Padan Fain

[Barid Bel Medar]

I don't think Fain would be able to survive or even function if he doesn't kill Rand. He is already on the edge as it is. 10 years living? Not a chance.

[Edynol]

Tuon is not their Empress. She is only empress of the Return, a murderer rules openly in Seandar.

 

Seanchan is like 3 times bigger than the westlands (not including Shara), the return is a small portion of the EVA. If the damane system is abolished by Tuon, their forces will be at a disadvantage, as the sul'dam and damane wouldn't be up to fighting.

Tuon is their empress now, not just the empress of the return. Provide me a quote that says otherwise.

 

@Maj - Okay I forgot about Seanchan already being at war, my bad. But to say Fain hasn't thought about Mat is not accurate. He has thought about all 3 ta'veren, just that he has mostly been focused on Rand. I mean, when Rand was out of his reach at the time, he jumped with the whitecloaks to the TR, killed all but one of the Aybaras, and captured all the Cauthons. That hardly suggests he had forgotten about either of them, they are just not at the top of his list. But what about after Rand dies(If he indeed doesn't survive at the end)? Also remember he is not a dumb man. Crazy? Indeed. But not stupid. So maybe he runs off to Seanchan and takes a side of the civil war, and that side will be all against the empress while the other side might accept her back and all that. He could continue feeding that side he chose making it nearly impossible to come to a peaceful resolution and half of Seanchan's population will be potentially wiped out. So what if he has to wait ten years? In many stories villains have bide their time in plots of revenge. And in this series too. There are stories about kings who's wives, brothers, or servants served them faithfully for decades, but plotting to betray them all the while. And Fain has shown he can be patient when he wants to be.

[Barid Bel Medar]

Tuon THINKS she is Empress of the whole of Seanchan. But they would say otherwise. Nobody even knows she is alive on Seanchan. She has only declared to the Return. IF she wishes to become Empress of the Seanchan continent, she has to go back and win it.

 

Declaring yourself Empress does not make it so. Only to those who accept it. That is those on this side of the Aryth.

 

As mentioned, Seanchan is under the control of another. Until the recent development, there was no way to get back to Seanchan and be accepted as Empress by the whole of Seanchan.

[Majsju]

Tuon is not their Empress. She is only empress of the Return, a murderer rules openly in Seandar.

 

Seanchan is like 3 times bigger than the westlands (not including Shara), the return is a small portion of the EVA. If the damane system is abolished by Tuon, their forces will be at a disadvantage, as the sul'dam and damane wouldn't be up to fighting.

Tuon is their empress now, not just the empress of the return. Provide me a quote that says otherwise.

 

@Maj - Okay I forgot about Seanchan already being at war, my bad. But to say Fain hasn't thought about Mat is not accurate. He has thought about all 3 ta'veren, just that he has mostly been focused on Rand. I mean, when Rand was out of his reach at the time, he jumped with the whitecloaks to the TR, killed all but one of the Aybaras, and captured all the Cauthons. That hardly suggests he had forgotten about either of them, they are just not at the top of his list. But what about after Rand dies(If he indeed doesn't survive at the end)? Also remember he is not a dumb man. Crazy? Indeed. But not stupid. So maybe he runs off to Seanchan and takes a side of the civil war, and that side will be all against the empress while the other side might accept her back and all that. He could continue feeding that side he chose making it nearly impossible to come to a peaceful resolution and half of Seanchan's population will be potentially wiped out. So what if he has to wait ten years? In many stories villains have bide their time in plots of revenge. And in this series too. There are stories about kings who's wives, brothers, or servants served them faithfully for decades, but plotting to betray them all the while. And Fain has shown he can be patient when he wants to be.

 

You can not eat the cookie and save it at the same time.

 

Either Fain has Mat and Perrin on his Must-kill-before-lunch list, or he does not. If he does still consider them important to kill, why run off to the other side of the world, where the chance of getting the opportunity to, you know, actually kill any of them is extremely small?

And if he does not consider them important to kill anymore, what are the odds of him not only making it all the wat to seanchan, but reaching a position high enough to be a key player after a while? The fain we saw last time would not exactly function in a normal society, he is too far gone.

[Barid Bel Medar]

 

INTERVIEW: Jan 25th, 2005

TOR Questions of the Week Part II (Verbatim)

 

The destruction of Shadar Logoth has not driven Fain any more insane. I'm not certain he'd be able to function at all if he were any madder than he already is. But being insane doesn't make him any less dangerous, only less predictable. He no longer responds to situations or events in any sort of sane, logical manner

[bsmnt23]

Fain might not die at the end of the climax. We've seen what he as become as Mordeith; he may not be able to be killed (but I'm not going to go out on a ledge on that one). It looks to me like his end might be more Metal than mere death at the end of a blade. He has become a third element into the equation that no one accounted for; not the Creator and certainly not the Dark One. I think the creature once known as Fain has a larger role to play than an ignoble end in some ditch in the blight. Didnt he just slaughter a pack of jumari (worms) that would have given an army of Trollocs pause in ToM? Anyway, he's a huge variable that has to be accounted for, he is a thing that has never happened in any turning of the wheel and Rand wants to do something that should be impossible given the rules of the established universe: kill the Dark One for good.

 

This is not coincidence; this is the ultimate meeting of the Dragon Soul and the Dark One (even Ishamail's dreams get to come true sometimes!) that breaks the pattern and allows time to continue on a liniar path (for those of you who have not read Sanderson's other series, Mistborn, well, let's just say that Sanderson is not afraid to go to the WAY OUT THERE for the resolution to a conflict, I believe that is the reason he was chosen to conclude this series). I do not believe this Last Battle will be concluded by armies facing hoards of shadowspawn; this is simply one aspect of the fight and probably the least important (granted, not to those actualy FACING the hoards of Trollocs).

 

We all have heard RJ state that the Dark One is playing a diferent set of rules than everyone thinks and that he is winning, that Humanity has but one slim chance, a jumped-up farmboy, to win. I think he is starting to see the greater picture of what the actual battle will entail when he left future battles to his followers; that is not how he will fight, it cant be. If the pattern needed simply another channeler or sword-swinger to win a fight, it wouldnt have spun out its Big Gun, the Dragon Soul to fight this battle. (Note that the Dragon Soul is not noted to have been involved in teh Trolloc Wars. That was a purly temporal battle and it was won through heroism and steel, not a metaphysical struggle between greater beings of light and darkness.)

 

Back to Fain, as an unantisipated variable in the equation, he leaves the option for something unantisipated to happen, and I see it happening thusly: Upon returing to life after his death at the Battle of Caemlyn (theres other posts concerning this, just let it go here) Rand is returned as the TAR Dragon Soul itself, in the body of his last incarnation Rand, completly rejuvinated. He then confronts the Dark One at SG where he is ambushed by Fain/Mordeith. From there, two things can happen, and I'm undecided on it. The first is that Rand actualy does manage to destroy the Dark One, but finds that the Pattern abhors a vacume and must replace the Dark One in his now-vacent extra-universal prison with something equaly as vile, Fain/Mordeith which subsequentialy replaces the Dark One in the next turning of the Wheel for the whole game to start over.

 

OR

 

Rand confronts the Dark One and is ambushed by Mordeith they fight and blah blah blah good triumphs over evil, ok we get it; the series is High Fantasy and the good guys get to go back to the shire at the end. Rand wants to end the threat of the Dark One once and for all but he cannot be destroyed so he recalls what Fell said before he died: that the Dark One's prison must be whole for him to be released in the next turning of the Wheel's Second Age. Rand uses this New Thing, this Mordieth to create a new prison that is both equal to and oppoite to the Evil of the DO like a magnettic bottle used to contain antiprotons and thus seal the Dark One away for all time again. After all, Lews Therin said in order to truly imprison the DO again you have to actualy touch the entity and thus risk the taint again on Saiden. What better way to insulate agaisnt the taint of the Dark One's evil with an equal and opposite evil?

 

But its probably going to just end with a swordfight on SG where Rand hits the self-distruct button to blow up the mountain, he manages to cut his hand when the place goes all essplody and in the next scene we find him in a very big bed with Elayne, Min and Avienda telling them the story of how he saved the world and would someone please go fetch him a sammich.

 

Edit: DO please forgive the inevitable speling errors; I am useless without a spellcheck.

[EmperorMayhem]

that post was as long as a WOT book...

 

(i still liked it though)

 

i definitely agree that Mordeth/mashadar will be used as a new type of seal against the DO. echoing what the other post said about the partial healing of rand's side wound (the 2 evils facing each other instead of Rand's body), and the cleansing of Saidin (the Shadar Logoth evil drawing the DO's evil off the male half of the Source)... i think that it'll play a role in the finale.

[cookiecrisp]

Tuon THINKS she is Empress of the whole of Seanchan. But they would say otherwise. Nobody even knows she is alive on Seanchan. She has only declared to the Return. IF she wishes to become Empress of the Seanchan continent, she has to go back and win it.

 

Declaring yourself Empress does not make it so. Only to those who accept it. That is those on this side of the Aryth.

 

As mentioned, Seanchan is under the control of another. Until the recent development, there was no way to get back to Seanchan and be accepted as Empress by the whole of Seanchan.

 

I don't think it's ever been said that Seanchan is under anyone's control. Someone controls the city of Seandar, but there's still slaughter going on and red sailed ships destroying harbors and stuff. There are over 40 nobles on the field declaring themselves Emperess/Emperor. I don't think they'll stand united against the re-Return, it may be more like the consolidation.