waygate

[Guest leebarr]

At Shador Logouth when Rand removed the taint from the power the waygate was destoyed. what happened, by chance are the ways clean now, or are they now more dangerous because they draw in the taint from the power

[Thor]

We don't actually know if it is destroyed or not, there has never been a statement saying, "The Waygate is destroyed".

[Jellybelly]

Um... was there a description of a waygate floating in the air above the crater that used to be Shadar Logoth? I think it is safe to say that with the entire city destroyed, the waygate is gone, too.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Yes, the entire city is gone, just because specific structures weren't NAMED doesn't mean they survived. In fact, since any surviving structures would have been very noticeable, the fact that the Waygate isn't mentioned indicates that it is gone.

 

 

The Shadar Logoth Waygate is gone.

[Guest Majsju]

Well, even IF the waygate somehow had managed to survive to to some miracle, it would be of little use as the crater where SL used to be is filled with water. It's a lake.

 

Though, as we saw in TEOTW, waygates are not indestructable, so there is no way the waygate in SL could have escaped destruction together with the rest of the city. It's gone. Poof.

[Narg]

the ways arent clean they just arnet getting any worse. if the ways were to be cleaned by the cleansing of saidin so would rand be cleansed.

[Just another pawn]

Also with the waygate in SL.. in TSR Loial states:

 

"A Waygate was destroyed once, less than 500 years after the Breaking,according to Damelle, daughter (etc)... because the Gate was near a Stedding that had fallen into the Blight. But she wrote that it was very difficult, and required thirteen Aes Sedai working together with a sa'angreal. Another attempt she wrote of, by only nine, during the Trolloc Wars, damaged the Gate in such a way that the Aes Sedai were pulled into..." (The Shadow Rising pg. 490)

 

I think we can safely assume that Rand and Nynaeve with the Chodan Kal were much much more powerful than the thirteen Aes Sedai with a sa'angreal and so were channeling enough of the power to destroy the Gate.

[chemteach1977]

I think we are going to learn a few things about the ways in aMoL. One of the ter'angreal that Aviendha looks at in KoD is something shaped like a root, had something to do with holes, and requires singing to operate. I'm not the first person to realize that this is likely the talisman of growing.

 

Not sure if the talisman can help restore the ways. Maybe the ways can heal themselves now? They are described as a living thing. Problem is we really don't know what is going on in the ways since SL and the taint were removed.

 

I had not thought about the waygate at SL or what affect (if any) it had on the ways and the black wind. The only clue we have is the thousands of shadowspawn moved to Lord Algarin's manor which seems unlikely if the black wind was still as potent as it used to be.

 

There certainly is a possibility that the black wind is gone. IF (big big IF) the black wind is a product of the taint, then it is feasible that as the waygate was destroyed, the black wind might have been siphoned out and destroyed with the rest of the taint. We just don't know enough yet.

[TheDiceAgain...]

I put forward this conjecture in another thread, but I thought it might have some bearing on the current discussion:

 

...perhaps it's not the same as the Taint on Saidin at all. Look at it this way. What is the greatest working from Age of Legends that we know of which used only one side of the One Power? The Seals on the Dark One's prison, right? They are made of heartstone and are thereby supposedly indestructible. We know however, and have known for some time, that that is by no means true.

 

I'm willing to conjecture that the increasing corrosion of the Ways coincides rather closely with the fragility of the Seals and is caused not by the Taint on Saidin, but rather by the encroachment of the Dark One on the Pattern. You said, quite rightly, that the Ways exist in another space-time, but we know that the Pattern encompasses all worlds, all realities and all space-times, I would guess. Therefore, as the DO encroaches more and more upon this world he also encroaches there and the lack of Saidar as a balancing agent in the making of the Ways has left them vulnerable to "His" corrosive, or maybe atrophying is a better word, effect.

 

The whole point of this theory is that even with the Taint removed, it may not help the corruption of the Ways...

[Guest Majsju]

The whole point of this theory is that even with the Taint removed, it may not help the corruption of the Ways...

 

It doesn't. The removal of the taint has no effect whatsoever on Machin Shin. The taint was the cause of MS being created, but once fully "grown", it acts as an ndependent entity.

[Luckers]

That may not be entirely true Maj. Since the cleansing we have seen something supposedly impossible given the nature of the Ways. Specifically a hundred thousand trollocs travelled through them without being killed by Machin Shin.

 

In the Shadow Rising we see that it takes weeks for Isam to gather his strengths because of the limited number of Trollocs he can move through the Ways safely. Even spreading the hundred thousand out would mean that given the time it took Moridin to notice pretty much all of the hundred thousand would have to be in the ways, yet comparing Rand's and Moridins accounts we know they suffered no substantial loss.

 

Altogether this suggests a change in Machin Shin, if nothing else--it is not nessasarily connected to the destruction of the Taint and shadar logoth, indeed Machin Shin seems to have been changing ever since it encountered Fain... we see it waiting at waygates and trying to escape the ways, both unprecedented actions on its parts... still, since the cleansing we have noticed a dramatic reversal, so i dont think we have the leg room to be so dogmatic about dismissing this option Maj.

[TheDiceAgain...]

Maj, you kind of missed my point. I was theorizing that it is entirely possible that MS and the general decay of the Ways are not a direct result of the Taint but rather the encroachment of the DO upon the world and the Pattern. Without saidar to act as a balancing agent it is entirely feasible, if not provable, that MS and the problems in the Ways are a result of the the DO "himself" (in quotes because, I'm not sure 'he's" masculine, 8)) and his approach to this reality. After all, nothing has actively been done to weaken the Seals (other than being stuffed in a stove, if I remember) and yet they are failing. To me, this means that something other than the Power or the Taint is acting on them and it stands to reason that that something is the DO.