but, as I was sitting here thinking about WoT, I recalled an old theory I either wrote or agreed with. The idea was that the corrosion of the Taint on saidin was what ate away at the barriers between reincarnations of a soul. That, if unchecked and lucky, a man might eventually have many previous incarnations sharing his mind with him.

I was also thinking about the DO. It doesn't quite make sense to me that he is a truly omnipotent deity. My idle thought, then, was that perhaps in some world, a man encountered a corrosive power (the TP/taint/etc) that he used too much, exclusively even, which ate away at the barriers between his soul's reincarnations, until he was functionally omniscient. This functional omniscience allowed him to become a deity, but also drove him insane, and the only way to end his suffering is to end existence.

Thus, the Dark One.

It's a completely idle thought... but it interested me long enough to type this post.