I'd imagine some of them would be sacrifices. Note that all the Sea Folk sisters are Browns, and librarians. I'd say that suggests certain personality types are picked, especially those with more sedentary inclinations, who wouldn't find much outlet for their proclivities as sailors. They're also not strong, so it could be just as much that they are sent away for their lack of utility as Windfinders. IIRC, someone else from the Tower confirms this, that the Sea Folk who come are so rare & weak that they don't bother looking for more recruits there. But regarding the consistent weakness of the sacrifices, maybe Cloud Dancing isn't really a Talent, like Healing, but more a Weave, like Traveling, and the girls they send are too weak to overcome the lack of natural aptitude at weather control.

IDK, I'm thinking in this case of RJ's assertion that there is a greater element of accuracy in Seanchan fortune tellers, due to their reproductive issues. Maybe there is some sort of natural selection at work that causes more weather talents among the Sea Folk, or at least a greater incidence of strength in Air & Water. I would also guess that they find other uses for the Windfinders as the Seanchan do with damane who lack the ability to fight, such as Aes Sedai captives, or women who can't make lightning or fire very well.

I find it hard to believe that Elayne's intimidation would cancel out a a far more fundamental inclination, especially considering that was her initial reaction to Jorin's weather working as well. Elayne personally is the type to embrace and rise to challenges, rather than let them put her off. She also leans toward very low personal self-assessments, which should have closed off a whole lot more avenues, if that was the case. It seems just as likely that her natural lack of affinity for Healing weaves would have caused her to be intimidated and see as complex what Nynaeve could do intuitively.

But remember, she gave no indication of such abilities, until Jorin taught her. She probably is naturally strong in Air, that being the method she used to kill their Myrdraal captors in tDR, but never seems to have thought to put it to work on the weather.

Aviendha's demonstrated skill with dispersing the rain was another such example of no normal inclination, but getting skill from access to teachings.

That was just clever applications, not messing with the weave itself. She wasn't thinking in terms of the science or engineering behind making different gateways, she was just thinking of outcomes that would be clever. It's like thinking how useful a feature would be on a car, compared to thinking of the engineering necessary to implement it. Yukiri was doing the former, not the latter. That whole scene disgusted me anyway, as it seemed to be one of the more egregious examples of Sandersonian idiocy. Most of the problems discussed in that scene could be solved by a manhole cover of Air, or a Folded Light barrier over the opening. Heck, the one problem Egwene brought up - accumulation of Dragkar corpses that tried to fly through the gateway was so devoid of thought, I personally think Sanderson must have lost a bet or something to include something so dumb. It is a horizontal hole, which is wide enough to watch an entire army! Any Draghkar who dies in the act of flying through, will immediately drop right back down! And that's assuming they are dumb enough to fly through gateways given the known fatal consequences!
They are extremely necessary for food production. No one lives in an insulated house, no one travels or transports goods in a water-tight car. Nynaeve's two main jobs as Wisdom were healing and weather forecasts. If changing the weather to optimal conditions were remotely humanly possible, that would have been on the list! In fact, once involved in worldly affairs, her predictive Talent gained greater scope, where in the village, the only thing of sufficient importance and interest to make her pay attention to its warnings were storms. If formative wants, desires and necessities established a channeler's limits, Nynaeve would never have had her prediction ability expand to include danger & strife.

No, that is exactly opposite. Healing can only be attributed to the person who tries to cure a wound or disease. How would anyone know who fixed the weather, or even that it HAD been fixed? That would be well beyond the knowledge of anyone but a channeler. Even abrupt changes could be seen as seasonal. I've seen lots of torrential downpours that stopped after five minutes, and I've seen snow more than two months before it had ever done so in my area in my memory. I never went to witchcraft as the explanation, nor would I have the faintest clue as to who the witch in question might be. A wound that Heals overnight, however, immediately points fingers at anyone who tried to do something about it. The only way to hide one's involvement would be to sneak up on a patient, or else let a doctor treat them and Heal the bandaged wound later.
Nynaeve, at least, didn't even know what she was doing was channeling. Most wilders would also not have any idea that Aes Sedai could detect them. In any event, fear of White Tower detection seems a pretty abstract concern when subconsciously selecting their areas of ability. And regardless of one's level of concern for the community's level of agricultural success, the ability to change the weather to one's convenience would still be a highly desirable power. Not to mention one's own ability to survive depends on said communal agricultural success, what with the pre-technological limitations on long range food transport and storage.


It was Skimming. His appearance in Tarwin's Gap was, I am convinced, a function of the Green Man's place. Someshta said it does not move, contrary to what everyone believes. The variable factor is the location of those who need to find it. Therefore, it transports people to its location imperceptibly, based on their degree of need. Likewise, Rand, as the closest person to the place's reason for existence (it was hiding his banner, and two objects related to his Prophesied Battle, whereas Someshta was merely the caretaker - ergo, Rand is the one for whom the EotW was made and the Green Man's place established), could use that same property to go where he was most needed at that moment. His moving from the hill to the Gap more closely resembles the way the whole group moved from a day or so into the Blight, to beyond the Mountains of Doom, rather than any manifestation of Traveling. And while it might be that RJ hadn't settled on gateways as the mechanism at that point in the story, there were still visual effects when Ishamael visited LTT in the prologue.

If Rand was establishing any limits at that moment, it would have been with Skimming, which should have also precluded the ease with which he surpasses those limits while pursuing Asmodean.

I didn't recall that being an actual limitation on Aviendha's ability, but a block, like Nynaeve's need for herbs with Healing. She directly attributed her weakness to the shameful circumstances under which she first Traveled.
Well, that's true for lots of stuff. I don't think RJ considered it all that important, and only worked out the mechanisms and details to the extent that he did, so he would be able to keep things consistent while writing.

In that vein, I think personality and Talents being related fits better with the themes of WoT, and RJ's intentions as a storyteller, rather than circumstances locking in abilities.

The more I think about it, I am coming to the conclusion that you're right about Aviendha's issue being a 2nd weave thing, especially since it's the same book where Cadsuane and Sorilea discuss that issue, and the gestures component. And over in Elayne's PoV, we also see the differences in throwing fireballs between the Aes Sedai and the other women. It stands to reason that Aviendha's issue would be in there as an example of the 2nd weave problem they also discussed.

And it's stuff like this that lowers my opinion of Sanderson even further. Even when two storylines in the same book never crossed paths, there were thematic things tying them together! Sanderson might have decided to release the books between LoC & WH in similar fashion to his butchering of aMoL, because there is very little crossover between PoV arcs. For the most part, Rand, Perrin, Mat, Elayne/Nynaeve, and Egwene have little interaction and crossover, so one might think you could get away with dividing them as tGS & ToM were. But you'd lose all that thematic unity stuff! tPoD had a lot of things in there about the dangers of power both of the One (recall Rand's noting similar blocks and shortcomings among his Asha'man entourage, and Gabrelle assuming the Asha'man they find at the BT suffer under common wilder limitations, as well as the revelations in Elayne's cluster and Cadsuane's) and political variety. Rand's, Perrin's, Egwene's and Elayne's stories are about about the politics of leadership, as opposed to the burdens, on which the previous book focused (which probably also explains Mat's omission as much as his injury & recuperation - he would not be in a place to be dealing with that sort of thing). I wonder if B-Sand ever even noticed that stuff.

Yeah.
IDK, I still think Healing is quite a leap when seeking to exercise sadistic impulses. I also doubt that they were such a driving force in the adolescent Semirhage. Usually that sort of thing emerges later in life as one gains experience, and refines one's tastes.
Yet another under-served issue with the world building, IMO. I expected a lot more from the discussions about barriers falling and new things emerging in the first two books. That suggested wolfbrothers and sniffers and Min's thing were the tip of the iceberg, rather than its entirety.