On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, Gametech wrote:
>
>Now my first inclination is to take the reference to the 'Furnace' as
>it's their equivalent to the 'Sun' or our 'Sol' I think that it only
>became apparent to me because the word was capitalized as a proper
>name would be (go fig.). But... It could also be a proper name for
>the effect of sorcerous pollution or something to have to do with the
>use of sorcery. The word furnace can easily be defined as to exhale
>or exhaust (pollution in this case) which might be the exact effect
>that is caused from using sorcery.
> That makes me ponder, at any rate those are my two theories about
>it. Is there any other evidence pointing towards either of these
>possibilities?
>
Since no one has yet mentioned it, there's also a paragraph in
"Issola", which you might not want to read since it is quite a large
honkin' spoiler (so here's some space):
"And above it all (quite literally) was this terrible, bright
object burning down on everything. I'm not trying to be
mysterious -- I had been to the East, and I knew damned well that
it was a Furnace, just as we had in the Empire, only here, as out
East (and a few places in the far West), it wasn't hidden by a
constant overcast. But I had forgotten how painfully bright it
was, and how dark were the shadows it caused when it met anything
else."
It occurs to me that the Overcast should dissapate if you get far
enough North or South as well.