Kevin's Watch

What struck me in The Runes of the Earth was how the events fell neatly in place to form a pattern reminiscent of Lord Foul's Bane, which turned out to have gone right according to Lord Foul's plan. In any case, I seriously doubt if the whole book could have passed without our master conniver with his snares within snares getting even a minor (non-accidental) victory after the initial summoning to the Land.

There are several ways by which Lord Foul could have influenced Linden. In no particular order:

1. Traditionally evil ur-viles

Even Linden herself wonders how convenient it was that the ur-viles and the Ramen appeared at the time they did. I think it could be that Lord Foul sent the expendable kresh to show Linden that she could trust the ur-viles and encourage the belief that she was doing something unexpected.

Ur-viles used to be allied with Lord Foul most of their history. We don't know if the surviving ur-viles couldn't have mended the relationship or if these particular ur-viles were caesured from an age before the Sunbane.

According to Anele the ur-viles were highly interested in finding the Staff of Law. Were they planning to guard it and die one by one or give it to humans? All other possibilities are less than good. The ur-viles still use their black lore, so there can't have been a total turn-around in their thinking.

More than once the the ur-viles for a wedge prepared to attack Esmer. Perhaps this is not out of the goodness of their hearts but in case the unpredictable Esmer decides to spoil their plan. The ur-viles are fine with Stave being beaten to the treshold of death.

2. Esmer's reliable treachery

Since Esmer hangs out with the good guys it would be perfectly within his conflicted character to hang with the bad guys too. Does Lord Foul give him suggestions as to which sort of treacheries to attempt? All boons and treacheries are not made equal, and the overall strategic situation complicates things. If Esmer can travel in time like the Elohim it shouldn't be too much for him to travel in space too without going through the intervening places. Remember that Esmer used to give the Ramen information on the terrain. So Esmer the disappear-reappear guy could pop up periodically wherever Lord Foul is at the moment and nobody in the good guy camp would be any wiser.

Esmer wants the white gold ring for himself. It is not known if he could actually wield it. Esmer with his personality problems may well have inherited the merewives' desire for breaking the Arch of Time. If given the ring, Esmer could break the Arch himself if he is able to, or else give the ring to the merewives or Lord Foul.

3. It sounded like Covenant

Linden thought he was getting advice from Covenant but that doesn't mean she was right to trust it. It could be that Lord Foul is simply an excellent actor. He must be able to block or fake his aura, or otherwise the Old Lords would never have believed he was a good guy. Trusting someone who feels all wrong and evil and icky just doesn't cut it even for someone like High Lord Kevin.

More likely, dead Covenant is being commanded to give specific bad advice to Linden to keep her on the right path, just whisper a few words here and there. Being told to believe in oneself can be really deadly advice if one is on the verge of making a colossal mistake.

In Revelstone Linden figures out Anele's terrain pattern and gets the bright idea of using Anele to mislead Lord Foul. What is bad for her, unless Lord Foul is completely underestimating Linden, this is a tactic that he must have known was only the matter of time for the good guys to come up with. Even worse, with his longer experience on Anele Lord Foul could by appearing selectively have himself set up the grass length patterns to mislead the good guys and make them believe they can get a straight line to Thomas Covenant.

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I suspect 1 - 3 theories of the above are correct, but I'm not sure which. Additionally, I think the chances of Jeremiah and Covenant in the end of the book to be really themselves without possession, being in the service of evil, or other traps being involved are about zero. Linden is going to be in for some seriously bad time. She reminds me of the Lords achieving easy miracles before the Sunbane.

I like your theories, and especially agree with the first one. But this:

Nerdanel wrote: It could be that Lord Foul is simply an excellent actor. He must be able to block or fake his aura, or otherwise the Old Lords would never have believed he was a good guy. Trusting someone who feels all wrong and evil and icky just doesn't cut it even for someone like High Lord Kevin.

On the other hand, he DID trust someone whose name was "Lord Foul".

The Somberlain wrote: On the other hand, he DID trust someone whose name was "Lord Foul".

I have always thought "Lord Foul" was later than that and everyone just started referring to him differently when the true nature of his deception hit home. It would be essentially the same thing as with Melkor being systematically called Morgoth after a certain point in Tolkien's Silmarillion. I think they probably originally called Lord Foul something like Lord a-Jeroth with no mention of the seven hells.

I think they probably originally called Lord Foul something like Lord a-Jeroth with no mention of the seven hells.

Agreed.

I'm promoting a theory that Covenant is fragmented (by the ceasures), and that Foul controls some of the fragments.

kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... &start=166
and
kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... &start=142
So on some of your points, I agree.

Consider also: since when can Covenant posess someone? Since when would he? I am suspicious of Anele's posessor.

When thinking along these lines, I always try to remember that, in each Chronicles, Foul's strategy, and Covenant's resolution, are different. Foul tried to win by brute force in the first Chronicles. In the second, he tried to win through deviousness. In the third, he will try to win in a different way. Foul, too, must grow. SRD himself points out that the Final Chronicles will explore more of Foul's internal character than the others. (Chatty Foul! )

I think we are going to be very surprised which things Foul is behind, and which he is not. I think that he is playing a brand new game. One which SRD considers to be very challenging to write about.

Well I'm not sure I think it was TC in Anele. He needed to talk to Linden and he was the only means. The Law of Death is still broken, that gives TC some freedom, but doesn't also means he has to obey the commands of the living? His daughter command the shade of high lord Kevin to confront Foul.

Something like that, it's been many many years since I have read the books. I'll have to dig out my copies and re read them now to make sure all my facts are correct.

Wayfriend: I agree that Covenant would be out of his old character if he talked through Anele. I was going to mention that but forgot... I'm not sure about shattered Covenants. It could be, but on the other hand it looks like pretty big an effect for the caesures to accomplish.

[quote="Lord Foul"]I would delight to see your grovel thus but I have not yet earned your prostration.[/quot]

That particular Chatty Foul quote in Despiser's Guidance among others shows quite a sharp departure from the previous books. Suddenly Lord Foul sounds less willing to fling out gratuitous insults and has gotten better at socializing. I think Foul's new strategy is simply, even though it is not simple in practice, influencing things behind the scenes, using words as an important component. He himself said as much. Now Lord Foul's power cannot be taken out by sending an army to a specific location.

Buckarama: Yes, I was talking about that. Perhaps I should have needed to be more detailed in the first place.

Nerdanel wrote:I'm not sure about shattered Covenants. It could be, but on the other hand it looks like pretty big an effect for the caesures to accomplish.

We already know the Arch is fragmented by the ceasures. And, while I won't say that Covenant equals Arch, there is some affinity. As well as to the wild magic which is breaking it.

Lord Foul wrote:I would delight to see your grovel thus but I have not yet earned your prostration.

Some of the best Foul-speak! Implied: "But I will." That's not socializing, that's threatening.

In other threads, there has been reference to the rainbow 'myth' and also to the similarities of some aspects of mythical pantheons (Olympian, Christianity, Judaism, Norse etc), I'm think in particular of the Rainbow Bridge of Norse legend. Rainbows are arches and TC is, or is in or protects an Arch.

Wayfriend's shattered aspects of TC made me think of shattered light as a prism creates a rainbow.

Wayfriend wrote:

Nerdanel wrote:I'm not sure about shattered Covenants. It could be, but on the other hand it looks like pretty big an effect for the caesures to accomplish.

We already know the Arch is fragmented by the ceasures. And, while I won't say that Covenant equals Arch, there is some affinity. As well as to the wild magic which is breaking it.

I'm not sure we can say the Arch is fragmented. I think the Arch refers to the four-dimensional space-time instead of just the one-dimensional time element of it. The caesures as four-dimensional tubes are making worm-like holes but it will be centuries before the integrity of the Arch is theatened.

It might be possible for the caesures to sever tiny pieces of Covenant if he is connected to the Arch. There would be one mini-Covenant per caesure, but there would still be the one true one corresponding to the unsliced space-time.

Lord Foul wrote:I would delight to see your grovel thus but I have not yet earned your prostration.

Some of the best Foul-speak! Implied: "But I will." That's not socializing, that's threatening.

I think I didn't say my point very well. Lord Foul has gotten a lot smoother with his threats. In a similar situation Covenant got the nickname Groveler and never got rid of it.

If Lord Foul had been more polite in the beginning, there is a good chance he would have gotten Covenant give the ring to him as an exchange for healing (and being blown to bits right after healing). It would have been a very short book. I think even the Despiser has finally realized how much better for his cause it is to have social skills. They allow him to manipulate people so much more effectively.

Nerdanel wrote:I'm not sure we can say the Arch is fragmented.

I can't look up the reference now, but I am sure that in Runes it is mentioned that there are cracks in the metaphorical wall which represents the Arch of Time, and that whole sections have become discontinuous. The Arch is damaged and fragmented now. This is what implies the ceasures. It is not sufficient damage to destroy the Earth - indeed that is centuries away, as I remember it worded. But the fragmentation has begun. [edit to add]Imagine a concrete foundation which is cracked and split; it can still hold up the house if the damage doesn't get worse, but it's split into pieces nonetheless, and the water is going to come in eventually.[/edit]

I thought the discontinuity referred to the edges of the "wormholes". A caesure appears in the spatial 3-D space as a roughly spherical object of limited size. It can be in all times at once simply by being infinitely long in the time-dimension, but if it was also in all places at once, it would be as big as the universe, which is clearly not the case. Rather I think we could say a caesure has the potential to be in all places at one time, since it moves around apparently randomly if not guided, but it will actually be in just one.

For example, if Linden travels by a caesure near Anele's cave, the time in that small location will be severed, but it shouldn't affect things in Revelstone because the Arch of Time appears capable of recovering from minor butterfly effects.

At least I hope it's that way since I think internal consistency is important. I'm someone who was bothered by the explanation for The Gap's faster-than-light travel because an unvoiced assumption behind it that there is a universal frame of reference to measure speeds against. The lack of an universal frame of reference was one of the most important things about Einstein's Relativity Theory as opposed to Newton's ideas and at the very least it merits a pseudo-science debunking instead of quiet ignoring.

Wayfriend wrote:

Nerdanel wrote:I'm not sure we can say the Arch is fragmented.

I can't look up the reference now, but I am sure that in Runes it is mentioned that there are cracks in the metaphorical wall which represents the Arch of Time, and that whole sections have become discontinuous.

Here is the reference.

In [u]The Runes of the Earth[/u] was wrote:The raw damaged rocks before her appeared to be chunks of time, discrete instances of the substance which should have made existence possible; woven the world whole. They were badly battered, torn from their natural union with each other by violence or lunacy. Yet they were intact in themselves; and each of them still implied its place in the former cliff.

Once they had formed a buttress against the sea, an assertion of structure and endurance in the teeth of the surging waves. Although they had been shattered, they retained their essential identity, their obdurate granite selves.

The Arch of Time is not in good shape. It's holding together, but it is not seamless and whole.

Wayfriend wrote:

In [u]The Runes of the Earth[/u] was wrote:The raw damaged rocks before her appeared to be chunks of time, discrete instances of the substance which should have made existence possible; woven the world whole. They were badly battered, torn from their natural union with each other by violence or lunacy. Yet they were intact in themselves; and each of them still implied its place in the former cliff.

Once they had formed a buttress against the sea, an assertion of structure and endurance in the teeth of the surging waves. Although they had been shattered, they retained their essential identity, their obdurate granite selves.

The Arch of Time is not in good shape. It's holding together, but it is not seamless and whole.

When I read the passage I interpreted it in the way that Linden isn't seeing the entire spacetime but just a small, particularly battered segment of it, which is only natural to be in a particularly bad shape due to Joan's presence. I think the way Arch of Time is not in good shape is that it like a worm-eaten fruit, afflicted with a fantasy equivalent to science fictional wormholes, and it would take centuries before there was more wormhole than normal spacetime.

If Lord Foul had been more polite in the beginning, there is a good chance he would have gotten Covenant give the ring to him as an exchange for healing (and being blown to bits right after healing). It would have been a very short book. I think even the Despiser has finally realized how much better for his cause it is to have social skills. They allow him to manipulate people so much more effectively.

Foul had social skills - he employed them with the Old Lords.

I think that Foul, right now, is sitting on the sidelines watching and waiting for the right opportunity to strike. I get the feeling that he's feeling a bit "insecure" about his position, or his inability to have a position, in this current conflict.

I agree that Foul is sitting on the sidelines, by his own admission. But I feel that he is as confident as ever that the outcome will be as he desires.

I also feel that that he is sitting on the sidelines because he is confident in the outcome. That's the impression I got while reading Runes, anyway.

Yes, that is a possible natural progression. First he tried brute force. Next he tried insideous subterfuge. Now he tries ... a hands-off approach, I guess you could call it.

But let's categorize things we know he is doing:
- he's using a Raver to torment Joan
- he's using Roger to get Linden summoned to the Land
- he's using Jeremiah to goad Linden into ... something.
- he's speaking through Anele to manipulate Linden into ... something.

So he's not completely inculpable either. It's more like, there's a fine stew already cooking, and he's spicing it up so that the result will be to his taste.

(Oh god ... I just had a horrible idea that I need to think about.)

Lord Foul is also manipulating other people, but we can count on learning about it after the fact, as is the SRD way.

Anele wrote:"But it is not tricked. It knows where Anele is. It pursues him. If it takes him --

I think Esmer is a prime candidate here. When Linden met Anele on the top of Kevin's Watch, Anele said he had been chased there by an it which turned out to be a caesure. Since caesures do not normally chase people, it must have been guided to make Anele be in the right place at the right time. The only person known to be able to guide caesures (in addition to the Demondim) is Esmer. (There is a good chance Lord Foul could have done it too, but he was otherwise occupied, and the thing looks like something he'd delegate anyway.) I cannot think of a nice motivation for Esmer to spend days hounding an old man. It must be terrible to be chased by a caesure. The things move slowly but never need any rest.

I think Anele was the initial lead meant to guide Linden to the path of regaining the Staff of Law, a course of action which I think can hardly be called "something unexpected" considering that both the First and Second Chronicles turned into questing for the Staff halfway into the first book, just like the Last Chronicles does.

I for one hope that we never see another quest for the Staff. I'm a bit tired of that. Thankfully, it seems we won't.

They've got to quest for something, I would think.
Find me.
Remember that I am dead.