Are Steddings outside of the Pattern?

[UGAShadow]

At the beginning of ToM we get a little excerpt of Loial's The Dragon Reborn. He says that their ancestors were standing outside the Steddings looking in. Why were they standing outside? Why weren't they roaming thier old houses or trees like humans?

 

 

Maybe Steddings are actually outside the fabric of the Pattern.

 

 

Whats your thoughts?

[Joshua Hendrickson]

I haven't read TOM yet, but I doubt that stedding are outside the Pattern. After all, in TEOTW Perrin probably drew the Whitecloaks into the stedding by being Taveren.

[Luckers]

I've always thought them slightly out of phase, similar to the halfmen.

[LazyMonk]

The Stedding has several unique attributes, but saying "outside the fabric of the Pattern" is going to extremes.

 

I'll start a wild theory and say that there's another force in wOT universe that is separate from the others altogether... the "Force of Nature". The ogier are attuned to this force and need it to survive. Steddings are focal points for this force. It used to be accessible readily everywhere but the breaking of the world has damaged/unbalanced it and now it can only be accessed properly in a Stedding... hence the Longing. Some ogier can access it more directly than others an channel it through the singing.

[Sharaman]

Steddings are halfway houses between the Ogier world(s) and WoTland. Since they're not accessible in TAR, and OP doesn't work there, the physical laws are obviously different.

[Arkane101]

I haven't read TOM yet, but I doubt that stedding are outside the Pattern. After all, in TEOTW Perrin probably drew the Whitecloaks into the stedding by being Taveren.

I was starting to think they might be seperate from the pattern until you said this, agreed.

[Apotheosis]

I haven't read TOM yet, but I doubt that stedding are outside the Pattern. After all, in TEOTW Perrin probably drew the Whitecloaks into the stedding by being Taveren.

I was starting to think they might be seperate from the pattern until you said this, agreed.

 

Why would he have drawn them into the stedding? Last time I checked they don't use the Power, so why would it have been relevant?

[LemonPastie]

The dead ogier also seem to have some consiousness in that they gathered at the outside of the stedding whereas all dead humans just repeat something they have done in life. That makes me wonder why they walked through walls - like the Aes Sedai in the tower - in life, the doors etc would all have been in the same place as they are now and so she should have gone to a door to walk out of the passage

[jsbrads]

Perrin didn't draw the WC into the stedding, they were just going toward a good campsite, when they saw a wolf. Visceral response, hunt for them, see campfire, go hunt for the people who fled, they must be DF

 

Stedding is part of the pattern.

[Durinax]

The dead ogier also seem to have some consiousness in that they gathered at the outside of the stedding whereas all dead humans just repeat something they have done in life. That makes me wonder why they walked through walls - like the Aes Sedai in the tower - in life, the doors etc would all have been in the same place as they are now and so she should have gone to a door to walk out of the passage

simple with the pattern changes that have been happening, a door could have been at that location previously

[rageofwar1978]

i think rather that at some point. perhaps when the OP became a part of the world, there were places like the stedding that remained the same rather than being changed. in essence the stedding would be the only remaining places in the world where it is still "normal" as in the ages before the age of legends.

[Arkane101]

Perrin didn't draw the WC into the stedding, they were just going toward a good campsite, when they saw a wolf. Visceral response, hunt for them, see campfire, go hunt for the people who fled, they must be DF

 

Stedding is part of the pattern.

He most certainly did, if he didn't have that encounter with the white cloaks he would have been dead in ToM, your not looking at the big picture, which is exactly what Ta'veran do, not just specific things, but large extended time events, if he didn't have that encounter with the white cloaks, he would have never had such issues in the future with them, then when he was travelling across Ghealdan it would have never caused a conflict and he would have not stalled, then escaped the dream spike and he would have fallen into Graendal's trap and surely been overwhelmed and killed. Thus, his Ta'veran nature drew the whitecloaks into the stedding.

[Arkane101]

i think rather that at some point. perhaps when the OP became a part of the world, there were places like the stedding that remained the same rather than being changed. in essence the stedding would be the only remaining places in the world where it is still "normal" as in the ages before the age of legends.

 

Has anyone ever asked RJ or any part of the team why the OP doesn't exist/can't be sensed or touched in the stedding..?

[Arkane101]

The Stedding has several unique attributes, but saying "outside the fabric of the Pattern" is going to extremes.

 

I'll start a wild theory and say that there's another force in wOT universe that is separate from the others altogether... the "Force of Nature". The ogier are attuned to this force and need it to survive. Steddings are focal points for this force. It used to be accessible readily everywhere but the breaking of the world has damaged/unbalanced it and now it can only be accessed properly in a Stedding... hence the Longing. Some ogier can access it more directly than others an channel it through the singing.

 

I don't think that is. The Ogier in Seandar don't suffer from the longing because post breaking they found stedding sooner then in Randland since there are more stedding in Seandar then Randland.

[Mik]

At the beginning of ToM we get a little excerpt of Loial's The Dragon Reborn. He says that their ancestors were standing outside the Steddings looking in. Why were they standing outside? Why weren't they roaming thier old houses or trees like humans?

 

Maybe Steddings are actually outside the fabric of the Pattern.

 

Whats your thoughts?

 

Thoughts?

I think Sharaman is closest to the mark:

 

Steddings are halfway houses between the Ogier world(s) and WoTland. Since they're not accessible in TAR, and OP doesn't work there, the physical laws are obviously different.

Well said, that.

 

Like Sharaman I think the Stedding are not 100% part of Randland but are (partly) sections of the Parallel World where the Ogier originated.

It's why Stedding are able to still the Ogier Longing (to their Homeworld); Stedding are partly Ogier 'Homeground'.

So Stedding are 100% part of the Pattern, but are essentially two different worlds in one spot.

 

Envission the way female channelers make Gateways;

To Travel, female channelers create a similarity in the Pattern for two different locations to essentially become one place.

I like to view the Stedding in the same way; enough similarity in the Pattern for two different locations in one spot to function as one location.

Maybe the Book of Translation translates locations from the Parallel Ogier World to Randland and vice versa, in a similar way that female Traveling works?

 

As with Shayol Ghul (now there's a place that is partly outside the Pattern if you ask me!) there just isn't enough (let's take a wild guess and say 'half') of the Real World left there to have an accessible reflection in the Unseen World.

I think that's why those Ogier ghosts are near the edge of the Stedding; it's as close as they can get and they can't access the Stedding because it has no reflection in the World where Spirit is strongest...

 

I've always thought them slightly out of phase, similar to the halfmen.

Yikes!

Similarities between Myrddraal and Stedding?

 

Myrddraal are slightly out of phase with time and reality.

I think it's safe to say that Myrddraal are slightly outside of the Pattern.

 

Stedding and Myrddraal share nothing except room in the same series. :)

 

(We've shared thoughts about Myrddraal years back in the 'Equal yet not'-thread IIRC )

[Luckers]

Similarities between stedding and Myrdraal in the same way there are similarities between the One Power and the True Power. :)

[Forgemage]

Hello, first time posting for a year...

 

I think the Steddings are not apart from the pattern at all. I think that at the arrival of the Ogier from, well wherever they came from, the lands where they first made landing changed. This in response to the way the travelled. a sort establishment of beachheads inherent in the way the Book of Translation works. I think that whatever the Book of Translation does when it travels it ensures that the Ogier using it can survive where they make landing. This change, brought on where the Ogier came through is permanent. This change would stay with the location, not the land itself. sort of like a Randland equivalent of GPS, if the landmass below changes shape it does nothing to the GPS coordinates so to speak. This would explain the comments early on in the series that the Steddings stayed the same but the land changed during the Breaking.

 

In essence, I think the Steddings are a by product of the method the Ogier employes to travel between worlds. a safeguard to ensure their survival.

[PsyQuestor]

I don't think they are outside the pattern. Not even the snakes and foxes are outside of the pattern. All of these different 'dimensions' effect Randland, imho. I mean, you can even die in dreams or get lost forever during the test in the tower (another parallel universe). There are a few places the OP doesn't work, but this doesn't mean they are outside or separate from the pattern.

 

When they use the portal stones in book two, Hurin can still smell where Fain has been (or will be) in the other 'universe.' This is one (of many) reasons I believe them to be connected. (steddings, the ways, the world of dreams, the world of the snakes and foxes, the haven of the green man...). And since I brought up the Portal Stones, I find it curious that Rand runs into Lanfear for the first time while using one in book two...that's another thread. (I'm still looking at all of the neat theories on site).