Murtagh Spork: Part 2: Chapter 17 - Exile
Jun. 30th, 2025 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ultimate_cheetah posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
antishurtugal_rebornAlright, hello everyone. Today we are going over the last chapter of the first half, Exile. So, keep your hands and feet inside the coaster for all times, and be prepared foooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrr..........nothing too exciting. Most of this chapter is travel. We get an actual day by day itinerary. The entire thing is them going to Nal Gorgoroth. This chapter has some tidbits in it that could be kept, but given the amount of dithering that has been going on, we can’t really afford more.
First, a quick note. They're not exactly being exiled. Yeah, there was that whole thing with Gil'ead, but there isn't a manhunt for them or anything, at least nothing we see in this chapter. (They don't seem to be afraid of someone going after them at all. Like, it doesn't even come up.) Exile implies they are fleeing FROM a place, while this chapter is about the journey TOWARD Nal Gorgoth.
The chapter starts with Murtagh flying. He’s trying to just let his mind wander, but…His natural inclination was to think—to endlessly turn over all that was, had been, and could be—but he fought the urge. No remembering! Rather, he found solace in existence without contemplation. It was a simple pleasure, perhaps the simplest of all, and yet no less profound. Yep. It’s just that easy. Just stop thinking about things that bother you. It’s even easier to do such a thing if you are traumatized, like Murtagh is.
Murtagh is worried that elves might be following him due to what happened at Gil’ead, and also that Eragon and Nasuada might assume he’s an enemy when they hear the news. He also wonders if Eragon and Arya will pursue them, which, fat chance. It’s only human lives lost. Arya won’t care. Eragon will think he does. (And it’s not like Eragon or Arya know where Murtagh is heading.)
Murtagh then looks down at the land, and thinks about how beautiful it is, and that he wishes he and Thorn could just be on their own and not worry about anything. He then thinks that everyone is connected in some way, and that he and Thorn can’t run from their responsibilities. On one hand, this is mature. On another hand, NO ONE IS ASKING YOU TO INVESTIGATE THE MYSTERIOUS CULTISTS WITHOUT BACKUP!!! Like, Murtagh is putting himself in danger, as well as other people.
Thorn and Murtagh land and make camp. We get details on what they eat for dinner. Thorn tries exposure therapy again. Which is also not a good idea, as doing huge exposures like this two days in a row is a terrible way to do things. Now, I don’t blame Murtagh for not knowing how therapy works, but you’d think he’d get a clue.
On the second day, Murtagh looks inside the dictionary of Ancient Language words, and tries to come up with new spells. He tries to make a spell to concentrate a large amount of light on a tiny spot in order to use said spot as a light source, or to store light. Instead, Murtagh basically blows up the campsite, as he’s made a laser. I do like this part, as Murtagh tries something new, and it doesn’t go the way he expects. It works, because us, the readers, know that his method would do something like this, but he didn’t. (However, Murtagh does have a pan in this scene, and it gets bent in half, so take a note of that for continuity.)
They travel some more. Murtagh composes a stanza that actually has rhymes. Murtagh and Thorn settle down and go to sleep. Etc. Etc. Then, they see the watchtower Vrael was killed at. Murtagh remembers Galby gleefully recounting his duel with Vrael, including the detail of how Galby kicked him in the balls. (Honestly, if I were Galby, and I defeated the leader of my enemies like that, I’d brag about it, too.)
They land on the watchtower, which Murtagh notes of course has a rooftop where dragons can land. It and the courtyard is in disuse, and there is [a] circle of twelve brass sockets lay embedded within the stones in the center of the yard. The sockets were each the size of a fist and as eyeless and empty as a skull. These are the same things that held the crystals that stopped magic in the tunnels under Dras-Leona, and I believe this was confirmed. (For those who don’t know, in Inheritance, Eragon and Arya got captured by the priests of Helgrind, and there was a circle of amethyst crystals that prevented Eragon from using his magic.) This will not have a resolution in this book. It’s yet another setup for another book to come. There seems to be a lot of those.
Thorn comments on how much was determined by Galby and Vrael’s battle there, and then Murtagh suddenly feels a surge of rage and starts screaming. Thorn flinches, and Murtagh keeps screaming until blood is in his throat. I…don’t think that’s possible. Your voice would go hoarse long before. Even if you pushed through the pain, your body would give out before you actually bled.
Then he punches the wall and uses Jierda to break the stones of the courtyard, causing a socket to fall out. Murtagh is clearly angered that Vrael didn’t win and the subsequent...everything happened. I wonder why this is where he broke down. But like…why break the stone and risk some century-old ward firing back?
He says the Riders should have killed Galby when they had the chance, to which Thorn says that Murtagh wouldn’t have been born. When Murtagh says that someone else would have, and had a “better chance at life”, Thorn gets upset, and says not to say that, and says he doesn’t want anyone else but Murtagh. Murtagh asks why Thorn hatched for him, and Thorn says they were a “proper fit”. Murtagh apologizes for not protecting Thorn, to which Thorn says Murtagh did a good job at it. Murtagh goes into the tower, and takes a goblet. There’s a discussion about how that goblet is a treasure, and Zar’roc is a curse instead, and how Murtagh can make a new history for it. This will come back later…at the most inopportune time. Just trust me on this one.
Murtagh and Thorn then fly past Palancar Valley, and Murtagh feels conflicted over the fact that his mother sent Eragon there, but left him at court. He knows that Morzan would’ve killed Eragon had he found out that Eragon was Brom’s son, but still wonders if his mother saw something in him that made her leave him behind. And these are valid feelings. Selena did do exactly this. And later in this book, she’s still presented as more of this good figure, rather than the complex one that the text shows she is. Thorn says that Murtagh doesn’t know Selena’s “reasons or her situation”, and that he chose Murtagh anyway, which makes him feel better.
They see Carvahall, which is rebuilt with a wall around it. Garrow’s farm still isn’t rebuilt, which Murtagh wonders about. Probably because now that an actual castle is being built for Roran, he doesn’t need the farm anymore, and no one else wants to live in a place that far from the village. Murtagh wants to visit them, but thinks that might not be a good idea, given the whole fought-on-opposite-sides thing.
They then fly deeper and deeper into the Spine, and discuss Galby losing his first dragon there, when he flew north with two others as a feat, and his dragon was killed by Urgals. Thorn says that Galby and the others were foolish. Yes, they were certainly foolish to go into a situation that they were unprepared for. Hmmmmmm, that sounds familiar…
Murtagh wonders how Urgals could have overpowered two Riders and three dragons. He says he wondered about it, but Galby obviously didn’t talk about this. And yes, that is a hint that there is more to the story. There will be another explanation given for why Galbatorix flew so far north, and it will make the Riders’ actions look far worse. Murtagh and Thorn do feel sorry for Galby for a bit, because they think about how horrible it would be to walk back all that way on foot after having your dragon killed.
Murtagh and Thorn then see an Urgal village. Murtagh flashes back to a fight he had with an Urgal chieftain who had fits of insanity (of course) when he was 17. He asks Thorn what will happen if they revealed themselves, and Thorn says the Urgals would probably all want to fight them to prove themselves. Murtagh is curious to meet the Urgals, despite, having nightmares about them. Then, Thorn says that he would roast and eat any Urgal that attacked them. Which, like, *you* are the ones who are on their territory. Thorn doesn’t want to be seen as a monster by Alagaesia, but he still acts like this.
Murtagh’s response is: Eat an Urgal? Really? I can’t imagine they would taste very good. Besides, they’re not animals. I…I think you might want to switch the order of those sentences, buddy. Like, priorities. The FIRST concern is about the taste, and the second concern is about people. Thorn isn’t that concerned, and Murtagh realizes how different they are, which, yeah, is a moment I’m surprised hasn’t happened more often when you’re bonded to another species.
Murtagh asks if Thorn would also eat humans, and when Thorn says yes, responds that Thorn “might as well be a Ra’zac”. Thorn gets mad and says he’s not a “carrion-picker”. First off, the Ra’zac definitely kill their prey themselves. They eat it fresh. That is something they are shone to do, multiple times.
Murtagh tells Thorn not to behave like a Ra’zac, and makes him promise not to eat humans, elves, or Urgals. Thorn agrees. Murtagh however, has omitted the dwarves in this sentence. So…..Thorn does have quite a handy loophole-
Speaking of the Ra’zac, and I bring this up here because I don’t really have anywhere else to do so, we never found out why Murtagh was pursuing the Ra’zac in the first book. We know why he escaped, but we don’t know why he wanted to chase the Ra’zac, specifically.
Murtagh then realizes that there’s a bunch of wild dragon eggs that Eragon has, and wonders how they are going to fit in Alagaesia, since, you know, they seem to have no problem eating sapient creatures. Which is something that Eragon probably should get on.
There’s a section break. The next section is literally just: them seeing more Urgal villages and wondering if they’ll have to fight Urgals again, and a bear coming up to attack them, and Thorn scaring it away with fire. We already had the “scary animal being scared by the dragon” scene with wolves earlier in the chapter (which I skipped ‘cause it wasn’t important). We don’t need two. Section ends
Murtagh and Thorn have nightmares about a battle, and a giant army of Urgals marching from the Spine. Thorn and Murtagh both realize these dreams are abnormal, and that they must be close. Sure enough, in the afternoon, they see some smoke coming from a valley. They are here. With that, the chapter, and the first half of the book, ends.
There’s not much I can really say about this chapter. It is mostly travelling, broken up into a bunch of little sections. Some sections are a couple pages, and others are a couple paragraphs. It’s kind of choppy, actually. I don’t think there’s really a need for that many section breaks. Several of them could have been cut entirely. The whole chapter probably could have been preserved if a large part of the book hadn’t been spent running around and solving various quests, but because it was, there’s not really much room for fluff. There’s a couple of things, the watchtower and the glimpse at Palancar Valley, that show us what is going on after the series ends, so they should be kept in. Seeing the Urgals also fleshes out the world.
You may notice that this spork has a lot of summarizing. That is because there’s really too many interesting things to say about this chapter. Like, I have skipped over one entire section. There is also a lot of play-by-play of their actions, like them landing on one day due to the weather, that I have omitted.
But buckle up, everybody. If you didn’t like some of the stuff in the first half…well, the second half makes the first half look like a walk in the park.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-30 10:27 am (UTC)Say what you will about the original series; at least it didn't have travel sequences this long and devoid of content! It is something that it shares with the Fractalverse books, so I wonder if that could be why we're getting it here...
Yeah, if it's so easy for him to turn off his ruminations, he should have been able to get rid of the rest of his trauma by now, and he isn't looking great for not doing so.
He then thinks that everyone is connected in some way, and that he and Thorn can’t run from their responsibilities.
Those are only the responsibilities that he and Thorn have put on themselves, not those that others have asked of them, I have to note. They're acting like it's the latter, but who would know or care if they don't go to Nal Gorgoth? Yeah, he's promised it to Nasuada, but I doubt she expects him to deal with it, and she's got no way to know if he doesn't, so they really can afford themselves some further thought on if they really want to go there.
We get details on what they eat for dinner.
Which includes a "blue-footed duck", an animal that doesn't exist as far as I can tell, which is quite jarring when nearly all of the fauna we have seen in Alagaësia does exist on Earth.
Thorn tries exposure therapy again. Which is also not a good idea, as doing huge exposures like this two days in a row is a terrible way to do things.
And given how badly things went last time, he'd do well to go back a bit (like having Thorn only stick his head in), and then slowly build up again. I get why Murtagh does it, but patience is necessary here if you want to get good results.
It works, because us, the readers, know that his method would do something like this, but he didn’t.
It did take me a bit to figure out just what goes wrong, though. I think it's that Murtagh doesn't keep the air and light there, so once he lets go, the compressed air explodes again, and all the light is loosed at once. If he did keep it in one place, he might have what he wants, though it would be quite hard and dangerous to hold.
(However, Murtagh does have a pan in this scene, and it gets bent in half, so take a note of that for continuity.)
There's no problems there; he's mentioned having it when he went to join Wren's company, and we won't be seeing it again.
Murtagh composes a stanza that actually has rhymes.
For those interested:
These are the same things that held the crystals that stopped magic in the tunnels under Dras-Leona, and I believe this was confirmed.
...I've never heard of that before, and I note those things were silver, not brass, so I really doubt that that's the case. Could you maybe point me to where you've heard it? I can't find anything.
Well, you can make your vocal cords bleed by screaming, it appears, but I don't think it would make "blood slick the back of his throat".
But like…why break the stone and risk some century-old ward firing back?
Because he needs to spend his anger on something? I don't know.
Murtagh flashes back to a fight he had with an Urgal chieftain who had fits of insanity (of course) when he was 17.
If I recall correctly, this is an explanation for why Murtagh knows so much about the commander of the group of Urgals who are after him, Eragon, and Saphira in Eragon.
Murtagh’s response is: Eat an Urgal? Really? I can’t imagine they would taste very good. Besides, they’re not animals.
...Why wouldn't they taste good? Vêrmund, at least, seemed to have no trouble with that, and Urgals aren't that different from humans. Also, I'd mind this a lot less if Thorn also had something like this with humans; as it is now, I get the impression that Urgals rank as less of people to him.
Thorn gets mad and says he’s not a “carrion-picker”.
Because Scavengers Are Bad. Never mind that, as you say, that Ra'zac aren't scavengers, and that scavengers don't kill, which I think would be a plus...
Murtagh however, has omitted the dwarves in this sentence. So…..Thorn does have quite a handy loophole-
And there's also werecats...
Speaking of the Ra’zac, and I bring this up here because I don’t really have anywhere else to do so, we never found out why Murtagh was pursuing the Ra’zac in the first book. We know why he escaped, but we don’t know why he wanted to chase the Ra’zac, specifically.
Now that you say it, I can't find anything on that. I guess that he wanted a cause to pursue, or that he wanted to hurt Galbatorix by killing them?
We already had the “scary animal being scared by the dragon” scene with wolves earlier in the chapter (which I skipped ‘cause it wasn’t important). We don’t need two.
In the first case, the wolves aren't even in sight, and Thorn seems to do it only to one-up them. Here, it's more justifiable, but it still feels a bit like Thorn's showing off, and I don't really like it in either case.
Edit: This doesn't make me appreciate it either:
Do you really think that's appropriate here, Murtagh?
With that, the chapter, and the first half of the book, ends.
Hmmm, the actual halfway point's at the end of next chapter, so there's a bit further to go than that.
I think I would mind it less if we hadn't already had much the same thing in chapter 5 (and if I had to choose, I'd preserve this chapter, because it's got more topics in it).
Hopefully I'll see you again in the next parts. Until then!
no subject
Date: 2025-06-30 08:30 pm (UTC)...I've never heard of that before, and I note those things were silver, not brass, so I really doubt that that's the case. Could you maybe point me to where you've heard it? I can't find anything.
Found it! https://www.reddit.com/r/Eragon/comments/184f4wc/ama_christopher_paolini_1pm_est11am_mst/
Question: Is the ring of brass sockets at Ristvak'baen a torque gate (or the equivalent)?
Answer: Brass sockets: not a torque gate as-such, but you're in the ballpark. Think back to the ring of amethyst in Inheritance
Question: 11) In Inheritance, during the escape from the chambers under Dras Leona, Eragon sees devices of brass and crystal. During Murtagh, we see another reference to Brass devices in Rist'Vak Bean.
Is there any connection between the devices of brass and crystal depicted under Dras Leona, and the brass indents at the tower at Ristvak’Baen?
Answer: The more important question is: Is there a connection between the brass sockets on Rist'vak Baen and the ring of amethyst in Inheritance.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-30 08:34 pm (UTC)Thank you for finding it for me! I remembered I'd read something similar in an AMA, but couldn't find it again. Now that I see the original... yeah, I'm not really convinced this is in any way a connection that readers would usually make, and Paolini needs to put in way more setup if he wants to have this be a thing.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-02 04:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-16 04:18 am (UTC)Yeah. I think he's trying to do something bigger and more existential/cosmic. In questions he's answered on reddit, he's said a lot of stuff to that effect.
When are the chapters for the next part going to be assigned? (No pressure, I am just curious.)
no subject
Date: 2025-07-16 05:08 am (UTC)Not sure; Anya's been having computer problems which has put a delay on things. I've asked her.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-02 05:28 am (UTC)It's as if over time he's just gotten even more allergic to ever leaving anything out for any reason as long as it's suitably
boringeasy to write.Paolini is constantly taking shortcuts with his characterisation and "dealing with trauma" so of course his idiot protagonist must do the same thing. Never mind that recovering from serious trauma can take a lifetime and sometimes there is no recovery; he thinks you can get over depression/torture with a quick chat and a good night's sleep!
Typical Paoem, it's pretentious as fuck and is also about nothing.
And here we have the third (at least) sudden violent outburst of uncontrollable rage. Morontagh has a serious problem with this which is NEVER acknowledged let alone addressed.
Yup, that's correct.
That's a good point. Like what did they ever do to him anyway?
More bullying animals just for the sake of it. It's an ongoing thing with Paolini's "heroes" and it's really awful.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-02 08:50 am (UTC)Yeah, it certainly looks like it, and it's even worse in some ways than it was in Brisingr; there, he never bothered to give us an exact play-by-play of the travel, and he at least includes some other stuff. Maybe Paolini thought this fit well with an introspective book? (It can, but then there should be some actual introspection.)
Paolini is constantly taking shortcuts with his characterisation and "dealing with trauma" so of course his idiot protagonist must do the same thing. Never mind that recovering from serious trauma can take a lifetime and sometimes there is no recovery; he thinks you can get over depression/torture with a quick chat and a good night's sleep!
He probably doesn't want the heroes to be unhealed for any longer than strictly necessary, so we get stuff like this.
And here we have the third (at least) sudden violent outburst of uncontrollable rage. Morontagh has a serious problem with this which is NEVER acknowledged let alone addressed.
It is acknowledged to the reader (and presumably meant to be bad, too; given who the targets are), but since Paolini never does anything with it, I don't know what he meant to do with it. Maybe a revision could have helped with that?
That's a good point. Like what did they ever do to him anyway?
Nothing but exist, which means that he's probably just hating on them because others do, which doesn't reflect well on him.
More bullying animals just for the sake of it. It's an ongoing thing with Paolini's "heroes" and it's really awful.
It's especially awful in this one, too. I've got no idea why it happens, but I don't like it any more than you do.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-03 05:34 am (UTC)And you can't have that without insight into yourself, of which Morontagh has little to none. Or if he attempts to, he gets it wrong. For one thing he thinks about how Eragon is NICER than him. Yeah, fuck all the way off with that nonsense.
That's exactly it. He only likes to have them be hurt if he can wring some drama/blood out of it. Beyond that he's just not interested, which is why his characters get severely malnourished (Sloan and now Morontagh) or catastrophically injured or upset and then it gets completely forgotten as soon as he loses interest.
I have a character who has trauma and who also got seriously injured. Both of these things ultimately catch up with him, and not at a convenient time either. In fact it happens at just about the worst time possible, all because he though he could just ignore it. This is what consequences actually look like.
Paolini: "Wut ar a 'ree...veee...see..on'?"
It is sort of acknowledged as bad, but when that happens Morontagh is just told to stop feeling guilty about it because oh it's all in the past now so never mind, just move on! (Which was exactly what happened in To Sleep over that whole "wah I killed my boyfriend" thing, which is never mentioned again once Kiragon has been told to just forget about it and stop feeling bad). He doesn't have to face any consequences or realise he has a problem, which is why it doesn't get dealt with.
It wouldn't even have been hard. Just have it that it was them who killed Tornac and he was after revenge. Bam, fixed in a couple of lines.
It's because Paotagonists are invariably cruel bullies who just automatically jump to picking on those weaker than themselves because it amuses them. After all when I was a little girl that's why bullies picked on me. They knew I couldn't fight back and they thought it was funny when I got upset. It made them feel powerful.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-03 09:06 am (UTC)I don't have much to add to what you said, so I'll just say that you expressed all of this very well!
no subject
Date: 2025-07-03 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-02 07:08 am (UTC)Ugh. I know I've criticised Paolini a lot for his lack of rhyme, metre, or rhythm. But this is hardly an improvement. SURE, there's two (2) end rhymes (blade, fate, shade: abccdc is the weirdest rhyme scheme I've ever seen, and I've seen some weird poetry forms), but it's about nothing and saying nothing. They may as well just be random words, three of which just happen to coincidentally have the same vowel in the same line position. He hasn't even tried the Germanic mid-line alliteration thing that he managed to mostly do in the poem Anya and I sporked a few weeks ago. Even though the poems's structure, with a comma in the middle of each line, totally supports it.
it's even lazier than his previous attempts at poetry.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-02 09:04 am (UTC)Thanks for the analysis! I generally wouldn't complain about structure, but since Paolini's clearly trying to use actual poetic structures, he should be held to that standard. As for the content... it conveys a particular mood, but nothing more than that.