MERCEDES-LACKEY Digest 2590 Topics covered in this issue include: 1) Re: Sibling Lifebonds by "Layla Voll" 2) Re: Bad Bard? by "Layla Voll" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 19:03:41 From: "Layla Voll" To: mercedes-lackey-+AT+-herald.co.uk Subject: Re: Sibling Lifebonds Message-ID: Kender writes: >delurks for a little... >Layla Voll said: > > Specifically, in thinking of Keren, I'm remembering that Talia says > > that Keren's emotional stability was like a three-legged stool, > based >on her relationship with her Companion (Fala?), her twin > Teren, and her >LifeBonded partner Ylsa. At least the way Talia > imagines it, these three >bonds are nearly equal. When Ylsa dies, I > don't think it would have done >Keren much good if her twin-bond > with Teren had been strengthened into a >LifeBond -- what she needed > (and got) she needed the additional support >of a separate, > LifeBonded partner. >I was reading this, and I thought.... Tylendel! IIRC, he has a twin bond >with Staven, a lifebond with Van, and a companion bond with Gala. Twinbond >snapped, and Lendel needed the support of Van and Gala. they kept him >alive, but because Van was the follower, he couldn't keep Lendel balanced >enough, so the whole gating incident occured, which caused him to lose the >companion bond too, so after losing two bonds, the lifebond wasn't enopugh >to keep him alive. >any other thoughts? I completely agree. I think that's what Sayvil means when she says that Gala made mistakes as well: granted, Tylendal hid his plans from her pretty well, but she should have guessed that the breaking of the twinbond would have put him near the edge, and she might have known that breaking the Companion bond would definitely send him over. I'm not sure that Vanyel could have done anything for him after losing both his twin and his Companion. As for someone's suggestion a while ago that Lavan (of Brightly Burning) and Vanyel are similar... ... putting in spoiler space for Brightly Burning .... s p o i l e r .. s p a c e .. h e r e ok... The comparison between Lavan and Vanyel is an interesting one, and there are definitely similarities in the basic outlines of their life stories, but I think I'd say that Lavan and Tylendal are even more similar. All three of them bring their fate down upon themselves in a rather apocalyptic way (and I'm also thinking of Tylendal bringing on the wyrssa as well as throwing himself off the tower), there's a certain self-destructiveness about Lavan and Tylendal that's missing from Vanyel, a sense that Lavan and Tylendal almost welcome all the destruction at the end as a relief. I also think that Vanyel is much better grounded than either of them. Both Vanyel and Lavan suffered through lousy childhoods, especially with families who didn't understand them, but Vanyel ends up making a number of pretty close friends (like the other Herald Mages) fairly quickly, once he's allowed to open up. Lavan doesn't really (othet than Kalira) and, while Tylendal seems to have a lot of somewhat superficial friends, it's scary that the only people he trusts with the secret of his relationship are the people who have to know, ie, the people who live with him -- that there aren't more of his Collegium yearmates who were close enough to him to realize that there was something happening. (In a good way -- that there weren't friends who realized that he was happy and in love and all that.) Anyway, that's all! Layla _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 22:05:16 From: "Layla Voll" To: mercedes-lackey-+AT+-herald.co.uk Subject: Re: Bad Bard? Message-ID: Some decades ago, mark the tax zombie wrote: > > And, what is the "Heraldic Gift"? Is it just something that > attracts a >companion to you, or does it do something else? any > special powers? >mindspeak w/ companions? And if it attracts > companions, that means there >is no chance for those born w/o the > gift to become Heralds.... >... The gift is - IMHO a mixture of things, one of which is that the >person must be, at their core - a good soul. I.E. a person who wishes to >help others, has no room for true evil intent. This is not to say everyone >else has a little corner of evil lurking in them. For besides this >"pureness" (for lack of a better term) they must also manifest some kind of >special ability. I vaguely recall reading that ALL the heralds were able >to use the "truth spell", so they all have some minor, in some cases very >minor ability, but it is an ability. >Well, that's my two cents. Rusty as my reasoning my be. It appears it's >time to reread the books. Not an unpleasant task. I figured, since I did finally get to rereading "Arrows of the Queen," I'd throw out one of the quotes about Gifts that I'd been looking for since this exchange: [from Talia's introductory Gifts lecture] "Does everybody have this kind of -- uh -- Gift?" Neave asked. [Ylsa answers] "Again, yes. The catch is that most people don't have enough of the ability for it to be really useful to them... As far as that goes, there are some of us whose Gifts are hardly stronger than those of nonHeralds -- and even among Heralds a *really* powerful Gift is rare, though we all have enough to enable us to bond with our Companion and use the Truth Spell. From what we can tell, it seems to be that the very strongest gifts tend to be assiociated with those who become Healers rather than Heralds.... "Oh, I think I should mention something about the Truth Spell; *that* really is a spell, in the sense of the Bardic tales. It requires a Gift to use, apparently the one that makes the Companion-Herald bond possible. If you have a strong Gift, you'll be able to use it to actually force someone to speak only the truth; if your Gift is weak, you'll only be able to detect whether or ot a person is lying." --------------------------------------- I think this means, given that everyone has at least a tiny amount of this ability, and that some Heralds have barely more than nonHeralds, that no-one who was Herald material, or who was needed as a Herald, would be unable to be Chosen just because they weren't born with the Gift. At least I hope so. I like Mark's idea that the other part of the Gift is that core of "goodness" -- what Tylendal described as a need to help someone, if you possibly could. Perhaps that core is what originally attracts the Companions, while the rest of the Gift makes it possible to contact them, Choose them, and form the Herald-Companion bond. Layla _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ End of MERCEDES-LACKEY Digest 2590 **********************************