[split] Memories/Forging (spoilers all books incl RWC)

[Farseer]

I'm in a bit of a rush so I can't contribute anything at the moment (currently fighting a war against dust! ) but I have split these posts from the Others' Island thread as I want to sink my teeth into this memories/Forging tangent we are on. I know we have talked about imbuing memory stone with anmas etc elsewhere in the forum but this seemed the best way to continue the discussion...

[Farseer]

Still in a rush but I just had to pop in and say "I was wrong" here, I think. While I was a little right , I was mostly wrong (and possibly should have contradicted myself when I had the chance!!).

I'll be back...!

[Nuytsia]

I don't have references to quote, but I just wanted to add that it's also my understanding that forging doesn't remove memories as such, it removes your emotional connection to the memories.
But I think it is left a little vague as to EXACTLY what it is ....

['thul]

that can be explained by the simple fact that they do not know what it exactly is.

[Nuytsia]

Yeeeees I meant that we might have differing views on it because it's open to interpretation.

[Farseer]

No time to sit at the keyboard (argh!) but posting just so you all know that I'm not avoiding this!

Of all the threads on here, this is one of two (along with The Skill and the Wit) that I really want to get stuck into but don't have the time or brain power to give it the full attention it deserves. Time as such that I should have taken before posting all this in the first place! That having been said...

I've since thought of a couple of references that back up the thinking that the 'Forging' process seems to not take memories, as such, but rather the connections. The main one that comes to mind is the Forged girl who Chade closely studied. She confirms it as, if I recall correctly, she remembered her family members, life she lived prior to Forging etc but was still acting in the usual 'Forged fashion'.

This is in line with what FoolishGirl was saying earlier about a Forged person still being able to remember family. I'll try to get back here soon and reference at least that passage (wherever it is!) as I think it was quite detailed due to it being kind of an experiment or series of tests that Chade had undertaken personally. He'd had the girl or young woman placed in a cell, I think, given her items from her past that she had once cherished but suddenly had no interest in and such, if anyone else can recall it or where it was mentioned?

As far as I can tell, what causes the grey area here (for ME at least! ) is the 'memory stone' element and this creates confusion in my thinking as we know that memory stone is used in the Forging process. I must admit I was being stubborn and blinkered in that I was overly thinking way too much on how Fitz felt when the simulacra were flying overhead at the end of AQ and took memories with them eg he was unsure of what he'd been thinking only moments before. From what I could understand, this was the taking of actual memories, and not the deletion of any kind of emotional connection or attachment (but, who knows, possibly some connection to something or other was also taken in the process?). Of course, contact here was also only fleeting and not sustained by any means. It also appeared to only hamoer his short-term memories and didn't seem to do anything in the long term?

Fitz had said something (not sure where) about it actually being the Six Duchies who had first created Forging, and not the Outislanders, during the time of King Wisdom's treating with the Elderlings and waging war on the Out Islands. It was back then when the simulacra flew overhead that memories of the Outislanders were taken and, enraged by this, the Outislanders sought a similar revenge and thus planned to create simulacra of their own to do the same to the Six Duchies folk (of course, the Pale Woman had her own agenda here, too, and thus wielded all this and Kebal Rawbread to her own White Prophety-advantage). Then, continuing things seemingly as per the cyclical rut that Time's Wheel currently finds/found itself in (?), Fitz awakened the simulacra to once more unwittingly 'Forge' the Outislanders to end the Forging of Six Duchies folk. No doubt the union of the SD and the Out Islands, and the downfall of the PW and Kebal Rawbread, will have shifted things to a new course at least as far as recurrent Forging/war with the Outislanders go.

Pfft... ...I have lost my total train of thought already, if I ever even had it!

*blundering on blindly*

Memory stone seems to, at times (?), act differently depending on the form it takes, and the contents it lacks/already contains. We've chatted about it a little in the Elderlings Creation thread and elsewhere in the forums. Still, as much as we seem to think we know, there's as much we don't or are still guessing at. Actually, I'm think I knew more a year ago but have overthought it all too much and am now just guessing or even 'confused'...!

I also think I have gone on a wayward tangent to my main thought that there is a possible, deliberate and maybe even evil relationship between the overall loss of memories, connections and also knowledge that has caused disunity within the realm.

There is so much more I'd like to respond to re this memories/Forging business but I'll have to come back at a later stage...fair dinkum, this has already taken hours of my coming back and forward to add a word here and there and I have no idea what I'm even saying!

[joost]

I don't have references to quote, but I just wanted to add that it's also my understanding that forging doesn't remove memories as such, it removes your emotional connection to the memories.

From 'Fool's fate', chapter 21:
I wondered what the Fool had lost in that brief kiss of stone. A summer's day from his childhood, a moment of watching King Shrewd and Chade talking by the firelight of the hearth in the old king's room? Had it been some moment he and I had shared, now snatched from him and gone forever? He would know such things had happened, but Forging would erase their significance to him.

[Farseer]

Ah, I love this place! This is one of those passages I was actually thinking of (confusing myself with!) in regard to the taking of memories rather than connections ...but that final line seals it. Nice one, joost!

As for the other passage that concerned the girl, it can be found in AQ, Chapter Eighteen, 'Assassinations'. It's quite a lengthy intro to the chapter but I will share at least this:

She had clear memory of her family, but had no interest in what had become of them

['thul]

Forging is fairly uncontrolled, while dragon-carving is intentional. Thus the only way to stick full-fledged memories into memory stone is through direct intention & contact.

[Farseer]

Yes, it certainly does appear to differ if one is willing rather than unwilling? I'm pretty sure even Fitz said that he still didn't fully understand Forging, despite having seen Verity carve his dragon etc.

So much more to add on all that, including Black Rolf/Old Blood's take on Forging...

When Pilkrop placed his memories into the memory stone cubes in Aslevjal, he certainly seemed to me to simply be storing 'memories' and this was a deliberate/intentional action on his part in that he chose what he wanted to place in it, when he wanted to place it there. The stone didn't seem (?) to want to 'draw' anything further from him.

Fool, too, willingly inserted specific memories into the gift that he gave to Fitz at the end of FF (and I think he may have also given over something, a piece of music, to one of Pilkrop's cubes?).