Wells

[Ferdawoon]

This is me thinking about the Ter'Angreal type called a Well.

 

"A Well is a ter'angreal that is able to store the One Power so that a channeler can use it as a separate source. "

http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Well

 

Basicly a Well let someone store part of the One Power inside it in some metaphysical aspect. They can be used while in a place where access to the One Power is limited or prevented. They let someone channel within the effect of the Guardian Ter'angreal in Far Madding, within a Stedding and, possibly, while shielded (even though there is no example of that happening as far as I know, the Wells do work in other cases where connection to the One Power is prevented as I just listed). Could one access a Well while chained to an a'dam and channel without the Sul'dam allowing it?

 

These can "run dry" and need to be refilled. Rand mention this in ToM before riding in to meet with the Borderlanders, where he say he assume that Cadsuane keep her Well filled.

 

Now, how do one replenish a Well? Simply channel through it and it will absorb the power until filled (kinda the way Moiraine do a lot in the early books where she channel through her staff or that blue crystal she wear on her forehead) or you need to channel threads? Can the well run dry simply by being left unattended or is power once stored there stuck in there until used?

 

That same part of the book, Cadsuane mention that she would only be able to create a small Gateway due to the limited power in the Well. What determine how much can be made with the power in a Well? Maybe this is me having a wierd view on how channeling and weaving is done, but I always thought that you channel continously, that the power stream through the threads to maintain whatever you created. That you need to keep channeling to keep a Gateway open, for example. There is no 5min duration on all gateways once formed. Is not a fireball once thrown still "linked" to the person weaving it so that if that person die, get shielded or whatever, that the fireball will vanish?

 

The other way to see channeling is that weaves and threads require a set ammount of power. The more complex the weave, the more threads are needed and the more power is needed. Same with just pure power. If you make a tiny fire or a roaring inferno.

 

What I think I want to get at here is, would not the gateway once formed keep draining the Well? Or is the channeler just needed to maintain the weaves and that my second attempt to explain power used while channeling is the correct one, since then all the power needed for the weaves to accomplish what they were ment to have already been applied and drained from the Well?

 

 

As it seems that these Wells provide a second source to the user (Saidin / Saidar plus the Well. Again taken from the wiki-page linked at the top), as well as being available while otherwise cut off from the source, I get the impression that the power stored in there is completly separate. However, what happen to the weaves after they are used? RJ have said that the True Source (Not the Dark One =D ) is finite and weaves used return to the True Source when their purpose have been accomplished, but what happen to the power used from a well when in a stedding when the True Source seem to be unavailable (characters have said that unlike being severed, shielded or while under the effect of the Far Madding Guardian where they can still sense the True Source, that while in a stedding they cannot even sense it)?

 

Could it be that creating a big Well and using its power to trap the Dark one would just taint the power within the Well and while no one use that Ter'angreal, no one will get mad?

 

 

 

I have been writing this post in many sections and jumping and adding new things all over. Sorry if it is hard to read =S

[Thrasymachus]

I'm pretty sure complexity of the weave doesn't have anything to do with the amount of the One Power a channeler can use. Remember Egwene as prisoner in the WT? She was kept forkrooted, and could only channel a trickle, but during her first class with an Accepted, wove a complex set of spinning balls and rings, and it was mentioned that the complexity was beyond what any Accepted could weave, and many Aes Sedai as well.

 

And as far as I'm aware, gateways can be tied off, though holding them is more taxing. It seems to me that we have to treat capacity to channel separately from capacity to weave. It seems to me that what taxes a person when channeling is the amount of willpower they have to possess to be able to control an amount of the One Power. Women find it taxing to surrender and submit their will for an extended period, men find it taxing to dominate and overpower for an extended period (Jordan's commentary on the nature of the sexes?). A more powerful channeler will be able to tolerate these taxing states to a greater degree, allowing them to control a greater amount of the Power for a greater duration.

 

Weaving, on the other hand, involves separating out threads from the Power, and weaving them together with other threads, while holding their configuration steady. This involves a great deal of concentration, and this level of concentration appears to be what is taxing with weaving complex weaves. Moreover, this kind of exhaustion is similar in both male and female channelers. This also explains, to a certain degree, variations in the facility with which individual channelers can create weaves, either specifically or weaves having to do with an individual Element. People often find concentrating one on type of task easier than concentrating on another type. Tying off a weave adds to the difficulty in concentration, thus, it we should find some channelers who could create a gateway, but be unable to tie it off, because they're already at their limit of concentration in just creating the gateway. Likewise, insofar as a weave requires a certain amount of the Power to take effect, there should be some channelers who can create a weave, perhaps quite easily, but cannot make it take effect because they lack the ability to give it the necessary Power. I believe we see examples of both these cases, though I don't really want to go look it up.

 

So weaves require both magnitude and complexity, and these two parts tax a channeler in similar, yet different ways. A well seems to me to be able to store a certain magnitude of the Power. Insofar as the Power of a weave, after it's allowed to dissipate returns to the Source when it's woven directly from the Source, it seems likely that a weave woven from a well does so as well. After all, a well is only "borrowing" a certain amount of the Power for a little while. I don't see any reason why weaving in a stedding from a well wouldn't also return to the Source. Channelers can't sense the Source inside a stedding, but regular folk can't sense the Source anywhere, that doesn't mean it's not "there." If steddings were completely cut off from the Source, then that would mean steddings are somehow cut off from all of Creation, since the One Power is the driving force of the Wheel, and yet are somehow continuous with that creation.

 

As far as using a large well to channel the seal over the Bore, that would probably work to prevent the taint from spreading to the One Power as a whole. It seems that the Eye of the World was just such a large well of pure, untainted saidin. But remember that this well was literally a large building, it might not be possible to create a large well as an easily transportable object. It also wouldn't protect the channelers creating the seal. Remember the 100 Companions were instantly driven mad by the Dark One's backlash, while those not there succumbed to the taint over time. The same thing would likely happen here, those channeling the seal would be instantly driven mad by touching the Dark One with the Power from the well. Any Power left in the well would be tainted, so any other channeler who continued to channel from that well would be driven mad over time.

[spoke]

Could it be that creating a big Well and using its power to trap the Dark one would just taint the power within the Well and while no one use that Ter'angreal, no one will get mad?

 

I wrote a post on this prior to the transition to the new boards, the general consensus was that the Eye was created to have a clean separate pool of Saidin so that the DO could be sealed correctly without tainting the true source. However what is completely missed in this is that there are two ways to break cuellendar. One method is to use the True Power. The second is that the taint internal to creating the cuellendar caused it to weaken and become brittle over time, hence the seals weakening and eventually breaking. By useing the Eye of the world to seal the DO, sure Saidin would not have been tainted, however, whatever seals were placed against it would suffer from the same weakness and the channellers would go mad, albeit, the rest of the population would be spared. The problem as Lews Therin stated "Something has to touch him" (quote inexact), so even though he would be re-sealed, he is still capable of breaking our again and again.