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DRAGONMOUNT

A WHEEL OF TIME COMMUNITY

Concerning Balefire


phoenix

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Well the Shadow still clearly have some left over skitecism about using it. Even to the level that the Dark One actually asks Demandred to use it, rather than commanding he use it.

 

As for the influence of balefire on TG... all i have to add is that RJ stated that the amount of balefire required to destroy the Dark One would destroy reality. Short of that i can offer nothing.

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Since we're discussing Balefire I wondered something as well.

 

After Rand kills Rhavin in the World of Dreams with balefire, I wondered if the other stuff that Rand destroyed in Tel'aran'rhiod with balefire was affected in the real world.

 

The "what happens in The World of Dreams happens in real life" rule seems to only affect living things (scars, death, etc) so I wondered if you balefired something there, would the actual thing (a wall, stairs, whatever)be affected in the waking world? 

 

Obviously Rhavin died because he was there in the flesh - but I imagine balefire would have killed him if he had been a Dreamer as well.

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  • 2 months later...

Naw, even the things that were destroyed by Balefire in T'A'R were repaired through the World of Dream's innate properties, but Rand (or Nynaeve) commented that they took an absurdly long time to reform. Asmodean met a wall that had been blasted by Balefire, but that had happened in the material world.

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Nope, Rahvin and Rand balefired each other inside the palace too, before going into the World of Dreams. At least the way I just read it.

 

I'm just filing the following question under this thread, because it seems senseless to make another thread just for it, since it concerns Balefire and all. If some extremely powerful channeler blasted someone with Balefire, could he erase previous lives too? You know, I'm talking about a Circle of 72 Rand-class channelers, having the Choeden Kal, Callandor, the Amyrlin's rod and what have you blasting like... an infant, so that the burning of the thread Balefire could do would stretch in the years beyond the gap between the person's reincarnations.

 

I'm not exactly asking if the power to do it can be actually mustered (well, Rand himself with the angreal which I calculate gives him a 2.5-3x increase in strength could blast Rahvin at least a quarter of an hour back, so if it was a full Circle with the Choeden Kal and everything they could presumably manage several years, but I don't know if they could reach quite enough) - that is irrelevant - only, would the effect of Balefire stretch beyond the current incarnation? And what about actions in the World of Dreams? (ie, if someone Balefired Birgitte after she moved to the material world would Moghedien be un-wounded?)

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Nope, Rahvin and Rand balefired each other inside the palace too, before going into the World of Dreams. At least the way I just read it.

 

Indeed, I went back and reread and you are correct. My appologies. Nevertheless I do maintain my comment--RJ did state that balefire in TAR would effect the world, and in strange ways, so it is more than possible that the effects held through.

 

I'm just filing the following question under this thread, because it seems senseless to make another thread just for it, since it concerns Balefire and all. If some extremely powerful channeler blasted someone with Balefire, could he erase previous lives too? You know, I'm talking about a Circle of 72 Rand-class channelers, having the Choeden Kal, Callandor, the Amyrlin's rod and what have you blasting like... an infant, so that the burning of the thread Balefire could do would stretch in the years beyond the gap between the person's reincarnations.

 

I'm not exactly asking if the power to do it can be actually mustered (well, Rand himself with the angreal which I calculate gives him a 2.5-3x increase in strength could blast Rahvin at least a quarter of an hour back, so if it was a full Circle with the Choeden Kal and everything they could presumably manage several years, but I don't know if they could reach quite enough) - that is irrelevant - only, would the effect of Balefire stretch beyond the current incarnation? And what about actions in the World of Dreams? (ie, if someone Balefired Birgitte after she moved to the material world would Moghedien be un-wounded?)

 

Balefire that strong would unravel the Wheel and completely destroy reality. It's possible, but more than the target would die.

 

As for TAR... RJ's comment about balefire in TAR effecting the real world, only in strange ways, implies the reverse would be true.

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How? Let's say someone was reincarnated 100 years after his death. And a strong enough Circle balefires him five minutes after he was born. Let's say that the strength of Balefire is enough to burn something 100 years and 10 minutes back in time. Even though the Balefire would have to be insanely strong to reach that far back, it still wouldn't do much, since the only actions that would be cancelled would be those the person took 5 minutes after his birth (not too much there) and 5 minutes before his previous death (again, nothing important). So yeah, how could it destroy the Pattern or something? Unless someone was stupid enough to thrust it in a downwards angle, in which case it would destroy the planet, it wouldn't affect anything except 10 minutes of a single thread (assuming it can affect previous lives, of course).

 

You're probably right about T'A'R. I wish we had some clearer explanations on that, though. Small chance of that happening in MoL.

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And the molecules that made him up? Some part of the genetic code of his parents would be removed, and of their parents before them, and of the food that got fed to him in the womb. What of the air that got touched by balefire as it streamed towards him?

 

Beyond that, souls exist even when they are dead. It would not be in the real world, but there would still be an effect.

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The genetic code isn't stripped away from the parents and "installed" into the child. Destroying it wouldn't affect the parents. Since the food would be donated to the unborn child anyway, again, destroying it wouldn't alter anything, since it would just... not be there, be as if it was never produced. Since it wouldn't alter the experiences of the people concerning it, it wouldn't unravel any more threads. And the air removed would be a very limited quantity, the area touched by the Balefire. Even if 1% of the Earth's oxygen was wrung out of the atmosphere, nothing much would change [EDIT: Actually, a lot of people would die if it was as much as 1%, but that's irrelevant. And in this case a lot, lot less than 1% would be affected by Balefire]. Air is not a substance either, so the "gap" left would be quickly refilled.

 

I thought only the Heroes of the Horn existed while dead? And the rest were just souls?

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Nothing comes from nothing man. That's basic physics. The atoms and molecules that make him up came from them--and from other sources too, which is part of the problem. The stuff that ends up in the kid begins elsewhere, and all of it is gone if that much time is removed.

 

Air is a substance by the way, and composed of more than simple oxygen. Remove a hundred years of only a limited area and it still creates an effect--trees that have moved in the wind no longer have moved, creatures that have breathed it no longer have breathed it. Storms made up from it, and influenced by it are no longer influenced.

 

The directly effected things may seem small, but make it over a hundred year period and the number of changes to the flow of events shatters the time line and the Age Lace simply falls apart.

 

I thought only the Heroes of the Horn existed while dead? And the rest were just souls?

 

The heroes exist in tel'aran'rhiod while dead, the other souls exist elsewhere--as shown by Osen'gar's thoughts following his first death--but they still exist, and being balefired still has an effect on them as shown by the Dark One's inability to transmigrate them.

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Yes, but destroying something, even with Balefire, doesn't affect its maker. Balefiring a baby with enough strength would mean that the baby didn't exist in its mother's womb over the last 9 months, that all enzymes, proteins and what have you that were used to feed it instead went to waste. That the sperm and egg cells that created it didn't even exist. But that's as far as it goes. It doesn't affect anything beyond that. And all the aforementioned things do not have a large impact on its environment, if at all.

 

And you misunderstood the oxygen part. Air isn't static. Let's say you remove a small batch of air. The air you removed is comprised of several gaseous substances, all of which were created not very long ago - it is known fact that air is constantly recycled, since the substances that comprise it are consumed and replaced all the time. The air removed will be gone up to the time in which the individual substances created it, because further back, it didn't even exist. How it was created is irrelvant - the lifeforms that affected its creation wouldn't be affected at all.

 

The thing is, you cannot destroy something before it began existing, and for all the things that would be destroyed in this case, that is not so long nor were they so important during that time that it would affect much.

 

And for the last part - what were Osan'gar's thoughts while he was dead? I don't remember them. Even if souls do exist (which they do, anyway), if they do nothing, then being Balefired doesn't change anything there.

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Yes, but destroying something, even with Balefire, doesn't affect its maker. Balefiring a baby with enough strength would mean that the baby didn't exist in its mother's womb over the last 9 months, that all enzymes, proteins and what have you that were used to feed it instead went to waste. That the sperm and egg cells that created it didn't even exist. But that's as far as it goes. It doesn't affect anything beyond that. And all the aforementioned things do not have a large impact on its environment, if at all.

 

Except that part of those anzymes were embibed by the child, and as such, as a part of the child, they were also removed. It is not just a case of that the child no longer existed to need these things, its that when the child was balefire, so was all things that his molecules existed in prior to being in that child.

 

Let me put it this way, no energy is destroyed or made. EVERY part of what made that child existed in something else prior--it was the specific combination that created the new being, and looking at it in the barest light, there was nothing created at all, merely remodelled.

 

So, every molecule in that child, every atom, every quark simple ceased to exist for a hundred years. And everything behind that child too--balefire strong enough to remove a few minutes swept clean through entire buildings, balefire strong enough to remove a hundred years....

 

So, in terms of men and politics this doesn't seem dramatic, but in terms of the very fabric of reality it is dramatic. Remove even just the atoms that make up one person for a hundred years into the past, and who knows the degree of the effects.

 

And you misunderstood the oxygen part. Air isn't static. Let's say you remove a small batch of air. The air you removed is comprised of several gaseous substances, all of which were created not very long ago - it is known fact that air is constantly recycled, since the substances that comprise it are consumed and replaced all the time. The air removed will be gone up to the time in which the individual substances created it, because further back, it didn't even exist. How it was created is irrelvant - the lifeforms that affected its creation wouldn't be affected at all.

 

They would be, because the molecules they had previously affected were no longer there. You seem to think that things are what they are only in their current state, but this is not the case--the air destroyed by the balefire may only have existed in its current gasous state for a brief period, but the molecules, atoms and quarks that make it up have existed since the creation of the universe. To remove them for a hundred years would have massive, and far reaching effects, because prior to being the air that floated around this child, those atoms were something else, and before that they were something else again.

 

Your looking at it on too big of a scale--everything is, at its core, atomic--completely removing some atoms from a hundred year period would be just as devestating to the nature of reality as removing a person involved in great social uphevals.

 

The thing is, you cannot destroy something before it began existing, and for all the things that would be destroyed in this case, that is not so long nor were they so important during that time that it would affect much.

 

No, you can't, but since everything began existing at the moment of creation, its a bit of a moot point.

 

And for the last part - what were Osan'gar's thoughts while he was dead? I don't remember them. Even if souls do exist (which they do, anyway), if they do nothing, then being Balefired doesn't change anything there.

 

He thinks about his second, more terrifying sleep when he is first resurrected, showing awareness.

 

And once again, being balefired does change that as shown by the Dark One.

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You are missing the fact that the molecules removed will not be concentrated, rather spread between an amount of different sources so great that it changes nothing on them, and a billion times nothing still equals nothing. Nature doesn't hang on a hair-thin balance where removing one atom will change something in the organism it was removed from, and removing an atom from each and every one of the gazillions of organisms that inhabit the Earth would change little, and that little in the very long run. Let me use a metaphore:

 

Let's say I decide to pierce the tip of my finger with a pin. A few drops of blood will fall, which equals thousands of atoms, until the wound closes. Those atoms are lost to me, yet nothing changes in my life. Oh, some will argue that because of that decision existence may be vastly different in a million years or even a hundred, and I'm not going to argue against that, but that's because of greater changes brought as a result of molecular ones - on a molecular level the change is so insignificant it doesn't matter to my organism.

 

Now let's say every people on Earth makes the same decision at the same time as me. A sum of trillions upon trillions of atoms is lost at the same time from the collective of the entire population of Earth, yet that again, changes nothing at all.

 

But if I were to wound myself so that I'd lose the same amount of atoms as that, I'd probably die of blood loss, or be severely impaired for the rest of my life. So while several thousand atoms lost by every person of Earth changes nothing, the sum of all these atoms lost from a single person will change the natural course of that person's organism drastically.

 

Same with Balefire. Gazillions of atoms simply cease to exist from a hundred years from a few thousand different organisms. But that can only change so very little in a single one, if anything at all, that even the collective changes brought upon every single organism mean way too little or nothing in the long run.

 

Now if I were to Balefire a grown man a hundred years back, a man who has eaten and drank and breathed through thirty or forty or whatever years, and I removed all those changes brought by him, even if it were a man who had never even spoken to another person, then yes, the changes would be dramatic.

 

Now, onto to other points brought by your post:

 

First, according to what I remember, Balefire only changed the Dark One's ability to ressurect that person. If that person's soul had been in a slumber sort of thing, and then was stripped clean of the Pattern, nothing would change. It's not like you can even bring up the molecular issue on this one, since the soul doesn't even exist in reality.

 

Second, you said that Balefire would destroy a lot of things in its course before it dissipated. At first I was going to say that the person can simply fire it in an upwards angle, but then you'd bring up the air removal point again (and you'd be quite correct). So I'm just going to say that a person can simply stop Balefire at any point before or after it hits its intended target by simply unraveling the weave. Done by Rand in Caemlyn, and he also tried to do it in the Waste when he balefired the Darkhounds after Mat but did not quite suceed.

 

Now if Balefire's heat rises according to its strength, that would change a lot since Balefire that can backtrack 100 years in existence would probably bear the heat of the sun on the Earth. But there isn't any evidence pointing towards that, it's only stated to be hot and bright. To forestall the "energy isn't lost so the greater energy put into the beam the greater the thermal energy produced" argument that I can totally see coming after this whole discussion, the energy put into Balefire translates into backtracking existence, not neccessarily into "visible" other forms of energy. So the heat could very well be standard, an aftereffect regardless of the power.

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You are missing the fact that the molecules removed will not be concentrated, rather spread between an amount of different sources so great that it changes nothing on them, and a billion times nothing still equals nothing. Nature doesn't hang on a hair-thin balance where removing one atom will change something in the organism it was removed from, and removing an atom from each and every one of the gazillions of organisms that inhabit the Earth would change little, and that little in the very long run. Let me use a metaphore:

 

Well, actually according to determinism nature does depend on hair-thin balances. The state of energy is set, if we can understand the position of one single atom, then theoretically we can predict the nature of the entire universe. Remove one atom....

 

And I'm missing nothing--your argument does not exist. Concentration in terms of human perception is not a viable or qualitative method of judging effect or influence. And for all that your wrote it in a sentence, it is not true that removing an atom from various organisms would have no effect--especially in terms of centuries.

 

Let's say I decide to pierce the tip of my finger with a pin. A few drops of blood will fall, which equals thousands of atoms, until the wound closes. Those atoms are lost to me, yet nothing changes in my life. Oh, some will argue that because of that decision existence may be vastly different in a million years or even a hundred, and I'm not going to argue against that, but that's because of greater changes brought as a result of molecular ones - on a molecular level the change is so insignificant it doesn't matter to my organism.

 

Now let's say every people on Earth makes the same decision at the same time as me. A sum of trillions upon trillions of atoms is lost at the same time from the collective of the entire population of Earth, yet that again, changes nothing at all.

 

But if I were to wound myself so that I'd lose the same amount of atoms as that, I'd probably die of blood loss, or be severely impaired for the rest of my life. So while several thousand atoms lost by every person of Earth changes nothing, the sum of all these atoms lost from a single person will change the natural course of that person's organism drastically.

 

Same with Balefire. Gazillions of atoms simply cease to exist from a hundred years from a few thousand different organisms. But that can only change so very little in a single one, if anything at all, that even the collective changes brought upon every single organism mean way too little or nothing in the long run.

 

What? The danger of balefire is not in that it does damage, its in that it does damage BEFORE the moment in which it occurs. It creates paradox, and the further back the more issues it creates.  On a basic physical level, to remove the atoms of a single person from the previous hundred years of history spells a massive absense. Quantum interactions that should have happened never did--it would destroy the very fabric of reality, throw order into chaos, undo all the physical laws that make existence work.

 

Direct damage is irrelevant here.

 

Now if I were to Balefire a grown man a hundred years back, a man who has eaten and drank and breathed through thirty or forty or whatever years, and I removed all those changes brought by him, even if it were a man who had never even spoken to another person, then yes, the changes would be dramatic.

 

From a human context, in a human social enviroment. But thats a misperception of whats going on here noticed only because that is the human experience. Reality won't unravel because Joe Blogs doesn't kill Sam Random like he was supposed to, but because what was supposed to be is not the case anymore. That holds true whether or not human life is obviously influenced by the use of balefire.

 

Quantum energy exists in the smallest particle--alter that in the past and you have the same paradoxical problems you have when cities of human beings are wiped out.

 

First, according to what I remember, Balefire only changed the Dark One's ability to ressurect that person. If that person's soul had been in a slumber sort of thing, and then was stripped clean of the Pattern, nothing would change. It's not like you can even bring up the molecular issue on this one, since the soul doesn't even exist in reality.

 

That's quite incorrect--for starters we see the soul influenced more than once--Rand's soul manifests a alternative personality as a result of a physical destabalizer. Nynaeve detects a cut in the soul of those that have been severed, Moridin binds souls in crystal phials, Mordeths soul has to compress itself to move through a hole in the wall. We see souls bound, leashed, removed, destroyed, transported, consumed and countless other things.

 

Souls in this context have a very real reality--seemingly one based in energy--and as such can be effected by balefire. Incidently, your comment about the molecular state is not entirely accurate--i said the molecules of the physical form would be effected, the soul as a form of energy would be made of particles too small to form into molecular chains. We'd be down to the level of photons and quarks. Both of which are still relevant.

 

But yes, balefire does effect the Dark One's ability to resurect an individual.

 

Second, you said that Balefire would destroy a lot of things in its course before it dissipated. At first I was going to say that the person can simply fire it in an upwards angle, but then you'd bring up the air removal point again (and you'd be quite correct). So I'm just going to say that a person can simply stop Balefire at any point before or after it hits its intended target by simply unraveling the weave. Done by Rand in Caemlyn, and he also tried to do it in the Waste when he balefired the Darkhounds after Mat but did not quite suceed.

 

Unfortunately that is innaccurate. Rand limited the degree of the destruction by limiting the power in the balefire, as well as the duration with which he sustained it. Balefire as strong as what you suggested might be limited in duration, but it would still rip through reality like a knife through butter.

 

Now if Balefire's heat rises according to its strength, that would change a lot since Balefire that can backtrack 100 years in existence would probably bear the heat of the sun on the Earth. But there isn't any evidence pointing towards that, it's only stated to be hot and bright. To forestall the "energy isn't lost so the greater energy put into the beam the greater the thermal energy produced" argument that I can totally see coming after this whole discussion, the energy put into Balefire translates into backtracking existence, not neccessarily into "visible" other forms of energy. So the heat could very well be standard, an aftereffect regardless of the power.

 

You seem to be wanting some mushroom cloud of an effect to be the basis and danger of balefire. It is not. Balfire's destructive elements are actually rather inconsequential--its danger is in the paradoxical nature of how it destroys things before they were attacked.

 

Frankly i see no basis for suggesting that balefire even has thermal energy. There is no descriptions of heat, no smoke--for all that it is described as 'liquid fire' we've never had a single comment indicating any form of heat is created.

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