Pretty certain WO were only in the circle with that Asha'man and none of the AS linked.

Yes, they were all WOs.

 

 

 

 

Something tickles the back of my mind about one of the books mentioning power forged weapons in the past having other abilities, but I can't put my finger on it.

First book when Rand has channelling sickness at an inn (after being separated) a woman attacks them with a blade that burned whatever it was stuck in

 

I thought that was something to do with her being a darkfriend rather than it being power-forged?  Like the blade being poisoned or something like that?

 

Yeah that wasn't the part I was thinking of.  It was a conversation, not an event.  I could be just imagining things too.

 

 

 

So, let me get this straight: Egwene dies, along with her discovery of maybe the single-greatest spell EVER!  Now nobody will rediscover that weave for thousands of years, if ever!  Common!!!

 

I thought it was a rather silly weave, perhaps if I ever reread the book it will make more sense but at the time I thought it was rather silly. But remember that as the wheel turns that weave shall be rediscovered so you don't have to feel bad.

 

Convenient yes, but not really silly.  yin and yang, black and white, all kinds of balances are a central theme in the books.  It only makes sense that there is an opposite to balefire.

 

 

I don't know; fixing compulsion requires a sort of mirror-weave, but fireballs and lightning are usually dissolved with shields or dodging, rather than an anti-fireball. I would have found a weave that fixes the damage to the pattern from balefire quite reasonable - but a direct anti-weave that blocks the stream seems too much like an anti-fireball for me.

 

Sure there's an anti-fireball.  It's called ice, that's fantasy magic 101 right there ;)  But if it's easier to just deflect it or block it then why bother?  The issue with balefire is that you CAN'T deflect it or block it.

The real point was that the channelers had been operating under the impression that balefire is unstoppable, and you just have to hope no one points it at you.  It was Perrin that reminded Egwene that it's just a weave like any other, so there MUST be a way to defeat it or cancel it out.

 

So, let me get this straight: Egwene dies, along with her discovery of maybe the single-greatest spell EVER!  Now nobody will rediscover that weave for thousands of years, if ever!  Common!!!

 

I thought it was a rather silly weave, perhaps if I ever reread the book it will make more sense but at the time I thought it was rather silly. But remember that as the wheel turns that weave shall be rediscovered so you don't have to feel bad.

 

Convenient yes, but not really silly.  yin and yang, black and white, all kinds of balances are a central theme in the books.  It only makes sense that there is an opposite to balefire.

My current belief regarding the identity of "Nakomi" is thus:

 

I believe it to be Verin Sedai. After re-reading key points in many books to completely understand the timeline... I've found that Verin would be dead at the time of the meeting between Avi and Nakomi. However, this is actually WHY I believe it to be Verin Sedai. I believe that when she died she was inducted into the hall of heroes that are summoned by the Horn. Her deeds are great enough to worthy her a spot and we know they exist in T'A'R and we know they can interact with people in meaningful ways.

 

Verin had the knowledge, Verin had the power and Verin had the heart.

But why disguise herself? 

 

1)  Lan comment on Rand's natural ability from the start.  Now, how much of this is Rand and how much is LTT bleedover is unknown, at least to me, but you figure LTT at least made learning easier, the same as he did with the OP

Okay, so where does this bleed come from? The taint?

 

Because if not, then did Lews have a bleedover from the Dragon before him and that's why HE was so amazing at everything?

 

I don't think it has to be the taint.  They have the same soul.  It may simply be a degree of "muscle memory."  My impression, after reading the books and from folks on here that have read the books 1000 times, is that the taint let Rand "talk" to LTT, but the knowledge, or instincts were there regardless.

2 questions:

 

1.) what's up with rand's swordsmanship?

 

It's just a thing that bothers me. I really never got the impression that Rand was the second best swordsman IN THE WORLD! (or does RJ's list refer to just Randland)

 

Didn't that lord who ended up with Padan Fain fight Rand to a draw in Crown Of Swords? It just seems like Rand was stated to be the second best swordsman just because.

 

2.) Why didn't the pattern choose a more experience adult to do this job.

 

It just, I don't get why the pattern made Rand the Ace at everything except the main thing he needs to win. Politics. Oh it tries, but Rand's most consistant problem and the source of all his problems post becoming the Dragon is that he's inexperienced and has terrible judgement. The Dragon last time was good at literally everything. One, that's really annoying from a tension point of view and two, if it can do that then why didn't the pattern do it this time as well? It contrived the world to make Tam find Rand on the slopes of Dragonmount, it couldn't have made that happen like 20 years before? The pattern must have had warning about the Forsaken breaking out, it started churning out really strong channelers in advance.

1)  Lan comment on Rand's natural ability from the start.  Now, how much of this is Rand and how much is LTT bleedover is unknown, at least to me, but you figure LTT at least made learning easier, the same as he did with the OP

2) The Pattern didn't "inject" the Dragon soul into Rand, he was born with it, so it can't choose an adult.  As for the timing, who knows?  The Pattern isn't conscious, it's possible it can't attempt to balance itself until it teeters past a certain point.

One would think power wrought weapons and their capabilities would be included in the encyclopedia.

 

As for Sanderson, we all know he has a propensity for being overly dramatic with descriptions at times. That said I thought he handled Perrin extremely well and enjoyed the hammer scene.

I agree, and I LOVED the scene forging the hammer, I didn't think about the whole thing with it being different from the power forged weapons we're familiar with until after I finshed the whole series.

I know this will be a dead horse, but it sounds like a Sanderson-ism. 

Forgive me, but so what if it is?  I don't care much who came up with the idea, I'm just curious as to the in-world mechanics.  If there are none, then a discussion of theories would be fine with me also.

I agree it's confusing, just playing devil's (RJ's) advocate, haha

 

 

This always bothered me. after elayne and nynaeve use need to find the Bowl of Winds in TAR, they can't find it again using need because "you can't have your cake and eat it too". Why can't they find it again by picturing "the dusty storeroom, with the iron chest, that has the BoW" or somesuch? 

This always bugged me.

(and why did they run outside the stairs, instead of just 'imagining' themselves on the roof, or in the front of the building, etc?)

 

Could a person who entered TAR in person travel to another TAR location the same way someone who dreamed into TAR can?

I'm guessing just to add tension and plot, but if you want to justify it I suppose need only works once, and describing a room isn't the same as knowing where it is, so that stopped them from finding it that way.

 

Egwene didn't know where the museum in the Panarch's palace was (or even the palace itself) in Tanchico, yet she was able to go there just from an illustration in a book. Need only works once, i got that. But if it was so important, they would remember enough of the dusty room to go back there.

 

They can remember every detail of the dusty room, but if they don't know where the room is to begin with, I guess that would be the problem in shifting there in TAR.  Maybe?  I dunno, just a guess.

This always bothered me. after elayne and nynaeve use need to find the Bowl of Winds in TAR, they can't find it again using need because "you can't have your cake and eat it too". Why can't they find it again by picturing "the dusty storeroom, with the iron chest, that has the BoW" or somesuch? 

This always bugged me.

(and why did they run outside the stairs, instead of just 'imagining' themselves on the roof, or in the front of the building, etc?)

 

Could a person who entered TAR in person travel to another TAR location the same way someone who dreamed into TAR can?

I'm guessing just to add tension and plot, but if you want to justify it I suppose need only works once, and describing a room isn't the same as knowing where it is, so that stopped them from finding it that way.

 

To be honest, I think Egwene would have been an excellent choice for being Rand's 'love of his life'.

 

As it happened, in the books, all Rand's relations were either to accessories (Min) or not very present (Elayne, Aviendha). Likewise, Egwene only has Gawyn who has to work for her (and who would story-wise probably have been better off dead at Dumais wells, really :p ). But Amyrlin to Dragon could have been a relation of more-or-less equals. They'd obviously bicker, but they could have recaptured some of the magic of Rand's desire to protect Egwene, and Egwene's to help Rand reach what he has to. Now that early-book tendency only re-appeared when Egwene died.

 

(which, as an aside, implies Egwene was always meant to die. After reading books 1-3 it doesn't feel so odd for Rand to feel horrible about being unable to protect Egwene, and for Egwene to tell him to let HER be a hero, too; fits her response to Mat's rescue, even if that response was more immature. After reading books 7-14 you'd sooner think Rand would have such a response to Nynaeve's or Min's death instead)

Never really thought about it much, but I kind of like that idea.  I especially felt that Egwene's and Gawyn's relationship just felt like pairing up left-over characters.  i didn't have as much as a problem with Rand's relationship, but I don't suppose it would have changed Elayne's and Aviendha's roles too drastically if they hadn't been in love with Rand.  Not sure what would have happened to Min though.

 

I think we could have done with some more in-depth internal POVs from Rand and Egwene on each other prior to AMoL because after book 3 most of their thoughts towards each other seem to be of frustration, anger, irritation, etc., rather than affection.  I liked the scene in AMoL where Rand gave her a ribbon and tried to patch things up a bit, but it felt a bit too jarring, and 'too little, too late', especially when they go to Merrilor and bicker without showing each other any respect.  I just think we could have done with a few more reminders that they still cared about each other.

 

I didn't get their interaction at Merrilor as lacking respect, more of a disagreement between near equals.  Nor did I ever get the impression that Egwene ever stopped "loving" Rand.  But she loves him as a brother, and one she thinks has gone wayward.  And Rand's affection toward Egwene is the main reason he didn't just walk over her, other than his political manueverings.

So generally, when we hear about OP-forged weapons, they never go dull, never rust, are almost unbreakable.  Perrin's hammer goes beyond this and not only burns shadowspawn (trollocs at least), but it can permanantly kill a darkhound.

My question is, why?

1) Was it the sheer amount of power poured into it by Neald and the circle?

  1a) Was it just the extra power from the circle or did the Saidar/Saidin combo do it?

  1b) Does this mean that if Neald had just continued on his own then it would have been a "run-of-the-mill" power wrought weapon?

or

2) Did Neald develop an entirely new way to imbue a weapon with the OP?

Something tickles the back of my mind about one of the books mentioning power forged weapons in the past having other abilities, but I can't put my finger on it.

Doesn't it still no sell attacks that aren't foxhead medalion based?

No, effects by the OP aren't the OP.  Just like...Jolina?  Smacks Mat with a thrown stick (or rock or whatever it was).  She can't weave against  him directly, but secondary effects work just fine.  Now, a gholum is MUCH more durable than a normal person, we one get stabbed and slashed and it shrugged it off, but I don't think they are invincible.

Could the Gholam have beaten the Choedan Kal? If so then shame on Sammael for putting it on the wrong scent, the WH fight would've been teh perfect place for it

The gholam was so effective because in general, by the time an AS realizes that direct attacks don't work, it's too late.  Even without the CK, a prepared AS could still defend herself reasonably well against a gholam.  Smash it with a rock and incinerate it with flames produced around it, and not directly on it, gateway followed by a rock to knock it through.  Plenty of options if a channeler knows what he/she is getting into beforehand.

 

4) We have the juxtaposition of Rand's killing Graendal's compelled minions with Balefire, and Egwene deliberately targeting raken carrying captured Aes Sedai during the Seanchan raid.  Both characters state something roughly equivalent to 'they're better off dead', but Rand's action comes off as much worse (to me anyway), and I'm not sure why.  Rand's goal is killing a Forsaken he doesn't know how to defeat otherwise; Egwene's is preventing Seanchan from having more damane and from learning Travelling - both good goals, I think.  The people Rand kills are essentially unhealable given that we now know what happens to people when Compulsion is removed, while the Aes Sedai Egwene kills would theoretically (depending on their mindset and length of captivity) be rescuable without too much lasting harm - this makes Egwene's action look slightly worse from a moral perspective.  In terms of results, both of them are only partly successful - Rand drives Graendal away and destroys her power base but doesn't kill her, and Egwene kills many of the Seanchan, but is unable to kill all of the captured Aes Sedai with the result that they learn Travelling anyway.  In terms of mind frame, neither Rand nor Egwene feels bad about what they are doing, they both think they are making the right decision.  So why does Egwene's scene come off as a crowning moment for her, while Rand's makes him seem a monster?

I suppose the easy answer is that Rand used balefire, and Egwene didn't.  As readers we've had it ingrained in us that balefire is bad bad bad.

I agree completely, and I'm not saying Cad isn't trustworthy, I just don't think there was any way Rand wouldn't pick Nyn.  Besides, Cad was a far better choice to have on the battlefield than Nyn, despite how much her healing could have helped.

 

Rand trusted Nyn completely, and he knew that she wouldn't second guess him, unlike Cadsuane. Right or wrong, Rand had a plan, and needed someone who would have his back no matter what. He didn't trust Cad to be that person..

Second guess him? Cads has backed Rand to the hilt as much as anyone in the series(see the cleansing as an example). Nyn makes more sense, but certainly not because Cads would second guess him.

 

@False

 

The battles take a fairly large suspension of disbelief to get through at times. It's clearly not what we would have gotten under RJ.

 

It's not about what Cad would or wouldn't have actually done, it was about who Rand perceived to be more supportive.  And Rand had far more trust in Nyn than he did in Cad to have his back.

How about the many times that men have come back as women in many T.V series, like Supernatural to name one of them.

I hardly think that's a reference to WoT.  WoT was not the first story to introduce the idea of gender swapping, lol.

 

-Really did not like how they had Nynaeve as a wielder of Callandor. I can more or less live with Moiraines limited role but if the idea was that Rand would go with women who have had a formative role on him then this should have been Cadsuane. I really think Nynaeve going with Lan and perhaps saving him at one point as well as bonding with her new Malkieri subjects (she is a Queen now) would have been better. Especially since her testing emphasised that she would chose Lan over being an Aes Sedai. Just having her stand there and give herbs to Alanna was very unsatisfying. Yes, technically she and Moiraine trapped Moridin and defeated the DO. But I would have preferred a more prominent role.

 

Rand trusted Nyn completely, and he knew that she wouldn't second guess him, unlike Cadsuane.  Right or wrong, Rand had a plan, and needed someone who would have his back no matter what.  He didn't trust Cad to be that person.

-A big problem I had with Rand and the DO. I may be mistaken, but my understanding was that the Pattern as made by the Creator is by its nature neither good nor evil. The Dark One wants to break this system of balance. So I couldn't understand why Rand killing the DO would create a world without free will because nobody can do evil. People doing evil is part of the pattern. That could only happen if Rand also tried to alter the pattern then? Wouldn't killing the dark one still leave a world with free will and where people could do evil? It seemed to be suggesting that the DO is the source of all evil and necessary for the Pattern to work which explicitly contradicts the notion that the DO is NOT part of the pattern.

You make an interesting point.  I'm sure one of the members that has already read the book 10 times could address this better than I could.

 

-I have no idea what Matt was doing or how he could have predicted any of that happening at the right time. Plus, I don't understand how Matt could bottleneck the Sharans with their ability to travel and it was only at the very end that he thought to do this with the Seanchan to trap the enemy.

 

Mat was at the pinnacle of his battle badassery.  He was drawing on thousands of years of combat experience, that's how he could predict the flow of battle so well.  As for the Sharans, Egwene had wiped out their channelers, they could no longer travel.  At least not as efficiently as before.

 

-Personally I thought there was nothing wrong with Lanfear redeeming herself in the end. In fact its strange that this is never done with any of the Forsaken in general. Killing her felt a little too harsh since she was IMO the most reasonable of the Forsaken or that she could have been clever enough to escape. 

She didn't redeem herself, she played a part to get close to Rand to kill him.  Granted, trying to use Perrin seemed a little contrived, seems she probably could have done it herself.  But killing her wasn't harsh, she was just as evil as she always was.

I generally tend to sympathize with the main characters surviving, at least to close to the end.  RJ had created this rich cast of characters, and most of them had very specific parts to play in the story.  When you're writing, one of the most difficult things to do is flesh out characters, and once you start killing them off, you generally have to then make MORE characters.

GRRM does this masterfully, but few other authors that I've read do.  Many times the "reserves" are thinner all around as characters.  As for bad guys getting killde off, well, there's generally more of them to start with, and many times their sole role is to be a character shaping tool for one of the protagonists.  Once that role is done, it's curtains for them.

Right, they are only preventing things they consider lies.  Cadsuane wasn't actually trying to convince the person that she really hadn't noticed the Aiel, so she's good to go.

It could be more like a demented Arcade game for him.

 

I've heard people describe the Pattern as a chess playing program and the dark one has been trying to beat it forever

 

You know how you could never BEAT arcade games. You just played forever and tried to get a high score. Imagine if that's what the dark one was trying with his attempts.

It could certainly explain why he's so grumpy.

Well, I hypopthesized that his STATED goal of destroying the pattern is bluster.  And it was more just a thought than what I actually think.  But it could be that his true goal is just to reign supreme over the world, remaking things the way he wants.  Either way, destroying the pattern or ruling the world, it would still be a victory.