: Hrmm I wonder what these crystals actually are . . ? Has
: anyone ever heard mention of them?
Maybe they -are- Tains. Maybe they're the Tain in and of itself...in some sort of weird parradox. That being that the tain crystals the dwarves pick up are internal copies of the outside tain, cut into four images by the transformation while remaining on the outside and when brought together they reflect their little weird selves onto the glowing archway to provide a form of escape. In essense the people inside of the tain would become the masters of the tain by possessing it. Seeing as the Tain itself is based on Escher's sketches, which were usually some sort of geometric paradox it would stand to some amount of reason that the smiths of muirthemne would need this kind of paradox to escape.
It would tie in with the basic spider idea...in a way one could argue that the several tains individually form traps, but through the intricacies of their design when brought into combination they would provide a means to escape. Spiders being historically linked to traps and puzzles, and weaving too. I wonder why there were no Weavers of Muirthemne....hrm, maybe there's some weird pair of mittens that sends people into a boxed universe somewhere? :)
Regardless, most of this...hell all of this, is conjecture.
Spook205
