Spoilers: Prologue debunks a theory! Sorry X :)

[OsaroLJ]

Rand and Moridin are literally MERGING. NOT SWAPING. LOL. As Min saw, these two men are beginning to look like each other,act like each other, see each other, feel each other, etc. It's crazy but they really are becoming ONE. Not switching bodies!

 

By the way, what did you guys think about Moridin's statements regarding the death of the Wheel? He hadn't ever quite put it like that before.

[Theodor89]

I agree, I mean when they are even affected by each others wounds I don't see how swapping bodies would do Rand any good...

[Zamael]

With the way balefire burns a thread out of the pattern, I think when Rand and Moridin crossed streams they fused their two threads ahead into the pattern.  The crucial moment when one gains dominance over the other will probably come at Tarmon Gaidon.  Rand could yet be turned to the shadow.

[fikkie77]

Or Moridin to the light if the Rand part will be dominant.

[inkL0sed]

No, one dies and the other lives, as per what Min said.

 

But I missed where they were affected by each other's wounds; care to quote the passage for me?

[fikkie77]

- Moridin doesn't feel his left hand - the one Rand is missing.

- Graendal thinks Moridin looks like Rand when he stands in some peculiar way (the way Rand usually stands).

- Rand feels his his missing left hand (Moridin still has that one).

[deviant728]

A thought occurred to me and I thought I would pass it along to see what you think; could Rand's "increased" level of insanity (I don't want to delve into a debate about the relative level of insanity displayed by Rand) be the result of merging with Moridin's unstable mind? We constantly get reference to Ishy's then Moridin's unhinged state. With Moridin sharing the pain of Rand losing his hand, do you think it is possible that Rand is sharing his mental stability with Moridin as well? What does everyone think?

[jemron]

deviant728, it's interesting that you bring this up.  I thought something similar as I read the prologue.  The taint is healed, but Rand seems to be still getting more and more mentally unstable.  My only thought is that his link with Moridin is causing this, since Moridin is insane (and getting worse because of the TP, I assume).

[Raezold]

Not to be a whiny crybaby, but ehm, shouldn't you change the title?

I mean, do people who don't want to read the prologue really want to know that the body swap theory (which was naturally not going to happen anyway) isn't going to happen?

[Kadere]

I mean, do people who don't want to read the prologue really want to know that the body swap theory (which was naturally not going to happen anyway) isn't going to happen?

 

Well first off I'm not positive the evidence in WtSM has really PROVEN that the bodyswap won't happen (though god I wish it doesn't). But in the spirit of hating the bodyswap, I'd have to say in answer to your question "YES!" I believe that EVERYONE wants to know that the bodyswap theory WON'T happen! It would make us all sleep easier. Well, maybe not Luckers.  ;)

[Charlz Guybon]

I don't see how it proves or disproves one or the other.

 

I'd prefer the merge to the swap, but I just don't see it.

[dholm]

If Moridin feels Rand's wounds (and WtSM certainly implies he does), it would suggest they are merging, as per Min's viewing.

[water_seeker]

I'm not convinced that a "merging" necessarily negates a "swap" (and the winner for excessing quotation marks goes to...).  If there is a merging going on, it could just be stage 1 of the swap (if there is a swap).

 

LOL, I just thought of the Dragon series by Patricia C. Wrede...there's a bunny that has a number of unfortunate things happen to it...it's magically grown over 6 feet tall, it's tuned into a donkey, it grows wings, it gets turned blue, it starts levitating.  All of those enchantments merge so that the magician in that story can't take them off individually, but he tranfers all of them to this one guy who's caused everybody all sorts of trouble and the bunny goes back to normal.

 

Rand = the bunny

Moridin = the troublemaker

 

Imagine if the merging or swap happens and Moridin gets all that pain at once that Rand has accrued and gotten used to over the last year and a half...the shock alone could kill a man.

[Luckers]

Unfortunately no it doesn't. They are coming closer and closer together--which they'd have to for either a swap or a merge to be the case--but the prophecies that sustain the swap dismiss the idea of a merge--or at least an ongoing merge. In particular we know Rand lives, but Moridin dies.

 

You touched, and seemed to merge into one another, and....one of you dies, and one doesn't.

 

So yes, they are coming closer to a touch, and ultimately they WILL touch, and for a time merge. But that time will not last and they will not remain merged. Rand will end up with singular control of Moridin's body. Moridin too will live for a time in Rand's body, I believe. That is what the prophecy about Alivia 'helping' Rand die is about, as well as several others--but you can read about that in the original bodyswap thread if you care to.

 

Of course none of this is certain yet, as others will point out. But a merge is not possible--not in the ongoing sense of say Isam and Luc, or Fain and Mordeth.

[Zamael]

For one to live and one to die, I agree the merge is temporary at best.  If/when the swap happens, it would have to be someone bonded to Rand to be able to save him.  Otherwise, how would they be able to sense/know whose body his soul resides in. 

[OsaroLJ]

Luckers, you make a HUGE jump from merge to swap.

 

It doesn't seem like a rational advance to go from two people merging into one to they switch bodies. It's creative I guess but its a reach (although most theories we come up with will be reaches).

 

They are undoubtedly becoming one. How long they stay one we don't know. You assume that it will be temporary, perhaps it last for much of TG. What we DO know is that to win TG, Rand may have to die in the act of "unmerging." But a swap seems like something out of thin air to me.

 

And like was pointed out earlier, we still don't know how far this "merging" will go. I didn't expect Moridin to start experience physical ramifications of Rand's actions. I thought that stopped with the nausea with channeling. Now it seems like they could literally be carbon copies of each other. If that is the case, the idea of swapping becomes redundant. Especially if we find out in the next chapters that Moridin too is experiencing problems with his eyes and feeling intense pain in his side. This new twist to the merging, i'm afraid, kills the idea of swapping.

 

Something interesting to think about, if Rand dies right now, would Moridin die as well? My guess is yes because Moridin wants Rand alive right now.

 

Another question, will Moridin be invited to party in Rand's head and be able to communicate with Rand? Perhaps thats one way he could have found out that Rand is in Arad Doman.

[OsaroLJ]

...

[Galahad]

They are undoubtedly becoming one.

 

How are they undoubtedly becoming one? I don't think that Rand behaving like Moridin or vice versa is necessarily indicative of a merge.

 

For instance, take this explanation:

 

If Moridin does something that affects Rand, that is only indirectly. Moridin's soul is affecting Rand's body. Rand's soul is affecting Moridin's body.  Rand soul, being mostly confined to his body, is able to witness the effect on his body of what Moridin is doing. And the same for Moridin.

 

Moridin is not actually taking on behavioral characteristics of Rand. When Graendal observes him standing similar to how Rand stands (or something of that sort), it was not because he chose to do so. It was because his body was subconsciously influenced by Rand.

 

In short, I propose that their bodies are becoming less attuned with their counterpart spirits, and more with their future host spirits. Rand is steadily losing control of his own body and gaining control of Moridin's.

 

If they are beginning to look like each other, then I suggest that the bodies are also making the transition.

 

I would imagine that it's sort of a fluctuation between the soul leaking through to the other person's body and the body leaking through to the other person's soul.

 

Of course I suppose that this does allow that at some point they will be halfway in transition, thus "merged." Unless there is some sort of tipping point.

[Luckers]

Luckers, you make a HUGE jump from merge to swap.

 

It doesn't seem like a rational advance to go from two people merging into one to they switch bodies. It's creative I guess but its a reach (although most theories we come up with will be reaches).

 

You havn't read the original bodyswap thread have you? I don't just suggest the bodyswap out of the existence of the link--the link will facilitate it, but the reason I suggested a bodyswap was due to prophecy. I am saying that due to the various prophecies surrounding Rand's death we know that the results of the link will not be a merger. Rand and Moridin will remain distinct personalities, and Moridin will die.

 

To jump to bodyswap from the mere existence of the link would have been a huge jump, but dude, when I first suggested the bodyswap theory we weren't even sure there WAS a link--just vague references to the Third Man in Rand's head, a fellow whom by popular belief at the time was an amalgamation of Rand and LTT or a third incarnation of Rand's soul entirely. I actually once got laughed at for suggesting it was Moridin.

 

My reasoning is there, and mostly has nothing to do with the link. Originally of course the existence of the link was a part of the theory, but now we know it as fact I don't even need to bother addressing it. Honestly, you seem to have heard the word 'bodyswap' and assumed i threw it out there based on no more than wisheful thinking and the existence of the link. It was neither, and based on neither. I've said as much already, and you've ignored it.

 

Next time you wish to declare someone's theory debunked, and their logic irrational, you should really look up what that theory is.

 

They are undoubtedly becoming one. How long they stay one we don't know. You assume that it will be temporary, perhaps it last for much of TG. What we DO know is that to win TG, Rand may have to die in the act of "unmerging." But a swap seems like something out of thin air to me.

 

Firstly, I'm not assuming it would be temporary. We know that, and I've stated why, which you've completely ignored.

 

Secondly, we do not know they are becoming one. Certainly they are coming closer together, and things seem to be slipping between the two of them--sensations, thoughts, etc. But then the same can be said of Rand and LTT (the sensations, thoughts bit) and they are in fact getting further apart. Furthermore by Rand's word even when the link is at it's strongest and they are at their closest they remain distinct personalities. Consider.

 

with saidin came the inevitable violent nausea, the almost overwhelming desire to double over and empty himself of every meal he had ever eaten. His knees trembled with it. He fought that as hard as he fought the Power, and saidin had to be fought ever and always. A man forced saidin to his will, or it destroyed him. The face of the man from Shadar Logoth floated in his head for a moment. He looked furious. And near to sicking up. Without any doubt he was aware of Rand in that moment, and Rand of him. Move a hair in any direction and they would touch. No more than a hair.

 

[KoD-21-Within the Stone]

 

They could touch, but Rand is completely aware of both himself and Moridin, and they are distinct individuals. No blurring there, no fuzzy cross place.

 

Mind you that's not to say they won't merge, but I don't see them becoming one. Specifically I believe when the link becomes fully active they will have complete access to each other. They will essentially be two people occupying the same space and time. Then they will snap apart again, and Rand will be in Moridin's body and vice versus allowing Moridin to die in Rand's body and fulfil all the tricky clauses established in prophecy.

 

Thirdly, it was the question of the connection between Rand's death and the link that made me write the bodyswap.

 

And like was pointed out earlier, we still don't know how far this "merging" will go. I didn't expect Moridin to start experience physical ramifications of Rand's actions. I thought that stopped with the nausea with channeling. Now it seems like they could literally be carbon copies of each other. If that is the case, the idea of swapping becomes redundant. Especially if we find out in the next chapters that Moridin too is experiencing problems with his eyes and feeling intense pain in his side. This new twist to the merging, i'm afraid, kills the idea of swapping.

 

Not so. The transferral of perception in no way indicates they are becoming copies of each other. LTT and Rand prove that, and Rand's preceptions of Moridin clearly show two distinct individuals.

 

Something interesting to think about, if Rand dies right now, would Moridin die as well? My guess is yes because Moridin wants Rand alive right now.

 

Moridin certainly seems concerned about it.

 

Another question, will Moridin be invited to party in Rand's head and be able to communicate with Rand? Perhaps thats one way he could have found out that Rand is in Arad Doman.

 

I would say that is indeed possible, but Moridin has easier ways to find Rand--contact with the darkfriends in his party, for instance, or that tracking-the-ta'veren trick, though Graendal states that has become far more difficult and unreliable.

[Aiemond]

Hey Luckers, how much do you think the DO knows about the link? Do you think he is factoring it in to his plans or do you think he would kill Mordin to take rand out if he knew?

 

Also, how do you think Rand will defeat the DO after taking Mordin's body?

[Luckers]

Hey Luckers, how much do you think the DO knows about the link? Do you think he is factoring it in to his plans or do you think he would kill Mordin to take rand out if he knew?

 

I have nothing to back it, but my thinking is that the Dark One doesn't know. I really like the idea that Moridin re-issued the no-kill order for personal reasons and that the Dark One is sort off doing his own thing, getting ready and all that (Elaida's comments about what the ghosts mean certainly points in that direction.)

 

The various comments by the Forsaken could be foreshadow on this--Graendal's most recent in the prologue.

 

And yes, I reckon he'd kill him, but I actually think he realise until too late. Rand may even use this post-bodyswap to get close or something. It's hard to know just how much the Dark One senses of the world--he sometimes seems almost blind, as Demandred stated.

 

Also, how do you think Rand will defeat the DO after taking Mordin's body?

 

Well as I said he might use it to trick the Dark One. Frankly I've no idea though. We simply don't have enough information to speculate.

[OsaroLJ]

The relationship between Moridin and Rand (as portrayed in the prologue) seems noticeably different from Rand's link with LTT. I mean, with the little information presented in the prologue, Moridin could be physically changing to look like Rand! And perhaps Rand, vice versa.

 

In fact, the circumstances behind the merging make it difficult to compare the two relationships. The Luc/Isam paradox is the closest thing to what Rand and Moridin are becoming.

 

Then there were hints in the prologue that can be taken as suggestive of a twin effect (something that has been hinted at before). Identical brothers fighting against each other. Meaning, these two men will be physically equal at the LB. They are certainly being (atleast it seems that way)pushed that way. And one of them may have to choose to die... 

 

I have read your body swap theory. Many times. But what is the pragmatic purpose of a swap if neither party gains or loses? As it stands, any hurt Rand recieves is felt by Moridin so what's the point of swaping bodies with him? And can prophecy be fulfilled without a swap theory? Of course.

 

New information, Luckers, not rationale, is what makes the swap theory more unlikely.

 

Hmmm...interesting thought...this discourse kinda gives the "he who is dead yet lives" new avenues of creative interpretation. I mean, what if they become carbon copies of each other? One dies, the other lives. Prophecy fulfilled??

 

Lol

[SinisterDeath]

Have you considered the only other 'situation' in the novels that is anywhere near similar?

 

Slayer.

Specifically the dark prophechy concerning Slayer.

"Luc came to the Mountains of Dhoom.

 

Isam waited in the high passes.

The hunt is now begun. The Shadow's hounds now course, and kill.

One did live, and one did die, but both are.”

 

 

From the Aelfinn "To live, you must die".

This doesn't seem like a coincidence to me.

"twice to live, and twice to die."

 

"Soul of fire, heart of stone, in pride he conquers, forcing the proud to yield.

He calls upon the mountains to kneel, and the seas to give way, and the very skies to bow.

Pray that the heart of stone remembers tears, and the soul of fire, love. "

 

"As the plow breaks the earth shall he break the lives of men,

and all that was shall be consumed in the fire of his eyes."

First scene in the prologue? A farmer.

A little ways in, the suldam is talking about his 'icy eyes', and someone talking about Moridins 'firey eyes'.

Coincidence?

 

http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Karaethon_Cycle

 

 

Read through it and you can just see how everythings coming together.

 

some of mins

“A sword that isn't a sword, a golden crown of laurel leaves, a beggar's staff, you pouring water on sand, a bloody hand and white-hot iron, three women standing over a funeral bier with you on it, black rock wet with blood, lightning around you, some striking at you, some coming out of you. You and I will meet again.”

 

“I saw you and another man. I couldn't make out either face, but I knew one was you. You touched, and seemed to merge into one another, and....one of you dies, and one doesn't.”

 

Heres how I'm looking at it.

We got an anomoly that is very much like Rand And Moridins prediciment. Perhaps, Slayer went through exactly what they did. And instead of killing one or the other and taking 'one' of the bodies, they shared it.

 

Obviously Rand and Moridin couldn't share the same room together, let alone a body...

So, heres what I'm seeing.

They have a limited Time frame to actually 'kill' one another, before their link becomes so strong, that killing one, would surely kill the other. But... Maybe rand can 'cross' that link, allowing him to be 'killed' in the process, and live by killing moridin.

 

It wouldn't be so much of a body swap but, the mental link becoming so strong, that Rand Becomes Moridins LTT. And somehow Rand Becoming the dominate psychee killing the other. This would easilly solve the paradox of the prophecy.

And why would rand need to hide out as a begger?

1. Everyone believes he's dead.

2. He wants a freakin break.

3. Some might mistake him for Moridin, instead of rand.

 

The only thing we know about slayer's 'creation' has to deal with the dark ones 'intervention'.

 

If rand & moridin were to cross the streams that should have 'killed' them both, what if the Dark One 'stepped in' to prevent it? (or perhaps the creator?) and in doing so created this link, basically guarnteeing that one of them is going to switch sides?

[sheikh chilli]

i have just finished reading prologue.

 

sigh. i miss the days where battles are settled by fire, earth and lightning bolts. Now we have body swapping going on....

[Titan Orion]

Of course none of this is certain yet, as others will point out. But a merge is not possible--not in the ongoing sense of say Isam and Luc, or Fain and Mordeth

 

Actually it is absolutely possible. Luc and Isam merged; one lives, one did die, but both are. Maybe Moridin is He Who Is Dead. Maybe Aviendhas kids will be different because they are literally Rand and Moridins kids