Gobbotopia’s undeniably a major positive achievement for goblinkind. That’s why I’m scared it will be destroyed by the Snarl, as a consequence of Redcloak continuing to pursue the Plan.
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Gobbotopia’s undeniably a major positive achievement for goblinkind. That’s why I’m scared it will be destroyed by the Snarl, as a consequence of Redcloak continuing to pursue the Plan.
Now that you mention it, that's a great point. There's still a massive rift right over Gobbotopia, so if eldritch tentacles start coming out and screwing the place over then the panicked messages from the local clerics that may be the extra motivation to make Redcloak to accept to seal the gates.
That would be a neat element of book VII, and would be consistent with the original "leakage" we saw when Soon's wife MiJung got taken, and when the Snarl erupted somewhat in the desert.
Oddly enough, it seems that we have no instances of the Snarl coming out unprovoked. Assuming you classify "scanning magic (or supernatural stuff, or extraordinary abilities)" as a sort of action against the Snarl, the Snarl never seems to have attacked anyone aside from MiJung, who could have been scanning it, or things like the bears that may well have walked into it. Laurin scanned it, the Scribblers were actively trying to seal it when it was attacking them, and so on.
The Snarl doesn't seem to be doing any fighting or attacking unless provoked (with a very loose definition of provoked), and possibly won't actually deal meaningful damage until the last rift is opened.
Redcloak was studying the rift while they were in Gobbotopia I recall. It would've been strange if he (or nobody else in the city) had ever used any scanning magic on the big glowing thing in the sky while in there. Even if Redcloak had proclaimed an edict "don't use any kind of magic in the big thing in the sky", the chances of some goblinoid caster disobeying or one of the non-goblinoid rebels doing it are pretty significant.
My bet is that it's lots of physical proximity that draws aggro, the Gobbotopia rift is pretty far up so it's hard to get close, while the rifts where tentacles did come from were much closer to the ground and had quite a lot of people gathering nearby for a significant amount of time.
Proximity qualifying for "under attack" probably works better; now that I think about it Laurin had scanned it via Clairvoyance prior to her favor (when she scanned it a second time).
Regardless, the Snarl seems to be much more passive at the moment than it was in the past; if we assume that those were exaggerated, it is possible that the Snarl isn't attacking so much as it is defending itself until it breaks free and attempts to devour the world itself.
I'd like to know when was the last time that the Snarl idly got loose without a ridiculously long wait period. If it's been thousands of worlds since the Snarl actually devoured a world instead of waiting for the end times to do so, it may have climbed the intellectual ladder and gained sentience, whether high level or low level. The brain does has an obscene amount of neurons, each of which is very complex; manifesting soul energy into a coherent mind on one's own through nothing but souls would take a very long time.
The idea of the Snarl thinking its a child trying to clean up after the mean adults (gods) is kind of funny though.
There was also a goblin cleric who allegedly got undone in the act of putting a chicken through the rift. Physical proximity seems to be the main thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if magical prodding alerted the Snarl and made an attack more likely. Blackwing and Xykon weren't attacked, but I suppose they weren't quite as close to the rift as the victims who did trigger an attack.
As for the Snarl seeming more passive, I think that's a big assumption. You're comparing a gated Snarl to a free-roaming Snarl.
soon's wife was snuffed by prodding the portal
one of the previous redcloacks was snuffed out by prodding the portal
the snarl only apeared when laurin began prodding the portal
I'm pretty sure at this point that at least at this level of tears it's the interaction with the portals that grabs the snarl's attention