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Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions darius_sedai Send a noteboard - 04/02/2012 03:04:48 PM
this White Tower also lost track of the date and the year TWICE over the course of its history.

Do you have a source for that? Not because I'm trying to be difficult, I'm just interested to read it.

Even if someone HAD lasted from the AoL to the founding of the White Tower, there is no reason they could not STILL forget the weave. Secondly, the books say NO Aes Sedai survived the Breaking. While it might have been possible for one to survive, none did. Period.

Again, do you have the source? And how do you forget a weave (if you mean forget in the sense that you can no longer remember something you used to be able to do)? It seems to me to be like riding a bicycle. Once you know how, you don't forget. Of course, what it seems like to me isn't an argument, but at least I can't remember (heh) there being anything about forgetting weaves in the books.

And there is no reason to assume they WOULD, even if they COULD. One method used to mark the end of the Breaking is the death of the last male Aes Sedai, and female Aes Sedai could very well have been favorite targets of the madmen. Remember, these are not random nutjobs, their madness comes from the Dark One's touch and in every case we have seen, it has manifested itself as delusions which incite or inspire violence and destruction.


That's not exactly true. Fedwin Morr was certainly completely bonkers, and he didn't turn violent. Poor statistics, I know, but at least they don't turn violent in every single case.

Why not? On what do you base that rather large leap? Male channelers are widely feared and their untrained destructive capabilities are taken very seriously. In Rand's portal stone life, he can alter the course of battles with a little surreptitious channeling here or there, and his ability is untrained and unreliable, but it is enough to win enough battles for a country boy from the ass end of nowhere to rise rapidly in the ranks of the Queen's Guard. The Seanchan damane are not very skilled, but are sufficient to be the basis of the power of a continent-occupying Empire.


Sure, a few women who could channel could turn battles and so on, but my point is that if they were just a bunch of wilders who happened to run into each other, there wouldn't be very many of them. It takes a while to figure out what you're doing, learn control, maybe find a few others who can do the same thing, and then figure out how to teach someone without the spark, and so on. To me, it seems unlikely that construction of the White Tower, a building meant to house thousands of people, would have begun as early as 98 AB if channeling was invented from scratch after the breaking.

You have no basis beyond their apparent political success for assuming particular levels of skill, and even those results say nothing about about their sophistication with the Power, only their POLITICAL skills. Or maybe you know the make-up of the "Tower forming" weave?


Actually, the Tower was built with the help of the one power, so someone would, quite literally, have known the "Tower forming" weave. Of course, that isn't neccessarily a complex thing to do, and doesn't have anything to do with the rest of this argument.


1. The calendar changed twice after rather long times of uncertainty. First after the Trolloc Wars ended and again after Hawkwings empire disintegrated. Between these times and the establishment of a new calendar people, including the AS lost track of the official date.

2. Not sure where the direct quote is on this one, possibly the Big White Book, but he is correct that it's stated at some point that no AS survived the entirety of the Breaking. Don't forget that there was a good amount of time before the Breaking really got going when the AS still fought the remaining forces of the Dark One. LPD took over leadership and spent years destroying the remaining Forsaken.

3. He's only harmless because he happened to be with someone who knew what had happened to him and had been given a specific task. It was only a matter of time until he lost control or threw a temper tantrum and did some real damage. A child mind with the power to level buildings is a dangerous combination... Just because he his death was sad doesn't mean he wasn't a ticking time bomb.

4. The years leading up to the Breaking (meaning the Collapse and the War of Shadow) had systematically torn down most of the advanced technologies like Ter'angreal factories ... This would have left the remaining AS more concerned with either the Prophesies of the Dragon, or with finishing the War ... Then the Breaking really hit... Suddenly rather than a few handful of men, we have millions of men going bat shit crazy. What's left of the AS women are fighting a war on two fronts. Why mention this? Because now they'd be over taxed and probably more focused on the tasks at hand than on finding and training women. This left teaching those they found the fundamentals, likely many of the same weaves that still exist and where deemed useful ... battlefield healing, shielding, and a handful of other critical weaves. Traveling may have been part of this for those with the Talent and enough strength, but as others have mentioned world conditions would have eventually made Traveling dangerous and eventually they would have stopped teaching a weave that most likely would end up killing people.

5. It's clear from the BWB that there were several groups that had probably decended from AoL AS mentalities (AKA proto-Ajahs) ... The obvious ones that would have come from AoL women are the Blue, Red, Yellow and Green ... Once the Breaking ended groups like the Brown and White would have grown and as first nations evolved the Grey would have found purpose. So rather than a single group we had several, I believe the BWB has some commentary on the various groups, but it also makes it clear that it took several hundred more years for the AS of the WT to build their own infrastructure and begin teaching in a formal manner. Prior to this it seems there were nomadic groups of AS following their own purposes ... Note one of the first acts the WT accomplished was to hunt down the AS not associated with them and force assimilate them... At this point there is no evidence that any AoL women had a hand in what can only be viewed as a bastardization of their system, not too dissimilar from what happened to the Aiel.

The damane system is more dramatic since in Seanchan the AS never united ... There would have been many more weaves circulating and many more damaging ones since for several thousand years rogue AS we're fighting wars amongst themselves and likely operated much more like the AoL Forsaken, the stronger ones likely had several weaker minions who they would have taught ... Imagine an evil Nynaeve with half a dozen Daigian level minions ... Once these women became damane the weaves they each knew would have been consolidated and taught to all damane, thus the Empire only became stronger with each new damane (I imagine the AS who came up with the a'dam was seeking such knowledge). So not only were they recruiting from the general population, they were increasing their knowledge all the time. Kind of like the Borg actually :)

6. The Stone of Tear was built using similar weaves, and even today the weaves are being used for Elaida's palace and the chain towers in the Harbors of Tar Valon. Seems like one of those basic weaves taught to AS because it was quick and useful during the breaking.
Domani Drag Queen in the White Tower ... Aran'gar watch out!
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How did Travelling become a lost Talent? - 03/02/2012 09:09:39 AM 1976 Views
It is a little odd. Maybe because channelers weren't united for a while? - 03/02/2012 02:24:17 PM 910 Views
Re: How did Travelling become a lost Talent? - 03/02/2012 02:49:02 PM 751 Views
It has always seemed unlikely. - 03/02/2012 04:53:14 PM 810 Views
i think it could be - 03/02/2012 07:56:18 PM 952 Views
Re: i think it could be - 04/02/2012 12:56:57 PM 867 Views
I'm really not seeing it. - 05/02/2012 04:19:38 AM 734 Views
It's always struck me as a tool of the Author more than a good hard fact - 04/02/2012 01:40:06 AM 594 Views
Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions - 04/02/2012 07:34:45 AM 996 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions - 04/02/2012 09:48:52 AM 804 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions - 04/02/2012 03:04:48 PM 846 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions - 04/02/2012 06:58:41 PM 736 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions - 05/02/2012 12:00:05 AM 741 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions - 05/02/2012 04:05:57 AM 653 Views
I don't see why people are having trouble believing Traveling was lost in the Breaking - 05/02/2012 05:53:32 PM 703 Views
not to mention - 05/02/2012 07:16:59 PM 665 Views
Re: not to mention - 05/02/2012 08:50:50 PM 991 Views
Re: not to mention - 05/02/2012 09:33:40 PM 706 Views
Re: I don't see why people are having trouble believing Traveling was lost in the Breaking - 05/02/2012 07:39:51 PM 878 Views
Medical knowledge... - 06/02/2012 02:15:13 AM 589 Views
My point was that it's surprising only ONE Healing weave survived - 11/02/2012 08:25:02 PM 672 Views
Re: I don't see why people are having trouble believing Traveling was lost in the Breaking - 05/02/2012 09:11:04 PM 596 Views
Rant rant rant - 11/02/2012 08:26:56 PM 703 Views
I agree. I was going to respond but you covered most of the bases. - 08/02/2012 04:13:20 PM 579 Views
Re: Your theory is based on rather severely flawed assumptions - 05/02/2012 09:52:35 PM 761 Views
You really need to read the BWB sections regarding this - 14/02/2012 01:20:20 AM 589 Views
he needs to read it just to see it for his own eyes - 14/02/2012 02:46:44 AM 558 Views
Re: he needs to read it just to see it for his own eyes - 14/02/2012 10:15:46 PM 634 Views
I would agree with you on less structured parts of the series - 15/02/2012 03:38:37 PM 521 Views
Re: I would agree with you on less structured parts of the series - 16/02/2012 09:41:29 PM 681 Views
That I can agree with - 17/02/2012 05:46:49 AM 730 Views
Re: That I can agree with - 17/02/2012 09:26:50 AM 593 Views
Seriously! The Yellow should be ashamed - 17/02/2012 01:49:07 PM 719 Views
Well to be fair to the Yellow (which generally annoy me as an Ajah)... - 17/02/2012 06:20:06 PM 667 Views
Seems reasonable - 18/02/2012 05:49:40 PM 621 Views
Quote found - 12/02/2012 01:35:58 AM 556 Views
My thoughts - 05/02/2012 10:14:59 PM 779 Views
Re: How did Travelling become a lost Talent? - 13/02/2012 12:24:35 PM 726 Views
a few more other factors - 15/02/2012 08:22:02 PM 568 Views

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