We know for a fact that Saidar weaves are weakening and failing outright

Where is this happening?

A chilling thought: maybe the melting was just a symptom; maybe all of the taint didn't go into Shadar Logoth; maybe saidar has been tainted.

I am really going to assume that you are joking here.

If you are serious, then:

WHAT IN THE SEVEN HELLS ARE YOU SAYING?

saidar tainted? *gasps and faints hysterically*

AND..perhaps...the Saidin one actually was damaged but not noticably... or weakened so that it will melt the next time it is used..

Rand faces DO at the Bore and screams "Prepare to die, Shai'tan!" He pulls at saidin through the access key and feels the Choden Kal glowing far off in Carihien. The DO's shadow rises threateningly to cover the heavens and and the banners of the Light are lost in the Dark.

And then he felt the key melt in his hand and saidin vanished at once. He reached for the source and found he couldn't touch it.

He was burned out. LTT giggles, "I told you so!"

Sweating profusely, he turns to Nynaeve for immediate healing, but finds that the corruption of the blight has given life to her braid and she is now battling savagely with it while it attempted to throttle her.

Cursing the idiot who designed the Choden Kal, Rand slowly edges behind Jead'en and tries to stay alive till the tinkers come to sing the song.

Tinkers don;t come.

Bore bursts open.

Creator yells obscenities at Rand.

WOT broken.

World remade in Dark' Ones image.

DO made King, and Creator imprisoned.

DO kills all Forsaken and DFs.

DO sits atop Mount Olypmus and watches the destruction in satisfaction-and then thinks, "Okay I'm free now. Eons of plans and escape attempts have finally suceeded. What now?"

That would be one HELL of an ending. Cliffhanger for possible sequel too.

saidin and saidar have to both be thought of as equal monopoles, bearing the same polarity.  Two North Poles, if you will, which is why they repel each other rather than attract.

 

There is one problem with comparing saidin and saidar to anything in the REAL world (that would include pos/neg charges, north/south poles or any other thing with oppostites).

That is:

While saidin and saidar work against each other, they also work WITH each other. That is one thing that I don't understand at all but I must admit that it sounds really cool when you read it. ;)

or, it's what worked best for the story.   8)

Possible. Any author has a plot and he needs certain things to happen. He would then plan how to being about that event in a convincing manner. I have seen a few instances where the cover is weak in WOT but this is a major thing- I doubt any author could pass it off on that excuse. There must be a valid reason. Strangely, nobody (not even Cadsuane) who was AT the cleansing wonders why the key melted (they are not aware that the Choden Kal itslef is gone).

I disagree.

Theoretically, saidar is not doing any work in keeping saidin compressed. Saidin compressed itself due to the opposing push of saidar. Rather like north pole and north pole. One could say that Rand was forcing them into close proximity but then both are doing an equal amount of work in preventing each other from touching. They are repelling each other.

Hence one cannot be said to be doing any more work than the other.

And yes, I think you are right that saidin touched, but did not enter SL. We can think of it as an oil spill in the sea. Now imagine forcing that contaminated water into a channel- and place a block on that channel that is just high enough to to allow only the oil to enter beyond the block. Something like that, I guess. Did anyone understand that?  :D

I agree with Luckers.

Rand tried to force it to form the conduit but it was all curling and spiralling about and doing other weird feminine stuff but he let it do so. He states that it doesn't matter what it did as long as it formed the conduit.

QUOTE WH:

He thought of it as a tube, at least, though it was not. The

weave did not form at all as he expected it to. As if saidar had a mind of its own, the weave took on convolutions and spirals that made him think of a flower. There was nothing to see, no grand weaves sweeping

down from the sky. The Source lay at the heart of creation. The Source was everywhere, even in Shadar Logoth. The conduit covered distance beyond his imagining, and had no length at all. It had to be a conduit,

no matter its appearance.

So nothing was really forced.

Also, QUOTE WH:

Drawing on saidin, fighting it, mastering it in the deadly dance he knew so well, he forced it into the flowery weave of saidar. And it flowed through. Saidin and saidar, like and unlike, could not mix. The flow of saidin squeezed in on itself, away from the surrounding saidar, and the saidar pushed it from all sides, compressing it further, making it flow faster. Pure saidin, pure except for the taint, touched Shadar Logoth.

So we DO have a flow of saidin and it did enter Shadar Logoth.

And ALSO, QUOTE WH:

Inside his head, Rand was screaming. He was sure that he was screaming, that Lews Therin was screaming, but he could not hear either voice in the roar. The foul ocean of the taint was flooding through him, howling with its speed.The taint was moving. That was all that counted, now. He had to hold on!

So this last quote disqualifies the idea that Rand was more 'capable' than Nynaeve.

I thought that during the cleansing, saidar was used as a 'tube' and saidin was funneled through it to Shadar Logoth. As saidin was forced into Shadar Logoth, the evil taint on saidin came into close proximity with the evil of Shadar Logoth (which were both evil but opposing). The interaction of the two 'evils' resulted in the utter removal of the Taint on Saidin as well as the utter destruction of Shadar Logoth itself.

I think of it like a particle and anti-particle collision where both destroy each other.

If this is correct, then saidar was only a conduit and did nothing other than ensure that saidin flows into Shadar Logoth and not elsewhere. I could be wrong of course.

I think the female Choeden Kal melted because Nynaeve wasnt up to the challenge. Her strength as in raw power was enough but her endurance wasnt. In the Cleansing she said she couldnt go on (I think?) but Rand stuck it out. That'll be why, because Nynaeve faltered towards the end

But she made it through to the end all the same. In my view, Rand would also have said that it was difficult to hold on but remember that by Book 9 , Rand is as hard as steel. So he doesn't complain. In his POV during the cleansing he expresses the same thoughts. He found it increasingly difficult to hold on but did so anyway. But he didn't voice it aloud. Same with Nynaeve except that she did voice it aloud.

And the idea that the sa'angreal itself could possibly be destroyed if the channeler is not capable of  maintaining the flow would be a serious flaw in the sa'angreal. Why would the AoL AS have made it with such a flaw, considering the time and effort spent on making it and the hunge importance of the Choden Kal to the women who signed the Fateful Concord?

ha! There only one true power while there is saidin and saidar!!! CREATOR WINS

;D I concede defeat.

Why did the female Choden Kal access key melt, and not the male?

Both were used.

Only one melted.

???

Also, we have evidence that there are at least 2 female access keys. Egwene finds a broken one in TAR.

So are there any other male keys? I think it is possible. Imagine if Rand uses the male choden kal at TG and only feels half its power in him. He turns and sees Moridin waving at him, holding another key!

The Creator created the One Power to drive the Wheel and and the universe.

The DO created the True Power for his own evil schemes (I guess).

This suggests that their difference in power may not be that great.

The theory basically was that the WOT world was an actual creation by a sentient being; at the time of the creation the being was trapped within it.  Not from being crazy, just from miscalculation.

A being creates the entire univers, one power and sets the planets and stars in motion and breathes life into the world and then traps itself due to 'miscalculation?'  All I can say for such an idea is : OH-MY-GOD!

the theory that the Creator went crazy and imprisoned himself.

Seems very unlikely. ::)

Quite true. But most people in Randland are not as unnerved as they ought to be.

People have suggested that the changing of corridors etc is the DO's direct work. If so, I find that the DO is pretty stupid. If he is directly doing this, then surely he can mess about the threads of much more important things????

That only suggests that this is occuring as some sort of side effect. The DO is not intentionally trying to make such things occur-I think.

This is an interesting idea about the nature of the Pattern.

In KOD, corridors switch and rooms in a palace shift to different places. This is attributed to the pattern unravelling due to the DO's touch.

Now, how does nature (or in this case the Pattern) see this? To the Wheel, when we build a castle, we move a bunch of raw materials from one place and assemble it in an orderly manner in another place as we desire. Why should the Pattern recognize a castle as anything other than a bundle of raw materials shifted from their original place?

This led me to think that corridors and roads shifting doesn't seem to make much sense. Maybe, if a corridor suddenly abruptly ended with a chasm beneath it- or half a room suddenly disappeared- would that make more sense? I don't understand how the Pattern (which I presume is neutral and has no will of its own) manages to distinguish such buildings built by man.

If the Pattern was actually unraveling I would have expected to see, for example, gaping ditches in the middle of a field, or abnormalities in landscape such as half a mountain suddenly sticking up somewhere. I also think that earthquakes would have done very nicely here. I would have loved it if there were earthquakes because the unraveling of the Pattern linked to quakes in the earth sounds really nice.

What do people think?

LOL bronzo.

I'm surprised he hasn't shown up on this thread yet. I mean, his personal quote is :I just want Faile to die.

That makes me laugh EVERY time I read on of his posts and see that quote at the bottom!

And Daphilip, I love Egwene but most people on this site don;t like her and I can't understand that. So if you like Faile, then so be it! everyone's cool with that.

But I think she is just an annoying character. Funny at times, but annoying all the same. The Ogier trick with the Ways was particularly annoying. If she wants Perrin to tie her up and hang her upside down from the ceiling then she should TELL him!!!

Dreadlord's just gonna love this topic.

I think the Saldean culture is really funny. I really can't imagine a woman who WANTS her man to shout at her! That is really funny. And the Saldean farmer girls are sooooo amusing.

Any flashes of light would probably count against them, given that anything for making light is on the prohibited list. Bear in mind that there was a lot of light on the Randland side of the doorway, which could easily translate into light on the other side, and said light would be unlikely to win them any friends with the Finns.

Exactly.  ;D

Does anyone know what the bracelet was made of? the Finns are sort of picky regarding 'iron.'

Also, they do not like people to bring torches/lamps. If Moiraine and Lanfear were channeling as they entered the Finn Realm or if they continued to channel after passing through the doorway, would any flashes of light count as bringing torches/lamps? I haven't seen this idea discussed before.

That may be why they were both imprisoned. :o