The Shadar Logoth Taint

[nophone]

Fain is the ShiZZZnickas. Love that guy. he's so evil and wrong it's great. I don't feel like we've heard enough from him in a while and i'm really excited.

 

what's great about fain???

 

WELLL he started off as a golem kind of character LoTR style... and he has transmorphed into one of the most bad ass evil villains in the history of literature.

[Cut Strand]

Well they speculated that even 1 piece of dust out of place would set the world wrong. I think that you're probably wrong about the proto-shaddar logoth, but recently brandon has mentioned that there is more than one kind of evil in the world. Originally it thought it was the dark ones touch on the world, but it's possible that it may a diferent kind of evil all together.

The same evil schedules reruns instead of new episodes on TV.

 

Edit: Shadar Syndication has a ring to it...

[graendalzooescapee]

Why do people keep declaring the 'Finn to another form of evil, as though they're similiar to the Shadow or Shadar Logoth? Birgitte says "They are not evil the way the Shadow is evil, yet they are so different from humankind they might as well be." There is a distinction there, subtle as it may be. It's also worth noting they are not fond of the Shadow being asked about, and also that Brandon has refused to answer questions such as "Can they be Darkfriends?"

 

I was putting the 'finns in the "supernatural evil" category only to make an exhaustive list -- and promptly to remove them from contention as a cause for the Hinderstap phenomenon. I had Birgitte's explanation in mind, in fact -- they're not like the Shadow, but they're so different that they might as well be considered evil. Eelfinn make harnesses out of human skin and are more than happy to kill you unless you're clever enough to say you want to get out alive. Call it "evil" or cultural relativism, but a mouse could starve on the difference.

 

This is well put. I also think it can't be irrelevant that we saw Slayer enter the Tower at one point. While I'm holding out hope for a better explanation, the best one so far seems to be that both Slayer and the Eelfinn are sadists, which is definitely a negative characteristic in Randland's cosmos.

[Bob T Dwarf]

This is well put. I also think it can't be irrelevant that we saw Slayer enter the Tower at one point.

 

We saw Slayer disappear behind the ToG in T'a'r. It is entirely unclear whether he entered, or simply used it to hide his departure from T'a'r.

[didymos]

 

I also think it can't be irrelevant that we saw Slayer enter the Tower at one point.

 

We didn't see him enter. Perrin assumed he did because the trail ended there. What Perrin actually saw was Slayer heading straight for it right before he simply vanished. Given that we know Slayer can enter and exit T'A'R at will, and that people can leap huge distances in T'A'R if they know what they're doing there, and that to enter the Tower you have to draw the Snakes+Foxes symbol on the surface with a bronze knife (no reason to think that changes in T'A'R either), that's not an assumption we readers should be making. Besides, it has all the earmarks of someone laying a false trail. He probably hoped Perrin would get himself caught by messing with the Tower, or at least waste a bunch of time trying to figure out how to enter. Plus, the Tower is nowhere near the Two Rivers, which is where Slayer's actual object of interest, Fain, was.

[Dagon Thyne]

Please forgive (and correct) a newcomer if I'm not following the proper posting etiquette, but I noticed that the new (lovely) FAQ didn't have much to say about the spreading of the Shadar Logoth taint, though there seemed to be a significant development in The Gathering Storm.

 

As Mat and company are traveling, we get some establishing narration to remind us of the old plot point (The Gathering Storm, "The Tipsy Gelding"):

 

He shivered, banishing the memory. Aridhol had been one of the ancient nations that had stood long ago, when Manetheren had been a power. The capitol of Aridhol had another name. Shadar Logoth.

 

Mat hadn't felt the pull of the ruby dagger in a very long time. He was nearly beginning to forget what it had been like to be tied to it, if it was possible to forget such a thing. But sometimes he remembered that ruby, red like his own blood. And the old lust, the old desire, would seep into him again...

 

When Mat spends the night in the village of Hinderstap, the madness he encounters looks very familiar, especially in light of the establishing context (The Gathering Storm, "Night In Hinderstap"):

 

It was almost completely dark now. Indeed, it seemed to him that the darkness had come too quickly here. Unnaturally swift. The road's length squirmed with shadows, figures battling, screeching, struggling in the deepening gloom. In that darkness, the fights looked at times to be solid, single creatures -- horrific monstrosities with a dozen waving limbs and a hundred mouths to scream from the blackness.

 

The phenomenon is similar enough to suggest that Hinderstap is a proto-Shadar Logoth, complete with a proto-Mashadar that comes out when the sun goes down. Two thousand years of ghostly violence may have turned perpetually-battling people of Aridhol into the single, many-limbed mist that we know and love. Or Mashadar's form could be a result of interaction with Mordeth himself, who seems able to create a monstrous, tentacled fog like in A Crown Of Swords, "Blades":

 

Outside, someone screamed, a wail of utter horror, and suddenly the huge tent snapped up into the air, vanishing into a thick grayness that hid the sky. Fog billowed on every side, filled with distant shrieks and bellows. Thin tendrils wafted into the clear inverted bowl left by the tent.

 

It's surprising we haven't seen something like this before. The Aes Sedai predicted that having the Shadar Logoth dagger on the loose (or even a pebble of that tainted city) would spread its evil, and we know that the Fain/Mordeth amalgamation has been traveling far and wide, dagger in hand. Was Hinderstap an early stop along his way? Will we be able to trace his route through similar manifestations?

 

Well they speculated that even 1 piece of dust out of place would set the world wrong. I think that you're probably wrong about the proto-shaddar logoth, but recently brandon has mentioned that there is more than one kind of evil in the world. Originally it thought it was the dark ones touch on the world, but it's possible that it may a diferent kind of evil all together.

 

 

 

 

The taint of Shadar Logoth didn't cause outright unexplain violence...it caused mistrust and jealousy and hatred...it took months for the city to actually break out into open fighting.....remember...Mat didn't start attacking people for no reason while he had the dagger...he just never trusted anyone and was always paranoid...

[Nooska]

We don't have to focsu so hard on "how can Fain have infected Hinderstap" or how SL taint has spread to Hinderstap. We know that Aridhold wasn't always SL, and we therefore know that it started at some point. The same process can easily be happening to Hinderstap if we want to posit the SL similarities to be caused by a similar reason or mechanic.

[MahaRaj]

We don't have to focsu so hard on "how can Fain have infected Hinderstap" or how SL taint has spread to Hinderstap. We know that Aridhold wasn't always SL, and we therefore know that it started at some point. The same process can easily be happening to Hinderstap if we want to posit the SL similarities to be caused by a similar reason or mechanic.

 

It's important to separate the origin stories from the end results. I think people are getting hung up over the fact that it took a long time for Aridhol to become Shadar Logoth, and they make assumptions about how Mashadar first manifested after its citizens destroyed themselves. (In truth, we' don't know the mechanics of Mashadar's origin, just its behavior.)

 

People argue against Hinderstap's nightly murder frenzy being related to Mashadar, thinking that Hinderstap would have to go through the same process Aridhol did, over the same time period. That's a bad assumption. Shadar Logoth's evil, and the Mashadar entity, are currently (1) fully manifest, (2) communicable, and (3) on the move through a vector once called Padan Fain. Knowing these three facts, we should expect to see Shadar Logoth/Mashadar type effects somewhere in the world. We know the evil-formerly-known-as-Fain has been growing in power, so it's not unreasonable to assume the effects he leaves will be more pronounced at this stage in the story.

 

And that brings us to Hinderstap. I've listed several behavioral similarities between Hinderstap's nightly murder frenzy and Mashadar's, as well as a passage where Hinderstap's fights are described in a way that recalls Mashadar's physicality. I've noted how Sanderson deliberately reminds us of Shadar Logoth in the previous chapter, seeding the idea that the two phenomena could be related. We may not know the precise mechanism, but it makes the most narrative sense to interpret Hinderstap's nightly troubles as a "baby Mashadar", even if Hinderstap's and Shadar Logoth's histories are dissimilar.

[Nooska]

We don't have to focsu so hard on "how can Fain have infected Hinderstap" or how SL taint has spread to Hinderstap. We know that Aridhold wasn't always SL, and we therefore know that it started at some point. The same process can easily be happening to Hinderstap if we want to posit the SL similarities to be caused by a similar reason or mechanic.

 

It's important to separate the origin stories from the end results. I think people are getting hung up over the fact that it took a long time for Aridhol to become Shadar Logoth, and they make assumptions about how Mashadar first manifested after its citizens destroyed themselves. (In truth, we' don't know the mechanics of Mashadar's origin, just its behavior.)

 

People argue against Hinderstap's nightly murder frenzy being related to Mashadar, thinking that Hinderstap would have to go through the same process Aridhol did, over the same time period. That's a bad assumption. Shadar Logoth's evil, and the Mashadar entity, are currently (1) fully manifest, (2) communicable, and (3) on the move through a vector once called Padan Fain. Knowing these three facts, we should expect to see Shadar Logoth/Mashadar type effects somewhere in the world. We know the evil-formerly-known-as-Fain has been growing in power, so it's not unreasonable to assume the effects he leaves will be more pronounced at this stage in the story.

 

And that brings us to Hinderstap. I've listed several behavioral similarities between Hinderstap's nightly murder frenzy and Mashadar's, as well as a passage where Hinderstap's fights are described in a way that recalls Mashadar's physicality. I've noted how Sanderson deliberately reminds us of Shadar Logoth in the previous chapter, seeding the idea that the two phenomena could be related. We may not know the precise mechanism, but it makes the most narrative sense to interpret Hinderstap's nightly troubles as a "baby Mashadar", even if Hinderstap's and Shadar Logoth's histories are dissimilar.

 

Oh, I absolutely agree that its possible, and most likely probable as well. My post was primarily aimed at explaining the inconsistancies in timing etc thats posited in this thread. However, we also have to acknowledge that Fain's intervention isn't necessary for the SL/Mashadar evil to manifest itself in early stages in Hinderstap. (I can't really re-read it, I read tGS in a lent book - library - and won't be getting my own copy till I get ToM within the next week (I hope).