Rankings

[mateodh]

Last year sometime I frequented these forums and there was a lively discussion going on attempting to put together a ranking of channelers. I've looked through about 10 pages, trying not to spam, but I give up. Anybody know if it's still here, where I can find it? If not, we can certainly revive the discussion here.

 

I was thinking the other day about a discussion I had with my sister and one of the things that has frustrated her about the series. Her favorite character is Nynaeve, and she feels like Jordan built her up with these interesting plot points, then tore them down. For example, early in the series, Nynaeve was estimated to be one of, if not the strongest in the OP. To make it fair, she had limitations on when she could channel. Now it seems like both of those attributes, which made her interesting and special, have been diminished. For a while it seemed like every book we ran into another Wilder or damane that's stronger than her. That's one reason I'd like to get a ranking going.

 

Thanks!

[Ozzie_aiel]

There only seems to be a couple non-forsaken female channellers more powerful, and none of them are as cool as Nynaeve. You got Alivia, whose basically become Rands channelling lapdog, Sharina, the elderly goodie-2-shoes novice who seems to enjoys making up rules, and that little Sea-folk apprentice who was whining to Nynaeve about leaving her ship behind and becoming a novice.

[goddessbec]

i love nynaeve, shes my favourite charactor, i sort of see it as proof that the Aes Sedai are so wrong about so many things. Nynaeve would be the strongest in the tower, if this wasn't the start of TG, as in, Alivia would still be damane, Sharina would never be allowed to become a novice...

 

Just because someone in the book SAYS something, doesnt mean it is true fact, the AS are all so sure of them selves that they believe everything they say as fact (well duh, 3 oathes an all) but that doesnt nessisarily mean it to be true.

 

just my opinion anyway, some sort of graph or something on the heirachy of rank would be cool, i remember seeing one once before too but that was ages ago.

[Darth Krewl]

I found this article ranking female channelers on the 13th. Depository blog a few weeks back and I think it's pretty accurate.

 

http://13depository.blogspot.com/2009/02/saidar-strength-ranking.html

 

Hope this helps.

[Mr Ares]

I was thinking the other day about a discussion I had with my sister and one of the things that has frustrated her about the series. Her favorite character is Nynaeve, and she feels like Jordan built her up with these interesting plot points, then tore them down. For example, early in the series, Nynaeve was estimated to be one of, if not the strongest in the OP. To make it fair, she had limitations on when she could channel. Now it seems like both of those attributes, which made her interesting and special, have been diminished. For a while it seemed like every book we ran into another Wilder or damane that's stronger than her.

Personally, I found it made Nynaeve more interesting to have people who were better than her. Nynaeve fans don't like her because she's the strongest channeler, nor because she's the best Healer - in both these areas she is surpassed, and yet she is still great. Look at the Golden Crane scene in KoD: "My husband rides for Tarwin's Gap. Does he ride alone?" He built up these aspects of Nynaeve, and then tore them away to show how superficial they are; they are not what made her interesting or special, in my mind. What made her interesting and special, to me anyway (and she ranks behind only Rand on my list of favourite characters), is her pesonality. She's brave, stubborn, compassionate, and often hilarious.

 

On the matter of strength rankings, bear this in mind: while there is information to place an awful lot of characters, there is nothing to indicate Moghedien is the weakest of the Chosen. I say this because nearly every time this comes up people put her at the bottom of the Chosen, but there is nothing to support it other than assessment of her personality. She's weaker than Lanfear and Cyndane, but those are the only comparisons I remember, so we cannot definitively place her below Graendal, Semirhage or Mesaana.

[Jblaylock]

Ranking?

 

In terms of overall strength in the One Power, regardless of affiliations?

 

 

If so, I don't know if there is an official determination of who's who, in those terms, but personaly, based soley on what I've always just assumed/imagined while reading, I'd rank them as follows:

 

Rand/Lews

Ishamael/Moridin

Lanfear (before resurrection)

Mazrim Taim

Demandred

Alivia

Graendal

Sammael

Rhavin

Semirhage

Aginor

Balthamel

Nynaeve

Be'lal

Mesaana

Moghedien

Logaine

Asmodean

Egwene

Aviendha

Elayne

 

...Bela

[Jon Paul]

Rand/Lews

Ishamael/Moridin

Lanfear (before resurrection

 

Everything in the Pattern is balanced. Everyone is balanced. Saidin balances saidar. Around Rand, good things happen as often as bad things because of balance. And I believe in the matter of the One Power, Lanfear is Lews Therin's balance. It wouldn't make sense of Lews Therin's balance to be another male but for a female? Yes.

 

So, although Elan Moran is a powerful channeller in Lews Therin's league, Lanfear should be either second or tied with Lews Therin with Elan at second/third.

 

In my opinion .

[username13]

Aginor was actually described as the most powerful male channeler behind Lews Therin and Ishamael

[Jon Paul]

Aginor was actually described as the most powerful male channeler behind Lews Therin and Ishamael

 

One of them at least. Probably right behind aye, because he was incredibly powerful and incredibly smart. But we also have Mr "Almost" and Sammael was no push-over either.

[Adamdidit]

reading the basis of the list is interesting, although I disagree with the writer there when he says women go to 21 and men go to 24...I think what was intended by saying men have another 3 levels doesn't change what we knew about Lanfear...it just made her unique...as though to say Lanfear is in the top 21st bracket, but pretty much no other women are above 18

 

as for ranking, well, we knew LTT/Rand is it, and we know the Lanfear and Ishy are supposed to have been roughly equal...we know that Demandred and Taim both have just a little less than Rand/LTT, and we know Aginor was the 2nd strongest male behind Ishy..so using my childhood lvoe of those word puzzles that ddint give all the info, I see it this way

 

LTT/Rand, Ishy, Lanfear in a virtual tie

Aginor just a tiny bit below (think 99.5 if the other three are 100)

Demandred and Taim a tiny bit below that (think 99.0)

[Barid Bel Medar]

reading the basis of the list is interesting, although I disagree with the writer there when he says women go to 21 and men go to 24...I think what was intended by saying men have another 3 levels doesn't change what we knew about Lanfear...it just made her unique...as though to say Lanfear is in the top 21st bracket, but pretty much no other women are above 18

 

as for ranking, well, we knew LTT/Rand is it, and we know the Lanfear and Ishy are supposed to have been roughly equal...we know that Demandred and Taim both have just a little less than Rand/LTT, and we know Aginor was the 2nd strongest male behind Ishy..so using my childhood lvoe of those word puzzles that ddint give all the info, I see it this way

 

LTT/Rand, Ishy, Lanfear in a virtual tie

Aginor just a tiny bit below (think 99.5 if the other three are 100)

Demandred and Taim a tiny bit below that (think 99.0)

 

Lanfear is several levels below Ishamael and Rand. She is the strongest woman, Rand is the strongest male, males are several tiers higher than women.

 

So it is most likely this

 

LTT and Ishmael - Sure (BWB)

Aginor - Sure (BWB)

Demandred - Sure (always a step behind LTT) (BWB)

Lanfear - Sure (Most powerful female)

Be'lal

Sammael

Rhavin

Semirhage

Graendal

Asmodean

Balthamael

Moggy

Mesanna

 

of course, I am only sure as far as Lanfear, but thats how I see the rest.

[Linda]

reading the basis of the list is interesting, although I disagree with the writer there when he says women go to 21 and men go to 24...

 

The writer is a she and she was quoting Jordan.

[Sarner]

Lanfear is several levels below Ishamael and Rand. She is the strongest woman, Rand is the strongest male, males are several tiers higher than women.

 

So it is most likely this

 

LTT and Ishmael - Sure (BWB)

Aginor - Sure (BWB)

Demandred - Sure (always a step behind LTT) (BWB)

Lanfear - Sure (Most powerful female)

Be'lal

Sammael

Rhavin

Semirhage

Graendal

Asmodean

Balthamael

Moggy

Mesanna

 

of course, I am only sure as far as Lanfear, but thats how I see the rest.

 

Werent Asmodean described as the weakest forsaken?

 

Not certain, just going by my memory.

[Arani Lepenque Aes Sedai]

Moghedien is surely the weakest in the OP among the forsaken. I mean, Nynaeve bested her in TSR, when Nynaeve was certainly nowhere near her full strength...

[randsc]

We know (from Asmodean) that strength in the Power is like strength of the arm. Some women may be stronger than some men, but in general, it is the other way around, and in about the same proportion. I don't have the book; perhaps someone else can come up with the exact quote.

 

So I think that the lists offered have too many women. A list of the twenty strongest arms in the world would not include 10 women. It probably wouldn't include any women.

[Nightstrike]

I agree with what's been said. Top 10 arm strength wouldn't include any women. Strongest woman can "do just about" anything that the strongest man can do, though. According to RJ. Whether that "doing just about" includes duelling is another matter (I seriously do not believe it it - based on what's been described in the series).

[Nightstrike]

I think there are women among the top 10 Forsaken. Maybe I should point that out.

[randsc]

I think there are women among the top 10 Forsaken. Maybe I should point that out.

 

 

Well, yeah, there would have to be, since there were only 13 Foresaken, and 5 are female.

[Jon Paul]

Men may, on average, be able to hold more of the One Power than a woman, but woman are better channellers on average. They can handle their flows a lot better and can weave them better. Channelling is not about just the volume of the Power one has at their disposal. It's why strength, pre-War, in the AoL didn't matter.

[randsc]

Where did you get the idea that strength didn't matter in the AoL? There are certainly textual indications that it did matter. The fact that the strongest male channelers were the ones to attempt to seal the bore, for example. So I am curious where that interpretation came from.

[Nightstrike]

I think there are women among the top 10 Forsaken. Maybe I should point that out.

Well, yeah, there would have to be, since there were only 13 Foresaken, and 5 are female.

There were many more than 13 Forsaken. Only 13 were sealed. (Not to mention their habit of getting themselves killed.)

[randsc]

There were six others, that we know of from the text, though there may have been more.

 

We aren't specifically told the gender of those six. It may or may not be meaningful that they were killed by the Dark One, and during the Breaking.

[Nightstrike]

TOR Questions of the Week, August 2004-January 2005

Week 12 Question: In Winter's Heart, you mention that back in the Age of Legends, there were several other Forsaken that the Dark One had killed because he suspected they would betray him. What's their story? Were those people ever as high ranking as the thirteen survivors, or where they more like high-ranking Dreadlords then actual Forsaken?

 

Robert Jordan Answers:

...

Forsaken was the name given to Aes Sedai who went over to the Shadow in the War of the Shadow at the end of the Age of Legends, though of course, they called themselves the Chosen, and despite the tales of the "current" Age, there were many more than a few of them. Since they occupied all sorts of levels, you might say that many were equivalent to some of the lesser Dreadlords, but it would be incorrect to call them so. At the time, they were all Forsaken—or Chosen—from the greatest to the least.

 

Some of those Forsaken the Dark One killed were every bit as high-ranking as the thirteen who were remembered, and who you might say constituted a large part of the Dark One's General Staff at the time of the sealing. With the Forsaken, where treachery and backstabbing were an acceptable way of getting ahead, the turnover in the upper ranks was fairly high, though Ishamael, Demandred, Lanfear, Graendal, Semirhage, and later Sammael, were always at the top end of the pyramid. They were very skilled at personal survival, politically and physically.

 

In large part the thirteen were remembered because they were trapped at Shayol Ghul, and so their names became part of that story, though it turned out that details of them, stories of them, survived wide-spread knowledge of the tale of the actual sealing itself. Just that they had been sealed away. Other Forsaken were left behind, so to speak, free but in a world that was rapidly sliding down the tube. The men eventually went mad and died from the same taint that killed off the other male Aes Sedai.

...

WinespringBrother reporting:

 

Tam: Ouch - Okay, now that you have killed my black cord theory, are the oath and covenants Forsaken make with the Dark One necessary for the Dark One to transmigrate a soul?

Jordan: They are not necessary, but he is not likely to do it for anyone who hasn't done, who hasn't sworn to him.

Tam: He doesn't have access to all souls to be able to grab any soul?

Jordan: No, no, no. Because of the Bore and the fact that the Bore is best perceived, the Bore doesn't really exist in Shayol Ghul, the Bore exists everywhere, its simply in Shayol Ghul where it can be perceived most easily. By the same token he has greater access to people at Shayol Ghul than he does elsewhere, or did, and uh, that's, when you know, Rahvin died, Rahvin is balefired out of time, slain out of time, cannot be reached, gone. Be'lal, (names someone else)...

Tamyrlin: Well, then is there something unique about the Forsaken other than the fact that they are his favorites that he would transmigrate them, or be able to?

Jordan: Well, he would have been a lot less likely to in an earlier time when they were a lot of powerful, knowledgeable channelers who were in his service. Essentially half the people in the world who could channel were on his side, during the War of the Shadow. Now he has very few, he's got the Black Ajah, and a few wilders, and some stuff I ain't going in to, but uh he doesn't have a lot, but he can't afford to waste assets.

Tamyrlin: Okay.

[Haftarun8]

There used to be a page with a detailed list of almost every major male and female channeler in the series on a more or less linear scale of 100, but I think it's been lost for a few years. Does anyone else recall this? The guy who proposed the list based it on every comparison sentence or bit of info he could find through the first 11 books or so, and based it on square footage of gateway size, noted size and strength of weaves, etc...

 

It was a post on a WoT fansite that's no longer online, and I THINK the poster's name was something like Sidius?

 

From memory (and I'm sure with errors), it went something like this:

 

100 - Rand, Ishamel

95 - Demandred

93 - Sammel

91 - Rahvin, Aginor

90 - Be'lal, Balthamel, Taim, Logain

85 - Lanfear (note that a woman with 85 power can mostly channel to the effect as a man near 100)

80 - Asmodean, Cyndane?

75 - Graendal, Semi, Alivia

70 - Messana, Sharina?

65 - Nyneave, Damer Flynn

55 - Moggy

40 - Elayne, Egwene, Aviendha

30 - Cadsuane

25 - Siuan & Leane (pre stilling), Moiraine, Verin, Eladia, Avg. Asha'man

.

15 - Avg. Aes Sedai

05 - Daigan

<01 - Morgase

 

I probably have one or two in the wrong spot and left out a TON of people (the original list was very comprehensive), but the guy had pretty substantial explanations and evidence from the books to back up his claims. There were some flaws and new developments in the story since it was written, and I personally think this list is too linear (methinks Rand is more like 8-10x stronger than someone like Moiraine as opposed to 4x). But compared to any other it seemed the most viable at the time.

 

What do people think, and does anyone know if the original 100 based list still exists somewhere?

[Nightstrike]

That was on wotmania. I think he's written something on 13:th depository too.