Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Elfquest: The palace disguised

Wendy and Richard Pini at 8:00 am Mon, Nov 5, 2012

Bee

Shuna's first husband was the abusive Nunkah. Bee--gentle yet courageous--is made of stronger stuff. [The Searcher and the Sword]

The Palace

Once the space-faring vessel of the elves' ancestors, the Palace spent endless millennia as a gloomy derelict before its rediscovery.

PREV • INDEX • NEXT

Tweet
Kindle

Page 9 of The Final Quest: Prologue is published online-first for the first time here at Boing Boing. First time reader? You're a few issues behind.

Conceived in the heat of creativity early 1977. Born in the throes of Ypsilantean adversity on February 28, 1978. Entering that long golden afternoon even now.

MORE:  elfquest

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

  • http://www.facebook.com/dc.mizejewski David Miz

    UGH – NOW we’re getting to the first real hints of what the Final Quest is going to be all about….  And have to wait another week for the next snippet.  TORTURE (but in the best sort of way).

  • http://www.tavie.com Tavie

    Oo, cryptic. Everything about “us” – wolfriders? Or all elves?

  • http://www.facebook.com/ej.doe Ej Doe

    Sounds like the elves might be turning back into “Coneheads”? I wonder if the non-pure Wolfriders would remain the same or also turn?

  • http://profiles.google.com/queenzenda Whitney Prince

    Lovely… I want to reach out and play with Leetah’s fringes.

  • http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

    OK. Time to EQ-nerd out a bit here.

    This has got me thinking that the palace is more important to the elves than is obvious (or important in different ways than are obvious), notwithstanding what’s already known. Especially when it comes to the soulful side of things. I even wonder if souls are literally part of the palace–spiritual software running on its hardware, as it were–rather than entities connected to but distinct from it. The elves’ minds and hearts are their own; but without the palace, there’s no soul. No soul and no magic, with one very important exception.

    Sure, this is maybe just a particularly nerdy way of rephrasing things that are already clearly expressed in the tale. And the software analogy is close to Cylon/Tron country. Jiva-Tattva, emanating from The Tree, is more than a ghost in the machine.

    But it would have some cool consequences if EQ was all like Arthur C Clarkian about it! For example, if such a palace is a finite system (or one that could be destroyed), that could mean that in fact, the Wolfriders are the only true immortals, because Timmain hacked the “soul software” to run in the world at large, rather then being completely dependant on a weird transdimensional piece of hardware. It wasn’t just the species’ physical survival she considered, but the likelihood that its spiritual survival was doomed so long as it was dependent on the palace.

    With the wolfriders sitting so close to the ship, though, the Palace is getting to do a little code refactoring–and maybe they’re not feeling the love.

  • kantis

     Sure makes me wonder where the souls of the immortals went during the palace’s long absence in Kings of the Broken Wheel. Was the little palace in Sorrow’s End really capable of storing and running 10 000 year’s worth of accumulated soul-software?

    And how does “going out” à la Savah figure into this? When her soul goes out, where does it go? What machine did she load herself into where she could also have met Winnowill for the first time?

    Oh well, I guess in the end I’m perfectly happy with just the explanation that this is fantasy and not hard sci-fi. EQ’s unique blend of fantasy and sci-fi makes it fun to wonder at these things sometimes, though.