Centigrade/Celsius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin? Come on, you've got to state the temperature scale you're using! ?

For myself, I've always had a thing for Min. She's probably the calmest of all the women in Randland (or WOT) - though I must admit, if Tuon looks Melanesian (Fijian, New Caledonian, Vanuatan, Solomon Islander, Papua Niuginian or West Papuan) I just might lose my heart to her ... though her attitude's not exactly sterling ...

IIRC, RJ doesn't give us a percentage of how many Trolloc births versus Myrdraal births from each hundred Trolloc matings. So I get the feeling that they are not as many as the Dark One would like. And that is why he can't randomly throw them into every situation he would like fixed to suit him. For that he has to have the human Darkfriends - and if there's enough of them for Trolloc cookpots courtesy of Fain, there's a lot more of them than there are of Myrdraal.

Judging from the books, they were "special forces" troops, except at the last throw of the dice, when they could be wasted at Shayol Ghul itself.

On 11/17/2019 at 11:00 AM, Sabio said:

My guess is she couldn't, the companion says she was born Ilyena Moerelle Dalisar.  So she was born with three names.  When she got married she became Ilyena Therin Moerelle.

 

The third name was given for deeds. important research, great achievements etc.  Mesanna went over to the shadow because of her failure to earn a third name.  Her goal in life was to do research at the Collam Daan, and her failure to achieve that was a key part of her going to the shadow.  Moghi was another who never earned a third name.  So it was a mostly a thing of status.

I've just consulted my copy of "The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time", page 79, which is the only place where she is mentioned, and it merely gives her three names - Ilyena Moerelle Dalisar - so the conclusion I came to, was that she had earned her third name the way her husband, Lews Therin Telamon, earned his - through hard work and honourable service.

I'm more interested in why she chose to add Lews Therin's name to her own. The fragments of Age of Legend life we see, chiefly through Rand's eyes, do not give the impression that women had to take their husband's last name. Did anyone ask Robert Jordan that?

I noticed that Gehennah/Jehennah thing too, but since Jehennah plays a very minor part in the entire series, I thought it was just the author, who obviously knew something of the Bible, playing with words (Worth pointing out that Gehinnom was a valley near Jerusalem (The Old City) where rubbish was burnt?). I mean, FWVLIW, in Tolkien's legendarium, he has Moria, which happens to be the name usually spelt Moriah in translations stemming from the KJ/AV translation - but which is spelt Moria in the Catholic tradition translations. In Canaan, Moria/h is a mountain city; in Middle Earth it's a cave city. Significance? Blowed if I know!)

I think you're reading too much into it.

Has anybody else commented on this? That in their final attack on Emond's field, the Trollocs charge, shouting ISAM! (ISAM is an IBM technical term for data file access, "Indexed Sequential Access Methods".)

I'm wondering if it's an in-joke of some sort, or perhaps Robert Jordan had a bad experience with an obnoxious IBM staffer or salesman while in service in Vietnam, and decided to make a joke of it? Did he ever explain this?

Perhaps the first Saldaean king's name was Jack? And his wife's was Jill?

Jack and Jill

went up the hill

to fetch a pail of water

Jack fell down

and broke his crown

and Jill came tumbling after.

But on the other hand you have the stories Thom alludes to, when humanity was brother to animals, and the wolves' delight at finding someone new who can talk to them just like they did way back in the beginning ...

My take on it - my .02c worth - is that the Randland that nearly all the action takes place on, is a horribly mixed up - and diminished - Eurasia plus fragments of Africa and most of China. The Seanchan islands are an equally horribly mashed up North and Central and South America with a lot of Africa and South-East Asia thrown in for good measure. While the solitary island continent in the Southern Hemisphere is of course Australia and New Zealand.

So the destruction of the old world during the Breaking of the World, was rather more comprehensive than otherwise.

I've just watched again the 1980s NZ film The Quiet Earth starring a cast of three including Bruno Lawrence in the lead role as a scientist partially responsible for setting up what is intended to be a world-wide standing flow network but instead has a negative effect on the local forms of universal constants within a radius of several light minutes at the very least. And it's the standing flow thing that's got me wondering, was this a film that Robert Jordan ever watched? Did he use it as an inspiration for his own Age of Legends standing flows?

I'm wondering, did Robert Jordan ever give any indication of the effect the cleansing saidin of the Taint would have on the Ways? If their darkening was a result of the Taint on the "algorithms" used to create it, surely cleansing saidin of the Taint would alter the Ways substantially?

Well, when time gets very short, they begin to see each other whenever they think of each other - Mat gets embarrassed at seeing Rand together with Min ...

And then there's the young-old Alivia, 414 years young and having been damane from about 13 or 14, and still thinks of herself as a teenager.

Any hint of just how old Lews Therin was when the War of Power swept over the Age of Legends?

Well, I have just remembered that when Egwene encounters her first non-Chosen Dreamwalker, Amys. Amys is reliving her Maiden of the Spear days and hunting; a lion is present.

So lions may have been "driven" into the mountains and survive mostly in the Aiel Waste and the Spine of the World. From which they are captured and exhibited ...

I've been puzzling about them for quite some time. The only large predatory cats on the continent that we have been informed about were the Ebou Dari leopards, who decamped on discovering that the Ebou Dari were a very aggressive mob not to be trifled with. And the cat Galina Sedai sees hunting while she is being broken by Therava and Sevanna shortly before they pass the judgement of Datsang on her.

So where would the inspiration for their name have come from? We've seen (from Tanchico) that Randlanders tend to disbelieve in most of the stuff of the Age of Legends. And big cats are just another of those things ...

Of course, before Robert Jordan woke from the dream, I intended to write him and ask, why hadn't he chosen a slightly more memorable name, such as the Pink Panthers? He's already snaffled Andor from one source, Tolkien's Akallabeth: snaffling the Pink Panthers from Inspector Clouseau's esteemed company would merely have needed the signature of President Murkin Muffley, countersigned by Dr Strangelove naturally.

Well, there is also the fact that she has only lived about forty-odd years by this time, and he remembers living several hundred. (The binding rod she swore the Three Oaths on has reduced her life expectancy.)

On 8/8/2007 at 4:53 PM, Mashiara O Aan.a--ein said:

Why is Rand so ridiculously sexist?  ??? That whole list of women whose deaths he blames himself for is way overkill. I don't understand why he feels worse for the death of a darkfriend woman than for a loyal Aielman who died for him. It just makes no sense that he can't kill a woman but can kill a man. It's driving me nuts...if it was just Rand I could attribute it to a thick skull, but Perrin and Mat seem to harbor the same feelings! Does anyone understand that whole "worse to kill a woman" thing? It just seems so fake to me. How dare he base his level of guilt for a death on gender!  >:(

 

It's almost insulting, as if he believes the woman did not stand as good of a chance. The Maidens seem to get a tad frustrated with this, but they don't sweat over it. If anyone can possibly explain Rand's attitude, please do, because my brain will soon turn to mush fuming over it.

There's something I read in a book on primatology and anthropology, about the way a troupe of baboons moves, with the males on the outside (where they face predators) and the females and the young on the inside of the group. Evidently baboons are sexist.

It's not general ignorance of social anthropology and gender relations that bothers me so much as general ignorance of gender relations in various species. We humans are not an island, but some of us think we are a sizeable peninsular - which we're not. One of our surviving co-pongids, the chimpanzee, is an outright patriarchal outfit; the other one, the bonobo, is a matriarchal outfit.

And it is an unpleasant and uncomfortable fact that males are generally more expendable than the females - one virile young man can populate a village in his lifetime, but each woman can only produce a limited number of offspring. (I think the limit is about 14, and that is with modern medical care and technology. Childbirth is quite a risky business - the New Zealand Maori have the proverb : "He puta taua ki te tane, he whanau tamariki ki te wahine" - the battlefield for man, the childbed for woman. Indicating where each gender was most likely to find an early death.)

FWVLIW, I've always assumed it was the fact that an Aes Sedai is more sensitive to things like dreams - being able to sense the Dark One's creatures must have something to do with it - so she must've felt the dream presence of Sammael and Be'lal from a greater distance than other non-channeler characters. then naturally that led to going checking out the source of those disturbing dreams, and triggering Sammael's and Be'lal's reactions.

On 8/30/2015 at 2:17 PM, Mrs. Cindy Gill said:

Because they're the Spanish Inquisition.

I think the Whitecloaks are more likely a critical retrospective of the US armed forces in Vietnam - or at least the officer class and the CIA - the "Questioners". Indeed, it's a toss-up between the Whitecloak Questioners and the Myrdraal as to which does the most damage unprovoked ...

Well, I made my picks and I asked the magic hat what it thought I belonged to, and it didn't give me anything! Another thing - no Black Ajah!

Did Robert Jordan leave enough materials to write any other prequels? Sequels? I would love to read of Mat and Tuon's fortunes in retaking Seanchan and Tuon's shock at discovering that his sister Bodewhin is by now an Aes Sedai ... family feuds, family dramas ....

On 6/22/2020 at 4:27 PM, Harldin said:

Warning Spoiler for MOL

 

Fain entered the Valley at Shayol Gul surrounded by the Mists of Mashadar and using the mist began killing everything he come across both Good Guys and Shadowspawn, Mat due to the fact that he had carried the Dagger was able to walk through the Mist unaffected walked up to Fain and killed him. It’s in MOL 

I don’t remember what happened to Shaidar Haran.

Hi. I'm Kalessin - old, wrinkled, and still got a lot of fire in me. I'm a WOT fan (also of Ursula Le Guin, Tolkien, Moorcock, and a set of others ...). I first noticed WOT when Vol 6, Lord of Chaos, kept turning up in a bookshop I frequented, and reading the back cover I wondered just who this Rand was, what on earth was a taveren, and so on. Then I picked up a used copy (Vol 6) from the library and was hooked. I bought The Eye of the World, since it was obvious I'd jumped into the middle of things, and then proceeded to go through the series as it unfolded.

I'm a muso of sorts - learning the cello with orchestral ambitions, play the trombone in a brass band, and ardently desire to play the Bach Cello Suites and Coltrane on pedal steel, C6th tuning. I also write fiction of sorts, mostly flash fiction - the latest being a couple of stories set in the town of Hullu, East Texas (it was founded by hullu suomalainen Hulkkonen, ergo its name Hullu) concerning the Love Thy Neighbour Guns Ltd company.