Gholam

[Luckers]

I remember shivering when i first read the scene in which the gholam is contemplating life without obedience to the Forsaken. I wondered at the time if RJ was going to move forward with that idea and turn the gholam into a wildcard, and more recently i concluded that he wouldn't... he just didn't have the time. Recently, however, i was re-reading Jordan Quotes, and i came accross this in the QotW.

 

Week 6 Question: How were the Gholams made? Were they created or bred like the Trollocs? How exactly are they controlled if they are immune to the One Power?

 

Robert Jordan Answers: The gholam---singular and plural are the same---were created, not bred. Supposedly their creation involved making them so that they would be obedient to the Chosen, whoever they might be at any given time. This was an attempt at copying something that had turned up in Myrddraal, which seem incapable of disobeying one of the Chosen, possibly because of the use of the True Power in creation of the Trollocs, the parent stock of the Myrddraal. Even Aginor, who created the Trollocs, and thus indirectly the Myrddraal, was uncertain about the actual cause. (Becoming one of the Forsaken involves receiving a mark from the Dark One in return for your oaths; this mark is invisible and cannot be sensed by another human being, even another of the Forsaken, but it can be by certain non-human creatures, including Myrddraal and draghkar among others. This may play a part in the Myrddraal's obedience but doesn't explain it completely.) This element in gholam has some flaws, however, as we have seen in a small measure. In any case, if I were you, I wouldn't try giving orders to a gholam unless I were one of the Forsaken.

 

It occurs to me that the last figure who had authority over the Gholam was Sammael, who is dead. Moridin wasn't even aware that the gholam was in Ebou Dar. So has the Gholam been running free all this time, slipping its chain? Certainly Semirhage seemed unaware of who the murderer was, though in truth that could simply be her not revealing herself in front of Tuon, which seems eminantly reasonable.

 

If the gholam is free its actions make sense. Fixating on Mat, the one person who had ever hurt it, likely gave it reason and purpose in its newly undirected life, and if RJ were going to unleash the gholam, it does make sense for it to have happened off screen... indeed, he could do some really clever things with the surprise of such an event. What do you guys think?

 

[Cadsuane]

If Sammael was the one ordering it to go after Mat, it may just be continuing on those orders, as it may not have received new ones after Sam's death. I agree that it would be interesting to have gholam free to do his own thing, but I worry about how that's going to fit with all the other things that seem to NEED to happen.

[Guest cwestervelt]

The gholam's orders weren't to go after Mat.  It was brought to Ebou Dar to deal with Nynaeve, Elayne and Aviendha because the BA were afraid of them.  Mat just got in the way.

[grump]

I wonder if Mat will have the presence of mind or the time to ask the finns about a weapon that affects the Gholam when he goes looking for Moraine

[Guest cwestervelt]

Mat already has the only object we have seen that can harm the gholam.  The medalion he got from the 'Finns when they hung him from Avendesora.  Mat just needs to figure out how to make it more effective.  Also, again thanks to the 'Finns, he has all those memories that make him such a good tactician.  He has shown a great ability for adapting those memories so I'm sure he could come up with something without more help from them.

[Charlz Guybon]

 

Certainly Semirhage seemed unaware of who the murderer was, though in truth that could simply be her not revealing herself in front of Tuon, which seems eminantly reasonable.

 

 

I think Semirhage must have recognized the signs left as the work of a Gholam, unless there was another type of Shadowspawn that fed upon it's victims in the same way. Even then, a Gholam would have been on the short list of suspects.

[Luckers]

Or it could have been just the run of the mill human whack-job.

 

Also, we don't know that the Finns know anything about the way that the medallion works, other than that it works. The presence of the Aes Sedai symbol suggests to me that its possible that the medallion was made FOR the finns, not by the finns. Possibly in payment of something.

[callandor]

maybe the gholam recognizes mat as a ta'veren and some order of sammaels was to kill any ta'veren and mat has been the only one it has seen.

[Luckers]

Well Sammael did tell the Gholam to kill Mat if it could, though he was in no way the prime target. It's possible in the absence of everything else, the Gholam is using that to follow its own fixation on the man that hurt it.

 

A sort of faux-freedom.

[callandor]

i meant to add that sammael had ordered it, and soo it kinda remembered that and along with mat was the only person to hurt it sooo, vengence.

[Soloce]

I was just re-reading Leigh's posts on Tor.com, and started thinking about this a bit more.  She says (and I don't have the book with me, but I trust Leigh):

"The gholam enters the room cautiously, still feeling the pain of the burn on its cheek; it had never encountered anything that could harm it until “that man with the medallion”. The itch it feels is from something like the One Power, yet not; it’s familiar to it, but it cannot recall from where".

 

So then I searched for 'Gholam' and 'True Power' on this site.  It seems that some people believe there is a connection between Mat's medallion being made of the True Power and the Gholam being made of it as well.  A couple of people assert that the Gholam is made as such, but there was no text to back it up.  So first, does anyone have this?  Then, is there a more recent thread on the medallion being made of the True Power?

 

Finally, what got my head swirling (with no real outcome) was the recent thread about the Rand/Mori connection from the SL incident.  I was thinking that most people have assumed that it was like the Ghostbusters crossing the streams.  But what if the two negated each other, so the Rand actually lost the Source and that's why it hurt so much?

 

I'm not sure where all this was going, but figured if it had been hashed out already, someone could point me to a thread. 

[Fains nose]

@Solace            that scene where the gholam senses the true power is when it enters a room where Moridin had just used the True Power, it didnt mean it was sensing thd true power from the medalion. As for how the medalion was made, i imagine it involved the combination of Saidin and Saidar being sort of inverted together or used in someway to repel their opposite force, like how Rand used Saidar to repel Saidin at the cleansing of the taint

[Soloce]

Yup, sorry, didn't mean to imply I thought it was because of Matt.  I was saying because Matt's T'A does the same thing, and it can hurt the Gholam that establishes my line of thought.  Someone else had suggested there could be such things as TP T'As though, which I thought was also an interesting line of thought.

[Shadow Rider]

Maybe the could some how incorporate the Medallion into the ashandarei so that it becomes part of it....that would kill it.

[Fains nose]

Has it been established whether Mats Ter'Angreal hurts the gholam because it repels the power like the golum does or could any Ter'angreal/angreal hurt it, because ive always fantasised that callandor could be used as a sword to chop the golum

[Val Mickey]

I've always wanted to ask the experts this: When Mat meets Noal for the 1st time, he mentions meeting a gholam in SL. Does this mean Mordeth is/was a gholam? He acted weirdly that time, bloating up and all.

[Fains nose]

Although im not an "expert" i thing i can safely say Mordeth was not a golum. He was more of a ghost type being

[Kikutez]

I always thought of Mat's medallion as some sort of magnet, but then in reverse.. When the + sides of 2 magnets get too close to each other they push the other away, so when saidar is used on Mat ('s medallion) it's like how these magnets work, it won't touch him.

 

Since using Saidar on the Gholam is ineffective, let's just say that he's positive (+) as well. Since two "plusses" don't go together it's obvious Mat can hurt him with the medallion when it does touch the Gholam. (If you use enough force and the magnets aren't that powerful you can make positive sides meet). Should Mat show his medallion to Elayne (while in Caemlyn) perhaps she can make more or bigger weapons with the same features?

 

Just my 2 cents.. (sorry for the bad English, I'm still Dutch)

[Wantanswers]

After Mat saved Elayne from the gholam in Ebou Dar, she said to him he had to give her a chance to save him once, so she could get rid of her toh. If she gave him the knife ter'angreal Aviendha discovered among the Ebou Dar stash, he would be invisible for the gholam and he could kill him with his foxhead ter'angreal

[algspkr]

RJ said the medallion hurt the Gholam because they functioned in a similar fashion.  I always pictured this as being similar to two ter'angreal of a similar nature resonating with each other.

 

I am a bit worried about Mat killing the Gholam with it as seems possible that this will destroy the medallion, although the available evidence suggests that this is not going to happen.

[Sharaman]

I've always wanted to ask the experts this: When Mat meets Noal for the 1st time, he mentions meeting a gholam in SL. Does this mean Mordeth is/was a gholam? He acted weirdly that time, bloating up and all.

 

Mat mentions seeing a creature (Mordeth) vanish into a very small hole in Shadar Logoth. Not a gholam, just something that can slip into impossibly small spaces.