Ask A Simple Question, Get A Simple Answer

[karehiro]

Is Grady's son supposed to be the rebirth of Gaidal Caine? I could have sworn I read somewhere that RJ confirmed that it wasn't meant to be Olver.

[yoniy0]

Is Grady's son supposed to be the rebirth of Gaidal Caine? I could have sworn I read somewhere that RJ confirmed that it wasn't meant to be Olver.

You are right, but Grady's son doesn't fit either. The timing is all wrong.

[Duskfire]

Its still not obvious Graendal did it though. I only just recently re-read it and kept an open mind and even I didn't see why it was obvious it was her. She was only narrowed down because of intense scrutinising afterwards. In fact, it really could have been anyone at the point Asmodean died. There's no reason why it couldnt have been Sammael or Demandred or Slayer or anyone for that matter.

 

She obviously did it. I am just questioning the whole obvious thing, when it wasnt that obvious at all :P The fact that we were debating it like 16 years after it was written or whatnot suggests it wasn't obvious, and most of the theories that supported Graendal used evidence from after the fact.

[didymos]

Anyways, here's my question.

What abilities does Perrin's hammer actually have - since it was made with the Power?

 

It never needs sharpening!

As stated previously it seem to burn is opponent

But it smashed pretty good the skull of is opponent to , perhaps it somehow enhance the strength of the blow .

 

It's a giant f@*$ing hammer. Perrin can just manage to lift it single-handed. There's no need to invoke enhanced force to explain the fact that it can smash skulls with ease. Especially not with Perrin behind it. What it has, in addition to the already-noted ability to burn Shadowspawn, is what all OP-weapons have: it's ridiculously difficult to damage. Why? Well, it was the forging of it that allowed Grady to figure how to make OP-weapons in the first place, so it has to have that feature. Otherwise, Grady using a lesser, non-spawn, burning version of that weave wouldn't have worked.

 

Anyway, when you've got an edged OP weapon, that means the edge will never dull because dulling is actually damage: the metal of the edge gets little microscopic chips and it gets bent and compressed and torn. So, Mah'alleinir will never dent, nor rust, nor bend, nor chip, nor be worn smooth, etc. (barring some crazy Rand vs. Ishamael type situation). It will also make pretty blue flashes when other Power-wrought weapons strike it.

 

Of course, that doesn't mean it doesn't have even more unique traits beyond the ones we've already seen. The "+Infinity vs. Darkhounds" idea mentioned above seems a rather likely one, given what Darkhounds are made of and Perrin's nature.

[AnthonyJamesEnglish]

Anyways, here's my question.

What abilities does Perrin's hammer actually have - since it was made with the Power?

 

It never needs sharpening!

As stated previously it seem to burn is opponent

But it smashed pretty good the skull of is opponent to , perhaps it somehow enhance the strength of the blow .

 

It's a giant f@*$ing hammer. Perrin can just manage to lift it single-handed. There's no need to invoke enhanced force to explain the fact that it can smash skulls with ease. Especially not with Perrin behind it. What it has, in addition to the already-noted ability to burn Shadowspawn, is what all OP-weapons have: it's ridiculously difficult to damage. Why? Well, it was the forging of it that allowed Grady to figure how to make OP-weapons in the first place, so it has to have that feature. Otherwise, Grady using a lesser, non-spawn, burning version of that weave wouldn't have worked.

 

Anyway, when you've got an edged OP weapon, that means the edge will never dull because dulling is actually damage: the metal of the edge gets little microscopic chips and it gets bent and compressed and torn. So, Mah'alleinir will never dent, nor rust, nor bend, nor chip, nor be worn smooth, etc. (barring some crazy Rand vs. Ishamael type situation). It will also make pretty blue flashes when other Power-wrought weapons strike it.

 

Of course, that doesn't mean it doesn't have even more unique traits beyond the ones we've already seen. The "+Infinity vs. Darkhounds" idea mentioned above seems a rather likely one, given what Darkhounds are made of and Perrin's nature.

 

It also seems to have the ability to increase it's power depending on perrins mood, as during the battle with the trollocs when he remembered the two rivers the hammer grew warmer in his hands

 

"Memories of the Two Rivers flooded into his mind. Blood.Death. Mah'alleinir grew warmer in his fist"

[Sharaman]

Its still not obvious Graendal did it though. I only just recently re-read it and kept an open mind and even I didn't see why it was obvious it was her. She was only narrowed down because of intense scrutinising afterwards. In fact, it really could have been anyone at the point Asmodean died. There's no reason why it couldnt have been Sammael or Demandred or Slayer or anyone for that matter.

 

She obviously did it. I am just questioning the whole obvious thing, when it wasnt that obvious at all :P The fact that we were debating it like 16 years after it was written or whatnot suggests it wasn't obvious, and most of the theories that supported Graendal used evidence from after the fact.

Nope Graendal and Sammael are the only theories that don't need info after Book I-V and don't need any assumptions about stuff we don;t know by Asmo's death.

Every other killer theory does.

[didymos]

Its still not obvious Graendal did it though. I only just recently re-read it and kept an open mind and even I didn't see why it was obvious it was her. She was only narrowed down because of intense scrutinising afterwards. In fact, it really could have been anyone at the point Asmodean died. There's no reason why it couldnt have been Sammael or Demandred or Slayer or anyone for that matter.

 

She obviously did it. I am just questioning the whole obvious thing, when it wasnt that obvious at all :P The fact that we were debating it like 16 years after it was written or whatnot suggests it wasn't obvious, and most of the theories that supported Graendal used evidence from after the fact.

 

Why do people keep thinking it was supposed be genuinely, sky-is-blue-style obvious? It wasn't. It was supposed to be "intuitively obvious to the most casual observer", which is what RJ actually said and which actually means the exact opposite of its literal meaning. I.e., not obvious at all. He also never said there was rock-solid, absolute proof available at the time of the murder. He said it could be figured out based on what was available as tFoH, not confirmed to a certainty.

 

Looking back, one thing I think people overlooked entirely or just discounted as not being "good" evidence was what you could call "meta-textual" evidence. I.e., not the events related by the text, but the structure of the story. In this instance, there's a couple things:

 

tFoH was Graendal's first appearance in the series, and she got a speaking role. And then she got a second appearance in the book, and that also a speaking role.

 

We're either told or can figure out what happens to every other Forsaken in the novel: Rahvin, balefired. Lanfear, Moirained and then 'Finned. Moghedien, captured. Sammael, stayed in Illian and clearly preferred to stay there.

 

 

But Graendal...? Nothing.

 

We get no solid clues as to where she is or who she's pretending to be, if anybody. Asmodean can only speculate that she may have left Arad Doman, but doesn't really know. We know nothing of her current interests other than the fact that she agreed to the plan, the detailed logistics of which are never given onscreen (i.e. who meets who where and when, etc.). That's just weird, given that she has her Forsaken "debutante" party here.

 

And yet, she still gets the full "I'm important to the plot" treatment by RJ. That really should have carried more weight with us readers. Especially when the standard pattern for largely plot-unimportant Forsaken was to get name-dropped in passing (Sammael in tDR or Demandred in tFoH for example), or to show up once, say a couple lines, and then die (Aginor, Balthamel, Be'lal).

 

Plus, every other Forsaken in the book is directly responsible for one or more events: Sammael sends various attacks to goad Rand into attacking him; Lanfear messes up the plan she proposed in the first place by trying to point Rand at Rahvin instead and then switches into full psycho mode and wreaks mass havoc; Asmodean hangs out, chats, plays some tunes, helps out every so often, and dies...twice; Rahvin continues screwing up Andor, fights Rand, gets balefired; Moghedien hunts Nynaeve, nearly kills Birgitte, gets captured, etc.

 

 

But Graendal...? Shows up to a couple meetings. Well...what the hell? Why is she even in this book? Doesn't she ever do anything?

[didymos]

It also seems to have the ability to increase it's power depending on perrins mood, as during the battle with the trollocs when he remembered the two rivers the hammer grew warmer in his hands

 

"Memories of the Two Rivers flooded into his mind. Blood.Death. Mah'alleinir grew warmer in his fist"

 

 

Both the memories and the warmth are due to him smashing Trollocs: doing so reminds him of the earlier battle, and more heat is generated each time it burns another victicm. They're not causally connected.

[analyticalkeys]

Is Grady's son supposed to be the rebirth of Gaidal Caine? I could have sworn I read somewhere that RJ confirmed that it wasn't meant to be Olver.

You are right, but Grady's son doesn't fit either. The timing is all wrong.

 

Why is the timing wrong? I just feel like him having a child "ugly as a stump" right before the Last Battle is a little too much of a coincidence..

[didymos]

Is Grady's son supposed to be the rebirth of Gaidal Caine? I could have sworn I read somewhere that RJ confirmed that it wasn't meant to be Olver.

You are right, but Grady's son doesn't fit either. The timing is all wrong.

 

Why is the timing wrong? I just feel like him having a child "ugly as a stump" right before the Last Battle is a little too much of a coincidence..

 

He's too old. The sign that Gaidal was reborn, vanishing from the dream, happened shortly before Birgitte was ripped out in tFoH. Grady's son was around four years old at the beginning of LoC. Also, the year was 998 NE in tEotW, and the current year is 1000 NE. Do the math.

[Sharaman]

Is Grady's son supposed to be the rebirth of Gaidal Caine? I could have sworn I read somewhere that RJ confirmed that it wasn't meant to be Olver.

You are right, but Grady's son doesn't fit either. The timing is all wrong.

 

Why is the timing wrong? I just feel like him having a child "ugly as a stump" right before the Last Battle is a little too much of a coincidence..

I think Yoniy0 means the child is too old to be Gaidal transmigrated. Time doesn't run backwards in TAR - if Gaidal reincarnates, he will do so after he disappears from TAR.

[analyticalkeys]

Is Grady's son supposed to be the rebirth of Gaidal Caine? I could have sworn I read somewhere that RJ confirmed that it wasn't meant to be Olver.

You are right, but Grady's son doesn't fit either. The timing is all wrong.

 

Why is the timing wrong? I just feel like him having a child "ugly as a stump" right before the Last Battle is a little too much of a coincidence..

 

He's too old. The sign that Gaidal was reborn, vanishing from the dream, happened shortly before Birgitte was ripped out in tFoH. Grady's son was around four years old at the beginning of LoC. The year was 998 NE in tEotW. The current year is 1000 NE. Do the math.

 

I forgot that they ever mentioned Grady's son before.. haven't read Lord of Chaos in years, lol.

[Guest StaffWielder]

What's up with Noal's (Jain's) comment that he's seen something like what the Finn do with their twisty hallways before, and he mentions how it's done with mirrors?

 

I kind of feel like Mat, where I don't see how they could be using mirrors since sometimes things just appear out of nowhere. What could he be referring to?

[Yorkie]

Olver, first POV and what we get some creepy manifestation of Mat...

I like Olver, nothing in the previous books give an indication that "Mat" owes him, or am I blind...

 

But I may be off here, but I did find it fascinating that he won snakes and foxes just as Mat escaped... A link, the link that RJ said that Olver had a part to play...

[vfletcher]

That flies in the face of everything we've been told about her proficiency in the Dream, that's all. THIS is the inconsistency, not that such things are possible in tel'aran'rhiod.

 

I think that there's different definitions of what counts as "proficiency". You could see when she was spying on the other Forsaken in Dreamland that she was able to access different "levels" of the place, which perhaps the others weren't able to. That's different from having as full an understanding of how "not real" it is. She thinks of it as an actual place which has some properties that can be manipulated, while Perrin is shown it to as something which is wholely imaginary that doesn't really have any properties (in the normal sense of the word), so everything about the place can just be ignored as he sees fit and he shows that to Egwene.

 

Sort of the difference between being an Agent in the Matrix and being Neo. An agent can do a lot of stuff that others can't do, but they're fluff compared to Neo. Perrin wasn't introduced to the place as a realm that had rules, so those rules didn't shape his understanding of it in the same way that someone trained in the place did, so he just decided to be Neo and, due to the nature of Dreamland, that decision made him right.

 

 

Yes!! Matrix reference to TAR Win!!

[Zefram]

Is Grady's son supposed to be the rebirth of Gaidal Caine? I could have sworn I read somewhere that RJ confirmed that it wasn't meant to be Olver.

You are right, but Grady's son doesn't fit either. The timing is all wrong.

 

Why is the timing wrong? I just feel like him having a child "ugly as a stump" right before the Last Battle is a little too much of a coincidence..

I think Yoniy0 means the child is too old to be Gaidal transmigrated. Time doesn't run backwards in TAR - if Gaidal reincarnates, he will do so after he disappears from TAR.

 

 

How old is Grady's son? If he is under 2 yrs old, he should be the right age. When we first see Grady he is one of the first ones being tested in Rand's presence by Taim and his wife is mentioned (who glares at Rand) but I don't remember no kids and its not specified if she pregnant or not. Last time we saw Gaidal was when Brigitte started to help Elayne and Nynaeve in TAR the first time around, but when Brigitte appeared last time in TAR (right before Moghiedien threw her out) she mentioned that she can't find Gaidal anymore and he is probably reincarnated. So 1.5 yrs if you consider that Gaidal (and other heroes of the Horn) vanish from time the moment they are born not the moment their mothers become preganant.

[Reckless]

Didn't RJ say insanity/madness couldn't be cured? Didn't Nyn do just that?

[yoniy0]

Didn't RJ say insanity/madness couldn't be cured? Didn't Nyn do just that?

He said the Cleansing won't undo whatever damaged the Taint has already caused, not that nothing can undo it.

[Guest runin2dson]

Ok 3 Questions...

 

1) Who is Slayer/Luc.. just some darkfriend human/dreamer that has it out for wolves? Does he have a past, some connection to the AoL, forsaken..? anything?

 

2) Fain was briefly brought up in ToM... but did nothing so far. Just a quick note to say he is still around and getting even more evil? Did I miss anything?

 

3) Whats with the whole prophesy/possible future after the Last battle (with Avi at the end of the book)? Every nation/people group that we have come to know and love over the last 13 books is destroyed/conquered in relatively few generations? All because Rand was 'evil' when he asked Tuon for peace the first time? What about the effects of other things, ie Mat being the prince, the Tuon can channel reveal, male AS and learning to link with women..etc.

- Why do we get a glimpse of such an extreem/depressing future when it seems other possibilities are more likely?

[capuga]

Ok 3 Questions...

 

1) Who is Slayer/Luc.. just some darkfriend human/dreamer that has it out for wolves? Does he have a past, some connection to the AoL, forsaken..? anything?

 

2) Fain was briefly brought up in ToM... but did nothing so far. Just a quick note to say he is still around and getting even more evil? Did I miss anything?

 

3) Whats with the whole prophesy/possible future after the Last battle (with Avi at the end of the book)? Every nation/people group that we have come to know and love over the last 13 books is destroyed/conquered in relatively few generations? All because Rand was 'evil' when he asked Tuon for peace the first time? What about the effects of other things, ie Mat being the prince, the Tuon can channel reveal, male AS and learning to link with women..etc.

- Why do we get a glimpse of such an extreem/depressing future when it seems other possibilities are more likely?

 

1. Slayer is a being with two souls - Luc (Tigraine/Shail's brother and Rand's uncle) who was sent to the Blight by Gitora (the AS that had the Foretelling about Rand being born) after one of her Foretellings and Isam (Lan's cousin) who was an infant when Malkier fell. We know these two are merged, we know they are an assassin for the Shadow, and we know they can enter TAR in the flesh. We don't know much about how all of this happened.

 

2. I don't remember seeing Fain after the prologue.

 

3. I think that the reverance that the LB survivors seem to view Rand and the Dragon-blooded with in Avi's vision indicates that it was not "evil" Rand that caused this to happen. Since Rand is held in such obvious esteem it seems much more likely that this future took place after Rand had his epiphany. It appears that he and his descendents still made some mistakes that made this bleak future possible. I don't think this future will come to pass now that Avi has seen it and can work to prevent it.

[Nomos]

Just one question for now, as I haven't seen this anywhere else.

 

When Min sees a new viewing above Rand toward the end of the book, she sees a fist of (onyx or obsidian, I don't remember) holding Callandor. Could this be Rand with a power-wrought construct for a left hand?

[Rand Skywalker]

Just one question for now, as I haven't seen this anywhere else.

 

When Min sees a new viewing above Rand toward the end of the book, she sees a fist of (onyx or obsidian, I don't remember) holding Callandor. Could this be Rand with a power-wrought construct for a left hand?

 

This was my immediate first thought, followed by: "why would he create such a hand? why would it look like that?" Then I thought it would be wielded by some by some bad guy (Taim? Demandred? Moridin? Take your pick).

[capuga]

Just one question for now, as I haven't seen this anywhere else.

 

When Min sees a new viewing above Rand toward the end of the book, she sees a fist of (onyx or obsidian, I don't remember) holding Callandor. Could this be Rand with a power-wrought construct for a left hand?

 

That was the impression I got when reading that.

[sean_powell08]

Three Questions:

 

1. Is there any reason for Fain's obsession with Red and Black? Any hints that he may be connected to Moridin/Rand since he knows where to meet Rand for Revenge or is he just following prophecy about Rand dying on SG?

 

2. Any small comments about the Ogier found? We only have one book left, yet we dunno how the stump is coming or if they have opened the book of whatever its called. If they open it would every ogier in the world disappear? I had secretly hoped the DW ogier would help unite randland before the LB. Also no mention of Ogier in Avi's second trip through the pillars. Could be coincidence tho.

 

3. Any speculation on why Rand's sickness from grabbing Saidin has disappeared? Seem to remember reading that was supposed to be what triggered the Moridin link and one reason why Moridin stopped using Saidin. I've thought maybe the "light" thing protecting his mind, but that should be protecting the taint, not crossed threads in the pattern. Moridin also doesnt mention any troubles with his hand again right?

[Rand Skywalker]

 

3. Any speculation on why Rand's sickness from grabbing Saidin has disappeared? Seem to remember reading that was supposed to be what triggered the Moridin link and one reason why Moridin stopped using Saidin. I've thought maybe the "light" thing protecting his mind, but that should be protecting the taint, not crossed threads in the pattern. Moridin also doesnt mention any troubles with his hand again right?

 

Could be taint/madness related.