Gateways are probably the most overpowered weave

[Sabio]

One problem with its rather tough to do some of those weaves against moving targets, weaves like that might be good for assassination.  But if someone running about probably just easier to blast them with a fireball.

[Barid Bel Medar]

It's also unlikely that any Aes Sedai actually knows what any of those internal points are, much less be able to weave precisely enough to be effective in battle. 

 

Instead of trying to light a little fire inside someone's brain when they are coming at you with a sword, better to just throw a fireball at them or rip the earth up around them and destroy multiple targets with it. 

[Azrayne]

Aes Sedai training would cover basic anatomy I'd imagine :p

[mb]

Anatomy might be taught in the Yellow Ajah, and possibly the Brown; I am not sure about the other Ajahs. The only other White Tower initiates to be taught anatomy I think would be those that have interest in healing and/or the body.

[Azrayne]

That doesn't make any sense, by the time an ajah is chosen the non-channeling education is completed. An even when it comes to the ajah specific weaves - the only practical training given after being raised to the shawl - it's strongly implied that even the yellow ajah don't know any more than the single basic healing weave used by all aes sedai, at least by the time the series starts.

 

I can't see a group which prides itself on it's (supposed) knowledge and wisdom not teaching at least very basic anatomy (location of organs, etc) in the 6 - 25 year education they provide their students. We know they receive education in history, language, politics, philosophy - something as basic and important as anatomy would be an unusual omission. You really think they'd have Aes Sedai wandering around not knowing where the brain is, or what the heart does?

[Barid Bel Medar]

The 3rd Age isn't exactly scientific. Sure they might know the basics of the brain and heart and lungs, but beyond their function and location, they wouldn't need to. The Yellow Ajah already proved their pride in knowledge of healing was negligent at best. 

 

They would not go into depth about human anatomy because of the way things were healed. There was one weave that simply healed everything. They didn't need to know specifics. 

 

As such, while they would know where things were and what they did, they would not have translated that - specially the Yellows, who focused on healing, not war - to any functional combat weave. 

 

Severing an artery or creating a weave inside someone's brain - while it could be done by someone like Semirhage in experiments and the like - wouldn't be combat effective. There's a reason why Semirhage - arguably the world's most talented Healer - threw a ball of fire at Rand when she was discovered instead of trying to do a minute job.

 

When you are faced with an army trying to shoot you with arrows, stick you with swords and spikes, you don't try to stop their heart with a tiny weave. You tear up the earth beneath their feet and throw waves of fire in their path.  

[Azrayne]

Sure they might know the basics of the brain and heart and lungs... their function and location,

 

 

That's all they'd need. Even societies considerably more primitive than the WOT setting are aware of the location of the major organs and the effect of damaging them (and they're referenced in the series - slitting throats, Wise Ones listening to the heart, etc) - if nothing else, the warders would be able to explain that severing the jugular artery or piercing the heart is a good way to kill someone.

 

I don't disagree that in a battle situation where they're standing at a distance trying to destroy as many enemies as possible as quickly as possible, explosions and lightning and the like would be the best option, but there are plenty of situations where channelers are picking off targets one by one for assorted reasons (avoiding friendly fire, they're spread out, etc), and in those situations it makes no sense to call down a lightning bolt to kill a single trolloc when they could just eg. set fire to his head instead, which would presumably require a fraction of the power expenditure.

[Barid Bel Medar]

That's true enough.

 

We don't see much of it in the series, but it's there. Cadsuane stops someone's heart in a stealth situation where she comes up from behind. 

 

Black Ajah and the Forsaken use these methods most often, and are the best at it. With their penchant for torture and secrecy, they are adept at these things and know some crazy tricks. Like Semirhage demonstrates by stimulating the pleasure centres in the brain until her victim dies. 

 

I think we don't see it from the Light sided characters because of the Oaths. It restricts their ability to use such weaves to Darkfriends and Shadowspawn. Most of the encounters with them are in battle, so they don't really have the knowledge or experience to have come up with such weaves, unlike their Black Ajah counterparts.

 

The Asha'man were built as killing machines to fight in battle, so they (as a whole) learned to be weapons, and basically blast the crap out of everything. 

 

The Wise Ones - before Dumai's Wells - didn't fight. They didn't do much in the way of violent channeling. The Seanchan damane probably do those kinds of things. Particularly with scheming nobles, but it's hard to say since we never really see the internal affairs with damane, we only really see them in battle. 

 

The Aes Sedai stick to the tried and true methods and aren't willing to experiment with weaves as a general rule, which is why they had stagnated. It takes someone like Cadsuane who doesn't exactly follow the rules to do these types of things. Same with Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne. 

 

I'd say that those kind of 'assassination' techniques would have been used in the Age of Legends, but due to the way the cultures have developed, only the Black Ajah and Dreadlords have explored that kind of thing. Which is a valid criticism and I think very likely intentional. The Aes Sedai are not creative and often do things the hard way when better ways exist. 

[Sabio]

Stuff like that would be good for trying to quietly kill someone type of thing, but I think in a battle where time is of the essence you want what's fast.  Not to mention as I have said before trying to create a small weave to slice up someone' heart probably would require them to be standing still.  Everytime they moved you would probably have to start over.  So those weaves are probably great for the quiet I want you to die without alerting everyone type of thing but probably pretty useless in an actual fight.  Another reason why things like that probably weren't used much in the AOL was simply why take the time to make a gateway inside someone when you could simply balefire them?  When balefire was forgotten then there was probably a need to be a bit more creative how to quietly kill someone. 

[mbuehner]

Better to open a gateway to the bottom of the ocean and let the pressurized water blast into atoms anything in front of it. Or if you wanted to create a homemade atomic bomb, use an angreal to open a gateway to the inside of the sun. Probably a one time experiment though, the radiation alone would kill a rather larger piece of geography I think. 

[Azrayne]

Better to open a gateway to the bottom of the ocean and let the pressurized water blast into atoms anything in front of it. Or if you wanted to create a homemade atomic bomb, use an angreal to open a gateway to the inside of the sun. Probably a one time experiment though, the radiation alone would kill a rather larger piece of geography I think. 

 

Don't remember the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure it would take more than an angreal to open a gateway into the sun. And people in the third age aren't even aware of the nature of the Sun/Stars, going off Moghedian's monologue to Nynaeve in Tanchino. Although the absurdly destructive uses to which the One Power could be put combined with a basic scientific knowledge goes a long way towards explaining the extent of the devastation during the Breaking, which was something I always wondered about earlier in the series when it hadn't become obvious just how powerful channeling could potentially be.

 

Found it: http://www.dragonmount.com/forums/topic/76087-other-planets-in-the-wot/

 

 

From the Tor QotW

 

 

Week 19 Question

 

How far can a channeler Travel with the One Power? I know they can Travel anywhere on the globe, and enter Tel'aran'rhiod through a slightly different weave, but is it possible to Travel to other planets, or even planets in other galaxies?

 

Robert Jordan

 

Travel to other planets within the solar system would require a circle of fairly strong channelers, though not necessarily as many as thirteen, depending on exactly how far out they wanted to go. Travel to a planet in another solar system would require a rather large circle (of the maximum possible size) of very strong channelers, and there would a limit on how far they could go in one jump. They could planet-hop, of course. Travel to another galaxy would be beyond them even if they began on the planet in this galaxy nearest the target galaxy.

 

 

But you wouldn't need the sun - imagine a gateway opened into the vacuum of space, or into the core of the planet, or as you said, the bottom of an ocean. Makes it much easier to imagine the Breaking completely reshaping the continents.

 

 

Speaking of Gateways, is there any source which clarifies their shape? I always imagined them as being round, since they're described as "rotating" open, but during my reread I came across what sounded like a description of a square gateway, so now I'm kinda confused. There's the picture from the graphic novel adaption of EOTW on the wiki, but it doesn't look anything like how they're described, so I don't think it's much to go on.

[mb]

many types of shapes could rotate open (or rotate close).

The White Tower flag seems to show something similar to the effect.