Wall of Nessus

Roy C. Lackey · 11 Jun 2010, 04:53 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:53:29 -0500
Subject: (urth) Wall of Nessus
References: <000901cb080c$a24bd6a0$3dd14a0c@rclackey>
	<4C113F93.6080403 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <003601cb0922$0df9bdc0$55cd4a0c@rclackey>

James Wynn quoted and wrote:
> > That latter detail may be somewhat at odds with Cyriaca's story, and
after
> > Typhon was revived on the mountain he speaks as if the monsters in the
> > oceans were news to him ("There are powers in the seas now who would
rule."
> > [SWORD, chap. XXVI] ), but that's the way it goes.
> >
>
> I believe Typhon is doing some Yoda-speak here. He is saying there are
> powers in the sea that NOW CONSIDER THEMSELVES RULERS and he'll sort
> them out tout de suite. (There's some pattern-matching here with Bill
> Reis in AEG.)

Probably so. And I have little doubt that he could have dispatched them at
least as easily as the U.S. Navy could have dealt with the Squid God. Anyone
who could build the _Whorl_ and manufacture hundreds of thousands of chem
soldiers would have little trouble with sea monsters; and the Ascians, if
they were even around in Typhon's era, would have been less than fleas to
him.

> Anyway, we know that the monster Scylla at least was around at the time
> of the Whorl's launch, because Typhon's daughter conspired with it
> against her father.

Yeah, but that may have involved a little retrofitting.

The Wall of Nessus just doesn't make much sense, no matter who built it, or
when or why. I think it is one of those things that just have to be accepted
for the sake of the story, like FTL spaceships, time corridors, ghosts and
spirit travel.

-Roy

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