How was Silchas Ruin so easily beaten?

This is a strange question.  Silchas Ruin survived a magical assault from the newly uber Quick Ben and two direct Moranth munition hits.  Most other characters would have given up and died, but Ruin just flew away.  So that would seem to indicate that he was very powerful.

But does that measure up to his expected power level?  Ruin is a Soletaken Eleint and a sibling to Anomander Rake.  He is described as "drinking deeper by far" of Tiam's blood that his brothers did, and it is natural to assume that this means he is a more powerful Soletaken.  So even given the level of opposition he faced, is it not strange that he was so easily driven off?

There's not an easy answer to this one.  Ruin has been built up and up for two books, and whenever we did see him in action he was unstoppable.  So it's hard to explain why he lost this fight.  It may be down to the Moranth munitions, since we don't know how they interact with the Elder Warrens the Tiste Andii Eleint would be using (Kurald Galain, Starvald Demelain).  It was shown that Ruin was totally ignorant of the modern world, even lacking the most basic knowledge about not-so-recent developments like the human warrens.  Moranth munitions were probably just as new to him, and so an unpleasant surprise. 

But that's the best answer we have just now, except to point out that it would have been inconvenient from a storyline point of view if Ruin had been allowed to destroy the city of Lether unopposed. 

Back to RG FAQ's.