Halima, Mat and attempted Compulsion

[Kalessin]

While reading that hilarious scene of Mat trying to make sense of the Aes Sedai at Salidar celebrating Egwene's ascent to the Amyrlin Seat, I read that bit about Mat anti-Power angreal going chilly after dancing with Halima and wandering on, and I thought, of all the things Halima is most likely to try, it's Compulsion. He's ta'veren, he's got the ear of the Dragon Reborn, he's clearly one of the linchpins of the resistance to the Dark One, and taking him out of the play and making use of him is going to get Halima major kudos from the Dark One and Chosen cohorts.

 

What do people think?

[DojoToad]

Definitely possible.  I'm coming back up to that scene in my reading now.  Will have to keep an eye out.

[Andra]

This scene brings up an apparent contradiction regarding Mat and his amulet.

Whatever was happening, it was clearly Halima channeling at him.  With Saidin.

 

Yet when Mat is killed in Caemlyn (before being "rewound" back to life by Rand's balefire) we are told that the fox-head didn't protect him from Saidin.

 

Which raises the question: how were the two events different?  Was Halima trying to directly touch him with the Power (by Compulsion or anything else) so it shielded him, but Rahvin's lightning wasn't the Power directly, so it didn't?

Remember that either Adeleas or Vandene threw horse manure at him with Saidar, and it didn't protect him.

 

In other words, was it an oversight/contradiction?  Or a clever application of the rules?

[Samt]

7 minutes ago, Andra said:

This scene brings up an apparent contradiction regarding Mat and his amulet.

Whatever was happening, it was clearly Halima channeling at him.  With Saidin.

 

Yet when Mat is killed in Caemlyn (before being "rewound" back to life by Rand's balefire) we are told that the fox-head didn't protect him from Saidin.

 

Which raises the question: how were the two events different?  Was Halima trying to directly touch him with the Power (by Compulsion or anything else) so it shielded him, but Rahvin's lightning wasn't the Power directly, so it didn't?

Remember that either Adeleas or Vandene threw horse manure at him with Saidar, and it didn't protect him.

 

In other words, was it an oversight/contradiction?  Or a clever application of the rules?

I'd always assumed that the amulet doesn't protect him in Caemlyn because the lightning doesn't directly target him.  It's not clear to me, though, exactly what that means.  (I think the assumption that the amulet doesn't protect him against Saidin is incorrect and just a result of the unreliable narrator).  

 

Lightning attacks using the power appear to be just regular lightning that is caused by the power.  Visually, I think they don't come from the channeler but rather from the air (ie. it's not something like force lightning from the star wars universe that literally emanates from the hands of the force user). Regular lightning is caused when a large electrostatic potential builds up between two clouds or between a cloud and the ground.  I assume that one power lightning is the same thing except that the electrostatic potential build-up is caused by the power.  The lightning itself is caused by the buildup, not by the power.  It's a bit like using the power to roll a rock up a hill and the letting it fall down on someone.  I'm not sure if anyone ever uses a lightning attack indoors.  

 

Thus, I would suspect that Mat is vulnerable to lightning in general, but I'm not sure if this is contradicted elsewhere in the series.  Alternately, I believe that when Rahvin attacks in Caemlyn, there is some general destruction of buildings.  The rubble from the destruction might have also hit Mat.  

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

Yeah, I think the point is that if you create lightning or fire with the power, the amulet won't protect you. It's only the weaves directly that will be unravelled.

 

Of course, that doesn't bear too close a scrutiny, if you weave a fireball, what is burning? But there is a difference between actual flames and weaves of Fire.

[Samt]

21 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

Yeah, I think the point is that if you create lightning or fire with the power, the amulet won't protect you. It's only the weaves directly that will be unravelled.

 

Of course, that doesn't bear too close a scrutiny, if you weave a fireball, what is burning? But there is a difference between actual flames and weaves of Fire.

Like you said, I'm not sure that makes as much sense for fireballs as it does for lightning bolts.  The book descriptions seem to suggest that fireball attacks do actually form from near the channeler and travel from him or her.  Of course, that fireball can ignite a mundane fire, but I think it's logical to assume that the fireball itself is still sustained by the power as it travels.  There aren't, after all, natural fireballs flying around the world in the way that lightning naturally occurs.  

 

This does open a bit of a can of worms as to what constitutes the power directly affecting the holder of the fox medallion, and what is just a secondary effect that results from the power doing something.  Holding with air or suffocating him by removing the air could be argued to just be controlling the air and then Mat is affected by the air and not by the one power directly.  Perhaps if the channeling is maintained then the medallion protects against it.  But if the channeling has already stopped, the secondary effects that remain are not affected by the medallion.  

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

Yup, it does does get a bit complicated.

 

For fireballs, I have always thought why they used them was that they were channeled close, then thrown. This means that the application of power is not done at distance (like making shadowspawn burst into flame with weaves). But then what is burning? Oxygen in the air solidified with Air flows?

 

With Lightning too, there seem to be two kinds at least. The girls at Cairhien manipulate the air to create local lightning storms that they move about the place, meaning they are not channeling the strikes directly and they are more "carpet bombing" their targets. We certainly see though that lightning is also used as a direct weapon without lag to generate it and deliberately aimed.

 

I've always felt RJ was happy leaving this kind of thing as a soft magic system where he gives you the rough outline but let's you add your own detail. To an extent, more detail would actual make it less believable as there would always be some sort of question about how it worked.

 

With the amulet the hard and fast rule is that weaves that touch Mat directly dissolve, so that could include Fireballs if they are some sort of tied off weave. But things created by the power like natural lightning (though Rahvin's trap sounds very direct and targetted) have no weaves to dissolve in the first place.

[Andra]

And to quote a different franchise: "This will really bake your noodle."

 

It hard to picture anything else in Randland that is a more direct application of the One Power on something physical than holding a Gateway open.  So much so that Shadowspawn (except for Gholam) can't survive going through one. 

Descriptions of how they initially take shape show the Power directly altering reality before the weaves that create the "frame" of the Gateway even exist.  Which would seem to say that every atom of the space within a Gateway is being directly affected by Saidar or Saidin for the entire time it's open.

 

Yet Mat passes through Gateways multiple times with the fox-head.  As do other people with the clones Elayne made of it.

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

The descriptions of how Gateways work seem to leave doubt that they are literal gateways between two points created by the Power, not some sort of portal that transports you using the Power.

 

The point that Shadowspawn cannot travel through them is, as far as I can see, entirely arbitrary to explain why the Forsaken do not use Travelling to overrun the Westlands with Trollocs, and why only the Borderlands are plagued by trolloc raids. In the lore this is completely ad hoc compared to any other information about Shadowspawn or Travelling. 

 

Unless I missed something, of course.

[Samt]

The way the Egwene rediscovers traveling through a better understanding of Tel suggests that gateways are connected to Tel or some other alternate plane of existence. The way it works in my head cannon is that gateways are actually a portal to an alternate plane where distances are all very short followed by another portal out of that plane. These two portals are slightly and precisely offset in the other plane and due to the scaling of that plane this leads to them being in very different places in the real world.  The scaling in that plane is so extreme that even traveling across the entire world is fractions of an inch in that plane and thus the two portal seem to be in the same place.

 

As to why shadowspawn can’t go there, it has to do with the nature of their souls.  Perrin and Slayer gain the ability to go to Tel at will due to the dual nature of their souls.  Shadowspawn don’t even have souls that are connected to their bodies in the traditional way.  The dark one has made a twisted connection, but this connection is unnatural and thus cannot persist across planes of existence. Therefore, taking shadowspawn from the real world into another destroys the connection to their souls and thus kills them.  
 

This does raise questions about the ways, but in my head cannon I decided that the ways are not another alternate plane but rather a folding of reality to make distances different.  The ways don’t actually leave our plane.

 

All just head cannon, but it makes sense to me.

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

I see what you mean, possibly this is very similar to what RJ had envisioned. 

 

To me, the male way of weaving a Gateway, boring through the pattern seems to be physically connecting those points. The female way of creating a similarity sounds almost like quantum entanglement or something like that, but it all seems to be about creating the Gateway in the pattern, not actually transporting anything through it. The TAR thing seemed to me to more like just a technique you could use in the pattern (age lace) or in the fabric of TAR, rather than actually the same thing.

 

But your construction certainly neatly explains the Shadowspawn issue, which mine most certainly does not.

[Dan G]

I might be overthinking this but regarding fireballs, would a weave of fire transfer enough heat/ energy to ignite the oxygen directly above a channelers hand that is able to form plasma? 

Or is a fireball a particularly energetic type of weave of fire in and of itself? 

Of course this leads to rhe other question of how a weave is maintained in a very local ares while still moving from point A to point B. 

Is the weave that creates a fireball tied off like other weaves and what is its range limit? 

With other weaves they seem to flow from a channeler until tied off, but fireballs seem to operate differently,  more like a thrown baseball. 

In my head I visualize some type of plasma,  basically an organically created form of the Romulan weapon from Star Trek or maybe a photon torpedo. 

[Samt]

1 hour ago, Dan G said:

I might be overthinking this but regarding fireballs, would a weave of fire transfer enough heat/ energy to ignite the oxygen directly above a channelers hand that is able to form plasma? 

Or is a fireball a particularly energetic type of weave of fire in and of itself? 

Of course this leads to rhe other question of how a weave is maintained in a very local ares while still moving from point A to point B. 

Is the weave that creates a fireball tied off like other weaves and what is its range limit? 

With other weaves they seem to flow from a channeler until tied off, but fireballs seem to operate differently,  more like a thrown baseball. 

In my head I visualize some type of plasma,  basically an organically created form of the Romulan weapon from Star Trek or maybe a photon torpedo. 

Oxygen doesn't burn on its own no matter how hot it is.  Fire is a reaction that involves oxygen combining with something else, usually hydrocarbons.  The air on its own does not contain sufficient levels of flammable gases to sustain a fire.  If it did, any fire would create a chain reaction that would spread unchecked throughout the face of the whole earth.  

 

I think this discussion raises questions about what weaves of fire, air, earth, and water actually are.  It doesn't seem like this works like benders from the avatar series where benders are actually controlling a piece of the element.  The ability of a channeler to weave an element doesn't seem to depend much on access to the element.  Channeling water weaves isn't easier in the ocean than it is in the desert and channeling earth doesn't become impossible (or even significantly more difficult) high in the air or in the middle of the ocean.  Thus, it is clear that weaving elements is not about using actual physical pieces of the elements.

 

Moreover, it seems that weaves of a specific element do not actually create or constitute that element.  The residue that weaves leave behind is not a material component. 

 

It seems that the weaves of elements consist of some sort of metaphysical shadow or parallel version of the elements rather than the elements themselves.  

[Dan G]

2 hours ago, Samt said:

Oxygen doesn't burn on its own no matter how hot it is.  Fire is a reaction that involves oxygen combining with something else, usually hydrocarbons.  The air on its own does not contain sufficient levels of flammable gases to sustain a fire.  If it did, any fire would create a chain reaction that would spread unchecked throughout the face of the whole earth.  

 

I think this discussion raises questions about what weaves of fire, air, earth, and water actually are.  It doesn't seem like this works like benders from the avatar series where benders are actually controlling a piece of the element.  The ability of a channeler to weave an element doesn't seem to depend much on access to the element.  Channeling water weaves isn't easier in the ocean than it is in the desert and channeling earth doesn't become impossible (or even significantly more difficult) high in the air or in the middle of the ocean.  Thus, it is clear that weaving elements is not about using actual physical pieces of the elements.

 

Moreover, it seems that weaves of a specific element do not actually create or constitute that element.  The residue that weaves leave behind is not a material component. 

 

It seems that the weaves of elements consist of some sort of metaphysical shadow or parallel version of the elements rather than the elements themselves.  

You raise very good points about oxygen in the atmosphere not being combustible. Typically,  I would have not thought along this line except for the magical system in place for WOT. Certainly there are metaphysics in play that are not real world 

Interestingly,  as you probably know, there was some concern during the Manhattan Project about igniting a chain reaction of all the hydrogen in the atmosphere.  

Instead of being of the specific element,  weaves might be based on the real world effect they have. 

We know there is technology left over from the age of Legonds,  so perhaps it is similar to the Stargate franchise concept where a very few individuals have a gene allowing them to interface with Anchent Tech. 

It is clear in WOT that a significant amount of knowledge has been lost and experiments with this tech can and have proven dangerous.