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DRAGONMOUNT

A WHEEL OF TIME COMMUNITY

They Moved Mountains


Vassili

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During the Breaking, Male Aes Sedai raised up mountains from the sea floor, and sank chunks of the continent into the ocean. However, when Siaun is "reconnected" for lack of a better word, she comments on how she can no longer lift large objects with the Power, like Gareth Bryne, and that lifting objects is the simplest yet hardest thing to do with the Power. She cannot even lift one person! Granted, men are stroger than women, and granted, Siaun is hardly strong for a woman. BUT, inorder for a man to be able to lift up a mountain, he would have to be stronger than Siaun by a factor of 10,000 or more!

 

To give an idea on how strong men can get, consider that Rand notes that Taim or him are both strong enough to destroy the land around them for several miles. (LoC) And, in the Breaking a single man destroyed an entire city by himself (tFoH). A woman draws enough of the Power to turn Manatherin into a flat plain of glass (tEotW?) and Lews Therin creates Draganmount. The energy involved in these processes is on the lvl of an atomic bomb, and only one channeler is involved. However, an Aes Sedai today can only lift the equivelent of one or two men at a time? What!?!

 

One explanation (A)- there is just some limit law on how much weight you can lift, even if you can easily channel more energy than would be involved. For example, you can't lift yourself, but you can lift other people. Strength means nothing.

 

If this is true, how did men raise mountains during the Breaking?

 

 

-(A1) They worked together to do it.

 

All the insane men we've scene lash out violently with the Power and must be put down for the safety of everyone around them. They cannot tell friend from foe, and therefore, how could they work together with other men who could channel? And if they somehow did, they can't link. It would take hundreds anyway, even if we are liberal with their strength and say they are all 10 times or more stronger than Siaun. Remember, thirteen weak novices are mentioned as being strong enough to shield Rand when linked. Siaun is weak, but I doubt she is, at the weakest, less than 1/20th an asha'man. To lift a mountain would take too many people. A1 cannot be true.

 

-(A2) Thousands of men, randomly blasting at things, did it with no conscious goals or teamwork.

 

Still, it would literally take thousands if (A) is correct. And if its random, Their actions would cancel out. YES, there would be lots of destruction, BUT mountains would not rise thousands of feet into the air like the Spine of the World. The land would be "lifted" or "dropped" hardly at all, though other destruction (fires, storms, etc) may still be great.

 

-(A3) There is a constraint on lifting with the Power, but it only applies to women.

 

As far as we know, we have not scene a man max out as far as lifting an object with the Power. If there is an instance when Rand is lifting something he can hardly hold, tell me, cause I can't remember it. I cannot prove A3 is wrong, but i just can't see a constraint like this applying only to women. There are constraints placed on both sexes. Ex: men can't link. women are weaker. BUT, these weaknesses seem to balance each other out. Thats how the Wheel works, right? So why would a man be allowed to raise a mountain when raising a person pushes women to the limit? Its just too one sided for RJ to have allowed.

 

 

-(B) A is true, but one or more crazy men got their hands on a Sa'Angreal, or a weapon. The gholam does remember weapons of the Power that could anhilate cities from miles away. In a world reeling from The War of Power, many of these weapons must have been laying around.

 

This makes more sense than A by itself, but there are a few holes:

 

 

-(B1) Lews Therin raised a mountain with no aid. However, he did die doing it. The question then becomes, "how much more of the Power can you draw when you kill yourself doing so?" Possibly way more than your maximum strength, i don't know for sure. Still, it would require thousands the amount you could normally draw. Tell me what you think.

 

-(B2) Never are men mentioned using Sa'Angreal or Ter'Angreal to perpatrait the Breaking. Still, i don't think it says they didn't either.

 

-(B3) Rand alone causes earthquakes in tEotW and at the beginning of TDR. If he can move the land all around him, and technically some lifting is done in an earthquake, why should he be unable to lift a heavy boulder?

 

 

-© RJ messed up. No offense meant. He just may have made a mistake when he made these rules.

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I'm not even going to address any points because your entire line of questioning is based on one false pretense.

 

Raising mountains and lifting objects are equivalent.

 

They're not, though. If the Breaking was known for Aes Sedai lifting mountains and tossing them around, then sure, I'd agree with you. But the Aes Sedai weren't lifting them, they were raising them.

 

Raising them as in, flat earth, I presume a very large and complex weave of Earth, and the ground lifts.

 

Tectonically, it doesn't make sense. Within tWoT, it makes perfect sense.

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Guest Dreadlord

Dude, they didnt actually "lift" a mountain. They made new ones. While lifting someone would obviously use flows of Air to raise a mountain up from the ground I would hazard a guess that they used flows of Earth. They didnt pick up a mountain and move it, they wrecked the land to such a degree that new mountains rose from the rolling earth and others were swallowed by it. Nobody ever lifted a mountain

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Actually,the description of AOL raising mountains does make sense from a tectonic-scientic point of view if what the mad channelers were doing were causing earth quake's tsunamis, etc. the "raising" of mountains was an indierect (but possibly intended) consequence of using the power to create "natural" disasters. This would also explain how they were able to shift the position of land masses.

 

Think of it this way, one madman channels an earth quake that causes Southern California to fall into the sea. Another channels an earth Quake causing the Indian Subcontinent to hit into the Asian landmass causing the Himalea(sp?) to rise. A third causes an Earth quake that causes Antartica to split from Australia and migrate to the south pole. Now imagine that these tectonic movements took not millions of years but maybe 20 to a hundred, and you have the Breaking. You woyuld need powerful channelers possibly usuing Angrel, but they would not have to be 10,000 times nor even 10 times as strong as a Randland Aides Sadie.

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Guest Dreadlord

Guys you are taking the wording of it way too literally. Nobody picked a mountain up with the Power and put it someplace else. The Breaking of the World wasnt a deliberate moving of mountains or anything like that. The land was damaged on such a massive scale that it caused colossal earthquakes all over the world, and by the time those earthquakes had settled the mountains had either been moved-by the earthquake, not some bloke channeling his ass off-or the mountains were swallowed by the sea and new mountains rose-again, caused by the earthquake, not some insane male Aes Sedai.

 

Moving mountains isn't possible to do directly I think. Anyone, even Rand, would burn himself out before he even made it lift off the ground. He could destroy a mountain-Im sure he cut one in half in the fight against Asmodean-but that isnt the same in any way

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I agree with Dreadlord. What occured was that the male Aes Sedai messed with the natural balance--there is a lot of pressure under the earth, and if you mess with it the effects can be pretty catastrophic.

 

It was the preverbial 'tossing a spanner in the works'. The effort done by the men began the devestation. Set it in motion, as it were.

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Well, yeah. Moving a mountain with flows of Air would probably be impossible by any standards. Causing the earth to erupt so that a mountain was raised (elsewhere) is a plausible result if lots of male channelers randomly weave flows all at once. Which was pretty much what was happening.

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Not every change was done with the OP but a response to changes made with the OP.

 

In tEotW LTT overdrew the OP when he was next to a flowing fairly straight.  He then caused a violent volcanic eruption, when he then died after setting the weaves (he was burned by lighting and lava after all).  The result was a volcano quickly grew from ground 0 of the eruption, it happens look it up.  That was not due to the Power.  And the earth quake resulting from that changed the course of the river and caused to split around an island.  That also happens.

 

So LTT did one thing while over extending himself that had a cause and effect on the land around him.

 

 

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Lews Therin, though, was the exception.  He had a moment of lucidity to realize what he'd done.  Thus, he willingly committed suicide by overdrawing from the One Power.  The other male Aes Sedai were just wandering around doing whatever they felt like doing.  They were not overdrawing.

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not sure if I am remembering correctly.

 

Didn't Rand, at the beginning of tDR, make the ground move and take out part of a valley in the MoM (thus changing the landscape), before he learned how to control Saidin?  He couldn't control how much of the power he was drawing and had to unleash it somewhere.

 

Possibly something the insane men would do during the breaking?  Pull too much of the OP and have to throw it somewhere, anywhere?

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Tectonically, it doesn't make sense. Within tWoT, it makes perfect sense.

 

The reason I said this is because I'm assuming mountains were raised all over the place with no true law to guide them rather than the Aes Sedai simply shifting the plates around to cause mountains.

 

Perhaps I shouldn't have assumed so much, but what can I say?

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Two things:

 

1: Men are stronger in Earth and Fire.

 

2: It is not unbelievable that most men did have angreal.  There has to be a reason why they are so rare this day and age.  When the men went insane, according to the BWB the war against the shadow was still going on, but the good guys were winning.  Many men were probally issued angreal when they went to fight.

 

It's like a solider going insane and using his M-4 that he is still carrying to shoot up people.

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