The heir (spoilers)

feyhunde wrote:

SYED wrote:I doubt he will be a full scale wild Mage, but seeing as the sword contains wild magic already, if he has some Mage talent, he could work together with the actual wild Mage.

If Ken is Toren Swordarm, he could be magic, but I doubt it. His brother Herrick was a wild mage. Both are of the blood of Ottovar the Great, with Wizard magic in the blood. Herrick's mage crisis was also forced by Carnadosa rather than natural, and as a result made him weaker than Wencit. Toren might simply not have had a crisis yet, but I think he was old enough (decades had passed in the civil war between him and Herrick), and was literally the heir in a magic kingdom.

BTW, MWW's words are careful when he describes the final battle between Toren and Herrick. They are both dropped in their final battle. So I think they will fight. And rather than one using light magic and one dark, I think it's gonna be more a complete foil. One is magic, one is brawn. One is light, one is dark. One has lived those years in darkness, the other slept in light.

I think you are confusing mage and wizard. The mage talents were not discovered until well after the fall, and flight to Norfressa. The name talents are virtually unknown to the dark wizards left behind, hence their attempt to acquire a mage (Documented? In Sword Brother).

And Herrick's fall to the dark side was not forced by Carnadosa - strongly encouraged, yes, but not forced.

While there is some confusion, the reference to Carnadosa activating Herrick is correct. See http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... essa/226/1:

Fortunately, Herrick's wild wizardry was never fully awakened. It turned out that if a man who had the potential for wild wizardry was willing to sell his soul to Carnadosa, she could open his wild magic "channels" without the sort of personally traumatic event Wencit has described to Bahzell and Brandark. (Mind you, it wasn't a pleasant process for Herrick even with Carnadosa letting him cut corners, but it could be done, and in a relatively short period of time.) On the other hand, Herrick's "channels" would never be as deep, as powerful, as what would have happened had his wild wizardry been awakened "naturally." Thus, even though he was at least several centuries younger than Wencit, and so (theoretically) a more powerful wild wizard, he was never actually able to match Wencit's power. Nor, obviously, had he been given anything like as long to learn to master the techniques of wand wizardry. Which meant he never dared to face Wencit directly.

One presumes that if the Dark Gods can do that, so too can the Gods of Light, or at least Semkirk. However, since one of the points of being a God of Light is that you don't offer your followers easy paths to power, in large part because doing it the hard way makes them much stronger, it would probably take a multiverse-shattering crisis for it to happen.

It's interesting, btw, that the Carnadosans not only know little about the mages, because there aren't any in Kontovar, they know little about wild wizardry either. Cat's Eyes reflects on the fact that there haven't been any of those in Kontovar either since Herrick. And that makes me think that it's odd that they do know so little: it would seem that it's only in the last generation or so that they've paid enough attention to mages to realise that they present a problem that even requires investigation.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

feyhunde wrote:If Ken is Toren Swordarm, he could be magic, but I doubt it. His brother Herrick was a wild mage. Both are of the blood of Ottovar the Great, with Wizard magic in the blood. Herrick's mage crisis was also forced by Carnadosa rather than natural, and as a result made him weaker than Wencit. Toren might simply not have had a crisis yet, but I think he was old enough (decades had passed in the civil war between him and Herrick), and was literally the heir in a magic kingdom.

BTW, MWW's words are careful when he describes the final battle between Toren and Herrick. They are both dropped in their final battle. So I think they will fight. And rather than one using light magic and one dark, I think it's gonna be more a complete foil. One is magic, one is brawn. One is light, one is dark. One has lived those years in darkness, the other slept in light.

I think you are confusing mage and wizard. The mage talents were not discovered until well after the fall, and flight to Norfressa. The name talents are virtually unknown to the dark wizards left behind, hence their attempt to acquire a mage (Documented? In Sword Brother).

And Herrick's fall to the dark side was not forced by Carnadosa - strongly encouraged, yes, but not forced.

If Herrick is "still alive", I suspect old "cat-eye" might be annoyed to learn that.

Old "cat-eye" appears to be a descendant of Ottovar the Great but also appears to be around a hundred years old.

Old "cat-eye" definitely not a Wild Wizard as Herrick was.

feyhunde wrote:

SYED wrote:I doubt he will be a full scale wild Mage, but seeing as the sword contains wild magic already, if he has some Mage talent, he could work together with the actual wild Mage.

If Ken is Toren Swordarm, he could be magic, but I doubt it. His brother Herrick was a wild mage. Both are of the blood of Ottovar the Great, with Wizard magic in the blood. Herrick's mage crisis was also forced by Carnadosa rather than natural, and as a result made him weaker than Wencit. Toren might simply not have had a crisis yet, but I think he was old enough (decades had passed in the civil war between him and Herrick), and was literally the heir in a magic kingdom.

BTW, MWW's words are careful when he describes the final battle between Toren and Herrick. They are both dropped in their final battle. So I think they will fight. And rather than one using light magic and one dark, I think it's gonna be more a complete foil. One is magic, one is brawn. One is light, one is dark. One has lived those years in darkness, the other slept in light.

feyhunde wrote:If Ken is Toren Swordarm, he could be magic, but I doubt it. His brother Herrick was a wild mage.

Stuff deleted for brevity:
At a signing a few years back RFC mentioned that Torren wasnt a wizard at all.

There is a quote in SOTS wherein Wencit explains to Kenhodan that
"I once knew a warrior with no more skill in the art, than a block of wood. You couldn't even imaagine how profoundly unmagical he was! Yet he could hear wild magic from one end of Kontovar to the other. Little good it did him in the end. There is a vast difference between detecting the wild magic and being able to command it, and he went off to the Battle of Lost Hope without ever showing even a hint of the Gift"

I always took this to be Wencit say that Torren did not have the ability to use the wild magic, hence Kenhodan would not either

Cheers

Cartref wrote:There is a quote in SOTS wherein Wencit explains to Kenhodan that
"I once knew a warrior with no more skill in the art, than a block of wood. You couldn't even imaagine how profoundly unmagical he was! Yet he could hear wild magic from one end of Kontovar to the other. Little good it did him in the end. There is a vast difference between detecting the wild magic and being able to command it, and he went off to the Battle of Lost Hope without ever showing even a hint of the Gift"

I always took this to be Wencit say that Torren did not have the ability to use the wild magic, hence Kenhodan would not either

Cheers

hmmmm interesting. I'd always assumed that meant some other unknown warrior, not Torren!!
but of course, when you read it closely it could be Torren.
However I'd sort of thought that all the ruling house had power.

isaac_newton wrote:Cartref wrote:There is a quote in SOTS wherein Wencit explains to Kenhodan that
"I once knew a warrior with no more skill in the art, than a block of wood. You couldn't even imaagine how profoundly unmagical he was! Yet he could hear wild magic from one end of Kontovar to the other. Little good it did him in the end. There is a vast difference between detecting the wild magic and being able to command it, and he went off to the Battle of Lost Hope without ever showing even a hint of the Gift"

I always took this to be Wencit say that Torren did not have the ability to use the wild magic, hence Kenhodan would not either

Cheers



hmmmm interesting. I'd always assumed that meant some other unknown warrior, not Torren!!
but of course, when you read it closely it could be Torren.
However I'd sort of thought that all the ruling house had power.

The how this section came about is that Kenhodan asked Wencit if he could hear Wencity using his wild magic, did that make him a wild wizard too and Wencit's response is above.

Now at the time of my first read, I knew nothing about Torren being somehow bound in the body that subsequently became inhabited by Kenhodan and it is made plain by Wencit in the last chapter that Torren is indeed Kenhodan and without that revelation the earlier comment by Wencit is completely meaningless, but with it, it is obvious to me (at least ) who Wencit was referring to.

As to the members of the ruling house had power, that is not correct as Torren did not have any of the art and Herick why gaining it later did not have it of his own accord.

Cheers

IMHO
Kenhodan is Torren, sent through time by Wencit (with his Memory suppressed) either from the last battle when he slew Herrick or from a parallel universe. His distaff cousin (and Herrick's decendent) is the current cat eyed wizard.

When Wencit said of the sons of Cleres one was a wild wizard and the other had no wizard talent at all, at all. So do not expect any magic from Kenhodan except that which he carries in the SoS. That seems to be a ward against any sort of Magic.

While Torren does not want any throne or Empire, Kenhoden is a natural leader and may be required to assume the mantel of his heritage for the duration of the last great wizard war in order to unite all the powers against the Carnadosians.

He will eventually find himself in the same situation as Bahzell had with Leanna when Gwynna decides she wants him.

dwileye13 wrote:IMHO Kenhodan is Torren, sent through time by Wencit (with his Memory suppressed) either from the last battle when he slew Herrick or from a parallel universe. His distaff cousin (and Herrick's decendent) is the current cat eyed wizard.

Sorry for the late reply, for whatever reason this is the first time I've read this thread.

I think your on to something here. I'm talking about the time travel theory, btw.
The reason I say this is that is that Kenhodan seems to remember(I'm too lazy to go find the exact quote(s)), during his harp playing, the Last Battle in detail, such as taking hits from a mace. Then we have that conversation at the end, where Wencit and the "unknown" are talking, which makes it obvious, more or less, that it was Wencit who cleared his memory(Which a White Wizard could do with permission) and that Wencit cared a very great deal for him(Wencit was known to have loved Toren and Herrick both). It's those two segments that say, Ok, this just might have happened.

There are other things that kinda/sorta also point to this as being a possibility. Like at the beginning where Wencit searches his memory for what might be about to happen, his FIRM refusal to tell Kenhodan anything about his past(even though it is obvious that Wencit knows his history) and Tomanāk's assurance to Bahzell that he is one of his swords just as much as the Gunny was.

Something else that sort of niggles at the back of my mind(as saying his body was brought forward, not just his mind) is the fact that Kenhodan is obviously VERY well trained in an ancient sword form(Bahzell makes the remark that sword mastery runs in the muscle, not the mind) , has seen A LOT of combat(as evidenced by the amount of scars he has) and seems to have a version of the "Rage. That last may not mean much...

Don't forget the relatives on the dark side.