Wed 20 Jun 2007
In which Stuart asks for help in his journey to the Castle Gurgoom.
Book 7: The Plain of One Shadow; Chapter Four: The Fate of the Hideous Sixty; Parts 3-8. [19:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Book 7: The Plain of One Shadow; Chapter Four: The Fate of the Hideous Sixty; Parts 3-8. [19:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
June 26th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Gail says “No Lens = no Padromos = no Corridor.”
I thought it was more “No Lens = no Prodromos control over the Corridor = Freedom for everyone to roam up and down the Corridor = Anarchy”
[It’s spelt Prodromos in the show notes.] Incidentally, I found this definition:
“Prodrome: A symptom that indicates the onset of a disease.” Is the Prodromos such a symptom?
I also have no sense that the threads of this story are being drawn together to make ready for an ending yet?
June 26th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
That’s why I don’t like to use character names, I seldom have any idea how to spell them. (Phonics doesn’t work for me here.) ((You could have fixed it in your quote Zebulon, thanks a lot.))
Zan makes up good names.
I think now I would say No Lens = No Corridor, and stop there. Without the Lens to focus energy along the Corridor the Prodromos would have no power. I’m recalling that the Prodromos built the Corridor using the Lens and the Whispering Stone, but maybe I made that up.
It all seemed to make sense before I wrote it down, anyway.
June 26th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
I don’t think the Prodromos built the Corridor, since one of his inner circle has been mapping it for years.
My sense is that the Inosculum (sp?) exists to steal the energies/currents from the universe through the conduit of the Corridor. These same energies are present in the energy drink (forgot the name) that is so revitalizing. The stolen energies, I’m guessing, give life to Castle Gurgoom, power to the Prodromos, and goodness knows what else. Once the Inosculum stops skimming off the top, who knows what the universe will do?
The Whispering Stone is still a mystery in the plot. I suspect it can do more than we know as yet. It doesn’t seem to have served any useful purpose, except (again, from memory) creating the current Prodromos, by having the stone dropped down his throat as his chosen form of execution.
I agree I don’t see any movement toward a resolution at this point. Which is OK–I’m enjoying this immensely!
June 27th, 2007 at 2:06 am
Prodromos: Greek. Precursor (lit. one who runs ahead).
Boy, what a hotbed of speculation these comments have developed into! I don’t know how much to respond to; my policy has generally been not to answer anything which will come clear in the story subsequently, but the discussion has moved on to things that have have been raised and will have a bearing on the remainder of the story, but will not be addressed in a very direct way.
As Zebulon and Vibeeen have said, there’s no immediately obvious resolution approaching, but I am nearing the end. I won’t be posting any new episodes this week as I’m having a rest before commencing the final book. At this point, all the characters who are going to play a part in the climax of the story have been introduced, and the scene has been set for Stuart and his allies to return to the Castle Gurgoom for a final confrontation with the Prodromos and his retinue. Some of those characters haven’t been mentioned for a while (like Julie) and some remain enigmatic (such as the Whispering Stone, which really is a character despite only being a lump of rock). From here on in, things will start to come together.
As for the relationship between the Prodromos, the Whispering Stone, the Castle Gurgoom, the Corridor and the Inosculum, I’ll talk about that a bit more because you’re probably not going to find a satisfactory explanation in the last book, I suspect. I’ve intentionally kept the explanation of this a bit confusing and fragmentary, and some of the references to these things have been thrown in in passing at earlier points in the story where their significance was not yet apparent.
The Whispering Stone is really the key, and it has been my intention to keep the Stone largely incomprehensible. I wrote this story quite some time ago, but when I went and saw the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies, it occurred to me that the Whispering Stone is quite like Tolkien’s ring, and I’m sure it results from a residual fascination with this from when I read LOTR when I was young. I think the idea of an inanimate object which nevertheless has some kind of inhuman intelligence and the power to shape human affairs had some impact on me.
The Prodromos is the most powerful entity in the cosmos, but his weakness is that his power was given to him by the Stone, which actually couldn’t care less about the Prodomos personally or even the rest of humanity. The Stone started out buried deep beneath the surface of the Facet Kush-Aatn, but when it became aware of the human beings on the surface it tormented them with visions of it until they tried to dig it up, whereupon everyone who came in contact with it except the Prodromos was driven mad. Once the Prodromos had been changed by the Stone and was able to commune with his aspects in other facets, he did himself create the Corridor and the Inosculum, but this happened under guidance from the Stone, and the Prodromos himself has an imperfect understanding of how it all works.
The Corridor allows the Inosculum to draw off current energy from the facets connected to it and refine that energy into something which both provides the Prodromos with power and immortality and keeps the Castle Gurgoom alive. To do this, of course, it needs a lens — a unique who, having no aspects and so not directing any of the energy back into them, serves as a conduit which unifies the flow of current. As the current lens has worn out and is approaching death, the amount of current which can flow into the Inosculum has declined, causing the Prodromos’s powers to wane, the Castle to whither and deteriorate, and the Corridor itself to become a safer place to be with far fewer current cumulates flowing through it.
With the Prodromos at a low ebb, the Whispering Stone has decided to end its alliance with the Prodromos, and it first set the Castle itself against the Prodromos, and then used Stuart to escape from the Prodromos’s possession, although Stuart eventually refused to play any further part in the Stone’s plans. It later turned out that the Stone had also engineered Elauthir’s capture by the Prodromos in order to free up Stuart to help it.
So the Prodromos wants to turn Elauthir into the next lens, replenishing his power and magnificence, Stuart and his companions want to rescue Elauthir (either as an end in itself or as a way to further weaken the Prodromos), and it’s still not entirely clear what the Whispering Stone wants to do.
That’s pretty much where things stand at the beginning of the final book.
June 27th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Zan says “I’ve intentionally kept the explanation of this a bit confusing and fragmentary …”
I can deal with that. Some of the most vivid book memories I have didn’t happen in the book, only my imagination. It makes discussion a bit difficult but I enjoy it anyway!
As for the subsequent explanation, thanks! Clearly the story is under control.
(No way I could have spelled Elauthir, either.)
June 27th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Gail says “((You could have fixed it in your quote Zebulon, thanks a lot.))”
I actually nearly did that at the time, but then the comment about the show note spelling wouldn’t have made sense!
Zan: Thanks a lot for the detailed summary. That has really helped clarify what has happened so far.
You said “the Whispering Stone is quite like Tolkien’s ring, and I’m sure it results from a residual fascination with this from when I read LOTR when I was young.”
J.R.R.Tolkien was professor of Anglo-Saxon language at Oxford University. He got a lot of the ideas for LOTR from Anglo-Saxon literature, in particular from reading Beowulf, written about 700 AD. So he probably experienced the same fascination with the earlier source that you did when he was writing LOTR. And the writer of Beowulf probably experienced the same fascination also, since a lot of Beowulf is based on ancient Norse mythology from hundreds, possibly thousands of years earlier…
June 27th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Gail, I would never had gotten close to spelling “Elauthir” either, so I just avoided the subject. I would have guessed el-Athea. Have you noticed that her correct name, spelled backwards is phonetically “ritual?” Oh no! She’s going to be ritually sacrificed!!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Zan. If there’s only one book to go, it should be a cracker of an ending!
June 27th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
That’s all right, Zebulon, it was much more fun to complain!
Well, Vibeeen, we don’t have to guess at many more of the spellings, Zan very kindly put most of them into his expo. No, I hadn’t noticed that about Elathir’s name. :O
No, wait, Stuart and the “Hideous Sixty” are on their way to prevent that sacrifice!
Absolutely it will be a cracker of an ending.
June 27th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
yes, I see another misspelled name.
June 27th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Should we call them the “Hideous Sixty minus 56″ or “The Hideous Four?” Or, “The Not-Quite-So-Hideous as the Hideous Sixty, but Bloody Well Hideous Enough Just The Same?”
June 28th, 2007 at 8:41 am
I like “The Not-Quite-So-Hideous…” best, I think, but it sure is unwieldy.
Keeping “The Hideous Sixty” would be a courtesy and shorthand for who they are. They can be vague when asked the where-abouts of the other 56: “So they got past here without you noticing” or “You don’t think we’d all travel together, do you?” - with appropriate threatening grimaces.
June 28th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I like that one, too. It sounds like something the Pythons would dream up.
Wait, I think I subconsciously borrowed that from the intro to Monty Python and The Holy Grail:
     ”And Sir Robin-the-not-quite-so-pure-as-Sir-Lancelot …”
Whoops!
June 28th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
probably why I liked it