Why did the female Choden Kal melt, and not the male?

[Luckers]

Saidar is not technically failing. The Dark One is effecting the world, and saidar is not working against him, but there is nothing wrong with saidar itself.

 

All the issues with saidar are effects of the Dark One. The rotting of food, the increase in vermin... its occuring everywhere. Only with the Aes Sedai they are occuring inspite of weaves designed to prevent such things. Other weaves such as the wards on the harbours are normal.

 

The weaves are fine, completely normal--its the difference in the state of reality that is an issue. The Dark One is influencing reality inspite of efforts to stop him. Nothing is failing, its just being countermanded.

[RAND AL THOR]

Theoretically, saidar is not doing any work in keeping saidin compressed. Saidin compressed itself due to the opposing push of saidar. Rather like north pole and north pole. One could say that Rand was forcing them into close proximity but then both are doing an equal amount of work in preventing each other from touching. They are repelling each other.

 

I disagree, equal repulsion would cause saidar to pull out. In order for saidin to have been compressed saidar would have been forced to hold firm against the repulsion--indeed, constrict in spite of it. This is the strain that caused the female sa'angreal to melt.

 

I see it now. Saidar would have needed additional effort to keep itself in the form of a conduit-while saidin was merely within the conduit and needed no further work.

 

In that case, it is acceptable that saidar was used much more than saidin. (interesting isn't it, considering that he was actually trying to cleanse saidin but depended very heavily on saidar for it!)

 

Does anyone know the nature of the saidin that was within the conduit? I think we can agree that saidin itself did not enter S Logoth, as Bob stated earlier. Hence was the quantity of saidin in the conduit fixed and non-moving with only the taint continuously moving into SL ?

[Luckers]

In that case, it is acceptable that saidar was used much more than saidin. (interesting isn't it, considering that he was actually trying to cleanse saidin but depended very heavily on saidar for it!)

 

It's not actually. Much more saidin was used than saidar--it was only that saidar was under much more strain--its use was actively forced in order to constrict saidin to the nessasary degree.

[RAND AL THOR]

sorry that;s what i meant to say. wrong choice of wording.

 

Either way, saidar was over-used.

[balefireruinssteaks]

When all is said and done, one of the reasons that all the Forsaken as well the Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends were so scared of the Choedan Kal was because it had not been tested.  The boundaries and limits of the sa'angreal had not been tested so they really didn't know WHAT would happen when it was used, and because of the attacks with Sammael and Demandred, the Aes Sedai did not have time to test it.  This was probably why Moghedien made the comment that she was surprised the Choedan Kal had survived being used for as long as it did at maximum power.

 

I think it was a combination of the "too much stress" and "Rand didn't know enough about it" theories which probably led to the female half being melted.  if there is another access key out there for use by female channelers, something tells me that Rand probably won't find it before Tarmon Gai'don.

[Razor]

I think there were 2 male and 2 female access keys made.  Why?  We saw another female access key in Tanchico that was broken.  And Lanfear reports of 2 stronger than Callandor that can be used bya man.  Although this may actually refer to the big statue, not the access keys so I may be wrong.

[RAND AL THOR]

Lanfear's comment has to refer to a specific sa'angreal-not to an access key.

This is under discussion in another thread currently. There most of us decided (somewhat) that the other sa'angreal is likely lost or destroyed.

 

Finding the second access key to the female Choeden Kal has no use now since the Choden Kal itself has been destroyed.

[Chowie]

Has anyone considered that because Cadsuane held Nynaeve physically and also weaved healing into her, while also holding a massive amount of Saidar + Whatever ter'angreals she has at her disposal on her, might have disturbed the balance of the already intense flow of Saidar flowing through the Access Key? 
 

As for some of the reasons presented such as, "inexperienced", "tired", shouldn't matter unless the Sa'angreal or Ter'angreal were flawed like callandor is/(was*). (i haven't read everything yet, starting on book 10 now ;), so not sure if Callandor gets destroyed or not, hence the vague "was").

[Agitel]

Hi, Chowie!

 

This topic was last active in 2008. Then again, I don't think people here care too much about "necro bumping".

 

My own thoughts on the why the saidar one melted is just a flaw in the making of the sa'angreal, or just otherwise the way it was constructed resulted in a failing. That and saidin and saidar being different.

[Thrasymachus]

Most likely, it was because Nynaeve was only just barely strong enough to handle it at all.  The ter'angreal access key would have had the buffer to prevent her from overdrawing, even through Rand's link, but that sucker was maxed out to accommodate enough saidar to handle all that saidin.  I reckon it melted simply because the buffer was overtaxed.

[Jsbrads2]

I was sure we had spoken about this before.

Rand is stronger than nynaeve and he can easily use the access key. Nynaeve is just strong enough to use the access key, but perhaps not strong enough to do anything with all that power. Angreal protect the users from drawing more than they can handle, but in a circle when someone draws the maximum the angreal holder can handle for long enough, the angreal itself gets damaged. It’s use as an amplifier gets overused or overheats and the Saangreal on the island is what got destroyed, the destruction of the access key itself was merely a reaction to the saangreal melting.