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DRAGONMOUNT

A WHEEL OF TIME COMMUNITY

Mulk

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Posts posted by Mulk

  1. we don't know if she connected the dots or not because we never see her thoughts on the matter, though if pressed I probably would agree that she eventually figured it out. And I know Gitara likely would not tell an Accepted, which is why I threw in there that the Amyrlin of the time might have told them since they knew of the Dragon's rebirth and were going to be working toward finding him. I'm thinking through these things as I write, can you tell? :D

     

    In retrospect, I kinda chalk up neither Fain nor Moiraine knowing almost immediately that Rand was their guy to an early bookism. Lan and Moiraine should know Aiel on sight and know that Rand can't be from around there given his great height and general physical appearance when (for a man) he's not full grown yet; average guys don't stop developing physically until 25 or so. Fain is not likely experienced with Aiel; nonetheless the Dark One and those attached to him would likely be able to realize that just on appearance or description one of these things does not belong. They SHOULD know, even if they don't make the connection on Tigraine (and I'm not saying there's reason that they should at that point, mind), that Rand isn't like the rest of the Two Rivers and thus is the one to focus on.

  2. Point taken about Luc and Moiraine knowing or having the possibility of knowing. I hadn't given either much thought. Though, I doubt Moiraine knew Tigraine well enough to see her features in Rand as clearly as the Aiel and the Caemlyn folk who knew Tigraine better did. Part of me wants to argue that when Tigraine disappeared, Moiraine probably put her out of her mind...UNLESS and it's a big one, unless Gitara told her (or the Amyrlin at the time and that Amyrlin then told Siuan and Moiraine since they witnessed Gitara's last foretelling) what her foretelling to Tigraine was. If you know that, it's easy to piece together.

     

    I wonder if it ever is going to be common knowledge. You'd think so - I have to think Rand will eventually tell Galad and once that happens it's probably going to be out of the bag.

  3. yeah, I read it as a plot error and not character error, herid.

     

    For Aes Sedai like Moiraine, I always thought that she viewed the Warder bond as a partnership with unequal ownership stakes - that is, they work together but she has the deciding vote, though on occasion Lan does manage to overrule her. For those like Merise, who seems to be training personal servants, I have a harder time dealing with it. It was encouraging to me to see that she was dithering on how to handle Jahar, who has not given in to her tight control like the others. It is to be hoped that once the problems between AS and Asha'man are resolved, that those Aes Sedai under the compelled version of the bond will be released and that a new version of the bond for those who wish to be that close with another in work or anything else which isn't one-sided. Something akin to how Asha'man bond their wives - at least, as it appears, since we don't know how much it mirrors the Warder bond.

  4. best guess for me is that Egwene doesn't know. AFAIK, no one has told her; at least no one has done so on screen. The Wise Ones know but they don't spread it about; they've become somewhat reticent about sharing information with Egwene since she left the Aiel tents. Obviously Alanna isn't going to tell anyone and Verin is dead without telling Egwene about it. Cadsuane and Egwene haven't met yet and the only encounter we see of anyone currently in Cadsuane's group of flunky AS with anyone of the Tower or Salidar is when Merise shows up in the Salidar camp with Jahar and his proposal re: bonding. Those sworn to Rand do not interact with Tower or Salidar Aes Sedai right now. Nynaeve, if she knows, hasn't mentioned it to her. Elayne, Aviendha and Min seem as though they wish to deal with Alanna personally instead of going through White Tower protocols...unless of course that doesn't prove satisfactory. So, we see no reaction because she simply does not know.

     

    As far as I know, the only thing AS have done to Rand that she believes she has any need to apologize for is his captivity in LOC and that inherited from Elaida, not of her own doing.

  5. From what I can recall, I think when we see people ducking and weaving to avoid something, we are seeing them avoiding secondary effects. Things like the lightning, earthquakes, storms, are all secondary effects that seem to originate along the weave and then flow in the aimed direction - or, they are weaves that are completed and then "thrown" to use a baseball term, like Cyndane's fireball tossed at Alivia during the cleansing, or balefire, which originates at the channeler's hands and flows in the pointed direction. They are vectors then, with direction and magnitude. Anything with a vector can be dodged, and anything with a vector can hit something who wasn't the original target - anyone who wanders into the path of the force in question can be hit by it.

     

    A shield seems to me to be a bit of a different animal. The only ways we know of to defeat a shield attempt are to either be strong enough in your connection that the one or ones trying to shield you cannot successfully stem the flow, to cut the shield before it cuts you off, or to break line of sight or greatly increase your distance from the caster of the shield. In addition, your connection to the Source is not a physical place, it's more of a metaphysical reality - we know it exists, but it is not a single, physical location. So, as long as you are in sight and in range, you can be shielded as your connection to the Source does not move in the same way a physical object would. There is a bit of apparent paradox in here, but RJ used several seeming parodoxes in describing the way the Source works, where it exists and how it is touched, so I think that's only to be expected.

     

    I hope I explained that ok. It's clear in my head, but explaining invisible realities that are described with the use of paradox isn't something I'm all that practiced at.

  6. they will honor three requests, but you have to bargain for the price of those requests and pay the price if you want the requests met. Mat didn't know that when he went through, so when he requested that he be away from him, they tried to kill him after honoring his three requests. If you break it down, they said done to 1) wanting the holes in his memories filled; 2) wanting to be free of Aes Sedai; and 3) wanting to be away from them and they granted all three. The manner in which they granted it, though, will take some time to be made clear.

  7. The actual irony of him being hung by the ashanderei isn't known until ToM. Not sure if you've read that or not so I'll stop there. I think at that point he's upset that they didn't give him what he wanted; they met the terms of his boons to the letter but in a different fashion than he expected or desired, and to be honest, the boons they answered weren't what he was actually looking for.

  8. I never was completely sure that it was related to the Bowl, per se. Maybe it was. Maybe it's also related to that high explosive-equivalent blast that Elayne set off when she and the Kin departed the Farm ahead of the Seanchan invasion.

     

    If it was ever said conclusively what caused it, I missed that entirely, so if it has been stated elsewhere, my apologies.

     

    edit: and if it was the Bowl, I highly suspect it is related to a usage that is not what the Bowl was designed for. According to Moridin's PoV, weather was highly regulated by ter'angreal in the AoL, but no one had the kind of weather control that certain channelers do now. By forcing the Bowl, which is likely one of those surviving ter'angreal, to perform a function well beyond its designed use, perhaps that caused the instability we see.

  9. Re-reading tPoD. When Rand rains fire and lightning on his own troops (and kills Adley) using Callandor, do we know definitively if this is due to Saidin being "alive" following the use of the Bowl of the Winds or is it due to the flaw in Callandor?

     

    combination of both, imo. We saw where another Asha'man lost control of his weave because of how "alive" saidin is. But there is no doubt that the magnification of the taint was on display, as Rand is out of control until Bashere breaks through.

  10. Verin says in TGS that she believes that above all else the Dark One desires for his adherents to be selfish. Selfish people are almost invariably short sighted and greedy. In the AoL this didn't matter; the world had no experience with war or even lower scaled evil on a large scale, and so the Shadow had the initiative from the start and very rarely ever let go of it even amongst all of the internecine scheming. At the point in time that LTT did what he did with the Companions, the Light appears to have lost the War in all but name.

     

    In another thread I stated I've wondered whether or not the taint was in a sense planned by the Pattern - that is, the Pattern conceded the taint so that it might win the war later. It's as likely that this was the Dark One's plan in reverse - that is, that he conceded the re-sealing in order to have a shot at warping the Dragon so badly that he could end the cycle entirely the next time around. Those who have read that far know how close to victory the DO is as things draw to toward the climax. It's actually a remarkably subtle plan, brought off by Ishamael and the Dark One by using the appetites of the Shadow followers and Forsaken against each other and against the Light, along with certain actions aimed at increasing despair and hopelessness.

     

    Are the Forsaken dashing examples of badassery and haberdashery (or something?)? No. Not at all. But then, they aren't the real bad guys and they are just carrying out orders - orders that are aimed at maximizing chaos and despair (I honestly think Ishy and the DO are indifferent to their overall success as long as there is more chaos and disruption) whilst hopefully pushing themselves further up the pile toward Nae'blis. Ishamael is imo the only one who ever truly understood the Dark One. If the rest really knew what the Dark One intends, they might not go along with it.

     

    edit to fix a typo

  11. I would think that the core of the issue is that the Warder bond was never designed to compel 100% obedience to orders, probably because Warders need to be free to think and react as each situation requires where an AS's safety is concerned. For whatever reason, the built in part of the bond (or the after-the-fact weave that allows an Aes Sedai to use the bond to command her Warder's obedience when she deems it necessary - I've never been clear on which it is) that allows situational commanding of the bonded man does not work on channelers, IMO probably because the possibility was not foreseen that channelers would be bonded in that fashion. Who wants to be bonded to a man who will die shortly, after all?

     

    And as to whether she could coerce him or not, RJ leaves unspoken the possibility of AS redesigning the bond to account for a channeler or of an "AS" using Compulsion to achieve the same effect. That may be all he means by using hard instead of can't.

  12. also: re not knowing about stilling/burning out releasing the Oaths, given how ingrained it is into all Aes Sedai, it's possible that those few who survive any length of time didn't think to lie until after they were gone from the Tower for a period of time. You also need to consider that the majority who were stilled on purpose were then subsequently executed and it's doubtful any such would volunteer any information to her executioners. I agree it's sort of unlikely that we got all of this time without someone knowing, but then just mentioning that someone has been stilled makes a fair number of the sisters physically ill so it's likely they wouldn't WANT to delve into it.

  13. I've often thought that the bit in the White Tower had something to do with his tav'eren ability to affect people and the world around him. Given how most of the other Aes Sedai we hear from say something along the lines of "how could you think during that" to Egwene, I don't think it is a stretch to say he could have by sheer force of presence and tav'eren nature caused or awed those maintaining the shield into ceasing to do so. Egwene and Tuon are the only people we've seen display resistance to Rand's pleas when his needs are driving the requests and they were not unaffected.

     

    /twocents

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