The Golden Crane transport

[Wooden Hedgehog]

When Nynaeve drops Lan off at Worlds End, how does she immediately make another gateway a zoom off to another part of Saldea?

 

I thought the rules were clear on this, "You must know a place really well to travel from there."

 

She had to look up where she was going from a book in the Library before she left. So obviously, she did not where she was going or the location.

 

Is this a new Nynaeve talent???

[alCal]

I believe it's said somewhere in the books that if you have Travelled to a place, you can Travel from it without beeing there for a couple of hours. But that's only if you travelled there in the first place, and that's what Nynaeve did.

[Luckers]

RJ answered this in his blog, he said that in travelling to a place, you learnt it.

[Red States Rule!]

I think what everyone is asking is if she hadn't been there in the first place, how could she have known to go exactly to that spot when she created her weave?

 

I thought the same thing too.... but here's an answer.

 

This hasn't been brought up, but I'm going to compare Sammael's "breaking Illian up into boxes" thing here.

 

One is able to travel line of sight no matter what. Say a hilltop on the horizon 3 miles away. In mountainous areas this distance gets even greater.

 

How long would it take to open a gateway, step through, close it, open another on the horizon, step through, close it, and get all the way across Randland? Then come back but equally far south on the horizon? (assuming you start from the NW corner, world's end)? Repeat yourself eastward, then westward. Then you would know where everything is.

 

Quite frankly I'm surprised that hasn't been mentioned as being part of Asha'man travel training. You could go across the waste and even recruit in Shara. It would only not work over water.

[Luckers]

That isn't nessasary, you only have to 'know' the place you are travelling to if you are skimming. To travel you only need to 'know' the place you are travelling from... by know i mean in the sense that you must know it in the intimate form of creating a gateway. When travelling you only need a ver basic understanding of your exit point... as evidenced by Elaynes and several others, a map or a description is all that is nessasary to do this.

[Guest Winespring Brother]

There is perhaps a slight error in this chain of thought.

For travelling you only need a rough idea of where you are going, although it seems the better you know the target, the more accurately you can place the gateway.

The key is to know where you are travelling from. We see how after correcting the weather, Elayne holds the power and memorises the are of the Kin's farm so she can make the gateway.

 

We have seen from Rand in Illian that you can make a gateway over a short distance without learning an area, because Rand opens the gate to Illian but other Ashaman run throug and make other ones to places around the city.

 

We have also seen with Nyneave, backed up by RJ, that travelling to a place, automatically means you know it well enough to travel again from it.

 

So my question is, if you are in an area you don't know, wanting to travel somewhere far away, what is to stop you opening a gateway to a spot a few metres away, making yourself know that location to a good enough degree that you can then do a long distance travel from it?

Did that make any sense?

[SinisterDeath]

I think I got what you are saying..

You are saying, If Person X makes a Gate way from point A to point B. Then from point B makes a gateway to point C, Whats stopping them from going from point C to A, or A to C?

Right?

 

Well, I think the answer is they can't *unless it already happend in the books*

The way I see it, a weave changes slightly for every gateway. No two gateway are exactly threaded alike, the process is the same, but the threads arent. The threads change, due to the location you are at, and possibly traveling to... So, If you made a gateway to A -> B -> C, you should only be able to make a gateway from C -> B -> A with out having to memorize your location..... Now if she memorized location C, I don't see any reason why she couldn't travel from C -> A..

[Luckers]

Actually sinister, i would say it is possible. It matches all the theoretical needs to create a travelling gateway.

[SinisterDeath]

Well, it all depends on how you look at it.

To create a gateway, you need to know where you are at correct?

When you make a weave A->B->C you don't exactly know where "C" is. But you know the "Weave" from B->C hence why you are able to make said weave over and over again, with out having to study it..

But I've been wrong about things like this before. Maybe just creating a weave to point C, allows you to know what point C looks like in a wave enough to make one to Point A... Maybe making one from C->B would be alot easier however, then making one from C->A.

*as the weave from B->C, and C->B are identical i'd imagine....*

[Guest Winespring Brother]

Hmm, all this a, b and c makes me think of maths or something.

 

What I was trying to get at before was this. Making a gateway like Nynaeve did with Lan to Saldea automatically gave Nyneave the knowledge of the place where the gateway opened to a sufficient level that she could open a gateway from it. Meaning that although you don't have to "know" a place to Travel to it, as soon as you do Travel to it, you "know" it. This we have definitely seen.

 

We have also seen that you don't have to "know" the place you are travelling from, if you only go a short distance.

 

To me, the next step of logic would be, for example, if Rand was riding along a forest road and suddenly wanted to Travel to see Elayne. He doesn't "know" the road so he cannot Travel from it, except over a very short distance. So if Rand opens a gateway to a spot 20 yards down the road, he has clearly opened a gateway there. Shouldn't he then automatically have enough knowledge of that spot 20 yards down the road that he can open a gateway to anyplace from it? Or does opening a gateway over a short distance not give you the same knowledge of the destination place as opening a long distance one?

 

If the they are both the same, you would never have to worry about not knowing a place well enough to make a gateway, because opening up a short distance one would automatically let you "know" a place well enough to open a long distance one.

[SinisterDeath]

Hmm, so I was kinda close to what you were saying... It's an interesting idea though..... I think this is something only RJ could answer..

[Graendals favourite]

Perhaps the reason would be that you either need to know the place you leave from firmly, or the two places in comparison to each other. If you know the first, you will know where the target place is in comparison to the first one, and so know it well. However, going a short distance, you only know the place you're going in comparison to where you leave, like 100 metres due north, so you will not know where either is in comparison to a third place, and you still haven't learned what the places really are like. Does this make any sense?

[Luckers]

Which is plausible, but still suppostition at this stage. It really depends on how the learning occurs in exit point gateways. I think that it is sufficient, learning happens faster with channeling because its raising your perception of something, but to bend the pattern, or make it similar, would also increases your perceptions of the exit it point, even over short distance. To me, it is likely that it can occur in the manner suggested.

[Blade]

Hold on, did she actually close the gateway after she let Lan through? that's the question I'm having right now. She could easily have just held it open, walked back through, and then opened another gateway to somewhere else in the borderlands. That would explain how it didn't take her an hour to make another gateway. I don't have KoD in my collection yet since I'm waiting for the paperback, so I don't know about this one.

[rd2000]

No, she made a new gateway. The story made that very clear.

 

I recall one of the first characters to travel (Rand I think) describes it in his POV as "folding". To understand "folding", think of a piece of white paper representing the land (a plane) draw two dots any distance apart on that paper (two points on a plane) Now, FOLD the paper so that those two dots are against each other, it now takes but a step to travel from one dot to the other dot.

[Blade]

that's the male way to do it. I think girls do it differently.

[Luckers]

Indeed, women do it by making two places similar. Either way means your going to end up knowing the end point well enough to open a gateway from there.

[bcxanth]

The only thing I can think of is that if you open a gateway over a short distance from a place you don't know, you don't actually "learn" the place when you arrive either. Perhaps they use slightly different weaves?

 

I don't know, but that's all I can think of. That the short hops gateways don't give the same benefit that the long hop ones do. Otherwise it seems like that's something the AS of the AoL would have some up with back then, and so the Foresaken would have that knowledge too. And potentially Rand would as well because of having LTT riding around in the back of his head.

[algspkr]

This is discussed when Elayne and Avi are out visiting farms and villages. I think it was in CoT. If you open a gateway you automatically learn the spot it opens on.

[Luckers]

Opens to... you have to know the spot it opens on or else it wont open...

 

There is no evidence that the Aes sedai in the Age of Legends weren't aware of that fact. It's not like it would give some great advantage. It doesn't take too long to learn a place the normal way, this would save maybe an hour at most... not too special.

[Guest Winespring Brother]

When your in a hurry, an hour could make all the difference.

 

I agree with bcxanth, that perhaps travelling over a short distance does just not give you the same learning benefit as long distance does, for some reason.

[Luckers]

I mean sure, it's plausible... but there is no evidence that its impossible, nor evidence it wasn't known to the Age of Legenders...and indeed, evidence to suggest that it is possible. I don't really see the big problem... if you really need to travel that quickly just skim to somewhere you know.

[bcxanth]

If you're in a battle situation, such as the War of Power, and you need to move troops immediately, you're going to use every advantage you can to get them to their destination as soon as possible. If you have a desperate need for troops somewhere, and you can do a short hop, then a long hop, and get them there in 20 minutes, or you can skim the whole bunch of them there in one trip but it takes five hours, then you use the option that gets you there over four hours faster.

 

Now, the evidence from the books is that LTT was a brilliant tactician and general. Someone like that would certainly be aware of the benefits of the short+long gateway scenario, and so I can't help but think that this knowledge is something that would have filtered through to Rand by now as well. Yet Rand still chooses to learn his ground first, or skim, if he has to travel from a currently unknown location.

[Luckers]

Now, the evidence from the books is that LTT was a brilliant tactician and general. Someone like that would certainly be aware of the benefits of the short+long gateway scenario, and so I can't help but think that this knowledge is something that would have filtered through to Rand by now as well. Yet Rand still chooses to learn his ground first, or skim, if he has to travel from a currently unknown location.

 

Like deathgates or blossoms of fire... which only came to Rand just now? The information has a tendency to slip through when its desperately needed, and Rand hasn't needed to yet. Moreover, the way Rand thinks about the TP suggests he's known for some time, yet we had no clue that information had slipped through.

[Inara]

hes been adopting some of LTT's personality traits for a while now...thumbing his earlobe??

so perhaps he doesnt realise that he knows this, if LTT knows, then it is just as likely that rand has the knowledge, but is not concious of it as smoethning he has learned. like mat's memories, they are just there when he needs them.