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

[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.

 

Philosophically speaking this is what I think could be happening.

 

 

One of the interviews (#35) from http://www.theoryland.com/intvsresults.php states that you are probably looking at 4 days max of balefire burning a thread back in time. That's with Rand and the Choedan Kal.

 

Going back four days is not going to move rooms in buildings or rot food that's been in transit for months.

 

Additionally, who or what is being balefired. Randland may not be the most populous region, but if entire cities were being taken out then surely Rand & Co would have noticed when the capital of Kandor disappeared.

 

If it's a list of important people...well why haven't Rand, Mat, Avi, Dobraine, Cads, Berelain, or someone like that been taken out? I can't think of anyone more important than the leaders that are helping Rand. I find it doubtful that it's a list of secondary (but important) characters. That would be a waste of Demandred - traveling around, conducting hits on people that he would first have to locate and then confirm their identity.

 

We are seeing the affects of a the DO being able to increasing do more to alter the Pattern. He is gaining strength and the Seals are weakening.

[Terez]

lol. How about we go to the how and where quote itself? Much simpler.

 

Ted Herman

Since you said at an earlier signing that the Dark One couldn't have brought back Asmodean if he wanted, was that at the time of Asmodean's death, or after that?

 

Robert Jordan

The Dark One couldn't bring back Asmodean because of the combination of two factors: HOW HE DIED and WHERE HE DIED. Not one or the other, both factors.

 

Footnote

The referred to earlier question was asked at the NYC Barnes & Noble signing on the Crossroads of Twilight tour.

[Iroquois Pliskin]

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!! :)

 

Except Taim was already on the scene way before Asmodean was murdered.

 

Also, I don't think the DO would bring back Asmodean, seeing as he was pretty much a betrayer.

[Terez]

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!! :)

 

Except Taim was already on the scene way before Asmodean was murdered.

 

Which doesn't stop people from believing that he is Moridin.

 

Also, I don't think the DO would bring back Asmodean, seeing as he was pretty much a betrayer.

 

The Dark One can't bring him back. I wonder how many times that will need to be said before this discussion is over...

[Suttree]

Also, I don't think the DO would bring back Asmodean, seeing as he was pretty much a betrayer.

 

The Dark One can't bring him back. I wonder how many times that will need to be said before this discussion is over...

 

Seriously.

[Iroquois Pliskin]

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!! :)

 

Except Taim was already on the scene way before Asmodean was murdered.

 

Which doesn't stop people from believing that he is Moridin.

 

Also, I don't think the DO would bring back Asmodean, seeing as he was pretty much a betrayer.

 

The Dark One can't bring him back. I wonder how many times that will need to be said before this discussion is over...

 

I wasn't implying he could, I was just implying that even if he could he wouldn't.

 

As a side note to this, there are going to be new Dreadlords right? So doesn't that mean that some of the vacant slots in the Forsaken are going to get filled with new faces?

[Suttree]

As a side note to this, there are going to be new Dreadlords right? So doesn't that mean that some of the vacant slots in the Forsaken are going to get filled with new faces?

 

It certainly is possible although I'm surprised that we haven't seen any real options. There is Taim of course but the only other real possibility was Alviarin and she got that "lesser" chosen mark that was compared to a "dog tag".

[Entreri]

So is there any conclusion? Is Demandred balefiring?

 

My guess is yes given what happened to Perrin et al.

[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!! :)

 

Except Taim was already on the scene way before Asmodean was murdered.

 

Which doesn't stop people from believing that he is Moridin.

 

*****I was implying Asmodean had assumed his identity, either by transmigrating into his actual body or via mirror of mists or whatever it is called. I am aware Taim was 'on the scene' before Asmo bit it, although we never actually see him til after Asmodean is already dead. However, if souls are transmigrated into already adult bodies, then yes in theory Asmo could have been transmigrated into Taim's body as easily as anyone else's. Possibly even long after he is given charge of the Asha'Man.*****

 

 

Also, I don't think the DO would bring back Asmodean, seeing as he was pretty much a betrayer.

 

The Dark One can't bring him back. I wonder how many times that will need to be said before this discussion is over...

I had not seen the quotes about Asmo being gone for good til now. Was not aware he had been ruled out.

[racon]

Time travel is always a difficult topic. By reading RJ:s WoT books, it is pretty clear that he would not be be smart enough to write logically

about the subject without botching badly on the way. My opinion is that he knew this and did not even bother. If you need proof, the constant balefiring practiced

in the book serie never has any unexpected results, we can see. Balefire is just a kickass sounding magic spell for Jordan, which is a great shame....

 

I am pretty impressed by Sanderson's original creations, so I really hope that he has the creative freedom to use his imagination to tie knots (save what is salvageable),

to create some semblance of order in the end. Won't be easy as RJ created an army of minor characters to distract the reader from the fact how bad the basic plot is

and especially how brain dead the Forsaken are (part of the DO's storm trooper school included dropping Forsaken on their heads countless of times when they were babies??).

I guess the story would end very soon if one of them would just create a gate in Rand's bedroom and balefire him to eternity.

 

 

WOT in itself is an interesting book serie as the forum activists expect great ideas

and hidden intends from "the mastermind" when RJ just pulls things out of his a$$ :)

 

This thread has some great ideas about balefire, I kind of hope that RJ would have hired the people so far contributing to this thread as creative advisers when it comes to balefire ;)

I hope that Sanderson is reading this hehe....

 

My apologies for a bitter post but I just Re-read the serie, and it was not nearly as good as when i read it the first time

in secondary high school...

[Terez]

Early morning moment; I'll get back to you.

[jwood01]

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.

 

 

One of the interviews (#35) from http://www.theorylan...ntvsresults.php states that you are probably looking at 4 days max of balefire burning a thread back in time. That's with Rand and the Choedan Kal.

 

Going back four days is not going to move rooms in buildings or rot food that's been in transit for months.

 

Additionally, who or what is being balefired. Randland may not be the most populous region, but if entire cities were being taken out then surely Rand & Co would have noticed when the capital of Kandor disappeared.

 

If it's a list of important people...well why haven't Rand, Mat, Avi, Dobraine, Cads, Berelain, or someone like that been taken out? I can't think of anyone more important than the leaders that are helping Rand. I find it doubtful that it's a list of secondary (but important) characters. That would be a waste of Demandred - traveling around, conducting hits on people that he would first have to locate and then confirm their identity.

 

We are seeing the affects of a the DO being able to increasing do more to alter the Pattern. He is gaining strength and the Seals are weakening.

 

In rereading LoC it seemed to me that Demandred thinks about pulling Elayne's thread from the pattern. Did Demandred mastermind the BA kidnap of Elayne in KoD? Maybe the plan was to rbing her to Demandred so he could balefire her?

 

In LoC:

Demandred thinks in TAR about pulling her thread from the pattern.

We here rumors in Caemlyn of a Aes Sedai who feeds cats (this is one of the BA sisters)

[mike hunt's here]

Can someone clear this up for me re: balefire...

 

didn't LTT balefire himself in the prologue of EotW? And didnt that cause dragonmount to rise and the breaking? Or was the breaking due to the 100 companions going nuts?

 

So with all this talk about balefiring Rand - wouldnt that just cause another breaking sort of? Its my opinion that Moridin/Ish doesnt want another breaking, he just wants the wheel to stop spinning. Don't know what Big D wants...other than being naeblis.

[Matrim-Bloody-Cauthon]

Can someone clear this up for me re: balefire...

 

didn't LTT balefire himself in the prologue of EotW? And didnt that cause dragonmount to rise and the breaking? Or was the breaking due to the 100 companions going nuts?

 

So with all this talk about balefiring Rand - wouldnt that just cause another breaking sort of? Its my opinion that Moridin/Ish doesnt want another breaking, he just wants the wheel to stop spinning. Don't know what Big D wants...other than being naeblis.

LTT did not balefire himself, that wouldve removed his thread from the pattern.

 

The breaking was caused by the male aes sedai who went mad.

I guess you could say the birth of dragonmount was the beginning of the breaking, but still just a small piece. The entire landscape was changed by mad channelers being, well, mad.

[Terez]

LTT did not balefire himself, that wouldve removed his thread from the pattern.

 

Lews Therin did not balefire himself, but only because RJ said so. Balefire ≠ permanent death.

[Cybertrolloc]

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.

Please provide evidence that there are any besides Avi and Graendal.

[joeron bigelow]

Time travel is always a difficult topic. By reading RJ:s WoT books, it is pretty clear that he would not be be smart enough to write logically

about the subject without botching badly on the way. My opinion is that he knew this and did not even bother. If you need proof, the constant balefiring practiced

in the book serie never has any unexpected results, we can see. Balefire is just a kickass sounding magic spell for Jordan, which is a great shame....

 

I am pretty impressed by Sanderson's original creations, so I really hope that he has the creative freedom to use his imagination to tie knots (save what is salvageable),

to create some semblance of order in the end. Won't be easy as RJ created an army of minor characters to distract the reader from the fact how bad the basic plot is

and especially how brain dead the Forsaken are (part of the DO's storm trooper school included dropping Forsaken on their heads countless of times when they were babies??).

I guess the story would end very soon if one of them would just create a gate in Rand's bedroom and balefire him to eternity.

 

 

WOT in itself is an interesting book serie as the forum activists expect great ideas

and hidden intends from "the mastermind" when RJ just pulls things out of his a$$ :)

 

This thread has some great ideas about balefire, I kind of hope that RJ would have hired the people so far contributing to this thread as creative advisers when it comes to balefire ;)

I hope that Sanderson is reading this hehe....

 

My apologies for a bitter post but I just Re-read the serie, and it was not nearly as good as when i read it the first time

in secondary high school...

 

Let me first say that in no way shape or form and I an avid forum activist standing up for my idol. However I do find it amusing that someone with poor grammar skills has the balls to comment on an published author's intelligence or perceived lack of intelligence to write about time travel.

 

A great many stories have plot holes and gaps in credibility, but they are meant to entertain, not to have someone with OCD nit pick about each error.

 

Anyway - isnt the whole problem with Gateways that you have to know where you are going to open one? So Demandred couldnt just open one in Rand's bedroom unless he was intimately familiar with the place...hmm unless that term "master of the blade" is meant to be said really fast and has a whole different meaning....haha.

[Luckers]

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.

Please provide evidence that there are any besides Avi and Graendal.

 

There was a Red sister present in Caemlyn as well, newly raised and sent to spy, but under Rahvin's control by this point. She fled the city upon learning Rand had conquered it, but we don't know whether this occurred before or after Asmodean was killed.

[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...

 

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.

But we have also seen when Nynaeve and the other girls are in the Ter'angreal for tests that Balefire kind of screws it up and causes problems for the sisters controlling them, and they are somehow linked to using T'A'R as we see when the ring is in close proximity to the three arches Egwene has to go through for her accepted test. We see in T'A'R that even in the waking world when the Caemlyn palace is Balefired, it affects the image in T'A'R, with the flickering appearing, disappearing pieces. Perrin shrugged off Balefire by changing it or not allowing it to harm him as can be done in the world of dreams. If Demandred went there in the flesh, and began to Balefire things, it burns them out of the pattern in all worlds and realities. At least that is my understanding on things.

[True Source Creator]

 

Except Taim was already on the scene way before Asmodean was murdered.

 

Also, I don't think the DO would bring back Asmodean, seeing as he was pretty much a betrayer.

Well no, not necessarily (to the first part). The original Mazrim Taim may actually have been killed/removed and a proxy of Taim may have been created, really being Asmodean...but no, Asmodean is a goner for good, I'm certain of it. But doesn't mean this Taim is the original Taim.

[ksbsnowowl]

 

But we have also seen when Nynaeve and the other girls are in the Ter'angreal for tests that Balefire kind of screws it up and causes problems for the sisters controlling them, and they are somehow linked to using T'A'R as we see when the ring is in close proximity to the three arches Egwene has to go through for her accepted test. We see in T'A'R that even in the waking world when the Caemlyn palace is Balefired, it affects the image in T'A'R, with the flickering appearing, disappearing pieces. Perrin shrugged off Balefire by changing it or not allowing it to harm him as can be done in the world of dreams. If Demandred went there in the flesh, and began to Balefire things, it burns them out of the pattern in all worlds and realities. At least that is my understanding on things.

Pretty sure that Rhavin was in TAR in the flesh when he was BF'ing things at the end of tFoH.

[BNICK1026]

maybe the DO asking Demandred to Balefire was just to see if he was loyal enough to do so. Perhaps, the DO has some foretelling and knows he will need someone to Balefire for him. Either in his defense or to strike at someone like Rand at a presumed pivitol time.

Or maybe, to remove Moridin?

[jwood01]

I just recently finished LoC on my pre-aMoL reread. The DO asks Demandred if he would unleash the balefire in his service in the prologue, and in the whole book I saw no evidence of him doing so. But at the end of LoC we see Demandred at SG saying what a great job he did. Was he referring to just sowing chaos i.e., let the LoC rule, or was he also unleashing the balefire somewhere?

 

Makes me wonder how much of a role Demandred played in making Dumai's Wells happen.

[Lurk No More]

I think RJ has been holding everything back on us as Demandred is concerned. (DUH) Even the stuff we have been told and believe we know I believe are suspect.

 

While this has been fun to read and speculate about, unless it's a huge bomb and an unbelievable reveal, it has potential to be significantly underwhelming. But I have failth in RJ, his notes and Brandon's ability to pull it off.

[Southpaw89]

As a side note to this, there are going to be new Dreadlords right? So doesn't that mean that some of the vacant slots in the Forsaken are going to get filled with new faces?

 

It certainly is possible although I'm surprised that we haven't seen any real options. There is Taim of course but the only other real possibility was Alviarin and she got that "lesser" chosen mark that was compared to a "dog tag".

 

 

Dreadlords were both men and women in the past so chances are they are just the Black Ajah