Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

Well...Sunday afternoon in Victoria saw RJ risking life and wallet speeding past the photo radar on the Pat. Bay Highway That's right...not even the Creator himself can catch the 10 o'clock ferry from Vancouver. Lara never showed up (she must have overslept).

ObTrix: Silly Lara...hibernation is for bears!

So all alone (Rob didn't show up either), I stood in the huge line (Way huger than in Vancouver). The line conversation sucked and the wait grew longer as we were told that RJ would be late. Finally at 1:20 I saw a familiar face walk through the door and head straight for the back room. RJ emerged some minutes later sans hat and stick and took his place at the signing table.

Soon ('cause I got there so early) it was my turn to confront the Great L^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Creator and attempt to wrest answers from him:

Hi...umm...could you sign this one to Greebs?

GREEBS

RJ

[Thinking he better get to the questions fast.] Umm, we were wondering if you had to take someone down into the Pit of Doom to make them into a Gray Man, you know, 'cause it seems so similar to Mindtrapping someone.

Yes...at least that's the way I've always thought of it. It's not easy to remove someone's soul.

gray men

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shayol ghul

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dark one

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souls

Cool. We [Notice that I'm trying to create the impression that there is more than just me there ...safety in numbers etc.] were also wondering about the size of the cities...how big is Caemlyn for instance?

[Thinking] Let's see...Well Tar Valon is 500,000 people and cities like Caemlyn and Tear are around 300,000 or so. I've envisioned a seventeenth century society and you've got to remember that for those times 300,000 would be huge. [I'm nodding and trying to look intelligent.] Some Asian cities of that period had populations near one million but nothing in Europe was even close.

geography

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tar valon

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caemlyn

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tear

Yeah...What about the linguistic similarity of the Old Tongue and the New Tongue? It seems there is remarkably little drift in the Seanchan dialect.

[Either on purpose or by accident misunderstands my question and gives the standard "Well you must understand that I've translated the New Tongue into English" answer.]

old tongue

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seanchan

At this point the Bolen guy shoos me away. I lurk for a while but people are asking spedly [?] questions [should have printed the FAQ].

I did learn that in addition to the card game and computer game and clothing line there will be a line of museum quality replica weapons. Someone asked excitedly about the SCA and RJ said that these would be real weapons since he didn't like play war [which is understandable]. Then I left.

—Greebs

military

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merchandise