Shhh! We don't want everyone to know his name.

You know there were those of us judges (the ones who brokered the "deal") who wanted to gak a certain individual (he who shall not be named ). Now I wish we had asked Henry if that could have been done. Just to see what effect it would have had on the story. Unfortunately I was too brain dead that Sunday morning to push that idea to its logical conclusion. And this would have been coming from a "good" cleric of Hurrian! But as someone once said in another universe "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one."

Oh come now. It is not like is a big secret, What was his name again? I think it starts with a C....

Anyhow, it isn't like we are all walking around with his symbol branded into our forearms....

Some of us more than others. (Points to a specific legion mark)

Oh, I know at least one character who is bothered by the loss of all that power to the side of good. If only there was some way to transfer the power from a Valinor to a person who would use it like it should be used.... like you might transfer an organ, say. Seems wrong for all that power to be lost to the side of the light. He wonders if you could summon the fallen Valinor from that prison singularly, and in a controlled manner, and siphon of the power for good causes, since they aren't doing anything good for the plan of the gods where they are now, and they can't be trusted free with the power. Seems only right to take the power and give it to someone more responsible...

(And just for the record, that isn't my main character Kavaris thinking that)

Too bad Oozy isn't around. He'd gladly volunteer for the transplant.

Oh wait, I was supposed to keep that Silent.

You are assuming Umor is the Dark One, and that assumption is based on Umor being evil. Umor is only considered evil by the PoM. Not by the Elorii or by the Ssethrics. The Dark One must be a yet unidentified being in league with the Silence. A being who Kassegore would consider an enemy.



Unfortunately you'd be wrong with that. The description specifically mentioned Belisarda being placed into a void by Umor (the double loop dragon) to hide her. So her picture is already known to the reader of the wall. And the exact wording of the goddess is "a new deity, a strange green skinned woman." The entire story is of the arrival of the PoM to Arcanis. There is only one new deity at the end of that story that the PoM would trust with half of Umor, Anshar.



That is not true either. Everything we know about the moon ties it to the PoM. It didn't exist until they arrived. The Elorii mention this specifically in Vision of Lives Past. Also the darker inclinations of the moon come from human beliefs, the other races don't have the same fears of that moon. In the story The Storm it talks about humans doing an important ritual on the moon. Again in For the Lesser Gods it mentions the creation of the moon. The exact text is half of Umor "is wound up by a deity playing a lyre into what looks like a black moon or planet". Sounds like a prison to me. I found this surprising because I always thought the moon was a means of transport that brought the PoM to Arcanis, hence why it appeared after they arrived, but this is much more interesting.

Kassegore didn't need to fool Belisarda, he needed to convince her to go along with his plan. He could have very well told her the complete truth. His identity, what he did, why, and what to do to stop the future. Or maybe he left some things out. Whatever he did Belisarda seems to have agreed. Also it's important to know that if Belisarda is the living spirit of Arcanis as everything seems to point, then the Ssethric are not her enemies because she would be on the side of life itself.
I have thought of both of Hara'mia siblings. His brother who was allowed by Cadic to flee into the shadow realm, and his sister Leeata of the Whispers who Illiir allowed to live. It's possible that his brother is the Dark One (after living in the Shadow Realm) made a pact with the Silence for revenge, it makes sense and fills in some holes. Also it's possible that Leeata is their creation god, and Illiir just let her go and killed all the rock people, and she was crying/raging in that cave for thousands of years to be found and call herself Belisarda. But I wondered more if she was prophetic (what else could "of the Whispers" mean) and Larissa absorbed her. And then looking into the future made Larissa go mad, hence why she went mad after arriving on Arcanis. I mean if she had prophetic powers before arriving here, why not use them during all that fighting in their homeland. What's it called, The Gods' War in the Eastern Continent? But she didn't, she used them here, and went mad here on Arcanis.

First off, let me start with: Loving the discussion.



I’m not assuming he’s the Dark One, I’m giving supporting evidence for it. I started my description of my thinking by indicating I specifically started with the premise that he wasn’t, but the data didn’t appear to support that hypothesis. The question to answer then is, if Umor isn’t the dark one, who is? My original thought was that it might be the Sorcerer King, since I think he has been identified before (I think) as dark, and we know he had an entropic being on his island recently. It would fit very nicely into a storyline that he, in his drive to become a god, makes deals with the Silence, or taps into energies he shouldn’t, and becomes the agent of destruction. But I just don’t see the evidence supporting that yet.



I don’t have that text at hand, so I can’t review it. I’ll readily take your word that it already indicates the disposition of Belisarda. I agree with the reasoning at that point of the green skinned woman possibly being Anshar. Though I don’t think anything we’ve seen depicts her as greened skinned. It makes me wonder about the skinless lady. 



I disagree. The source of the moon obviously appears to be the imprisonment of Umor by the PoM. I’m not discussing source – I’m discussing connections in writing. Its appearance over the citadel, the “important” (which I read as to be dangerous or threatening) actions taking place on it during the Storm, the epilogue of the Codex Arcanis, and the time-travel module all indicate a connection with the Silence. The epilogue is vague about whether the connection is opposition or support, but the others all appear to be pretty strong connectors to the moon being “bad.”




Belisarda’s chosen creations were fighting regularly against Kassegore’s at the time of his arrival. Considering the “as below, so above” premise of divine and racial conflicts that we believe play out when races fight, than we have to assume that Belisarda and the Elemental Lords probably had a fight against Kassegore and Yig when the Elorii revolted. I can’t imagine she would immediately trust him as she appeared to in the stories, if she knew Umor was Kassegore.

I understand your argument that she would be on the side of life itself on Arcanis, but that doesn’t make her dispassionate and logical. After all, using that logic she should be supporting the PoM whole heartedly right now since they’re out fighting entropy, but it would appear she holds a grudge still. Right? Additionally, if his logic was so strong as to win over her, why try to trick the PoM and be partially imprisoned? Why not just have the same talk with the PoM and get everyone on the same page with reason?

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I believe legend says that Cadic defeated the lord of the shadow realm to become its current master, so it is unlikely that the Dark One, is the Hara,mia shadow god – though that would be interesting that he could be Umor, since if he was, and Belisarda is his Leeata, it would explain their instant connection upon meeting again. And we all know legend can be wrong too, so it’s a thought.

But why would Larissa wait several Millennia to absorb her, until they came to Onara? Why not do it right then? If they just wanted her power, I assume they could have killed/absorbed her then. They wanted her, for some reason, out running around doing stuff.

As for the other Eastern continent, I believe what happened over there is generally called “the age of legends” and that is when the god’s warred amongst themselves (Illiir vs Neroth, etc). That doesn’t seem to have ended until immediately before the fight with Umor, called “The God’s War.” That is when they fought the being we now call Umor (actual name erased, Umor mean’s, I believe, “waits in darkness” or something like that in Elorrii, indicative of being in the black moon). If you look at the timing of Manetas’s first rebellion against Illiir during the mythic age and when he mislead the first empire, there doesn’t appear to have been enough time in between for there to have been a long time of peace before the God’s War against Umor.

The epilogue of the Codex Arcanis, which doesn't appear to be present in the electronic versions says this:

How do we know that the Sorcerer-King had an entropic being recently? If the answer is a spoiler for a mod, please don't reveal the spoiler here.
It would make a nice story for the S-K's drive to divine power to lead him to ally with dark forces from beyond....