The DO breaking Free

[Forgemage]

Just thought I'd throw the idea out there and see what you think.

[rubbernilly]

Sorry, I cast my vote for Yes when I meant No. No, the DO would not be prevented from escaping.

 

Bah. I don't like the wording of the question, but my take on it is that short of turning every channeler into a Gray Man (the only mechanism we know to remove a soul from the Pattern), a channeler will be reborn.

 

Channeling strength is soul-dependent, so stilling/gentling/killing doesn't do much in the long run. In fact, I think we are supposed to come to the conclusion that the theory about the Red Ajah "culling" the ability to channel out of the human race is busted... given the numbers of recruits the Black Tower is gathering and the number of women coming to the Tower now that Egwene has opened the novice books.

 

The end result is that you could probably only cull the ability out of a generation. It would return, and with it the possibility of a new Bore being drilled.

[Forgemage]

Only meant as a hypothetical question, however it underlines something interesting, The Power as the ultimate cause of the whole DO problem.

[Durinax]

ugh how i dislike the possibility that each and every soul is reborn as the same as before. . . . I much rather my own thoughts about how the souls are torn apart and reassembled from random pieces (excepting heroes) and if by some chacne most of a previous soul is reassembled then that person has memories from before.

 

and this also includes the fact that if the human population never stops expanding that there will never be a shortage of souls, since as the amount of soul material goes down then less gets put into a perosn and the missing component is regrown. . . but these are my own ramblings

[MikeRiley]

Channeling was (re-)discovered towards the end of the age prior to the Age of Legends which suggests before the Wheel turns again, the ability will either be lost or forgotten. It's possible that when/if Rand closes the bore, he will do it in a way that also shuts off the Creator's reach of the world, shielding the world from both Powers. Then when the Wheel turns and the shield on the Creator degraded enough, an old ability would be discovered. All assumptions. It could just be that there's another Breaking and knowledge is lost over time, or there's a massive backlash that severs everybody - followed by a Whitecloak-generated witch hunt, but that wouldn't stop people tapping in and learning to touch the source on their own.

 

I have a sneaking suspicion that this will be a cliffhanger in the last book. We'll get a glimpse of something happening but have it left in the air what actually happened and if it even did happen.