Happy birthday, Thom 🥳 Hope you are having a great day 🙂

The Seal over the Bore was always going to be temporary - I don't remember if this was known from the outset of the attempt by the Hundred Companions, especially as it was saidin only, or if this was one of the many things that Foretelling made explicit. Remember it is canon that the Pattern forms the Age Lace - the Bore is always made at the end of the Second Age and repaired at the end of the Third. Time is cyclical - the Bore must be made as it as already been repaired, and it must be repaired so it can be made again. What causes it? I'd guess at something hand-wavy like the evil of the Dark One seeping into Seal. Nasty stuff, liquid evil. The books don't go into a lot of "why". The Dark One is just one of their universal constants. I guess it must be necessary for the Creation of the Universe. The Creator does appear, rather bizarrely at the end of the Eye of the World, not really sure why Jordan included that as he never seemed to build on it or explain it at all. I could guess that maybe Rand was going to be much more literally the Creator's Champion at some point, but that is pure speculation. Outside of that the Creator is just the classic omnipotent creator god that moves in mysterious ways. Not to be questioned by us mere mortals. There are no beginnings or ending in the Wheel of Time. There have been an infinite number of Dragons before and will an infinite number after. If you mean, is he reborn as the Creator's Champion in Ages other than the Second and Third - no idea. I don't believe canon even slightly touches upon this. The songs of Growing (probably not actually called that, lol) that the Aiel sang in the fields with Nym and Ogiers in the Age of Legends. The closest thing that remained would be the Ogier treesong, and it was a near pain for me that not a single Tuatha'an was ever told that. An infinite amount of searching and suffering throughout endless Third Ages, and no one ever tells them. So frustrating. He accepted his fate rather than fighting it, iirc. Not sure - I'm not a great fan of the attempts at philosophy in the book and I may have glossed over the whole top of Dragonmount as his conclusions, to me at least, make zero sense in a cyclical time line. Doing better then next time means nothing when you always have to come back to the same spot. No matter what you do, everything is going to end up the same regardless. Rand's madness tends to come and go as the plot needs, for me it worse in the Dragon Reborn where Rand goes totally feral and barely seems to have a grip on himself at all then reverts to being completely sane when he reaches Tear. Can't say I know the specifics, but like magic, dude. If you mean literally - they are both alive at the same time so they cannot be the same soul. I have seen people speculating, maybe about the show, I cannot remember, that Lews Therin, Lanfear, Ishamael, and others were comparable to Third Age Team Rand, and the reason that Lews Therin failed was that they failed, not him. But in canon, they could not literally be the same people (or at least reborn souls like Lews Therin/Rand), though I guess the Pattern could be using them as analogues or some such. It of course also gets a bit more confusing when you consider that Rand is the Creator's Champion, but the Pattern is interested in balance, not the victory of the Light. So it seems like counting ta'veren as only forces for good would wrong - if the Light was too strong, the Pattern would even things up - perhaps with a Shadow aligned Mat. Welcome to Dragonmount, Hero 🙂 (sorry where are my manners?) Hope you have a great time here. Though the only thing I'd like to point out that many people that love the books also loved the show, many also couldn't care less and many hated it. But it would be wrong to assume that any one group's subjective opinion is somehow better than another's.

Welcome to Dragonmount, ShockExit 🙂 I hope that everything is going well with your knee There should somewhere be a list of characters per chapter so you could home in on their descriptions but I have failed to find one. I did see some stuff on reddit when I was searching but did not quite feel up to that site at the moment. Perhaps someone with the ducks more in a row than me will be able to point you to a suitable resource. The artwork is amazing 🤎And total props for including the real star of the books, Bela 🙂

Welcome, Andrew 🙂 That was an incredibly detailed intro post 🙂 sounds like you will fit right in here. Look forward to seeing you about.

I got 2 guesses - but I will freely admit only because Agelmar was not an option after guessing Nynaeve, lol. It is good. Maybe we could even use this in events or as raising points, seems like a good idea to me.

Hi Ringerrings 🙂 Welcome to Dragonmount 🙂 I had a go at your game, it is quite fun. How many characters are in the database? Seeing as WoT has something like 2.9k named characters I imagine you had to draw a line somewhere 🙂 What are you looking to do with the game? I see that you have added other fantasy series. Must be quite a project.

I'm afraid not. I would guess that it is something specific to the producers of the audiobook, which appears to be Audiorenaissance if my ears are hearing right but no idea how you would go about identifying it.

Were they not staying/traveling together? So they just assumed that they were married, obviously putting the same stock in marriage as patriarchal societies do. If I remember correctly at least.

I think also for the ta'veren is that they pull and enmesh each other. If everyone in the party from the Two Rivers had been a ta'veren they would have been locked into the deep gravity well that is the Dragon. You could look at the doubts and willfulness and denial of responsibility (Mat) or the overcommitment to responsibility (Perrin) not being the cause of the ta'veren status but being necessary to survive being a ta'veren (especially around Rand) and still get the stuff that needed to be done done. Like if Perrin had not been so dead set on killing himself for his family, he wouldn't have been there to accidentally cause a revolution in the Two Rivers which would have huge impact later on when they march to the Fields of Merrilor. Just like the Band would never have been formed if Mat wasn't trying to run away. If they had not resisted being ta'veren and the pull of Rand, none of that would have happened. Unless of course the ta'veren works on a deeper level and everything was fated to happen exactly like that, but then there would be no point discussing it at all then. Also it means that Nynaeve and Egwene achieved what they did through their own grit and determination without the help of the Pattern smoothing their way.

Good morning, Tanchico 🙂 I love the smell of Balefire in the morning. Er, not sure where that came from. It is awesome to have you on Dragonmount and hope you have a fantastic time here. Plus all the things Ithi said. We also have things like a Discord server where people talk and whatever people get up to on Discord. Look forward to seeing you about 🙂

As I remember it, she originally left the Two Rivers and then chose to pursue the One Power solely because of her desire to protect the Emond's Fielders who were her responsibility. Lan was a later and much more secondary reason for her rivalry with Moiraine. It may have provided her with additional motivation for learning to channel, but it wasn't why she ripped up her life, nor was it why she enrolled in the Tower. As I remember it anyway.

From what I have seen, absolutely everyone hates something about the books. And every time you think you have found one thing that everyone agrees was weak, you'll find someone popping claiming that is their favourite bit of the book bar none. It is one of the appeals of the books and the community, I think.

Actually, according to Jordan the publisher picked up his pitch for a story that would be five-six books and he was given six and told if it was five he could just write something else for the sixth. Because "he liked the way [Jordan] writes". Not that I disagree that editing could very well be a lower priority as books progress and the story gets more locked in and the power of the author increases. Didn't Rowling sack her editors? Maybe that is just a malicious rumour I heard.

I would shy away from calling myself a writer as I have never managed anything outside of Nanowrimo, but I came across a program called yWriter. It is just a word processor more or less but it has some nice touches like allowing you to put the point of view, characters, setting, outline and such per scene or chapter. So you can for example check that your main character's pov has more words than a secondary character, and you can generate an outline by only showing each chapter's, etc, and it is just useful to have all that info without having it in a separate document or in the main narrative either. Each chunk is separate so you can move them about while looking at the higher info, such as pov and word count. It is free to use and it is an author who just shares the tool that he uses. It is still being kept uptodate and may have more features now as I haven't used it in years and years. You can find it here if you think it sounds interesting yWriter8 by Spacejock Software

I am prone to towering rages myself, but for me I find that rage is a destructive and unhappy emotion. At least it is in me. It is the negation of all the things I hold dear and cherish - kindness, empathy, reason, logic, love, self-sacrifice, humour... perhaps you can control your emotions better than I can. Now mad fancies I can get more behind.

I'm sorry but... what exactly is the question?

Welcome to Dragonmount, Zev! It is a story that grabs you and doesn't let go, burn my bones to ash if it doesn't. Even my aged Grandmother says so 🙂 As for how to contribute - you could start a re-read thread so as to share your personal experience as you go along, browse through the years and years of book discussions, and we have Social Groups where you can hang out and have fun with other users and even a role play section for creative writing set in the Westlands and beyond that is going through something of a restart at the moment. Pretty much how ever you would like to engage. There is also a Discord channel if that is more your thing where people engage more in the wider WoT world of content creators, rewotch different series and films, and whatever those fine people actually get up to. Appears to feature heavily in memes, from where I am sitting. Hope you enjoy your time here and have fun with your reread 🙂

Welcome to Dragonmount, Coursouvra 🙂 Always great to meet a fellow fan 🙂 I hope you enjoy your time here. The role playing section is at the bottom of the forum list and is currently going through something of a restart. It would be great to see you there.

Actually I've just remembered the bit I was thinking about the Wisdom being elected was actually Nynaeve's arches where the Wisdom had convinced the women to convince their husbands to vote for Cenn for Mayor. Was it Cenn? Hmm. I was misremembering that that was how the evil Wisdom was elected, but actually it was her controlling who was Mayor. My bad. Anyway, maybe I'm misremembering that the Wisdom is elected. But as that may be, she still has rightful authority.

I see. I had not realised that they would have let them burn down the inn if they had insisted. Obviously I misunderstood. I'm pretty sure the Wisdom is elected by the Women's Circle. You aren't suggesting that isn't democratic, are you? Nor are you commenting on all the corporal punishment of children and women. Yes in real life physical violence is terrible. This is a story. A story where Nymaeve's character is displayed partly by her propensity to hit people with a stick for not obeying her authority which is entirely in keeping with their societal norms. Indeed one can say she is only noticeable because she is a woman hitting men. And if people in Emond's Field didn't want hit, they only had to not disrespect her, more or less. If you want to call that victim blaming, be my guest.

Of course not. What I am saying is that she had an important function and deserved respect that she wasn't given. Because that respect was necessary for her to perform her role. What I am saying is that they share some of the blame for it being necessary. Now obviously in real life, I would be looking at this differently, but in a world that among other things is choc-a-block full of corporal punishment, and has a literal personification of evil - I'm quite happy saying they should be respecting her democratically elected authority without the need of a stick. I seem to remember that the Mayor was not above threatening people with Master Luhan's muscles if they did not behave. I don't see this, in the context of the story, as anything different - especially as it is more about character building than justifying physical bullying - which is kind of a thing throughout the story, especially for young women.

And indeed, if you look at how many people were only respecting her in as much as they didn't want whacked with her stick rather than respecting her authority it is difficult to lay the blame entirely on her.

I think for me (though I admit I've not thought about this a lot so maybe I'm being a bit hasty) but the issue often is not that each story arc needs an obstacle, it is more that the story due to its scale (or Jordan's preference perhaps) resists overcoming the obstacles so the arcs seem to often hit dead ends when they come up against something that cannot be solved until the last battle or is an important story element like the machinations of a particular forsaken, for example. Like for example how Couladin is fairly quickly dealt with but the Shaido linger for quite some time as they are needed for the general plot of chaos being wrought across the Westlands. Or how some nations continue through rebellion/forsaken control/Rand-skepticism for so long, because if Rand too quickly gets their support the story runs out of obstacles for the main narrative.

Which video game is that?