On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

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Da'Shar
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On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

Post by Not a ID »

When the 10th sui'kun was born(Keritanima's son), Tarrin starts worrying about his having been replaced. Which is odd, considering he was told back in the Firestaff series that there were going to be 10 sui'kun after all was said and done. 7 to maintain the weave, and 3 "as spares" in himself, Spyder, and Jasana.

Now granted, a little later it is mentioned in a discussion between some of the Gods that one of them had "tampered" with his mind a little bit, which is why I didn't immediately ask about it upon noticing that. However, after the end of the Pyrosia story-arc, that particular matter(that there were always supposed to be 10) never came up, even though Tarrin continued to keep fixating on his having been replaced(because there were 10 sui'kun on/from Sennadar) throughout much of the rest of the series.
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Re: On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

Post by Rakshasa claw »

Not sure I see a question in there... but it was originally planned to be 9 or 10 actually. At least that's what I recall. And to be fair, up until he reveals to Ayise his plan to free himself of the corruption of the Firestaff he was going to be expendable... so the 10th really was actually intended as his replacement. Note that she (Ayise) makes it quite clear to Niami that Tarrin will not be permitted to return to Sennadar, not any of the others that go to Pyrosia... no. Just Tarrin. She also was going to destroy him when he touched the All upon his return to Sennadar and ordered Spyder to destroy him or deny him access to Sennadar. His surrender to her, and his willingness to strip his lingering godhood from himself was all that saved him in that moment.
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Re: On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

Post by Not a ID »

Yeah, kind of failed on the question part of it. Title was written before the post, what was written drifted away from initial intent. :)

Subsequently digging through the archives elsewhere, I see someone else pointed out the 10th Sui'kun issue a looong time ago, and it also went unaddressed at the time. He however, didn't acknowledge that a Deity had been meddling in Tarrin's head shortly before then.

In the Firestaff series, which was written well before Axe of the Dwarven King, IIRC Spyder was the one who said (To Tarrin and Jenna) there were going to be 10 Sui'kun after all was said and done. 7 for each of the elements of the weave, and 3 as backups and work that needed to be done "outside of normal channels" or something to that effect. She specifically named herself and Tarrin as 2 of them, and at some point in the course of the Firestaff series, Jasana was named as the one who would be the third "spare" as it were. I'm fuzzy on if that happened at the same time, or later on. In either case, Tarrin was aware of this.

Which makes what happened in Chapter 18 of Axe of the Dwarven King and after that a bit odd. He knew there were going to be 10, so why did he suddenly start fretting after the 10th one turned up? Divine Meddling certainly accounts for how/why that happened, but it is mildly annoying that Fel probably deliberately added in the plot element, as I'm sure that shift was deliberate and not an error on his part, but it then is left hanging out there in the breeze and never seems to be addressed afterwords.

In some respects, I can understand how/why that happened, at least with what is written. Tarrin(either one of them) realizing one of the Elder Gods of Sennadar tampered with his memory in such a way would be likely to have unpredictable results to say the least.

Yes, it set in motion a chain of events that needed to happen, but the nature of how it was done would still be a major issue for him IMO. An alternate option is that The Overgod told Tarrin after all was said and done, and kept Tarrin otherwise occupied until after Tarrin was given plenty of time to cool down.

Besides which, with 9 Sui'kun in Niami's service besides Tarrin, there was no urgent need to replace Tarrin until after his situation was fully resolved. It took the Breaking for the other gods to agree to allowing Niami the "3 spares" she was given, and until Tarrin's situation was resolved, I doubt they were going to create any scenario where she could possibly end up with 4 spare Sui'kun. After all, they'd waited several years to get to 10 after having reached 8. So while they agreed that having the spares was important, keeping the count at 10 wasn't an OMG emergency either. Or keeping it at 9 for that matter, as Jasana wound up over in Pyrosia with Tarrin for a time, which took the Sui'kun count on Sennadar down to 8 for several months.

Of course, with other comments made on that front(when establishing the new Tower on Pyrosia), evidently it may not be particularly critical for more than "a handful" of the Sui'kun to physically be on Sennadar. Their simply being alive and "out there somewhere" might be enough for most purposes... And given Tarrin's unique circumstances, his specific location probably matters even less than it does for any of the rest of the Sui'kun when it comes to being connected to Sennadar's Weave.

So basically, the Gods had no intention or need of replacing him until he was either truly and permanently dead, or otherwise "fully disconnected from Sennadar" by some means.
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Re: On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

Post by Rakshasa claw »

Well, he wouldn't have been connected to the Weave when he first left Sennadar. He wasn't uniquely connected until after he removed the lingering divinity. She replaced that divinity with a touch of her power and gave him wings that way to replace his lost ones. I agree there are plot consistency concerns but it seems mostly trivial to me. The overall story doesn't lose that much from the issue.
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Re: On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

Post by Not a ID »

Rakshasa claw wrote: Mon Jul 02, 2018 12:47 amWell, he wouldn't have been connected to the Weave when he first left Sennadar. He wasn't uniquely connected until after he removed the lingering divinity. She replaced that divinity with a touch of her power and gave him wings that way to replace his lost ones. I agree there are plot consistency concerns but it seems mostly trivial to me. The overall story doesn't lose that much from the issue.
Uh, it was subsequently revealed, during Book 2 in the Pyrosian series, IIRC, that he did not need the Sword in order to channel sorcery from Sennadar, and that he was essentially just using it as a focus for doing so. It was a very distant, and weak connection, but it was a connection all the same. IE it was Tarrin who was connected to the weave when the channeling happened, not the sword.

Now after his death, he was no longer attached to the weave, although the sword(as a part of Tarrin's divine self), and possibly his Shadow, may have had a lingering connection all the same... And by the time the Sword and the Shadow were addressed, the fully mortal Sui'kun Tarrin Kael had already been back around for a while.

Which isn't to mention the other matter that was explicitly brought up in regards to the Crossed Sorcerers going to stay over in Pyrosia in numbers shortly after the Weave was created in Pyrosia. As the question was directly asked about whether their departure to Pyrosia would weaken the weave in Sennadar. The answer was essentially that the weave wouldn't be weakened unless or until they happened to die, without respect to what world they were on, the power they contributed to the weave would be unchanged, only their ability to draw from the weave would change(as they'd both need a weave in order to use the weave, and would deal with the typical weave power constraints from there). As such, it is reasonable that at least elements of the weave with regards to the Sui'kun specific items would likewise persist in the weave so long as that Sui'kun remained living, even if they were not actually present on Sennadar. That isn't to say that they really want to ever be in a position where they have 7 or fewer Sui'kun physically present on Sennadar ever again, even if all 10 of them are alive when they did so.
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Re: On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

Post by Rakshasa claw »

The sorcery I was talking about wasn't connected to his sword. I was referring to Niami giving him the wings, which allows him to use sorcery regardless of where he goes. I was ignoring the divine impact of him drawing sorcery from Sennadar into Pyrosia. That was after all, purely an artifact of his being a demigod not something special or inherent to Tarrin himself... except that he is the only being on Sennadar to ever become a demigod of course.

And the Sui'kun effect is linked to the world on which they stand. Otherwise Tarrin being on Pyrosia to create his weave wouldn't have needed Jasana to change worlds when he died... because he would still have been linked to Sennadar still and thus unable to "power" the Weave on Pyrosia that way. Which to me implies that a different set of rules would need to have been created for Pyrosia's Weave. This doesn't impact the power they provided to the weave, because that happened at a specific point in time. That moment of course is when they crossed over and thus that is directly linked to the world upon which they cross over, not the world upon which they stand. My interpretation of course, but unless Fel says otherwise it seems reasonable to me.
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Re: On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

Post by Not a ID »

The "Sui'kun effect" in respect to Pyrosia is a bit more complicated than that. Pyrosia's circumstance was that there was no Deity anchoring the weave as was the case in Sennadar(where Niami was present), so it required somebody to step in to fulfill the role. Dolana was fulfilling the role of Anchor(/"Heart"), and she wasn't even a Sui'kun. What Jasana's presence in Pyrosia was there to do was to stabilize the weave and reduce the strain on Dolana, and that simply required her to be close to the weave on Pyrosia. Yes, they kept her there even after Tarrin's Deity half took up the role of God there and began oversight of The Heart, but its ambiguous on if that(Jasana's presence) was absolutely required at that point, or simply done to help "boost" the weave on Pyrosia enough for the Sorcerer's to accomplish other tasks in the interim, or Tarrin(Deity) and Niami simply playing it safe. Given Sennadar's history, it is apparent that the Weave on Sennadar existed even before there were Sui'kun, as Spyder was evidently the first Sui'Kun. So it would seem the only thing a Sui'kun achieves by being present when a deity is overseeing the weave is to strengthen it.
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Re: On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

Post by Kacoo »

There is no hint that Spyder was the first Sui'kun, and its probably more likely that she wasn't, and is just the only one that survived the breaking (eg because she was the Tarrin of her time and was made to combat the blood war) she survived. Correct me if i'm wrong but that seems like a lot more likely than her being the first Sui;kin when her race isn't even one of the originals (eg humans, dwarves, goblins and elves).
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Re: On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

Post by Belgarion213 »

I think your right in that Spyder wasn't the first. That said, she was born to deal with Val/The Blood War, just as Tarrin was born to deal with the Firestaff and Val.

As for how she survived, my view would be that it was her ability to warp the world that let her survive...or Niami realised what was happening and told her to leave the plane through the Portal to survive the Weave-quake.
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Re: On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

Post by Kendog »

While it's a bit late, another thing to keep in mind is that while the other gods were pre-planning to replace Tarrin in the Weave, at that point, he was an anomaly, at best, with the gods concerned about maybe needing to destroy him. After everything was "said and done", while the end result was likely Niami having 11 suikins, instead of the 10 originally planned, Tarrin was often "elsewhere" dealing with things for the "God of Gods"/Creator of Everything. There are likely many situations during his service where having a connection to Senneddar would be "bad" that the Overgod wouldn't "want". As a result, while the end result was 11, there was likely some behind the scenes influence by the Overgod, okaying it. Plus, as said by Fel in either this thread or elsewhere, when Tarrin does end up dying for good/permanently, he would be rejoining his "godly half" of his soul.
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Re: On chp 18, Axe of the Dwarven King, a question.

Post by Wolfee »

Kendog wrote: Sun May 12, 2019 12:24 am While it's a bit late, another thing to keep in mind is that while the other gods were pre-planning to replace Tarrin in the Weave, at that point, he was an anomaly, at best, with the gods concerned about maybe needing to destroy him. After everything was "said and done", while the end result was likely Niami having 11 suikins, instead of the 10 originally planned, Tarrin was often "elsewhere" dealing with things for the "God of Gods"/Creator of Everything. There are likely many situations during his service where having a connection to Senneddar would be "bad" that the Overgod wouldn't "want". As a result, while the end result was 11, there was likely some behind the scenes influence by the Overgod, okaying it. Plus, as said by Fel in either this thread or elsewhere, when Tarrin does end up dying for good/permanently, he would be rejoining his "godly half" of his soul.
You are forgetting Tarrin's 2nd pair of wings the ones that Niami gave him - they are a conduit back to Sennadar so he can always touch the weave. And don't forget this is Tarrin we are talking about.
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