He showed that he is willing to use balefire on a large scale to destroy a whole palace with a Forsaken in it, even if he kills innocent people alongside the Forsaken (and even if all those people were "drones", they are still innocent and not the real targets).
Yes, but they are indeed drones. It is a horrific thing to contemplate.
Imagine having your mind raped so badly that you had no free will of your own. You could not choose anything, you were just a mindcontrolled puppet with each action you made somethin Graendal wanted you to make.
If you were lucky, you would be totally dead, as the puppet Rand created in Tear was.
If you were unlucky, there would be a part of you, under all that compulsion, buried deep, SCREAMING!
I don't know about you, but if I had been one of those people in Graendals palace, the tiny part of me would have been very gratefull for Rand for putting an end to that kind of utter torture.
We know there was no way to fix the damage Graendal had caused. No way to heal those innocents. I guess whether you think this bad or not depends on the difference between living and existing.
Imagine that you suffered severe brain damage. You were left paralysed, blind and mute. Now imagine you are in a hospital, hooked to machines keeping you alive. There is no way for the real you to communicate. The only thing you could do is just lie there, trapped within your own mind, unable to talk, unable to walk, unable to do anything that makes life worth living. With the knowledge that you have nothing to look forward to, except just lying there, with no input or output. Only desperately looking forward to death which would release you from the living hell your life has become. Now imagine realising that you are young that you will be trapped in this existence for 50 more years. How long until madness sets in? In that situation would you really not pray with all your strength that someone would pull the plug? I know I would.
This is in some ways a situation similar to Graendals drones. Even if there was something left, buried deep. They were as unable to do anything they wanted. They were programmed robots obeying Graendals whims. An existence far FAR worse than death.
Rand was right. It was a mercy. Those drones may have been existing, but they were not alive. Graendal was the only living thing to die there that day.
We don't even know, if all people in the palace were drones (and also Rand couldn't know). For example, Ituralde also visited Graendal in her palace once, and wasn't a drone. Such visitors might have been in the palace, when Rand destroyed it. But in the end, Rand doesn't care about such collateral damage, because he wants Graendal.
As it's shown later in TGS, Rand starts then to see balefire as a common weapon. He already contemplates to balefire Tam and all the Seanchan. The next possible step would be that Rand considers to balefire whole cities, which don't bow to him or if he just believes that a Forsaken is inside the city. Ultimately such an attitude threatens humankind and the Pattern. Therefore balefire is forbidden and to use it widespread as Rand did an atrocity. Even the Forsaken don't want to use balefire this way anymore.
True. And as I said in my original post, I don't deny that Rand went crazy. I mean we see that in the fact that he was about to rain fire on that army, or the fact that he nearly killed Tam and most certainly when he nearly blew up the world. I was focusing on this particular incident however. The rest have not happened yet.
The point is that the incident with Graendal's palace seems like the catalyst for Rand losing the rest of all restraints (and humanity) to use balefire on a large scale. After he destroyed the palace, the next big thing he considers is balefiring all the Seanchan bulwarks, although the Seanchan are common enemies and Rand is aware that innocent people might die as well.
Besides that, Min and Nynaeve apparently - wrongly - believe that someone who was balefired can never be reborn, which would make its use even more horrific.
Hmm. That is actually a good point that could explain it. If balefire destroyed the soul, what Rand did would have been terrible. But balefire does not do that.
Still maybe Min and Nynaeve do think that.
Wait, how can Min think that? She has been reading Herids books. She knows that time is cyclical and that souls are constantly reborn to create new threads to the pattern as time goes on.
If Balefire were to destroy souls, and if the wheel has turned as long as it has, surely the usage of balefire would have destroyed all possible souls many many turnings ago. Min should be able to realise that considering the little philosopher she has turned into.
Doubt that Min is such aware of the mechanics of rebirth and balefire. However, her thoughts imply that she thinks a balefire death is final.
Rand the psycho?
- 06/01/2010 02:53:30 AM
1859 Views
I cannot follow your assumptions.
- 06/01/2010 04:07:33 AM
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Re: I cannot follow your assumptions.
- 06/01/2010 04:59:12 AM
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Wait!
- 06/01/2010 05:10:33 AM
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Re: Wait!
- 06/01/2010 05:20:02 AM
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Re: Wait!
- 06/01/2010 05:58:00 AM
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Re: Wait!
- 06/01/2010 11:46:13 AM
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Re: Wait!
- 06/01/2010 03:55:01 PM
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I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
- 06/01/2010 07:30:56 AM
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Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
- 06/01/2010 03:32:24 PM
1050 Views
Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
- 06/01/2010 09:52:47 PM
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Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
- 06/01/2010 11:19:56 PM
1080 Views
Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
- 07/01/2010 12:21:50 AM
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Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
- 07/01/2010 12:56:26 AM
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Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
- 07/01/2010 01:46:16 AM
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Of course, I agree with you, esp since I just put forth the idea you support earlier in the thread.
- 11/01/2010 04:58:26 PM
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Rand crossed a line
- 06/01/2010 02:36:42 PM
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Doesn't Balefire remove your thread from the Pattern permanently?
- 06/01/2010 02:55:38 PM
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No, RJ stated balefired people can be reborn. *NM*
- 06/01/2010 03:26:00 PM
557 Views
But not in this turning of the Wheel. So they'd miss out on MANY lifetimes.
- 06/01/2010 05:46:04 PM
1055 Views
No, balefire just kills you backwards in time. It is not super-death. *NM*
- 06/01/2010 09:58:18 PM
565 Views
LOL ... super-death!
- 06/01/2010 11:59:31 PM
997 Views
Yes it was.
- 06/01/2010 06:51:15 PM
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Re: Yes it was.
- 06/01/2010 07:16:14 PM
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Re: Yes it was.
- 06/01/2010 08:58:40 PM
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Re: Yes it was.
- 06/01/2010 10:47:11 PM
1080 Views
let me ask the question in a different way
- 06/01/2010 11:26:43 PM
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Re: let me ask the question in a different way
- 06/01/2010 11:40:56 PM
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actually that quote supports my thoughts
- 06/01/2010 11:50:40 PM
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Re: actually that quote supports my thoughts
- 07/01/2010 12:10:07 AM
1024 Views
yet it could take him some undetermined amount of time to figure out your dead?
- 07/01/2010 12:34:34 AM
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Re: yet it could take him some undetermined amount of time to figure out your dead?
- 07/01/2010 01:13:40 AM
987 Views
Meh. I just think advocating mass-murder is the opposite direction RJ meant for this to take.
- 07/01/2010 12:00:44 AM
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Sigh. What mass murder?
- 07/01/2010 12:15:01 AM
976 Views
In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
- 07/01/2010 03:14:32 PM
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Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
- 07/01/2010 03:57:43 PM
1065 Views
Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
- 07/01/2010 07:13:21 PM
1075 Views
Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
- 07/01/2010 07:52:24 PM
1002 Views
Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
- 07/01/2010 08:56:43 PM
1084 Views
Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
- 07/01/2010 09:26:01 PM
1058 Views
Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
- 07/01/2010 09:30:45 PM
971 Views
Personally I'm kind of sick of Rand being the only person killing FS!
- 07/01/2010 09:42:57 PM
1121 Views
Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
- 07/01/2010 09:56:02 PM
1100 Views
OK I'm sorry but this gets a huge ROFL :lol:
- 07/01/2010 10:30:19 PM
1107 Views
Yes. Anakin Skywalker all over again
- 06/01/2010 11:01:02 PM
1165 Views
Meh
- 06/01/2010 11:30:24 PM
993 Views
The worst part about his atrocities is his rationalizing them!
- 06/01/2010 11:33:32 PM
991 Views
Re: The worst part about his atrocities is his rationalizing them!
- 06/01/2010 11:50:37 PM
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Re: The worst part about his atrocities is his rationalizing them!
- 06/01/2010 11:55:03 PM
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I do have to guiltily say, though, that if Rand had balefired the Seanchan and THEN became good...
- 07/01/2010 12:03:20 AM
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Re: The worst part about his atrocities is his rationalizing them!
- 07/01/2010 12:23:11 AM
983 Views
I don't think Rand or LTT (who has/have) little capacity for Healing
- 07/01/2010 12:52:25 AM
1021 Views
Re: I don't think Rand or LTT (who has/have) little capacity for Healing
- 07/01/2010 01:24:32 AM
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Re: I don't think Rand or LTT (who has/have) little capacity for Healing
- 07/01/2010 03:33:52 PM
1007 Views
Re: I don't think Rand or LTT (who has/have) little capacity for Healing
- 07/01/2010 04:28:18 PM
1175 Views
right cause all Generals are so well versed in medical conditions 
- 07/01/2010 09:44:09 PM
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- 07/01/2010 09:44:09 PM
1120 Views
Nice way to avoid the argument.
- 07/01/2010 10:00:17 PM
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I'm just done talking in circles. You seem to think that because people
- 07/01/2010 11:53:05 PM
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I concede
- 07/01/2010 01:09:11 AM
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You weren't wrong overall, but there were some serious flaws in your reasoning.
- 07/01/2010 02:43:17 AM
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Morals are subjective anyhow,
- 07/01/2010 06:23:09 AM
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Re: Morals are subjective anyhow,
- 07/01/2010 03:23:59 PM
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I have religious beliefs and that is an absurd contention
- 09/01/2010 12:00:02 AM
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You are treating Graendal's "pets" as though they were enemy combatants
- 07/01/2010 03:40:03 PM
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Like I give a damn what a group of professional killers would do.
- 08/01/2010 11:39:11 PM
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Graendal captured these people as part of the Shadows offensive, Operation Chaos Rules
- 09/01/2010 12:00:40 AM
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Well, I still liked your first argument. It's a freaking war. The argument ...
- 07/01/2010 07:08:53 PM
1047 Views