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I've been planning this for a few weeks now, so I'm just going to get to it. No frills, no intro, no witty word play. Nothing. Going in dry.
The Crimson King's "Avatar" and His Current Ratings
I'll be blunt, the current rating for Los' is wrong, and based on info that is also wrong.
Capable of rearranging the debris and chaos from the Dark Tower's destruction to return it to null and void, were it able to be destroyed by the Breakers.
This was never stated, and wasn't even what he was trying to do in his plan. His goal was to collapse the Tower, which in and of itself would have returned the multiverse to null and void. There is no evidence suggesting that this was what he was capable of.
Presumably also powered by the King's infinite-dimensional reactor
Presumably...why? Aside from the brief mention of it being the King's, it's never once suggested that the reactor was empowering Los' in any respect. Actually, it's never even stated what the power plant does, only that it affects the entire multiverse once it's destroyed by Tyler Marshall.
and still managed to have some influence over the world even when reduced to almost nothing by Patrick Danville, empowered by Bessa.
He most certainly did not. The final confrontation at the end of DT7 makes a point to hammer home the fact that he has absolutely no power left, and Patrick's High 1-B erasure of his body (sans his eyes) took away his last means of interacting with the world in any meaningful way. As Roland ascends the Tower, all Los' can do is speak to him telepathically:
Hell, the book even states that the entire reason Roland can't gain access to the Tower is because the balcony Los' is trapped on gives him command over whether or not the entrance opens. He loses that control the moment his body is erased.
He sure as hell isn't Immeasurable speed, either. He's an explicitly 3-D being who needed a horse and a portable storm in order to travel to the Tower.
So yeah. Not High 1-B at all.
Erasure Resistance and "Bessa's" High 1-B Empowerment
This is based on bullshit, and if I'd had a good enough memory of DT7 when I saw it added, I would have contested it immediately.
For starters, Patrick's failure to erase the King had nothing to do with him being resistant to erasure. It was because Patrick hadn't gotten the eyes all the way finished when he was drawing the picture of the King that he was going to erase:
What did he need in order to finish them?
Color.
He needed to color them, and the Roses of the field and Roland's blood from cutting his hand on their thorns were the only things available that he could use.
And as far as the King's eyes being left over?
Patrick literally ran out of eraser before he could get to them.
Next.
The Power of the Crimson King and His Relation to the Other One
I shouldn't have waited this long to double-check on this.
At this moment, we consider the "True" Crimson King as being capable of flooring the Dark Tower on a whim, as well as reshaping the entire multiverse to his liking should his plan to topple it succeed. This is mostly based on in-universe implications and speculations found in the DT series as well as the novel Black House.
But I'm pretty sure this is wrong.
A quote regarding the Crimson King's goal tells us that the King at the top of the Tower has promised the other King his own kingdom to rule over if he succeeds in bringing down the Tower:
However, this doesn't tell us that the King is capable of destroying the Tower at all. It just means that once the Tower is destroyed, the King is willing to provide for his other self his own section to rule over. Moreover, in my searches over the past few weeks, I've yet to locate any other quotes that suggest he might be capable of toppling the Tower on his own, or that he's limited by Gan rather than the Tower itself. (The latter is starting to make a lot more sense.)
In fact, I've actually managed to run into something that suggests otherwise. Aside from the whole bit about the King being "pent in a cell at the top of the Tower", Maerlyn states that this particular one isn't even powerful enough to defeat the Beam Guardians on his own:
And yes, he's talking about the one at the top of the Tower.
To put it simply, this King most likely isn't High 1-B either.
Plot Shields and Fate Manipulation
This one's gonna be the longest part.
Most of CK's supposed powers over fate and the plot don't actually come from the core DT novels; they're found in a book called Insomnia that Stephen King released in 1994. It's the only novel outside of DT7 where the Crimson King personally appears.
Problem is, it's explained within the DT canon itself that Insomnia isn't meant to be taken at face value:
Prior to this, the story even implies that Stephen King (who has appeared in this series as a character by now) wrote the book with the express purpose of getting the attention of either Roland or the Tet Corporation.
Consider the following:
Here's how the planes of existence work in Insomnia, as explained by the Doctors Clotho and Lachesis:
The Crimson King, in this instance, would fall under the Higher Random. He is the "something from the higher levels that has interested itself in Ed".
"Short-Timers" possess auras which exist on the same plane as Clotho and Lachesis. They serve a ton of purposes, but only two of those actually matter in relation to this thread. One of those purposes they serve is as a "clock" that dictates a person's appointed lifespan. The other is as (to put it as simply as I can) the aura of a person's fate.
Each aura also comes with a "life-cord" that hangs upwards it. They control when a person dies. The Bald Doctors' job is cut these cords once a person's time has come, effectively giving them the peace of death:
Atropos, the Bald Doctor who serves the Random, does things much differently. He slashes these cords with a rusty scalpel, and pretty much chooses the people he slashes based on his own whims. Everyone whose cord he slashes is destined to die a "Random" death, with events setting themselves up as a means of "fulfilling circumstance" in order for this to happen. Basically, if Atropos cuts your cord before it's time for it to be cut, fate kills you:
"What the **** does all of this have to do with the Crimson King?"
I'll tell you what. Remember that commonly-accepted thing about how the Crimson King can generate "plot shields" that deflect all incoming attacks?
Welp, yeah. That's false as all hell. The reason the auras and the Doctors' function in relation to them is important is because they directly relate to what the King is capable of in this novel. When Atropos slashed Ed Deepneau's cord, the Crimson King personally shielded him from his fate. This is explained and referenced numerous times:
As far as the shields themselves go, Ralph actually learns how to generate one. It literally surrounds a person's aura and protects it:
And that's exactly what the Crimson King did, only in his case, he was able to do it to someone whose life-cord had been slashed:
So basically, we've got two avenues here. Either:
In Summary
I'm open to discussion/dispute here, as always. But if there are any counterarguments to what I've said, they should preferably be supported by quotes or other material from the novels. I've learned the hard way that we're not going to get anywhere by stitching together information from respect threads and the DT Wiki, especially since the former are patently unreliable and the latter is full of outdated info that largely hasn't been updated since 2016.
The Crimson King's "Avatar" and His Current Ratings
I'll be blunt, the current rating for Los' is wrong, and based on info that is also wrong.
Capable of rearranging the debris and chaos from the Dark Tower's destruction to return it to null and void, were it able to be destroyed by the Breakers.
This was never stated, and wasn't even what he was trying to do in his plan. His goal was to collapse the Tower, which in and of itself would have returned the multiverse to null and void. There is no evidence suggesting that this was what he was capable of.
Presumably also powered by the King's infinite-dimensional reactor
Presumably...why? Aside from the brief mention of it being the King's, it's never once suggested that the reactor was empowering Los' in any respect. Actually, it's never even stated what the power plant does, only that it affects the entire multiverse once it's destroyed by Tyler Marshall.
and still managed to have some influence over the world even when reduced to almost nothing by Patrick Danville, empowered by Bessa.
He most certainly did not. The final confrontation at the end of DT7 makes a point to hammer home the fact that he has absolutely no power left, and Patrick's High 1-B erasure of his body (sans his eyes) took away his last means of interacting with the world in any meaningful way. As Roland ascends the Tower, all Los' can do is speak to him telepathically:
| Roland crossed to the little window, walking among the shredded bits of diaper, and looked out. The disembodied eyes sensed him and rolled over giddily to regard him. That gaze was poisonous with fury and loss. Come out, Roland! Come out and face me one to one! Man to man! An eye for an eye, may it do ya! "I think not," Roland said, "for I have more work to do. A little more, even yet." It was his last word to the Crimson King. Although the lunatic screamed thoughts after him, he screamed in vain, for Roland never looked back. He had more stairs to climb and more rooms to investigate on his way to the top.'' | ||
~ DT7: The Dark Tower |
He sure as hell isn't Immeasurable speed, either. He's an explicitly 3-D being who needed a horse and a portable storm in order to travel to the Tower.
So yeah. Not High 1-B at all.
Erasure Resistance and "Bessa's" High 1-B Empowerment
This is based on bullshit, and if I'd had a good enough memory of DT7 when I saw it added, I would have contested it immediately.
For starters, Patrick's failure to erase the King had nothing to do with him being resistant to erasure. It was because Patrick hadn't gotten the eyes all the way finished when he was drawing the picture of the King that he was going to erase:
| It's his eyes, Roland thought. They were wide and terrible, the eyes of a dragon in human form. They were dreadfully good, but they weren't right. Roland felt a kind of desperate, miserable certainty and shuddered from head to toe, hard enough to make his teeth chatter. They're not quite r— Patrick took hold of Roland's elbow. The gunslinger had been concentrating so fiercely on the drawing that he nearly screamed. He looked up. Patrick nodded at him, then touched his fingers to the corners of his own eyes. Yes. His eyes. I know that! But what's wrong with them?'' | ||
~ DT7: The Dark Tower |
| Patrick interrupted his thoughts, once more pointing at the road. Pointing back the way they had come. Roland shook his head wearily. "Even if I could fight the pull of the thing—and I couldn't, it's all I can do to bide here—retreat would do us no good. Once we're no longer in cover, he'll use whatever else he has. He has something, I'm sure of it. And whatever it is, the bullets of my revolver aren't likely to stop it." Patrick shook his head hard enough to make his long hair fly from side to side. The grip on Roland's arm tightened until the boy's fingernails bit into the gunslinger's flesh even through three layers of hide clothing. His eyes, always gentle and usually puzzled, now peered at Roland with a look close to fury. He pointed again with his free hand, three quick jabbing gestures with the grimy forefinger. Not at the road, however. Patrick was pointing at the roses. "What about them?" Roland asked. "Patrick, what about them?" This time Patrick pointed first to the roses, then to the eyes in his picture. And this time Roland understood.'' | ||
~ DT7: The Dark Tower |
He needed to color them, and the Roses of the field and Roland's blood from cutting his hand on their thorns were the only things available that he could use.
| Patrick cupped a hand beneath his mouth and spat out a red paste the color of fresh blood. The color of the Crimson King's robe. And the exact color of his lunatic's eyes. Patrick, on the verge of using color for the first time in his life as an artist, made to dip the tip of his right forefinger into this paste, and then hesitated. An odd certainty came to Roland then: the thorns of these roses only pricked when their roots still tied the plant to Mim, or Mother Earth. Had he gotten his way with Patrick, Mim would have cut those talented hands to ribbons and rendered them useless. It's still ka, the gunslinger thought. Even out here in End-W—Before he could finish the thought, Patrick took the gunslinger's right hand and peered into it with the intensity of a fortune-teller. He scooped up some of the blood that flowed there and mixed it with his rose-paste. Then, carefully, he took a tiny bit of this mixture upon the second finger of his right hand. He lowered it to his painting . . . hesitated . . . looked at Roland. Roland nodded to him and Patrick nodded in return, as gravely as a surgeon about to make the first cut in a dangerous operation, then applied his finger to the paper. The tip touched down as delicately as the beak of a hummingbird dipping into a flower. It colored the Crimson King's left eye and then lifted away. Patrick cocked his head, looking at what he had done with a fascination Roland had never seen on a human face in all his long and wandering time. It was as if the boy were some Manni prophet, finally granted a glimpse of Gan's face after twenty years of waiting in the desert. Then he broke into an enormous, sunny grin.'' | ||
~ DT7: The Dark Tower |
| In the end Patrick erased everything but the eyes, and these the remaining bit of rubber would not even blur. They remained until the piece of pink gum (originally part of a Pencil-Pak bought in a Norwich, Connecticut, Woolworth's during a back-to-school sale in August of 1958) had been reduced to a shred the boy could not even hold between his long, dirty nails. And so he cast it away and showed the gunslinger what remained: two malevolent blood-red orbs floating three-quarters of the way up the page. All the rest of him was gone.'' | ||
~ DT7: The Dark Tower |
Next.
The Power of the Crimson King and His Relation to the Other One
I shouldn't have waited this long to double-check on this.
At this moment, we consider the "True" Crimson King as being capable of flooring the Dark Tower on a whim, as well as reshaping the entire multiverse to his liking should his plan to topple it succeed. This is mostly based on in-universe implications and speculations found in the DT series as well as the novel Black House.
But I'm pretty sure this is wrong.
A quote regarding the Crimson King's goal tells us that the King at the top of the Tower has promised the other King his own kingdom to rule over if he succeeds in bringing down the Tower:
| "The Crimson King's Breakers are only hurrying along a process that's already in train. The machines are going mad. You've seen this for yourself. The men believed there would always be more men like them to make more machines. None of them foresaw what's happened. This … this universal exhaustion." "The world has moved on." "Aye, lady. It has. And left no one to replace the machines which hold up the last magic in creation, for the Prim has receded long since. The magic is gone and the machines are failing. Soon enough the Dark Tower will fall. Perhaps there'll be time for one splendid moment of universal rational thought before the darkness rules forever. Wouldn't that be nice?" "Won't the Crimson King be destroyed, too, when the Tower falls? Him and all his crew? The guys with the bleeding holes in their foreheads?" "He has been promised his own kingdom, where he'll rule forever, tasting his own special pleasures." Distaste had crept into Mia's voice. Fear, too, perhaps. "Promised? Promised by whom? Who is more powerful than he?" "Lady, I know not. Perhaps this is only what he has promised himself." Mia shrugged. Her eyes wouldn't quite meet Susannah's.'' | ||
~ DT6: Song of Susannah |
In fact, I've actually managed to run into something that suggests otherwise. Aside from the whole bit about the King being "pent in a cell at the top of the Tower", Maerlyn states that this particular one isn't even powerful enough to defeat the Beam Guardians on his own:
| "And who is Daria?" "A prisoner, like you. Locked in a little machine the people of the Fagonard gave me. I think she's dead." "Sorry for your loss, son." "She was my friend," Tim said simply. Maerlyn nodded. "It's a sad world, Tim Ross. As for me, since this is the Beam of the Lion, 'twas his little joke to put me in the shape of a great cat. Although not in the shape of Aslan, for that's magic not even he can do . . . although he'd like to, aye. Or slay Aslan and all the other Guardians, so the Beams collapse." "The Covenant Man," Tim whispered. Maerlyn threw back his head and laughed. His conical cap stayed on, which Tim thought magical in itself. "Nay, nay, not he. Little magic and long life's all he's capable of. No, Tim, there's one far greater than he of the broad cloak. When the Great One points his finger from where he bides, the Broad Cloak scurries. But sending you was none of the Red King's bidding, and the one you call the Covenant Man will pay for his foolery, I'm sure. He's too valuable to kill, but to hurt? To punish? Aye, I think so."'' | ||
~ DT4.5: The Wind Through The Keyhole |
| "How did the Red King catch thee?" "He can't catch anyone, Tim—he's himself caught, pent at the top of the Dark Tower. But he has his powers, and he has his emissaries. The one you met is far from the greatest of them. A man came to my cave. I was fooled into believing he was a wandering peddler, for his magic was strong. Magic lent to him by the King, as you must ken."'' | ||
~ The Wind Through The Keyhole |
Plot Shields and Fate Manipulation
This one's gonna be the longest part.
Most of CK's supposed powers over fate and the plot don't actually come from the core DT novels; they're found in a book called Insomnia that Stephen King released in 1994. It's the only novel outside of DT7 where the Crimson King personally appears.
Problem is, it's explained within the DT canon itself that Insomnia isn't meant to be taken at face value:
| "She'll read it to you on the trail," Moses said. "On your last trail, say God!" Yes, Roland thought. One last story to hear, one last trail to follow. The one that leads to Can'-Ka No Rey, and the Dark Tower. Or it would be nice to think so. Nancy said, "In the story, the Crimson King is using Ed Deepneau to kill one single child, a boy named Patrick Danville. Just before the attack, while Patrick and his mother are waiting for a woman to make a speech, the boy draws a picture, one that shows you, Roland, and the Crimson King, apparently imprisoned at the top of the Dark Tower." Roland started in his seat. "The top? Imprisoned at the top?" "Easy," Marian said. "Take it easy, Roland. The Calvins have been analyzing King's work for years, every word and every reference, and everything they produce gets forwarded to the good-mind folken in New Mexico. Although these two groups have never seen each other, it would be perfectly correct to say that they work together." "Not that they're always in agreement," Nancy said. "They sure aren't!" Marian spoke in the exasperated tone of one who's had to referee more than her share of squabbles. "But one thing that they are in agreement about is that King's references to the Dark Tower are almost always masked, and sometimes mean nothing at all." Roland nodded. "He speaks of it because his undermind is always thinking of it, but sometimes he lapses into gibberish." "Yes," Nancy said. "But obviously you don't think this entire book is a false trail, or you would not want to give it to me." "Indeed we do not," Nancy said. "But that doesn't mean the Crimson King is necessarily imprisoned at the top of the Tower. Although I suppose it might." Roland thought of his own belief that the Red King was locked out of the Tower, on a kind of balcony. Was it a genuine intuition, or just something he wanted to believe? "In any case, we think you should watch for this Patrick Danville," Marian said. "The consensus is that he's a real person, but we haven't been able to find any trace of him here. Perhaps you may find him in Thunderclap." "Or beyond it," Moses put in. Marian was nodding. "According to the story King tells in Insomnia—you'll see for yourself—Patrick Danville dies as a young man. But that may not be true. Do you understand?" "I'm not sure I do." "When you find Patrick Danville—or when he finds you— he may still be the child described in this book," Nancy said, "or he could be as old as Uncle Mose." "Bad luck f'him if that be true!" said the old man, and chortled. Roland lifted the book, stared at the red and white cover, traced the slightly raised letters that made a word he could not read. "Surely it's just a story?" "From the spring of 1970, when he typed the line The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed," Marian Carver said, "very few of the things Stephen King wrote were 'just stories.' He may not believe that; we do." But years of dealing with the Crimson King may have left you with a way of jumping at shadows, do it please ya, Roland thought. Aloud he said, "If not stories, what?" It was Moses Carver who answered. "We think maybe messages in bottles." In the way he spoke this word — boh'uls, almost — Roland heard a heartbreaking echo of Susannah, and suddenly wanted to see her and know she was all right. This desire was so strong it left a bitter taste on his tongue. "—that great sea." "Beg your pardon," the gunslinger said. "I was wool-gathering." "I said we believe that Stephen King's cast his bottles upon that great sea. The one we call the Prim. In hopes that they'll reach you, and the messages inside will make it possible for you and my Odetta to gain your goal."'' | ||
~ DT7: The Dark Tower |
Consider the following:
- As seen above, Insomnia would have us believe that the Crimson King that Roland eventually faces is the one trapped at the top of the Tower. This is not true; When Roland finally faces the Crimson King, the latter is stuck on a balcony two floors up from its base, as Roland had already been lead to believe throughout the story.
- It's foretold in Insomnia that Patrick Danville would die saving two people. This does not happen either; Not only is he accompanied by exactly one person in the end (Roland), but he survives the tale and Roland sends him off to go back the way they came before venturing forth to the Tower.
- In this novel exists a monument to the Losers Club in a park somewhere in Derry. This directly contradicts the canon of that novel; After the Losers defeated Pennywise, it's made clear that the characters forgot their experiences as well as everything related to It as a being.
- When explaining the levels to Ralph Roberts, the Bald Doctors describe the Tower's structure as effectively containing multiple overlapping higher planes of existence/realms of consciousness (within the same single universe) that serve as its floors. This directly contradicts the canon of DT itself; As we see on Ga's page, it's explained to us by The Man In Black that the structure of the Tower is nothing like what is described in Insomnia, and unlike the latter, O'Dim's description has in-series evidence to support it being the truth.
Here's how the planes of existence work in Insomnia, as explained by the Doctors Clotho and Lachesis:
| Clotho: [Be content with this: beyond the Short-Time levels of existence and the Long-Time levels on which Lachesis, Atropos, and I exist, there are yet other levels. These are inhabited by creatures we could call All-Timers, beings which are either eternal or so close to it as to make no difference. Short-Timers and Long-Timers live in overlapping spheres of existence ― on connected floors of the same building, if you like ― ruled by the Random and the Purpose. Above these floors, inaccessible to us but very much a part of the same tower of existence, live other beings. Some of them are marvellous and wonderful; others are hideous beyond our ability to comprehend, let alone yours. These beings might be called the Higher Purpose and the Higher Random . . . or perhaps there is no Random beyond a certain level; we suspect that may be the case, but we have no real way of telling. We do know that it is something from one of these higher levels that has interested itself in Ed, and that something else from up there made a countermove. That countermove is you, Ralph and Lois.] Lois gave Ralph a dismayed look that he hardly noticed. The idea that something was moving them around like chess-pieces in Faye Chapin's beloved Runway 3 Classic ― an idea that would have infuriated him under other circumstances ― went right by him for the time being. He was remembering the night Ed had called him on the telephone. You're drifting into deep water, he'd said, and there are things swimming around in the undertow you can't even conceive of. Entities, in other words. Beings too hideous to comprehend, according to Mr C, and Mr C was a gentleman who dealt death for a living. They haven't really noticed you yet, Ed had told him that night, but if you keep fooling with me, they will. And you don't want that. Believe me, you don't.'' | ||
~ Insomnia |
"Short-Timers" possess auras which exist on the same plane as Clotho and Lachesis. They serve a ton of purposes, but only two of those actually matter in relation to this thread. One of those purposes they serve is as a "clock" that dictates a person's appointed lifespan. The other is as (to put it as simply as I can) the aura of a person's fate.
Each aura also comes with a "life-cord" that hangs upwards it. They control when a person dies. The Bald Doctors' job is cut these cords once a person's time has come, effectively giving them the peace of death:
| [I hear your anger, Ralph, but it is not justified. You do not believe that now, but perhaps you may. For the time being, we must set your questions and our answers ― such answers as we may give ― aside.] ['Why?'] [Because the time of severing has come for this man. Watch closely, that you may learn and know.] Clotho stepped to the left side of the bed. Lachesis approached from the right, walking through Faye Chapin as he went. Faye bent over, afflicted with a sudden coughing-fit, and then opened his book of chess problems again as it eased. ['Ralph, I can't watch this! I can't watch them do it!'] But Ralph thought she would. He thought they both would. He held her tighter as Clotho and Lachesis bent over Jimmy V. Their faces were lit with love and caring and gentleness; they made Ralph think of the faces he had once seen in a Rembrandt painting ― The Night Watch, he thought it had been called. Their auras mingled and overlapped above Jimmy's chest, and suddenly the man in the bed opened his eyes. He looked through the two little bald doctors at the ceiling for a moment, his expression vague and puzzled, and then his gaze shifted toward the door and he smiled. 'Hey! Look who's here!' Jimmy V exclaimed. His voice was rusty and choked, but Ralph could still hear his South Boston wiseguy accent, where here came out heah. Faye jumped. The book of chess problems tumbled out of his lap and fell on the floor. He leaned over and took Jimmy's hand, but Jimmy ignored him and kept looking across the room at Ralph and Lois. 'It's Ralph Roberts! And Paul Chasse's wife widdim! Say, Ralphie, do you remember the day we tried to get into that tent revival so we could hear em sing "Amazing Grace"?' ['I remember, Jimmy.'] Jimmy appeared to smile, and then his eyes slipped closed again. Lachesis placed his hands against the dying man's cheeks and moved his head a bit, like a barber getting ready to shave a customer. At the same moment Clotho leaned even closer, opened his scissors, and slid them forward so that the long blades held Jimmy V's black balloon-string. As Clotho closed the scissors, Lachesis leaned forward and kissed Jimmy's forehead. [Go in peace, friend.] There was a small, unimportant snick! sound. The segment of the balloon-string above the scissors drifted up toward the ceiling and disappeared. The deathbag in which Jimmy V lay turned a momentary bright white, then winked out of existence just as Rosalie's had done earlier that evening. Jimmy opened his eyes again and looked at Faye. He started to smile, Ralph thought, and then his gaze turned fixed and distant. The dimples which had begun to form at the corners of his mouth smoothed out. 'Jimmy?' Faye shook Jimmy V's shoulder, running his hand through Lachesis's side to do it. 'You all right, Jimmy? . . . Oh shit.' Faye got up and left the room, not quite running. Clotho: [Do you see and understand that what we do we do with love and respect? That we are, in fact, the physicians of last resort? It is vital to our dealings with you, Ralph and Lois, that you understand that.]'' | ||
~ Insomnia |
| She looked at him, not understanding. Ralph made frantic wood-chopping gestures with his right hand, but before Lois could respond, Rosalie gave a dreadful lost howl. The bald doc raised the scalpel and brought it down, but it wasn't Rosalie's throat he cut. He cut her balloon-string. A thread emerged from each of Rosalie's nostrils and floated upward. They twined together about six inches above her snout, making a delicate pigtail, and it was at this point that Baldy #3's scalpel did its work. Ralph watched, frozen with horror, as the severed pigtail rose into the sky like the string of a released helium balloon. It was unravelling as it went. He thought it would tangle in the branches of the old pine, but it didn't. When the ascending balloon-string finally did meet one of the branches, it simply passed through. Of course, Ralph thought. The same way this guy's buddies walked through May Locher's locked front door after they finished doing the same thing to her. This idea was followed by a thought too simple and gruesomely logical not to be believed: not space-aliens, not little bald doctors, but Centurions. Ed Deepneau's Centurions. They didn't look like the Roman soldiers you saw in tin-pants epics like Spartacus and Ben Hur, true, but they had to be Centurions . . . didn't they? Sixteen or twenty feet above the ground, Rosalie's balloon-string simply faded away to nothingness.'' | ||
~ Insomnia |
| 'We can't do it anymore,' he said. 'Because it really might be addictive. Anything that feels that good just about has to be addictive, don't you think? We've got to try and build up some safeguards against doing it unconsciously, too. Because I think I have been. That could be why—' A scream of brakes and sliding, wailing tires cut him off. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, as outside on the street that sound went on and on, grief seeming to search for a point of impact. There was a muffled thud from the street as the scream of the brakes and tires silenced. It was followed by a brief cry uttered by either a woman or a child, Ralph could not tell which. Someone else shouted, 'What happened?' and then, 'Oh, cripe!' There was a rattle of running footsteps on pavement. 'Stay on the couch,' Ralph said, and hurried to the living room window. When he ran up the shade Lois was standing right beside him, and Ralph felt a flash of approval. It was what Carolyn would have done under similar circumstances. They looked out on a night-time world that pulsed with strange color and fabulous motion. Ralph knew it was Bill they were going to see, knew it ― Bill hit by a car and lying dead in the street, his Panama with the crescent bitten out of the brim lying near one outstretched hand. He slipped an arm around Lois and she gripped his hand. But it wasn't McGovern in the fan of headlights thrown by the Ford which was slued around in the middle of Harris Avenue; it was Rosalie. Her early-morning shopping expeditions were at an end. She lay on her side in a spreading pool of blood, her back bunched and twisted in several places. As the driver of the car which had struck her knelt beside the old stray, the pitiless glare of the nearest streetlamp illuminated his face. It was Joe Wyzer, the Rite Aid druggist, his orange-yellow aura now swirling with confused eddies of red and blue. He stroked the old dog's side, and each time his hand slipped into the vile black aura which clung to Rosalie, it disappeared. Dreams of terror washed through Ralph, dropping his temperature and shrivelling his testicles until they felt like hard little peach-pits. Suddenly it was July of 1992 again, Carolyn dying, the deathwatch ticking, and something weird had happened to Ed Deepneau. Ed had freaked out, and Ralph had found himself trying to keep Helen's normally good-natured husband from springing at the man in the West Side Gardeners cap and attempting to rip his throat out. Then ― the cherry on the Charlotte russe, Carol would have said ― Dorrance Marstellar had arrived. Old Dor. And what had he said? I wouldn't touch him anymore . . . I can't see your hands. I can't see your hands. 'Oh my God,' Ralph whispered.'' | ||
~ Insomnia |
| [Atropos serves the Random. Not all deaths of the sort Short-Timers call 'senseless' and 'unnecessary' and 'tragic' are his work, but most are. When a dozen old men and women die in a fire at a retirement hotel, the chances are good that Atropos has been there, taking souvenirs and cutting cords. When an infant dies in his crib for no apparent reason, the cause, more often than not, is Atropos and his rusty scalpel. When a dog ― yes, even a dog, for the destinies of almost all living things in the Short-Time world fall among either the Random or the Purpose ― is run over in the road because the driver of the car that hit him picked the wrong moment to glance at his watch—] Lois: ['Is that what happened to Rosalie?'] Clotho: [Atropos is what happened to Rosalie. Ralph's friend Joe Wyzer was only what we call 'fulfilling circumstance'.]'' | ||
~ Insomnia |
I'll tell you what. Remember that commonly-accepted thing about how the Crimson King can generate "plot shields" that deflect all incoming attacks?
Welp, yeah. That's false as all hell. The reason the auras and the Doctors' function in relation to them is important is because they directly relate to what the King is capable of in this novel. When Atropos slashed Ed Deepneau's cord, the Crimson King personally shielded him from his fate. This is explained and referenced numerous times:
| Ralph: ['Are you saying that Atropos cut the cord of someone who was supposed to die a natural death . . . or a Purposeful death?'] Clotho: [Not exactly. Some lives ― a very few ― bear no clear designation. When Atropos touches such lives, trouble is always likely. 'All bets are off,' you say. Such undesignated lives are like—] Clotho drew his hands apart and an image ― playing cards again ― flashed between them. A row of seven cards that were swiftly turned over, one after another, by an unseen hand. An ace; a deuce; a joker; a trey; a seven; a queen. The last card the invisible hand flipped over was blank. Clotho: [Does this picture help?] Ralph's brow furrowed. He didn't know if it did or not. Somewhere out there was a person who was neither a regular playing card nor a joker in the deck. A person who was perfectly blank, up for grabs by either side. Atropos had slashed this guy's metaphysical air-hose, and now somebody ― or something ― had called a time-out. Lois: ['It's Ed you're talking about, isn't it?'] Ralph wheeled around and stared at her sharply, but she was looking at Lachesis. ['Ed Deepneau is the blank card.'] Lachesis was nodding. ['How did you know that, Lois?'] ['Who else could it be?']'' | ||
~ Insomnia |
| Ralph: ['All you have to do is tell the truth, boys.'] Lachesis, as plaintively as a child: [We have been!] Ralph: ['The whole truth.'] Lachesis: [All right; the whole truth. Yes, it is Ed Deepneau's cord Atropos cut. We don't know this because we have seen it ― we've passed beyond our ability to see clearly, as I said ― but because it is the only logical conclusion. Deepneau is undesignated, neither of the Random nor of the Purpose, that we do know, and his must have been some sort of master-cord to have caused all this uproar and concern. The very fact that he has lived so long after his life-cord was severed indicates his power and importance. When Atropos severed this cord, he set a terrible chain of events in motion.]'' | ||
~ Insomnia |
| ['Last summer, after he beat his wife up, Ed spoke to me of a being he called the Crimson King. Does that mean anything to you fellows?'] Clotho and Lachesis exchanged another look, one which Ralph at first mistook for solemnity. Clotho: [Ralph, you must remember that Ed is insane, existing in a delusional state—] ['Yeah, tell me about it.'] [― but we believe that his 'Crimson King' does exist in one form or another, and that when Atropos cut his life-cord, Ed Deepneau fell directly under this being's influence.]'' | ||
~ Insomnia |
| Clotho: [You must not approach Atropos directly, either. I cannot emphasize that enough. He has been surrounded by forces much greater than himself, forces that are malignant and powerful, forces that are conscious and will stop at nothing to stop you. Yet we think that, if you stay away from Atropos, you may be able to block the terrible thing which is about to happen . . . which is, in a very real sense, happening already.] Ralph didn't much care for the unspoken assumption that he and Lois were going to do whatever it was these two happy gauchos wanted, but this didn't seem like exactly the right time to say so. Lois: ['What is about to happen? What is it you want from us? Are we supposed to find Ed and talk him out of doing something bad?'] Clotho and Lachesis looked at her with identical expressions of shocked horror. [Haven't you been listening to—] [― you mustn't even think of—] They stopped, and Clotho motioned Lachesis to go ahead. [If you didn't hear us before, Lois, hear us now: stay away from Ed Deepneau! Like Atropos, this unusual situation has temporarily invested him with great power. To even go near him would be to risk a visit from the entity he thinks of as the Crimson King . . . and besides, he is no longer in Derry.]'' | ||
~ Insomnia |
| Leydecker lunged out from behind the police car, and as his fingers disappeared into the black membrane surrounding Chris Nell, Ralph heard Old Dor say, I wouldn't touch him anymore if I were you, Ralph ― I can't see your hands. Lois: ['Don't! Don't, he's dead, he's already dead!'] The gun poking out of the window had started to move to the right. Now it swiveled unhurriedly back toward Leydecker, the man behind it undeterred ― and apparently unhurt ― by the hail of bullets directed at him from the other police. Ralph raised his right hand and brought it down in the karate-chop gesture again, but this time instead of a wedge of light, his fingertips produced something that looked like a large blue teardrop. It spread across Leydecker's lemon-colored aura just as the rifle sticking out of the window opened fire. Ralph saw two slugs strike the tree just to Leydecker's right, sending chips of bark flying into the air and making black holes in the fir's yellowish-white undersurface. A third struck the blue covering which had coated Leydecker's aura ― Ralph saw a momentary flicker of dark red just to the left of the detective's temple and heard a low whine as the bullet either richocheted or skipped, the way a flat stone will skip across the surface of a pond.'' | ||
~ Insomnia |
| Two uniformed figures, looking more like pro football linemen than cops in their bulky Kevlar vests, charged from behind one of the cruisers, running flat-out for the porch with their riot guns held at port arms. As they crossed the dooryard on a diagonal, Charlie Pickering leaned out of his window, still laughing wildly, his gray hair zanier than ever. The volume of fire directed at him was enormous, showering him with splinters from the sides of the window and actually knocking down the rusty gutter above his head ― it struck the porch with a hollow bonk ― but not a single bullet touched him. How can they not be hitting him? Ralph thought as he and Lois mounted the porch toward the lime-colored flames which were now billowing through the open front door. Christ Jesus, it's almost point-blank range, how can they possibly not be hitting him? But he knew how . . . and why. Clotho had told them that both Atropos and Ed Deepneau had been surrounded by forces which were malignant yet protective. Was it not likely that those same forces were now taking care of Charlie Pickering, much as Ralph himself had taken care of Leydecker when he'd left the protection of the police car to drag his dying colleague back to cover?'' | ||
~ Insomnia |
- A) The actual events within the book are meant to be considered irrelevant to the greater DT timeline, in which case the King's few feats in this novel simply don't exist. Or
- B) The events of this book are taken at face value, in which case the King's "plot shields" are actually "fate shields" which he's completely incapable of granting himself due to lacking a Short-Time aura.
In Summary
- Los' being High 1-B is completely unjustified and needs to be changed.
- Los' resistance to existence erasure is completely bogus and based on false information.
- Dis being anything above Low 2-C is severely in question and needs to be addressed.
- The Crimson King's feats from Insomnia, assuming they aren't null and void to begin with, are completely misinterpreted in regards to his current powers and abilities.
I'm open to discussion/dispute here, as always. But if there are any counterarguments to what I've said, they should preferably be supported by quotes or other material from the novels. I've learned the hard way that we're not going to get anywhere by stitching together information from respect threads and the DT Wiki, especially since the former are patently unreliable and the latter is full of outdated info that largely hasn't been updated since 2016.
