Why has no one thought of this?

[dscott8]

So I'm reading ToM, and during the battles a thought came to me. Why not have your Aes Sedai or Asha'man open a gateway to a point high up in the air above your enemy? You could lean out and scout them, or drop fireballs from way out of long bow range.

 

For that matter, just randomly opening momentary gateways in the enemy's camp would probably slice up tons of enemy soldiers. Opening one in the enemy general's tent at night may decapitate their leadership. Opening one in the middle of a siege engine would reduce it to scrap.

 

Is everyone locked into a mental picture of gateways as a Traveling device? Davram Bashere was there when Rand first used Deathgates. You'd think he'd catch on.

[Shard]

Your forgetting the Aes Sedai oath.

[redarm]

Nothing wrong with using the power to scout things. Also the Asha'man take no such oath.

[Canis Rufus]

Well your second idea was basicly done by rand already I feel more than sure your first idea is simply an issue of logistics.

[Agitel]

They're not thinking with portals.

 

 

I don't know if anyone else will get the reference...

[Jblaylock]

Or, at least in the case of trollocs, where passing through a gateway kills them instantly, why not have all the Asha'man and Aes'sedai link to form one G I G A N T I C gateway and send it like a giant open mouth to devour the ranks of trollocs? End millions of them in one fell swoop. But I guess that's too easy and wouldn't make for a great ending to the series.

[Shard]

I think the two Asha'men with Perrin DID do scouting trips.

[Canis Rufus]

Or, at least in the case of trollocs, where passing through a gateway kills them instantly, why not have all the Asha'man and Aes'sedai link to form one G I G A N T I C gateway and send it like a giant open mouth to devour the ranks of trollocs? End millions of them in one fell swoop. But I guess that's too easy and wouldn't make for a great ending to the series.

 

 

Yeah the real fallacy of the series is that the OP is completely over powered if any of them had a lick of commonsense to use it as such. I mean really, you can weave air to lift things yet you never thought about tying that off under a cart to help carry more supplies? We erase time and undue current events. WHY IS ANY ONE EVER GETTING HURT? WE can form a sword out of thin air… why still no hand? We can heal you if you have been severed, stabbed near to death, taken over by a greater evil, erase year old scars, even heal lifelong ailments.. But we can’t heal a hand? Really? No I think the real problem with Rand land is they lack the basic ability to think outside of the box unless it’s a plot device then they go right back to being blissfully ignorant of what they should be able to do. With the OP they should basically have impenetrable Tanks of life ending doom and if they shot the wrong person just erase that shot and bring them back. Really no balance. Still a wonderful story if a bit on the whimsical side.

[Shard]

Or, at least in the case of trollocs, where passing through a gateway kills them instantly, why not have all the Asha'man and Aes'sedai link to form one G I G A N T I C gateway and send it like a giant open mouth to devour the ranks of trollocs? End millions of them in one fell swoop. But I guess that's too easy and wouldn't make for a great ending to the series.

 

 

Yeah the real fallacy of the series is that the OP is completely over powered if any of them had a lick of commonsense to use it as such. I mean really, you can weave air to lift things yet you never thought about tying that off under a cart to help carry more supplies? We erase time and undue current events. WHY IS ANY ONE EVER GETTING HURT? WE can form a sword out of thin air… why still no hand? We can heal you if you have been severed, stabbed near to death, taken over by a greater evil, erase year old scars, even heal lifelong ailments.. But we can’t heal a hand? Really? No I think the real problem with Rand land is they lack the basic ability to think outside of the box unless it’s a plot device then they go right back to being blissfully ignorant of what they should be able to do. With the OP they should basically have impenetrable Tanks of life ending doom and if they shot the wrong person just erase that shot and bring them back. Really no balance. Still a wonderful story if a bit on the whimsical side.

 

The OP isn't overbalanced, it takes stamina to channel and we've been shown characters pushed to exhaustion and fearing being burned out by how much they are channeling. There ARE limits.

[Canis Rufus]

Thats like saying I'll get tired of pulling the trigger on a gun evetually. Sure they get tired but still they can out strip every natural law. They can destroy friction, time and even create energy. Don't get me wrong I love the story but it seems like every other person has this ablity to one degree or another. That makes the OP overpowered. Sure one person may get tired but then there are a thousand more just waiting to take the spot. Honestly I love the seachan as that was the only real balance in the books a real leveling field but even that has been wreaked due to the story progression. (I know it should be safe but to me that was a big thing and I don't want to risk a spoil for anyone.) So my point it not one person is over powered (though they are) but as a whole the entire cost and balance of the OP is just not well balnced.

[dscott8]

Yeah the real fallacy of the series is that the OP is completely over powered if any of them had a lick of commonsense to use it as such. I mean really, you can weave air to lift things yet you never thought about tying that off under a cart to help carry more supplies? We erase time and undue current events. WHY IS ANY ONE EVER GETTING HURT? WE can form a sword out of thin air… why still no hand? We can heal you if you have been severed, stabbed near to death, taken over by a greater evil, erase year old scars, even heal lifelong ailments.. But we can’t heal a hand? Really? No I think the real problem with Rand land is they lack the basic ability to think outside of the box unless it’s a plot device then they go right back to being blissfully ignorant of what they should be able to do. With the OP they should basically have impenetrable Tanks of life ending doom and if they shot the wrong person just erase that shot and bring them back. Really no balance. Still a wonderful story if a bit on the whimsical side.

 

 

This is a problem to some degree with every magic-related tale I have read. I can always think of ways the characters could have used the magic, but didn't. Maybe it's just that hindsight is easier than foresight.

[moratcorlm]

Probably because they're a bunch of premodern hayseeds. We have the advantage of fiction, movies and television and cartoons as well as books, to show us all the neat things that can be done with magic.

 

Actually the most advanced use is probably Asmodean's, with his garrote of Air in Rhuidean. Honestly, often the problem with these channelers isn't that they think too small but that they don't think small enough, don't think just how fragile a human – or Trolloc – body actually is, and how little an alteration it takes to render it nonfunctional.

[dovien]

They're not thinking with portals.

This was a triumph.

 

I mean really, you can weave air to lift things yet you never thought about tying that off under a cart to help carry more supplies? We erase time and undue current events. WHY IS ANY ONE EVER GETTING HURT? WE can form a sword out of thin air… why still no hand? We can heal you if you have been severed, stabbed near to death, taken over by a greater evil, erase year old scars, even heal lifelong ailments.. But we can’t heal a hand? Really?

Weaves of air that are tied off remain where you left them. They don't move and they don't float.

Time cannot be erased. While it is possible to revert some actions, it involves killing someone with balefire which is extremely dangerous and requires reasonable strength in the power to do. Only a few percent of people can channel and only a portion of those are strong enough to wield balefire - not enough to 'save' everyone even if it would work.

Forming an item of air is in no way similar to forming a part of a living person, complete and whole and functioning. Think of healing as being similar to natural healing only a lot faster. People can recover from all kinds of wounds but we can't regrow limbs. Healing with the power has the same limitations. Also note that there are a lot of weaves which aren't widely known at all. Only a few people can heal severing. The method for healing old scars was known in the AoL but is not known by anyone of the current age.

 

They can destroy friction, time and even create energy.

Uhh, no. Channelers can not do these things.

[dscott8]

Actually the most advanced use is probably Asmodean's, with his garrote of Air in Rhuidean. Honestly, often the problem with these channelers isn't that they think too small but that they don't think small enough, don't think just how fragile a human – or Trolloc – body actually is, and how little an alteration it takes to render it nonfunctional.

 

True, and yet another thing that bugged me. When Aes Sedai fight Trollocs, they are usually shown as throwing fireballs or calling lightning, both of which seem to take a lot of energy that is dissipated as heat and light. There has to be a more efficient way. Maybe a chest-high, razor-thin blade of air? Or going back to gateways, it's been mentioned several times that the size of a gateway depends on the channeler's strength, but how strong to you have to be to open a walunt-sized gateway where a Trolloc's spinal cord enters its brain? Trauma at that spot will drop any vertebrate creature.

[Kal Logan]

I think people are missing the point, and forgetting how much stamina it takes to weave the simplest thing over an extended period of time, that's why Channellers facing hundreds of thousands trollocs weave very simple things over and over such as fireballs ect. And I seem to recall someone asking R.J. if gateways can be made at different angles and he said it was possible and also said there were weaves to interfere with gateways being made. I think the idea of dropping fireballs through a horizontal gateway has merits but the fact that Travelling is relatively new means that nobody has thought of the possibility yet. We know the usefulness of bombing a target from the air because we have been using such tactics for about 100 years, Randlanders haven't.

[dovien]

That's a good point Kal, fireballs are something even novices are taught to weave. They're simple enough that an Aes Sedai can continue to weave them correctly right up to the point when she no longer has the strength to hold the Power.

Small sharp blades of air might wound but definitely wouldn't kill a trolloc and they don't spread like fire does.

Attempting to use a gateway to cut the spinal cord of a moving target is just not a viable tactic when most channelers have to see where they're weaving and, even if they're strong enough to make a gateway work, can only make a gateway in one place.

[Canis Rufus]

Ok here we go, or why I think the OP is over powered. I am sorry I can not cite pages but I think my examples are well known enough to support themselves without citetaion (sp).

 

They can destroy friction. They can tie off the air weave to the cart not the ground and yes it will stay. This is proven though out the book when shields are tied off to a person or any number of other weaves that have been tied off to a particular object. See the very start of the series with the three coins, and the tracking weave tied to them.

 

They can destroy time. Balefire! Really nuff said but for the sake of argument I’ll elaborate. They have the power to take something out of the time stream in reverse that will have a negative (read mathematical) effect on the future sum of events. So I have removed one from the equation it is now one less, so that particular “time” has been destroyed creating a new “time.”

 

They can create energy. I am assuming that you simply over looked this one as it is really again self explanatory. I know no better way to say it. They can call lighting from nothing fire from nothing they can even recreate most every form of classical friction all of these are energy, to the enth degree the OP is the embryonic form of energy and they the cultivators of its transformation.

[Jblaylock]

One thing I'd like to see more of is blunt use of air. Look at Jedi and Sith in starwars. They use the force to simply pick up their opponents and smash them against walls, or the ground, or each other. I'd like to see more Asha'man doing this. Screw a fireball. Pick the trolloc up with air, and smash it on the ground. That probably wouldn't be as exhasting as conjuring up fire and lightning. And it'd be cool as hell. Imagine the Dumais Wells battle, but instead of the meat grinder, a hundred Asha'man simply lift-and-smashing rank after rank of trollocs. That would have been BAD ARSE!

[Arani Lepenque Aes Sedai]

They can call lighting from nothing fire from nothing

 

Wrong and wrong. Heat is everywhere. Charge is everywhere. Using the one power simply distributes that power and concentrates it to become lightning or fire.

 

As for the air weaves. Let me clarify that what the weaves do is HOLD the molecules of air IN PLACE, which makes them act like invisible binders and ropes that hold the object in place. They do NOT destroy friction.

[Arani Lepenque Aes Sedai]

One thing I'd like to see more of is blunt use of air. Look at Jedi and Sith in starwars. They use the force to simply pick up their opponents and smash them against walls, or the ground, or each other. I'd like to see more Asha'man doing this. Screw a fireball. Pick the trolloc up with air, and smash it on the ground. That probably wouldn't be as exhasting as conjuring up fire and lightning. And it'd be cool as hell. Imagine the Dumais Wells battle, but instead of the meat grinder, a hundred Asha'man simply lift-and-smashing rank after rank of trollocs. That would have been BAD ARSE!

 

Sorry for the double post, that isn't feasible. Egwene can't lift four women higher than several feet in the air. Many Aes Sedai cannot even lift more than two people at a time, and that is very uneconomical compared to using a fireball that can kill several trollocs at once. Compare that to a weave of wind that blasts trollocs back into each other without killing them.

[Canis Rufus]

“In physics, energy (from Greek ἐνέργεια - energeia, "activity, operation", from ἐνεργός - energos, "active, working"[1]) is a quantity that is often understood as the ability a physical system has to produce changes on another physical system[2][3].

The changes are produced when the energy is tranferred from a system to another. A system can transfer energy by means of three ways, namely: physical or thermodynamical work, heat and, mass transfer.

This quantity can be assigned to any physical system. The assigned energy, according to Classical Physics, depends on its physical state relative to the reference frame used to study it.”

 

So they can create energy. They weave it from the OP.

 

As for the air weaves. Let me clarify that what the weaves do is HOLD the molecules of air IN PLACE, which makes them act like invisible binders and ropes that hold the object in place. They do NOT destroy friction.

 

Then how do the Windfinders push the ships and If they hold the air in place then how in several places through out the book have they bound or gagged someone with air and then transport them to another location. If your concept held then the moment you tried to move then they would either rip in half or break the weave. What they have done is created a "force" of energy that holds something beyond the normal enviromental effects. If you were to place this weave to the bottom of a cart then much like the way a Mono-rail works it would be floating on a bed of air. It's not a big leap to see what the windfinders do with pushing the wind to be translated to a frictionless ship soaring through "weaves" of force pushing all other forces way.

[Jblaylock]

One thing I'd like to see more of is blunt use of air. Look at Jedi and Sith in starwars. They use the force to simply pick up their opponents and smash them against walls, or the ground, or each other. I'd like to see more Asha'man doing this. Screw a fireball. Pick the trolloc up with air, and smash it on the ground. That probably wouldn't be as exhasting as conjuring up fire and lightning. And it'd be cool as hell. Imagine the Dumais Wells battle, but instead of the meat grinder, a hundred Asha'man simply lift-and-smashing rank after rank of trollocs. That would have been BAD ARSE!

 

Sorry for the double post, that isn't feasible. Egwene can't lift four women higher than several feet in the air. Many Aes Sedai cannot even lift more than two people at a time, and that is very uneconomical compared to using a fireball that can kill several trollocs at once. Compare that to a weave of wind that blasts trollocs back into each other without killing them.

 

 

Well it would still be a fun scene to read, if it was feasible, which I now understand, thanks to you, it is not.

[Jblaylock]

Here's a thought. When the bore was originaly bored, releasing the DO by accident, didn't most chanellers way back then know at least something about Balefire? If so, why wouldn't they just balefire the idiot who opened the bore, thus undoing the act and preventing the dork one from ever escaping in the first place? I'm sure they could have justified sacraficing that one person to save millions.

[Colonel_Sanders]

“In physics, energy (from Greek ἐνέργεια - energeia, "activity, operation", from ἐνεργός - energos, "active, working"[1]) is a quantity that is often understood as the ability a physical system has to produce changes on another physical system[2][3].

The changes are produced when the energy is tranferred from a system to another. A system can transfer energy by means of three ways, namely: physical or thermodynamical work, heat and, mass transfer.

This quantity can be assigned to any physical system. The assigned energy, according to Classical Physics, depends on its physical state relative to the reference frame used to study it.”

 

So they can create energy. They weave it from the OP.

 

 

Your definition of changes in energy above doesn't contain the word create at all. Also you cannot bring real world physics definitions into a fictional universe and expect everything to be the same.

 

The above explains how energy can be changed or transferred between systems. It boggles the mind how you managed to get to your conclusion, seems like you decided 2 + 2 = 5 because you want it to be.

[Jblaylock]

seems like you decided 2 + 2 = 5 because you want it to be.

 

 

That's impossible because 2 + 2 = 7, because I want it to be so! And I doubt you dare challange El Oscuro (roughly spanish for The Dark One).