Lord Foul's Power/The Baneful Lore

[Rukh]

This post is, in part, a reply to a reply posted by Steve Hurtloam. he made the simple statment, "What kind of power does Foul have in the Land anyway?" This is something that I have always wondered about. It seems that each time Foul returns, en force, he defines his power in the context of the banes that are at work in the land. In the 1st chronicles he appeared as a penumbral shadow, reeking of the aura of the Illearth Stone. In the second chronicles he appeared as though he were shaped out of the fire of the Sunbane. Granted, he seems to have a native form; in both the 1st and 2nd chronicles he had the shape I discussed in another post; that regal, robed, and bearded form. And, of course, no one could forget the one feature of him that never changes; his eyes. But SRD always seems to be vague about what the nature of Foul's native powers are. We know that he came from before the creation, and so, like the wild magic cannot be defined exclusively in terms of the Earth; this seems, in fact, to be the source of his essential indestructability. So much of the time Foul seems to excercise not power, as we understand it, but the absence of power; he seems to create this void that draws others forward to excercise their powers, and thus fulfills his goals. I am not saying that he doesn't have might of his own, but it seems somehow indefinable, other than saying that it is "wrong". I also have been very intruiged by a little description that may have eluded some of the other readers of the new book. At one point, early on in the story, when Linden sees Foul's eyes, she observed that she had always thought of the eyes as being full of malice, but that this time she saw in them despair!!! I think that we are getting very close to learning something very important about Foul in this story.
As a side note, I also find it interesting that the baneful lores of the Earth seem to be more powerful than the other lores used by the types such as the Lords. From what I undersand, the old Lords, such as Damelon and Loric, and Kevin, were immensely powerful, and yet Stave spoke of the darkening of their hearts because the were not equal to this task of fighting the lore of the Viles and the Demondim.

[wayfriend]

See Just what can Foul do?. I think it was all summed up nicely with my song ...

Who can make a Sunbane,
Sprinkle it with rue?
Cover it with Riders, and a Raver-bee or two.
Lord Foul man, Lord Foul man can,
Lord Foul man can cuz he's stuck in the Earth
and the Earth won't do.
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[CovenantJr]

He made the Sunbane by corrupting Earthpower. The Ravers are not of his creation (though whether they may have been enhanced by him is a discussion in itself). Basically, other than his immense intellect and tendency to corrupt, he has little direct power.

[Caer Bombadil]

I've long thought that the "banes" were basically counterparts to the Earthpower.

You will notice that a major theme throughout the 1st & 2nd Chrons was the necessity that legitimate power, such as the Earthpower, be subject to discipline and Lawful structure, lest it decay into chaos, particularly if and when a finite human or humanlike being attempts to manipulate it. Infelice I remember finally expressed the idea explicitly in TOT after it was strongly implied up until then, but DHBWM (Don't Have Book With Me).

(IIRC a very similar idea was expressed by U.K. LeGuin in A Wizard of Earthsea: the greater the power one wields, the less freedom one has to decide and choose how to act.)

The "Oath of Peace" in the 1st Chrons represented an additional restriction on the New Lords' ability to wield power, and, as it turned out, even to fully comprehend it. They crippled themselves in the name of averting Desecration.

Such disciplined power as Earthpower will be at a disadvantage when pitted in a contest of sheer direct force against any power not subject to such constraints.

My theory is that banes such as the Illearth Stone were basically sources of untrammelled power subject to no law or limitation except their ultimate capacity. As such, they "didn't belong" in the universe of the Land and were ticking time bombs planted by Despite. The Illearth Stone could do anything within its vast capacity to generate eldritch force, like Green Lantern's ring, even down to the color! It could even do a sort of "good" as at Stonemight Woodhelven, but at a high price, as it would erode Law and corrupt the wielder.

As to the Sunbane, it was the product of nature and Earthpower coming unglued, from its essential structure of law that defined it, made possible by Elena's earlier breaking of Law.

So here we have examples of structure/discipline juxtaposed with chaos.

The white gold, being the "keystone" for all of existence, represents in itself simultaneously both the Law and the power to utterly unbind it. Like Dissolves Like, as we learn in freshman chemistry.