Gholam

[billoumm7]

the Gholam work like matt's medallion the ONE power cant touch them. there is the possibility that both were made with the TRUE power since it is the essence of the dark one. or they could both be from that world through the doorways/ or the tower of whatever. (I cant think of names right now.) matt almost killed one though so they are not invincable, and he gor his medallion from the aelfin. so maybe when he goes there with nole and thom they will find some weapons of the sort.

 

as for the gate ways, if the power cant touch them how can they tough the power? i think that a gate way just wouldn't function the same way with one of them in it as another form of shadowspawn.

[nashdude]

I think the answer to "how to kill a gholam" lies in determining exactly what a gholam is. We know a few things about them...

 

--They were made by the OP, but are not dependent on the OP

--They have the inate ability to cut weaves

--Mat's foxhead ter'angreal (which also cuts weaves) hurts it

--Wounds caused by the foxhead do not heal (unless I remember this wrong ::))

--They are not flesh and blood

 

This leads me to believe that gholams are "living and breathing" weaves---intelligent constructs of the OP. Elementals, if you will. This would explain why Mat's ter'angreal is able to hurt it. While the OP cannot touch the gholam, Mat's ter'angreal is not dependent on the OP---kinda like how a Well can work inside a stedding or Far Madding---so the cutting effect of the gholam is nullified. The medallion cuts the weaves that create the gholam, enabling Mat to wound it.

[trakand_01]

 

--Wounds caused by the foxhead do not heal (unless I remember this wrong ::))

 

 

I think you're right - in book 9 when Mat meets the Gholam for the 2nd time, when he meets Noal, RJ makes a point of mentioning that the Gholam has a nasty scar on the side of it's face - which is where Mat hit it with the medallion in the Rahad.

[aevogt]

The Gholam is a living being.

 

The wound Mat's medallion made is referred to as a brand in later books which does seem to me to indicate it has healed.

 

If the Gholam was a weave of the Power, it would not need to feed on blood or aything else, which we know it does.

 

[trakand_01]

I disagree a little; if something burnt me, and i had a permanent scar, i wouldn't consider myself to have healed. Healed 'with a scar' maybe, but not healed. 'Healed' suggests no-one would ever know, and you have no negative effects.

[balefireruinssteaks]

Mat can move through a gateway because it's kind of like someone was saying about lightning.  The weave creates lightning, but lightning is lightning.  The weave creates a gateway, so perhaps the weave is the outline of the gateway holding it open, but the space that one walks through is simply space; there would be nothing to disrupt.  If Mat moved his medallion toward the edge of a gateway it would likely disrupt the gateway's structure.

 

The gholam/ter'angreal idea is good because it's kind of like when Egwene went through her Accepted testing and the ter'angreal for the test was being disrupted by the ring ter'angreal Egwene had been given for dreamwalking.  Two ter'angreal that have the same purpose or similar purposes tend to screw with one another.  So Mat's foxhead might disrupt the ter'angreal properties of the Gholam because they are both created to do the same thing.  It's like a short circuit.  I suppose a way to kill the gholam would be to keep hitting it with the foxhead or maybe shove the foxhead down its throat or something.

[wvlr]

I suppose a way to kill the gholam would be to keep hitting it with the foxhead or maybe shove the foxhead down its throat or something.

 

My thought would be for Mat to catch it trying to escape through another "little hole in a brick wall" and use the foxhead to "slice it" like scizors.  Just chop it in half.  Would that kill it though or just create two pint sized Gholams?

[Corbett]

If I remember corectly from the WoT Role Playing Book, a Gholam can be killed by normal means it just has superhuman strength and everything else which makes it incedibly hard to. I think tha is said that a Gholam is more than a match for 20 master swordsman. So they can be killed. It is just VERY VERY VERY HARD. The best luck will be for Mat to use his medalion and hope some quick friends can stabit alot until it dies.

[balefireruinssteaks]

I think it was Graendal who said she found a gholam in one of the stasis boxes she stumbled upon and it nearly killed her.

 

I remember her saying something like that.  I don't think she killed it so I tend to agree that if some of the Chosen think it was a mistake to make them then perhaps they really ARE that hard to kill.

[Nethran Thaimal]

Jordan seems to enjoy drawing parallels between his world and our own.  If I remember correctly(which I might not), Mat's ter'angreal is made of silver? Certain mythic creatures in our world are only able to be killed by the use of silver weapons. Perhaps that's the cause of the Gholam's weakness to the ter'angreal?

[Corbett]

The medallion is made out of silver. It is possible that that is the reason that it is effective against the gholam. I think that it is more probable that it is due to the like properties of the Gholam and the medalion.

 

Oh i just thought of this. In support of the argument that it is the silver that produces the effect is if Gholam are immortal. If they are then they would probably been able to reproduce. There were 3 of each sex made and if it was the like weaves factor that damages the Gholam it would have been theortically impossible for a Gholam to reproduce. Then again, it is very likely that due to the nature of a Gholam's abilities and the fact that even the Forsaken are wary of and fear them that they were built without a sex drive and givven extremely long life/immortality.

[Juggler]

Mat and fireworks, not magic but pretty disruptive that would cause some damage.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Why else do you think he's looking for bellfounders?

[aevogt]

Someone, amnd I cannot remember who exactly, had the idea that maybe the gholam was a "living ter angreal" or other noncorporeal construct of the Power and that was why it reacted to Mat's Fox Head ter angreal.  I sort of shot it down as not in keeping with the rest of the tale but I have to reverse myself in this one.

 

We do, in fact, have another example, that being the Nym.  The Nym were sentient constructs of the OP that used the OP to assist in crop growth.  Basically, a living ter angreal.

 

I had the impression that the Gholam was a genetically engineered creature, like a trolloc, drakhar or Fade.  The more I think about it, this is not the case.

 

Who ever had this idea first was a lot closer to the mark than I originally gave them credit for.

 

Now, I realize this doesn't explain why it needs blood or why it is described as having no bones, but it does ecplain why a ter angreal with the same function would apparently injure it.  After all,the Nym was "real" enough to be injured.  It has a fissured scar running down it's face, probably from the OP. 

 

I think the "living ter angreal theory has a lot of potential.

[Generic Aelfinn #2]

just for consideration in theories, i may be wrong here, but i'm VERY certain the gholam was made from the TP, just like the rest of the shadowspawn were.

[Korin Caylin]

That could be why the Medallion hurt the Gholam like when Rand and The mysterious stranger in Shadar Logoth(Moridin) who was supposedly using the TP and their balefires hit and caused intense pain to both of them... That could mean the medallion is made of OP and the Gholam is made of TP...

 

 

I think the only way to kill a Gholam is to deprive it off blood without putting it in a stasis box. I mean I know the Gholam was hurt by the medallion but that could be just pain and it might never actually be able to kill him just cause him extreme pain and maybe make him vulnerable enough for something else to kill him but I don't think so....

 

But what do I know? I'm a newb.  ;D

[Nethran Thaimal]

The medallion hurts the gholam in ways that it cannot fully heal.  I know I said maybe because the medallion is silver, but when you look at Rand and Moridin's cross-balefire, we can see the effects of identical weaves in opposing Powers. The fox-head and the gholam have the same power-deflecting effect, so it's possible that the True Power and the One Power clash when they touch.

 

I don't think the gholam is a "living ter'angreal", but I do think they are similar.  If it was a living ter'angreal, then so would all of Aginor's creations be. Including those odd servant things that can read your mind.  The gholam was MADE with a Power, but so is cuendillar. They both have supernatural characteristics, but that doesn't mean they're ter'angreal.

[aevogt]

But all the other shadowspawn were genetic manipulations of human or animal stock done with the True Power.  Though I do see your point.  Living ter'angreal is not a great description.

 

Cuendillar is made from metal, manipulated with the One Power.

 

 

I'm talking about something that was created using only the True Power.

 

Made from scratch, as it were.

 

 

[Nethran Thaimal]

I can sort of see what you mean, but going by the appearance of the gholam, I'd say that it wasn't from scratch.  I think they used humans as a base and went crazy.

 

Cuendillar is metal, manipulated with the One Power.

 

Gholams were humans, manipulated with the True Power.

 

That's the direction I'm coming from, anyway.