Peter Metcalfe, commenting on my idle speculation about a connection between Sheng vs. Saird's patroness and the Devil vs. the Spider, noted:
>I don't think the Pentans or the Orlanthi would confuse Yara Aranis
>with a Spider.
My thinking had been that within Pentan poetic language or oral tradition, Yara Aranis could easily be referred to as a "hunting spider" -- a six-armed and two-legged (hence, eight-limbed) stalker of men and horses; part of this would of course depend on Pentan ecology, about which I will admit I know just about nothing. The "Argrath's Saga" _clearly_ describes her attack as being "like a wolf spider leaping upon a fly," so the Orlanthi at least appear able to make a Yara Aranis - Spider connection. Assuming that the Pentans are aware of hunting/wolf spiders, either small or great, some sort of similar metaphoric language on their part seems possible to me, and as 150+ years seem to have passed between the possible dates of the events of "Argrath and the Devil" and the collection of Jalk's Book, that seemed enough time for the flawed transmission of a Pentan tradition back to the Orlanthi of DP, or a combination of their traditions describing the non-Red Emperor vs. the "wolf spider". Nonetheless, I will admit it was a stretch :-).
John Brown, continuing to argue for an LBQ basis to the "Argrath and the Devil" story notes:
>I'd also like to bring to everybody's attention pg269 of KoS in the "In
>Closing" section where the author has concluded that the confrontation with
>the Devil probably happened during Argarth's LBQ.
While on the one hand the author's conclusions in that passage do add some weight to that interpretation, part of the problem is that it requires, as the author points out, ignoring what the story itself says -- as in when he admits "it might be elsewhere or elsewhen, such as the very era which it says it is in. That is during the otherwise relatively empty 53 years when Argrath fights the Monster Empire. It might even be at the end of his reign, in 1725, when the moon is torn down." If you are willing to say that "Argrath and the Devil" is simply 'myth', then there's also no reason to privilege the recordings of the "Argrath's Saga" itself as being historically/factually valid (i.e., I'm not really sure you can use one text to trump another within KoS; indeed, there's little reason to privilege the musings of the "author" at all, including his suppositions that the Devil is coming back).
"Argrath and the Devil" begins with a (fairly straight-forward) statement -- "Without the facade of the Red Goddess and the Lunar Empire, the true nature of the enemy was revealed when Wakboth, the God of the Ultimate End, came forth to rule humankind." The moment that best corresponds to that initial state of affairs -- no Red Goddess, no Lunar Empire -- is oddly enough the very end of the "Argrath's Saga", which, IMO, makes "A&tD" a pretty good candidate for a lost piece of text; it works really well if you just kind of slip it in there at the end of the Saga, just prior to Argrath's announcement of the change in the world -- which indeed otherwise goes unexplained.
And after all, if Argrath had confronted the Devil at the end of his 1677 LBQ, and had wound up killing him with the aid of Arachne Solara and the rest of the gods (and I agree, incidentally, with those that see an I Fought We Won connection there), then the rest of "Argrath's Saga" would have to be rewritten to reflect that the gods were gone from the world (or at least incommunicado).
On a final note, Brian Curley said:
>I am reminded of the words of Cotton Mather: The Devil is never more
>like himself than when he masquerades as an angel of light.
Oddly enough, I am increasingly tempted to think both a) the Arkat the Deceiver cult is right, and that Arkat was actually nothing more than a guise of Nysalor himself, his own "good side" made manifest to fight his own "bad side", and that b) Argrath _was_ the Devil, and fought himself as well, and tricked the world into dooming itself.
Just a few thoughts,
Mark
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