to the Land after the Desecration knew lore, because they relied on it to survive the years in exile. Maybe I'm mistaken. Were things like wood-burning fires actually more common in the Land than I thought? This would give me a picture of a citizenry that was not as innocent and special as I had thought. Time to take off my rose-colored lenses.

Sergio, ultimately it's up to SRD to say whether or not he made a gaffe here. I recommend you ask him directly in the Gradual Interview at his website.

Sergio, ultimately it's up to SRD to say whether or not he made a gaffe here. I recommend you ask him directly in the Gradual Interview at his website.

i did, can only hope it gets selectec

I also agree with dlb I believe somewhere in LFB Covenant talks about using wood but not cutting wood from trees.
I think that this is one of those things that will drive me nuts untill I dig out my copy and look it up. Ill keep you posted.

Thanks, all. I don't have my copy of TPTP with me, but as I said above, The Healer chapter in that book will shed some light on this. In that chapter, Morinmoss allows the fire in her cave because 1) it is small and 2) it is dead wood.

I agree. Not everyone in the land knows about lore. What about the Haruchai. They are not Bloodguard so they would have to eat. What would they use to cook meals since they do not beleave in weapons or the use of lore? I think they would have to use wood to make fires to cook meals. So the burning of wood would have to be possible in the land.

I was a Boy Scout and we were only allowed to build our campfires out of the dead wood we could find in the area,and we never went without a fire.

Besides which, dead wood burns a lot better than fresh cut "green" wood does.

Well, I tried doing what Hearthrall Borillar showed me (rubbing the end of the wood brand to call up an Earthpower flame) but it never seems to work for me...

I got the impression that burning wood was a rarity in the first series. In TWL, when TC is greeted by a resident with a smoking torch, he's shocked, and knows things have gone wrong. If burning wood was common in the first series, it wouldn't have seemed out of place to him in the second.

I got the impression that burning wood was a rarity in the first series.

Perhaps this is right. Wood is only burned when people have no recourse to the “earthpower technology” that allows them to use wood to produce heat and light without destroying it. Kind of like using an outhouse is for us: something that only happens on rustic camping trips or at outdoor festivals.
This may imply that only certain people (the lillianrill?) had the lore to produce non-burning torches, and it took some effort so that even the Lords could not simply whomp one up while camping in the woods on a quest.

It is said during the quest to Seareach that the lillianrill rods will decay without a Hirebrand to care gor them, and both Lord Shetra and Lord Hyrim were along for that ride.

Sum sui generis
Vs

Okay, now I'm really hoping SRD some day answers Sergio's query on this issue (though SRD is about 200 questions behind in the GI because he's working on Fatal Revenant). You people are overturning some of my basic assumptions about the people of the Land here--which can be a good thing, if I've been completely wrong all these years. But I have to say, I disagree with the "dumbing down" view of lore in the Land that seems to be taking place here. You're giving me visions of Landfolk as clueless, lore-challenged scavengers, with only a few experts around who knew what the heck they were doing. How is this any better than the Sunbane era, then?