Aelfinn/Eelfinn and items of Power

[bigdoug1971]

I don't have my books with me, and I'm not certain which gives answers and which fills your needs.....

 

Where do they get the objects of Power from they give people? Moriaine got an angreal, so powerful it's almost sa'angreal. Mat got a Power wrought ashandari and the foxhead medallion too.

 

Where do the Finns get these objects from? It cannot be just from an unlucky traveler that happened to be in possession of that item when they came to bargain. For example: If 5 friends decided to go through the doorway in Rhuidean and all 5 asked for the exact same thing, it seems to me the Finns would be able to provide it.

 

Are they able to create items of the Power out of thin air? Do they possibly have (using my example above) 5 foxhead medallions to give away to people wanting the exact same thing. What are the chances a person walked in to bargain on 5 different occaions carrying identical items so the Finns could give them to the 5 friends making a bargain at another moment in time?

 

 

[Nightstrike]

I don't have my books with me, and I'm not certain which gives answers and which fills your needs..... Where do they get the objects of Power from they give people?

There was q & a where it was said they traded with AS (during AoL, I think).

Moriaine got an angreal, so powerful it's almost sa'angreal. Mat got a Power wrought ashandari and the foxhead medallion too. Where do the Finns get these objects from? It cannot be just from an unlucky traveler that happened to be in possession of that item when they came to bargain. For example: If 5 friends decided to go through the doorway in Rhuidean and all 5 asked for the exact same thing, it seems to me the Finns would be able to provide it. Are they able to create items of the Power out of thin air? Do they possibly have (using my example above) 5 foxhead medallions to give away to people wanting the exact same thing. What are the chances a person walked in to bargain on 5 different occaions carrying identical items so the Finns could give them to the 5 friends making a bargain at another moment in time?

Mat was lucky he asked for the things he might need. But that's him - lucky. They don't have to make a deal, either.

[Nightstrike]

I searched for the q and a I thought I remembered - about "where do their store of *angreal come from" - but I couldn't find it. Maybe it was a theory and not a q and a. Too bad, then. It's probably the way it is, though, since they can't channel.

 

 

 

Interview: Sep 2nd, 2005

DragonCon Report - Isabel (Paraphrased)

Matt Hatch

The Snakes and Foxes seem to have a lot of powers. Do they also have the Power?

Robert Jordan

No.

 

[Sid]

If I'm not mistaken, the angreal was one Moiraine brought through the doorway with her.

 

This thread reminded me of a post by Dom (from R.A.F.O) at Theoryland a few weeks ago.  It was pertaining to a discussion about whether the 'Finns could create a being like Slayer, in which he went off on a rather fascinating tangent about his thoughts on 'Finns and ter'angreal.  It's not really provable or disprovable (yet), but I think a lot of it makes sense. 

 

I'll quote the relevant portion here:

There are "patterns" to the Finns's powers.


The Finns don't "see" reality like humans do. They perceive dimensions the humans cannot perceive. For one thing they can see the aura of Spirit around humans, see their "life thread" and this perception isn't bound by Time etc. To them emotions is something substantial and "concrete" like matter. Memories/experiences too.

To them the One Power is pretty obviously "visible", and they have found a way to use it which isn't channeling. The clues are all there, the TOM episodes only made it even more obvious. Their use of the OP systematically involves symbols, shapes and materials. E.g. They make their equivalent of "Gateways" by drawing symbols using compatible materials (incl. bronze and or the alloy the Ashan'darei was made of). In their world (incl. the outside of Ghenjei itself) everyone can make these, even visitors.

Symbol/shape, material, color.. what does it remind you of? Ter'angreal, of course. Ter'angreal are made of very specific materials (and for most of them, "alien", ie: not existing naturally in the human world), and often the shape and color are important, and we know they work using matrixes "drilled"/imprinted in the material which for all intent and purpose reproduce a web. Since the "standing flows" have failed, most of them work only by being powered by a channeler with the right flow. Some (not all) using Spirit as their energy source seem to still work for non-channelers (so far they're the only ones proven to work non-channelers, eg: Egwene's ring, the Sindhol portals, Mat's medallion which as a side effect cuts him from TAR and shields his dreams), and the reason for this is most likely because Spirit happens to be the "flow" of sentient souls (the TS is the sum of all souls in Creation in the end... we know everything has a soul, everything has a thread including inanimate matter like rock, and living things like plants - all that energy is "the True Source", Creation itself is the True Source, and the essence of the Creator).

This is why channelers are able to draw/weave Spirit subconsciously in their sleep: it's their own energy from their own soul. Anything else require conscious control. This is why non-channelers also demonstrate Talents which all seem related somehow to Spirit, or are similar to Talents/effects related to Spirit in channelers... Min's Talent (in some way similar to Dreaming and Foretelling), Perrin's "soul bond" to the wolves (in the same family as Warder bonds), Dreamwalking which is a thing or Spirit etc.

My theory why the True Source can't be felt (and thus not reached) in Stedding is because stedding are pockets from another world, and in that world the flows are organized differently, ie: Spirit isn't the flow of sentience, it's rather the flow Trees and Ogier souls are made of.

Birgitte revealed in TOM that it's the Eelfinn or Aelfinn themselves who made the ter'angreal Portals to Sindhol, and who came to the humans to offer them a treaty. Brandon told Tamyrlin that they have vast stores of ter'angreal, and more importantly he started explaining that some things they can do aren't because of their Talents, but because they own ter'angreal that might be able to perform such things (eg: altering the physical appearance of someone).

I think this is because ter'angreal is simply their way to use the OP, a counterpart in their world to channeling, or Singing in the Ogier world: they "see" the threads of energy of which everything is made. It's how they perceive the world. A human sees a rock, they see how the Earth flow forms that rock.

Thus they must understand how each flow relates to the physical world, what matter(s) can stop Fire, or Air, or Spirit etc. If you use a matter Spirit can't pass through, and make an intricate matrix in a lump of a specific shape of that material, you could force the flow to adopt a certain shape, reproduce the equivalent of a weave, flows adopting a specific shape to produce an effect... becoming a pattern or symbol...or an object. The AS do this mentally, controlling the power, I believe the Eelfinn do something similar by drawing shapes/making motions using an object of a specific matter, or letting Spirit go naturally through a specific object in which they've designed a hole-out matrix, forcing the flow to adopt a specific shape, way too complex for an Eelfinn to "draw it" in the air.

IMHO, it's gonna be revealed by LTT in AMOL when he discusses the Finns with Moraine that the Eelfinn and the Aes Sedai of the AOL pooled their knowledge/skills to further develop the art of making ter'angreal, or "weave emulators". The Eelfinn know more about the complex relations of the physical world with the energy that forms everything, the AS had the unique talent to be able to draw the five flows distinctly, thus use the energies of non-sentient souls, not only Spirit. nor only their own soul energy. Obviously (because of the portals to other worlds they made) the Eelfinn can make ter'angreal of their own, but they're probably limited because only channeling is able to produce microcopic and incredibly intricate matrixes, and probably it's the only way as well to "merge" or transmutate many materials as well.

In their simplest form, ter'angreal emulate a weave a channeler can do, to spare him/her having to do the weave. With the Standing Flows to power them, that allowed non-channelers to use the function of those weaves without an Aes Sedai to make it for them, eg: the one to communicate from afar, reproduced with a "callbox".

In their more elaborate form, ter'angreal seem to perform weaves of so extreme a complexity to be beyond the mental capabality of a channeler to from them, or combine together many weaves in a precise manner, to produce extremely complex effects. I believe this second and third categories of ter'angreal were often conceived with active help from the Aelfinn and Eelfinn, because of the need for their different perception of how reality worked.

I think this will prove to be where their "great stores of ter'angreal" come from: by the treaty they kept their experiments/prototypes developped in collaboration with AS, and they are quite able to make some ter'angreal of their own too.. as long as they have a material naturally in their realms, and can create the matrixes through means other than channeling. AS may even have made them "matrix makers". It's very likely they're the ones who made Mat's medallion.

I also have a strong feeling ter'angreal with a relation to "alternate realities", "possible futures", "memories/blood memories" etc. in the series were all designed by the Eelfinn. That would include the arches the AS use to test Accepted, and far more obviously the WO's arches that essentially emulates the Talent of the Aelfinn.

I think the Aes Sedai of Rhuidean made a deal with Eelfinn so they'd make for them the Glass Columns.

Based on the few facts we know from RJ or Brandon about it (eg: it works only for those of Aiel blood), I think this seemingly incredibly complex ter'angreal is connected directly to Sindhol. The Eelfinn or Aelfinn (or both) can see the pattern of someone's life, thus they see that of a person in the ter'angreal. They can track the person's thread to birth, and from there find the thread of the mother/father.. all the way back to a Da'shain ancestor. It's how it determines if the person is or isn't of Da'shain ancestry. If not, the deal is that they do nothing.

If the person is Aiel, the Finns find specific moments determined by their bargain. They give the person in the ter'angreal those specific memories (just as they did with Mat...).

How is all this paid for? The emotions, to begin with... The Aelfinn don't ask for a price, they just enjoy the emotions without the visitor knowing. The Eelfinn are far more greedy... they love to have a physical bit of you to draw the emotions/experience from. It's their price, a blood price. It would be a fair bet, I guess, that the very old Rhuidean Aes Sedai and the Jenn Aiel (including the one named Nakomi) paird for this ter'angreal with their own lives. And to bind the Eelfinn to "operate it"? They feed on the emotions of everyone entering, and by their agreement they get their blood price from every one who fails. How do a WO candidate or Clan Chief candidate fails? Whenever the Finns don't see becoming chiefs or WO in their future. It's not about acceptance - Therava and co. reject the Aiel prophecies and show all signs not to believe what they've seen in the ter'angreal... but they've passed, because they were destined to become WO and chiefs of the corrupted plans, the Pattern needed them. The Eelfinn weed out each and every candidate the WO send who isn't destined to become chief or WO... and come (came, the Portal is now gone) get them as they are in the Glass Columns... not sign remains of those who failed...

We'd need to look no further to puzzle out where those clothes of human leather the Eelfinn have take to wear come from (they can't be 1000 years old - the last era in which the Eelfinn got visitors, they'd have desintegrated): they're the skins of the Aiel who failed the passage in the Glass Columns. For all we know they may get anyone who "vanishes" in similar ter'angreal.. the failed candidates to apprenticeship, and the failed Accepted....

Several clues also points to them also being the makers of the Portal Stones and "masters" (as in "they're the ones who understand them") of the "Worlds of If". The two most important is for the first that the PS also work using specific symbols in a language/alphabet terribly similar to the symbols of the "Red Doorways" and it's also very similar to the way to open a portal into or out of the TOG by tracing a symbol. The second important clue is that RJ let slip in a Q&A about the Finns' powers that the Finns have access to the "Mirror Worlds").

It's even how the Talent of the Aelfinn works, IMO: they can "see" the "Mirror Worlds" dimensions and thus can see all possibilities, and track the one most plausible to happen to a visitor (this is why their answers are so vague... implausible paths are "faded", the likely paths are more "vivid", but there are always choices, and they tell you about those crucial choices. The "answer" isn't a riddle, it's no meant to be understood until the time for a choice comes. Once Rand got his wound by Fain and it started interacting with his TP wound, a choice to Cleanse saidin appeared, and the Aelfinn had provided Rand information to make the right choice. Moiraine will either solve the "riddle" for Rand, as long foreshadowed (it's not about cardinal points. It means the People of the West (Seanchan) and the People of the East (the ill-named Westlanders) must ally "as one", the south and north refer to locations when Westerners and Easterners respectively now gather.. Merrilor and Ebou Dar., so when she tells Rand Mat has gone to attempt to convince the Empress of Seanchan to put aside conquest and come fight the LB he will understand the winning conditions aren't met and he must not Strike at SG yet.

TOM also reinforced the theories suggesting that some Shadowspawn may have Finns genes. Long ago, it was about the fact RJ used the very same wording to describe the way the Aelfinn moved like snakes that he used in the descriptions of Myrddraal, but with TOM it went further as Mat noticed the Eelfinn seemed to use shadows to move around.

Any, this got very long again, but I don't think I had exposed my Sindhol musings on this site yet, and it's relevant to show their connections are to very specific things, in summary it's about a wholly different way to "see" reality, a way to see the "possibilities and choices tying them to the Mirror Worlds, and about a wholly different way to create "patterns" with energy, based on shaping specific matter/symbols/colors to create effects.

[Orderofolde]

It has been said that the Finns possess a massive trove of objects of the power in one of Brandon's comments.  I'm not a quote master so I can't plaster this posting with all the supporting evidence, but it was a topic of conversation many months ago.  Some thought that the Finns are able to make the objects, but that was debunked by what was mentioned in a post above, that the Finns traded with the Aes Sedai for items that used the One Power which isn't so hard to believe.  In the AOL objects of the power were being made everyday.  It would be little different bargaining for wishes and answers and paying with a personal CD player or a used cell phone.  Especially if some of those objects were the ones that used the OP without the user needing to channel.  

 

There are the cleverly worded comments too, that the Finns cannot last long outside of their own world.  However as we know that the two known portals to them just happened to sit in the middle of massive troves of objects of power both in the holding in the Stone of Tear and the even more massive collection in Rhuidean, and given their less than honorable reputation is it any surprise that they have piles of the stuff sitting around?  Is anyone surprised? 

[Suttree]

There are the cleverly worded comments too, that the Finns cannot last long outside of their own world. However as we know that the two known portals to them just happened to sit in the middle of massive troves of objects of power both in the holding in the Stone of Tear and the even more massive collection in Rhuidean, and given their less than honorable reputation is it any surprise that they have piles of the stuff sitting around? Is anyone surprised?

As far as I know there are not any such comments. The closest we come is one statement that says there are limits to their power and they can not affect the outside world at all. Wonder what you are referring to?