From: [6]Damien R. Sullivan
   Subject: P. C. Hodgell/ God Stalk/ Kencyrath speculations
   Newsgroups: [8]rec.arts.sf.written
   Date: 1998/01/30

P.C. Hodgell/ God Stalk et al spoilers!!!!!














I've been re-reading Hodgell again, and getting even more out of it.
Like the beginning of _Seeker's Mask_, when the schoolteacher is
thinking about how what happens to Caineron affects even distantly bound
people such as herself, and later wonders why she feels so uprooted.
And I've been fascinated by the Builders, these really powerful people
who had the cushy construction job while the Kencyrath had to do all the
fighting.  And who got wiped out at roughly the same time Gerridon fell.
(I thought the barred window looking out onto the Builders' old home in
Perimal Darkling was quite fetching.)

And Seeker's Mask raises all sorts of questions about the nature of
the divinity.  So, here's some wacky speculation, hastily written:

-------

Builders were really powerful, could go between worlds, accidentally
opened breach to the void and let the shadows in.  Recruited Arrin-Ken as
allies, bound the Kencyr to their power, bound the Kendar to the Kencyr,
then ducked behind the front to let the Kencyrath serve as rearguard.
The 'God' is a myth which the Arrin-Ken may or may not be aware of.
Remember the Builders could wipe Grindark memory when dead.  3000 years
ago the Builders goof up and get killed by the native power of Rathilien,
which they'd scorned.  Gerridon finds this out and falls.

Joke's on the Builders: even as the New Pantheon gods are the shaped
leakage from the temples, so 30,000 years of belief has caused the
mythical 3-faced god to become real, shaped out of the main power of the
temples.  Jame's "challenges" to Ishtier provoked Arrin-Ken judgement;
but the middle prophecy was the god itself, as signed by its names.
(I'm not sure the Arrin-Ken are aware of the details of that incident;
they know Jame "usurped authority", but it's not clear that they plucked
out what the "obscure prophecies" were.)

----

-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-)

"Anyway, I would not be a woman in this society."
 -- "A Gift from the Culture"