Questions of Balefire...

[Siswaiaman]

A Refreshment of Balefire, go to second paragraph.

We know that blaefire removes a thread from the pattern, the time its removed dependant on the power of the balefire. When used on items, whatever they did when they existed is undone from the period they were removed. When used of people, they are removed indefinatly and cannot be reincarnated by the Great Lord or the Wheel.

 

So a Simple question. What if a weave of Balefire was used on a dead body strong enough to go back the period the body was still alive? Say at a moment one day before the person died normally, they were burned out.

 

Did i say simple? I Lied!

 

If true, then even if you died, anyone finding your body would be able to (with enough force) to remove you forever.

[Guest Majsju]

If the body is dead, the thread should be cut already. And once the thread is gone, balefiring a corpse would be about as useful as balefiring the chair someone sat on before they fell and broke their neck.

[Siswaiaman]

In steps then.

If you bale a boul of soup after youve eaten the soup, the soup would end up on the ground where the bowl was removed from the pattern. Ifthe bowl was an object, then so was a body.

 

If you remove the body all the way to where it was removed BEFORE its death, then the balefire becomes the cause of death.

[Guest Majsju]

Since balefire burns threads from the pattern, to determine what effect balefire would have requires that we know what objects that has threads. Is it only living things? In that case you can balefire a corpse how much you want, the only thing that would happen is that you would end up with an odd-looking hole in the ground.

 

And that seems to be the caes. Otherwise, why would the DO bother with recycling dead forsaken into new bodies, when all he would have to do is to demand someone to balefire the corpse til it starts moving around again.

 

Although, it would be a cool prank to balefire the ham sandwich someone was just about to eat... :lol:

[phoenix]

what i really want to know is this: what if you balefired someone (really strongly), who just balefired your friend (really weakly). For example, if ishamael balefired the crap outta moiraine when she bf'd be'laal. Would the 1st person come back to life?

[Angel of Death]

phoenix, i see it as a fairly big contradiction, theoretically yes they will come back, but since they were balefired, ie died before they died never to be again, i dont think they will.

 

 

Also, i dont think balefire effects non-living things in the same way as living things, nut does effect them. The way i see it is, balefire burns a hole through the non living thing (like the pillars in heart of the stone) but it fully removes the whole living soul.

 

Which raises another question, do all animals have souls or just humans. I doubt plants will even though they are living.

[SinisterDeath]

Umm... When you balefire a person, there "soul" is not gone forever, even to the wheel. RJ cleared that up to say something along the lines of, they won't be spun out for a very long time. *Like during this age*

 

As for the Person A balefires person B, then person C balefires Person A, hasn't that already been answered by rj? Something along the lines that, Person B would still be dead, only Person A is joining them to.

[Shai-tan]

Also it does work on non-living objects. Do you remember palaces being balefired on many occasions and huge pillars dissapearing?

[Guest Majsju]

Also it does work on non-living objects. Do you remember palaces being balefired on many occasions and huge pillars dissapearing?

 

That's not the same thing as having balefire burn the palace's thread from the pattern. How would that work, balefire a pillar, and bring back a worker who died working on it to life?

[Zyrshnikashnu]

what i really want to know is this: what if you balefired someone (really strongly)' date=' who just balefired your friend (really weakly). For example, if ishamael balefired the crap outta moiraine when she bf'd be'laal. Would the 1st person come back to life?[/quote']

And now you see why it was outlawed in the Age of Legends. It was screwing up reality.

[Siswaiaman]

lol.

I wonder what would happen if you bf'ed a male gateway... Since theyre holes ripped outta the pattern, what would happen to the people who traveled them if they suddenly vanished. Tis a great insurance policy!

"Do what ever you want, in an hour ill balefire the gateway and ull appear beside me."

[alCal]

Well, a gateway is not an object, it's a weave. I don't think anything would happen, exept for the bf to go straight through to the other side.

[Zyrshnikashnu]

Speaking of which, perhaps gateways are related to balefire. They both involve ripping open the Pattern, do they not?

[Guest cwestervelt]

Nope.

 

Balefire, whether used by man or woman, doesn't rip the pattern but it burns a Thread from the Pattern, causing it to unravel. A Gateway, when opened by a man, folds the pattern bringing two distant points together and then bores a hole through the Pattern. For a woman, a Gateway aligns to parts of the pattern to making them the one. In each case, when the Gateway is closed, the pattern returns to its previous state. There is no unraveling.

[BSDBovine]

bf has effect on things and the objects they are affecting. For example, when the dark hound attacks the room mat is staying in w/ the maidens of the sprear, it rips through the doors and actually gets mat w/ its deadly venon(drool), but when rand BF's the dark hound, in the next chapter, mat is left w/ nothing but a pink mark where the venom once was.

[fader6818]

Actually, there is a point being missed here...

 

Balefire destroys whatever it touches, but it only burns back for living things.

 

In the Fires of heaven, rand is shooting balefire around like nobody's business, but when it hits the pillars and walls, it leaves HOLES. it doesn't destroy the entire wall.

 

But when balefire hits a PERSON, it burns their thread back, and their clothing too, it seems. :-P

 

I'm not sure if this is related to INTENT. If Rand wanted to destroy the wall, would it have vanished? If he meant to destroy a fly, but the balefire hit Egwene instead, would it just burn a hole through her?

 

Anyway, whatever the reason, balefire is inconsistant. I think hitting the bowl would just put a hole in it, not bring back the soup.

 

And for those who use the boat in Crown of Swords, IIRC, the driver of the ship was hit, causing the ship to change positions, as if nobody had been piloting it for a minute.

[Guest cwestervelt]

You can regulate the amount of BF to make sure it doens't burn all the way through a wall.

 

In the case of the Darkhounds, they were living entities even though Shadowspawn. Thus, they have threads in the pattern to get undone. A wall doesn't have a thread.

 

It's your Three Fates concept. They didn't spin webs with items, just people. When they one cut the thread, the person died. BF just cuts the thread a little before the fact.

[crash]

Balefire:

A one power construct with vast destructive power. The liquid white-hot fire was invincible, burning anything it touched into nonexistence. During the War of Power, the weapon was used liberally for a year by both sides -- until they discovered its hidden cost. The searing energy of balefire did more than kill or destroy -- it actually burned threads from the Pattern. Anything destroyed this way actually ceased to exist before the moment of destruction, leaving only a memory of deeds no longer done and souls forever erased from the Pattern. Not only that; whatever had been done because of those vanished actions also no longer had been done. The greater the power of the balefire, the further back in time its victim ceased to exist. During the year of unrestricted use, entire cities were burned from the Pattern, and the world and its universe were threatened by the broken and loosed threads. Reality itself was in danger of unraveling. Faced with the possible dissolution of existence, both sides, without formal agreement or truce, simply stopped using balefire.

[Siswaiaman]

Its not that the body would have no thread...

 

If you hit a body with balefire strong enough to go past beyond their death, you would either burn them out or cause a wound strong enough that the balefire wound would be the cause of death, right?

As the balefire was the cause of death, would they be burned out?

[Bob T Dwarf]

This is another case where Jordan seems to have contradicted himself.

 

In a QoTW, he said: Someone who has been killed with balefire in actuality died before the apparent time of his or her death, and thus the window of opportunity for the Dark One to secure that soul for transmigration is gone before the Dark One can know that the soul must be secured unless the amount of balefire used is very small.

 

Yet, the definition that crash supplied ( which comes from p 43 of the BWB ) says: souls forever erased from the Pattern.

 

So which is it? Can someone killed by balefire be transmigrated if the amount of power used is sufficiently small, or is their soul "forever erased from the Pattern"? Forever, as in no transmigration nor even a possibility of rebirth.

[Jedimuppet]

This is another case where Jordan seems to have contradicted himself.

 

In a QoTW' date=' he said: Someone who has been killed with balefire in actuality died before the apparent time of his or her death, and thus the window of opportunity for the Dark One to secure that soul for transmigration is gone before the Dark One can know that the soul must be secured [u']unless the amount of balefire used is very small.[/u]

 

Yet, the definition that crash supplied ( which comes from p 43 of the BWB ) says: souls forever erased from the Pattern.

 

So which is it? Can someone killed by balefire be transmigrated if the amount of power used is sufficiently small, or is their soul "forever erased from the Pattern"? Forever, as in no transmigration nor even a possibility of rebirth.

 

It's not actually a contradiction. The soul is only burned from the pattern with a sufficient amount of BF. If the amount used is small enough then the time effect is very small, hence no erasure.

J

[Bob T Dwarf]

It's not merely a matter of erasure though.

 

The definition in the BWB says forever erased, with no mention of some threshold of power being required. ie. if you're strong enough to create balefire, anyone you hit with it will be gone forever. Soul totally destroyed. No rebirth. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

 

Jordan's answer implies that the soul isn't damaged at all. Merely that if the amount of Power used is great enough, the soul has returned to the soulpool before anything can be done to recapture it.

[Jedimuppet]

It's not merely a matter of erasure though.

 

The definition in the BWB says forever erased' date=' with no mention of some threshold of power being required. ie. if you're strong enough to create balefire, anyone you hit with it will be gone forever. Soul totally destroyed. No rebirth. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

 

Jordan's answer implies that the soul isn't damaged at all. Merely that if the amount of Power used is great enough, the soul has returned to the soulpool before anything can be done to recapture it.[/quote']

 

Well we've had this debate before, and you have to admit that RJ's language seems to indicate that the amount of balefire used relates to the amount of time lost when the thread is burned from the pattern.

 

With a small enough use of power, it wouldn't be burned out at all...I think he pretty much point blank says it when he discusses the amount of balefire used as having an effect.

 

The only thing that threw me for a loop with that quote was that I would have thought that BF without enough power to burn a thread away would not have enough power to cause any damage at all.

 

J

[Shai-tan]

Balefire destroys whatever it touches, but it only burns back for living things.

 

But when balefire hits a PERSON, it burns their thread back, and their clothing too, it seems. Razz

 

Both of those statements are incorrect. In this passage in TDR Rand's clothes get singed and the pillars cease to exist.

 

 

"The shaft of light struck the blade of Callandor - and parted on its edge, forking to stream

past on either side. He felt his coat singe from its near passage, smelled the wool beginning to

burn. Behind him, the two prongs of frozen fire, of liquid light, struck huge redstone columns;

where they struck, stone ceased to exist, and the burning bars bored through to other columns,

serving those instantaneously as well."

[Siswaiaman]

so what defines it, ultimately? The channelers's mindset? It can't be the force, because even small bf's have erased people.