Most of you know RaFoaDK much better than I do, I was always confused by the last scene with Hamanu where he took the Dark Lens and burrowed to Athas' core with it, after letting it go, he drifted back to the surface through the natural process of erosion and was greeted by a paradise. What was all that? An afterlife? Future history? Do you feel those events are canonical?
Wouldn't the Dark Lens take just as much time to be brought to the surface as Hamanu?
As far as the whole paradise, i tend to think that this was something not to be taken as canon. i think it was all in his head. athas has no paradise, and no happy afterlife.
A lot clearer than our explanations...heheh.In any case, Hamanu swam in the magma, trailing either the Lens or Rajaat's prison in the stone cyst (or both, can't recall) with him so he could put it far out of reach of the (partially freed) Rajaat and his pawns.
Then, he drifted in the magma until the spirit of Athas - a global spirit of the land - took him under its wing, taking a long 1,000 years to purify Hamanu's immortal body of Rajaat's handiwork. During that time, Hamanu was ensconced into a rock coccoon, or something like that...its a bit nebulous ;) He was finally magically spit out by the spirit, transported directly in Urik's courtroom, found out he was a mortal man again...and offered the possibility of joining his loved one - Telhamie - in eternity, merging with the very being of the spirit of Quraite. (For since Telhamie was a great druid her dead spirit did not go to the Grey but joined with the spirit of Quraite.)
LC is the first product to describe events that occur after Free Year 12. We now canonize events as far ahead as free year 13. :D (pun warning) Beyond that is out of canon range. :p
You could always re-read that last chapter, Exiled.
I've reread it several times. It's still confusing.
Someone please back me up, or correct me, on this. :P
RaFoaDK, IIRC, is the one book that points to the Lens still existing. It may be that Abbey misread Denning...like most of us did.
In any case, whether the Lens still exist or not, Rajaat can still be freed from its prison. The Lens is/was but one way to free him. That's all.
Plus a DM ought to be a little crazy to use the Lens in his campaign as anything else than a plot device, for its power is too terrible to behold and would screw up the campaign.
I love the last chapter too, but not as a canon source. It is a fitting end to the hero though.
Exactly. So many people have voiced a negative opinion on that last chapter, as if apparently unable or unwilling to acknowledge the difference between canon and a good yarn.
That chapter's ending is similar to many other tales from outside the realm of rpg novelization and about which you don't hear complaints, and sometimes even hear good things said.
BTW, that book has my favorite dedication of any book I have ever read.
I'm not sure of this, but I think that in 'beyond the prism pentad', it mentions that sadira has placed wards and would know if anyone would go there looking for the dark lens, infering that the lens still exists...
Good catch! Yes, that's what I would infer from that detail.
I'm not sure of this, but I think that in 'beyond the prism pentad', it mentions that sadira has placed wards and would know if anyone would go there looking for the dark lens, infering that the lens still exists...
That'd be correct...although it's more than likely because the author of the book, who IIRC *wasn't* Denning, also incorrectly read the ending of the PP and mistook the wards and such as being placed on the Lens rather than on Rajaat's (new) prison-sun.
In the end, however, I think there's enough canon material, as well as enough "room for interpretation" in the wording used at the end of the PP to justify either the Lens having been destroyed, or it having been warded in the magma. I'm pretty confident that, based on the novel itself, that the Lens was destroyed, but again...there are other canon sources that say otherwise.