one day i will do a grand breakdown essay on Why Jarlaxle and Kimmuriel’s Relationship Makes Me Incredibly Unhinged With Citations but for now you get this abridged version. Spoilers for Lolth’s Warrior/last book in particular but also Generations and other Way of the Drow books a little bit.
also this is STILL a long post i’m sorry I am VERY not normal about this
so last trilogy (generations) kimmuriel's all, man i wish i was an illithid. i like illithids. hive mind's great. love those guys.
But here, in this place, nothing was measured in that manner. In this place, Kimmuriel Oblodra didn’t exist, other than to be a single colligation in the one being that was the whole of illithid society. Here in the hive mind, his fingers caressing the great pulsing brain, the edifice of connection and oneness, thoughts and memories became interchangeable and mingled.
Study in the hive mind was merely a matter of searching what had become your own expansive knowledge and memories rather than hearing or reading the words of a separate being.
Kimmuriel often lamented that he should have been born an illithid.
The hive mind knew this truth within the drow’s heart, of course, which explained why he was so welcomed here. One could not easily hide insincerity in this place. One could not easily hide anything from the illithids.
A large part of the individual that was Kimmuriel wanted to just stay here. Let Luskan and Bregan D’aerthe be the concerns of another. He could remain at the hive mind and caress knowledge itself, bask in pure thought, revel in memories as visceral as if he had walked those pathways in the lonely and singular drow form he had been forced to wear.
and then in THIS trilogy (way of the drow) kimmuriel has mentioned it's also going to be his afterlife as a way of rejecting the concept of a god-given one/escaping the clutches of Lolth, or any god, entirely
“The multiverse is a matter of divine numbers,” Kimmuriel said.
“The particulars of the tyrant gods are merely noise—temporary noise in the ultimate eternity of it all. We are manifestations of pure and singular thought, grains of sand on an endless beach or drops of water in the endless ocean that splashes onto that beach.
The hive mind is a conduit into that pure and singular thought. It is my destiny to directly merge, to become less speck and less droplet, and more a viewer of it all. You felt the power when we channeled it from the hive mind to obliterate Demogorgon those years ago. You felt it, the ecstasy.”
this kind of description is also imo, implicitly has thematic connections to transcendence; kimmuriel is interested in it, he asks drizzt for his opinions as drizzt has gone through a similar process, he examines the memories of Kane’s own transcendence, etc. It’s not the same but it is similar.
Transcendence is a process that is easy to initiate and hard to come back from because you essentially become one with the universe and it's so ecstatic and amazing that you have trouble remembering who you are as an individual, and if you lose that thread enough, you kinda cease to exist as like, yourself. You just get lost in the sauce, forever.
but, some kind of strong emotion and focus can bring you back from it, if you go in with a purpose and you manage to maintain that purpose: 'ecstasy' is a key word here because kimmuriel uses it to describe what channeling the power of the hive mind/being tapped into that pure conduit is like, and vitally, to strengthen the connection, transcendence is also described this way:
“The body will not turn back and the mental and emotional discipline needed to deny that call of ecstasy is enormous.
When you transcend, you will know such joy, unrelenting, even building as time, which becomes meaningless, passes, yet the time to find the needed discipline, the denial of pure desire, is short, and failure means that you will be forever removed from this existence.
Afafrenfere just stared at him, jaw hanging open.
“I know not how to put it more clearly or bluntly,” the ancient monk answered that blank stare. “You will not want to come back, and so you, as you are known and as you know yourself, will be no more.”
So, i posted all that text, now i'm gonna get into the next bit
Several books have established that Kimmuriel is lonely without psionic connection and the hivemind fills an unmet need in him.
However, as a direct counterpoint to the hive mind and what it is capable of giving him
(despite its love for him, and I do believe it’s reasonable to interpret this passage:
Arguments came back at him from so many other corners of the hive mind, though. He was unique here, or nearly so. Only this synapse of the hive mind, this being named Kimmuriel, that existed in that drow reality in that world of Faerun, could bring in such expansive experiences and knowledge of that place.
He would be limiting the hive mind and thus limiting himself if he lost the balance between recipient and source.
as a kind of love, even if it is an ‘alien’ expression of it; Kimmuriel is worth more to them as an individual and not an illithid, even as an outsider, than he is joined and subsumed to them)
we have...stuff like this:
Kimmuriel’s work here was done. He offered that thought to Pescatawav, and the Most Endeared excused him to go and tend to the more pressing problems he faced on his home plane, among his own inferior people.
There was no sense of gratitude, no thoughts of hope that Kimmuriel would succeed.
It just was.
There were a few moments like this for Kimmuriel Oblodra, when he almost reconsidered his life’s journey, when he saw so plainly the difference between the sensibilities of the hive mind and those of Jarlaxle.
His only friend.
we also have jarlaxle getting kinda disassembled and put back together by the hive mind so his memories can be deconstructed and it's kind of funny but also
Kimmuriel had been desperately worried about subjecting his dearest friend to the intrusions of the mind flayers. Perhaps he should have been more worried about subjecting the illithids to the sensibilities of Jarlaxle.
Jarlaxle is So Much that he’s kind of affected the hive mind. Good job buddy. But it means they now have that connective tissue: Kimmuriel cannot hide anything from the illithids including whatever strong feelings he has for Jarlaxle, and Jarlaxle is also very attached to Kimmuriel:
“Kimmuriel is your second.”
“He’s the other half of my first. In my part of Bregan D’aerthe, in
my, shall we say, personal journeys, you are my partner.”
Like really attached:
“Where will you go?” Jarlaxle pleaded when Kimmuriel didn’t answer. “
“You know,” the hulking possessed man replied audibly.
“No,” Jarlaxle breathed. “I won’t let you!”
Drizzt saw that Jarlaxle was fighting back tears.
[...]
“There is an emptiness . . . I will miss you, Kimmuriel,” Jarlaxle said, as quiet as Drizzt had ever heard the rogue.
Like, really really attached:
“I am lesser without you, my friend,” Jarlaxle told the image. “Both practically and in my heart.”
I could go on but I’m trying to make this short etc there’s like a fucking billion examples.
So. Kimmuriel is not content with just his mortal body on his own plane, which is a lonely existence, or just feeding his mind which is essentially what the hive mind does for him. He needs friends and people to like...make physical existence worthwhile to actually reach a pleasant equilibrium.
His more passive suicidal tendencies actually sort of ebb after Generations, where he is considering mortality carefully but also is like "i'm not sure i actually want to die":
“So, he let you in there and he gave to you his memories of
transcending the physical form.”
“And now I understand better. But of course, there remain
limitations on that understanding, because such an act may or may
not be a permanent state of being.”
“There’s only one way to find out the truth,” Drizzt admitted.
“I am in no hurry to leave this life.”
So he's clearly found some sense of purpose to make being physical work for him , and again! A large part of that is Jarlaxle! He names other friends (especially Gromph) but a LARGE part of that is Jarlaxle.
And then he fucking dies of course I've shrieked enough about that lmao
and when he says goodbye he confirms that yes, he is going to his ideal afterlife, where Drizzt hopes he finds peace similar to transcendence:
“My time is ending,” the voice of Malagdorl repeated. “There is nothing to be done.”
“Except to say farewell,” Drizzt said. “I will remember our talks on the road to the monastery, my friend. May you find oneness with the hive mind and peace in eternity.”
“And you, warrior. Survive, I beg.”
joining the hive mind, a cluster of individuals swirling into a greater ‘being’ and is also referred to as ecstatic, is compared and contrasted to a process of becoming one with the universe that is hard to come back from as yourself because it feels That Good.
Got all that? Good. Because now we get to the epilogue of Lolth’s Warrior:
Jarlaxle left them, then, and went to his private room. He sat down before a table and pulled a cloth off the circular object resting in a tri-pronged stand atop it. He closed his eyes and reached out, hoping.
A familiar image appeared in the ball a long while later, and Jarlaxle breathed a sigh of relief.
“I am glad you are floating about this day,” Jarlaxle said. “You miss me.”
This day, he heard in his mind, a most familiar voice. And perhaps again, now and then.
Jarlaxle understood the unsaid part: Kimmuriel would not come to him at his beckon.
Less so, came the thought in his mind. There is so much. So much.
“And so much I still need from you.”
You will be disappointed.
[...]
“I am lesser without you, my friend,” Jarlaxle told the image. “Both practically and in my heart.”
It is the way of things.
And that was it, and the spirit of Kimmuriel departed once more.
Perhaps for the last time, Jarlaxle knew, though he desperately hoped that wouldn’t be the case.
Here he is! It’s not a summoning circle or a calling spell, it simply just seems to be that Jarlaxle reaches out and hopes that Kimmuriel will be around to answer him, and he does. Taking Jarlaxle's gay little sad thought calls, plural, because they have done this several times already, is worth it to Kimmuriel, enough to tear himself away from his ideal, implied to be VERY GOOD FEELING AFTERLIFE for.
Enough to maintain a sense of self and individuality because he speaks to Jarlaxle like he's the same person, just very distracted
and its like
WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH ANY OF THIS.
like fucking. Im not even getting into the implications that it's rooted in love, like, the hive mind’s love for kimmuriel as an individual and kimmuriel’s love for jarlaxle and jarlaxle’s love for kimmuriel?? subtextually?
becuase jarlaxle is the only one who has consistently treated kimmuriel like a person
To trust Kimmuriel is to trust a creature we cannot begin to decipher. Why Jarlaxle elevated him to lead Bregan D’aerthe, I will never understand.”
“Perhaps Jarlaxle believes that he understands Kimmuriel.”
“Then Jarlaxle fools himself.”
they are noted by other characters to be extremely close to the point that they have a trust bond that is rare among menzo drow:
Now, though, I witness a much different structure within Bregan D’aerthe, and one very much more powerful.
For Jarlaxle has given to his followers something truly special among the Lolth-serving drow: an element of trust.
And he does so by example. Jarlaxle has entrusted Kimmuriel Oblodra with the very leadership of the band on those many occasions when he, Jarlaxle, is out on some adventure or other. He has even tasked Kimmuriel with reining in his own worst excesses—with keeping Jarlaxle himself in line!
(also see the other half of my first thing; when Jarlaxle says Zak is his partner Zaknafein immediately rebuts it with “Kimmuriel is your partner”)
they go from standoffish and awkward to like calling each other friends and kimmuriel being Totally Fine with jarlaxle just touching him unprompted, a guy whose personal space bubble is Don’t Fucking Touch Me Asshole:
“I hesitate to take Azzudonna, this woman I barely know and know not at all as a friend, and you expect me to subject you to the intrusion of the hive mind?”
“Why, Kimmuriel, did you just admit that you love me?” Jarlaxle teased, but the psionicist was having none of it.
“Good,” said Jarlaxle, nodding to his drow companions. “Then I want you to cast it now on my dear friend here,” he explained, wrapping his arm about Kimmuriel.
and then kimmuriel dies and this literally does not slow him down. and then he dies and, as the epilogue shows, comes back to jarlaxle anyway.
like it's not even thematically inappropriate is what fucking gets me, because kimmuriel has already established he is someone who essentially lives in two worlds and needs both to be happy
and the conclusion is that he doesn't have to choose, he can have both, and that mirrors jarlaxle's defiance of having to give things up to be 'good'
Jarlalxle doesn't have to abandon everything he was just so he can become Good and Palatable to a surface world that doesn't give a shit about him (drizzt did this only out of desperation, even; his flight and rejection and all of it, for him menzo is a home that he wanted so badly to belong to, it hurts to leave, but he knows he has to because he can’t bear it. that’s a different essay though). he can have all of it, as much as he can carry. he wants all of it. he hates to let go of it.
that refusal to let go saves almost three thousand people from menzoberranzan. kimmuriel's refusal to be forced into a choice means he comes back to jarlaxle in some way and form, even with the deck stacked against him to make it incredibly fucking difficult to do so
and again, kimmuriel has literally everything he has ever wanted in dying, everything he's ever aspired to, the One Truth he’s been reaching toward, and it is, apparently, still not enough.
“Look at yourself!” Gromph scolded. “You care. Kimmuriel Oblodra— and how remarkable that any Oblodra or Odran cares! Have you gone soft, then? Have you abandoned your sole goal in life, to find the One Eternal Truth along with those tentacle waggling illithids?”
Kimmuriel wanted to deny his words, to deny him, but his responses sounded without conviction.
“Have you become enamored of the flesh, Kimmuriel?” Gromph asked more seriously. “Have you found within your emotionless mind a bit of love for that which we mere mortals covet?”
idk man look at it its on the ceiling. i dont fucking know. i truly do not know. i am not going to be normal about this for the next five years.
When Kane is talking to Afa about transcendence and Afa’s reasons for transcendence (he wants to find his dead boyfriend again):
“Nothing in the multiverse is more powerful than love, my friend,” Kane said, and he smiled, and moved his hand.
Like sure okay whatever. Sure. It sure is huh.
