Half a dozen of my sisters- warning: thread has utterly derailed.

[Mr Ares]

i'm with luckers on this one.  moiraine not being able to take out a single fist is outrageous.  moiraine and 6 other sisters not being able to take out a fist is simple inconceivable.

 

RJ simply went a little overboard with dramatic effect.

Think of it this way. A heavy machine gun will massacre an entire battalion if it charges across an open field. But if a single company infiltrates a village and attacks from different directions the machine gun is of much less utility unless you're willing to gun down scores of villagers.

And flatten the village, as well.

[Luckers]

What is "later on?" She uses balefire at the end of The Dragon Reborn. When could she have learned it between The Eye of the World and The Dragon Reborn?

 

The general consensus is sometime whilst she was staying at Adeleas and Vandene's place--my guess from having read a description of how to form the weave in a book--we know such things are possible, Egwene figures out how to create Cuendillar from a description by Moghedian.

 

Think of it this way. A heavy machine gun will massacre an entire battalion if it charges across an open field. But if a single company infiltrates a village and attacks from different directions the machine gun is of much less utility unless you're willing to gun down scores of villagers.

 

Which does not speak to Moiraine's pessimistic assessment of her own strength.

[Tyrell]

I think that while Moiraine's statement is totally ridiculous in light of what we've seen, it may well have been true at the time. That is to say I think it isn't a case of Moiraine being wrong or pessimistic to the point of being a big fat lier, just RJ changing his mind / hadn't made up his mind on how dangerous he wanted his magic to be.

[RAND AL THOR]

Train going east instead of west.

[Mr Ares]

Train going east instead of west.

And there's you, stuck at the station. I thought she was referring to other Aes Sedai.

[RAND AL THOR]

Train going east instead of west.

And there's you, stuck at the station. I thought she was referring to other Aes Sedai.

 

I seem to be the only one who though otherwise. What does this suggest, now? It seems I need further cranial development.

[balefireruinssteaks]

Moiraine was fine with her own strength.  When she was heading to Cachin, she encounters Cadsuane but before she sees her she can feel her and says "there was only one woman who could be THAT much stronger than her [Moiraine]"  She probably was just being vague about her own power.

[Barmacral]

I think that while Moiraine's statement is totally ridiculous in light of what we've seen, it may well have been true at the time. That is to say I think it isn't a case of Moiraine being wrong or pessimistic to the point of being a big fat lier, just RJ changing his mind / hadn't made up his mind on how dangerous he wanted his magic to be.

 

I agree with this statement absolutely, if RJ were to have re-written that book later after he finished writing some 4 or 5 books in the series, either there would have been a lot more trolloc's, or Moiraine would have got them all... including the Mydraal that both she and Lan failed to take out.

[GrandpaG]

Wasn't her statement meant to scare the crap out of the boys so they'd follow her?  ::)  ???

 

Doesn't matter if she "stretched the truth"...she got results.  :)

[Cabriana]

I think we have to look at the battle tactics of Rand and the Asha'man. When LTT seized the source, he introduced things like deathgates and arrows of fire. The other male channlers were pretty quick to pick up the weaves and were able to wreak massive destruction.

 

If it wasn't for LTT, they most likely would have been over run and killed.

 

That battle wasn't anything like the attack on the Two Rivers. Apples and oranges.

 

And as others have pointed out, she probably could have mowed them down on a direct assualt with no villagers in the way. But killer innocent villagers woudn't have exactly endeared her to Rand, Perrin and Matt.

[Hybrid]

Depends on whether those innocent villagers were Cenn Buie and the Coplin/Congar clan...  ;)

[Kaznen]

Keep in mind the AS of modern Randland are primitives compared to the AoL AS.

 

In tSR Lanfear said to Rand, "You build a hut out of mud when you can have marble palaces with a wave of your hand."

 

The AS of today don't think about why a weave works, it's just, "fire here, air there, spirit like so, now I have a lightning bolt!"

 

The AoL AS would be more along the lines of, "Okay, now I have created a static electricity charge to make a lightning bolt...But, if instead I do this, this, and this, use water and fire to make more clouds, use earth and air to form a negative charge for about the same amount of effort."

 

Let's the web go

 

"Hoorah!  Look at all that lightning!  We're cooking with gas now!  Die Trollocs."

 

All the forsaken, even Asmodean, sound like scientists in their POVs and conversations.

 

The AS use the power like a recipe not really understanding why the yeast makes the bread rise.  The real AS knew why and looked at how they could manipulate the rising to get various flavors for there bread.

[sillyman]

^^^wow iv never though of it that way but it makes a great deal of sense and it explains why there is a female equivalent for every male weave and vice versa^^^

 

plus in KOD Rand(and LTT) is either at his full strength or very close to it and Logain, by all accounts is not much weaker. Then there's the other asha'men who are stronger then most women and trained almost entirely in the use of the power as a weapon, Cadsuane who has 250 years plus of battle experience and Alvia the Damane who according to Cadsuane know every weave to do with killing from her years as a Damane.  To me it doesnt seem so surprising that they destroyed the Trolloc army.

[Luckers]

Thats not entirely true--we know the Aes Sedai do put thought in to why which of the powers cause specific effects, and how to increase the effects. Consider, in the direct method of your example, Nynaeve pauses whilst watching the Asha'men destroy Trolloc bodies and thinks to herself that his weave was far hotter than a weave of pure fire should have been.

 

This shows that the Aes Sedai have considered the issue of mixing webs to create the same effect with lesser effort. Moiraine shows the same, when she is fighting Trollocs she thinks to herself that there are several ways to make a fireball, but because she is in a rush she chooses to use the simplest--and one would assume the least destructive.

 

We see it again when Nynaeve reveals that she uses Earth and Fire in healing--Aes Sedai had never seen that before, had never considered it, but immediately percieve ways that it could be employed based purely from the thought of using fire and earth--that implies a degree of understanding as to the effects and implications of their nature.

 

But you are right, Aes Sedai knowledge of physics is limited, and that limits how much they can achieve. I just don't think its to the degree that would have hamstrung Moiraine to the point that she felt she couldn't fight a single fist of Trollocs.

 

She may not be able to make a marble palace, but i reckon she'd do fairly well and a picturesque cottage. She does know more than Rand did, remember.

 

^^^wow iv never though of it that way but it makes a great deal of sense and it explains why there is a female equivalent for every male weave and vice versa^^^

 

plus in KOD Rand(and LTT) is either at his full strength or very close to it and Logain, by all accounts is not much weaker. Then there's the other asha'men who are stronger then most women and trained almost entirely in the use of the power as a weapon, Cadsuane who has 250 years plus of battle experience and Alvia the Damane who according to Cadsuane know every weave to do with killing from her years as a Damane.  To me it doesnt seem so surprising that they destroyed the Trolloc army.

 

None of those Asha'men, with the possible exception of Sandomere, comes close to Moiraine's strength. Men are on average stronger--which means only that the male average is a slight step up from the female. Men still have the full range of strengths, and we know for a fact that whilst some of the Asha'men are starting to get close to the Aes Sedai in terms of strength, and that some will eventually get higher, none as yet are close to Moiraine.

 

Now, I don't reguard it as surprising that they destroyed the Trolloc army--but even so thats 5,000 trollocs per channeler. Even if we say that the majority were taking out by Rand's fancy AOL weaves, the women still killed alot more than a hundred each, and none of those women except Cadsuane, Alivia and Nynaeve came close to Moiraine's strength--certainly not close to Moiraine wielding an angreal.

 

I just find it incongruent that Moiraine expressed such doubt about her abilities--or that it winded her so much to try and fight those Trollocs. Even with what everyone said, of Trollocs being spread out through the villiage, its stated directly that Moiraine tried to kill the halfman and failed--thats rediculous, if she was in a poisition where she might try to kill it, she could have.

 

I think Tyrell hit the nail on the head. RJ just hadn't fully fleshed out how dangerous he wanted the power to be.

[Kaznen]

When Beowin showed Elaida how to travle and skim she didn't explain the part where you make two places similar, she just showed the weave and explain about knowing the terrain.

 

Egwene, Elyeane an Nyn look at the how and why, the rest didn't.  And even after their discoveries the other AS were not interested in the why but just the weave required.

 

An AS would have thought Rands fire sword as impressive, the forsaken laughed at it.

[Hybrid]

I agree.  The AOL Aes Sedai were like scientists.  They wanted to know the rules, not just the results.  Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne are like this. 

The Third Age Aes Sedai are only interested in results.  This is likely an effect of the situation in the Third Age.  Technology and knowledge in general has mostly been lost, and the struggle against the Shadow is a constant threat.  The Third Age Aes Sedai are soldiers, not scientists.

 

[Luckers]

I still disagree--for all the reasons i stated above. The Aes Sedai do the best they can with the tools they have.

[Kaznen]

I think it all hearkens back to the Breaking.  How the AS would conscript girls as OP batteries when one of the Sisters died.  When all the sisters were dead the conscripts thought they were AS now.

 

At the time I think they would have gotten a very quick training session on embracing the source then have to watch what the others did.  The AS never had time for proper healing so they did the quick and dirty way.

 

After the Breaking the AS, in concerns of the power, were more concerned with maintaining the status quo then rediscovery.  Look at all the rediscovery that happened in the last year, not just the power, because people just tried.

 

It's not a matter of the tools the AS had.  It never came to them they could find, build, make new tools.  No, they just whined about the lost weaves. 

[Generic Aelfinn #2]

except that experimenting leads to death or close to it(being burned out).

 

almost all of the recent discoveries have been a result of knowledge gained from AOL channelers.

[Ndshacker]

But because of one headstrong and stubborn woman, who wouldn't bend her neck and quit. That isnt a problem, The point Im making isn't that stilling is curable. The point Im making is, Perserverence.

[Charlz Guybon]

I think it all hearkens back to the Breaking.  How the AS would conscript girls as OP batteries when one of the Sisters died.  When all the sisters were dead the conscripts thought they were AS now.

 

At the time I think they would have gotten a very quick training session on embracing the source then have to watch what the others did.  The AS never had time for proper healing so they did the quick and dirty way.

Sounds logical, but do you have any references to that being what happened?

 

After the Breaking the AS, in concerns of the power, were more concerned with maintaining the status quo then rediscovery.  Look at all the rediscovery that happened in the last year, not just the power, because people just tried.

 

It's not a matter of the tools the AS had.  It never came to them they could find, build, make new tools.  No, they just whined about the lost weaves. 

It's implied that Aes Sedai during the Covenant of the Ten Nations recovered some of the lost knowledge on for it to be lost in the war, how much though, we don't know.

[Fryn]

I would put it down to at the start of the series RJ hadn't refined the power level of the users. It seems like in the first few books the power was rather meek, and later on it was ramped up. NS was written after the first few books so it rewrote the power level of using the source rather than how it was portrayed in the first few books. Use of the one power is one of the things that imo morphed and improved as the series went on.

 

In the end the story is more exciting with the group splitting up and running; compared to Morriane being a super hero and blasting down a hundred trollocs while the rest sang charrols. At that point it would of been like Gandalf and the balrog =p. At that point, considering the book on its own, not as part of the series, it makes for a great read.

 

Years down the track and 10 books later the comment makes a lot less sense, but it shows how the story has developed and ideas of power levels have changed. Another example is the trip to the green man... those enemies should of been trivial for morraine alone to take out, but it was handled by mostly Lan. Even the worm shouldn't of been a challenge for Morraine with an angreal.

[triadruid]

None of those Asha'men, with the possible exception of Sandomere, comes close to Moiraine's strength. Men are on average stronger--which means only that the male average is a slight step up from the female. Men still have the full range of strengths, and we know for a fact that whilst some of the Asha'men are starting to get close to the Aes Sedai in terms of strength, and that some will eventually get higher, none as yet are close to Moiraine.

Huh? Why do we know the comparative power of a woman who hasn't been seen since before the Farm was started, and the Asha'man of the Black Tower?

[GrandpaG]

Moraine knew very well that she could have taken care of that group of Trollocs...that was not part of her scheme...she wanted the boys to leave Emond's Field with her.  If she had eliminated the possibility of the Trollocs returning to Emond's Field (by destroying them), the boys would not have been so eager to leave home...Moraine is Aes Sedai and a master of manipulation...she was raised in the Great Game of Houses...she knows how to say what she doesn't really mean without you knowing that she's doing it.  She didn't exactly "lie" about what her and six of her sisters could do...she simply used the proper words to get the results that she sought...the boys followed her out of Emond's Field...because she scared the crap out of them...they THOUGHT that it would take six more of her sisters working with her to take care of the trollocs...she knew better but it didn't fit her plan.  She had been stalking her prey for 20 years and if it took a little fear of trollocs to get the boys to react, then so be it.  How many did she take care of just before they headed into Shadar Logoth?  Even with fighting in the streets -vs- open country she could have handled them just like she did in her test for Aes Sedai.  Lan took care of a bunch of them by himself.  Had she wanted them all dead they would have all been dead...it suited her better to have a handful remaining as a threat to Emond's Field if the boys didn't join her.  I know...same thing I said in a couple of lines in the earlier post...but it didn't sink in, so I'll try more text.  Bottom line is that she had to have some way of getting them to leave their home with her so she used their concern for their fellow Emond's Field people as a tool to get what she wanted.  Aes Sedai do things to fit their own schemes.  Just an opinion.  :)

[Hybrid]

Another example is the trip to the green man... those enemies should of been trivial for morraine alone to take out, but it was handled by mostly Lan. Even the worm shouldn't of been a challenge for Morraine with an angreal.

I disagree.  The entire purpose of the journey was to get the three ta'veren to the Eye of the World, not destroy every evil twisted creature in the entire Blight.  Moiraine stuck with the party to protect them, while Lan scouted ahead and behind--as he always does.  Fighting off the worm pack would be ridiculous, unless it became a necessity.  There are plenty of other creatures in the Blight, and the worms were the only reason the other creatures weren't continuing their attack.