No, Balefire Does Not Work Like that. (-- 2009 Empy Award Winner!)

[blanklook]

Does anyone else think that it was a really strange passage in the book where Rand shows Nasharima or whateverhisnameis how to use balefire? He doesn't trust anyone at this point and he shows someone the most deadly thing in the world, not only that the passage makes no reference to the ashaman's reaction to this knowledge.

[Mcpatrick]

He already trusted Narishma to retrieve Callandor in tPoD. Rand wasn't exactly the most trusting of people back then either.

 

As for Balefire: I don't why people have such trouble understanding it.

 

It makes things done by the balefired person to not have happened. The indirect effects also are undone. They only exception is that what happens to the caster of the balefire stays happened and what was done by the caster of the balefire also stays happened. Note that we already have evidence for this from Rand killing Rahvin.

 

The events in tGS are entirely consistent with past uses of Balefire.

[clu7ch]

Kay I was torn between posting here and in the one power thread.

 

Balefire doesn't destroy heartstone correct????????

 

Rand needs to make him a box (ironic cus he hates boxes) of slabs of rock turned into cuendillar by egwene in the last battle.....he can float it on air, and be invincible!!!

 

And Moridin will be like.....uh...holycrapfck there's a freaking gray box just wandering the battlefield killing all of our people....

[Muirenn]

Talked to Brandon at the stormleader dinner last night.  He had a few things to say on this topic:

 

1. The bruises on Min's neck were not an error.  After consulting with Team Jordan, it was determined that indirect effects remain.  Rand was the one who strangled Min, not Semirhage directly, so the bruises stayed.

 

2. Brandon knows of two ways to destroy cuendillar.  But he would not confirm if the Domination Band that Rand was wearing was made from cuendillar.  He said it was not relevant to what happened.

 

3. The bracelets did not disappear when Semirhage and Elza were balefired because they were not considered to be intrinsic to their person.  It would be the same if someone was holding a book and was balefired, the book would drop to the floor.

[Sentinel78]

2. Brandon knows of two ways to destroy cuendillar.  But he would not confirm if the Domination Band that Rand was wearing was made from cuendillar.  He said it was not relevant to what happened.

 

One way is bale-firing the person who made the cuendillar... The 2nd way appears to be putting in contact with the Dark One, although it apparently takes 3000+ years.

[coteaz]

Talked to Brandon at the stormleader dinner last night.  He had a few things to say on this topic:

2. Brandon knows of two ways to destroy cuendillar.  But he would not confirm if the Domination Band that Rand was wearing was made from cuendillar.  He said it was not relevant to what happened.

 

If it isn't relevant then that means either it wasn't which would mean nothing, OR it is cuendillar and only the TP can destroy it.

[karehiro]

Kay I was torn between posting here and in the one power thread.

 

Balefire doesn't destroy heartstone correct????????

 

Rand needs to make him a box (ironic cus he hates boxes) of slabs of rock turned into cuendillar by egwene in the last battle.....he can float it on air, and be invincible!!!

 

And Moridin will be like.....uh...holycrapfck there's a freaking gray box just wandering the battlefield killing all of our people....

 

The True Power can destroy cuendillar, so that wouldn't really be an effective tactic.

 

The only thing that we know to be invincible is Callandor, but it's unknown what exactly it's made out of, or how and why it was made.

[Sentinel78]

Rand needs to make him a box (ironic cus he hates boxes) of slabs of rock turned into cuendillar by egwene in the last battle.....he can float it on air, and be invincible!!!

 

Sounds like Magneto.  unfortunately, you cannot lift yourself with Air, no matter how powerful you are.  That's from Siuan's POV, I think in the Great Hunt.

[Dunderdan]

Im all for the idea that balefire doesnt remove indirect effects, because the opposite would be close to impossible unless youre advocating a full time roll back, Matrix style. And Im not very fond of using the Matrix time structure for WoT.

 

If bf DID remove indirect effects, where would you draw the line? The grain of sand which fell from the window because of the bf battle and landed on a ledge, pulling more grains of sand down, falling into a mans eyes blinding him for a few seconds, making him not see person A passing him whom he would have talked to otherwise, etc etc. And, assuming indirect effects do get removed, establishing a new chain of events would likely cause new paradoxes where the new, bf-altered chain of events doesnt match perfectly the outside, unaffected chain of events. In my opinion, the only possible way to completely remove indirect effects, would be to completely reset time.

 

Besides, causing a memory is an indirect effect and even RJ says memories remain.

 

No, Im all for the idea which suggests that balefire only removes direct effects and that the wheel of times tries to mend the fabric of times as good as possible. Side note: that mending would be a retcon but its done by WoT, not BS. You could even argue that retcon is the means which WoT uses when dealing with balefire.

 

And Moridin will be like.....uh...holycrapfck there's a freaking gray box just wandering the battlefield killing all of our people....

 

That made me chuckle  :D

 

 

[Lord_of_the_Morning]

This thread is useless.  it's like a Space Time Continuum thread on some Star Trek website.

 

Opinion this and opinion that, you didn't write the flaming series, so you have no bloody groundwork from which to launch a successful argument.  Every single argument here is based on your own perception of balefire which, after reading all 24 pages of the post, nobody seems to have taken grasp of.

 

Its a fairly simple idea.  You take a crap in the toilet reading your new copy of TGS, and you wipe up...  GASP! someone breaks in on you like Asmo in a wine pantry, a bar of white liquid turns you black or white all over and you turn into sparkly motes.  Your book drops to the ground, (poor book) and your ToiletPaper is back on the roll.  The next person to come in finds a fresh copy of TGS on the ground, and a maybe a little balefire scar on the wall behind you...  No poop in the toilet and a fresh roll ready to go. 

 

Simple enough no?  Blood and ashes people...

 

:p

 

Now the real question.  If someone balefires your poop only, does that put it back inside you?

I don't think so no.

[Aleron688]

Now the real question.  If someone balefires your poop only, does that put it back inside you?

I don't think so no.

 

This.  Also, BS as much as said it himself, Graendal is DEAD. who cares how balefire works when we know something to be true? no point in discussing it.

[Lord_of_the_Morning]

I know Graendal is dead.  I don't need the author to tell me.  Rand outsmarted her as I see it, Balenuked her castle where she sits constantly.  The Pattern itself shifting the way it did was all I needed for proof, let alone the Lord Bumpkin Compulsion indicator.

 

Graendal is dead, Moridin is Ishamael, Demandred is Roedran, Death will be Healed, Someone will get turned to the Dark (13AS+13Myrdraal) and Robert Jordan will always be my favorite author.

[nosscire]

What I was thinking is that he can't have burned greandal very far back. He killed lots and lots of people right there, and I have a feeling that it might have unraveled the entire pattern had it been that strong.

 

Wouldn't it make more sense if the balefire wasn't that strong at all, but only big? One would image that this was possible as well, and it would make more sense to me.

[Mr Ares]

Also, BS as much as said it himself, Graendal is DEAD. who cares how balefire works when we know something to be true? no point in discussing it.

Sanderson said it himself? Sure about that?

2. Answer: Let’s go on record with this, I am not going to say until after Towers of Midnight, but I will…they are looking for a “toast” comment, and I am not going to give the “toast” comment yet. The scene that I’m talking about, there will be things related to it in the next book, so I don’t want to say yet. Corner me after Towers of Midnight and I will give you a definitive answer, but Towers of Midnight may in itself give a definitive answer.

He refuses to confirm as yet. So we don't know her to be dead. So let's debate. Hey, people have tried debating stuff that really did have Word of God against it, why not this?

[WWWwombat]

1. The bruises on Min's neck were not an error.  After consulting with Team Jordan, it was determined that indirect effects remain.  Rand was the one who strangled Min, not Semirhage directly, so the bruises stayed.

 

If consulting was required does that mean RJ himself was ambiguous about it?

[richnewton82]

.

[WWWwombat]

Even about what socks to wear?

[richnewton82]

.

[WWWwombat]

Then maybe they figured out what RJ meant when he said "They may remember the supposed effects."

[richnewton82]

.

[WWWwombat]

Why would you have trouble remembering them and why are they supposed.

[richnewton82]

.

[sheikh chilli]

there's something that's really bothering me with all this balefire stuff. the dark one wants to unreavel the pattern. he wants the end of time.

 

so why did he forbade his minions from using balefire in AOL? Would'nt the constant use of balefire only hasten the unraveling of the pattern?

[elec1cele]

I don't think it says anywhere the DO told them to stop using balefire.  It does say both sides stopped using balefire because they realized it had the potential to unravel the pattern.

 

I guess that just shifts the question to why didn't the DO order them to continue. Perhaps in the AOL, where the Dark One had more freedom then he currently has, he had a more direct way to alter the pattern that worked better for him then the in-discriminant use of balefire.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Finally found the quote I'd been looking for.

 

Australia Interview - August 1999

 

Q:  Balefire is one of the most confusing things in the book, for me. I find the fine aspects of it, the whole threading together of the things that work in it... Could you be a little more elaborate on that?

RJ: All right. The cosmography we're looking at here, is not the cosmography of here and now. The Wheel of Time is in its way a spinning wheel. The fabric of reality is woven by the threads. Those threads are the lines that are formed by people passing through time. Each person has a thread. The thread has its sole dimension in time, its life is in time. Those are the threads that are used to weave the fabric of reality. When balefire strikes a person, a thread here, it doesn't simply stop the thread there. The thread burns backwards a little bit, like you just took a thread and put a match to it and it burns up a little bit before it goes out. It depends on how hot the flame is how far it's going to burn back and what the material is opposed to. It burns up a little bit, it doesn't just catch fire on the end and go out. So that person that was hit here is burned out of the pattern back to here. What that person did between here and here was no longer done. Other people remember seeing it. They may remember the supposed effects of it but what that person did wasn't done. It didn't happen, it's not real. Now that's a little bit of a shiver on the fabric of reality as it is. The reason that there was an unofficial agreement in the War of the Shadow to not use balefire any more, to stop using it, was simply that several cities were destroyed in that way. Hundreds of thousands of threads were burnt out from the pattern in one go and the fabric of reality began to unravel. And even the guys going for the Dark One knew that there's not a whole lot of point to winning if winning means there's nothing there to rule, nothing there to win. If you burnt out the stakes, forget it. Have I made it a little clearer I hope?

 

So, what effects remain after a balefire incident are entirely dependent on what acts are covered by the balefire interval.

 

In Nynaeve's case, the oarsmen and part of the boat got hit and erased.  The oarsmen's direct acts ( pushing and pulling on the oars ) got erased.  The result of their acts ( propelling the boat through the water ) got erased.  When Nynaeve's perception and the altered reality collide, the boat is some distance from where it had been when struck, and has been filling with water for some time already, which is why, from her POV, she is "suddenly" underwater.  The new reality is that she had been sinking for some time without being aware of it.

 

What effects would remain after the Rand/Semi incident would likewise depend on the amount of time erased.

 

Once Rand perceives a source of Power that he can touch, the sequence goes:

Seize that power.

Blast the Domination Band off his neck.

Release Min.

Stand up.

Turn around.

Balefire Semirhage.

 

Let's guess that it takes 5 seconds from releasing Min to balefiring Semi.  If Rand only erases 15-30 seconds, Min should still have bruises.  If he erases 2 minutes or more, she should not.

 

As that scene is written, both the destroyed Domination Band and Min's bruises remain.  Therefore, to be consistent with Jordan's definition of how balefire works, the interval covered cannot extend further back than to just after he destroyed the Band.  Maybe 5 or 6 seconds at most.

 

But, with balefire, both the victims acts and the supposed effects of those acts are erased.  Primary effects and downstream effects both.  That's what "they may remember the supposed effects of it," means