 What is the Watcher's purpose in spinning the vision of when the Ryzgas fell?
But its outward perils could not compare with the Ryzgas themselves, who slept within, ready to wake and conquer.... Now, if her father and his kinsmen overtook them, it would be death for Var, and for Neena living shame. While she waited he spun a dream, attaching it to the crags that loomed over the pass, and to the frozen ground underfoot. It was black night, as it would really be when Groz and his henchmen reached this place; lurid fire spewed from the Ryzga mountain, and strange lights dipped above it; and for good measure there was an avalanche in the dream, and hideous beasts rushed snapping and ravening from the crevices of the rock. Var eyed the ice-curtain closely to make sure that it was real, not dream-stuff; then he struck it boldly with his fist. The Watcher was four hundred years old; beside him even Groz, who had always seemed so ancient, was like a boy. Var saw with some surprise that all the walls were sheathed in ice—warm to the touch, bound fast against melting by the Watcher's will. Behind them began a tinkling of falling water, thawed from the glacial ridges above to descend sheet-wise over the cave mouth, freezing as it fell into lengthening icicles. Warming to the old man now, Var sketched his and Neena's history briefly. And before very long, I'm sure, I would have performed some deed which Groz would recognize as a worthy exploit, and would thus have healed the feud between our families. The Watcher was broodingly silent; his eyes shifted to Neena, where she nestled by Var's side. I did not see the sleepers, nor will any man until they come again, but I met their sentries, the sentinel machines that guard them now as they have for two thousand years. When I had gone that far, the mountain began to shake, the force that is in the Earth rumbled below, and I returned in time." There were tyrannies before the Ryzgas, there was lust for power, and atrocious cruelty; but such tyranny, power, and cruelty as theirs, had never been known. They were great and evil as no other people has been, because they wanted the stars. "Because of them we must build with dreams instead of iron, and our only fire is that of the Sun, and even now, two thousand years later, the Earth is still slowly recovering from the pangs and poison of that age.
 To persuade Var and Neena not to go further in their journey without understanding the potential consequences
 To tell a story of human selfishness and evil in order to arm Var and Neena against the Ryzgas  To instill a sensible amount of fear in Var and Neena before they sacrifice the world for their romance  To persuade Var and Neena not to go further in their journey without understanding the potential consequences  To convey a neutral account of history in order to inform Var and Neena of what they're up against