Kevin's Watch

In TIW Tull brings a tale about the Giants to Hile Troy and Mhoram at Kevins Watch. His grief at the tale he has to tell makes itself plain and this display of emotion, totally alien to anything he has seen from the Bloodguard before, shocks Troy. He thinks it is because Tull is fairly new to the Vow, having replaced a Bloodguard who died recently.
However, in TWL, when Covenant meets the Haruchai, they have the same dispassionate, unemotional characteristics that the seasoned Bloodguard of before have.
It seems that the Haruchai just have these traits naturally, probably partly due to the disdain for weakness amongst themselves and partly because they tend to only use speech amongst non-Haruchai, they themselves speak mentally to each other.
So was this a slip from SRD or did the later Haruchai simply think not showing emotion was something the Bloodguard developed and they though was a good idea?

A lack of outward emotion seems to be a common trait among the Haruchai.

That and the fact the I'm guessing there is a limit that was crossed with Tull, in the telling of the Giant tale --- its was 'overload' for his emotions. He was unable to supress them...

I agree Tull's actions were just a result of being overwhelmed.

If you want further insight into the mind of the Haruchai, I suggest reading "Gilden-Fire" which is a few pages cut from TIW by Donaldson.
You can find "Gilden-Fire" in the new release of "Daughters of Regal" short story collection.

SRD goes into the mind of Korik and it's very cool to see how they think and reason.

Also keep in mind the kinship the Bloodguard had with the Unhomed. It was similar to the deep affinity that they shared with the Ranyhyn: both Giants and Ranyhyn were among the wonders of the Land that had originally moved the Haruchai to pledge the Vow. In the eyes of the Haruchai (even more so than in the eyes of the common people of the Land), both Giants and Ranyhyn must have particularly shone as symbols of incorruptible integrity and fealty. So the downfall of the Unhomed would have been especially traumatic for the Bloodguard--in order to shake their stoicism, it takes something as unimaginably bad as the realization that even Giants can be broken in spirit and corrupted.

Guess I never really replied to the question at hand: why did Tull break his composure while the other Bloodguard did not? Maybe it's just an individual thing. Maybe Tull's emotional fault lines just happened to be closer to the surface than in most of his brethren. All Haruchai may not necessarily be the same inside, even though most of the time they do seem like clones of each other. All I know is that Tull's moment of anguish sharpened the drama of the scene. I'm not quite ready to call it a slip on SRD's part.

Agree with MM that it wasn't a slip. Afterall, why would it be remarked upon (or noticed anyway) by his listeners unless it was ourely deliberate.

I think that MM has a good point where he mentions the symbols that the Giants were to the Haruchai.

To see them "overthrown" must have been devastating.

--A

Thanks all! I have read Gilden GFre but it was about 10 years ago so I only remember sketchy details.

I just found it odd that the reasoning Troy gave for Tull's emotion was that he was a 'new' Bloodguard, suggesting that the other Haruchai weren't supressing their emotions in the same way as the Bloodguard, but we know that this isn't the case from later books.

Of course as you all seem to agree, it may just be that he tale of the Giants affected them all deeply and Tull more than others, which Troy wouldn't necessarily grasp. Of course it is also mentioned that Tull is very young which may also explain his reactions.

Yes, a combination of those factors, youth and inexperience, and the fall of the Giants, would seem to make the most sense.

--A

Runes has a passage which talks about matters relating to this. It's in Spent Enmity. Basically, the earlier posters have hit the proverbial nail on the head.

OOps guess Id better re-read Runes again then!

As for Hile Troy's remark, I would guess he simply made a false assumption... he probably started from the idea that a young soldier, possibly not yet tested in times of war, is much more prone to emotional outbursts than a veteran soldier who has already seen the horrors of war; he simply applied this concept to the Haruchai, believing that it would work the same way.

And all this time, I just thought SRD was a fan of Star Trek, Mr. Spock and the Vulcans. There are many similarities.

Matrixman:

why did Tull break his composure while the other Bloodguard did not? Maybe it's just an individual thing. Maybe Tull's emotional fault lines just happened to be closer to the surface than in most of his brethren. All Haruchai may not necessarily be the same inside, even though most of the time they do seem like clones of each other. All I know is that Tull's moment of anguish sharpened the drama of the scene. I'm not quite ready to call it a slip on SRD's part.

Me neither. It did actually say in TIW that Tull was inexperienced, 'a Haruchai no older than Troy himself' which explains well enough to me why he lost it for a moment whereas the other Bloodguard didn't.

As for the Haruchai in the later chronicles, yes, they would have been nowhere near as old or experienced as their Bloodguard ancestors, but they would still presumably be part of the Haruchai fighting elite, the ones selected among their race to venture into the Land. Therefore they would have naturally tended to share traits with the Bloodguard. And, let's not forget that Brinn and Cail showed weakness and corruptability in their own way when they succumber to the merewives. And they had undertaken quite a solemn Vow of their own, to protect Linden & Covenant...

In The One Tree, after the encounter with the merewives, Brinn gives the reason why the Haruchai succumbed to the merewives...it did kinda show that under all that stoicism they were a passionate people...

I think what truly made Tull break was that the Giants themselves broke. Of normal humans the Bloodgaurd, and haruchai in general, had no expectations of humans to stay strong, pure, etc.. whatever it is that made the haruchai feel higher and mightier as TC put it. But the Giants and Ranahyn, THEY the haruchai felt WERE pure and strong so for the Giants to break and give up living when Kinslaughterer came was too much for Tull to handle.



*this post makes sense in my head, and i dont know if i conveyed it properly*

Isn't "Haruchai" the name of Saruman's elite Orcs in Lord of the Rings?

Thats Uruk-kia.