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Re: How I see Traveling... Sidious Send a noteboard - 26/12/2015 10:43:13 AM


From people who are less in the know. Rand says, while he has an angreal in his pocket and a real need to make a Gateway as large as he can to quickly transport as many Aiel as he can, that he can't make a Gateway larger than 4x4 no matter what. This is also a time when he doesn't have all his eventual strength, yet even much later he doesn't make Gateways any larger.

No one can make a gateway as large as Rand in the series. 4x4 is the maximum for any single channeler. And how do you know 'who is in the know'? What's wrong with Logain's judgment of saidin?



I called it moronic long ago, and continue to do so. There was plenty of evidence that Gateway size doesn't strictly track with strength, including Aviendha's quote from tPoD. I don't remember whether it was you or Shannow, but someone once actually had a theory that we can take Gateway areas of various characters, and from that map their strength. I think Rand's 4x4 gateway was compared to Beonin's 2x2, and it was concluded that this meant Beonin was 1/4th Rand's strength. What is that BUT moronic? It was to those theories I was referring to.

I've never said it's linear. Most Aes Sedai have about 50 strength and can't make a gateway bigger than a small hole to put their arms through. But if someone makes a big gateway you know they're strong in the Power - Logain himself says so. It's no coincidence that Sammael and Osang'ar make smaller gateways than Rand.


No one contradicted him because there was a more immediate issue at play: Rand was at the brink of overdrawing Saidin. The only man with enough knowledge to say different was focussed on not dying...

So RJ put that in to show how ignorant Logain is. In all likelihood, he was answering a question that was asked to him dozens of times by readers and his resultant RAFO became something tangible.


Not sure how much credence we can place on Brandon's work, so huge grain of salt and all that, but as of aMoL, this isn't true. Androl makes much larger ones on his own.

Androl has never exceeded Rand's gateway sizes unaided.



Problem is, we don't know they were making the largest they could. Rand doesn't always make a 4x4 gateway, only when he needs the largest he can make.

That makes no sense, especially in Sammael's case where he needed to transfer thousands of Shaido. He's not exactly the patient type.


But not to compare strength. That's the point. To an extent, you can add more OP and make a Gateway larger. But you hit an upper limit, eventually. The question is: is that upper limit set by your potential? Several quotes directly state otherwise.

If you grow in strength your gateways get larger - therefore strength equals gateway size. If someone opens a very large gateway in front of you, you will know it's a high level channeler, or maybe keep in the back of your mind that there is a 1 in 1000 chance that it's someone like Androl who isn't very strong at all.


Sure, except we see Rand verify that. And from Aviendha we know that where Elayne can make her largest Gateway using less than the total amount of OP she can draw, Aviendha cannot because of her block.

I've never claimed that you need to use all of your ability to weave your largest gateway. I said the exact opposite in my original post. Aviendha is struggling because she is trying to relearn a weave and it's difficult.


No, I think that is wrong. Here's how I see it:

1) The size your Gateway will take is defined by the strength of your Talent.
2) For average Talent, a minimum of level 19 strength is needed to be able to make a functioning Gateway large enough for a person to walk through. Even if you're stronger in the OP, you can't use less strength and make a huge Gateway, since your Talent is the same.
3) Since your level of Talent remains the same, if you're growing in strength, up to a point you might increase Gateway size.

I say the last because whatever level of Talent Rand had, his Gateway sizes didn't change between Book 5 and Book 11, though we have some hints to his strength increasing. For Aviendha, the second learned weave limitation seems to have held her back even as her strength grew.


It's likely that people who need more OP to make their largest gateways struggle with Spirit (or Fire in Men). Considering Rand is strong in all the Powers, it's likely he got to 4x4 early on, and couldn't improve on that.

Remember that Rand once chose a group of AM based on their ability to weave a gateway. He said that they all had to be strong enough to weave a gateway. It's likely then that 99% of channelers have an average Talent and above level 17 the size becomes linear up to ++1 where it's 4x4.


Doesn't make much sense. What allows someone to regulate Gateway size, then? We've seen Nynaeve, for instance, make two Gateways of different sizes in immediate succession. If size was passively determined by her potential, what did she do? Trick the Gateway-size gods into thinking her potential was lower?

She'll use less saidar, obviously. If Nynaeve has a strength of 96 (or whatever) then she needs 65 to make a good sized gateway. She can probably make her biggest gateway with 75. As an example.


He definitely defies the trend in that his level of Talent is incredibly high. But I dislike theories that aren't parsimonious. The simplest solution is that Androl's Talent is so high he doesn't need much of the OP to make a Gateway. Rather than seeing this as something out of the blue, its best to treat him as part of the trend, just an extreme outlier.

Well he's probably as strong as Sorilea and can make gateways that are as big as the Forsaken, so yes he's an extreme outlier like Berowin. It's rare enough to surprise people. The books even say that the guys at the BT can't believe it.


If you think two people of the exact same OP strength can make equal sized Gateways, I'd ask you to prove it. We have Aviendha and Androl to prove otherwise, and nothing at all to prove it is true.

I told you that Rand made 4x4 and both Sammael and Osangar made slightly smaller gateways, and they're at ++2/++3. It's not a coincidence. There's then Logain who says that Rand must be stronger than him because his gateways are bigger. That is direct evidence from the books that you are choosing to ignore. We see in the same scene that the other AM have smaller deathgates than Rand.


I'm not saying what I want. I'm saying what is in the books, which is that Gateway size isn't strictly dependent on the amount of OP you put into it.

Well that's good because I never claimed that.


This is clearly LTT's knowledge leaking through, though. A few days later he destroys every Trolloc in the Stone with one weave. And we see that Asmodean is never able to teach him how to shield. But he gets it later anyway.

Not necessarily - it may be, but it also may be instinct. Nynaeve was weaving extremely complex weaves of Healing without any training or knowledge.


Definitely, but I don't think just increasing the power of the shield is enough. If you read the scene where Nynaeve and Talaan are dueling, your focus matters. So your focus on the shield, and your focus on holding on to the source. Get distracted even a little, and you can be shielded/accidentally shield instead of stilling/fail to land your shield.

Well sometimes. When Rand breaks free from the AS he smashes fists of Spirit into the AS and still them. It's raw unskilled massive power and it severs them.

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