Lord Soth V.S. The Witch King

[EvilElitest]

WG thanks for the dragon note. I don't deny his badass powers, Soth is my second favorite character in th books, but i don't think we can just say "he is only able to be killed by a god"

Lets do this logically, what does Soth have that can hurt the WK and visa versa?
from
EE

[warty goblin]

WG thanks for the dragon note. I don't deny his badass powers, Soth is my second favorite character in th books, but i don't think we can just say "he is only able to be killed by a god"

Lets do this logically, what does Soth have that can hurt the WK and visa versa?
from
EE

I agree that just because Soth was killed by a god doesn't mean that only a god can do it. On the other hand the only other Death Knight I know of was Krell from the Amber & ____ trilogy, who was also done in by more or less a god. The only mortal I can think of who was able to defeat Soth was Raistlin, but seeing as he killed an entire pantheon that's not much of a lower bound either- although Soth recognizes Raistlin's superiority before he goes back in time and aquires all of Fistandantilus' power, so he's not yet at deicide power levels. Raistlin however also makes it perfectly clear that at that time the only reason he hasn't conquered the entire world is because the proposition is too boring to be worth his time.

Of perhaps more interest however is the encounter between Soth and Ariakas- who is both an adept wizard (he passed the Test), a very powerful warrior (he's able to throw a spear clean through a horse) and is Minion Numero Uno to Takhisis. He is in short a reasonable analogue in function and more or less in form to the Witch King- and Soth takes him down by grabbing his wrist. Ariakas is then literally awestruck by the power of Soth, and seeing as he tends to cahort around with two different goddesses (he serves Takhisis and has a son with Zebiom) Ariakas strikes me as a man not easily taken aback.

[Mr. Scaly]

EE, that's a reasonable assumption. But honestly, I have no idea what else could do the job.

As was mentioned earlier, he killed a dragon with a word.

He out duelled Tanis Halfelven, pain in the ass but a highly skilled swordsman. Or he did in the alternate timeline thing.

Not sure how analogous this is, but he was more than a match for Strahd von Zarovich of the Ravenloft timeline.

People who stab or even touch him are gripped with a chilling cold that numbs their limbs to the point of uselessness.

I don't think he actually has a physical body, to be honest. He's pretty much just armour with a pair of evil glowing eyes but nothing else is inside it. I suppose Witch King could try and sunder it but I doubt that would do much good...the armour isn't worn by Soth, it IS Soth.

[Steven the Lich]

1) No, when i say i don't like Star Trek, but i reorganize some of its good points, i just don't like. Calling him a hack is accurate, because that is what the books is the work of, somebody with no talent. http://anti-shurtugal.com/mission.htm see there
The book is nothing but the work of a hack, somebody without any talent working off of cliches and fridge logic
2) the same way you win real debate, through logic
3) you brought it back from the dead, not I


1) Fancy descriptions don't prove a point. I realize Soth is powerful, i just don't think he can win
2) Um, he got cursed with immortality, nothing special
3) He was defeated by the dark godess, don't mean nobody else coudl hurt him
4) His magic scared a dragon i believe, i don't recall him killing one.


I need to check hte rule book again, but i think they are just freaking powerful, not absurd
from
EE

1) I too, found Eragon a good read. As for your opinion, thats fine. But calling him a hack? Do you have any support for that matter? It seems just plain rude and radical just to say this stuff without proper evidence. I found most of the stuff unique, and while he may have used common lore, he did mix it up and created some spice. Heck, as far as I'm sure, Urgals and Shades were pretty unique, the dragon riders were cool, and as far as I'm sure, the dragon binding hasn't really been used before in the same context as Eragon. Provide evidence for your claim before making it, as making your oppinion public without support just makes you look like a jerk.
2)And, ultimately, what the crowd thinks of you in the end. Are you proposing debate without an audience, in which case cannot be won, even with logic. It is highly unlikely that one in a debate can persuade the other side into their beliefs. That is what happened in LK vs. Sauron, we couldn't persuade you nor you us, and that is why it kept going for some time.
3) Though it wasn't at all settled. Just a point.

1) But describing the character in such powerful forms does have an effect. If you just say "This dude is evil" and that alone, are you really giving the readers a good image to work with in terms of power? No, JRR tolkien gave fancy wording and history for his villains to add effect as well and to give more of an essence for his villains.
2) Yes, so did the WK. Difference? Soth got his cursed immortality on his own and keeps it independently. WK dies when Sauron dies. Soth is more independent.
3) Well... he was killed before, but only by powerful people. So are you saying that a random hobo in the streets can pick up a sword and run it through Soth with ease? The lord of a cursed realm had to give into his demands to keep him from destroying it and himself (Meaning the lord of the realm). He was only defeated by powerful beings of darkness (Who had to take away his undeath to do so, granting him a much longed for gift in the process), and a guy who traveled through time itself! Sounds pretty hard to top with your average adventurers and even epic adventurers.
4) Actually...

Strahd tried to use Soth to his advantage but this only cost him a red dragon which was one of his castle guardians.

He did kill one.

EE, that's a reasonable assumption. But honestly, I have no idea what else could do the job.

As was mentioned earlier, he killed a dragon with a word.

He out duelled Tanis Halfelven, pain in the ass but a highly skilled swordsman. Or he did in the alternate timeline thing.

Not sure how analogous this is, but he was more than a match for Strahd von Zarovich of the Ravenloft timeline.

People who stab or even touch him are gripped with a chilling cold that numbs their limbs to the point of uselessness.

I don't think he actually has a physical body, to be honest. He's pretty much just armour with a pair of evil glowing eyes but nothing else is inside it. I suppose Witch King could try and sunder it but I doubt that would do much good...the armour isn't worn by Soth, it IS Soth.

Nicley put, Mr. Scaly.

Oh, and EE, sidenote
http://anti-shurtugal.com/mission.htm
This seems like a site of zealous fanatics when I just read the History.
Case in point.

Let us ponder this for just a second...

Arya is a noble elf princess, who insists on wearing skimpy leather outfits around a horny sixteen-year-old. And then denies the poor boy, telling him he should find someone younger.

"There is something dreadfully wrong with this." I say.

"But..." you say "It's not her fault, she's suffering from shyness and body image issues, by telling him to find someone younger she's merely acting the martyr. The poor girl deserves our pity!"

"Alas" say I, "I wish it were even so, but Nay! Elves are without a doubt the most beautiful creatures in existence, and age makes little or no impression on them."

"But..." you say "Maybe she's right, perhaps he should find someone younger."

"Forsooth." I reply "If it were so, even then would I agree with her most heartily. But Nay! Hast thou forgotten the skimpy leather outfits??? What then could be her purpose in wearing these abominations but to esnare the (almost) innocent young lad in her web of seduction?"

"But...but..." you say "Maybe she just likes wearing leather."

"Verily!" I remark, my tongue laden heavily with the demon, Sarcasm, and my eyes rolling heavenwards "Leather is not in the least bit comfortable, nay, niether is it practical in combat situations. For I say truly unto you, tight leather inhibits movement and flexibility!"

"But...but...but..." you say "Maybe...maybe she's just playing hard-to-get. Maybe she actually will love Eragon."

"Riiight." Respondeth I in typical sarcastic drawl "And get her ass thrown in jail for statutory rape?"

"Er..." Reply you with much scratching of thine noggin, endeavoring to figure out if that actually works.

"THE TRUTH IS!" bellow I with an excess of gusto "ARYA IS A DIRTY @#$%&!!!"

"*gulp*" you gulp

"THE TRUTH IS!!!!" I scream, veins pulsing on my forhead and sweat running down my livid face. "ARYA DESERVES DEATH FOR HER MERCILESS EXPLOITATION OF MALE EMOTIONS!!!!"

"*gasp*" you gasp

"THE TRUTH IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I shriek, jumping up and down, waving my arms frantically and getting tangled in the microphone cord.

"ARYA SHOULD BE SHOT AT DAWN!"

Thankyou, thankyouverymuch ladies and gentlemen.

And honestly, I thought she denied him a relationship because she didn't want him to be distracted from his duties. And I actually never imagined her wearing skimpy leather.
From my oppinion... the site is solely made for mocking Eragon and its author.
My oppinion... the site has no taste, and is vulgar.
Oh yeah, and that speech is incredibly stupid and violent. Eragon's world doesn't have guns. The rant down from that has less caps, but maybe a more disgusting comparison. The third one... has little to no point... most likely the latter.

[Rowanomicon]

Well I haven't read Eragon, but that rant has a good point and if she didn't want him distracted then she wouldn't wear skimpy outfits.
gratuitous skimpy outfits on elven females is a common and stupid trope of bad fantasy writing (not saying it never appears in good writing, but even when it does it's still silly).

*ahem* Back so Soth and the WK.

WG, passing the test only means that he /is/ a wizard, not that he's a great one. I believe a wizard is required to take the test before learning 1st level spells (could be wrong, but I think it says something about Sleep in Soulforge) and I believe the (not-necessarily-cannon) 3.0 Dragonlance setting book gives level 3 as the level a wizard must take the test and choose robes or else become a renegade wizard and fear retribution.

Also the WK is not longer a mortal, I can't see him being afraid of anything really, not even Sauron. I think he just obeys Sauron fully. I sincerely doubt that the WK can feel fear.

Both combatants are rediculously good swordsmen so I see no big advantage either way.

Soth's magic is, in my opinion, stronger, but it is hard to grade the type of magic that appears in Middle Earth against D&D magic.
Also, as I stated with the LK, I don't see direct damage spells hurting the WK without first doing something to bypass his magical protection. Then again... destroying all his armor etc would mean that he needs to return to Mordor to get re-outfitted by Sauron. So, if you count that as a win, then Soth could probably pull it off.
Furthermore, Power Word Kill will not kill the WK as he is undead.

I can see Soth winning if he casts Cure Serious Wounds or something like that (I'm figuring that positive energy is basically the same as Anti-Sauron/WK magic), but even then he has to touch the WK, which might get risky (see next point).

Is Soth's sword indestructible? All blades perish...

(Just to be clear, it's very hard to touch someone with a sword without getting shanked to high heaven.)

So I guess I was wrong. They're both great swordsmen, but if it moves to melee the WK has a very clear advantage. Can Soth be defeated by weaponly damage?

[warty goblin]

Some examples of Ariakas' power:

- After Soth bitch-slaps him he turns around ready to reduce Soth to a pile of ash with a spell before realizing he is a Death Knight. By this point in the series Weis and Hickman are playing a bit fast and loose with spell levels and suchlike, but no way is burning somebody to a cinder a first level spell.

- He surrounds himself with a magical shield in Neraka potent enough to keep anybody from stabbing him, at least until Raistlin lowers it from a completely different part of the temple complex.

- I'm fairly sure, though I can't prove it atm, that he was involved in the creation of the Draconians.

Some more Soth trivia:
- His armor, sword etc are reasonably close to indestructable from what I can tell. For one thing he's been using the same stuff for 300 odd years, apparently without cleaning or other forms of maintenence. It also survived the fire that destroyed Dargaard Keep, a fire so hot it burned through rock.

- Raistlin is the only living thing Soth has ever met that he fears. Granted, Soth probably doesn't go on Meet 'n' Greet tours of Krynn, but he did spend a good portion of time kicking around Neraka, which was packed to the gills with priests, wizards and warriors of various and sundry power levels. It also clinches my earlier conclusion that Soth could dominate Ariakas, Dalamar and pretty much anybody else who comes to mind.

- Isn't Soth described somewhere as a being that the gods themselves might fear?

[Rowanomicon]

I know that Ariakas is certainly capable of spells higher than first level. I was simply pointing out passing the test alone doesn't rank someone very high on the over all power scale of literature.

Fireball is a spell that would certainly reduce most to ashes (or at least burn them to death).
A good spell, but not overwhelming power.

Anyway, maybe Ariakas is a better parallel for the WK than I first thought, but the WK is still not going to be afraid.

Well, do you think that Soth's sword would break against the WK?

Soth is certainly fearsome (and awesome!) and I do, for the record, think he definitely outranks the WK on the sheer power scale.
I'm just trying to figure out how this might go down.

Good to see you again by the way.

[Steven the Lich]

Well I haven't read Eragon, but that rant has a good point and if she didn't want him distracted then she wouldn't wear skimpy outfits.
gratuitous skimpy outfits on elven females is a common and stupid trope of bad fantasy writing (not saying it never appears in good writing, but even when it does it's still silly).

Actually, it said she had a unadorned leather shirt and unadorned leather pants, but there was nothing about her outfit being skimpy or being tight even. What really caught Eragons eye was her cat-like eyes, her raven black hair, and all. It was not in the leather.

Soth is a powerful being, I'm not sure that the WK's black breath will have any effect on him. I'm sure that plenty of Soth's spells can push WK around a lot as well. His armor survived fire bruning through rock, his sword is black with the blood of countless victims and still useable, and I think it is bound to him as he appears with it every time he forms a new body at the coffer, that I think is qualified as indestructible.

From the new facts I just noticed, WK is doomed to fail. There isn't much to back him up besides numbers of orcs (Which are easily killable and bear not as much quality of Soth's soldiers), while Soth has dragons and draconians and all that. Major difference in power.
Ultimately, WK has little hope. Soth is too epic a character, worthy of being a dark lord of evil. WK stands a better chance alone with Soth than against his armies. Even then, it's bleak.

[Rowanomicon]

reformable and indestrucable are two different things.
I'm still going to go with Soth's sword falling under the category of "all blades" as far as the WK's weapon shattering body goes.

However I still think Soth takes this (though not with ease). I was originally going to make a Soth v Sauron thread, but decided the boards didn't need another Sauron thread.

(and as to the off topic Eragon discussion. If she's not actually wearing skimpy leather then that's a whole different thing.)

[EvilElitest]

I agree that just because Soth was killed by a god doesn't mean that only a god can do it. On the other hand the only other Death Knight I know of was Krell from the Amber & ____ trilogy, who was also done in by more or less a god. The only mortal I can think of who was able to defeat Soth was Raistlin, but seeing as he killed an entire pantheon that's not much of a lower bound either- although Soth recognizes Raistlin's superiority before he goes back in time and aquires all of Fistandantilus' power, so he's not yet at deicide power levels. Raistlin however also makes it perfectly clear that at that time the only reason he hasn't conquered the entire world is because the proposition is too boring to be worth his time.

1) i checked my book, and my book is falling apart so opening it scares me, so in my quick look i noticed the death knight template. They gain 13 powerwords, fear arura, some immunities, resistence to turning, control over mindless undead, the abilty to summon a mount, and a few niffty powers but nothing absurd. Most of Soth's power simply comes from his high level as a fighter
2) Well Raistlin is absurd so....

Now i'm willing to believe that Soth is a better fighter than the WK in raw sword fighting, but in the miltary situation he could be brought down by mass numbers.

1) I too, found Eragon a good read. As for your opinion, thats fine. But calling him a hack? Do you have any support for that matter? It seems just plain rude and radical just to say this stuff without proper evidence. I found most of the stuff unique, and while he may have used common lore, he did mix it up and created some spice. Heck, as far as I'm sure, Urgals and Shades were pretty unique, the dragon riders were cool, and as far as I'm sure, the dragon binding hasn't really been used before in the same context as Eragon. Provide evidence for your claim before making it, as making your oppinion public without support just makes you look like a jerk.
2)And, ultimately, what the crowd thinks of you in the end. Are you proposing debate without an audience, in which case cannot be won, even with logic. It is highly unlikely that one in a debate can persuade the other side into their beliefs. That is what happened in LK vs. Sauron, we couldn't persuade you nor you us, and that is why it kept going for some time.
3) Though it wasn't at all settled. Just a point.

1a) Yes, he is a total hack. he is almost the poster child of a hack. He is utterly and totally talentless. Everything in the book has a total lack of quality, badly written or out right stolen. Allow me to expand
1B) orginial. Sure, in a not at all sort of way
Star wars break down

http://anti-shurtugal.com/emperorjustin.htm

Lord of the rings

hell, general cut and paste, fable had more originality

1c) we have his utter lack of actual writing style
Mary Sues
awful character development
inconsistencies
writing
prose
and those are just run of the mill writers
Eragon is a book which is written without talent. Like, none at all. We go from cliche to cliche and inconsistency to inconsistency without

[EvilElitest]

Oh, and EE, sidenote
http://anti-shurtugal.com/mission.htm
This seems like a site of zealous fanatics when I just read the History.
Case in point.

You should go into propaganda, where half truths and unbacked interpretations are rewarded
Now lets considered what you did
I gave you a link to a site that explains, logically why Eragon is a bad book. I sent you to the mission statement. Not saying that they are all fanatics sounds good, and if you can find one piece to back it up it works. But here is the thing, you didn't look into the history. That article is in fact under Miscellaneous under rants. Now i'm confused how you got there. I'd expect you'd look under maybe prose, or writing, or character, or if you want real quality (albeit a bit too pro Harry Potter for my taste) the Epistles. But instead you chose and admitting bad rant and used it to try to discredit the entire site. Which is bad form, and i suspect deliberate. You didn't go for hte history, you went instantly for rants. Which is an odd train of thought. Now if it was an honest mistake, i will defend the site and all of my complaints with eragon with the best writing on teh sight

Spoiler

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Why So Many Young Authors Despise Inheritance

There are many popular books in the world. Not all of them are particularly deserving of their popularity. Others are. But few popular novels attract as much hatred as the Inheritance trilogy by young adult Christopher Paolini. On forums all over the internet debates over its quality are carrying on, and often they are quite vicious. The question here is – why? Why do non-fans of this series hate it so much, and why are they so vocal about their dislike? And why are so many of them other young authors not much different from Paolini himself? As fans have demanded time and time again, why don’t these critics simply move on and read something else?

The answer, I think, is quite simple. Other young writers object to Inheritance because they are young writers. In other words they are developing writers hoping to be published one day. This can and has led fans to accuse them of jealousy. This is a false argument which violates the famous Ebert’s Law, but is it true? For the most part, probably not.

In answering the question of why young writers hate the Inheritance series, it is important to note something which most non-writers probably aren’t aware of: publishing a book is not an easy thing to do. In fact it is extremely hard and, for some, impossible. If you were to ask an author with at least one book on the market about their publishing quest, they will almost invariably tell you it took them years of hard work. Not weeks. Not months. Years. And for some it can take a lifetime. The quest for publication usually works like this: an author writes a book. He thinks it is good enough to be published. He then begins writing proposal letters to publishers and, perhaps, seeks out the services of a literary agent. After sending those proposal letters, it’s all a matter of waiting. Then, often months after the initial sending of the letters, the replies come back. It is likely almost to the point of absolute certainty that they will all be rejections. Every professional writer has had rejection letters, and some have entire folders full of them. The legendary J.K.Rowling, for example, was supposedly rejected by nearly every publisher in the United Kingdom. And this is an author who has gone on to make millions and who, many agree, writes quality material.

Young, unpublished authors like the owners of this site are aware of that. They know that years of hard and unrewarding work await them in their quest to attain that distant, shining thing – publication. They long for it. They live for it. It is all they dare to dream of, and they would give anything to achieve it.
And then, quite suddenly, this young man called Christopher Paolini arrives on the scene. He’s published. Twice. He is a bestseller. He has been on TV. He is an international celebrity, and all because he published a book which he famously began writing at age fifteen and finished at nineteen. It all sounds so wonderful, does it not? A child prodigy, according to some. Look at what he has achieved! He’s living his dream and getting rich off it! He has a million fans! He is a genius!

But here’s something those young writers know which most of his fans do not: people who begin writing novels at fifteen are extremely common. There are thousands of them. Many of these young writers began writing before that age. Some of them are still at that age. In essence, the only difference between Mr Paolini and those young writers is that he is published. And he is not published because he wrote those letters and got those rejections. He is not published because he worked hard. He is not published because he is a genius. He is published because he has family connections. He is published because his parents own their own publishing company. He was picked up by Knopf because he did not have to go to school like those other young writers do. Instead he was free to travel the country – probably at great expense – publicising his book. Knopf took him on because they saw a great marketing opportunity in such a young client with his own novel. Most likely they wanted their own J.K.Rowling, and he would be sufficient to fill that role. So they published Eragon and began an aggressive marketing campaign, hailing their prize as a prodigy.

The problem is this: he is not a prodigy. He is, at best, a writer of average skill. If he had been forced to spend years reworking, revising and editing as writers normally do, he could have been very good. As far as young writers go he is perhaps a little above average. But as writers, period, go, he is mediocre. However, the public does not seem to be aware of this. They repeat what Knopf told them, leading some to think that he is still fifteen whereas he is in fact twenty-two and by no means a child any more. Young children and those inexperienced in the fantasy genre find his works accessible and admire him for his success, perhaps encouraged by of his rather naïve and innocent personal charm.

However, young writers like himself despise him. They loathe his books, they loathe the things he says, and most of all they loathe what he stands for. To them he is not a hero, or a genius, or a good writer. The fact of the matter is this: he did not go through those years of hard work. Instead of suffering all the anguish and self-doubt which a writer usually must, he had the world effectively handed to him on a silver platter. Does he have that folder of rejection letters? Does he have that terror that he will never realise his dream? No. Instead he has something which is normally reserved only for those of rare and special ability, something which should have gone to a truly original and distinguished writer. Not one who churns out simplistic, unoriginal airport novels aimed at a young or inexperienced audience.

So those young, unpublished writers are not impressed but enraged. By reaching this high point in the way he did, by becoming famous without hard work or significant ability, he has offended everything they hold dear. He has given the public the impression that publishing is easy, that near-plagiarism of other people’s ideas is acceptable behaviour, and that young authors do not know how to write. They are afraid that this phenomena is symptomatic of the corruption of literature and the transformation of writers from closeted, serious, hard-working people into vapid celebrities whose only gift is being charming on chat-shows.

And when they try and share this fear with others, they are all too frequently met with derision, with accusations of jealousy, intimations that they lack talent, and no form of respect for their opinions. Their refusal to accept Mr Paolini as one of their own means that his fans treat them with scorn, perhaps believing that it is they, and not he, who are phoney writers or pretenders. Not being writers themselves, they cannot know about the passion that drives these people. All they see are a group of individuals who hate what they love and won’t be silenced. They can’t understand their anger.

The writers are angry because they feel their efforts are being mocked. And they are afraid that, if they should ever realise their dream and become published, that status will have been degraded and so mean less than it did before.

Let me put it this way: if you had spent years painting an exquisite and precise picture of a magnificent old building and, having finally completed it after spending what feels like your entire life working at it, perfecting your craft and subordinating all else to getting that painting finished, and then the art gallery turned you down in favour of a piece of canvas which someone had spent an afternoon randomly splattering paint onto, how would you feel?

Bad writing

Spoiler

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As established in the first Epistle, other writers – and not just young writers, as a matter of fact – consider the Inheritance series unworthy of its popularity because it is poorly written. Writers should of course be expected to know what they are talking about – published or no. And it is not just other writers who think this. The famous (or imfamous, depending on your point of view) Ivy is a professional editor as well as a writer. And people working in publishing – agents, proofreaders, executives, etc. – have agreed with her sentiments. It is common knowledge amongst people in ‘the business’ that Inheritance is merely a sensationalist popular phenomena. Nobody with experience in writing and publishing thinks of it as ‘literature’. Instead the common view among them is that the Inheritance series – Eragon and Eldest both – are ‘airport novels’. Readable, easily accessible, and very little else. It is only fans of the books who believe they are innovative, that they are literature, that they will last for longer than a few months after the publication of Empire, the final book in the trilogy. Fans may be inclined to wonder how the Epistler and others like him can so confidently predict that the trilogy will be quickly forgotten once it has been completed and released. This is what Epistle the Second will attempt to answer.

The reason – there are others, but this is the most important – for these predictions is very simple. The Inheritance series will be quickly forgotten because it is an example of bad writing. Not once in the pages of Eragon or Eldest does the quality of the prose rise above mediocre, and much of the time during Eldest it is not just mediocre but terrible. Epistle the Second will explain, using sub-headings and examples, just how this is so.

Problem One: Clunky. And. Robotic. Emotionless. Writing.

Imagine a friend of yours has just read a good book. He’s got that special glow, that satisfied expression. Clearly, he really enjoyed that book. Here’s an experiment: ask him just why he enjoyed it so much. The odds are very good that he’ll say it was because he really cared about what happened in it. “I just really connected with the characters”, he might say. Or, “it was so exciting! My heart was pounding!”. Anything along these lines would imply that he was able to connect, emotionally, with the characters and the story. In other words, he found himself caring about what happened. Every good book makes its reader care about what happens, and the level of emotional involvement depends on how good the writing is. That’s it. A sufficiently skilled writer can make you care about anyone. George R R Martin, for example, is able to make the reader sympathise with a traitorous murderer who had an incestuous relationship with his own sister. This is because he is an uncommonly good writer. It is a matter of skill, and enough stress cannot be placed on this point.

However, Paolini is unable to do this. At no point during Eragon and Eldest does the reader really care about what becomes of any of the characters. In other words, there is no emotional investment. The reader keeps on reading in the vague hope of finding out what happens next, but if the main character were to die he or she would almost certainly be left unmoved. Even the most rabid and obsessive fans of the series rarely, if ever, express any concern about the ultimate fate of any of the characters. Some even admit to caring more about minor characters such as Angela the witch than about Eragon himself.

This cannot be argued with. It is a solid, immutable fact. Nobody is emotionally invested in what will take place in Empire. And the blame for this rests squarely on the shoulders of Christopher Paolini. Love him or hate him, it is a flat fact that he has not the ability to put emotion into his writing. It is lack of skill on his part, not lack of intelligence on the part of his readers, that makes Eragon and Eldest so hollow and devoid of spirit.

And how, you may be wondering, does the Epistler know this? The answer is easy. Here is an extract from the ending of Eldest, when Eragon is thinking over the revelation that Morzan is his father.

“Eragon always assumed he would be glad to learn the identity of his father. Now that he had, the knowledge revolted him. When he was younger, he often entertained himself by imagining that his father was someone grand and important, though Eragon knew the opposite was far more likely. Still, it never occurred to him, even in his most extravagant daydreams, that he might be the son of a Rider, much less one of the Forsworn.
It turned a daydream into a nightmare. I was sired by a monster.... My father was the one who betrayed the Riders to Galbatorix. It left Eragon feeling sullied.”

Let us analyse this. Imagine for a moment that it is you who just found out your father was an evil man. Imagine you had just been told your father was a terrorist responsible for murdering innocent civilians. Imagine if your father was known the world over for having beheaded a helpless captive on camera, and shown no remorse for his actions. Imagine that. How would you feel? Unless you happened to agree that terrorist activities are just and noble, it can be assumed that you would be distraught, inconsolable. Most likely you would cry, be depressed, try endlessly to find reasons why it can’t be true. But Eragon does none of those things. All that happens – all the readers gets in the way of an emotional reaction – is the obligatory single tear, a paragraph of shouting, and finally this tiny section where Eragon thinks it over. This part should have been the most emotional of all, as it would logically be taking place when Eragon is able to think more calmly and begins trying to come to terms with the truth. But it isn’t. The writing tells you that Eragon is upset, rather than showing you that fact. And to make it worse, it does the telling in an entirely innappropriate manner, using formal language which makes it feel stiff and distant. Read aloud, this paragraph feels like someone making a formal statement in a court of law. Try reading it aloud, and the most fitting voice to read it in would be a flat monotone. It has no emotion in it. None. A robot could have written it. To cap it all, we then move onto the next paragraph and find that Eragon gets over it. That’s it. In the space of ten minutes he forgets how upset he is, and manages to rationalise the situation, and then everything is fine and dandy again. Observe:

“But no...As he healed a man’s broken spine, a new way of viewing the situation occurred to him, one that restored a measure of his self-confidence: Morzan may be my parent, but he is not my father. Garrow was my father. He raised me. He taught me how to live well and honorably, with integrity. I am who I am because of him. Even Brom and Oromis are more my father than Morzan. And Roran is my brother, not Murtagh.
Eragon nodded, determined to maintain that outlook. Until then, he had refused to completely accept Garrow as his father. And even though Garrow was dead, doing so relieved Eragon, gave him a sense of closure, and helped to ameliorate his distress over Morzan.”

This is not how a human being behaves. It simply isn’t. This is how a computer thinks. Cold, logical, utterly emotionless. No-one could possibly recover from such a painful blow so quickly, unless they were sociopathic. And, once again, this is written in the same formal, flat style. It even shows evidence of Thesaurus syndrome. No-one thinks the word ‘ameliorate’. Most likely you will have to look it up before you know what it means. It is a distraction. It does not add colour. Nor does it solve the problem that this passage is hollow and spiritless. How can the reader possibly hope to feel for Eragon’s sufferings if he himself cannot do it?

Here is an example of how a more skilled writer might portray this part of the story:

“Eragon wandered through the battlefield, surrounded by dead and dying men. He could hear the screams and moans of pain from those still alive, and thought grimly that for many of them this would be their only dirge and farewell. But somehow he could not feel for them. He could only feel rage at all that had happened, and guilt that he should be angry. What right did he have to rage against injustice? He was not the noble and righteous Rider he had thought he was. He was the son of a monster. The seed of a traitor and murderer lived inside him, and there was nothing he could do about it. It was irrational, he realised later, but he could not help but feel as if he had betrayed them all by his very existence. Eragon felt his heart shudder inside him, and tried his best not to cry. That would be weak. But he couldn’t help it. Hot tears poured down his cheeks, and he gave himself over to despair”

Not the best writing in the world, but still better than the extract you just read. How so? Because it actually goes inside Eragon’s head. It acknowledges the fact that he is feeling miserable, and shows his sense of duty, along with all else, being subsumed by his emotions. Human beings are emotional creatures, not automatons. And whether he likes it or not a writer is expected to know that and portray them accordingly. Paolini cannot or has not done this.

Problem Two: Purple Prose

Purple prose is a term for writing that is excessively ornate and flowery to the point that it distracts from the plot. It generally refers to description, and in Eldest especially purple prose appears again and again. Here is a prime example of purple prose, although there were many to choose from.

“Every day since leaving the outpost of Ceris was a hazy dream of warm afternoons spent
paddling up Eldor Lake and then the Gaena River. All around them, water gurgled through the tunnel of verdant pines that wound ever deeper into Du Weldenvarden.
Eragon found traveling with the elves delightful. Narí and Lifaen were perpetually smiling, laughing, and singing songs, especially when Saphira was around. They rarely looked elsewhere or spoke of another subject but her in her presence.
However, the elves were not human, no matter the similarity of appearance. They moved too quickly, too fluidly, for creatures born of simple flesh and blood. And when they spoke, they often used roundabout expressions and aphorisms that left Eragon more confused than when they began. In between their bursts of merriment, Lifaen and Narí would remain silent for hours, observing their surroundings with a glow of peaceful rapture on their faces. If Eragon or Orik attempted to talk with them during their contemplation, they would receive only a word or two in response.”

Reading this passage made the Epistler feel physically ill. Why? Because there is simply no reason to write so many words and say so little. A more formal expression for writing of this kind is simply ‘overwritten’. This is not beauty or eloquence. This is the author trying to sound beautiful and eloquent by imitating Tolkien. It does not conjure a vivid mental image, but instead bores and irritates.

Purple prose is not the only problem; verbosity is another, related one. Verbosity means wordiness, or an excessive use of words. Every good author knows that economy of language is important. It is a measure of a writer’s skill if he can say a lot using few words. Paolini does not do this. Everything he says is explained laboriously and almost nothing is described in less than a paragraph. He uses many words to say very little. What is worse is that much of the time the way things look is unimportant. For example, he spends a lot of time in this paragraph describing the two elves, even though after the party arrives at Ellesméra they disappear and are never seen again. Hence it was completely unnecessary to introduce them in such loving detail. Developing their actual characters would have been good, but this does not happen. In fact, Paolini draws so little distinction between them that he describes them together rather than individually. And this leads into the next problem.

Problem Three: Worldbuilding and Characterisation for Dummies

Creating an entire world is a hard thing to do. To make one that is realistic, interesting and believable can and does take years. Years. Even lifetimes. The world of Lord of the Rings took a lifetime to create, and even after the Silmarillion had been written and Tolkien was dead there was still a lot left to be uncovered. So creating a world is a slow and involved process. If Paolini had done it, he would still be working on Eragon. But that would have meant putting in a lot of effort for no immediate reward, and today’s modern mind isn’t interested in that. Besides which, if he had waited there would have been no chance to exploit his young age, because he would have been well into his forties by the time he was ready.

Paolini got around this easily enough: he didn’t create a world at all. Instead he took the one which Tolkien had already made, added a few bits and pieces of other, similar fantasy worlds, tweaked it in one or two places, and called it finished. That is why it took him so little time to have his first novel finished – he took shortcuts. Unfortuantely, he did the same thing with his characters. A real character, according to every true writer on the planet, is a person. They live, eat, sleep, think, dream, fight, cry, fall in love and do everything that real people do. The very best characters feel real and alive to the reader as well as the writer, and so endear themselves and make their story come to life as well.

The Inheritance series does not have characters like that. Instead of living, breathing people, the world of Alagaësia is populated by stereotypes, archetypes, entities and automatons.

For example, the villain. Galbatorix. To date he has not appeared in person at any point in the books, and thus we are given an idea of his character by other characters, who describe him, his past and his actions. And this is all we get. We hear almost nothing of him from people who are not his enemies, hence we only see one view – the one that says he is mad, evil, cruel and tyrannical. That’s it. That’s all we ever get. This being so, how can we truly feel angry toward him or care about his actions? Villains, just like heroes, need personalities and Galbatorix has had no opportunity to display one.

With Eragon, the hero, the opposite is true. Or is it? Unlike Galbatorix he remains central to the plot and is rarely not around. The bulk of the story is told through his eyes. This means plenty of opportunities to develop him as a character. This being so, what do we know about him? He’s brave, impulsive, somewhat naïve, hates Galbatorix with a passion and harbours unrequited love for Arya. But that’s all we know about him.

In spite of the fact that we know all this, Eragon still fails to be a fully fleshed out, three-dimensional character. The reason for this is fairly simple: he is never developed beyond what is absolutely necessary for the plot. He says, does and feels what the plot requires him to, and no more. The so-called ‘epic romance’ (Paolini’s own words, from Eragon) is limited to Eragon’s immature lust toward Arya the elvish woman. He rarely if ever makes a serious mistake, and when he does it is forgiven and forgotten almost immediately and never has any significant repercussions for him. For example, in Eldest it is revealed that he accidently put a curse on a small child he was supposed to be blessing. In a properly developed book with properly developed characters, there would be consequences for Eragon. For example, he may become unpopular among some people. His reputation might suffer. He could suddenly be deemed unfit to perform complex magic lest he make another mistake. He could suffer a period of self-doubt and need reassuring. But none of this happens. Instead Eragon feels embarrassed for an extremely short space of time, apologises to the child and offers to try and reverse the spell, and then all is well again.

This is not the only deficiency in Eragon’s personality. Many, many important things are never adressed. How does Eragon feel about being a Rider and having so much responsibility rest on his shoulders? Is he afraid he won’t be strong enough to do what he must? Does he miss his old, easier way of life? Does he ever wonder if war is the only answer and whether they could try negotiating with Galbatorix instead of resorting to violence? What does he think of himself? Is he humble? Narcissistic? Does he think he is good-looking or does he wish his nose was smaller? What kinds of food does he enjoy?

Questions like these may seem unimportant, but if they were answered they would go a long way toward developing Eragon and making him come alive. But they are either briefly skipped over or avoided altogether, and the result is, of course, a flat, cardboard cutout of a character. Even fans often claim they are more interested by side characters than by Eragon himself. And, unfortunately, these problems are present with every other character in the series. The ways in which they relate to each other are simple and clear-cut, with no ambiguities or subtleties present. Every character who dislikes Eragon is either on ‘the bad side’ or is unimportant. All the important characters on ‘the good side’ adore him, and he accepts this without question. This points to another problem – this being the fact that Eragon is a Mary-Sue (or Gary-Stu in this case). Mary-Sues tend to be ridiculously powerful – and given that Eragon is a Dragon-Rider, expert magician, elite swordsman and, by the end of Eldest, an elf/human hybrid with heightened senses, he fits that part to a tee. They also tend to be, yes, loved by every good character and hated by every bad character. There are other Mary-Sue characteristics which Eragon also fits, but these are the most important.

And so, with a world which is essentially Middle-Earth, a hero who is a Mary-Sue and a villain the reader has no chance to hate, it is safe to say that the Inheritance series has failed to provide a living, breathing story.

Problem Four: Intellectual Theft. Yes, Theft

The most common complaint from critics: the unnecessarily derivative and unoriginal world and plot of Inheritance. Many have even called it plagiarism. Fans are not happy about this. However, when challenged to name something from the books which is completely, 100% original, they have been unable to do so. This is yet another thing which cannot be disproved. Derivatives, the borrowing of ideas and similarities between books are by no means unknown. They are very common, in fact. The problem with Inheritance is not so much that it is derivitave but that it is nothing else. In other words, it is not unoriginality that is the problem, but lack of originality. Even the most imitative work in the world can be excused if it contains enough truly original material, but Inheritance does not have this. Absolutely nothing in it is special, nothing unique. Instead it is all borrowed material, linked together by more borrowed material. The list of derivatives is long and has been repeated many times, including elsewhere on this site, but a couple of less well-known ones are as follows.

The werecat: some have claimed – incorrectly – that the idea of a cat which sometimes changes into a human is original. It is not: a werecat appeared in Garth Nix’s book Sabriel.

The white raven: again, not original – white, talking ravens appear in the Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and there often serve as companions for human characters.

Even more damningly, the very few tweaks included in order to make the ‘borrowed’ ideas appear unique are either crude or laughably silly. The elves, for example, which are obvious transplants from Tolkien, down to the immortality, the mysterious origin in another land which they are now going to return to and so on, have been given a ‘unique’ philosophy and social system based on the idea that life is sacred. Not only is this poorly done; being frequently preachy and patently ridiculous (the idea that a people so ‘pure’ that won’t even kill animals for food has so few qualms about killing enemies in battle quite frankly beggars belief), but it makes the debt to Tolkien even more obvious – if the elves were the author’s own idea, he would not be making an effort to make them ‘special’ – however clumsily it has been done.

The tweaking – which also includes feeble attempts to respell names by shuffling a few letters here and there – is not just there to hide unoriginality. It is also there to cover the author’s back. Although the various thefts from other books are not sufficient to land the author in court, they are still obvious enough to be spotted, and they have been, numerous times. This near-plagiarism, although just barely legal, is frowned upon in the literary world. It also means that since, as Ivy puts it, the book brought nothing new to the table, there is little reason for it to be remembered. After all, there is nothing in it that can’t be found elsewhere, handled by more skilled writers into the bargain.

Problem Five: Preachy, preachy

A problem many young authors encounter at some point. After they have mastered – or think they have mastered – the basics of telling a story, beginning authors will start experimenting with the notion of inserting morals into what they write. This is a bad idea, and most authors eventually realise it, because moral lessons which have been deliberately inserted into stories inevitably appear forced and didactic. In Eldest Paolini betrays the fact that he has not yet learnt this, and he includes a few glaringly obvious anti-religious messages, as seen in the extracts below.

““I deny nothing, only ask what good might be accomplished if your wealth were spread among the needy, the starving, the homeless, or even to buy supplies for the Varden. Instead, you’ve piled it into a monument to your own wishful thinking.”
“Enough!” The dwarf clenched his fists, his face mottled. “Without us, the crops would wither in drought. Rivers and lakes would flood. Our flocks would give birth to one-eyed beasts. The very heavens would shatter under the gods’ rage!” Arya smiled. “Only our prayers and service prevent that from happening. If not for Helzvog, where—”
Eragon soon lost track of the argument. He did not understand Arya’s vague criticisms of Dûrgrimst Quan, but he gathered from Gannel’s responses that, in some indirect way, she had implied that the dwarf gods did not exist, questioned the mental capacity of every dwarf who entered a temple, and pointed out what she took to be flaws in their reasoning— all in a pleasant and polite voice.”

And yet, somehow, we are expected to agree and sympathise with her. This segment is particularly annoying because it assumes that the reader will automatically side with Arya… even though there is no reason given to do so. In fact this part is a collossal misjudgement on Paolini’s part, as it does nothing more than offend people with religious beliefs and also make Arya appear rude and self-righteous.

Later on, the subject comes up again when Eragon asks Oromis about what the elves believe in:

““And you don’t put stock in gods.”
“We give credence only to that which we can prove exists. Since we cannot find evidence that gods, miracles, and other supernatural things are real, we do not trouble ourselves about them. If that were to change, if Helzvog were to reveal himself to us, then we would accept the new information and revise our position.”
“It seems a cold world without something... more.”
“On the contrary,” said Oromis, “it is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our own actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment. I won’t tell you what to believe, Eragon. It is far better to be taught to think critically and then be allowed to make your own decisions than to have someone else’s notions thrust upon you. You asked after our religion, and I have answered you true. Make of it what you will.””

It could hardly be more clear which side Paolini is on here. The fact that he appears to be unaware that moralistic writing is unlikely to win him any admiration speaks volumes about his ignorance about writing for an audience. Whether you agree with him or not, it is hard to feel anything but irritation over having these morals forced down your throat. Again, this is something a more seasoned and talented writer would know better than to do.

Problem Six: Dullsville Arizona

The final and most sweeping problem of all is this: the Inheritance series is simply boring. What with the emotionless writing, shallow world and characters, and forced, obviously morality, the books simply collapse in on themselves and become tedious. If the reader does not care about Eragon or his struggle against the Empire, then there is no reason to read on. In reading Eragon and Eldest, all the reader can summon is, at best, vague curiosity. Capping this off are other problems – the slow pacing, the needlessly meandering plot, the black and white morality (evil is always ugly and black, good is always beautiful and shining white), and the forced and ridiculously archaic dialogue. All this put together does not make for a gripping read.

[EvilElitest]

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Epistle the Fourth
In His Heart Lay Dragons… or Maybe Not

“I have visions of lizards. Not just little rock lizards, or even something as big as an alligator, no – I see gigantic, majestic flying dragons. I have visions of them all the time, whether in the shower, sitting on the couch or riding in the car. The problem with seeing dragons is that they tend to take over your mind. And once that happens, you can go a little crazy. Which is probably why I became a published author at eighteen”

~Christopher Paolini

Such a sweet note with which to begin the next Epistle. Any uninformed person, reading it, would be led to believe that it is Paolini’s love of dragons which led him to ‘become a published author at eighteen’ (such modesty! The Epistler can scarcely contain his admiration!). As we all know, the hero of the Inheritance series is Eragon, who is a dragon-rider. His partner and steed is Saphira, the wise and beautiful blue dragon. At various times, Paolini has claimed that the most important part of the story is the relationship between Eragon and Saphira, who are mentally and emotionally bonded and whose destinies are irrevocably entwined:

“The kernel of the story [in Eragon] is about a young boy finding a dragon egg. When Saphira hatched, I didn't know how intelligent I was going to make her. But when Eragon first saw Saphira – I saw her so clearly, she was so beautiful with sapphire-blue scales, that I felt like she had to be this incredible character.”

And:

“I knew Eragon was going to become closely linked with her (Saphira) because they share feelings and thoughts.”

There is only one problem with this. Very well, the Epistler lied; there are several problems with this. But the main one is that Saphira is not an ‘incredible’ character and that she and Eragon are not all that ‘closely linked’. In fact she and her relationship with Eragon are one of the most hollow and disappointing parts of the books. Their relationship, far from being a central part of the story, is extremely shallow and uninteresting. As Paolini famously (and idiotically) said; “characters are born out of necessity”. It is certainly true that his characters are born out of necessity, or at least that he treats them as if they are, and Saphira is probably the most striking example of this. She is, at bottom, a flying, talking plot device. And the other dragons in the story are equally unmemorable. Far from making dragons the focus of the story, Paolini handles them very uninterestingly – physically speaking they are identical to the most stereotyped, boring version of dragons which readers have seen a million times before, character-wise they are little different than the non-dragonish characters and, all in all, they have nothing striking or unique about them. And, of course, bear in mind that there is a total of exactly two dragon characters in the story – Saphira and Glaedr. And they serve exactly two purposes: to provide ‘wisdom’ (or at least a lame imitation of what Paolini thinks passes for wisdom) and to make their riders more powerful. That’s all. Although Saphira occasionally provides some painfully unfunny comic relief.

Epistle the Fourth shall examine the characters of Saphira and Glaedr in order to explore this point, and will also discuss the handling of dragons generally, and both you and he will find out whether Paolini’s claims about being obsessed with dragons are as lame and meaningless as they appear to be.

Saphira

Saphira hatches at the beginning of Eragon, as is well-known. Depressingly, given her excuse for a character arc following this event, her hatching contains a modicum of interest. At first, while she is still an infant, she has no dialogue. This adds an element of mystery to her – the reader does not know what she is thinking, but he does know that she’s intelligent. It makes her feel a little alien, and the reader is intrigued by her, as well as moved by her inherent cuteness – a newly-hatched dragon with big dewy eyes is automatically cute. It provides some welcome relief and interest in the story, since until this point the reader has been forced to spend all their time with Eragon – the thick-headed, whiny and singularly unlikeable ‘hero’ – and very little has happened so far that contains any interest (a word of warning to developing writers – boring opening chapters in which nothing happens are a very, very bad idea). Hereafter we see Saphira begin to grow and develop, and watch as Eragon tries to find a way to deal with her sudden entry into his life. This part of the book is actually moderately enjoyable, as we see Eragon start to become fond of Saphira, and she remains voiceless, expressing herself through expressions and actions instead. At this point she reminds the reader of a cat or dog – and as owners of either pet will know, cats and dogs have ways of communicating their feelings to their owners in a way that goes beyond mere words. So far, so good – Saphira is an animal and acts like one, and is also cute. Not exactly ‘majestic’, but still endearing.

The Epistler advises readers to treasure this part of the book, because not long afterwards the bottom begins to fall out of it. Saphira begins to speak.

This scene is easily mockeable; Eragon starts to hear her voice in his head (the dragons are telepathic, which will be dealt with later). At first all she says is his name over and over again (this becomes quite irritating), and when he crabbily asks her if that’s all she can say she says ‘yes’. ‘Now it has a sense of humour’, Eragon thinks. Sadly, yes, and the reader will be subjected to an agonisingly long string of examples over the course of the rest of the book and into the sequel.

Thereafter we are treated to a scene where Eragon names Saphira. This part would possibly be interesting, but for the fact that it was lifted almost word-for-word from a book called Jeremy Thatcher: Dragon Hatcher, which Paolini admits was his favourite book as a child (for some reason he seems to think it is all right to steal from books he particularly enjoyed. Still, if one must steal, why not steal from the best?). Shortly after this, Eragon starts sulking over the fact that his cousin Roran is planning to leave home and get married. Luckily, Saphira is there to comfort our self-centred brat of a hero:

“Saphira was a balm for Eragon’s frustration. He could talk freely with her; his emotions were completely open to her mind, and she understood him better than anyone else.”

The text then goes on to talk about how she goes through a ‘growth spurt’ during this time, and the Epistler is left to tear his hair out in frustration. What, exactly is wrong with this little segment? It reveals just how clueless Paolini is about character development. It’s a classic case of telling rather than showing. So Saphira understands Eragon better than anyone else. Any author – ANY author who knows anything about his art – would know how this ought to have been handled. The reader should not be TOLD that Saphira understands Eragon better than anyone else. It should be SHOWN. Instead of a few sentences, there should have been a scene to demonstrate that Saphira understands Eragon better than anyone else. Taking a shortcut like this is an extremely bad move. If Paolini actually cared about the relationship between Eragon and Saphira, he would had dwelt on this point. He would have shown, not told. The focus isn’t on their developing relationship at all; instead it is on Eragon’s endless complaining over Roran leaving. As if it weren’t bad enough that Saphira has been shoved into the background (where she remains until the plot requires her to do something), the reader is also given more reasons to dislike Eragon – his objections to Roran leaving make him look very childish indeed. Saphira’s growth into adulthood and thus into an adult character is skipped over in exactly the same careless way. Many have complained about this and said they would have liked to see more of her babyhood, but this is not provided.

Worse still is that the character she becomes is nowhere near as interesting as the one she started out as. As one reviewer on Amazon.com put it; ‘She’s like this talking, perfect Lassie’. After Saphira begins talking, she reveals that she doesn’t have to spend time learning anything thanks to the magic of racial memory (this is an actual and extremely loopy pseudo-scientific theory long since disproved). “I may be younger than you in years, but I am ancient in my thoughts”, as she puts it toward the end of the book.

This is nothing short of pathetic. Saphira is only a few months old; a baby, to all intents and purposes, but she speaks and acts as if she had lived for centuries. Paolini explains it away with the reliable old Deus ex Machina known as ‘magic’, but it is still ridiculous and unbelievable. It feels as if Saphira the adult – Eragon’s infodumping grandma, as one person called her – simply came out of nowhere, fully-formed and knowing more than Eragon. So there is already a problem with the oh-so-deep relationship between her and Eragon – it’s unequal. If they were truly partners and equals, they should have developed side-by-side, both learning about the world and slowly becoming stronger and wiser. But no. Instead Saphira becomes a female counterpart to Brom – another wise old mentor who has to steer the wayward young hero onto his Path of Destiny, etc and so forth. Their mental bond is a very shallow one – in essence it is limited to their being able to communicate telepathically and occasionally share images of things they have seen. That’s it. They don’t share their emotions or have any kind of deep understanding – most of the time Eragon is nagging at Saphira because she won’t do what he wants, or she is lecturing him for being stupid. Much of the time they feel more like mother and son than partners. They are very much like Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket – one is naïve and stupid (and also made out of wood), and the other is the worldly-wise character who must do all his thinking for him and generally teach him about life.

A way to make Eragon and Saphira equal would have been to have them both act as if they were young. If they were BOTH immature and inexperienced, the reader could have seen them grow and develop together, learning from each other and the world around them. Having Saphira magically not need to learn anything means that the focus is taken off her and is instead placed on Eragon, the eternally ignorant child. So their relationship is not an equal one and thus it does not feel as if they are truly linked on that deep, magical level.

As for Saphira… what exactly does she do in Eragon? The Epistler decided to make a list:

1. She hatches and bonds with Eragon, thus turning him into a magical super-warrior

2. She drags him away from his uncle’s farm, thus dooming this poor abused minor character to a melodramatic death

3. She accompanies Eragon on his subsequent journey, remaining off-screen for much of the time, and provides a string of amusing or pseudo-philosophical remarks

4. She helps rescue him from Gil’ead

5. She distracts Durza so that Eragon can kill him

…and that’s about it. Bear in mind that the book Eragon is hundreds of pages in length. Saphira’s role in the plot is quite a small one. She does less than Brom, less than Murtagh, and far less than Eragon. She barely even counts as a sidekick for our hero. Although Eragon’s character development is minimal (something of a Paolini trademark), hers is even less. Much of the book’s very dull plot consists of monotonous travelling – pages and pages of it. Eragon and Brom ride along on horses together (not much actual dragon-riding is done by Our Hero), and Brom teaches Eragon about swordplay and magic and other boring things. Meanwhile Saphira… flies overhead. Staying high so no-one sees her. They stay in Teirm for a while, where Eragon meets an old friend of Brom, has his fortune told in the marketplace, throws a tantrum over the evil slave trade (which he forgets about awfully quickly), and nearly gets caught by guards. As for Saphira, she hangs around outside the city while all this is going on and does, well, nothing. Aside from acting as a convenient mental telephone to help Eragon and Brom stay in touch, anyway. Truly, there never was a dragon more magnificent.

But, the reader may protest, what about Eldest? Saphira does much more than just hide and be Eragon’s conscience there!

Very well. Here is another list of what Saphira does within the pages of the Red Book:

1. Stops Eragon dating a sorceress (matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match, indeed)

2. Accompanies him on the long, long, very long trip to Ellesméra

3. Undergoes some sort of training with Glaedr, most of which we don’t see and could care less about

4. Tries to get it on with her senile teacher, much to the reader’s disgust (however, she’s still happy to tell Eragon to stop hitting on Arya. Hypocrisy much?)

5. Fights alongside Eragon on the Burning Plain

Now, in Eldest, since our heroes are with the Varden, it’s no longer necessary for Saphira to stay in hiding all the time. Therefore, we should in theory be seeing more of her. But we don’t. Or, at least, she’s around but doesn’t do anything. Her character becomes even worse than it was in Eragon, where she at least asserted herself occasionally. But in Eldest she stops lecturing Eragon all the time and becomes… nothing. This is where we see her finally become what Paolini really intended her to be from the beginning – an accessory for Eragon. She’s no longer a real character; all she does is stay by Eragon and agree with him all the time, and carry him around like an overgrown horse with wings. We could almost imagine Eragon keeping her in his trophy cabinet next to his archery prize. Other characters adore Eragon because he’s a Rider (oh, and he killed Durza), and he’s only a Rider because he has Saphira. Without her he’d be just another idiot with a shiny sword (which he more or less is anyway, but let it pass). This is Saphira’s function; she makes Eragon cooler and more powerful. When he attends councils and gets involved in some boring political struggles, she does absolutely nothing. Many people, even in official publications (eg. the Entertainment Weekly article which named Eldest the worst book of 2005) have referred to Saphira as ‘the hero’s pet dragon’. The Epistler has a strong suspicion that Paolini is annoyed by this, but the truth is that Saphira, along with all the other dragons, more or less IS just a pet. A talking pet, maybe, but still a pet. The Epistler is reminded of occasions where someone is walking their dog and other people come up to pat the dog and compliment the owner on having a nice pet. In the Inheritance trilogy, people more or less come up to Eragon and tell him what a nice shiny dragon he has.

We do not get any insight into Saphira’s mind in either book, which we logically should have given that she and Eragon supposedly ‘share thoughts’. Eragon confides in Saphira very frequently, turning to her when he needs advice and sharing his feelings with her, but Saphira does not reciprocate. She never tells Eragon how SHE feels, never asks him for advice, never treats him as a true friend. When they talk, the focus is always on him. Eragon never asks her about herself, and all in all he takes her for granted, always assuming that she will be there when he needs her and never stopping to consider whether she might need him. And Saphira appears to be completely unbothered by this. Again, they are neither equals nor true partners. A true partnership – even a close friendship – requires that both give and take from each other. But this does not happen between Eragon and Saphira. Eragon does not act as if he truly cares about Saphira’s feelings. All he does is take and take and take from her, as if she were some sort of eternal wellspring. In a realistic world with properly developed characters, Saphira would probably be nursing a grudge against him and he would eventually be forced to confront his own selfishness, but it is a fair bet that this will not happen, as both characters are being handled by an author who would not recognise a real character if it stole the glasses off his nose. Instead Saphira, like every other ‘good’ character, behaves as if her life revolves around Eragon. Their conversations are all about him, him and only him, as if he were some kind of metaphorical sun around which even a wise, mighty dragon must orbit. It is the same for every other character. Everyone and everything in Alagaësia revolves around Eragon, and that includes Saphira.

In terms of Star Wars, which as most people know is where Paolini got his plot from, Saphira’s obvious equivalent character is in fact two characters – the droids R2-D2 and C3PO. This may seem absurd at first, but on examination it is quite plausible. Like the droids, Saphira is the catalyst for the hero’s adventure and the reason why the rebels accept him, and she also tags along on the adventure where she does nothing much except provide comic relief and exposition and once or twice help the hero out at some crucial moment. If during Empire she begins saying ‘oh my!’ or bleeping at frequent intervals, the Epistler will not be the slightest bit surprised.

What is most aggravating about all this is that it didn’t have to be this way. Saphira did not have to be the nothing character that she is. She had the potential to be every bit as incredible as Paolini felt she should have been. If only he had handled her properly.

If the Epistler had had the chance to provide a little advice during the writing of Eldest, he would have suggested that instead of making Roran and Nasuada new ‘viewpoint’ characters, Saphira should have been allowed to come to the fore. If parts of the story were told from her point of view, it would have been an excellent way to develop her character and show the reader everything that he wanted to know about her. Readers constantly talk about how much Saphira interests them, and if she had been a viewpoint character and there had been various subplots told through her eyes in place of Roran or Nasuada’s subplots, both of which were pointless and uninteresting, it could have been a great improvement.

Saphira and Eragon’s relationship could have been a deeply moving and affecting thing which had both a positive and negative side, which helped develop them both as characters and which gave the reader an emotional connection with the story. A story told about characters like this, with a truly well-developed and involving link, could have been great no matter how generic the plotline was. If Eragon and Saphira’s relationship had truly been the ‘kernel’ of the story, it could have gone a very long way toward redeeming Paolini’s ripoffs and endless list of clichés.

But the point is that it wasn’t and it didn’t. Paolini failed miserably – failed both his readers and his characters. And no amount of boasting or exaggeration on his part will ever change that.

Glaedr

If Saphira is a nothing character, then Glaedr is even less than nothing. He is the partner of Oromis, Paolini’s Yoda clone, and like Oromis he fills the mentor role vacated by the late Brom. When the Epistler says that he is less than a nothing character, he means it literally. The Epistler simply cannot think of a way to describe Glaedr’s personality, for the simple reason that he does not have one. He is simply words on a page; a vehicle for some tedious lessons on morality and philosophy which the Epistler does not remember nor care to remember, in spite of having read them several times. He is supposed to be Oromis’ counterpart, who teaches Saphira while Oromis teaches Eragon. He fulfils his plot device role, and otherwise does absolutely nothing and has no character development whatsoever. The Epistler honestly cannot think of anything more to say about him.

Thorn

Not a character at all. Thorn has a total of zero lines during his one appearance in Eldest and never does anything character-defining. Murtagh may as well have shown up at the Burning Plains on a donkey.

Shruikan

Has not appeared at any point in the series (although for some reason everyone already seems to know that he has red eyes). Being the steed of the oh-so-evil Galbatorix, Shruikan is black (if you find this surprising, please refrain from breeding). Apparently he was forced to serve Galbatorix by means of evil magic, which at first suggests he may be set free. But then we remember that Shruikan is black. Forget setting him free: he’s evil and must die.

And these are all the dragon characters to be found in the Inheritance trilogy so far – ‘characters’ being a relative term. They have physical descriptions and two have dialogue, so the Epistler is forced to concede that they must be characters, though he cannot help but feel as if he is insulting the thousands of REAL characters that exist in the realm of literature. They are simply uninteresting, and they are certainly not the focus of the story. The focus of the story is all on Eragon and Arya and other semi-humanoid characters. The dragons barely get a mention, and when they do it is never alone. Everything they do is defined by who their riders are – plenty of ancient elven warriors are named and talked about, but not a single dragon is mentioned that does not have a rider. And when it comes to heroic deeds, it is always the rider who does them, not the dragon. This being so, how can it possibly be said that riders are equal to their dragons? We are constantly TOLD that they are equals, but we are never once SHOWN it. All we actually do see confirms the idea that the rider is the important one, and that every rider has a nice sharp sword, fancy titles, magic powers and a dragon to ride. The dragon is simply a tool, and that is exactly how they are portrayed. And we never see Saphira complain about how Eragon orders her around all the time, either. She does not act like a proud, ferocious warrior of the sky, or even like a character that isn’t human. One reader remarked that they got some way through Eldest (not having read Eragon first) before realising that Saphira wasn’t human. And if a non-human character acts so much like a human that they actually become indistinguishable from one, why bother?

Oh, the reader protests, come now, Epistler, how can you be so stupid? You forgot all the things Saphira and the other dragons do that makes them special! They can fly and breathe fire and everything! Well, setting aside the fact that special abilities do not a convincing character make, let us examine these special dragon abilities.

Dragon Abilities

So what can dragons do in Paolini-land? They can breathe fire and fly. How very, very distinctive. And they are telepathic. Just like the ones in the Dragonriders of Pern novels. Who would have thought it – Paolini didn’t come up with telepathic dragons on his own, after all! But in all seriousness, what does it matter that Saphira is telepathic? Her dialogue with Eragon is no different than ordinary spoken dialogue – she may as well have been given a voice just like any other character. The impact that this has on the plot is limited to the fact that they can communicate over longer distances than most people, and that Eragon has to serve as her mouthpiece when she wants to talk to someone else. Like many other things in the Inheritance books, it seems to have been thrown in simply because Paolini thought it was cool, since it has absolutely zero effect on the plot or the characters. One thing that the Epistler finds most frustrating about Paolini is his lack of imagination – he puts things into his books ‘just because’, rather than because they actually mean something. Saphira’s telepathy is a prime example.

Riders Generally

The Epistler feels that he has already made his point about how dragon riders in the Inheritance series treat their dragons like pets. But he found his daily dose of nutritious irony within the pages of Eragon itself:

“They (the dragons) were no more animals than we are. For some reason people praise everything the Riders did, yet ignore the dragons, assuming that they were nothing more than an exotic means to get from one town to another. They weren’t. The Riders’ great deeds were only possible because of the dragons. How many men would draw their swords if they knew a giant fire-breathing lizard – one with more natural cunning and wisdom than even a king could hope for – would soon be there to stop the violence?”

~Brom

Oh Paolini, how you mock yourself. Brom could very well have been channelling the Epistler himself when he said this. The Epistler hates to break it to you, Paolini, but Brom was absolutely right – and he was talking about you.

odd morals

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Epistle the Sixth
Black, White, Shades of Grey, and Hot Guys With Scars

The Epistler extends his greetings to his readers. Sadly, his suicide attempt was thwarted after some helpful voodoo priest cast a spell of resurrection over his grave and caused him to rise once more, replenished and ready to once again take up his spectral pen. It has recently reached the Epistler’s ear that some do not like the anonyminity implicit in his writings. The Epistler’s response to this is that his identity is unimportant and, were it known, it would prove far less interesting than his readers may have been led to expect. Some also dislike the Epistler’s habit of referring to himself in the third person. The Epistler’s response to this is: according to the Surgeon General, the Epistler’s stylistic choices will not cause any lasting damage to his readers. He apologises to those who dislike it, but he cannot please everyone.

And now, let Epistle the Sixth begin. Sit ye down and prepare thyself, mortal.

Character Arcs, X-Treme Edition

“SECTUMSEMPRA!” bellowed Harry from the floor, waving his wand wildly.

Blood spurted from Malfoy’s face and chest as though he had been slashed with an invisible sword. He staggered backward and collapsed onto the waterlogged floor with a great splash, his wand falling from his limp right hand.

-Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Pg 489, Bloomsbury Edition, © J.K.Rowling, 2005

And with this simple paragraph, we see J.K.Rowling demonstrate her remarkable skill as a writer in a dramatic but deceptively simple way. Harry Potter, the beloved hero, has just demonstrated that he is a real human being – he has done something morally questionable.
The Epistler sincerely doubts that there is a single human being on the planet who has not yet read Half-Blood Prince yet cares about plot spoilers, so he has no qualms about discussing this scene and its ramifications. Harry suspects that his nemesis, Draco Malfoy, has some nefarious scheme. So far in the book he has spent a great deal of time trying to discover just what it is, only to be frustrated. At this point in the story he comes across Malfoy crying in a bathroom; the poor boy is being forced to work for Voldemort, under threat of death for himself and his family, and now, for the first time in the series, he shows an inner vulnerability. Harry is shocked to see him, but, on being seen spying, he ends up in a fight with Malfoy which ends when he uses a spell on him which he has never tried before – a spell which proves more descructive than he expected.
Now, although Malfoy is indeed a villain, and a highly unpleasant person into the bargain, what Harry does to him is both shocking and cruel. And afterwards he is forced to confront that fact. Harry is the hero of the story – we like him and we don’t like Malfoy – and yet he has just shown that he, like Voldemort, is perfectly capable of attacking other people, and not just humiliating them, but hurting them. His hatred for Malfoy got the better of him, and this is the bloody result.
So what does this mean? Does Harry’s behaviour mean that he is no longer the hero? Do we cease to care about him because he has done something unsympathetic? No.

What this scene really achieves is twofold – firstly it demonstrates that good is not all good, and that even the ‘pure of heart’ (as Dumbledore has previously described Harry) are not just able to do bad things, but are sometimes willing to do it, too. And secondly, it is an important character-defining moment for Harry. Previously, with the knowledge that it is his destiny to be the one to kill Voldemort, it seemed hard to believe that our protagonist could possibly do it – after all, he has never killed or really fought anyone in his life. He is still an innocent, and innocents do not kill.
But now it is plain that Harry is no longer an innocent. He has stepped over the line and become a fighter, and fighting has a dark side – at bottom, it involves hurting and, ultimately, killing other people.

It is both moving and, in a way, saddening. For Harry to become a true hero – to finally triumph over the forces of evil – he has no option but to become like them. As he observes to himself during Order of the Phoenix, he must end his life as either murderer or victim.

In war, innocence dies first.

Whether Harry dies at the end of the last book or not, his role will still be a sacrificial one – he must lose his purity in order to be the saviour of all he holds dear. Even if he triumphs over Voldemort in the end, he will never be the same again. Such is the price of victory.

So what is the point of all this, and what does it have to do with Eragon? Yes, the Epistler must finally return to the subject of his least favourite book, much as he would have enjoyed writing about Harry Potter instead.

Well, let us compare and contrast Harry’s character arc with that of our beloved Eragon. To date, in both series, Harry has killed zero people and Eragon has killed hundreds.
Did anyone really notice? Not really. Since Eragon is a sociopath (see Epistle the Fifth) he is able to become a mass murderer without suffering any lasting psychological effects.
The difference between Eragon and Harry – aside from the fact that one is a cardboard cutout with a mental disorder and the other is a well-rounded, three-dimensional character – is that Harry has a dark side, and Eragon does not. And in this day and age, when reality has made cynics and realists of us all, a hero who is a shining beacon of purity cannot help but feel somewhat farcical.

Black and White and Shades of Grey, Help Us Keep the Fools at Bay
The morality in Eragon and Eldest is extremely simplistic, and that’s putting it lightly.
Here is the formula:

White + Beautiful + Sparkly = Good
Black + Ugly + Smelly = Evil

That strange, incense-scented breeze you just felt was the Epistler’s depressed sigh.
And here is the second formula:

Good Character Does Something = Automatically Virtuous
Bad Character Does Something = Automatically Heinous

That rumbling in the earth was the Epistler bashing his head against his desk.

Out of all the characters in the story, the only one who does not quite fit the mould of either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is Murtagh. And coincidently he is widely acknowledged to be the favourite character of many, many readers.
…Let it be now acknowledged that the word ‘coincidently’ did not in fact need to be in the previous sentence. It is not a coincidence at all that Murtagh is the most beloved of all Paolini’s characters.

Why is this so? It is because Murtagh, unlike Eragon, is an anti-hero. He is neither on the side of evil or the side of good – he acts according to what he wants, not according to what someone else wants. Typically his characterisation is as thin and shaky as it is with everyone else’s, but it is possible to read a pattern into his behaviour by applying previous experience with characters in other books and movies. So, completing his ill-defined personality by fitting in parts of other, similar characters, as the DNA of the dinosaurs in Jurrassic Park was completed by splicing it with the genetic materials of frogs, we are able to get a picture of what Murtagh is like (let us pause to remember that we should not have been required to do this in the first place, and we all know who is to blame for it).

So. Murtagh is tough and independent-minded – a rogue not dissimilar from Han Solo of Star Wars fame (is anyone surprised? Of course not). He does not trust anyone (not even – gasp! – Eragon) and is self-reliant. He is also not above doing morally questionable things for his own benefit – for example, in Eragon he kills a slave trader who attempted to capture himself and Eragon when he was disarmed and helpless. Eragon, much to our complete lack of surprise, proceeds to throw a tantrum and accuse Murtagh of murder. Murtagh, however, is unmoved; pointing out that killing the slaver was in their own best interests, since they cannot afford to have anyone know where they are. Eragon, needless to say, is too abysmally stupid and self-righteous to understand, but Murtagh immediately gains the reader’s sympathy because he has, in the space of a few pages, shown more common sense than Eragon has displayed throughout the entire book so far.
Murtagh is also one of the few characters who remains more or less unimpressed by Eragon’s status as a rider. He, unlike even the Kings and Queens whom Eragon later encounters, has the spine to argue with him. He also, much to the reader’s glee, is able to defeat him in combat – and this is before he becomes a rider.

Murtagh garners even more sympathy after he and Eragon finally reach the Varden, since he is immediately treated with suspicion and locked up for the crime of being Morzan’s son (apparently the Varden believes that Evil is hereditary). Eragon, meanwhile, is greeted with a ticker-tape parade and people wearing t-shirts with his face on them. Which is only just, since he has… uh… done… absolutely nothing beyond becoming a rider and blundering his way into their hiding-place. Which is, uh, highly impressive, to be sure. And no, the Epistler does not ever waste an opportunity to say unpleasant things about Eragon. He thanks you kindly for asking.

In the end, Murtagh is simply a more interesting character than Eragon is. He is morally ambiguous and rough around the edges, and his backstory – since there is a fair amount that we simply don’t know about him – is intriguingly mysterious.
When Eldest was released, many of those who read it did so eager to discover what became of Murtagh – the only character who ever had a hope of being even slightly interesting. But Paolini blew it.
Murtagh ‘dies’ during the first chapter and is absent from the rest of the book right up until the end, where he appears just when we most expect it, at the height of the ‘climactic’ final battle, now riding a dragon of his very own. He then proceeds to make Eragon look like the weak, whiny pansy he is for the second time, steals his sword and makes another abrupt exit from the text.
In doing what he did with Murtagh, Paolini may as well have tattooed the words “I Am Clueless” on his forehead. He took the most popular character he created and, instead of enlarging his role in the story, reduced it to a virtual cameo – and a highly disappointing and predictable one at that. So Murtagh ended up working for the enemy. Who would have thought it?

Well, pretty much everyone who has seen Star Wars, actually.

Paolini is an idiot. He took all the potential Murtagh had, used it to clean his lavatory and then threw it into the gutter to rot.

And what will happen to Murtagh in the third and (thankfully) final book in the series? The Epistler will now use his psychic powers to find out.
Let the door of knowledge open unto him…

Murtagh will sacrifice himself to save Eragon and thus redeem himself before dying a tragic but honourable death, thereby proving Eragon’s moral superiority once and for all.
It is unavoidable. Paolini has already locked himself into the Evil Path of Cliché, and is now lost forever. Fare thee well, thou poor soul.

Anti-Heroes FTW
Once upon a time, every story told was a fairy story. Myth, legend… old stories.
These stories were, by and large, fairly simplistic. Today, as the art of storytelling has become more sophisticated, stories have become more complex. And fasions come and go. Once upon a time, it was commonplace for heroic characters to be shining beacons of purity – incorruptible, unconflicted… pure of heart.
In this modern age, however, this has changed. The trend is now toward darker, grittier, more psychologically and morally complex heroes. The readers of today are far too cynical and jaded to be easily impressed by a hero who can do no wrong and never does – today, when we have been forced to admit to ourselves that bad things do indeed happen to good people, when greed and corruption beget descruction and genocide which we seem powerless to stop, we find it far easier to relate to an anti-heroic character.
Once we had John McClane and Luke Skywalker. Now we have Captain Malcom Reynolds, Beatrix Kiddo and Captain Jack Sparrow.
Once we had heroes in children’s literature like Sarah Crewe (incidently, she is one of the most blatant examples of a Mary Sue in original fiction that the Epistler has ever come across) and Matilda Wormwood. Now we have Harry Potter, who slashed his enemy’s face open in a fit of rage, and Will Parry, who committed murder at the age of twelve.
Paolini is writing from a very childish and naïve perspective – which is only to be expected, given his obviously sheltered upbringing. Having been homeschooled and brought up in isolation, he was incredibly inexperienced when he began writing Eragon – it would appear that more or less the only other humans he ever interacted with on a regular basis were his parents and his sister. It is unlikely that he had any wider experience, and to this day, at the age of twenty-two when he is more than old and wealthy enough to move out on his own, he is still living at home and, the Epistler suspects, allowing his parents to screen all his fanmail (it is certainly true that his father is claimed to have been spotted persecuting critics on the internet, along with someone who may or may not be his sister Angela).
Much of this remains moot, but it would certainly explain the simplistic world-view presented in the Inheritance trilogy so far – along with the apparent inability to create realistic characters (human interaction is an absolute requirement to writing good characters).
If Paolini has never experienced real suffering and loss, or spoken to someone who has, how can he be expected to portray that in his writing? He does not and cannot. He is a man who writes like a child, and hence he is completely oblivious to the reasons why it should have been Murtagh, and not Eragon, who was the protagonist of his books.

the lack of orginality

[EvilElitest]

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Epistle the Seventh

Imitation as the Most Insincere Form of Flattery



Let it not be said that the Epistler does not listen to his readers. He is pleased that the fruits of his labours have provided entertainment and proven informative. It has reached his attention that his diagnosis of Eragon’s sociopathy has been challenged. The Epistler admits that he may have been less thorough than he should have been, but would like to add that he sadly passed beyond the mortal plane before he had the opportunity to make a study of psychology, much as he would have liked to. Either way, even if Eragon is not a full-blown sociopath, it remains true that he has severe psychological problems. Much like the Epistler does, but the Epistler would like to believe that his own psychosis is a little more entertaining.



The Epistler would like to take this opportunity to thank those who have put forward suggestions for further Epistles, as he had been having difficulty thinking of a new topic to cover. In order to thank these people, he will now offer the following teaser for future Epistles. The Epistler intends to view the upcoming Eragon movie and will compose an Epistle which gives his views on it – even if the movie proves to be good, which at the moment appears unlikely. He will also obtain a copy of the Eldest Deluxe Edition as soon as he is able to, and will write an Epistle about the “special exclusive features” therein (the use of salesperson language puts a bad taste in the Epistler’s mouth). When the final book of the Inheritance trilogy is released, the Epistler intends to read it and write a running commentary on it, most likely spread over several Epistles. He cannot but feel some trepidation at this prospect, especially if said book proves to be as long as rumour implies, and even more so if people’s impressions of the sample provided in the Eldest Deluxe Edition is found to be accurate and the book surpasses the awfulness of its prequel (now there is a run-on sentence to be proud of!).



And now, without further ado, on with Epistle the Seventh. Of all the topics that have been suggested so far, the Epistler found this one the most challenging but also the most tantalising. Besides which, how can he set out to criticise Paolini’s work without doing justice to what is possibly the most loathed aspect of it? He cannot and shall not.



Of all the crimes Paolini has committed against literature, possibly the most heinous one is his plagiarism. The Epistler absolutely refuses to call it “homage”, “tribute” or “influence” for the simple reason that it is not. Perhaps Paolini thinks it is these things, but if he does then he is wrong. Epistle the Seventh will discuss the difference between plagiarism and paying tribute, and will explain why Paolini should not be excused.



On Originality

True originality does not exist.

This is a sweeping statement which many people – including writers – have made and created instant controversy with. The Epistler thought long and hard about it and eventually decided that it was both true and untrue.

Interpreted at its most superficial level, the statement is false. If one reads it to mean that it is impossible to create a work which is distinct, then it is absolute nonsense. Anyone who truly believes this should not be allowed to write novels. Ever. But at a deeper level, it is true. If by “true originality” one means that every story has something in common with every other story, then, no, true originality does not exist. Every story ever written is related to every other story ever written at a fundamental, unchangeable level. No matter how hard you may strive to make your work completely different from everything else, others will always find ways to compare it to something else. All stories have one thing in common: they are stories. If one were to take out the things that make a story – plot and character are the most fundamental – there would be nothing left but a lot of words strung together. And, although there is nothing wrong at all with experimentation and thinking outside the box, most writers are disinclined to create works that other people will not want to read, because a story not read is completely worthless.

In literature, much emphasis is placed on experimental works such as, for example, the French novelette called The Malady of Death, which goes so far into the realm of plotlessness and characterlessness that it is virtually incomprehensible. The Malady of Death is a smoothly written and beautiful work, but very few people would be able to relate to it, even though they may feel sophisticated and intellectual for having read it.

What people want – the dirty little secret that lurks at the bottom of literary study – what people truly want from stories is very simple: entertainment. People read stories because it’s fun. The human brain does not take kindly to boredom. Stimulation is what it craves. In other words, entertainment. Stories are a way to make life interesting, a way to escape from reality and a way to define the world and create some kind of order out of chaos and confusion.

The best stories, the ones that provide the entertainment people want, are the ones that are easy to relate to, and hence, in the end, they must have characters and situations the reader finds familiar in some way, and there must be something going on in order to maintain the reader’s interest – in other words, a plot. There is little point in writing a novel if nobody can relate to it. The Epistler has travelled in academic circles and has been forced to listen to a large amount of nonsense about style, trend, literary theory and the importance of showing the world how clever you are by writing a 60-page novel wherein two people do nothing but screw and talk about nothing, and the conclusion he has reached is as follows: pull your head in and just write a good story.

So. The point of this rather longwinded discussion is that, no, in the end the true essence of originality does not exist because at the end of the day stories remain stories and cannot escape from what lies at the heart of their nature and which they all have in common.



But this in no way implies that each story should not strive to be unique.



A story is not just a collection of words. It is, at bottom, an expression of something pure that lies inside every person. Everyone has at least one story in them. And this story comes from them. Not from anyone else. There will inevitably be influences from elsewhere in any given work, but the driving force behind the story comes from inside its writer’s soul. A writer writes to express something. It can be anything, but this something is always something they have felt and been profoundly affected by. This is what every true novel has at its heart. It may not be well-expressed, it may be obscure, it may be false or distasteful, or even boring, but it is always there.



But the Inheritance trilogy has no heart. It is a book without a soul. The Epistler says this with complete seriousness.



Why?



The Inheritance trilogy is pulp. Mindless, empty, bland pulp. It cannot be called literature because it, unlike those novels worthy of the name, completely lacks that sense of truth at its heart. Not a hint of its creator’s soul showed through at any point in the text. It never had the chance. How could it possibly reveal anything about the boy who wrote it when he has utterly failed to include even a hint of original thought or creativity?

The trilogy does not have a “voice”. Instead it is an echo of an echo of an echo. It does nothing but mindlessly and pointlessly regurgitate things which have been done a million times before, in exactly the same way, over and over again. While Paolini has lifted the characters, worlds, ideas and plots of other writers verbatim, what he has failed to transplant is what that really matters about these things. Everything in his books is there “because”. For example, in the Star Wars trilogy, it was revealed that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father because this revelation created realistic and sympathetic conflict within the hero’s mind. It added a touch of darkness and complexity to the story and heightened the viewer’s interest and emotional investment in what was happening. At the time, it was also a relatively new and fresh idea that genuinely surprised people.

In Eldest, it is revealed that Morzan was Eragon’s father and this makes absolutely no difference to anything. Paolini includes this plot point for the gods alone know what reason – most likely because he thought it was “cool” – apparently unaware that it has to do more than just be there. In Star Wars the “I am your father” revelation was shocking and involving. In Eldest the only response from the reader is one of boredom and contempt. Why should anyone find it at all shocking or interesting when it is so familiar? Everyone knows about what happened in Star Wars – the “I am your father” line has been relentlessly copied and parodied and has ingrained itself into popular culture to the point that most people know it before they even watch the movie. The way it is done in Eldest means that the reader feels absolutely no surprise, only astonishment that Paolini apparently believed it would provide a big “wow” moment for his readers.



And yet the idea of the protagonist of a story being in some way related to the villain does not need to be unoriginal. The reasons why Paolini failed to make it work are as follows:

Firstly, it is clumsily done. The fight between Murtagh and Eragon is painfully contrived, and when Murtagh “dramatically” reveals to Eragon that they are brothers it is hampered by Paolini’s excruciatingly stilted writing. There is no sense of drama inherent in the prose at this point; the dialogue remains as horribly forced and unrealistic as ever, and this makes it difficult for the reader to immerse himself in what is going on.

Secondly, the theft is so blindingly obvious as to render this part of the book outright laughable. Absolutely no attempt has been made to hide the “inspiration” behind it; on reading it, one instantly recognises it as having come from Star Wars. Some time later the line “look inside yourself, you know it to be true” appears. This is almost identical to Vader’s famous line; “search your feelings, you know it to be true”, and only helps to confirm that, yes, Paolini stole the scene from Star Wars.

And finally, the impact that it has on the plot and characters is virtually nil. Eragon feels a little depressed about it for approximately half a page, and then it is all over and forgotten. The fact that it makes so little impression on Eragon makes the reader dismiss it just as quickly and move on. If Eragon is barely upset by it, why should the reader care? Thus we see the point emerge; we have had the idea without the spirit. Paolini stole the “I am your father” element but completely ignored the whole reason why Lucas used it in the first place. It is simply there, and that is all.

Now, there could easily have been a way to make Eragon be related to a villain without making it an obvious ripoff of Star Wars. There would have been nothing wrong with Paolini using the idea, even if he did get it from Lucas, if he firstly put an original spin on it and secondly made it count. There was no need to have it revealed at the height of a fight scene with the evil emperor’s right-hand man. It could have been known from the beginning. A different character could have revealed it. Eragon could have gone through the whole trilogy not knowing and not found out until the very end of the story. By taking not just the essence of the idea – ie that the hero’s father was evil – but the way in which someone else has already expressed it, Paolini made the ripoff incredibly blatant. The near-identical “revelation” scene means that the reader can easily see the strings, and hence it is not an old idea expressed in a new way, but simply another example of plagiarism.

Paying Tribute: a Tithe to the Greats

In writing, it is common practise to pay tribute to the works of other people. Homages are completely the norm in the creative world. For example, Quentin Tarantino is a fan of old Japanese kung-fu movies and constantly references them in his own works. But this does not make him a plagiarist. Kill Bill is not a ripoff just because it includes a line from another movie called Lady Snowblood. Why? Because the plotline and characters are original, the way in which the movie was made is Tarantino’s own unique style, and the whole production is stamped with his personality. The “revenge movie” is a well-known subgenre, but it is the way in which Tarantino has created his own revenge movie that makes it his and nobody else’s. He created the character of The Bride, he created the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, it was his idea to show parts of the movie out of sequence, to include a segment shot in black and white and to animate another part. This all came from him. But, every now and then, something appears in the movie which is not his creation. When O-ren Ishii says “look at me… take a good look at my face… do I look familiar? Do I look like someone you murdered?” she is paraphrasing Lady Snowblood’s line; “…do I look familiar? Do I look like someone you raped?”. But the line is used for a different purpose and in a different way. It is not there to compensate for a lack of creativity on Tarantino’s part. If he had written a different piece of dialogue that expressed the same thing, the impact would have remained the same. He took the line and used it in a slightly similar scenario (ie someone getting revenge) as a nod to a movie he admired. At the same time, the tribute only extends as far as this one line. There are no major plot-points lifted wholesale from somewhere else – even if there is influence present, Tarantino has put his own spin on everything.

Thus we have an excellent example of a proper tribute. It is not intellectual theft; it is perfectly acceptable, even clever.

Some people, in attempting to defend Paolini on the charge of plagiarism, have said that all his supposed thefts were in fact tributes. But they are not.

For one thing, in all the interviews he has given, although he claimed that some of his names were “tributes” or “contained hidden jokes” (in fact, virtually all of them were lifted from Lord of the Rings with a few letters changed and none of them were either hidden or at all amusing), Paolini never added that his plot-line was taken from Star Wars – hence he did not acknowledge that it does not belong to him, which amounts to pretending that it does. When challenged about his thefts, he simply responded that “all fantasy is derivative”. It is highly probable that he knows his works are unoriginal, but he is apparently under the delusion that this is somehow acceptable. Or perhaps he simply does not care. The Epistler is uncertain as to which attitude is more aggravating.

Another reason why Paolini’s “ideas” are not tributes but thefts is that he has used what he has taken not in order to enrich a world, story and characters that belong to him, but in place of the original ideas that should have been there. Instead of coming up with his own plotline he copied Star Wars, and instead of creating his own world he stitched together a Frankenstein’s monster from pieces of a hundred other fantasy books. Absolutely everything in his books is recognisable as having been taken from somewhere else, and only the barest hint of originality ever shows through. Even the most minor and inconsequential elements are stolen.

Solembum the werecat? Taken from Garth Nix (albeit with an absolutely ridiculous new name slapped on). Angela the witch? Which of any number of “cheerfully eccentric” mystics would you prefer? Elva? Taken from Dune, or possibly The Ring. Arya’s name? Stolen from G.R.R.Martin. Eragon? Perilously close to Aragorn. Even if it was actually created by changing one letter in the word “dragon”, as Paolini claims, the Epistler does not believe it. Saphira? Taken from, of all places, the Bible. Hrothgar? Taken from Beowulf. The Star Sapphire? Step forward, David Eddings. Elves and dwarves? Everyone already knows the answer to that one.

And so on and so forth.

Paolini seems to have written the books in reverse. The so-called “tributes” make up the bulk of the story, and the very, very few vaguely original elements appear here and there and do not make an important part of the story, as if they were taking the place of proper homages.

The reason why his “tributes” are not tributes is because, rather than enriching the story, they are the story. It is all homage, all reference. Eragon and Eldest are nothing more than a pair of extended quotations with a few words changed here and there. Because Paolini has allowed other people’s ideas to take the place of his own, he has stepped very firmly indeed over the line from tribute into plagiarism.



Plagiarism: The Unforgivable Crime

In the literary world, there are few things as despised as much as plagiarism. A book is hard to write, and new ideas are worth their weight in gold. Hence, stealing them is the equivalent of stealing money. It is, in essence, cheating. Not taking the time to think up your own ideas shows open contempt for the creative process, and stealing someone else’s ideas mocks and cheapens their hard work.

Paolini is a literary parasite. He has taken things which do not belong to him and used them as if he owned them, and in the process has made the entire world of fantasy writing look bad. This is not something that should be ignored. Too many people have admitted that he is a thief, but then proceeded to pretend that it doesn’t matter. It does matter. It matters because writing is an art, and one which has enriched the lives of millions ever since the written word first came into existence. If the Epistler stole a necklace from a jewellery shop and then claimed to have made it, even though it still had the maker’s label prominently visible, would you be impressed?

So, you may be wondering, if Paolini is indeed a thief, what should be done about it?

The Epistler is aware that, as far as most people know, none of Paolini’s victims have pressed charges. Unfortunately, copyright cannot be placed on ideas. Paolini had just enough common sense to make enough changes – superficial though they be – to avoid actually breaching copyright laws. However, he need not be taken to court. All it would take would be for George Lucas, Anne McCaffrey, the Tolkien estate, David Eddings or any one of those whose ideas he stole to acknowledge the crime committed against them and, preferably, condemn it. The Epistler does not know why they have not done so. Perhaps they don’t know about it, or perhaps they don’t care. But the Epistler believes that they have a duty to their fans to not let this sort of thing pass unchecked. There should be some sort of reaction.

As for the rest of the world, who are not so fortunate to have been left with an itchy welt from Paolini’s proboscis, if they truly care about creativity, and respect those who take the time and effort to be original, the way to punish Paolini would be to boycott him. Do not buy his books. Do not see the movie or buy any of the tie-in merchandising. Stop putting money in his pockets, because he has not earned it. Stealing is a crime. See to it that it doesn’t pay.

read any of those if you want a demonstration of the valid complaints about Eragon

or my first review of the book

This has been done to death, does my option even matter any more?


Ah Eragon
"The writing was okay, I guess. But I couldn't take it anymore after Harry returned from his first run-in with the Dementors to find the Ring Wraiths had burned the Lars Homestead."
I highly disliked the writering
I hated the characters, Eragon is a mary sue, the best at everything, a boring may character, and apperently a sociopath as show here, credit goes to the Epistler

Spoiler

Show

Quote:
Eragon Shadeslayer: Ye Olde Faux-Medieval Sociopath



Mary Sues are quite common in both original fiction and fanfiction. However, Eragon also bears the less common distinction of apparently suffering from antisocial personality disorder. The Epistler did a little research and uncovered the most common traits of sociopathy, which are as follows:



1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest. This may seem a little shaky at first. The Epistler had difficultly analysing it, since it would appear that, in fact, Eragon is perfectly law-abiding and has never been arrested.

But after pondering on it for some weeks, the Epistler suddenly had a revelation. Eragon is a criminal of the first order – he’s a member of the rebel army, guilty of repeated acts of high treason against the ruler of Alagaësia, not to mention disturbing the peace, ignoring a peace offering, using dishonourable tactics in battle, breaking out of prison and freeing a known supporter of the rebels who was guilty of smuggling stolen goods.

Yes, Galbatorix is ‘the bad guy’. But he’s still the King, and legally speaking he has authority over everyone who lives in Alagaësia – including our righteous hero. Eragon grew up under his rule, and by all accounts had a fairly peaceful childhood. The Empire did not harass him or his family, he had enough to eat and a roof over his head – from all we’ve seen so far, the most evil thing Galbatorix has done is (gasp!) make people pay taxes. But we must remember that the much-maligned King is trying to fight a war against the Varden, and that wars are expensive. The fact that he got his throne through violent rebellion does not change the fact that he is the King and Eragon is his subject. If one looks at it from an unbiased perspective, the Varden are nothing more than a group of terrorists. The Epistler urges his readers to consider this. If the Varden did not exist, there would be no war. The Empire’s citizens would be able to live peacefully, and there would be no armies wreaking destruction on the landscape. War profits no-one – once the Varden wins (there is no doubt whatsoever that they will), they will place their own candidate on the throne and so will begin a new Empire, which will have no essential difference whatsoever from the previous one. It will still be a dictatorship, it will still have been placed there by bloody and violent rebellion, and the common people will still have to pay taxes.

Eragon, of course, is completely unaware of any of this. However, by this logic, once the glamour and black-and-white morality has been stripped away, we can see that he is, at bottom, a criminal. The Varden stole Saphira’s egg from the King, probably murdering a few people in the process. Once Eragon found it and became a rider, his duty should have been to pledge himself to the Empire and use his newfound power responsibly. However, since the King is just so evil (we shall ignore the fact that Kings generally rule Kingdoms and that Empires have Emperors), he does not do this. Instead he joins the Varden, and during the course of both Eragon and Eldest he commits numerous criminal and terrorist acts, without showing the slightest trace of remorse. He kills Imperial soldiers – men who were merely doing their duty – destroys property, lies and steals, refuses all offers of clemency, and in general does his best to create chaos wherever he goes. And we know perfectly well that he will not at any point be brought to book for any of this, because God – otherwise known as Paolini – loves him too much for that to happen.

2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure. Eragon is a poor liar, but is one of the most self-centred individuals the Epistler has ever had the displeasure of reading about. Consider this… has he at any point achieved anything notable during the course of either book, on his own?

….not really. He escapes from prison only because Murtagh and Saphira help him. He makes it to the Varden because of them and Brom. He only kills Durza because of Saphira and Arya’s intervention – without them he would have been killed. Not a single one of his ‘heroic’ exploits succeeded because of his own cleverness, strength or daring. Eragon is a pathetic child who calls himself a grown man yet needs someone to hold his hand every step of the way. He takes no pride in doing anything himself.

And yet he never appears to notice this. He takes his friends absolutely for granted, expecting them to wait on his every command and indulge the childish tantrums which invariably take place whenever someone does not rush to help him at every turn. He is also utterly ungrateful – witness his ‘grudging’ thanks to Brom after the aforesaid makes him a saddle, his constant whining to Saphira, his outright rudeness to Oromis, his pathetic bewilderment and emotional blackmail when Arya rebuffs his sickly-sweet romantic approaches, the hysterical abuse he throws at the already much-abused Murtagh, his brother and apparent whipping-boy, his sulky rage over Vanir’s refusal to kowtow to him, and his generally condescending and overbearing behaviour toward every other character in the book. The Epistler admits that Eragon does not lie or deceive to get his way – but he does not have to.

Eragon is a spoilt brat wearing a hero’s armour and carrying a sword. He treats every other character in the book like his personal entourage, and yet accepts the respect he gets as if it is his due. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the Epistler is rooting for the Empire to win?



3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead. This is no contest. Even other characters remark on Eragon’s rashness and stupidity. He constantly rushes into things without a second thought (only to be miraculously saved every time, but this is beside the point). This trait is probably supposed to be endearing – our hero is meant to be a hot-headed but courageous lad who has a lot to learn… blah blah blah. The Epistler has a better way of putting it: he’s a moron.



4. Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults. On numerous occasions in the books, Eragon has temper tantrums, usually over something trivial. It is a little unfair to add that he constantly fights and kills people as a solution to his problems (i.e. he would rather not work for the nasty ol’ King), given that he is a fantasy character and that is what fantasy characters do… but the Epistler used up all his charity a very long time ago.



5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others. This has already been covered more or less in point 2, but the Epistler will recap. Eragon is constantly putting himself and other people in danger, usually because he is too stupid to think about anything for more than two minutes together. He is extremely reckless, and this cannot be overlooked given that he lives in a world where danger is ever-present and real, and the consequences are, frequently, death (or, at least, they would be if Paolini knew anything about a little thing called ‘realism’. Let us interpret it the way he apparently wished us to)



6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain steady work or honour financial obligations. If you will indulge the Epistler for a moment… he just had an hilarious mental image of Eragon trying to obtain a job at McDonald’s.

To return to the topic at hand, Eragon is indeed irresponsible. In spite of the fact that everybody is relying upon him, he constantly does stupid and irresponsible things which get himself and other people into trouble; his apparent inability to think ahead only compounds the felony.



7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another. Now this is the real killer. One day, perhaps, in the far distant future, some deranged person will go through the trilogy-to-be and make a tally of all the people Eragon kills, but for now it is safe to estimate that it stands at at least a hundred.

Now… in Eldest, when Eragon’s cousin Roran is forced to begin fighting and killing people, he keeps a mental count of all his victims and angsts about it. It is lame and unconvincing, but at least in this case Paolini made an attempt at showing some realism – Roran is shocked by the fact that he has killed people. Eragon, however, has no such reservations. At no point in either book does he truly feel remorse for anything, even something as heinous as killing another living soul. In Eragon, when he first kills a group of urgals, he has no reaction beyond (to quote Ivy), “OMG I gotz magick??!!”. He pats himself on the back for having discovered his magical abilities, but doesn’t pause for a second to consider the fact that he has just become a killer. Yes, the victims were evil, beastly urgals, but they were still, technically, people. And yet Eragon feels nothing at having killed them. Later on he kills human beings with a similar lack of reaction or human feeling. Where is the disgust? Where is the guilt? Where is the horror? He acts like a robot. In the, uh, glorious final battle of Eldest, he uses the uber-speshul magical death words (the Epistler has a name for these: cheap cop-out) to instantly kill dozens of Imperial troops, and his only real thought is ‘geez, this is just too easy’. And this is after he’s been told that there is no life after death and that this life is all anyone gets.

…Does anyone else see the internal contradiction here, or is the Epistler hallucinating?

This is not all. After Murtagh ‘dies’ at the beginning of the book, Eragon feels (or rather, thinks) sad for exactly a paragraph, and then forgets about him for the rest of the book. When he reappears at the end and reveals that he is now working for the Empire, Eragon screeches at him about how he was ‘mourning’ for him (liar), and goes on to be a complete ******* toward him – taunting him about the scar he got from his violent father, and continuing to hurl abuse at him after it is already clear that he has been coerced into his current position and is now more of a victim than ever. Once the fight is over (and Eragon has been soundly defeated, much to the reader’s pleasure – this reader, at any rate), he continues to feel sorry for himself and barely spares a thought for Murtagh at all – after he has discovered that they are brothers, no less.

There are even more examples to be had of Eragon’s selfishness and lack of remorse. Elva is an excellent one. When he discovers that he unintentionally cursed the child instead of blessing her, he is dismayed for approximately one minute before he moves on to other things and forgets all about the matter. He suffers from no lingering guilt or anxiety whatsoever, and when he finally meets his victim face-to-face, he briefly apologises and promises to try and remove the curse before he wanders off and forgets about her again for the rest of the book. Somehow, the Epistler is not taken in by this display of remorse.

Strangely, however, he goes to pieces over having killed a few rabbits.



The diagnosis is now complete: Eragon is a sociopath. He fulfils every single one of the criteria. As a bonus, he also displays a few of the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, namely:

1. A grandiose sense of self-importance

2. Requires excessive admiration

3. Strong sense of entitlement

4. Takes advantage of other people

5. Lacks empathy (again)

8. Arrogant affect (he accepts being the Last Hope of pretty much everything with scarcely a pause. One would expect some feelings of self-doubt or at the very least embarrassment, but apparently Paolini thinks otherwise)



From the accounts he has read, it would seem that narcissists, far from actually being special, have very little personality to call their own. Instead, they create a false personality from bits and pieces of the personalities of other people whom they regarded as an authority. They adopt other people’s tastes and opinions as if they were their own, they have sterile inner lives and resent having to do anything for themselves, and they don’t talk about their feelings…

…does this sound at all familiar?

Eragon is a blank slate of a character. He never thinks for himself. Instead he mindlessly repeats things which other people have said, has no real opinions or beliefs of his own – he has no individuality. Everything he is is a quotation of some sort; he becomes a vegetarian atheist like Oromis with little or no resistance, and never shows any resentment over the fact that he is being changed by powers outside of his control. Narcissists also show an inability to change as a person based on their experiences, which, again, is true for Eragon. He begins as a selfish, immature brat, and stays that way right to the end of Eldest, in spite of all the huge changes that have taken place in his life. His view of the world changes not one iota.

(For more information about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, see www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/howto.html)



The Epistler does not pretend to be a qualified psychologist, but it is easy to see from this that Eragon has some serious issues. He is a Gary Stu of the first order, with Sociopathic and Narcissistic Personality Disorder thrown in as a bonus.

What is even more hilarious about this is that Paolini almost certainly does not know it. The Epistler will refrain from making cruel comments about how author and protagonist may have a lot in common – he has no right to say such things, and nor does anyone else who does not know Paolini personally.

However, the Epistler feels he is able to safely say that it is unlikely that Paolini put as much thought into his works as went into a single one of the Epistles written thus far. He speaks of ‘searching introspection’ as if he were a literary mastermind, but there is no way he can have applied much of it to the works that have made him so wealthy and famous. If he had done so, he surely would have realised that his beloved hero has a mental disorder and urgently needs psychological attention. Meanwhile those who read his books must suffer through an endless string of Eragon whining, Eragon throwing tantrums like a four year old, Eragon magically getting stronger without doing any work, Eragon being praised to the skies by a bunch of yes-men other characters, and Eragon doing stupid and irresponsible things and getting away with it without so much as a slap on the wrist.

…and this is the character whose name is currently being shouted from the rooftops and whose exploits have made his creator a hero to children all around the world.



There will be no further Epistles. The Epistler is now going to seek out a good exorcist to help him commit suicide. Fare thee well, readers.
credits to the Epistles, he does infact come back from the dead

He also meets up with Arya, his Faux Action girl, Brom, the mentor knock off, meets the Murtagh the anti hero, who's father is the dragon

who later does a face heel turn. The hero then goes on his many adventures with his dragon fighting the evil empire , which by the way, i don't really understand why it is evil

However, what annoys me most is how black and white the story is, how bad the characters are and the issues with stealing the plot


In case you haven't read the book, here is a brief description of Book 1
and book 2
I feel so obsalite, now, what is my option worth
from,
EE

Conclusion, Eragon is the work of a hack, no, a talentless hack. The book is at best an over praised medoricty. There are writers who i despise who at least have better quality than this

2)And, ultimately, what the crowd thinks of you in the end. Are you proposing debate without an audience, in which case cannot be won, even with logic. It is highly unlikely that one in a debate can persuade the other side into their beliefs. That is what happened in LK vs. Sauron, we couldn't persuade you nor you us, and that is why it kept going for some time.

No, because numbers don't change a fact. Propaganda is the idea of getting masses of numbers to "prove a point" not logic. As i said, debates make no difference. In early times, people believed that the world was flat. Most of them in fact (not during Columbus's time actually, but point remains) did that make it so? In Russia the overwhelming majority of the people were Communist, does that make Communism the perfect system? Numbers mean nothing, only the points on the table

3) Though it wasn't at all settled. Just a point.

Forum rule, if a thread is dead, make a new one, don't raise the old one

1) But describing the character in such powerful forms does have an effect. If you just say "This dude is evil" and that alone, are you really giving the readers a good image to work with in terms of power? No, JRR tolkien gave fancy wording and history for his villains to add effect as well and to give more of an essence for his villains.

No a realize Soth is badass and amazingly dangerous, i'm just saying i don't think he can defeat the Wk

He isn't protected from the WK (normal weapons can hurt him however). In a one on one the WK would simply win over a long time, because i don't think Soth can hurt him. Soth is most likely a better sword fighter, but can he actually hurt the WK? Soth has no magical protection against swords through he is immune to some magics
He is dangerous certainly, i don't deny that, just not enough

2) Yes, so did the WK. Difference? Soth got his cursed immortality on his own and keeps it independently. WK dies when Sauron dies. Soth is more independent.

1) But you can't claim his obtaining immortality as an asset, or something to be impressed by. Also He can't come back from the dead like the WK can

3) Well... he was killed before, but only by powerful people. So are you saying that a random hobo in the streets can pick up a sword and run it through Soth with ease? The lord of a cursed realm had to give into his demands to keep him from destroying it and himself (Meaning the lord of the realm). He was only defeated by powerful beings of darkness (Who had to take away his undeath to do so, granting him a much longed for gift in the process), and a guy who traveled through time itself! Sounds pretty hard to top with your average adventurers and even epic adventurers.

in theory, a hobo with a sword could kill him. i'm not saying Soth is a weaknling no, he could kill Arthas any day, but he doesn't have any sort of special protection from swords. So if the Wk simply swarmed him with a bunch of guys, he'd lose most of them but they would still prevail

He did kill one.

Touche. I forgot about that one. It was young i recall

Not sure how analogous this is, but he was more than a match for Strahd von Zarovich of the Ravenloft timeline.

they never fought i believe. They both disagreeded, but Strahd one in the end, he got Soth to kill a rival and to go into his own demi plane (where he got stuck)

People who stab or even touch him are gripped with a chilling cold that numbs their limbs to the point of uselessness.

I don't think he actually has a physical body, to be honest. He's pretty much just armour with a pair of evil glowing eyes but nothing else is inside it. I suppose Witch King could try and sunder it but I doubt that would do much good...the armour isn't worn by Soth, it IS Soth.

death knights do have phyical bodies, but they can turn incorpral for a brief amount of time, (I'm too afraid to open my book sadly to double check) Also the Wk isn't mortal, wouldn't be effected by the chill

- I'm fairly sure, though I can't prove it atm, that he was involved in the creation of the Draconians.

i don't think so. He knew about it, but i don't think he actually did anything

His armor, sword etc are reasonably close to indestructable from what I can tell. For one thing he's been using the same stuff for 300 odd years, apparently without cleaning or other forms of maintenence. It also survived the fire that destroyed Dargaard Keep, a fire so hot it burned through rock.

But magical weapons still get destroyed by the WK

Does Soth still have his holy sword however?
from
EE

[Mr. Scaly]

Glossing over the irrelevent Eragon parts.

He isn't protected from the WK (normal weapons can hurt him however). In a one on one the WK would simply win over a long time, because i don't think Soth can hurt him. Soth is most likely a better sword fighter, but can he actually hurt the WK? Soth has no magical protection against swords through he is immune to some magics
He is dangerous certainly, i don't deny that, just not enough

in theory, a hobo with a sword could kill him. i'm not saying Soth is a weaknling no, he could kill Arthas any day, but he doesn't have any sort of special protection from swords. So if the Wk simply swarmed him with a bunch of guys, he'd lose most of them but they would still prevail

Question: Soth is dead and has been for some four hundred years. Can a Morgul blade shank something with no physical body? Deathknight template or no, his death was described quite thoroughly, and he's often described as being nothing more than empty armour with glowing eyes.

Touche. I forgot about that one. It was young i recall

A forty foot long mature young dragon come into its own strength and magic, yes.

they never fought i believe. They both disagreeded, but Strahd one in the end, he got Soth to kill a rival and to go into his own demi plane (where he got stuck)

I never read the book admittedly, but wikipedia describes it "Soth attacked Strahd unceasingly and the vampire had no choice but to release Caradoc in order to keep his domain in one piece."

death knights do have phyical bodies, but they can turn incorpral for a brief amount of time, (I'm too afraid to open my book sadly to double check) Also the Wk isn't mortal, wouldn't be effected by the chill

Alright. Another example. Ausric Krell. Another deathknight (more of cowardly ass than a fallen but honourable man). He had no body left either, nothing but his suit of armour which was more like his 'essence'.

But magical weapons still get destroyed by the WK

Does Soth still have his holy sword however?
from
EE

If his sword was holy before it is now. It's not out of the question actually, since he was once highly placed in the knighthood.

But I think it's a part of him as much as his armour. Sundering it MIGHT work but it would be like trying to sunder an immensely powerful being as well.

[EvilElitest]

Glossing over the irrelevent Eragon parts.

At least acknowledge taht it was amazing

Question: Soth is dead and has been for some four hundred years. Can a Morgul blade shank something with no physical body? Deathknight template or no, his death was described quite thoroughly, and he's often described as being nothing more than empty armour with glowing eyes.

1) Well the morgul blade would have no effect in terms of magic
2) A normal sword can hurt him yes. I think Soth has a burned body, just often becomes ghostly (i wish somebody else could double check the time limit on taht

A forty foot long mature young dragon come into its own strength and magic, yes.

was it that big in the book

I never read the book admittedly, but wikipedia describes it "Soth attacked Strahd unceasingly and the vampire had no choice but to release Caradoc in order to keep his domain in one piece."

What happened i believe is taht Strahd simply was fed up with him and wanted him out because Soth was slaughtering random people. In the scene where Strahd is described he doesn't seem miffted, he has no love for Caradoc

Alright. Another example. Ausric Krell. Another deathknight (more of cowardly ass than a fallen but honourable man). He had no body left either, nothing but his suit of armour which was more like his 'essence'.

he is actually the sample death knight in the book, which i'm too afraid to double check (really, it is on the verge of falling apart

If his sword was holy before it is now. It's not out of the question actually, since he was once highly placed in the knighthood.

would it become unholy then?
from
EE

[Mr. Scaly]

At least acknowledge taht it was amazing

The sociopath comments were hilarious. And intriguing. We need more sociopathic heroes.

1) Well the morgul blade would have no effect in terms of magic
2) A normal sword can hurt him yes. I think Soth has a burned body, just often becomes ghostly (i wish somebody else could double check the time limit on taht

Huh. Honestly, I have a hard time believing that it would be that easy. Someone would have done it before some time.

was it that big in the book

I don't remember and a brief glance doesn't say. But it was a bronze.

What happened i believe is taht Strahd simply was fed up with him and wanted him out because Soth was slaughtering random people. In the scene where Strahd is described he doesn't seem miffted, he has no love for Caradoc

I don't think anyone was fond of Caradoc by that point. But why didn't Strahd try and take out Soth himself if he was raising chaos?

he is actually the sample death knight in the book, which i'm too afraid to double check (really, it is on the verge of falling apart

Irony of ironies. In Amber and Ashes, Chemosh tells about how Krell became a deathknight. Zeboim was a little miffed that he murdered her son and sought him out. Chemosh's words? "I'm told that there wasn't enough left of him to fill a bucket." And in Amber and Iron Krell is musing to himself about how is armour is his 'body'. He clanks around a lot because he likes people to know he's coming and fear him, but he can be perfectly silent when he wants to.

would it become unholy then?
from
EE

Good question...

[Bago!!!]

EE, could give us a quote on the whole Strahd and Caradoc bit please about it? From what I have heard and read on many websites, he practically wreaked pure havoc on Strahd's kingdom.

Course Strahd has no love, he's a bloody vampire in ravenloft. EVIL! Well, thats actuelly wrong, but you get the idea. What he lost when he gave up Caradoc was any possibility of manipulating Lord Soth for his own ends.

Holy or unholy weapon.... hhhhmmmmmm... tough one...

But that is irrelivant. Sword skill wise, Lord Soth. He can outmatch Witch King without a doubt. He is epic level, with levels in fight, that I have little to no doubt.


And Arthas is more than a match for him, because arthas' magic is a demi god in his own right at the very least, has tremendous magic, a tremendous swordsman, and an incredibly shrewd tactition.


But yeah, lord soth is easily epic level.

Death Knight stats just plain ROCK! They have Ice wall at will, can probally dispell magic, can cast atleast one fireball, spells that hit said death knight have a high chance of doing nothing to him, another chance of reflecting off of them, they are immune to cold, with two other immunities if I am correct (though I forget what. Maybe Lightening and Fire?). Not only that, all of those spells are treated as a 20th level sorcerer casted them, or so I believe. Then the runes and words of pain, stun and such.

And if I recall, he also killed one of Strahd's Red Dragons, unless wikipedia lies to me. And I personally think that if he caused any trouble in Strahd's realm, such as killing a red dragon and causing havoc, he would try to confront himself. I think he did do that, and he did not do so well.

[Mr. Scaly]

Well I wouldn't say that Soth is an infinitely better swordsman because he's a deathknight. It's that he was one of the most skilled Solamnic Knights, who themselves were legendary for their skill at swordplay.

[EvilElitest]

The sociopath comments were hilarious. And intriguing. We need more sociopathic heroes.

It is sad because the writer isn't aware of this

Huh. Honestly, I have a hard time believing that it would be that easy. Someone would have done it before some time.

I said it was possible. It is possible to kill Soth with a sword. Now nobody pulled it off, because well, he lives in his nasty castle with his army. Also he is an incredible fighter, so killing him isn't hard. The Wk however can be hurt by Soth, and can just keep it up until eventually he hurt Soth. The one on one might take a few years actually, as both would fight until the WK shanked him to death (which wouldn't be easy). In the full scale battle, the Wk can just swarm him to death

I don't remember and a brief glance doesn't say. But it was a bronze.

red actually, and yes it was young p. 147

I don't think anyone was fond of Caradoc by that point. But why didn't Strahd try and take out Soth himself if he was raising chaos?

Strahd didn't care. Chapter 16 it shows Soth's attack on Strahd, who deliberately pretends to be upset by it (through Soth isn't fooled) The count then tells Soth where the ghost is (near the mists) knowing full well that if Soth enters the mists he will be stuck in his own realm. So he got rid of Soth

Irony of ironies. In Amber and Ashes, Chemosh tells about how Krell became a deathknight. Zeboim was a little miffed that he murdered her son and sought him out. Chemosh's words? "I'm told that there wasn't enough left of him to fill a bucket." And in Amber and Iron Krell is musing to himself about how is armour is his 'body'. He clanks around a lot because he likes people to know he's coming and fear him, but he can be perfectly silent when he wants to.

Just checked the book again, they aren't incorporal. Maybe his armor must be destroyed for him to die.

edit
Oh Soth can used magical attacks however to hurt the WK. Most of them are evil however

Good question...

If so it can't hurt the Wk

EE, could give us a quote on the whole Strahd and Caradoc bit please about it? From what I have heard and read on many websites, he practically wreaked pure havoc on Strahd's kingdom.

Course Strahd has no love, he's a bloody vampire in ravenloft. EVIL! Well, thats actuelly wrong, but you get the idea. What he lost when he gave up Caradoc was any possibility of manipulating Lord Soth for his own ends.

the entire chapter 16, too long to quote.

Also he gave up Caradoc to manipulate Soth into entering the mists

But that is irrelivant. Sword skill wise, Lord Soth. He can outmatch Witch King without a doubt. He is epic level, with levels in fight, that I have little to no doubt.

1) I'm willing to admit that Soth is a better swordsmen, but not an infintly better one, the WK is very good
2) Also how is his sword going to hurt the WK

And Arthas is more than a match for him, because arthas' magic is a demi god in his own right at the very least, has tremendous magic, a tremendous swordsman, and an incredibly shrewd tactition.

Most of Arthas' attack magic isn't going to work on ether Soth or the Wk. if we take away his undead, Arthas is powerful, but i don't think he could defeat Soth.
Also Arthas is an awful tactition. He overextends himself and has no unity in his forces, also has no political mindset

Death Knight stats just plain ROCK! They have Ice wall at will, can probally dispell magic, can cast atleast one fireball, spells that hit said death knight have a high chance of doing nothing to him, another chance of reflecting off of them, they are immune to cold, with two other immunities if I am correct (though I forget what. Maybe Lightening and Fire?). Not only that, all of those spells are treated as a 20th level sorcerer casted them, or so I believe. Then the runes and words of pain, stun and such.

This are a different death knight template you realize. They can control undead, use unholy fire, 13 power words, immunities to turning, briefly turn incorporal ect.
from
EE

[Mr. Scaly]

It is sad because the writer isn't aware of this

But imagine if he was and Eragon was an 'evil hero.'

I said it was possible. It is possible to kill Soth with a sword. Now nobody pulled it off, because well, he lives in his nasty castle with his army. Also he is an incredible fighter, so killing him isn't hard. The Wk however can be hurt by Soth, and can just keep it up until eventually he hurt Soth. The one on one might take a few years actually, as both would fight until the WK shanked him to death (which wouldn't be easy). In the full scale battle, the Wk can just swarm him to death

Why can't WK be hurt by Soth again? I thought there was a general 'prophecies off' rule in effect.

red actually, and yes it was young p. 147

Are we thinking the same dragon? I mean Fireflash the Bronze, from Dragons of Spring Dawning and the Test of the Twins. And he was old enough to fight with mature dragons in aerial combat.

Strahd didn't care. Chapter 16 it shows Soth's attack on Strahd, who deliberately pretends to be upset by it (through Soth isn't fooled) The count then tells Soth where the ghost is (near the mists) knowing full well that if Soth enters the mists he will be stuck in his own realm. So he got rid of Soth

Oh, cool.

[/QUOTE]Just checked the book again, they aren't incorporal. Maybe his armor must be destroyed for him to die. [/QUOTE]

That's the problem with source books and fluff. So often they clash with each other and we all argue over which is consistent.

edit
Oh Soth can used magical attacks however to hurt the WK. Most of them are evil however

As they say in Dragonlance, Evil turns in on itself. Just because something is evil doesn't mean it can't harm another evil being. Hence this thread. Hehe... To your knowledge, has the WK ever fought an evil being of approximately his power level? If not i don't think anyone has used an evil weapon or spell on him.

[EvilElitest]

But imagine if he was and Eragon was an 'evil hero.'

Then it would be amazing

Why can't WK be hurt by Soth again? I thought there was a general 'prophecies off' rule in effect.

no this isn't hte prophecy (no living man can hinder me), this is the fact that he has a spell that protects him from all but holy anti undead weapons and magic

Are we thinking the same dragon? I mean Fireflash the Bronze, from Dragons of Spring Dawning and the Test of the Twins. And he was old enough to fight with mature dragons in aerial combat.

oh i'm talking about Stahd red dragon guard, so we are not talking about the same dragon

Oh, cool.

thanks, it was odd i was walking past my shelf and it was just peeking out

That's the problem with source books and fluff. So often they clash with each other and we all argue over which is consistent.

well i don't thing e has ever been considered incorporeal, and in Knight of the Black Rose he was bite by a red dragon, so i think you can't hurt him, just not easily

As they say in Dragonlance, Evil turns in on itself. Just because something is evil doesn't mean it can't harm another evil being. Hence this thread. Hehe... To your knowledge, has the WK ever fought an evil being of approximately his power level? If not i don't think anyone has used an evil weapon or spell on him.

1) Well yeah, but the magic Soth has wouldn't work on the Wk. Unholy energy, power word kill/pain/madness ect. He has unholy fire, but the WK can use fire as well
2) No actually he hasn't, through i imagine the Wk would be considered unholy
from
EE

[Mr. Scaly]

Then it would be amazing

Light Yagami, eat your heart out.

no this isn't hte prophecy (no living man can hinder me), this is the fact that he has a spell that protects him from all but holy anti undead weapons and magic

But since he's never been stabbed by unholy weapons we don't actually know if they work or not.

oh i'm talking about Stahd red dragon guard, so we are not talking about the same dragon

But he can kill dragons then. Apparently at will.

thanks, it was odd i was walking past my shelf and it was just peeking out

Lucky...all the books I want don't come out for a few months.

well i don't thing e has ever been considered incorporeal, and in Knight of the Black Rose he was bite by a red dragon, so i think you can't hurt him, just not easily

Hmm... I can't find any reliable info on Soth's game stats. They all seem to differ.

1) Well yeah, but the magic Soth has wouldn't work on the Wk. Unholy energy, power word kill/pain/madness ect. He has unholy fire, but the WK can use fire as well
2) No actually he hasn't, through i imagine the Wk would be considered unholy
from
EE

Oh, I doubt much of his magic would work. Power words Fear and Kill wouldn't work on undead, but Stun might ( I think. It did back in Baldurs gate at least...) and then theres his Dispel Magic at will thing, and fireball and wall of Ice and such.

[EvilElitest]

Light Yagami, eat your heart out.

He is just amazing

But since he's never been stabbed by unholy weapons we don't actually know if they work or not.

It said no other sword could do it however. Merry's was uniquly made. Magic might work i admit

But he can kill dragons then. Apparently at will.

1) Not at will, it was a hard fight both times
2) and dragons can be hurt by any weapon so.....

Lucky...all the books I want don't come out for a few months.

N, what was weird was on my book shel

Hmm... I can't find any reliable info on Soth's game stats. They all seem to differ.

I found it. p. 148 Knight of black rose

"Needle sharp teeth clamped down on the death knight's wrist"

Oh, I doubt much of his magic would work. Power words Fear and Kill wouldn't work on undead, but Stun might ( I think. It did back in Baldurs gate at least...) and then theres his Dispel Magic at will thing, and fireball and wall of Ice and such.

1) what would dispel do?
2) Ice and fire would do much to the WK ether
3) Stun can work on undead
What else does he have
from
EE

[Steven the Lich]

It said no other sword could do it however. Merry's was uniquly made. Magic might work i admit

No other sword in Middle Earth. That is the intended meaning. Don't presume it means "every sword that anyone will ever put in a fantasy in the future and any sword of any fantasy previously", because JRR Tolkien could not have seen the swords in future fantasies, which actually has his paling in terms of power. Also, the unholy magic in LotRs belonged to Saurons side, so WK has never faced it before at all.

1) Not at will, it was a hard fight both times
2) and dragons can be hurt by any weapon so.....

1) He did so anyway.
2) Yeah... but they're... big... and aren't dragonscales hard?

[QUOTE]1) what would dispel do?
2) Ice and fire would do much to the WK ether
3) Stun can work on undead[QUOTE]
1) Are you clueless? Dispel would disable the WK's protection. That said, Soth would be able to harm him.
2) Unholy fire is different than normal fire. To the best of my knowledge, WK just uses fire.
3) Score one for Soth.

[EvilElitest]

No other sword in Middle Earth. That is the intended meaning. Don't presume it means "every sword that anyone will ever put in a fantasy in the future and any sword of any fantasy previously", because JRR Tolkien could not have seen the swords in future fantasies, which actually has his paling in terms of power. Also, the unholy magic in LotRs belonged to Saurons side, so WK has never faced it before at all.

You always try to pull this card, stop making me have to rebuke it. Really Stop doing this
1) Weather Tolkien saw other worlds or not is irrelevant, he made the characters protection, and so swords of a simliar nature to Merry's must be used (holy, anti undead)
2) Pales in comparison. You should know by know that ME can certainly hold its own against plenty of other setting, i remind you of Rowans hat
3) Except undead are immune to most of Soth's magic
4) and unholy tends not to hurt evil or undead creatures much. Soth might have some spells that can hurt him, but not many

1) He did so anyway.
2) Yeah... but they're... big... and aren't dragonscales hard?

1) But not auto kill, he had to fight and struggle, hence he isn't perfect
2) Yeah, but nothing a basic magic weapon can get through. They don't have some sort of absurd super special awesome protection

1) Are you clueless? Dispel would disable the WK's protection. That said, Soth would be able to harm him.
2) Unholy fire is different than normal fire. To the best of my knowledge, WK just uses fire.
3) Score one for Soth.

1) Dispel magic doesn't overcome natrual protections, for example a vampires protection from non magic weapons isn't taken away.
2) He summons fire, evil dude, Sauron uses evil fire, Balrog uses evil fire, stands to reason that the WK would as well. Also evil fire was used at the siege of minas Tirith, with the WK, a powerful caster overseeing it. Also why would unholy fire hurt him more, he is undead
3) Um, what. How would Stun not effected the WK be a score for Soth?
from
EE

[Steven the Lich]

You always try to pull this card, stop making me have to rebuke it. Really Stop doing this
1) Weather Tolkien saw other worlds or not is irrelevant, he made the characters protection, and so swords of a simliar nature to Merry's must be used (holy, anti undead)
2) Pales in comparison. You should know by know that ME can certainly hold its own against plenty of other setting, i remind you of Rowans hat
3) Except undead are immune to most of Soth's magic
4) and unholy tends not to hurt evil or undead creatures much. Soth might have some spells that can hurt him, but not many

@ Ummm... what is so invalid about this card? What gives you the divine right to rebuke it?
1) This is not the setting of Tolkiens world, so while weapons from his setting may not affect the WK, powerful weapons from other settings may be effective. Epic weapons from other settings I am quite confident can overcome the WK's protection. We have no evidence that unholy weapons will not work on him because he is not against any unholy force.
2) Yes, it can. I'm not saying it can't. However, D&D is a high magic setting, ME is low magic. From what I've seen, heard, and what I know, WK doesn't stand a chance against Soth.
3) Maybe so, but he has plenty of other tricks up his sleeves.
4) Evil can harm evil, undead can harm undead, devils war with demons, it is not entirely impossible for Soth to use unholy energies to harm unholy beings. Besides, it's possible to kill someone with too much of something. Toss a living guy in the plane of negative energy, he dies. Toss another guy into the plane of positive energy... he explodes of having too much life, and then dies.

1) Dispel magic doesn't overcome natrual protections, for example a vampires protection from non magic weapons isn't taken away.
2) He summons fire, evil dude, Sauron uses evil fire, Balrog uses evil fire, stands to reason that the WK would as well. Also evil fire was used at the siege of minas Tirith, with the WK, a powerful caster overseeing it. Also why would unholy fire hurt him more, he is undead
3) Um, what. How would Stun not effected the WK be a score for Soth?

1) The barrier was dispelled when Merry cut through. I'm not sure it is natural anyway.
2) Yet his ring wraiths get hit with normal fire and run off the building in panic. Yeah... You wonder how effective unholy fire will be?
3) ... What? To be honest, your sentences are getting more and more difficult to understand. No offense. You said stun works on undead. Advantage Soth... even further.

EE, with all due respect, you are applying one worlds laws in another. D&D is a high magic setting, ME is a low magic setting. I can name plenty of epic non-holy weapons that can likely overcome the WKs protection. The Sword of Truth (From the Sword of Truth series) can burn right through the WK's shield since it is perhaps one of the most powerful weapons in fantasy. Frostmourne is a chaotic weapon capable of passing through divine armor (And more importantly, invincibility cheats). My point, when we take magic weapons from high magic settings and face a guy from a low magic setting invulnerable to weapons in said setting, we can't just say he'll be immune to the newer more stronger weapons.

[Mr. Scaly]

He is just amazing

But to a captain is he a captain?

It said no other sword could do it however. Merry's was uniquly made. Magic might work i admit

I still think that line 'no other sword would have struck such a mighty blow' (paraphrased) refers to the fact that Merry's was designed to smite him, not that he's sword invincible. Without the enchantment protecting him Eowyn's stabbing did the trick.

1) Not at will, it was a hard fight both times
2) and dragons can be hurt by any weapon so.....

Um...he pointed at Fireflash and said "Die."

N, what was weird was on my book shel

But you have the books you want on your shelf...the ones i want, I still have to buy. :-P

I found it. p. 148 Knight of black rose

"Needle sharp teeth clamped down on the death knight's wrist"

Did said needle sharp teeth do any damage at all?

1) what would dispel do?
2) Ice and fire would do much to the WK ether
3) Stun can work on undead
What else does he have
from
EE

1) I figure that it would bring down his magical protections much like Merry's magical protection breaking sword did.
2) Just because a man can wield a gun doesn't mean he's immune to getting shot. Horrible metaphor.
3) Then if it can work on undead, there should be no problem, right?

I don't know, I haven't seen his actual stats.

[EvilElitest]

@ Ummm... what is so invalid about this card? What gives you the divine right to rebuke it?

Because you always bring it up, and i always have to remind you why it works this way. It is like in every vs. thread you forget the particular details that were covered ages ago

1) This is not the setting of Tolkiens world, so while weapons from his setting may not affect the WK, powerful weapons from other settings may be effective. Epic weapons from other settings I am quite confident can overcome the WK's protection. We have no evidence that unholy weapons will not work on him because he is not against any unholy force.

We don't use that argument, that would eliminate all vs. threads pointless. the assumption in every vs. thread, from the LInk vs. seph, to the Voldemort vs. Sauron to Sauron vs. LK is that magic works normally on each other unless there is a reason for it to do otherwise. In Return of hte King, it specially states that no other type of weapons could hurt him. Unless somebody has a weapon of similar quality or something that could buy pass the shield, but not a normal weapons for not reason other than it suiting your best interests. Soth's sword, while magical, has no mentioned of being good or holy, and as of yet i don't know what happened to his holy sword. Epic means nothing, zip, nada (also Soth doesn't have an epic weapon) it needs to have the specific qualities necessary. Otherwise, the Wk's fear could effect Soth, because just because Soth is immune to Dragonlance magic fear, doesn't mean he is immune to ME magic fear.

As for unholy magic, Soth uses D&D unholy. Do i need to remind what unholy does to undead

2) Yes, it can. I'm not saying it can't. However, D&D is a high magic setting, ME is low magic. From what I've seen, heard, and what I know, WK doesn't stand a chance against Soth.

Ok, you should know better, this point get is own group of replies
2a) ME is not a low magic setting, you've made this claim, Rowan has throughly rebuked this claim, stop doing this. ME is a not a flashy setting. It isn't an openly magical setting. It is still a mid magic level setting, it is just more subtle than something like Warcraft, but no less powerful.
2B) Dragonlance is a mid level setting, and Soth isn't a full caster
2C) your fooling yourself. In a one on one fight, Soth might debatable have a chance, but in sheer numbers, the WK will crush him. Soth has a small elite undead army, and the Blue Dragon army (if he gets that, then the Wk gets Sauron's army, just not Sauron i think the OP said), he just can't make it. Remember, living dragons are not immune to fear, despair, corruption, posion, Black Breath, or the Morgul Blades. the Wk just needs to shoot one

3) Maybe so, but he has plenty of other tricks up his sleeves.

Such as?.......

4) Evil can harm evil, undead can harm undead, devils war with demons, it is not entirely impossible for Soth to use unholy energies to harm unholy beings. Besides, it's possible to kill someone with too much of something. Toss a living guy in the plane of negative energy, he dies. Toss another guy into the plane of positive energy... he explodes of having too much life, and then dies.

You have no evidence to back this up. Ignoring the fact that Devils and Demons actually can't hurt each other easily (you need good to over come their DR, because WotC is badly organized), we no what unholy does to undead. It heals them. That is a rule, in both D&D and dragon lance, unholy helps undead. You throw the Wk in the negative energy plane, he is fine. He is even more power (granted so is Soth). Through ether of them into hte positive energy plane, well then they are both screwed

look up the rules on negative engery plane and undead, in D&D that is where undead come from.

now unholy can hurt living evil people your right (I think actually, i have to double check) but not undead

1) The barrier was dispelled when Merry cut through. I'm not sure it is natural anyway.
2) Yet his ring wraiths get hit with normal fire and run off the building in panic. Yeah... You wonder how effective unholy fire will be?
3) ... What? To be honest, your sentences are getting more and more difficult to understand. No offense. You said stun works on undead. Advantage Soth... even further.

1) You right, it is a spell, but that means it works as a counter spell (IE soth has to over come the WK's will to get rid of it)
2) Actually, your wrong, the nazgul aren't every hit by the fire, they just leave on their own, they shanked Frodo, why hang around
Also unholy heals undead
3) I said stun doesn't work on undead. you can't stun ether soth or the Wk
edit
Oh your right, i'm sorry. Correction, stun can't work on undead. They are immune

EE, with all due respect, you are applying one worlds laws in another. D&D is a high magic setting, ME is a low magic setting. I can name plenty of epic non-holy weapons that can likely overcome the WKs protection. The Sword of Truth (From the Sword of Truth series) can burn right through the WK's shield since it is perhaps one of the most powerful weapons in fantasy. Frostmourne is a chaotic weapon capable of passing through divine armor (And more importantly, invincibility cheats). My point, when we take magic weapons from high magic settings and face a guy from a low magic setting invulnerable to weapons in said setting, we can't just say he'll be immune to the newer more stronger weapons.

1) ME isn't a low magic setting
2) D&D isn't a setting, it is a rule design. Dragon lance is low mid magic, FR is mid high magic, Ebberon is high high magic
3) The sword of Truth would have no effect on the WK at all. Do you know why? Because it only hurts liars remember in King of Shannara? It doesn't work on the demons because they know they are evil unholy beings. The warlock Lord is a living illusion and so the power of truth destorys them. It is the idea of absolute truth
4) Already showed you Frostmourns stats
5) Just because something a weapon comes from a high magic setting does not give it some sort of free card to let it over come cannon powers. It needs a justified basis

Mr. Scaly, my good friend

1) Light is basically your stay at home badass
2) Basically it was that no other weapon could wound him like that, and so after Merry shanked him, his protection was gone and then he got stabbed in the fact. You need to stab his twice with two different weapons basically, through the latter doesn't need to be magical
3) Oh he just used power word die that time. Deaths knights get 13 power words, witch the WK is immune to
4) it said it hurt, but doesn't really hinder him. I imagine it just was a minor injury because Soth slaughters the Dragon right after
5) Well he can control fire and ice, but fair enough. Cold wouldn't hurt him however
from
EE

[EvilElitest]

@ Ummm... what is so invalid about this card? What gives you the divine right to rebuke it?

Because you always bring it up, and i always have to remind you why it works this way. It is like in every vs. thread you forget the particular details that were covered ages ago

1) This is not the setting of Tolkiens world, so while weapons from his setting may not affect the WK, powerful weapons from other settings may be effective. Epic weapons from other settings I am quite confident can overcome the WK's protection. We have no evidence that unholy weapons will not work on him because he is not against any unholy force.

We don't use that argument, that would eliminate all vs. threads pointless. the assumption in every vs. thread, from the LInk vs. seph, to the Voldemort vs. Sauron to Sauron vs. LK is that magic works normally on each other unless there is a reason for it to do otherwise. In Return of hte King, it specially states that no other type of weapons could hurt him. Unless somebody has a weapon of similar quality or something that could buy pass the shield, but not a normal weapons for not reason other than it suiting your best interests. Soth's sword, while magical, has no mentioned of being good or holy, and as of yet i don't know what happened to his holy sword. Epic means nothing, zip, nada (also Soth doesn't have an epic weapon) it needs to have the specific qualities necessary. Otherwise, the Wk's fear could effect Soth, because just because Soth is immune to Dragonlance magic fear, doesn't mean he is immune to ME magic fear.

As for unholy magic, Soth uses D&D unholy. Do i need to remind what unholy does to undead

2) Yes, it can. I'm not saying it can't. However, D&D is a high magic setting, ME is low magic. From what I've seen, heard, and what I know, WK doesn't stand a chance against Soth.

Ok, you should know better, this point get is own group of replies
2a) ME is not a low magic setting, you've made this claim, Rowan has throughly rebuked this claim, stop doing this. ME is a not a flashy setting. It isn't an openly magical setting. It is still a mid magic level setting, it is just more subtle than something like Warcraft, but no less powerful.
2B) Dragonlance is a mid level setting, and Soth isn't a full caster
2C) your fooling yourself. In a one on one fight, Soth might debatable have a chance, but in sheer numbers, the WK will crush him. Soth has a small elite undead army, and the Blue Dragon army (if he gets that, then the Wk gets Sauron's army, just not Sauron i think the OP said), he just can't make it. Remember, living dragons are not immune to fear, despair, corruption, posion, Black Breath, or the Morgul Blades. the Wk just needs to shoot one

3) Maybe so, but he has plenty of other tricks up his sleeves.

Such as?.......

4) Evil can harm evil, undead can harm undead, devils war with demons, it is not entirely impossible for Soth to use unholy energies to harm unholy beings. Besides, it's possible to kill someone with too much of something. Toss a living guy in the plane of negative energy, he dies. Toss another guy into the plane of positive energy... he explodes of having too much life, and then dies.

You have no evidence to back this up. Ignoring the fact that Devils and Demons actually can't hurt each other easily (you need good to over come their DR, because WotC is badly organized), we no what unholy does to undead. It heals them. That is a rule, in both D&D and dragon lance, unholy helps undead. You throw the Wk in the negative energy plane, he is fine. He is even more power (granted so is Soth). Through ether of them into hte positive energy plane, well then they are both screwed

look up the rules on negative engery plane and undead, in D&D that is where undead come from.

now unholy can hurt living evil people your right (I think actually, i have to double check) but not undead

1) The barrier was dispelled when Merry cut through. I'm not sure it is natural anyway.
2) Yet his ring wraiths get hit with normal fire and run off the building in panic. Yeah... You wonder how effective unholy fire will be?
3) ... What? To be honest, your sentences are getting more and more difficult to understand. No offense. You said stun works on undead. Advantage Soth... even further.

1) You right, it is a spell, but that means it works as a counter spell (IE soth has to over come the WK's will to get rid of it)
2) Actually, your wrong, the nazgul aren't every hit by the fire, they just leave on their own, they shanked Frodo, why hang around
Also unholy heals undead
3) I said stun doesn't work on undead. you can't stun ether soth or the Wk
edit
Oh your right, i'm sorry. Correction, stun can't work on undead. They are immune

EE, with all due respect, you are applying one worlds laws in another. D&D is a high magic setting, ME is a low magic setting. I can name plenty of epic non-holy weapons that can likely overcome the WKs protection. The Sword of Truth (From the Sword of Truth series) can burn right through the WK's shield since it is perhaps one of the most powerful weapons in fantasy. Frostmourne is a chaotic weapon capable of passing through divine armor (And more importantly, invincibility cheats). My point, when we take magic weapons from high magic settings and face a guy from a low magic setting invulnerable to weapons in said setting, we can't just say he'll be immune to the newer more stronger weapons.

1) ME isn't a low magic setting
2) D&D isn't a setting, it is a rule design. Dragon lance is low mid magic, FR is mid high magic, Ebberon is high high magic
3) The sword of Truth would have no effect on the WK at all. Do you know why? Because it only hurts liars remember in King of Shannara? It doesn't work on the demons because they know they are evil unholy beings. The warlock Lord is a living illusion and so the power of truth destorys them. It is the idea of absolute truth
4) Already showed you Frostmourns stats
5) Just because something a weapon comes from a high magic setting does not give it some sort of free card to let it over come cannon powers. It needs a justified basis

Mr. Scaly, my good friend

1) Light is basically your stay at home badass
2) Basically it was that no other weapon could wound him like that, and so after Merry shanked him, his protection was gone and then he got stabbed in the fact. You need to stab his twice with two different weapons basically, through the latter doesn't need to be magical
3) Oh he just used power word die that time. Deaths knights get 13 power words, witch the WK is immune to
4) it said it hurt, but doesn't really hinder him. I imagine it just was a minor injury because Soth slaughters the Dragon right after
5) Well he can control fire and ice, but fair enough. Cold wouldn't hurt him however
from
EE

[EvilElitest]

@ Ummm... what is so invalid about this card? What gives you the divine right to rebuke it?

Because you always bring it up, and i always have to remind you why it works this way. It is like in every vs. thread you forget the particular details that were covered ages ago

1) This is not the setting of Tolkiens world, so while weapons from his setting may not affect the WK, powerful weapons from other settings may be effective. Epic weapons from other settings I am quite confident can overcome the WK's protection. We have no evidence that unholy weapons will not work on him because he is not against any unholy force.

We don't use that argument, that would eliminate all vs. threads pointless. the assumption in every vs. thread, from the LInk vs. seph, to the Voldemort vs. Sauron to Sauron vs. LK is that magic works normally on each other unless there is a reason for it to do otherwise. In Return of hte King, it specially states that no other type of weapons could hurt him. Unless somebody has a weapon of similar quality or something that could buy pass the shield, but not a normal weapons for not reason other than it suiting your best interests. Soth's sword, while magical, has no mentioned of being good or holy, and as of yet i don't know what happened to his holy sword. Epic means nothing, zip, nada (also Soth doesn't have an epic weapon) it needs to have the specific qualities necessary. Otherwise, the Wk's fear could effect Soth, because just because Soth is immune to Dragonlance magic fear, doesn't mean he is immune to ME magic fear.

As for unholy magic, Soth uses D&D unholy. Do i need to remind what unholy does to undead

2) Yes, it can. I'm not saying it can't. However, D&D is a high magic setting, ME is low magic. From what I've seen, heard, and what I know, WK doesn't stand a chance against Soth.

Ok, you should know better, this point get is own group of replies
2a) ME is not a low magic setting, you've made this claim, Rowan has throughly rebuked this claim, stop doing this. ME is a not a flashy setting. It isn't an openly magical setting. It is still a mid magic level setting, it is just more subtle than something like Warcraft, but no less powerful.
2B) Dragonlance is a mid level setting, and Soth isn't a full caster
2C) your fooling yourself. In a one on one fight, Soth might debatable have a chance, but in sheer numbers, the WK will crush him. Soth has a small elite undead army, and the Blue Dragon army (if he gets that, then the Wk gets Sauron's army, just not Sauron i think the OP said), he just can't make it. Remember, living dragons are not immune to fear, despair, corruption, posion, Black Breath, or the Morgul Blades. the Wk just needs to shoot one

3) Maybe so, but he has plenty of other tricks up his sleeves.

Such as?.......

4) Evil can harm evil, undead can harm undead, devils war with demons, it is not entirely impossible for Soth to use unholy energies to harm unholy beings. Besides, it's possible to kill someone with too much of something. Toss a living guy in the plane of negative energy, he dies. Toss another guy into the plane of positive energy... he explodes of having too much life, and then dies.

You have no evidence to back this up. Ignoring the fact that Devils and Demons actually can't hurt each other easily (you need good to over come their DR, because WotC is badly organized), we no what unholy does to undead. It heals them. That is a rule, in both D&D and dragon lance, unholy helps undead. You throw the Wk in the negative energy plane, he is fine. He is even more power (granted so is Soth). Through ether of them into hte positive energy plane, well then they are both screwed

look up the rules on negative engery plane and undead, in D&D that is where undead come from.

now unholy can hurt living evil people your right (I think actually, i have to double check) but not undead

1) The barrier was dispelled when Merry cut through. I'm not sure it is natural anyway.
2) Yet his ring wraiths get hit with normal fire and run off the building in panic. Yeah... You wonder how effective unholy fire will be?
3) ... What? To be honest, your sentences are getting more and more difficult to understand. No offense. You said stun works on undead. Advantage Soth... even further.

1) You right, it is a spell, but that means it works as a counter spell (IE soth has to over come the WK's will to get rid of it)
2) Actually, your wrong, the nazgul aren't every hit by the fire, they just leave on their own, they shanked Frodo, why hang around
Also unholy heals undead
3) I said stun doesn't work on undead. you can't stun ether soth or the Wk
edit
Oh your right, i'm sorry. Correction, stun can't work on undead. They are immune

EE, with all due respect, you are applying one worlds laws in another. D&D is a high magic setting, ME is a low magic setting. I can name plenty of epic non-holy weapons that can likely overcome the WKs protection. The Sword of Truth (From the Sword of Truth series) can burn right through the WK's shield since it is perhaps one of the most powerful weapons in fantasy. Frostmourne is a chaotic weapon capable of passing through divine armor (And more importantly, invincibility cheats). My point, when we take magic weapons from high magic settings and face a guy from a low magic setting invulnerable to weapons in said setting, we can't just say he'll be immune to the newer more stronger weapons.

1) ME isn't a low magic setting
2) D&D isn't a setting, it is a rule design. Dragon lance is low mid magic, FR is mid high magic, Ebberon is high high magic
3) The sword of Truth would have no effect on the WK at all. Do you know why? Because it only hurts liars remember in King of Shannara? It doesn't work on the demons because they know they are evil unholy beings. The warlock Lord is a living illusion and so the power of truth destorys them. It is the idea of absolute truth
4) Already showed you Frostmourns stats
5) Just because something a weapon comes from a high magic setting does not give it some sort of free card to let it over come cannon powers. It needs a justified basis

Mr. Scaly, my good friend

1) Light is basically your stay at home badass
2) Basically it was that no other weapon could wound him like that, and so after Merry shanked him, his protection was gone and then he got stabbed in the fact. You need to stab his twice with two different weapons basically, through the latter doesn't need to be magical
3) Oh he just used power word die that time. Deaths knights get 13 power words, witch the WK is immune to
4) it said it hurt, but doesn't really hinder him. I imagine it just was a minor injury because Soth slaughters the Dragon right after
5) Well he can control fire and ice, but fair enough. Cold wouldn't hurt him however
from
EE