I've been thinking about this - Edit 2
Before modification by darius_sedai at 07/10/2012 11:12:43 PM
The cool eyed White was Brendas. We get conformation in LoC.
As for Talents, there's an RJ quote somewhere saying that a circle doesn't add up the Talents of its members. Their strengths in the five powers aren't added either. However, if various circle members have related or complementary Talents suited to a task, then you pick them no matter the strength because they can pass control of the circle around as need demands. We've seen from the bonding of Rand that two linked women can complete a single weave by passing control around. So you can pick a man and a woman with great Healing Talent, and link them with another man who may be uselss, and then have the man and woman pass control around based on what kind of Healing may be needed, since men are better than women in some aspects, and vice versa.
Likely the same kind of thing was done for ter'angreal.
Will reply to the rest of the stuff later, but agree with you on the other posts. Great job!
As for Talents, there's an RJ quote somewhere saying that a circle doesn't add up the Talents of its members. Their strengths in the five powers aren't added either. However, if various circle members have related or complementary Talents suited to a task, then you pick them no matter the strength because they can pass control of the circle around as need demands. We've seen from the bonding of Rand that two linked women can complete a single weave by passing control around. So you can pick a man and a woman with great Healing Talent, and link them with another man who may be uselss, and then have the man and woman pass control around based on what kind of Healing may be needed, since men are better than women in some aspects, and vice versa.
Likely the same kind of thing was done for ter'angreal.
Will reply to the rest of the stuff later, but agree with you on the other posts. Great job!
And we have at least 1 example of an incident that does NOT align with what you are saying. The Gateway 13 Rebel sisters make for the Army:
The Path of Daggers
Chapter 30
Beginnings
The light of saidar sprang up around the thirteen sisters near the Sitters, around all of them together, and a thick slash of silver appeared in the middle of the clearing, rotating into a gateway ten paces tall and a hundred wide.
that gateways is exponentially larger than what any other "standard" AS could generate on her own ... seems to me that to at even 13 fairly strong sisters should not be able to make one so large without the Talent also being exponential. 13 AS linked are probably no more than 4x Rand's strength (assuming they are strong sisters) but even if they were 5x or 6x his strength they still should not be able to make a gateway this large.
Rand can make one of 144sq feet ... this monstrosity is 9,000sq feet ... and is only being powered by at MOST 6x Rand's strength ... smacks of cumulative Talent to me
I don't think 13 women as strong as Lanfear should be able to do this if Talent isn't cumulative too