Posted 28 June 2006 - 05:17 PM
I'll answer what I can, but rest assured that half of this stuff is "loose ends" and will be awaiting answers in a sequal.
Question: What makes someone a Bridge?
Question: This is where something that's beneficial to the cult happens right? What exactly is it? I can't quite remember what Lenkmann said. Did John DeFoe become the bridge?
Right, you've got John DeFoe, who was battered to death with the idol which, lets not forget, is made of the Prince. Somehow, it stuck John's soul in the idol with the Prince, thus making him the Bridge. For reasons I'm unsure of, the destruction of his body (the bones), soul (the idol), and mind (which Y-mans keeping as a trump card, methinks) creates the Bridge for Chzo. So... yeah.
Question: When did the druid become the Prince? Before or after his tree was chopped down?
Far as I can tell, before. His soul, I believe, is the tree. The bit I'm not sure about is whether all the flashbacks happened on the same day, because then it confirms that there's one day the Prince can come into our world and inflict gory death on people who go 'round chopping up his soul.
Another question: Did this happen in the non-shadow world? If so, then what was the purpose of the ritual at the end of TN? Or is proximity to wood from the Prince-tree what causes the reality-shifts and everyone the Prince has killed have actually been shifted? This would then include the unfortunate couple whose bodies lie scattered around the Dark Hotel - they came there from our world, and then they shifted while near/in the hotel.
I think you answered yourself there. Remember how Abed died? Got pissed and miserable, shifted, then had his head replaced by the porcelin head.
Question: What exactly was the concrete mission of this cult? Summon CHZO i guess, but how were they to pursue it?
Worship, I think, that and summonation. And apparently, the Prince knows how to summon Chzo (make the bridge! Damnit!), so summoning him (the ritual at the end) would be damn helpful.
Question: Why exactly did they need Trilby alive? What about Siobhan? Did it have anything to do with her heritage?
Far as I can tell, the summoning of the Prince involved Agonies of the Mind, Body, and Soul. Apparently, Lenkmann was the Mind (not explained how, a plot point for the sequal?), Siobhan "had to make do" as the Soul (also no idea...), and the huge gaping knife wound in Trilby's stomach counted as the Body (an Agony of the Body... makes sense to me). Obviously, you can't be in a lot of pain if you're dead (unless we delve into metaphysics, which we won't - for now, when you're dead, you're dead), so it screwed up the ritual. How big time, we don't know.
Question: At the very end, we see the Tall Man speaking to the cultists "through Lenkmann" in some fashion (note, Lenkmann is probably not dead: Sibhain specifically only says that Mr. Tall did something "very bad" to him). The cultist scene appears to be in the non-shadow world. Did the ritual then succeed after all?
To be honest, I had no real idea what was going on there whatsoever. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. We don't really even know where they were in the end. Once again, plot point for the sequal...
God, I'm bored.
When you lose your calm, you feed your anger.
Less Is More v4Now resigned to a readership of me, my cat and some fish