Herid Fel's last note

[bRANDan]

What are your thoughts on Herid's last note?

       

              "before you can rebuild you must clear the rubble"

 

I think it's implying the bore can never be sealed while a single seal remains intact. That would explain the darkfriends looking for the seals so furtively. If they had got the seals they could break all but one, so the barrier would be weak enough for the DO to continue his/her work on widening the bore, but the final intact seal would assure that no one would be able to seal it up, at least until Shai'tan was ready to break completely free of the prison then the final seal could be broken.

 

But what will Rand rebuild? Will he completely redo the prison? Make a perfect patch? Grow the prison with the song(I personally don't think so, otherwise why not try it in the AoL when the song was well known and in use)?

 

Or, and this is my personal favorite, does he undo the bore using balefire? How? Why Meirin of course. For her it has only been a little over a century since she bored the hole, easy enough for Rand to use the Choedan Kal to balefire her back that far. He'll recognise her, wouldn't you recognise that personality, no matter the body? As for the pattern unravelling, I think this only happens when the outcome of the balefiring is extremely different from the way the pattern was before, and remember the actions would be undone not the memories, in the AoL people would still remember the Forsaken and the DO. I think that all of that would, in combination with the pattern already being weakened, thanks to the DO, therefore making it more accomodating to changes, that the pattern would not unravel and the present situation would only differ slightly, no DO but all his minions remember and do the DO's work, the breaking, though it would not have occured in the same fashion, would have occured due to the increased size and duration of the War of Power (you know Forsaken no longer trapped with the DO for 3000 years). Plus that would eradicate LTT from Rand, because he would not have died in the fashion he did and be reborn in the same fashion, thus fulfilling the "to live, you must die" prophecy.

 

My main reasons for entertaining this theory are:

1) Herid Fel said he did not think anyone could reseal the bore to it's original state, balefire would simply undo the boring of the hole not reseal it.

2) Balefire has been a large part of the story and I don't see it going unused in TG, if anyone wields it, Rand will.

[Guest adamld]

Nice thinking but unfortunately nobody would thank Rand for unravelling the entire pattern.

 

You balefire a farmer so far back none of his actions took place you could unravel the pattern.

 

If you balefire a forsaken, someone who has killed so many, change so many lives, effected so much change in the world that the DO made them a Chosen, you balefire this person back so that not only do their actions not happen, but the actions of everyone they killed DO happen, and then the actions of everyone who died from the DO breaking free happen.. you aren't just unravelling pattern you're putting it through a blender.

[Mr Ares]

adamld is right, the use of such quantities of balefire would almost certainly destroy the Pattern. Personally, I think that the Pattern will be able to Heal itself once Shai'tan's "finger" is removed from the Bore - which will be the job of the three ta'veren. As to your objections to the Pattern unravelling, bear in mind that if the Bore is not drilled, the Collapse never happens, there are no Darkfriends, the War never starts, the Breaking never happens - the changes couldn't be anything less than Pattern destroying, we are talking the best part of 4,000 years of history being ripped out of the Pattern at once. It could hardly be anything less than incredibly destructive to the Pattern, if it even possible to balefire back that far. Also, Rand wouldn't do it, because of the whole not killing women thing.

[aussie_ashaman123]

Nice thinking but unfortunately nobody would thank Rand for unravelling the entire pattern.

 

You balefire a farmer so far back none of his actions took place you could unravel the pattern.

 

If you balefire a forsaken, someone who has killed so many, change so many lives, effected so much change in the world that the DO made them a Chosen, you balefire this person back so that not only do their actions not happen, but the actions of everyone they killed DO happen, and then the actions of everyone who died from the DO breaking free happen.. you aren't just unravelling pattern you're putting it through a blender.

 

You balefire the forsaken that drilled the original bore, so there is no DO, no forskaen, now War of the Power, no breaking, nothing that happened beyond that point, the pattern will simply dissolve

[trakand_01]

Is the general consensus that Sammael sent the Gholum to kill Fel, or is that still open for debate?

 

I wondered if somehow Fel had seen a future, or seen something that could have pointed to Dashiva's attack 'you must clear the rubble before you can rebuild' - perhaps the rubble of the Sun Palace? Maybe it was Dashiva / Osan'gar who sent the gholum, if Fel had figured something out?

[Aemon raHal]

The clear the rubble before rebuilding refers to the Seals and the prison.

 

Rand shouldn't just patch up the Bore - he should make the prison anew.

 

 

[Dhaos]

Just to add my two cents to this balefire debunk...

 

There are a couple of really serious problems with this idea.

 

The first is all of the Foretellings, Prophecies, and Dreams we've seen.  We know that the general outline for the aftermath of the Last Battle will look like this: Rand may die or be hidden away in seclusion.  The Asha'man and Aes Sedai will be roughly equal in number.  The Seanchan will remain a presence and a problem in Randland.  The Last Battle will be over, but war will still grip the land, presumably between nations in Randland.  These are all heavily hinted at, or directly spelled out.  If the Bore is undone- and the Breaking undone with it- a lot of this makes absolutely no sense.

 

Secondly, RJ specifically mentioned an outrigger novel he was going to write, set 10 years after the Last Battle, about Mat and Tuon.  It stretches credulity to think that he was actually talking about "Mat and Tuon's reborn souls, in a world the Dark One never touched because Rand stopped the Bore from occurring."

 

Third, if solving this problem were so easy, why didn't they do it during the War of the Power?  In the Age of Legends, the Aes Sedai (male and female) knew that Lanfear was Mierin.  Lews Therin's Strike on Shyoul Ghoul should have been a Strike on Lanfear.  But they didn't do it then, because they knew how dangerous it was.  Remember that during the War of the Power -both sides- stopped using balefire because it was fundamentally dangerous to reality.  Balefiring someone 3000+ years into the past would do unimaginable damage to the Pattern, even if it could be done.

 

Finally, what guarantee is there that the Bore can be undone through Balefire?  The Bore essentially created a hole in the Pattern, and now the Dark One has his pinky sticking through,  You suggest that by burning Mierin's thread out, this hole can be retroactively sealed.  But that pinky got through to this side of reality.  Do you think it will play nice with the Pattern's rules that say 'no, you were never let in now?"

[bRANDan]

Yeah I know there are alot of holes in that theory, it's just a fun theory to entertain, as I said. One point though, here's where our views differ, I think that when something gets balefired out of the pattern people still have the same memories, you know, "thought is the arrow of time" I think that if the DO's sealed retroactively people in the AoL would still remember it being opened, therefore the War of Power would still occur, the forsaken would still be there, darkfriends, Aginor's creations, etc. Only this time there would be no bore for them to be sealed in and the War would last considerably longer. I could go on but the main thrust of what I'm getting at is this, if the people all remember the pre-balefiring way the world was, DO's prison weakening, forsaken, Tarmon Gaidon, etc., than how different would the world be? Maybe very different yes and the pattern unravels, but maybe not so different and the pattern is only tested to its limits. Also I don't think the pattern cares about what the earth looks like only the threads of human lives.

 

BTW, this is not my best theory for the sealing of the bore, just my favorite, reckless and desparate seems to suit Rand in my minds view of TG, and balefire is certainly both of those.

[marcbreault]

What if the Dark One and Rand's soul, that is, the essence of him, are two halves of the same being.  Perhaps this is why the two are constantly in conflict but drawn to one another.  After all, LTT and Rand bring death, destruction and chaos and cause the world to break and I suppose you could argue the Dark One causes some people to commit to the light in a way they might not otherwise.  For instance, if the Dark One just sat quietly by and did nothing, Egwene might take over the inn in the Two Rivers and never do anything strange.  Perhaps in the last battle, Rand has to unbreak the seals and somehow merge with the Dark One, making them whole and thereby removing a completely evil being.

 

I hope this is not the case as this has been done in fantasy before.  I would much prefer a straightforward good vs evil conflict.  I thought I would throw the merge theory out there, though.

[42Bonzo88]

    Call me an idiot, but I think we are all missing one little piece of what started this whole mess. Wasn't it human stupidity that created the Bore in the DO prison to begin with? If I remember right when Rand went to the waste and learned his ancestry that during the age of legends, the Aes Sedai were experimenting with a "whole new change". They found out that trying to achieve brought about the Bore.

 

    I understand about the prophecies of Rand going to TG against the DO and that's the way it should be, but after the final battle, couldn't the Creator step in with "There, that seal will hold like there was never a bore. I hope the humans will just leave things alone this time."

 

Please pick this apart at will. But I kind of like it.

 

[Luckers]

The issue is that we don't know what the Creator is capable of, much less what his intentions are.

 

Check out my thread on the Creator here--it better shows what i mean.

 

http://forums.dragonmount.com/index.php/topic,20545.0.html

[benr]

If I were a detective, I'd certainly look at Fel's last note for clues as to who killed him (or had him killed).  I'm more inclined to Mesaana, as Fel was everything she wasn't - it was PERSONAL.  Really, though, Fel was taking Rand closer and closer to actually breaking the wheel of time; he had to go. I think the Creator was capable of that.

[BKVMC]

Herid Fel heres a wild theory  maybe  he was  the creator  or rather an avatar of the creator in human form , the old man  certainly  knew  more of the pattern  and  ages  past and to come than any  person weve  seen to date he  served his purpose and  was killed very martyr  like  and we know how much religious helpers  do the martyr thing :)