The Magnitude of the Problem with Balefire

[Guest reachzero]

Please keep in mind that I'm only a third of the way through Towers of Midnight, so if this issue is addressed there, I am unaware of it. That being said, I know there has already been a great deal of discussion regarding the mechanics of balefire; I don't believe that this particularly issue has been raised. The issue in question is how completely balefire burns a thread out of the Pattern. Can a thread that has been burned out the Pattern eventually be woven back in? We have no evidence of anyone being spun back into the Pattern after being balefired, so it is difficult to say for sure, but if it is not possible, killing with balefire is gradually decreasing the total number of threads in the Pattern. This would mean that unless the Creator creates more human souls, eventually the Pattern will be depleted significantly (I imagine that after a few cycles of the Wheel, people would stop using balefire entirely if there are only ten or so people left!). Not only is the total number of souls an issue, the specific threads that shape the Ages are at serious risk if balefire terminates them permanently. For example, consider a fight between any given Forsaken (let's call him Rahvin) and the Dragon Reborn (let's call him Rand) in a particular Age. Each attempts to balefire the other. If Rand successfully balefires Rahvin, how can this same fight occur the next time the Wheel spins out this Age? The Dark One must find a new Forsaken to replace the missing soul of Rahvin. However, this problem is far, far worse if Rahvin balefires Rand, considering the importance of the Dragon Reborn to the Pattern. Even if the missing piece is much less significant than the Dragon, it seems from the characters in this particular Age that each thread is strikingly important--what will happen when this Age returns if it no longer contains Cadsuane, or Moiraine, or Siuan, or even Mazrim Taim? The removal of almost any major character means that the Dark One wins, and even if he does not benefit directly, the large-scale removal of threads from the Pattern guarantees that he will win in the end. And lest you argue that the small-scale removal of threads from the Pattern in this Age make the overall loss negligible, I remind you that not only does the Wheel cycle infinitely, but entire cities were burned out of the thread during the Age of Legends.

 

Considering the massive problems inherent with the danger of depleting all the threads in the Pattern, it is tempting to think that threads that are burned out of the Pattern can be restored in a later Age, or in a later cycle of the Wheel. However, that itself would raise major questions of what happens to souls when a person in Randland dies. Are they stored in Tel'Aran'Rhiod until the Wheel spins them back out or they are called by the Horn of Valere? If so, we would expect TAR to be overflowing with souls of the dead. Do they go to some other plane of existence? Remember, they have to go somewhere that the Dark One can touch. They apparently are not simply "absorbed by the Wheel". Complicating everything even further, the fact that ghosts are now walking the land confirms for us quite strongly that souls in Randland continue to exist after the death of the person. Even if balefiring a person in the material world didn't wipe the person out of the Pattern, what if you balefired them in Tel'Aran'Rhiod? What if you balefired a ghost? There are simply too many unanswered questions....and in almost any theory, unless the Creator directly steps in, the Dark One wins. If anyone, in any Age uses balefire, the Pattern is doomed.

[Agitel]

Balefire does not destroy a soul, it merely kills them before their time of death. That is why the DO can't transmigrate a soul that was balefired. He only has a small window of time in which to catch a soul before it's out of his reach. Since that window has passed before the moment of death, he can't save his Chosen who've been balefried. Balefired souls will be reborn. With that said, non-Hero characters like Rahvin may not play the same exact role they did in the Age of Legends and the Third Age the next time it comes around. Rahvin wasn't born for that specific purpose. Heroes that aren't spun out intentionally or souls that aren't made ta'veren intentionally by the Wheel have, in general, a great deal of free will in regards to their lives. Heroes and ta'veren are the corrective mechanisms to make sure that the GENERAL events of an Age play out in the proper way.

 

It seems that only Heroes wait in tel'aran'rhiod after they die. Most souls don't. Where they wait we don't know. What happens when balefired in tel'aran'rhiod (a soul, like Birgitte waiting there for her next rebirth, not someone like Rhavin, who entered in the flesh or Egwene, who dreams her way there) we can't say for sure, but that is something that could lead to permanent destruction or at least no rebirth, but we can't say for sure. Only a small number of Heroes wait there, though, and in general they seem to try to avoid other people while there (part of the "precepts" Gaidal and Birgitte mention).

[dscott8]

My theory:

 

"Hero" souls are preserved in tel'aran'rhiod because they've earned it, the Creator made TAR as a way to preserve souls that excelled in Her cause. All other souls that die go back into a "holding tank" -- wait, that's not a grand enough name for this genre, call it the Well of Souls -- and when a new person is born, they get a random sample (the Ewer of Conception?) from the Well of Souls.

 

Since souls are spun into threads of the Pattern, and balefire burns them back prior to their natural ending point, the soul returned to the Well is somewhat diminished -- so Rahvin will be reborn as a cranky shoe salesman, marry a redheaded harridan, and have two kids -- a slutty daughter and an egotistical mook of a son.

[nogoodatnames]

 

" so Rahvin will be reborn as a cranky shoe salesman, marry a redheaded harridan, and have two kids -- a slutty daughter and an egotistical mook of a son.

 

I've just realised how much my life mirrors Al bundy's.