How has Demandred "unleashed the balefire" in your opinion?

[Lurk No More]

This has been bugging me since book six.

 

What has Demandred done to fufill this request by the DO. What could he have been balefiring? I have racked me brain, but have come up with no answers.

 

I have considered may options but nothing resonates for me. I have been trying to think around corners... what could be balefired that would cause food to spoil? What could be balefired to cause the floorplans of palaces to change? What could be balefired to make the seasons go wacky (THAT is believed to be the DO's doing, but what if not?).

 

Balefire is the most powerful and destructive use of the OP, and to my knowledge, it only removes, or subtracts things from the pattern. How could the use of this weave be used to give the shadow advantage?

 

I do believe that Demandred is out there using balefire, but to what end, I have no idea. What do you believe?

[TommyRocker]

Maybe he's been balefiring the polar ice caps, the ozone layer, and the sun...

[Iroquois Pliskin]

I don't think we have per se seen the actually act of him releasing balefire, but for the most part. I think the places where the Pattern is unraveling is a result of the use of balefire. The massive food spoilage.The places were towns reappear, or disappear and turn to dust. The White Tower rearranging itself, all of these things seem to me the result of massive and strategic balescreams and weakening of the pattern in order to allow the DO through and allow him to influence the world. I think ultimately all they are doing is burning certain things and people out of the pattern, like a farmer here or a grain checker there. Or burning out whole cities strategically so that they get certain results.

 

We've been seeing the dark one increase in his ability to touch the world at large, but the thing is some places are more affected than others for some reason. So I think they are doing this as a way to create places similar to the Bore. I also think that maybe Mierin/Lanfear might have been the one to actually "discover" balefire in her opening of the Bore, and that balefire is specifically a key to the Dark One's full release.

[Edorion]

Remember the massive BALESCREAM (love that word) at the beginning of KOD? The one that made Faile think she was going to desintegrate? That book is where all the really crazy stuff starts happening: the beetle vomiter and the Quicksand sinker in Shiota. The Tower, the Stone of Tear, and the palace in Caemlyn all have shifting corridors and dead people walking the halls, whatever he wiped out mustve been large or heavily populated.

[Iroquois Pliskin]

A little off topic but.supposing that Callandor does have the power to use and amplify the TP. What would happen if Rand Balefired the DO? I mean technically the DO isn't part of the pattern and can't directly touch the directly. So what would be the effect of burning the DO out of his own pattern, back to say the beginning of the first Age of the Wheel? I mean that raises all sorts of questions, such as does the DO have a thread, albeit one completely separate from the pattern. Or does the DO exist as a wholly existential being without a thread at all?

 

I ask this because say the DO is really just one thread with complete and utter singularity, and control over itself. Then releasing the DO would be like allowing him to weave his thread into the pattern and then, because he's one with his own thread and not subject to the laws of the wheel then maybe it would give him the god like powers we are seeing.

[Cybertrolloc]

That was answered, it's not possible to create enough balefire to harm the DO or something like that.

 

Back to topic. It's possible that it's metaphor: JUST HOW MUCH ARE YOU WILLING TO DO FOR ME, DEM?

 

Not sure what specific mechanism is most harmful to the pattern, but you can do some easy things like have a trolloc activate a mechanism that quickly kills a lot of people (something low tech like a lever that drops a big anvil), then BF the trolloc so they come back to life. Another low horse power method might be identifying say a messenger that brings news that influences say a battle, then balefiring same later. Of course it's possible that the pattern is really only hurt by powerful BF that hits tons of sentient things and then we're back to being mystified.

 

PS Jury's still way out on what the As If the World Were Fog things were. Important notes is it's two separate events for starters, plus many other subtleties.

[True Source Creator]

You know what would be awesome?

 

The first time we see Demandred in AMoL, we get taken immediately back to that day at Shayol Ghul, in a flashback scene where the DO asks if Demandred would unleash balefire for him, then we see bits and pieces, through the italicized flashbacks that have been used sometimes in the books, of Demandred going here and there and everywhere and balefiring things the DO asks, some little snippits of him going to Shayol Ghul and asking if he's done well (hence the laughter), see what he's been up to.

 

That would be great, but unlikely.

[Orderofolde]

What if he isn't using balefire in Randland, but in T'A'R? That might well explain the shifting of buildings and rooms. If The World of Dreams itself is damaged, I'm thinking that would be a very bad thing...

[Morden]

Why would he need to be doing it in the known realms we here about in the books? he could be destroying cities and people nonstop in seanchan and on the other major civilizations without us knowing, and it'd still mess the pattern up.

[Terez]

Just for the record, the food spoilage is because of Rand's Fisher King connection to the land and has little or nothing to do with the Pattern falling apart. One theory is that they have been balefiring things in Shara. I personally think it more likely that Moridin and his two pets have been balefiring things than Demandred.

[TristanWebb]

Yeah, if the DO told anyone other than Ishy to start unravelling the Pattern there would probably be some balking.

[Manel Rochaid]

Yeah, if the DO told anyone other than Ishy to start unravelling the Pattern there would probably be some balking.

 

I think the more daring of the Forsaken would take the risk. I can see them thinking "Yeah, Balefire may destroy the world, but the GLOTD said he'd remake it anyway". The thing that makes me curious about Demandred is that I think the Dark One would have played on his desire to kill Rand. Whatever he's been doing, I think in some way it's all aimed at that, or at least from his point of view.

[OptimusPrime]

I think it was metaphoric for taking a risk.

[Iroquois Pliskin]

What if he isn't using balefire in Randland, but in T'A'R? That might well explain the shifting of buildings and rooms. If The World of Dreams itself is damaged, I'm thinking that would be a very bad thing...

 

But T'A'R supersedes the OP, I was under the impression that you couldn't permanently affect it with the OP seeing as Perrin is far stronger than the OP in T'A'R when he just shrugs off balefire.

 

 

I think what's going on is a more strategic unraveling of the pattern. Like during the WoP the problem was that they were balefiring whole cities,which had vast reprocussions and unforseeable changes in the time line.

 

Like if you balefire one person out of the pattern for a day or two nothing really happens. Even if you balefire a town of farmers out of the pattern for week the pattern isn't going to unravel because it's isolated. If you balefire someone important that has a lot of interactions with other people, like lets say a king or a queen or a general then the effects are much more pronounced. Balefire is like rewriting history, and the more you do it, the farther back the pattern has to go back to correct things.

 

So what if you start by burning out one thread, that affects another thread that connects to another thread? Like theoratically if you knew enough history and were powerful enough, couldn't you subtly change history by balefireing key people back so that certain things never happened?

 

For instance, If a woman get's pregnant by her husband yesterday, and they have the kids, and I'm powerful enough to balefire the man out of the pattern up till the point of the kids conception. Would the kid disappear? Would the kid stay in the pattern but just have another father? Like we really don't know the far reaching affects of balefire.

[Lisa Campbell]

Isn't the whole mess about balefire about the actions being erased (of the balefired person) but not the subsequent reactions and memories of the people who witnessed the erased event in the first place the whole problem?

 

Also, it is mentioned in the text numerous times that the ghosts and changing landscapes (eg.Tower, Caemlyn Palace etc.) is just another sign of the DO's imminent arrival.

[MountaineerWV]

Demandred balefiring people, towns, cities is just meaningless speculation. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't.

 

I don't buy that balefiring would lead to the effects we are seeing in Randland. I don't have the quote, but I remember RJ stating that even the most powerful Balefire could only burn a thread back a very short amount of time.

 

I just don't see how something that can only go back maybe an hour could have affects like what is happening to structures of buildings, food spoilage, 2 thousand year old towns reappearing, parts of the Blight appearing in Ghealdan...

 

While I think what is causing those things to happen may warrant a conversation, I don't think it is balefire.

[Lurk No More]

Terez, I will allow that the food spoilage is in direct relation to Rand as the fisher king (The land and the dragon are one), and not a result of a balefire campaign.

 

We have seen it time and time again in the books (and I love it, as I have not seen it in any other books, save perhaps the Elric saga, another unwilling hero ) the fact that what a character believes to be true is not necessarily true. But when in their POV, it is presented as concrete, rock solid and undeniable. And of course we tend to believe that.

 

 

School_Of_Seven_Bells has a great comment. What if someone is balefiring stock animals and fields of grain, where the 'fruit' of said food has been harvested, but is now affected by it's progenitors being balefired? That might cause spoilage. Whatever the case I believe we are in for a quantum theory / paradox type revelation as to the relationship with all the wierdness and strange occurances.

As for palaces and other structures being rearranged, perhaps Oiger and or stone masons are being balefired so that what they did or had a hand in has now been done by someone else? That's a stretch, I know. I am still trying to wrap my head around this thing.

I like the idea of things being balefired in TAR, like Rand and Ravin's battle in TAR at the end of tFoH. But I don't recall any change to the real world when they came back. Other than Mat, Asmo & Avi's ressurection.

 

What if the balefiring has been done in portal stone worlds... what effect might that have on our Randland reality?

 

 

There is a great RJ interview tacked on to the Audible audio books where he discusses the idea that he had of information being distorted over time and distance, where what people belive may be just an interpretation of an interpretation.

 

Memories that fade into legend, legend that fades into myth and myth long forgotten.

This is at the beginning of all the books. It MAY be significant... Just sayin.

 

Love your ideas everyone. Thanks.

[LoLPoR]

Demandred's machinations have clearly been left out of all the books. I think that we are in for a major epiphany in the last book as to what he's been up to. I will be very disappointed if he shows up then blam he's dead. I hope he's the general of the Dark Armies because that would make the most sense to me. We would then see a lot of him in TG to make up for the complete lack of knowledge on of the most feared Forsaken's comings and goings for 13 books now. Imagine if he balefired Bela all the way back to the Two Rivers, oh how I would love to read about the chaos that would ensue.

[Iroquois Pliskin]

Demandred balefiring people, towns, cities is just meaningless speculation. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't.

 

I don't buy that balefiring would lead to the effects we are seeing in Randland. I don't have the quote, but I remember RJ stating that even the most powerful Balefire could only burn a thread back a very short amount of time.

 

I just don't see how something that can only go back maybe an hour could have affects like what is happening to structures of buildings, food spoilage, 2 thousand year old towns reappearing, parts of the Blight appearing in Ghealdan...

 

While I think what is causing those things to happen may warrant a conversation, I don't think it is balefire.

 

Philosophically speaking this is what I think could be happening.

 

Say you have point A. in the pattern. We know that there isn't any time travel because even the DO can't step outside of time. However, even though there is point A, there are other threads woven into point A. which connect to other points in the pattern. I am making an assumption here and a slight jump in logic but I think that the pattern tries to weave the most cohesive and logical pattern it can. Hence we get how Ta'veren don't have much leeway in their lives and what they can and can't do, were as Joe Tanchico can change his whole life if the pattern can logically allow for it.

 

Now say you unravel person A at point A with balefire and you burn this person out of the pattern for a couple of hours. Depending on what that person did in those hours, the pattern now has to reshift and pull different threads into different places in order to maintain the integrity of the pattern, that's what a balescream is. The weird thing is, that people still maintain their memories of what happened in the original time stream unless they were the ones that were balefired out. But actions, cease to have occurred, Like with Rahvin and killing Avi and Mat.But thats convoluted because balefire is destructive, it burns a thread out of the pattern completely to where it's not just set aside to be reborn. But it also enables you to bring threads back into the pattern and force them into the pattern were they don't belong.

 

Look at it like this, did the pattern plan for Mat to die and then be resurrected because Rahvin died? Or did the Pattern plan for Mat to die permenantly and Rand's use of balefire is an anomaly that can't be predicted by the pattern and therefore Mat is an anomaly in the pattern that doesn't belong.

 

So if you burn one person out of the pattern who did something important, you negate whatever they did because even though people have memories of having done a thing. It never actually happened. But then that begs the question of if that thing was meant to have happened and was planned, or if it was never meant to be. Is balefire a part of the pattern or is it something outside of the pattern? And if the Wheel of Time is basically a huge circle, how can a thread burned out of the pattern now ever exist in the future?

 

So Rahvin's thread has been effectively burned out of the pattern back to a certain point. Does this mean that the thread can't be reused in any future incarnations? But then doesn't the mean that he never existed in the first place because the future is the same thing as the past?

 

So If I burn Joe Tanchio out of the pattern, it doesn't just affect the things he did recently. Potentially it could affect ALL future turnings of the wheel where his thread was necessary for a certain thing to happen. And that means that it effects THIS turning of the wheel, because it would have already happened in the last turning of the wheel, but because Joe Tanchio exists to be burned out then we know it didn't happen in the last revolution, but we know that it did....

[Terez]

Terez, I will allow that the food spoilage is in direct relation to Rand as the fisher king (The land and the dragon are one), and not a result of a balefire campaign.

 

We have seen it time and time again in the books (and I love it, as I have not seen it in any other books, save perhaps the Elric saga, another unwilling hero ) the fact that what a character believes to be true is not necessarily true. But when in their POV, it is presented as concrete, rock solid and undeniable. And of course we tend to believe that.

 

Indeed; this is very pervasive in WoT, and the Creator himself

on that topic.

[Lisa Campbell]

Just a thought...

 

RJ said that balefire makes it very difficult for the DO to transmigrate a soul by cutting down the window of time. When reading this thread, I've suddenly come up with the theory that the DO has resurrected someone who was balefired, however we don't know who this could be (maybe Asmodean?). Why else would RJ clarify this? I think most readers were happy with the balefire=completely gone until then. Could this be a hint from RJ?

[Suttree]

Just a thought...

 

RJ said that balefire makes it very difficult for the DO to transmigrate a soul by cutting down the window of time. When reading this thread, I've suddenly come up with the theory that the DO has resurrected someone who was balefired, however we don't know who this could be (maybe Asmodean?). Why else would RJ clarify this? I think most readers were happy with the balefire=completely gone until then. Could this be a hint from RJ?

 

It makes it impossible unless the amount of balefire used is very, very small. Regardless in relation to Asmodean RJ said it wasn't only how he was killed but also where.

[Lisa Campbell]

Not completely impossible Sutts, why else would RJ provide solid evidence that it is? Considering that there were many female channelers in and around Caemlyn at the time (Avi in the next room), I think Graendal would use the smallest amount of the Power possible to complete the deed. It was a surprise attack, max power not required in Asmo's case.

[Matrim-Bloody-Cauthon]

Just a thought...

 

RJ said that balefire makes it very difficult for the DO to transmigrate a soul by cutting down the window of time. When reading this thread, I've suddenly come up with the theory that the DO has resurrected someone who was balefired, however we don't know who this could be (maybe Asmodean?). Why else would RJ clarify this? I think most readers were happy with the balefire=completely gone until then. Could this be a hint from RJ?

When i read this just now a lightbulb went on above my head.... Taim = Asmodean.... BAM, bigass mystery solved!! :)

[Suttree]

Not completely impossible Sutts, why else would RJ provide solid evidence that it is? .

 

Which is why I said unless the amount of bale fire is very very small.

 

Also why would you think Avi was next door to whatever store room Asmo was looking for wine in? Either way bf does answer the "where" requirement in his death.