Final Quest #12

That's pretty much the only way her behavior makes sense to me.  It's also the only explanation for her being so cryptic.  She never hesitated to explain things before, but she would've had a reason to want to keep from sharing this motivation.  Savah  was probably just jumping to her own conclusions. That would also explain why Skywise  was so upset, if her behavior was, as it seems, atypical.

I'll be honest, I thought she said no to him using the pods because any elves that want to come to the palace must suffer on the trip ('lesson of pain' ) to make them worthy.

Shadowpath wrote:

I'll be honest, I thought she said no to him using the pods because any elves that want to come to the palace must suffer on the trip ('lesson of pain' ) to make them worthy.

Yep, that's what I always thought too.

Lunakat wrote:

That's pretty much the only way her behavior makes sense to me.  It's also the only explanation for her being so cryptic.  She never hesitated to explain things before, but she would've had a reason to want to keep from sharing this motivation.  Savah  was probably just jumping to her own conclusions. That would also explain why Skywise  was so upset, if her behavior was, as it seems, atypical.

I always thought Skywise was so upset because Timmain and Savah were both serenely content with letting elves die to prove some sort point about natural selection! Frankly I'm amazed Cutter was so blase about it too - did Ember's talk about "the tests" unsettle him that much? Or does he really not give a damn about elves he hadn't personally met?

It takes Savah down a notch in my books, that she's so ccontent to let strangers suffer and die while she and her tribe have been contented moochng off the Palace for years.

BUT, if it was a deliberate play by Timmain to stall for time, that makes her behavior even worse - she's sacrificing elves so she can control the exact time of her mind-mangling revelation? Holy chessmaster, Batman.

(I seriously doubt there is an explanation for this other than Wendy saying "okay, we need pods for some things but not everything, or its too easy for our protagonists. So we need reasons why we can't just use them like taxis."

Seems it would have been better to explain the 10 year wait by.... saying the Palace fliers needed to practice deep space flight, or postponing the call until after the time jump (what's another decade when Sunstream has been dragging his heels alread) or having some tribe chiefs saying "we need time to consider this", etc etc.

but hey, if Wendy wants to portray Timmain as a heartless manipulator, I won't complain.

Shadowpath wrote:

I'll be honest, I thought she said no to him using the pods because any elves that want to come to the palace must suffer on the trip ('lesson of pain' ) to make them worthy.

That's what Savah said- but Timmain never explained.

If she did it for this reason-- I call faulty logic. And I got the impression that Skywise was upset both by implication of her decision (that elves would suffer and die on their way to the palace when they didn't have to) and by how she delivered it.

If she, on the other hand, made this choice because she had studied the scrolls and she knew that if she didn't time things right that, in the larger picture, it could all fall apart-- then I would find that understandable.

It's understandable, but it would still be annoying. Seriously, it feels like one big school science project if that's the case. But that's not unlike her so I shouldn't be surprised *grumble*

My thought when I read the issue was that Timmain wanted elves to take the journey not to prove themselves worthy, but to... I don't even know how to express this properly, but to find within themselves a truer understanding of whether they still wanted to go away in the Palace or remain on Abode. I think I'm still not expressing it properly, and I may just be editing it in my head to make it work anyhow. There is a level on which it makes some kind of intuitive sense to me and another on which I feel like that's inherently artificial. I mean, it's all well and good for Timmain to say that and believe it, but if I was one of those elves I'd probably feel like, "OK, so you left me to flounder for ten years while you hung out drinking dreamberry wine? Screw you Palace dwellers, I'd rather stay then ride off with the likes of you."

I really hope we see that couple in wrapstuff wake up! I imagine they'll have some opinions to share!

ErinC1978 wrote:

"OK, so you left me to flounder for ten years while you hung out drinking dreamberry wine? Screw you Palace dwellers, I'd rather stay then ride off with the likes of you."

Aren't all mortal elves kind of bound to the palace? No idea how it worked out when Rayek jumped in time, but I always thought that immortals, at least when they are dead (oxymoron, eh) cannot exist outside of the palace. The Go Backs had that pull and couldn't do but go back to it (even though they are the most non-magical elves and the palace is the most magical artefact...). So wouldn't leaving them on Two Moons be the most cruel treatment?

wingthing wrote:

I really hope we see that couple in wrapstuff wake up! I imagine they'll have some opinions to share!

"Oh, can you feel this, it was totally worth it *la la la*"

wingthing wrote:

I really hope we see that couple in wrapstuff wake up! I imagine they'll have some opinions to share!

I'm hoping to see that too. At the moment the whole "call" seems so anticlimactic. It was built up over so many years and then when Sunstream finally sends it out, we basically get Dr Dre, one couple we didn't even get to see, and one other who was dead by the time she got there. Even if those four were from the same tribe, (Dr Dre must have come from *somewhere* even if he's a loner now) it means there are at least two tribes out there who have had no chance to experience the palace, never had the 'leaving abode' idea put to them...but they are apparently expected to give up everything and go on an extremely dangerous journey to get there. I want to meet those tribes! Ok, the Wolfriders and the Go Backs have already fought for, and won the palace, but as was pointed out earlier the Sun Folk and Wavedancers just had it handed to them on a plate - why should all these other elves have to suffer to get there? It makes no damn sense.

Could it be that all the newcomers who answered The Call were tribeless? People whose tribes either dwindled to almost nothing, or who simply belongs to groups that pretty much haven't grown since the crash; a couple of generations after it at the most. Those tree-elves for example, they could be ancient.

All three of them?

Why not, since they are basically trees XD

I don't know how cruel Timmain's been in not going to pick other elves up. There's been one spirit show up, a couple in wrapstuff, pony boy and egg - hardly the magnitude of, say, a sea turtle hatching. Maybe she knew there wasn’t much danger in waiting a few decades.

Damn, I had another point, but the cat just ran past playing with his toy mouse and I completely lost my train of thought.

Squirrel!

I just can't believe this is all they got in the way of rsvps in ten years. It took Cutter, what? One year to find the Gliders, the Go Backs and the Palace-- without any direction? This is an open invitation and GPS! Are there only five or six other elves on the entire planet? Or are they all just not interested?

Well, with the exception of the sun village we've pretty much always seen individual tribes as close-knit and suspicious of outsiders--elves have not been proven to be a particularly trusting lot! I'd actually be more surprised to see a bunch of other tribes coming out of the woodwork to answer, personally.

And didn't Dre and Egg show up on the same day?

Maybe there just aren't that many elves. Maybe the call was to rally the spirits of the wolfriders and high ones that might be floating around the sphere of the palace, and we know they have a terrible sense of time.

Or maybe "the call" is just another diversion in Timmain nefarious plans.

If Cloudbuck is right- then the only way to collect everyone is to go fly to them, introduce yourself and have a discussion about options. So why would Timmain nix that? Timing is the only explanation that makes any sense to me.

It would have been so cool to see tons of new, different elves who have learned to survive in different ways. Like, even with their slow, inefficient means of production, there has to have been more elves, if not now, then at some point in the past. But no, we get trees with boobs, Dre Ahn, Egg, and two elves that are probably going to turn out to be elves we met in the past, and a dead chick.

I'm so disappointed.

On facebook:

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Wendy Pini‬ wrote:

Many of you seem to be wanting to read double and triple meanings into what Timmain says. Try taking her literally.

Into what Timmain says about what?

Do you have a link, Miscellaneous? I can't find that post on FB.

The part Wendy's talking about is in response to when Skywise is asking Timmain if they could get Sunstream to find him (Cutter).
It's the part when she says blah blah blah, magic beyond any mortal wolf rider magic will kill Cutter.
Then Wendy says to take Timmain's words literally.

Sorry, I can't find it again. I took it as "you are always seeing too much..." but maybe it was more specific.