The Souls of Shadowspawn

[Luckers]

Has anyone ever wondered where they come from? They have them--they have dreams, and in this world at least dreaming is the function of the soul. Whats more is that we know that there is a difference between animal and human souls, and the souls of the shadowspawn--by which i mean the Trollocs, Myrdraal, gholam and Draghkar, seem to be in the same form as human souls.

 

This could be the defining difference between what we call shadowspawn--Aginor's creations that are used as the Shadow's armies--and the monsters of the blight, which are also Aginor's creations, just not used, and seemingly without the same... sentience.

 

If this is the case it means that Trollocs and all the rest have human souls in them. Perhaps that is why the True Power was nessasary in their creation, to twist their innate natures so as to make them inherently evil.

 

In which case the other monsters have animal souls, also twisted. Darkhounds are either wolf souls, or don't have souls--its stated the wolfs soul is consumed in the transformation, which may just be the loss of the facet personality.

 

Still, its a grim thought.

[RobertAlexWillis]

A grim thought indeed, and one of the closest parallels with Tolkein's mythos, in which the Orcs were originally Elves corrupted by Melkor.

[Luckers]

Mmm. You thought being reincarnated as a cockroach was bad.

[RobertAlexWillis]

I don't know ... life as a cockroach could be pretty good, I think.  I always hoped for a giant tortoise, though. 

[Luckers]

You know, despite what we tell our kids, slow and steady almost never win the race.

[Roxinos]

I always assumed that their souls came from the human stock. Which, I suppose is what you assumed, which I suppose makes this thread pointless.

 

Ah well, fun to think about anyway. If dark.

[Luckers]

Yeah, i did always assume it, but i never really paused to think about what it would mean for those souls.

[RobertAlexWillis]

You know, despite what we tell our kids, slow and steady almost never win the race.

 

Oh, I know.  But seriously, who wants to race?  ;)  You kids go run around and burn all your energy off, and in a hundred years, when your great grandkids are doing the same thing, I'll still be chuckling.

 

But, about the souls, I wonder what the effect of the Dark One being completely cut off from the Pattern again will be on them?  Does it serve as a get out of jail card?  Or does he keep the ones he's already got?  Does he keep them around for his torturing pleasure?  Or really truly obliterate them in some way?  It is similar to the fate of souls ostensibly consumed to make the Myrddraal swords?  Unfortunately, we just don't know.

[Osan`gar]

trollocs are made from human and animal essences combined in some horrible perverted manner. we know that humans have souls and we can make a somewhat safe assumption that some animals do by virtue of the dead wolves whose spirts go to the dream world when they die i.e. hopper. we have encounterd no other animals from which we can derive a POV the way we do with Perrin and the wolves, but it seems safe to assume that they are treated no differently by the creator. so it is not a great stretch to assume that any shadow spawn created from human/animal stock do have souls. besides the DO would enjoy perverting a soul to his own purposes too much to do it a different way. he would probably put for more effort just for the opportunity to destroy an innocent soul.

[moroten]

Ok lets say that Trollocs are made up of Human souls. But doesnt the wheel have a limited number of souls since every soul is reborn in a new age/time? There is plenty of trollocs...and they seem to multiply faster than humans(speculation from my side considering the losses they must have sustained from the trolloc wars). My question is: If there is a limited amount of souls in the wheel and Trollocs multiply like rabbits will they slowly take over the world due to humans not being able to multiply?

[Osan`gar]

Ok lets say that Trollocs are made up of Human souls. But doesnt the wheel have a limited number of souls since every soul is reborn in a new age/time? There is plenty of trollocs...and they seem to multiply faster than humans(speculation from my side considering the losses they must have sustained from the trolloc wars). My question is: If there is a limited amount of souls in the wheel and Trollocs multiply like rabbits will they slowly take over the world due to humans not being able to multiply?

 

they also die much much quicker than humans hell in KOD Rand and Logain killed 100,000(wild guess) of them in about a half hour. in all liklihood the average trollic gets "recycled" hundreds of times in any age in which he exists.

[Mik]

I'm with Roxinos on this one. It's obvious Trollocs have human souls.

 

My question is: If there is a limited amount of souls in the wheel and Trollocs multiply like rabbits will they slowly take over the world due to humans not being able to multiply?

The simple answer?

Yes, if there are a limited amount of human souls, then in the end, Trollocs will out-breed the human population.

Especially if you consider what is known about the sickly twisted Trolloc soul;

once a Trolloc soul, always a Trolloc soul.

(as long as Shai'tan isn't sealed up properly that is)

 

Whereas the soul of a non Shadow construct -like a Nym- would return to the regular soul-pool and could be reborn as something else then a Nym.

 

The Nyms soul is borrowed in tact from the supply.

The Trollocs soul is tainted for as long as Shai'tan is around to touch the world.

 

Cheerio,

Mik

[Luckers]

I'm with Roxinos on this one. It's obvious Trollocs have human souls.

 

Umm... no one in this thread has actually disagreed with that idea--which, by the way, was initially stated by me, not Roxinos.

[Charlz Guybon]

I'm with Roxinos on this one. It's obvious Trollocs have human souls.

 

My question is: If there is a limited amount of souls in the wheel and Trollocs multiply like rabbits will they slowly take over the world due to humans not being able to multiply?

The simple answer?

Yes, if there are a limited amount of human souls, then in the end, Trollocs will out-breed the human population.

Especially if you consider what is known about the sickly twisted Trolloc soul (what's left of it anyway);

once a Trolloc soul, always a Trolloc soul.

(as long as Shai'tan isn't sealed up properly that is)

 

Whereas the soul of a non Shadow construct -like a Nym- would return to the regular soul-pool and could be reborn as something else then a Nym.

 

The Nyms soul is borrowed in tact from the supply.

The Trollocs soul is tainted for as long as Shai'tan is around to touch the world.

 

Cheerio,

Mik

Well then, since time is cyclical, there must either be some way for the new souls to be created or for the tainted souls to eventually be cleansed.

 

[Mik]

I'm with Roxinos on this one. It's obvious Trollocs have human souls.

 

My question is: If there is a limited amount of souls in the wheel and Trollocs multiply like rabbits will they slowly take over the world due to humans not being able to multiply?

The simple answer?

Yes, if there are a limited amount of human souls, then in the end, Trollocs will out-breed the human population.

Especially if you consider what is known about the sickly twisted Trolloc soul (what's left of it anyway);

once a Trolloc soul, always a Trolloc soul.

(as long as Shai'tan isn't sealed up properly that is)

 

Whereas the soul of a non Shadow construct -like a Nym- would return to the regular soul-pool and could be reborn as something else then a Nym.

 

The Nyms soul is borrowed in tact from the supply.

The Trollocs soul is tainted for as long as Shai'tan is around to touch the world.

 

Cheerio,

Mik

Well then, since time is cyclical, there must either be some way for the new souls to be created or for the tainted souls to eventually be cleansed.

 

Bingo

 

And that will happen when Shai'tan is shut outside the Pattern properly.

Bye bye so called True Power. Bye bye Shai'tans touch. And the Shadow is lifted from the Soul.

[Mik]

I'm with Roxinos on this one. It's obvious Trollocs have human souls.

 

Umm... no one in this thread has actually disagreed with that idea--which, by the way, was initially stated by me, not Roxinos.

Roxinos said the thread was pointless up untill that point. I agree.

 

Oh.. your idea?

Equal yet not..?  ;)

On the internet, everything has been said before.

 

http://forums.dragonmount.com/index.php/topic,36692.msg962947.html#msg962947

I like to think Myrddraal are 'only' the human part of what was to become a Trolloc. How? Because the human part of their soul allowed channeling and somehow that severs the link made by Aginor with the True Power between the animal & human parts of what was to become a Trolloc. It's quite clear the 'True' & One Power repel eachother, so that could snap the link somehow. If the Trolloc was to become a male, The Human throwback-part develops & the part that is lost develops as ..errr.. 'nothingness'; the domain of Shai'tan.

 

Cheerio,

Mik

[Nightstrike]

From "Thus Spake the Creator":

Q: What happens to the soul of someone when he becomes a Gray Man. Is his thread removed from the Pattern, or are threads and souls different things alltogether?

A: Err, they are... Oh, uhm, no, it is gone. It is gone. And it ceases to exist in any form that you could of as real.

Q: So threads and souls are the same thing

Err, not the same thing, but they must coexist. The thread can be removed; you die in this world. You die and the soul remains to come again and begin another thread. The soul disappears from this Gray Man, it's gone. Think of the Dark One as having eaten it. It's a fiction, but a convenient fiction for the moment.

The thread of the Gray Man remains until the Gray Man dies, physically.

Q: And the rest of the Shadowspawn?

What? Do they have souls you mean?

Q: Yeah, and how do their threads work.

The threads work in the way, in the same way that the thread of any living thing works. It is part of the Pattern. They are not outside of the Pattern. Neither are the Forsaken. But the Pattern in a thing that is open, that's change. It is not a matter of the lives being forced necessarily. It's wide, you have the Pattern, the Heroes that are bound to the Wheel, they're not always heroes in the way of someone who rides in galloping with a sword, or carries out daring rescues. The people, the Heroes who are bound to the Wheel, are the corrective mechanisms. Human behaviour is throwing the Pattern out. It's throwing the balance off. And the Wheel spins out the proper correctives. Put everything back in the balace. So not even the Forsaken are apart from that, they're not outside. The only things that are outside are the Creator and the Dark One. Neither affected by the Pattern.

 

RJ also said that having a myrdraal as a warder would be very unwise, because they are far from human. He said that even Fain couldn't have done it (I know Fain can't channel, but RJ brought Fain up) without going even more insane than he already was. RJ brought up "shared feelings" as a cause for myrdraal warders being such a bad idea. If feelings are evidence for a soul, then I guess shadowspawn can have souls. But I really don't think they have human souls. I doubt the myrdraal souls get reborn the exact same way that humans do. I think that we have very little evidence for exactly how the "shadowspawn soul" thing could work. I'd say that it's even possible that RJ himself never bothered to work out all the details. I mean, it's not been of any great importance for the story. Not so far, anyway. Maybe it will be in the Encyclopaedia?

 

 

 

 

[tjtalbert]

, and in this world at least dreaming is the function of the soul.

 

Drivel. You may believe this, but you do not know it. 

 

Whats more is that we know that there is a difference between animal and human souls,

 

You cannot possibly know this, because you do not know what a soul is, or even if it exists, much less what the varieties of such a thing might be.  You may very well belive this, but that is not knowing, and if you think it is, you miss-understand religious faith.

 

Tim

 

 

 

[RobertAlexWillis]

Um ... yeah.

 

, and in this world at least dreaming is the function of the soul.

 

Drivel. You may believe this, but you do not know it. 

 

We do know it, because of what we know about Dreamwalkers.

 

When he says "in this world" he means "the World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time", not the real world.

 

Whats more is that we know that there is a difference between animal and human souls,

 

You cannot possibly know this, because you do not know what a soul is, or even if it exists, much less what the varieties of such a thing might be.  You may very well belive this, but that is not knowing, and if you think it is, you miss-understand religious faith.

 

Again, yes we do, because of what we've seen with wolves in Tel'aran'rhiod, among other things ...

 

... and what does this have to do with religious faith?  We're talking about a fantasy world here ...

[tjtalbert]

 

When he says "in this world" he means "the World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time", not the real world.

 

Oh.  My bad. Nevr mind, and Gilda would say.  I stand (well, sit actually) corrected.

 

Tim

[Rinkai]

If there is a finite number of souls, then time cannot be infinite. Every turn of the whell hundreds die by balefire, and their souls cease to exist. Also, I assume that machin shin,drakdgar and mashadar all destroy souls too. Eventually we would run out of souls.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Souls do not cease to exist when they are hit by balefire.

 

They are simply dead a little earlier in time then they would have been.

 

Threads and souls are not the same thing.  A "thread" is the life of the soul within the Pattern.  Whether the "thread" is cut (being killed), or runs out (old age), or burned (balefire), the soul is not destroyed.

 

The only confirmed way of having a soul actually destroyed is to be turned into a Gray Man.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Let me add to the end of that, with a highly tacky double post.

 

Your point still stands, Rinkai.  There is a way for souls to be destroyed, and hence, if there is an ultimately finite number of souls, and some souls actually are lost in each turning, then eventually the Wheel would run out.  In fact, there is probably a threshold short of zero souls at which the Wheel would cease to function.

 

So, either there is a way to produce new souls, or the Wheel is not actually mathematically infinite.

[cloglord]

I'm not sure that it is confirmed that Graymen have their souls destroyed.

 

I thought that they merely surrendered them to the DO.  Do you have some source for this?

[RobertAlexWillis]

Look back .... lets say ... eight posts in this thread.

 

Big quote from RJ.

 

Of course, if you don't trust "Thus spake the Creator" (and I don't blame you if you don't), then we have zero confirmed soul destroying methods.

 

But given that the other name for the Grey Men is the "Soulless", I'm more inclined to trust this one.

 

Edit: changed "Look up" to "Look back" since this posted at the top of a new page.