Questions

[Otto Didact]

I liked Aether of Night, but I felt like it lost cohesion at the end and tried to cram a bunch of stuff in that wasn't foreshadowed (yes, I know he's stated it's not his best work and it needs a rewrite), so I'm a bit confused about how some stuff works. Wondering if anybody understood this better than I did.

 

• First of all, when the Kavir dude tries to bond with Raeth's Amberite bud, it fails, whereas the Verdant bud that the Shentis gave them worked. Presumably this is because the Verdant bud came directly from the source of Verdant. Okay, fine, but don't the High Aedin make more Amberite Bonds by doing exactly what they tried to do with Raeth's bud?
• Okay, so Slaughter and Despair created the Aethers out of Chaos and Order, but the Former is imprisoned in the four Aether sources (principally Verdant)?
• Decay imprisoned the Twins in the pure essences of Chaos and Order, which themselves became sort of "God Aethers" (Night and Illuminous)? Am I reading that right?
• Why on earth did Raeth getting splashed by the pool cause him to not only Bond Night, but also cause Makkal to escape from his prison into Raeth's head? None of the Dari that had Bonded Night got Makkal in their heads.
• Why did Decay want the Twins imprisoned at all? It seems like the Twins were great agents of Decay.

Anyway, let me know what you think. I'm still trying to parse what I read at the end and I just don't get it.

[dbulick]

To your first point, it failed because Raeth's bond was so weak.  Splitting his bud gave too weak of a bud to bond properly too.  The text made it a point that they were targeting the kind because his bond was so strong.

[alylime]

First of all, when the Kavir dude tries to bond with Raeth's Amberite bud, it fails, whereas the Verdant bud that the Shentis gave them worked. Presumably this is because the Verdant bud came directly from the source of Verdant. Okay, fine, but don't the High Aedin make more Amberite Bonds by doing exactly what they tried to do with Raeth's bud?

 

As dbulick said, his bud was too weak. They needed a strong bud or it dies without a host during transport.

• Okay, so Slaughter and Despair created the Aethers out of Chaos and Order, but the Former is imprisoned in the four Aether sources (principally Verdant)?

It also says in the epilogue:

Decay didn’t understand one thing.  The Former had never been imprisoned.  How could he be in prison when he was placed inside that which he had made, that which he loved, and that which he watched over?

 

So I have no idea about this one.

• Decay imprisoned the Twins in the pure essences of Chaos and Order, which themselves became sort of "God Aethers" (Night and Illuminous)? Am I reading that right?

• Why on earth did Raeth getting splashed by the pool cause him to not only Bond Night, but also cause Makkal to escape from his prison into Raeth's head? None of the Dari that had Bonded Night got Makkal in their heads.

   

  The other Dari that Bonded Night had "the taint," presumably related to having been visited by Agaris in their dreams and in some sense being agents of him.

 

 

 

• Why did Decay want the Twins imprisoned at all? It seems like the Twins were great agents of Decay.

Anyway, let me know what you think. I'm still trying to parse what I read at the end and I just don't get it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, this begs the question: what did Decay get out of the deal?

[Weltall]

On 5/5/2016 at 9:39 AM, Otto Didact said:

• First of all, when the Kavir dude tries to bond with Raeth's Amberite bud, it fails, whereas the Verdant bud that the Shentis gave them worked. Presumably this is because the Verdant bud came directly from the source of Verdant. Okay, fine, but don't the High Aedin make more Amberite Bonds by doing exactly what they tried to do with Raeth's bud?
• Okay, so Slaughter and Despair created the Aethers out of Chaos and Order, but the Former is imprisoned in the four Aether sources (principally Verdant)?
• Why did Decay want the Twins imprisoned at all? It seems like the Twins were great agents of Decay.

- To add to the bud discussion, the impression I got was that while the 'High Aedin' are essentially just people who got lucky and had stronger aether buds given to them, not everyone is suited to a particular aether which is why Raeth can't do much with his Amberite until he was able to enhance his power with Night. And by implication, his incompatibility made the bud itself weaker over time, since otherwise the attempt to steal a bud from him should have been High Aedin-level. The Patriach's supposedly decayed ability with Amberite due to a combination of age and lack of use seems to support the idea.

- The Former seems to be 'imprisoned' (but not really) in the world as a whole.but able to express himself most directly through the source of Verdant. Though that makes me wonder now what a Ferrous or Besterian bud looks like. We know Amberite's a gemstone in the palm and Verdant a vine-like band but I don't remember the writing ever describing the other two, we just see their effects. And yeah, the Former implies that the four aethers came from Order and Chaos in an 'impure' form and then the 'god aethers' were Order and Chaos in their pure form.

- We're probably never going to know the original intention since Decay became Ruin so that entire plotline is either going to be extensively rewritten or dropped entirely if/when Aether gets the White Sand treatment..Augur had an interesting idea in another topic that the Vax that Ati mentions could be Vaeria with a new name and the plotline could involve something Preservation and Ruin did before creating Scadrial.

If I had to guess though, I'd say it lies in the comment that Decay always seeds betrayal. Maybe he simply wasn't capable of doing otherwise in the end, kind of like how Niven's Protectors are incapable of not betraying someone as soon as doing so is more advantageous to them. Or possibly he felt they were dangerous enough to him (at least in potential) that leaving either of them free just wasn't worth it. Of course this raises the question of how their release would affect things after the story (and whether Makkal's time riding around in Raeth's head might have influenced him in the long run) but we'll probably never know that for certain either.