Prologue, Chap. 1-50, Epilogue

[raydurz]

I just hope Elaida will do something to redeem herself, like jumping off a cliff or something before she gives up the secrets of traveling.

[lillcheese]

I think I remember Egwene saying that damane are kept away from heights so they can't do that.  Suffa's screwed.

[BrainFireBob]

And Bob T Dwarf is wrong.

She is atomic dust.

RJ was no fool. Balefire leaves smoke behind. It doesn't truelly 'destroy'. If it did, there'd be no smoke. Things would simply disapear entirely. And even then, I dunno if that means it was 'destroyed'.

You can not Destroy or Create, you can only convert. ;)

 

More accurately, they don't annihilate each other- they become pure energy. You can turn energy into paired matter and dark- matter, too.

 

Unless you collide matter and anti-matter.  That supposedly annihilates both in a burst of pure energy.

 

What we have here is existence and anti-existence.  Crank up the ole CK, even to half-power balefire and you've got a lot of anti-existence.  It's enough of a jolt that the whole Age Lace does a conga, but did you notice there was no actual blast, or physical shock/heat-wave?

 

Nature is supposed to abhor a vacuum, too, so where are the physical effects of creating a hole in reality where a large palace used to be?  Should at least be a huge thunderclap and associated wind as air rushes to fill that vacuum.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Something hit Min, something like a shocking wave in the air.  It wasn't a physical blast, and it didn't make her stumble, but it twisted her insides about.  The forest around them - still lit by the glowing access key in Rand's hand - seemed to warp and shake.  It was as if the world itself was groaning in agony.

 

It snapped back, but Min could still feel the tension...

(Emphasis mine)

 

Seems to me to show the very epitome of a "reaction" to the existence vs. anti-existence.  Since we're talking magic in nature, obviously it's not going to be the same thing as if covered by physics, but the bolded section above seems pretty clear to me that there was a reaction - both spiritual and physical, in the world and in the Pattern - and it was a major reaction.

 

Just sayin'...

 

I already said the Age Lace did a conga.  But that's not a physical effect.  Physical effects would be noise, heat, blast pressure wave, backblast wave, etc.  We don't know whether any of those occurred or not since they would have happened before Rand et al got there.

[Tensai0211]

so, in regards to callandor. the "flaw" is that it allows the man to channel enough of saidar to burn himself out, unless in a circle?

 

so does that mean, rand, + 2 women, since they can negate the flaw (probably elayne and avi, or possible nyn) = UNLIMITED COSMIC POWER?!~

 

plus, ive always felt callandor was underused...we all know arturian legend is a huge influence on the WoT, and it seems to me "excalibur" hasnt really had its main stage yet.

 

More like it causes insanity unless the flow is controlled by a female.

 

 

No, as Cadsuane thinks and says, Callandor's arguably bigger problem is that it lacks the *buffer* that makes it safe to use.

 

Namely, that you can use it to increase the amount you're drawing, but do so runs a serious risk of damaging your ability to channel or even burning you out.

 

One of the things i took from this book was that Callandor is very different from other Sa'angreal and with the three becoming one prophesy being introduced i wonder if its a Ta'veren Sa'angreal and its going to be the combined Ta'vereness of Rand, Mat and Perrin that wins the last battle rather than any one power idea.

 

I also have to say that Brandon Sanderson did a good job, he had some very large shoes to step into and he's managed to pull it off so far, hoping ToS continues along the same lines

[gee69]

Just finished the book really enjoyed it but I did notice the difference between writing styles. With the books written by RJ I felt that I was in the story watching over the players shoulders. That I knew these people and when I finished the rereads, I missed these people that I had been involved with. With The Gathering storm, it seemed like I was not able to get into the story, that I was reading about these people rather then experiencing it with them. I suppose that as RJ created the people in Randland he knew them the best and was able to bring us in. Although BS is a fan of WOT he could not know the players as well as someone that has been thinking about them and creating them for the last however many years. That all said I still enjoyed it to get to find out what has happened to these people. I am a little confused how did Cadsuane know that Tam was with Perrin? But in the end all that matters the story is continuing.

 

 

[BKVMC]

"I am a little confused how did Cadsuane know that Tam was with Perrin?"

 

the easiest  guess for me would be from  sorilea via the  wise ones with perrin with the help of course of  melaine amys or bair.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Or, since she knows how to Travel, she just gated to the Two Rivers and asked.

[Crossroad]

Please someone put me straight about BF does it wipe all existence of your former self past, present and future and deeds u may have carried out of reality.  If this is so why hasn't Rands hand returned ??? ???

[JenniferL]

No, Balefire doesn't erase you completely.  It erases you partially. The stronger the balefire, the further back it goes. Moiraine could only erase a few minutes. Rand, using the sa'angreal, was able to erase Graendal and her palace back hours. I suppose he could use it to erase someone's entire existence, but we haven't seen that and it's unlikely to happen now the Chodan Kal are destroyed.

 

I think we have a thread on the Structured board for balefire. It might be a good idea to review it if you have questions about how it works.

[Bob T Dwarf]

There is a troubling issue with Rand's balefiring of Semi, though.

 

They're in the real world.  He was torqued.  He was using a Power he'd never touched before.  He was drinking it in deeply.  He goes immediately from choking Min to blasting Semi with both barrels.

 

Yet, Min still has bruises after it's over.

 

???

 

Is this another error that needs to be corrected before another printing?

[Nightstrike]

They're in the real world.  He was torqued.  He was using a Power he'd never touched before.  He was drinking it in deeply.  He goes immediately from choking Min to blasting Semi with both barrels.

 

Yet, Min still has bruises after it's over.

Maybe in the world of the Wheel, this is a case of what Rand did physically? Not what Semirhage did physically...

[Mr. Dragon]

There is a troubling issue with Rand's balefiring of Semi, though.

 

They're in the real world.  He was torqued.  He was using a Power he'd never touched before.  He was drinking it in deeply.  He goes immediately from choking Min to blasting Semi with both barrels.

 

Yet, Min still has bruises after it's over.

 

???

 

Is this another error that needs to be corrected before another printing?

 

Although it was Semi that got Rand to strangle Min, his actions are still seperate of Semi's and so the actions of Rand still stand. Think of it this way, from the perspective of a 3-D object within the pattern, the scene plays out just as given in the book. From the perspective of a 4-D object, which takes into account temperal discrepencies, Rand for no reason starts to strangle Min but stops part way through and then balefires a seemingly empty space.

[Mendeleev]

I couldn't find discussion on this point, so let me give it a shot. Does Rand being mentally more stable help him with the sickness he get when grabbing saidin? His sickness seemed to have gotten worse the more Machiavellian he became, with him thinking "The sickness washed across him more powerfully than it ever had before." right before he decided not to balefire the whole of Ebou Dar.

[Bob T Dwarf]

 

Although it was Semi that got Rand to strangle Min, his actions are still seperate of Semi's and so the actions of Rand still stand. Think of it this way, from the perspective of a 3-D object within the pattern, the scene plays out just as given in the book. From the perspective of a 4-D object, which takes into account temperal discrepencies, Rand for no reason starts to strangle Min but stops part way through and then balefires a seemingly empty space.

 

That's not right, either.

 

Balefire erases the person and the effects of anything they have done between when it's cast and when it takes effect in the past.

 

Semi forced Rand to strangle Min.  When she got balefired to dead sometime in the past, everything she had done between that point in the past and when the balefire struck her  also got erased.  Rand would remember strangling Min.  Min would remember Rand strangling her.  BUT, the strangling never would have happened and neither would the bruising effects - unless they were physically in T'a'R.  They weren't.

[richnewton82]

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[Mendeleev]

 

Although it was Semi that got Rand to strangle Min, his actions are still seperate of Semi's and so the actions of Rand still stand. Think of it this way, from the perspective of a 3-D object within the pattern, the scene plays out just as given in the book. From the perspective of a 4-D object, which takes into account temperal discrepencies, Rand for no reason starts to strangle Min but stops part way through and then balefires a seemingly empty space.

 

That's not right, either.

 

Balefire erases the person and the effects of anything they have done between when it's cast and when it takes effect in the past.

 

Semi forced Rand to strangle Min.  When she got balefired to dead sometime in the past, everything she had done also got erased.  Rand would remember strangling Min.  Min would remember Rand strangling her.  BUT, the strangling never would have happened and neither would the bruising effects - unless they were physically in T'a'R.  They weren't.

If Rhavin had died before Mat was killed, and everybody's resultant actions were changed as well, the moment the balefire hit, they would be standing in different locations, but they're right where they were. When balefire is used, no one remembers standing in a different spot. Which means they probably did all the same stuff they did in the previous timeline, only with Rhavin's direct actions not taking place. Or that's how I see it.

[richnewton82]

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[Bob T Dwarf]

Except for the fact that if Rand balefired Semmi, then she would never have forced rand to strangle min, he would have never embraced the TP, and would never have balefired her. Paradox.

 

Ignore it and move on. Time travel and time paradox effects like balefire need to just be accepted as plot devices. The bruise itself isn't the problem, cause and effect is.

 

Balefire stands outside its own paradox.  Once cast nothing can uncast it.

[richnewton82]

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[JenniferL]

It's also possible that balefire created by the True Power is slightly different from balefire with the One Power. We already know Healing is different.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Read my analogy above. It is not simply Balefire that stands outside the paradox, the pattern does. The pattern does not reshape itself as a result of Balefire. Things the thread that was burned did, cease to have happened, but events 1 step removed do not.

 

Sure they do.  Balefire the architect the building never gets designed or built.

 

Every thread interacts ( to an extent ) with every other thread.  Remove one thread and the threads that directly touched it no longer do, they are drawn toward something else instead.

 

That twisting sproiiiiing that everybody feels after Rand offs Graendal is the wheel going back and patching up the Age Lace as best it can.

 

If Rahvin had hit Rand's attackers with balefire instead of lightning, Mat never would have died, his foxhead would have protected him, but Avi and Asmo would have stayed dead no matter what Rand did to Rahvin.  Since Rahvin used lightning, once he got balefired, the Wheel had to go back and reconnect all three of those life threads and undo/redo all the threads they would now touch that they hadn't while they were dead.

[richnewton82]

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[Bob T Dwarf]

The fish bites were not edited out because they occurred in T'a'R.  Had they happened in the real world they would have been edited out.

[JenniferL]

The actions get erased. Go re read the bit in TFoH when Moiraine explains it after the Darkhound attack. So yes, its either a misstep by Team Jordan, the TP balefire works differently or Rand didn't balefire her that far back.