Kevin's Watch

The rest of the world is like a shadow cast by Elemesnedene. Foul and the Sunbane are just symptoms. The real disease is something else - he didn't bother to say exactly what. Something about a darkness threatening the heart of the Earth. He wants my ring. He wants the wild magic. So he can attack the disease.

Lord Foul wrote:"Fool! I have no heart. I have only darkness. For that reason, I strive to free myself. [...] For that reason, I do not relent, though my torments are endless. For that reason, you may no longer oppose me.

"No mortal may stand in my path. I have gained white gold, and my triumph is certain."

burgs wrote:In TOT, Covenant relates his examination by Chant to Linden

The rest of the world is like a shadow cast by Elemesnedene. Foul and the Sunbane are just symptoms. The real disease is something else - he didn't bother to say exactly what. Something about a darkness threatening the heart of the Earth. He wants my ring. He wants the wild magic. So he can attack the disease.

In [u]The One Tree[/u] was wrote:The chiming grew louder. Daphin was gazing directly at Linden. Linden had no control over the sound in her head. But she almost gasped with shock when Daphin said, "You are the Sun-Sage."

Before Linden could react or respond, the woman had turned to Covenant. He was staring at her as if his astonishment were a wound. At once, her smile fell. The bells clamored like surprise or fear. Distinctly, she said, "You are not." As the questers gaped at her, she suddenly melted down into the grass and was gone, leaving no trace of her passage on the wide lea.

"And our vision does not lie. Rawedge Rim and Woodenwold do not lie."

"Sun-Sage," she said with a note like sorrow or regret in her voice, "this thing which you name Earthpower is our Würd." Like Daphin, she blurred the sound so that it could have been either Wyrd or Word. "You believe it to be a thing of suzerain might. In sooth, your belief is just. But have you come so far across the Earth without comprehending the helplessness of Power? We are what we are - and what we are not, we can never become. He whom you name the Despiser is a being of another kind entirely. We are effectless against him. That is our Würd."

Nerdanel wrote:I think the Elohim cannot directly fight Lord Foul for the same reason Earthblood cannot. He is on a level that transcends their power.

"And also," she added as an afterthought, "Elemesnedene is our center, as it is the center of the Earth. Beyond its bounds we do not care to go."

Linden wanted to cry out, You're lying! The protest was hot in her, burning to be shouted.

"Earthpower is not the answer to Despite. Or Kevin would never have been driven to the Ritual of Desecration. He was a master of Law and Earthpower, but it wasn't what he needed. He couldn't save the Land that way.

"That's why the Land needs us. Because of the wild magic. It comes from outside the Arch of Time. Like Foul. It can do things Earthpower can't."

burgs66 wrote:What, then, are the Elohim?

burgs wrote:ah.

yes, i know, the most erudite posting of all.

Perhaps this means that the Staff of Law is not as pure as it should have been.

Creator wrote:Yes! And there is another one where they say how the Elohim themselves are threatened if Lord Foul wins!! I think it is fron Findail when Covenant asks him to remove the venome and Findail explodes!!

SRD wrote:"I do not deny that the path we chose was harsh to the ring-wielder. But are you truly unable to see in this matter? You are the Sun-Sage. He is not. Yet the wild magic which is the crux of the Arch of Time is his to wield, not yours. There lies the hand of evil upon the Earth - and also upon the Elohim, who are the Earth's Würd.

"You have said that we serve the evil which you name Lord Foul the Despiser. That is untrue. If you mislike my word, consider other knowledge. Would this Despiser have sent his servant the Raver against you in the storm, when already a servant such as myself stood among you? No. You cannot credit it. Yet I must say to you openly that there is a shadow upon the hearts of the Elohim. It is seen in this, that we were able to conceive no path of salvation which would spare you.

"You have not forgotten that there were those among us who did not wish to spare you.

"Surely it is plain that for us the easiest path lay in the simple wresting from him of the ring. With wild magic could we bid any Despite defiance. Then for beings such as we are it would be no great task to achieve the perfection of the Earth. Yet that we did not do. Some among us feared the arrogance of such power, when a shadow plainly lay upon our hearts. And some saw that the entire price of such an act would fall upon you alone. You would be lost to yourselves, deprived of meaning and value. Perhaps the meaning and value of the Earth would be diminished as well.

"Therefore we chose a harder path - to share with you the burden of redemption and the risk of doom. The ring-wielder we silenced, not to harm him, but to spare the Earth the ill of power without sight. As that silence preserved him from the malice of Kasreyn of the Gyre, so also would it have preserved him from the Despiser's intent at the One Tree. Thus the choice would have fallen to you in the end. His ring you might have taken unto yourself, thereby healing the breach between sight and power. Or perhaps you might have ceded the ring to me, empowering the Elohim to save the Earth after their fashion. Then would we have had no need to fear ourselves, for a power given is altogether different than one wrested away. But whatever your choice, there would have been hope. To accomplish such hope, the price of the ring-wielder's silence - and of my Appointment - appeared to be neither too great nor too ill.

"That you took from us. In the dungeon of the Sandhold, you chose the wrong which you name possession above the responsibility of sight, and the hope we strove to nurture was lost.

"Now I say to you that he must be persuaded to surrender his ring. If he does not, it is certain that he will destroy the Earth."

For a moment, Covenant reeled down the path of Findail's explanation. His balance was gone. To hear his own dread expressed so starkly, like a verdict! But when he turned toward Linden, he saw that she had been hit harder than he. Her face had gone pale. He hands made small, fugitive movements at her sides. Her mouth tried to form a denial, but she had no strength for it. Confronted by the logic of her actions as Findail saw it, she was horrified. Once again, he placed her at the center, at the cusp of responsibility and blame. And Covenant's earlier revelation was still too recent: she had not had time to absorb it. She had claimed fault for herself - but had not understood the extent to which she might be accused.

Ire for her stabilized him. Findail had no right to drop the whole weight of the Earth on her in this way. "It's not that simple," he began. He did not know the true name of his objection. But Linden faced him in mute appeal; and he did not let himself falter. "If Foul planned this all along, why did he go to the trouble?" That was not what he needed to ask. Yet he pursued it, hoping it would lead him to the right place. "Why didn't he just wake up the Worm himself?"

Findail's gaze held Linden. When her wide eyes went back to his, he replied, "This Despiser is not mad. Should he rouse the Worm himself, without the wild magic in his hand, would he not also be consumed in the destruction of the world?"

Covenant shurgged the argument aside, went on searching for the question he needed, the flaw in Findail's rationalizations. "Then why didn't you tell us sooner? Naturally you couldn't condescend to explain anything before she freed me." With all the sarcasm he could muster, he tried to force the Appointed to look at him, release Linden. "After what you people did, you knew she'd never give you my ring if she understood how much you want it. But later - before we got to the One Tree. Why didn't you tell us what kind of danger we were in?"

The Elohim sighed; but still he did not relinquish Linden. "Perhaps in that I erred," he said softly. "Yet I could not turn aside from hope. It was my hope that some access of wisdom or courage would inspire the ring-wielder to step back from the precipice of his intent."

Covenant continued groping. But now he saw that Linden had begun to rally. She shook her head, struggled internally for some way to refute or withstand Findail's accusation. Her mouth tightened: she looked like she was chewing curses. The sight lit a spark of encouragement in him, made him lean forward to aim his next challenge at the Elohim.

"That doesn't justify you," he grated. "You talk about silencing me as if that was the only decent alternative you had. But you know goddamn well it wasn't. For one thing, you could've done something about the venom that makes me so bloody dangerous."

Then Findail did look at Covenant. His yellow gaze snapped upward with a fierceness which jolted Covenant. "We dared not." His quiet passion left trails of fire across Covenant's brain. "The doom of this age lies also upon me, but I dare not. Are we not the Elohim, the Würd of the Earth? Do we not read the truth in the very roots of the Rawedge Rim, in the shape of the mountainsides and in the snows which gild the winter peaks? You mock me at your peril. By means of his venom this Despiser attempts the destruction of the Arch of Time, and that is no little thing. But it pales beside the fate which would befall the Earth and all life upon the Earth, were there no venom within you. You conceive yourself to be a figure of power, but in the scale of worlds you are not. Had this Despiser's lust for the Illearth Stone not betrayed him, enhancing you beyond your mortal stature, you would not have stood against him so much as once. And he is wiser now, with the wisdom of old frustration, which some name madness.

"Lacking the venom, you would be too small to threaten him. If he did not seek you out for his own pleasure, you would wander the world without purpose, powerless against him. And the Sunbane would grow. It would grow, devouring every land and sea in turn until even Elemesnedene itself had fallen, and still it would grow, and there would be no halt to it. Seeing no blame for yourself, you would not surrender your ring. Therefore he would remain trapped within the Arch. But no other stricture would limit his victory. Even we, the Elohim, would in time be reduced to mere playthings for his mirth. While Time endured, the Desecration of the world would not end at all.

"Therefore," the Appointed articulated with careful intensity, "we bless the frustration or madness which inspired the gambit of this venom. Discontented in the prison of the Earth, the Despiser has risked his hope of freedom in the venom which gives you such might. It is our hope also. For now the blame is plain. Since you are blind in other ways, we must pray that guilt will drive you to the surrender which may save us."

finn wrote:However they are their own blind spot and their nature fits more to Autistic or Aspergers than contemplative evil, IMO (possibly Volvo drivers). I think their self interest is focussed on maintaining status quo but events have made them take an active role in an attempt to prevent anything that would have them having to take an even more active role.

“The Elohim are unlike the other peoples of the Earth. We are of the Earth, and the Earth is of us, more quintessentially and absolutely than any other manifestation of life. We are its Würd. There is no other apposite or defining name for us."

“Ring-wielder, we had become less young. And the burden of being Appointed is loathly to us who are not made for death. Therefore we grew less willing to accept exigencies not our own. Now we roam less, not that we will know less – for what the Earth knows we will know wherever we are – but that we will be less taken by the love which leads to death.”

"You we do not know. Perhaps the tale of your people will interest us."

Durris wrote:Why indeed did something so ontologically hot as the Vow escape the Elohim's notice?

Maybe it appeared squarely in the center of the Elohim's blindest spot--purpose (or rather the lack thereof). Where the Elohim have arbitrary excesses of power but not very much purpose to apply it to, the Haruchai were, or started out as, mere mortals, and conceived a purpose so overwhelming that it transcended their mortality.

Maybe the Elohim either literally couldn't see the Vow because sentients of any sort generally see what they expect to see, or didn't want to see the Vow because it would shame their own exalted purposelessness.

Wayfriend wrote:

Nerdanel wrote:I think the Elohim cannot directly fight Lord Foul for the same reason Earthblood cannot. He is on a level that transcends their power.

More specifically, Foul is from outside. He's not a natural component of the Earth and Arch. This is why the Elohim and Earthblood (and Earthpower in general, which is what they both arise from) is effectless.

"The first of these hazards - first, but perhaps not foremost - is the one great limit of the Power. It holds no sway over anything which is not a natural part of the Earth's creation. Thus it is not possible to Command the Despiser to cease his warring. It is not possible to Command his death. He lived before the arch of Time was forged - the Power cannot compel him."

"Sun-Sage," she said with a note like sorrow or regret in her voice, "this thing which you name Earthpower is our Würd." Like Daphin, she blurred the sound so that it could have been either Wyrd or Word. "You believe it to be a thing of suzerain might. In sooth, your belief is just. But have you come so far across the Earth without comprehending the helplessness of Power? We are what we are - and what we are not, we can never become. He whom you name the Despiser is a being of another kind entirely. We are effectless against him. That is our Würd."

Wayfriend wrote:But, then again, after Infelice said those words quoted above, we read:

"And also," she added as an afterthought, "Elemesnedene is our center, as it is the center of the Earth. Beyond its bounds we do not care to go."

Linden wanted to cry out, You're lying! The protest was hot in her, burning to be shouted.

What is the lie? That they are effectless? Or that they do not care to leave Elemesnedene?

Aleksandr wrote:I’ve wondered since the end of WGW if there isn’t something subtly wrong with the Staff. Not evil since Linden would perceive that. But something that deforms the Earthpower or the Law somehow. Berek after all set a guard on the One Tree to prevent the creation of a second Staff and the Elohim seemed to dislike that plan too for unexplained reasons that go beyond Findail’s personal fear of death. Hopefully we’ll get some asnwers in the next book.