(urth) TSH: Ted's identity

[Roy C. Lackey]

Craig Brewer wrote:


> Maybe I'm just remembering incorrectly, but are we ever told specifically
that Goldwurm killed Ambrosius and threw his body in the river? I can't seem
to find it.<

Yes. That's the story as given by Emlyn. I cited the page number in the post
to which you are responding. Page 74. "I imagine Goldwurm thought he'd find
his master's [weapon of sorcery] without much trouble, so he didn't keep him
around to question. Just strangled him and threw him in the river. It was
before my time, but I've heard that the old sorcerer's name was Ambrosius."

> And as long as we're talking about small gold things, what about the
coins? The coin collector says they're probably greek with Athena on one
side. But he never identifies the other side, although we get a lot of talk
about how it is NOT an amazon. Ideas? Significance? I'm a bit at a loss
about why the coin stash was specifically Greek rather than generic magic
fairy coins or some such.<

I don't know. Being *ancient* Greek would add monetary value to them, but
then it soon turned out that Bax didn't need the money for them. It may be
that the coins were planted, along with the cash, probably by Zwart. Or they
were a side effect of the use by Bax of the unintelligent triannulus to get
money.

>
> But the ancient Greek echoes in this have me a bit confused, since that's
a different set of myths from faerie that seem to operate in very different
ways. Nonetheless, we have Bax's degree in classics, the greek coins, Greek
names (and wasn't "Doris" a minor sea god?), didn't they even hit a
Mediterranean restaurant once? <

The triannulus obviously responds to what amounts to wish-fulfillment. For
Bax, the scholar and lover of things Greek, old Greek coins would represent
riches. The other Greek echoes may just reflect Bax's and/or Wolfe's
interests.

As for the mixture of mythologies in the book -- all those things that are
not a part of traditional Faerie lore -- Wolfe's notion of faerie seems to
be a catch-all for many things normally considered to be supernatural,
regardless of cultural origin.

-Roy