The Streak in the Sky

[bsmnt23]

In the mirrior world Rand, Loial and Huran travel through there are several things that are "off" which they encounter. The tree that was happy to be made into a weapon; the vast tracts of steralised land that looked as if made by a paintbrush; the monumet dedicated to the shadow's triumph over Hawkwing and Man in general; but most of all that single streak in the sky which Rand see's but could not identify as a cloud.

 

Has anyone any idea what that streak is?

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

i always assumed it was a vapor trail form some kind of aircraft.

[Kamin_Majere]

I asked about this very thing about a month ago. It seems to be a contrail of a jet (which counters the dead world, and jets don't just make or fly themselves... unless they are transformers)

 

But no one really knows what it was as i dont think RJ ever explained it to anyone or no one ever asked him.

 

 

I'm hoping after everything is said and done with the series they release all of his notes in a book that might shead alot of light on little things like this.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Kamin_Majere

[Cybertrolloc]

Grown up Jumara or big whatever the Seanchan birds are called? Contrails don't only come from engine exhaust vapor, but that is the most common cause.

[Luckers]

This sounds like something that might be in the Encyclopedia.

[bsmnt23]

The WoT Encyclopedia only offers that it might be a jet contrail, too, but I find that ridiculous. The human population is at least implied as exterminated in this world or pushed so far south as it doesnt matter. A jet simply doesnt fit the series, neither the science nor the poetry, and it takes a huge industrial base to invent the science to make the tools to create anything like a jet-powered aircraft. A world in which Man lost to the shadow in the Trolloc Wars probably couldnt mount an effort to do that, even if some fraction of the population managed to survive the onslaught.

 

A thought just occured that the striated clouds seen by varius characters at Shayol Ghul as the result of the Dark One's greater control of reality there are basicly "long streaks of clouds". Considering the nature of that reality, maybe the DO was stronger and could affect the world more?

[Kamin_Majere]

But i believe the books basically say that if the Dark One is bound in one of the mirror worlds he is bound in them all, same as if he is free in one he is free in all? I would think that would be the same for his "levels" of freedom.

 

It could be simply a jet contrail from some island nation not connected to randland/seandar. I mean trollocs have a hard enough time with a river... i couldnt see them being able to cross an entire ocean to attack a place. Could simply be an atlantis style nation somewhere out there in that mirror world.

 

But with out RJ or his notes telling us it's probably just going to be speculation

Edited July 21, 2012 by Kamin_Majere

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

i don't remember the population of the whole world being exterminated... just the part they saw?

[bsmnt23]

i don't remember the population of the whole world being exterminated... just the part they saw?

 

That's just what I infered; granted there's no way to know as there is no population betweek Sheinar and Kinslayer's Dagger in the Real World. The WoT Wiki has this, though: "In one of the 'mirror worlds' reached by Portal Stone, the Dragon Reborn, Rand al'Thor, discovered a parallel history where the Shadowspawn had been triumphant at the Battle of Talidar and gone on to wipe out humanity entirely. However, the Shadowspawn in turn seem to have decimated one another and then been wiped by other animals, such as grolm."

 

Oh, and I was wrong, the battle monumnet for the Battle of Talidar wasnt for a battle durring the Trolloc Wars, but the abortive trolloc invasion of Hawkwing's empire hundreds of years later. My bad. Still, though, Hawkwing lost and died, thus never establishing a lot of things that should have happened to set up Randland for Rand's birth. It's possible that the human civilization moved further south.

Edited July 21, 2012 by Lurk31

[Kamin_Majere]

True it never said that all humanity was destroyed (and that was a uninhabited land even in the main world) but it was a lifeless world still, where there are no humans you would expect to find rabbits and birds and foxes, etc and they didn't even see a single sign of that.

 

I mean even if the trollocs took over rand land, there isn't much they could have done against a culture with Jets and "modern" military technology So they could have been totally wiped out. I think that section of the great hunt has puzzled me more than everything else in the series simply because no answers are given for any of it. I mean what are the burn lines on the ground that are so perfectly straight, why is there no life yet seems to still exist, what happened there, etc. I reread that section a lot but there just aren't any hidden clues that i have ever been able to find. Closest I can figure is there is a technologically advanced culture either far to the south or on another island continent that the trollocs couldn't get to and when they ventured north/came to explore they discovered massive hordes of trollocs and eventually nuked the whole area

 

It was a very odd mirror world indeed.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

smart dreadlords? aliens? dunno. i really think he put stuff in he never intended to explain, just to make people puzzle.

[Kamin_Majere]

aliens... this I support fully :)

 

Yeah I figure it will never be explained, unfortunately I latch on to the oddest things when I read, they are never of any consequence but they are the holes that bother me the most. Bela could end up being the Creator and Tam al'Thor the Dark One and it wouldn't bother me like this does lol (i'm an odd one)

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

nah, i think these things bug a lot of people. it bugs me that there were a thousand, maybe a hundred thousand little bits and bobs thrown in, people tossed in, plot points, little oddities like this one... that were never intended to go anywhere. i like the world complete, or nearly so. if there's a mystery i like to see it solved. and i kind of think it was meant to bug people, tbh. in a good way, i'm sure, lol....

Edited July 21, 2012 by cindy

[GYLD]

My money is on Narg inventing the jet and all that came before it. Without some wool headed shepherd to cut him down Narg was allowed to live up to his intellectual potential. Narg smart.

[nolirion]

Those where not true world only echoes of a reality where Hawking lost to the Trolloc , I would not read to much about it , but I have absolutely no Idea what the streak is .

[Luckers]

The WoT Encyclopedia only offers that it might be a jet contrail, too, but I find that ridiculous.

 

Was that a reply for me? If it was I meant that it was something that might be in the Encyclopedia that Harriet, Maria and Alan are making from Jordan's notes, not that it would be in eWoT.

[bobarose]

maybe it was another rand from another world that had jets.he may have been hiding out on this world from his foresaken and such.heron marked firearms anyone? lol

[rand4747]

perhaps whatever people or whatever caused the trails in the air causes the scars on the landscape to.

[Kamin_Majere]

perhaps whatever people or whatever caused the trails in the air causes the scars on the landscape to.

 

More than likely in my mind. Burn marks as sharp as a razor sounds an awful lot like laser based weapons and in a world where the greatest scientists used the one power to break the laws of physics to achieve super technology its not too far removed from possibility.

[Vardar]

If there was no life, where the the grolm come from?

 

I figured it was a jet or some sort, coming from somewher else on the planet that still has life. Sure trollocs wiped out the populaiton where they were,but who's to say what happened on other land masses. I also took the burn swaths to be landing for those jets.

[TristanWebb]

I always thought the Grolm were travelled there by Lanfear.

[Vardar]

I always thought the Grolm were travelled there by Lanfear.

 

Hmm. So she controlled them? Can animals be compelled?

[Kamin_Majere]

Hmm. So she controlled them? Can animals be compelled?

 

Its unsure if she brought them, but its pretty much a given she was controlling them... having seen grolm in the books we can be pretty sure she wouldn't have been able to hold them off with a stick.

 

We have seen animals be controlled/compelled before in the series... ravens moving in murder packs hunting perrin/egwene, ravens and rats used as spys, the dove(?) grendal used, the insects that the blue ajah can control. Lots of little things that say, yes it's possible to control animals using the one power.

 

As to whether or not these grolm were native of this mirror or she brought them is unclear though, they had to come from somewhere and this mirror world is a good a place as any for that (as they dont appear to be native creatures of the main randland)

[rand4747]

In New Spring Moirane sort of controlled ants to bite Lan, and I think there was other animals to wasn't there?

 

What I fail to understand about the streak and all is what civilisation could develop high technology in this mirror world that cant in the main world? there must have been some interfarence (or lack of) that allowed this to happen. It also seems that the trollocs that won in that mirror world were killed off by those other people whoever they are.

Edited July 23, 2012 by rand4747

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

rats. ravens.