[RandallFlagg]

So I found Golan's expedition to be the slowest parts of the book, especially since in hindsight they accomplished nothing. So what was their purpose? Golan mentions it's to expand their empire into Ardata's territory, but as he is talking with the masters they say that he is serving as a distraction for their plans? Ok so the masters know that Kallor is returned, so the whole point of Golan's army is to serve as a distraction (for Ardata? someone else?) while they perform another ritual to stop Kallor. You would assume that's the only purpose, since you wouldn't want to expand your territories into a hostile jungle while a tyrant you're terrified of has just returned. But why wouldn't your army be of better use in your capital, where the tyrant is leading his forces? You could fight and stop him there? We know he can be stopped, otherwise he wouldn't have needed to recruit an army so why didn't the Thaumaturgs just strengthen their defences and crush him in battle? Kallor took their capital because their defences were diminished, but if the full circle of masters had stayed along with their full army surely they could have defeated them?

And surely the ritual was an overreaction. Last time Kallor has enslaved a continent so they brought down the crippled god to defeat him, a ritual which destroyed all the masters, destroyed most of the continent and pretty much caused the problems of the whole series. Now Kallor doesn't have a single follower, and is just one (albeit hard to kill) man coming towards them and they panic and evoke the same ritual that destroyed the continent? You can say it's just their panic over the return of a thousand year old tyrant but these are a people who are supposed to have trained their minds to be masters of logic and reason and do away with any superstition. Surely they could easily injure him (if he is so hard to kill), hold him captive and take away his youth candles and watch him turn really old? Kallor has shown fear when facing Tays and Dassem, he can't be completely unstoppable.

I'd be interested to see what you guys think, but I just thought they jumped the gun on doing another continent shattering ritual. (also I'm confused over the necessity of the Golan sub plot)

[Andorion]

To me that sub plot was comic relief

[Esa1996]

Yeah, the Golan stuff was kinda pointless, but eventually it became one of my favorite story lines in the book due to being quite funny. Esslemont's version of Tehol and Bugg.

[Abyss]

RandallFlagg, on 04 November 2015 - 03:39 AM, said:

...Surely they could easily injure him (if he is so hard to kill), hold him captive and take away his youth candles and watch him turn really old? Kallor has shown fear when facing Tays and Dassem, he can't be completely unstoppable.

I'd be interested to see what you guys think, but I just thought they jumped the gun on doing another continent shattering ritual. ...

If we're going to speculate on rationale beyond 'that's the story the author wanted to tell', it works both ways. In the same sense that you assume they had all these other options, its reasonable to assume that if they thought they had other options, they wouldn't have gone with the whole 'drop a chunk of insane god on kallor and hope for the best' approach.


More to the point, Kallor has survived wars, curses, gods, elder gods, ascendants, dragons, stabbings, arrows, explosions, the self-inflicted heat death of a continent... damn right they should be worried.


Iirc, Golan's campaign was basically to distract neighbor Ardata so she didn't mess up their next attempt at a ritual.