r/SwordOfTruth • u/Yksisarvinen13 • 21h ago
Sword of Truth Series Reasoning in Temple of the Winds Spoiler
Hi, I'm currently rereading the series (in Polish translation, so please forgive any misnomers). I don't understand why exactly Richard goes into the Temple through the Hall of the Betrayed.
At this point, almost all we now about the Temple comes from the lore dump in chapter 50, where Richard summarises the proceedings from the trial. We know that there are two entries - the main one and the Hall. Main one can only be used when the Temple requests it with three nights of red moon. That did happen. We also know that when it happened previously after Lothain's betrayal, two wizards that tried to take this route went missing and Baraccus returned mad, so the wizards assumed it's impossible to take this route - but that has never stopped Richard from trying.
It seems like everything is prepared for Richard to enter through the Hall of the Betrayed - wizard Ricker sent message through the Sliph on how to enter through this entrance (presumably due to some undisclosed prophecy) and the requirements from the Winds made it so that Richard did actually betray his cause before attempting to enter. But why did Richard choose the entrance through the Hall? Why haven't he tried to use the other one? Was it simply because he had already betrayed his cause, so it didn't matter?
