Callandor ....industructable??

[bjclinton]

Quick question. I'm rereading the series right now and in The Fires of Heaven during the final battle scene between RA and Ishy in the Stone of Tear, Ishy opens the attack with a line of Balefire right at RA, who literally splits the line of BF into two, thus preventing it from hitting him and causing a lot of problems....big problems......

 

in any event, i was surprised that it was able to stop something as powerful as balefire and the only thing that I can come up with is that it must be made of Cuillander, and since nothing has ever been known to destroy cuilander, it split the balefire in two.

 

Sound about right? any other theories?

[Davian93]

Part of it is that Rand was channeling as much power as he could through an extremely powerful sa'angreal.  The crystal sword is probably made of a very hard form of crystal and the OP is what kept it from shattering.

[Man of MAdnEss]

I don't have my book with me at the moment but I seem to remember that Ishy was channeling the TP and that is why Callandor was able to split the BA.  Now if Ishy had use the OP the effect would have been different, I think.

 

MM

[bjclinton]

doesn't say anything about Ishy channeling the TP at this point in the book. either way, why would that make a difference? Balefire is Balefire...

 

still can't figure out how Balefire was cut in two.....even if it was made of a hard crystal. you can balefire a mountain out of existance- how does something made of crystal stop it? even if it is filled with uber amounts of the OP. does anyone recall anything else stopping balefire in the series? i cannot seem to recall any such thing happening.

 

any other theories?

[DemandredFO]

It never says explicitly that Ishy is using the True Power but I will make an educated guess and say he was.  Except for training Dreadlords Ishy probably used the True Power.  As to Callandor, I think Davian is right because cuendillar needs to be iron to begin, Callandor is most definitely crystal.

[bjclinton]

Then for the sake of assumption, lets assume that Ishy was channeling the TP as opposed to the OP....

 

How would the effect that balefire has on things be any different? Its still balefire.

 

If a female channeller uses balefire with Saidar and a male channeller uses balefire weaving the flows of Saidin, the outcome is still the same.

 

Based on your answer, do you think that the actual properties of Balefire are different if its created with the TP? If thats the case....wouldn't it be something different than Balefire?

 

(Edit for further thoughts)

 

Now that I think about it, there is nothing in this scene that would lead the reader to believer that he is using the TP...however, there are hints that Rand is learning from Ishy's channeling, which means he must be using the OP (such as opening up the portal to TAR where they actually do battle).

 

Also, thinking about how BF works, what ever object it destroys "ceases to exist right before it is even touched".....based on that, the materiel that Callandor is made out of shouldn't matter.

[DemandredFO]

I forgot about the portal, you're right, it must have been saidin.  No one can detect the True Power.  Oops

[SonAr]

First of all the scene is not in TFOH but in TDR.

It says that rand just basing on instinct, and memories of Laws therin, channeled into callandor to save himself of the incoming balefire. RJ said that nothing can withstand balefire, but did he ever say no one can channel a wave that splits it?

[Luckers]

I forgot about the portal, you're right, it must have been saidin.  No one can detect the True Power.  Oops

 

Indeed, furthermore at the very end of that scene we see Ishamael call to the shadow around him to aid him, which seems to be suggestively the moment that he begins to utilize the True Power.

 

Additionally, whilst we have the comparison to Moiraine's balefire, we don't actually know for sure that what Ishamael did WAS balefire. Concider the description of Lews Therin's death which  is also very similar in terms of the description of the intensity of the fire that destroyed him as to Moiraine's balefire, and yet was not balefire.

 

Otherwise i would suggest that the sword is some form of cuendillar. We know from the male a'dam that cuendillar can be made to look different to the generic brown-like stone collar.

 

But if that is not the case, i suppose it is possible that Rand stumbled on some heretofor unknown method of blocking balefire--we see an almost comprable situation in the next book with the shadowspawn-seeking lightning. If such a weave required such power, then in the past it would likely have never been discovered, because the only ones allowed such powerful sa'angreal would have been very well trained and set in that training, and thus unlikely to fumble upon weaves.

[cloglord]

Indeed, Luckers made most all of the points that I was going to.  The male adam is an example of a form of cuendillar that is not the typical heartstone white, as are the seals, since they seem to be made of at least two different colors of cuendillar.  I'll add that it would appear that Ishy was using the TP at the beggining of that battle as well, as he is described as having shadow exude from him upon his apearance after Bel'al's death.  Since Rand also sensed his weave into TAR it appears that Ishy was using both powers to some extent, and even possibly using them simultaneously, (although I'm not sure how that would work...)

 

The other thing that I would mention is that there is a specific example of Cuendillar surviving OP balefire.  In the Panarch's palace, there is some cuendillar item, (can't remember might have been the sad bracelets,) that falls to the floor after it, and the platform it was on, got hit by a blast from the big black balefire wand.

 

My $.02?  Callandor is a form of cuendillar, and since it's also a sword it doesn't do a half bad job of slicing things in two. ;D

[bjclinton]

this is good stuff guys....i was also leaning more towards the cuellander theory myself as well, but couldn't find any examples of that happening....great reference above!

[Davian93]

I will rest my hat on it not being a form of cuendillar but rather it was the massive amount of OP that was able to split the balefire weave.

[bjclinton]

the problem w/ that theory is that there is nothing in the series that would support what you're saying. Balefire is from the AoL and Powerful Sa'Angreal were used in the AoL...if that were true, if just holding enough of the OP in an item could split a weave of BF, I would suspect that some scrap of knowledge would have survived about that, considering all of the other knowledge that has survived re: BF.

 

unless you can recall something that i've completely missed, its complete speculation.

 

What we do know, however, is that Cuillander cannot be destroyed by balefire- therefore the only logical explanation is that the sword was made of cuillander...based on deductive reasoning with the facts that are available to us.