Interesting response by SRD...

[wayfriend]

So, are you saying that when Elena used the Power of Command she did the equivalent of asking someone else to overturn the Law of Death? I disagree with your Supreme Court analogy.

Ah, all analogies are bad if you take them to far.

My only point is that, Elena did not suspend the Law of Death (just for Kevin), she "broke" the Law of Death, literally, in the sense that the Law of Death doesn't work well anymore.

This is a consistent behavior in Donaldson's world-building.

I think this is the point I'm making (and maybe no one else is really interested in my point , but if it isn't 'unalterable', then what is the big deal? Why are we supposed to be so concerned about Laws that aren't really Laws? Why would the people of the Land devote themselves to lives of service to these 'suggestions'?

On the other hand, if Law didn't need any support, why would anyone devote themselves to serve it? (Who devotes their lives to serving the Law of Gravity?)

If Laws really are what SRD has lead us (or at least 'me') to believe, then Earthpower should never have been able to give Elena the ability to break any laws (since wild magic and law are what provides the framework for Earthpower in the first place).

I'm pretty sure that Donaldson intended exactly that - that Earthpower could be used to damage the Law, even the Earth. All created and living things must have the ability for self-destruction built into them to be alive.

You're a Creator; and you want to create a world that will be an organic whole, a living, breathing entity, rather than a mere mechanical extrapolation of your own personality and preferences. So how do you accomplish that goal? The obvious answer is: give the inhabitants of your world--or perhaps even the world itself--free will. Allow them to use or misuse as they see fit whatever your world happens to contain. Therefore they must be equally capable of both preserving and destroying your creation. QED.

When you look at it that way, the fact that the powers in the Land can be used to break the Laws which preserve the Land is sort of a "Duh." That *has* to be true. Otherwise your world is nothing more than an exercise in ego, a piece of machinery which exists solely to glorify you.
(07/13/2004)

Why? Didn't their creation occur inside the Earth? Unless they were created outside the Earth and then jammed in by some external force, they should be bound by the same laws of the Earth as everyone else.

This is what I am saying. They are bound by the Law. However, they aren't apt to it. There were created in the Earth, but they were created by lore.

I don't have a copy of the book. I listened on CD, so I can't go back and confirm this without re-listening to hours and hours to find the right spot, but I seem to recall this big discussion in Runes about how the ur-viles and Waynhim live outside Law. Not that they aren't in 'tune' with it, but they are outside it. If I remember wrong, my bad. Can someone with a book confirm or deny this for me?

Thus the Waynhim are not creatures of law. They are entirely alien in the world.

You have to admit that "entirely alien in the world" cannot mean that they came from outside. Rather, it means that they were not created 'naturally', but by lore. Similarly, "not creatures of law" doesn't mean that they are immune to the Earth's Law; rather, that they don't partake of it the way natural creatures do. They can't "see" it.

And for another, the ur-viles and Waynhim stand outside the governing forms of Law in part because they literally *don't* "see".
(03/16/2005)

[oconnellc]

My only point is that, Elena did not suspend the Law of Death (just for Kevin), she "broke" the Law of Death, literally, in the sense that the Law of Death doesn't work well anymore.

Actually, that appears to be the case. Time certainly seems to be just a little bit broken. Since the Law of Life was broken, I would fully expect to see Kevin, Elena, Mhoram etc. all walking around trying to fix the Earth. Where are they? You could say that Mhoram wouldn't do something that breaks Law, but since the Law of Life was broken, its gone. He is isn't breaking anything. And I wouldn't say that breaking the Law is such a bad thing. Hollien did it. That wasn't so bad. And even if it was, Elena is loony enough not to mind. At least she and Lena should be out messing with the Lurker or feeding Rhanyhyn or something.

Since we haven't run across them yet, I assume that the Laws weren't broken in the sense you describe above. I don't see any reason not to...

On the other hand, if Law didn't need any support, why would anyone devote themselves to serve it? (Who devotes their lives to serving the Law of Gravity?)

We all might, if we could really 'see' just how great the Law was. It lets us balance small things on top of large things. If we were really clever, we could use it to balance large things on top of small things. And, it is what makes some things float (boats float on water, hot air ballons float in cold air). Gravity lets us do some pretty cool stuff. And, there are evil people out there who want to use Gravity to do some bad stuff, like cause avalanches and kill people etc. etc. Gravity needs us to keep those people from using it the wrong way. But even if we fail, and they do use Gravity to do some bad things, Gravity is still there. Now that is a Law I can get behind. It needs me to keep it from being misused, and I feel good about that.

I'm pretty sure that Donaldson intended exactly that - that Earthpower could be used to damage the Law, even the Earth. All created and living things must have the ability for self-destruction built into them to be alive.

Really? Why? I would argue that created and living things must have the ability for self-determination (i.e. free will) to be alive.

You're a Creator; and you want to create a world that will be an organic whole, a living, breathing entity, rather than a mere mechanical extrapolation of your own personality and preferences. So how do you accomplish that goal? The obvious answer is: give the inhabitants of your world--or perhaps even the world itself--free will. Allow them to use or misuse as they see fit whatever your world happens to contain. Therefore they must be equally capable of both preserving and destroying your creation. QED.

When you look at it that way, the fact that the powers in the Land can be used to break the Laws which preserve the Land is sort of a "Duh." That *has* to be true. Otherwise your world is nothing more than an exercise in ego, a piece of machinery which exists solely to glorify you.
(07/13/2004)

I disagree (I admit that sounds goofy. Its 'his' world, he can make any assertion that he wants. But some assertions either make me believe his world, or make me feel like I'm getting cheated). I can use Gravity for Good or Evil, but I can't make Gravity go away. If I could, why create Gravity in the first place. If you Create a world, don't you want it to at least 'work'? If the probability of Gravity stopping based on some aspect of Gravity itself is greater than zero, it is only a matter of time before Gravity stops. That is the definition of probability. I can get a sense of satisfaction by seeing that Gravity is used for Good and not for Evil, but how much satisfaction am I going to get out of just keeping Gravity together for my lifetime so that it can fail during my childrens lifetime?

Thus the Waynhim are not creatures of law. They are entirely alien in the world.

You have to admit that "entirely alien in the world" cannot mean that they came from outside. Rather, it means that they were not created 'naturally', but by lore. Similarly, "not creatures of law" doesn't mean that they are immune to the Earth's Law; rather, that they don't partake of it the way natural creatures do. They can't "see" it.

Why is created by lore not natural? I don't get the assertion that lore is not natural. When the earth was being created, the Creator and Foul both put a bunch of stuff into the earth. After creation was finished, the Arch prevented anything new from coming in. All ingredients in that goulash are natural (except what Covenant and Linden brought with them). If a stonedowner took a grass seed, cut it open, cut open a corn seed and jammed the grass seed contents into it and buried the whole business in a small hole and crossed his fingers, would what came out somehow not be natural? If I follow the road that I think you are laying out in front of me, it could be? Hard to tell for sure ahead of time, I think. And if the stonedowner ate whatever grew, he might break the law of indigestion by doing so.

I'm not trying to mock you here, but I think we are being fed a lot of not so consistent stuff, and just being asked to look the other way. I wouldn't mind, but this not so consistent stuff is a hugely important part of the story.

[wayfriend]

I cannot respond to most of this, cause I'd only be repeating myself. And I'm not trying to change your convictions anyway - you're entitled to any that you think work for you.

Since the Law of Life was broken, I would fully expect to see Kevin, Elena, Mhoram etc. all walking around trying to fix the Earth. Where are they?

Well, just because the door has been opened doesn't mean that everyone has walked through it. There is some evidence that the Dead need to be summoned (Kevin, Elena, the attack on Revelstone, the barrow of the Cavewights). In other cases, they seem to appear only out of great need (Kevin, Mhoram, Saltheart, Atiaran, Trell, Covenent). Otherwise, they pretty much keep to themselves. I would speculate that this has a lot to do with the knowledge that they have, which they try to avoid imparting to the living.

"The Dead--being dead and all--exist on a different plane of knowledge than the living ... Covenant's Dead don't reveal everything they know because, like the Old Lords, they understand the dangers of unearned knowledge. But they clearly have access to some pretty wide bodies of knowledge." (GI 10/21/2004)

Since we haven't run across them yet,

We haven't? I'm sure we did. It's just not Dawn of the Dead -- which you seem to demand as proof that the Law is broken.

I would argue that created and living things must have the ability for self-determination (i.e. free will) to be alive.

Donaldson would probably agree with you. Except he goes so far as to say free-will includes the ability to destroy yourself, and the world, if you choose. (I've already quoted the appropriate ... er ... quote, above.)

Which, in the end, is where Service to the Earth comes from. It's a devotion to making those free choices which serve rather than harm the Earth, to learning enough to keep from harming it through error, and self-discipline to keep from harming it in the throws of passion.

Why is created by lore not natural?

That's a great question. I don't know why ... I only know that Donaldson says that it is so for his Earth. Perhaps the Creator (like the J-D God, or Tolkien's Iluvatar) reserves the creation of people to himself. Perhaps using lore to create beings harms the Earth in some way. (Consider that the beings who created the ur-viles and waynhim were evil.) Perhaps they are unnatural because they were created without that sense of 'belonging in the World' which humans have and which they notably lack.

I'm not trying to mock you here, but I think we are being fed a lot of not so consistent stuff, and just being asked to look the other way. I wouldn't mind, but this not so consistent stuff is a hugely important part of the story.

Well, in the end, it's only a story. It's not real. It's going to be inconsistent if you drill down deep enough. Even Donaldson admits that he only builds enough of his world to tell the story he wants to tell. The rest needs to be left to the willing suspension of disbelief.

That being said, it's illuminating to look deep enough into his writing; often apparent inconsistencies become apparent with a deeper, or different, way of looking at it.

Donald's Laws are not Laws of Physics. They are not Laws of a Sovereign Nation. They are not Laws of a Civil Society. They are something else. They are something that can only happen in a Fantasy. They are mystical explanations of how the world works, like dryads who live in trees and gods who grant rain, except because it is Fantasy they granted 'reality' in the story. By author fiat. Since they can only happen in Fantasy, there is no good 'real world' analogy that holds up in the end.

Maybe someone else can respond ...

[variol son]

Ummm, I could, but I'm just not that worried.

The Land, and the rest of the world that exists within the Arch of Time, is a fictional construct that SRD uses to tell the story of Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery and their personal journeys. As such, the Laws of the created world serve no other purpose but to further the story of Covenant and Linden.

Now SRD is very careful about internal consistancy when it comes to what has been said about a particular subject or person in a previous book, or a previous part of the same book.

However, I don't think he is worried about consistancy in a but how would that work in real life sense because the fact of the matter is this is a fictional fantasy world that would not work in real life, no matter how internally consistant or scientifically correct it is.

Sorry if that comes across a little short, it isn't supposed to. I just get the feeling that the two of you are passing the same arguments/theories back and forth to know avail.

Sum sui generis
Vs

[lurch]

..Wayfriend has scratched on it..let me take it a step further. Donaldson introduces,,or surfaces to a larger degree,,the "mystery" and the "solving of the mystery" concept in the 2nd Chrons,. The Mirror of Her Dreams continues the use and we see it in the Gap series as well,,who is behind those suicide bombers?,,who is manipulating the mirrors,,etc

,,So in the fantasy is also mysteries that have to be solved,,and as any good mystery writer does,,there are clues dropped along the line and there are misdirections aplenty..The intro of the Elohim ,,is pure mystery,,etheral of neither sex, all knowing but only act when highly concerned..etc..etc..They have their weird and keep it to themselves(mystery huh)...As wayfreind suggests,,basing a point of view on smoke screen, misdirection, hidden agenda and lies created by mysterious etheral being, who is ina quandry over to be sacrificed for the good of All or sneaky enuf to dodge the bullet for self preservation..well,,theres alot there to indicate perhaps a more solid and secure foundation for a perspective ought to be sought. The Elohim are the most non real characters Donaldson created in the TC chrons...They are mystery personified. And,,as with all "mystery personified" things in life..it all comes down to what you choose to believe,,not know mind you( no mystery with that),,but, what you choose to believe..Now we;re back to wf's suspension of disbelief...Anyway,,i still see the elohim to this day as shady characters in a crime story. They tend to speak out of both sides of their mouth and thats why I wouldn't put to much stock into what Findail says or even does. Nothing is on the surface with characters that evaporate.,,,MEL

[oconnellc]

OK. I guess I lose

I know that it all boils down to "This is a book of Fantasy. Anything can happen here and the author can do what he wants". I'll buy that. I still enjoyed the story, and I'll probably read/listen to the rest of the books in the series (although I have learned from starting books by George RR Martin that from now on, I'm going to wait until a series is finished until I start it. I can't stand waiting 9 years to see how the story ends).

However, I guess I'm a little disappointed in the way it looks like the Earth was 'built'. It seems kind of arbitrary that ur-viles are outside of law. Couldn't they be weird and different from people without being outside of law? And the reason seems a bit weak (they experience law different from the way people do. Huh? Somehow the fact that they can't see is important! Huh? What does that mean? Sounds profound, though.). I'd be a little more willing to suspend my disbelief if the world were a little more consistent. The law of death gets broken and it is smashed to bits. But the law of time can be broken a little at a time? Huh? We know that the dead can now interact with the living without being summoned (somehow Foamfollower got Vain from the ur-viles. Dead people were everywhere in Andelain. Wait, don't say that Andelain was special because it was the last bastion of law. That should mean it is the last place dead people should be. The Dead should have been everywhere else. Oh yeah, bastions of law are the best place to break old laws. This is a fantasy, remember?). Yet there aren't any dead walking around in the earth. Just because we haven't seen them, I would assume that the Haruchai would have come across a few. Sure, the intelligent, responsible dead know that things are best if they just stay dead. But aren't there a few 'crazy dead' out there willing to do anything? I mean, we know Elena is nuts, and so was Lena. Just about 12,000 years passed between first and last chronicles. That is a lot of time and a lot of crazy people who would just be begging for a chance to come back and see the wraiths in Andelain and maybe spy on their old girlfriend to see who she's messing around with behind the graveling pot.

Alright. I admitted I lose, and I'll stop now. Besides, if I don't stop now, I'll get started on why technology wasn't developed sometime in the last 3500 years... I mean, the Haruchai don't like Earthpower. That doesn't mean they have a problem with people spinning coils of wire around magnetic rock, does it?

[variol son]

Oh crap.

oconnellc, you don't loose. I think your argument is actually quite valid. I just never saw things that way, at least where SRD's work was concerned. He isn't overly concerned about that sort of things, so neither am I. Conversely, authors that are I generally tend to pick to bits.

Sorry if have deflated you at all. It wasn't my intention.

[CovenantJr]

My response to this issue, after seeing it debated back and forth, would be "SRD is human". I agree he has authorial licence to do whatever he likes, but also he's fallible. He makes mistakes, and even if he didn't, there's no way he can make every reader see things his way.

[Sigilind]

Ok, everything that is created is created in seperate species, right? The same basic rules apply to every species, such as life and death, ok? But would each specials have their own laws on what they can and cannot do? People can run on two legs, and weild earthpower. But the Elohim may have different laws that say they can change shape, and this changing of shape means they can travel great distances in a short space of time. The Elohim still die, so they are still following the basic laws but they have their own different ones which are unique to their species. Would this not also explain why Esmer can do some odd things as he is a mixture of two psecies and his laws must be a strange mixture of both.

Waynhim and ur-viles cannot physically see, which means they have to perceive the world around them differently, which could be why the laws are different for them.

[Warmark]

The Elohim still die

Do they?
Couldnt the presence of the elohim still be felt in the colosuss?
Isnt the new Staff alive because Findail and Vain are still within it?

[oconnellc]

Waynhim and ur-viles cannot physically see, which means they have to perceive the world around them differently, which could be why the laws are different for them.

I'll never get that one. If Laws are external to you, then why would a law care if you can see or not? And if they are internal to you, what kind of law is that? Did Hile Troy have different laws than Mhoram? It wasn't like Troy was blinded, he could never see. He was born without sight organs. If he had been killed and someone used Power of Command to bring him back, would the Law of Death have been broken?

[wayfriend]

Waynhim and ur-viles cannot physically see, which means they have to perceive the world around them differently, which could be why the laws are different for them.

I'll never get that one.

As I said, I don't think these things mean that the Waynhim and ur-viles operate without the Law restricting their actions. As you yourself seem to realize, the implications don't make sense. So use that as supporting evidence for a hypothesis that it is indeed not so.

Their eyelessness is a metaphor, and only a metaphor, for their lack of attunement to the Law. This is the essence of SRDs words in the GI - it is under the topic of 'sight as metaphor'. They don't see Law, in a metaphoric sense; more prosaicly, they have difficulty understanding and using the lore of Law where the Lords are much more able. (Hile Troy's sightlessness is a metaphor for something else entirely, hence, no implications about Law can be made.)

The Elohim are another matter. They are explicitly designed by the author to operate without the Law restricting their actions. (Until something like Vain comes along and changes the equation; that is where their hate for Vain comes from.)

[Edelaith]

Stephen Donaldson did mention the Caesures existed before the breaking of the Law of Life, but that they were not noticed, and had little effect.
Yet the Demondim reached back to a time before the breaking of the Law of Death - when the fundamental Law of the world was at it's strongest - to use the power of the Illearth Stone.
I wonder about that. Because obviously the Caesures can have significant effect prior to the breaking of the Law of Life, if the Demondim are drawing power from the Illearth Stone. The Illearth Stone (back then) is certainly taking notice of the Caesures.

This business of drawing power from the past by the Demondim sets a dangerous precedent, in my opinion.

[ur-bane]

A precedent shared by Linden, having gone into the past to retrieve the SoL.

[SleeplessOne]

I found this whole thread to be very interesting, oconnellc raised some great questions which wayfriend and co. responded to with great insight into the workings of SRD's Land

However, I guess I'm a little disappointed in the way it looks like the Earth was 'built'. It seems kind of arbitrary that ur-viles are outside of law. Couldn't they be weird and different from people without being outside of law? And the reason seems a bit weak (they experience law different from the way people do. Huh? Somehow the fact that they can't see is important! Huh? What does that mean? Sounds profound, though.).

with regard to Ur-Viles; whilst they are indeed a product of the Land, they are 'made' in a way that the Laws of the Land deem 'unnatural' - much like christians and catholics reviling Science for attempting to 'play God' by cloning human beings, the creation of ur-viles and waynhim through artificial 'spawning' contravenes the Lands Laws (put in place by the Creator himself) - whilst it *can* be done, it's not the natural order of things as they're 'meant' to be ..

[Ur Dead]

I think SRD can just attrib all the inconsistancies to Lord Foul meddling when the creator made the world.

I can't remember which book(s) it was , but a story was told about how Lord Foul place Banes within the world. This was the marring that cause the creator to struggle with Foul and cast him into the world. Then using the Arch to seal him in. The Illearth stone was one and the others weren't mentioned.

Other books refer to things or powers not yet revealed. Maybe it was Findail that mention something. Can't quite remember.

But I do find SRD world is alot more orderly than Tolkien's world. (But I like those books also)

[Usivius]

I nearly got a headache reading this thread.. Yah, there are some great thoughts, but in my mind the whole thing is very simple... As SRD said about free will in the Land... and Foul's presence ... there are ample opportunities for man to create things which end up outside established 'law'... Heck, wasn't it Elena drinking the pure earthblood (or something like that when finding that hidden ward...) that caused the breaking of the Law of Death?... It was using a very pawerful tool of the land in a bad way that caused this (similar to let's say, burining all the coal in the entire world at once and causing utter destruction to our air...)

It's a very fasinating topic, but, to my simple mind, a very simple, and wonderful set-up SRD has created for these Last books...

I'M GOING NUTS! I JUST WANT THE DAMN BOOKS NOW!


(okcalmdown everything is fine .... whew...)

[Dagonet]

Heya all,

I've been gone from the site for a long while, and wandered back after revisiting Runes of the Earth a bit after dinner. I know the thread has wandered a bit afield from oconnellc's original question, but I wanted to share some personal thoughts on Law, Earthpower, etc. . .

IMHO, Law (or, rather, the collection of various Laws) forms the basic structure within which the Land exists. Law sets up and orders all the natural processes which underlie the world: the seasons, the life-cycles of animals (and even inanimate entities such as mountains), and other natural phenomena. It defines what is possible, and serves as a buffer against attempts at, well, misuse. For example, there's mention in Illearth War about a Law which protects the sea (presumably regulating the tides, allowing boats to float, and preventing rains of fish over Revelstone), and that it would have been broken if Kinslaughterer had managed to force the ocean to smash The Grieve. I'll let wiser minds than mine talk about the Laws of Death and Life (the difference between which I never fully understood), although it occurs to me to wonder how the Demondim could raise/inhabit the bodies of the dead when Sheol was supposedly able to do it during the siege of Revelstone only because the Law of Death had been broken. I should note that Law appears to be essentially static; it doesn't actively defend itself, and doesn't repair itself on its own if something gets broken. Vain, who consists of almost pure structure and can almost be described as being "programmed" to achive his goals to the exclusion of everything else, is an excellent "avatar" of Law.

If Law is, well, Law, then Earthpower would be Chaos. Or at least possibility. But the two are complementary rather than opposing. If Law provides the framework for what can and cannot be done, then Earthpower is the force which makes those possibilities real. But Earthpower is still, for the most part, subject to the restrictions imposed by Law. The Elohim (quintessential Earthpower) can do *anything*, except, of course, for the things they can't do.

Now, if you raise Chaos to its purest, most perfect level, you get wild magic, a force which encompasses all possibilities. It can heal damaged capillaries or crack the universe like an eggshell, pacify a sandgorgon or allow travel through time. It exists outside of Law, so in theory it can break Laws without Breaking them, causing temporal disruptions like the caesures without actually shattering the Arch. <shrug> It can do anything, and its only limitations are the strength of its wielder and the fact that it ties directly to the Arch of Time.

This leaves us with the Despiser, who is described as the opposite of Wild Magic. Which would make him. . . pure Order, or a force which is orders of magnitude more pure, more Lawful, than Law. That's why the home be builds for himself is utterly, absolutely flawless. That's why he uses a giant gemstone for a power-focus. And that's why he hates everything and everyone that can't match his standards of perfection and purity. Heck, I've always assumed that Foul hated the Creator's building-project for the simple reason that it wasn't *good* enough.

Ur-viles and Waynhim. . . The fact that they exist partially outside of Law doesn't invalidate the Law, it just means that they are exempt from some of the restrictions (like eating, aging, etc.) to which everybody else is subject. And remember that they are subordinate to the Law (indeed corroded by direct contact with it), and thus not in a position to cause any real damage.

I hope the above makes at least some sense; I claim no special insight, but this is the way I've always viewed this particular subject.

Cheers,

Dagonet

[wayfriend]

Good post, Dagonet. I agree with it for the most part, except I would consider Earthpower to be energy rather than chaos. However, energy without Law would indeed be Chaos, so for the most part you are correct.

But Foul ... Time is not Foul's normal condition. It is alien to him. Earth is a prison for him partly because it forces him to experience time sequentially, to be bounded by the dictates of cause and effect. Time imprisons him as much as the Arch does.

[DukkhaWaynhim]

Wow. Based on this description, Foul is really a personification of OCD.


dw