Sev the Murderer

Dave Tallman · 05 Jun 2008, 12:03 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:03:17 -0600
Subject: (urth) Sev the Murderer
Message-ID: <4847D605.1030902 at gmail.com>

Thlassocrat wrote:
> The context makes it clear that the blood is the "second 
> volunteer's", and that Sev has killed him. Only later does Sev come 
> out and say explicitly that he did so. Perhaps somewhere he 
> expresses some kind of remorse or shows some empathy, but I don't 
> recall it.
>   
Sev was raised to kill without pity, so this is not surprising. Probably 
if he had not helped Voldalus that night he would have been mistaken for 
a grave robber and killed himself, but I agree about the immorality of 
what he did.

> The culminating point of Sev's sham "trial" in Yesod is when he 
> joins battle on the side of the eidolons against the sailors 
> fighting to prevent the destruction of Urth. (UOTN XXI) The 
> eidolons are weak at first, then appear to gain strength as he 
> focuses on them, and when he joins the battle, they triumph at 
> once. 
>
> There is a resonance here; once again he takes sides against the 
> real defenders in a cause he knows almost nothing about....
The real defenders? Now you are arguing for a complete moral inversion 
of the entire series, and I can't agree. The Sun wasn't dying of natural 
causes; someone put a black hole into it and shortened the life of the 
entire biosphere by millions of years. Was it worth catastrophic global 
warming to put the Sun back to normal? The choice of futures was the 
world of the Green Man or the world of Ragnorak. I believe Sev was on 
the right side, however foolish his motives. He was a flawed hero, not a 
villain.

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