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

[Nightstrike]

Is it possible to balefire yourself?

No, I don't think it is possible. Are you thinking of when LTT created Dragonmount? Because RJ said it was caused by LTT overloading himself with the OP intentionally. Not with BF.

[Rocky_Outcrop]

How could they be possibly thinking of that? Dragonmount gets talked about a few times in every book, it is so obvious that you'd sooner find someone thinking that they use bf for sex changes...

[Nightstrike]

Who says that how far back the actions of one burned out is determined by power? What if it is determined by Rand really wanting to help his friends out? Why is it power and not feeling? The amount of anger you have about an event would be linked to power, naturally, but why is it so ... mathematical?

Weak channelers can't burn away more than a few seconds. The DO can still transmigrate their souls. Strong ones, especially with angreal, can burn away them long enough for the DO to not being able to resurrect them.

 

What I really want to know though is since when has BF stopped moving through objects? Since when ever ever has someone been able to shoot their jacket on the floor and not have a hole in the floor too, and for that matter a hole in the roof of the floor below and then one in floor of that room etc.

It probably won't go forever through the earth. It burns away that which is hit, up to a certain distance.

 

That much BF used to kill Gren. means that there is a massive massive hole in the ground after the palace and that this pit will be the biggest absence of dirt that has ever existed no?

Maybe there was a big hole. I'm sure they had other things to focus on right there and then.

 

 

[Stevros]

Is it possible to balefire yourself?

No, I don't think it is possible. Are you thinking of when LTT created Dragonmount? Because RJ said it was caused by LTT overloading himself with the OP intentionally. Not with BF.

 

I think it more likely they were just looking at the post 2 above

1.  Moridin balefires Bela

2.  Mule balefires Moridin

3.  Bela balefires mule

4.  ????

5.  PROFIT!!!

 

4.  Mule balefires itself.   ;)

 

[Nightstrike]

How could they be possibly thinking of that? Dragonmount gets talked about a few times in every book, it is so obvious that you'd sooner find someone thinking that they use bf for sex changes...

I've seen it mentioned before - LTT supposedly balefiring himself.

[Rocky_Outcrop]

Who says that how far back the actions of one burned out is determined by power? What if it is determined by Rand really wanting to help his friends out? Why is it power and not feeling? The amount of anger you have about an event would be linked to power, naturally, but why is it so ... mathematical?

Weak channeler can't burn away more than a few seconds. The DO can still transmigrate their souls. Strong ones, especially with angreal, can burn away them long enough for the DO to not being able to resurrect them.

 

What I really want to know though is since when has BF stopped moving through objects? Since when ever ever has someone been able to shoot their jacket on the floor and not have a hole in the floor too, and for that matter a hole in the roof of the floor below and then one in floor of that room etc.

It probably won't go forever through the earth. It burns away that which is hit, up to a certain distance.

 

That much BF used to kill Gren. means that there is a massive massive hole in the ground after the palace and that this pit will be the biggest absence of dirt that has ever existed no?

Maybe there were a big hole. I'm sure they had other things to focus on right there and then.

 

Thanks for answers - what about the hole under Rand's coat?

 

People had time to mention how the palace was no longer there, well, they aught to have noticed the huge hole behind it too ....I am going on the beauty of the landscape - it would most certainly have been as noticeable as the lack of a palace.

[tneva82]

How could they be possibly thinking of that? Dragonmount gets talked about a few times in every book, it is so obvious that you'd sooner find someone thinking that they use bf for sex changes...

I've seen it mentioned before - LTT supposedly balefiring himself.

 

Well. Apart from RJ flat out denying it wasn't like that there's nothing to say he didn't balefire himself(apart from issue of how one balefires himself).

 

Makes one wonder why DO didn't put his hands on LTT's soul since he didn't BF himself. Or does legendary figures bound to wheel like LTT and Birgitte have some special protection against DO?

[Rocky_Outcrop]

How could they be possibly thinking of that? Dragonmount gets talked about a few times in every book, it is so obvious that you'd sooner find someone thinking that they use bf for sex changes...

I've seen it mentioned before - LTT supposedly balefiring himself.

 

Mentioned in the books or in a forum online? Or by RJ or BS? I don't remember LTT using balefire on himself, it would be very easy to achieve however

 

Shoot bf

open gateway

stand on otherside of gateway

 

Its the same sort of convoluted thing people do in the real world to kill themselves all the time, would be easier ways but you could most certainly hit yourself with BF if you wanted to, it would maybe just pass through and not effect you....

 

I've never read about anyone using it on themselves I am sure and BF is about removing from the world, dragonmount didn't exist poof dragonmount did exist to me that is adding to the world and therefore not bf.

 

A massive hole in the ground on the other hand...

[Stevros]

How could they be possibly thinking of that? Dragonmount gets talked about a few times in every book, it is so obvious that you'd sooner find someone thinking that they use bf for sex changes...

I've seen it mentioned before - LTT supposedly balefiring himself.

 

Well. Apart from RJ flat out denying it wasn't like that there's nothing to say he didn't balefire himself(apart from issue of how one balefires himself).

 

Makes one wonder why DO didn't put his hands on LTT's soul since he didn't BF himself. Or does legendary figures bound to wheel like LTT and Birgitte have some special protection against DO?

 

It would also be impossible for Rand to be LTT reborn if he BFed himself and there would never have been dragon reborn and the DO would have won.

[Nightstrike]

People had time to mention how the palace was no longer there, well, they aught to have noticed the huge hole behind it too ....I am going on the beauty of the landscape - it would most certainly have been as noticeable as the lack of a palace.

:-\ Maybe he expertly judged how much of it he should use? And then didn't force out more than enough? Or, maybe there was a big hole that noone bothered about?

 

Makes one wonder why DO didn't put his hands on LTT's soul since he didn't BF himself. Or does legendary figures bound to wheel like LTT and Birgitte have some special protection against DO?

RJ said that the DO doesn't have access to grab all souls. Maybe they need to swear themselves to him first?

 

It would also be impossible for Rand to be LTT reborn if he BFed himself and there would never have been dragon reborn and the DO would have won.

Balefire isn't the eternal death of the soul. It gets spun out again.

 

[Stevros]

RJ said that the DO doesn't have access to grab all souls. Maybe they need to swear themselves to him first?

 

Does that mean Kari al'Thor was a darkfriend.

[Nightstrike]

Mentioned in the books or in a forum online?

Forum online.

 

I don't remember LTT using balefire on himself, it would be very easy to achieve however

 

Shoot bf

open gateway

stand on otherside of gateway

 

Its the same sort of convoluted thing people do in the real world to kill themselves all the time, would be easier ways but you could most certainly hit yourself with BF if you wanted to, it would maybe just pass through and not effect you....

The paradox of someone who doesn't exist weaving balefire to kill someone (himself) would be gigantic. If the world survives the effects, then it still isn't the eternal death of the soul. I highly doubt it could even be possible. Maybe the weave just wouldn't work that time.

 

 

Does that mean Kari al'Thor was a darkfriend.

No, I think she was conjured up in t'a'r by Ishamael.

 

 

[roshan]

My question about balefire is this: why is it known in the Third Age at all?  Moiraine knew the weaves.  Cadsuane knows the weaves- well, at least she knows enough about the effects of balefire to tell Rand never to use it again.  Presumably other Aes Sedai know them as well.  How/where did they learn how to weave balefire?  Why do they have enough knowledge about it to react with such horror and anger (Cadsuane) to Rand using it?

 

The Aes Sedai of the Third Age seem to have a fairly intimate knowledge of balefire-- how to make it, how dangerous it is-- for people who are 3000 years separated from the time when channelers quit using it during the War of the Shadow!

 

Seems to me that after 3000 years the MOST that would remain would be legends or stories of a destructive weapon (weave) that was so terrible that EVERYONE decided to quit using it.  If knowledge of the forbidden and unused balefire remained, Traveling- something not prohibitted and undeniably useful- would have remained.  Not to mention that the Oaths prevent the use of the One Power to kill (except...) so there shouldn't have been any explicit effort to retain knowledge of the weaves.  Quite the opposite, I'd say.

 

How could an intimate, working knowledge of a forbidden and unused weave survive for 3000 years while useful weaves such as traveling, illusion, inverting weaves and masking an Aes Sedai's abiility to channel be lost?

[tneva82]

It would also be impossible for Rand to be LTT reborn if he BFed himself and there would never have been dragon reborn and the DO would have won.

 

Why impossible? Souls are reborn normally after BF as said by RJ. It only kills you back in time causing some serious causality issues which dangers pattern unraveling. And since person hit by BF dies back in time DO can't grab his soul("Even I cannot reach beyond time" tms).

 

BF ain't soul removed from pattern forever. Graendal and Semirhage will be reborn again in future allright. Frankly I don't know whether there IS such a thing as eternal death of soul. Maybe DO can cause one but BF doesn't.

[Stevros]

It would also be impossible for Rand to be LTT reborn if he BFed himself and there would never have been dragon reborn and the DO would have won.

 

Why impossible? Souls are reborn normally after BF as said by RJ. It only kills you back in time causing some serious causality issues which dangers pattern unraveling. And since person hit by BF dies back in time DO can't grab his soul("Even I cannot reach beyond time" tms).

 

BF ain't soul removed from pattern forever. Graendal and Semirhage will be reborn again in future allright. Frankly I don't know whether there IS such a thing as eternal death of soul. Maybe DO can cause one but BF doesn't.

 

Cheers for that; I've obviously been misunderstanding the mechanism by which it works. :)

[Nightstrike]

My question about balefire is this: why is it known in the Third Age at all?  Moiraine knew the weaves.

Moiraine learned it from a book that the old sisters had. (Adeleas and Vandene?) Maybe it was depicted somehow?

[tneva82]

My question about balefire is this: why is it known in the Third Age at all?  Moiraine knew the weaves.  Cadsuane knows the weaves.  Presumably other Aes Sedai know them as well.  How/where did they learn how to weave balefire?  Why do they have enough knowledge about it to react with such horror and anger (Cadsuane) to Rand using it?

 

Well. Who knows how much stuff has been recovered. It's worth a note that not many AS seems to know it. From Moiraine I got the impression it's not exactly commonly known weave. Moiraine might have learned it from Siuan who might have learned it from secret records of the AS. As for Cadsuanne...Well she's Cadsuanne. She might have accessed secret records illegally for all we know.

 

The Aes Sedai of the Third Age seem to have a fairly intimate knowledge of balefire-- how to make it, how dangerous it is-- for people who are 3000 years separated from the time when channelers quit using it during the War of the Shadow!

 

If something is dangerous better make sure you KNOW it's dangerous. Least all knowledge is forgotten and then somebody figures it again and there's no idea just how dangerous it is and then...Boom.

 

Seems to me that after 3000 years the MOST that would remain would be legends or stories of a destructive weapon (weave) that was so terrible that EVERYONE decided to quit using it.  If knowledge of the forbidden and unused balefire remained, Traveling- something not prohibitted and undeniably useful- would have remained.  Not to mention that the Oaths prevent the use of the One Power to kill (except...).  How could an intimate, working knowledge of a forbidden and unused weave survive for 3000 years while useful weaves such as traveling, illusion, inverting weaves and masking an Aes Sedai's abiility to channel be lost?

 

Random? Scraps of knowledge manages to survive by random chance. Also it might precicely be BECAUSE it is such dangerous thing. And by the time oaths came around reliable histories could again be maintained. They weren't introduced for quite a while after breaking.

[richnewton82]

.

[Inara]

i have a feeling that shadar haran had something to do with those aes sedai in the hallway, it would also make sense for him to have opened the writing box in cadsuanes room - he has the ability to cancel out weaves so there wouldnt have been any alarm

elza was just a pawn to help get into rands room and wear the second bracelet

[Vorkia]

My question about balefire is this: why is it known in the Third Age at all?  Moiraine knew the weaves.  Cadsuane knows the weaves- well, at least she knows enough about the effects of balefire to tell Rand never to use it again.  Presumably other Aes Sedai know them as well.  How/where did they learn how to weave balefire?  Why do they have enough knowledge about it to react with such horror and anger (Cadsuane) to Rand using it?

 

The Aes Sedai of the Third Age seem to have a fairly intimate knowledge of balefire-- how to make it, how dangerous it is-- for people who are 3000 years separated from the time when channelers quit using it during the War of the Shadow!

 

Seems to me that after 3000 years the MOST that would remain would be legends or stories of a destructive weapon (weave) that was so terrible that EVERYONE decided to quit using it.  If knowledge of the forbidden and unused balefire remained, Traveling- something not prohibitted and undeniably useful- would have remained.  Not to mention that the Oaths prevent the use of the One Power to kill (except...) so there shouldn't have been any explicit effort to retain knowledge of the weaves.  Quite the opposite, I'd say.

 

How could an intimate, working knowledge of a forbidden and unused weave survive for 3000 years while useful weaves such as traveling, illusion, inverting weaves and masking an Aes Sedai's abiility to channel be lost?

 

First of all, the Browns are known for seeking knowledge and as a result the Tower has a very extensive library with information from the AOL and it would stand to reason that at least one of those books mentions and describes BF.

 

Second of all, the Tower did have an ter'angreal that produced BF.  Even though it was stolen by the Black Ajha, it had spent time in the tower and was studied.  So it would stand to reason that even if there was no records of it in their vast library, the Tower would have some knowledge of it.

 

Thirdly, lets discount Rand's ability to sporadically create previously lost weaves because of the Lews Therin connection, and what Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne are able to do because of Moghedien's "teachings" but that leaves Aviendha, who was able to Travel when she was trying to escape Rand before it became somewhat common knowledge again.  The point is that when in stressful situations, instincts take over and new things are created that were previously lost.  The problem with that is remembering what was done (henceforth Aviendha's problem with creating gateways) But in some circumstances, there are witnesses around who can see the weaves and recreate them.  There are lots of reasons that the Tower has the knowledge about BF.

[Nightstrike]

Moiraine said that she was "more dangerous now" than she was before, after having visisted Adeleas & Vandene. She learnt Balefire in a book they had.

[BrainFireBob]

richnewton, and others, are arguing with a linear conception of time. This is why they are having a problem. For them, balefire altering what has already happened- which is what we are told it does, actions being erased- requires time to rewind and replay. Jordan was a physicist, and I believe he took a physicist's conception of time. To whit: We have seen the Portal Stone worlds. What I present to you is the idea that when balefire happens, an alternate reality becomes real and reality becomes an alternate world, where balefire didn't happen. However, the more you use, the more improbable the existance of the world you end up in- until reality itself begins to unravel.

 

EDIT: On why Cads knew balefire-  RJ confirmed a number of years ago that it is one of the secret weaves (every Ajah has them) of the Greens. Makes sense, some Shadowspawn don't die to much short.Vandene may have taught Ms after the Draughkar attack.

[Devlin1969]

Well I'm sure people are getting tired of my posts on the matter so I'll just post it in here and others can argue against it all they want.

 

I think Balefire is misunderstood by many, including myself up until recently.

 

 

Balefire doesn't cause time to go backwards and events to replay with that missing thread. This isn't like Back to the Future.

 

Rather, the thread is burned backwards and, in an instant, the pattern is forced to reconcile contradictions that exist as a result.

 

 

This is really important because it explains many things within the books. For example:

 

When Rhavin dies by balefire some things are undone but some are not. The things caused by his use of lightning (Mat, Asmo, and others dead) must be undone. The pattern cannot leave those people inexplicably dead. So it returned them to life. The damage done to the palace during the fight was not undone. Rand caused that damage. It is not paradoxical without Rhavin present.

 

Moghedian balefires Nynaeve's boat. You can read the passage for yourself and see that 1 instant she's sitting there, suddenly feels a massive amount of Saidar, doesn't even have time to react, and then suddenly, minutes have elapsed differently but HER reactions have not shifted. She's suddenly underwater. The passage even says that it took minutes out of the pattern for the rowers and the hull of the boat. One does not sit idly in a sinking ship for a few minutes. They run to deck and leap out. She had no reaction time because time did not go backward and restart. The pattern simply adjusted what it could: the position of the boat (due to rowers dying) and the position of the water(due to it now being cut in half and filling with water).

 

 

The misconception people are having is that they feel if there is a cause -> effect sequence in a situation and balefire removes the cause, then the effect should be removed anyway. This is very plainly false. Otherwise both the scene with Semmirhage and the scene with Graendal are completely 100% flawed.

 

In Semmirhage's case, she died from balefire and so did Elza. If there is simply a cause -> effect relationship and time should have transpired differently then we should have seen both Rand and Min shift from standing where they were, to sitting back on the bed where they were to begin with. The collar should have been replaced in the box. Min's bruises should have faded away. With a cause -> effect or "time rewind" interpretation of balefire those 3 things should not be how they are written and BS made huge errors. But they are. They make perfect sense if the pattern only seeks to resolve paradox and doesn't simply rewrite history though.

 

At Graendal's Palace the only thing that is undone is the compulsion weave is removed. The pattern had to remove it because it cannot inexplicably exist now. Graendal wasn't alive to put it there. If time rewound, then Rand would have showed up at the palace, it would have been empty, and they would have left after Ramashalan came back with nothing to report. No balefire would have even occurred at all. People will argue that "balefire exists outside of its own paradox" and indeed it does, precisely because of the mechanic I am describing. If time were rewritten, a paradox would form. Time isn't rewritten though. The balefire did occur, will always have occured, and the pattern would not undo it. Removing the balefire would remove Graendals death. You'd have a loop of paradox. The pattern seeks to remove paradox, not create it, therefor the balefire is never undone and hence, is always outside and unaffected by any paradoxes it creates. The pattern seeks to resolve all others created by it rather than touching it.. because that just creates a cause/effect loop/mess.

 

 

Clearly this is the great danger with Balefire. We saw at Graendal's palace the pattern groan as it reconciled the damage to reality from that paradox. Indeed, this is why removing entire cities threatened the entire world and why the tapestry analogy is perfect. Removing a thread or even a few threads from a tapestry may damage it, but hold a lighter to it's center and you'll have a hole that can never be mended. The pattern does not rewind and replay. It simply continues with the hole burned in it patched as best it can with what it has to work with. You burn a big enough hole and the hole cannot reconcile. The lose ends fray away. The pattern disintegrates. If the pattern simply rewove, then it would never be destroyed. You could burn the entire thing back 20 years and we may have a different pattern but a pattern would still exist. Because it doesn't rewind, it cannot reweave. It can only mend damage. It's ability to do that is fairly limited. And that is precisely why it is such a ridiculously powerful weapon yet completely unpredictable weapon.

 

 

 

Thank you!

I have had the thoughts in my head as I have read other peoples post but just have not had the time, or the words, to get it posted.

I agree with you 100% your description and interpretation of the effects of Balefire have be confirmed multiple times within the series and also in "The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time".

[Nightstrike]

It wouldn't matter who balefired Semirhage.  If Semi was erased to before she put the Domination Band on Rand, the bruises would disappear.

No, it wouldn't matter who BFed Semirhage. Min would still keep her bruises.

[Tsunami]

This is really important because it explains many things within the books. For example:

 

When Rhavin dies by balefire some things are undone but some are not. The things caused by his use of lightning (Mat, Asmo, and others dead) must be undone. The pattern cannot leave those people inexplicably dead. So it returned them to life. The damage done to the palace during the fight was not undone. Rand caused that damage. It is not paradoxical without Rhavin present.

 

2 questions about that sequence:

 

1. Why did Nynaeve had to heal Rand?  His wounds were caused by Rahvin's weaving of the dream.

 

2. Would it not matter how long ago Rahvin placed the wards that protected the city?  If he had done this months prior (like Rand had set wards protecting callandor), wouldn't it have been too far back to be burned away?