alefire is the key
by Oatman: 2004-01-06 | 1 out of 10 (4 votes)
There are a lot of theories about what will happen during the last battle and how rand will win, if he will survive, etc and i would like to throw another into the fray.
My theory combines to things constantly repeated by rand to himself,
1-how can he match the creators work in rebuilding the dark ones prison
2-he cannot bring himself to harm any woman, even one trying to kill him
the answer to the first is simple. he will not have to redo the creators work. He will undo the work that was done to create the prison. How to do that you ask?, isnt their somthing which can destroy people and things backwards in time? Thats right! BALEFIRE!!!!!!!!!!
Now who was it who set the Dark one free? Lanfear!
Now supose Rand used both that giant angreal he used to cleanse the source and calandor at the same time, and used that immense amount of power to unleash a HUGE beam of balefire at the lanfear or wateva her name is now, and it was to wipe her out of time to before she created the bore to the dark ones prison. This would be effectively closing the bore would it not?
And to prevent such a disaster happening again in the near future, the creator, or perhaps rand himself, could take rand back to the AoL as a kind of guardian. This could fit in with the whole beggar viewing thing as he would obviously want to be discreet about what he is doing. Also once this protector rand is gone people would be free to try to bore into the DO's prison, and the cycle would start again which supports the everything repeating slightly different WoT theory, as well as a linear time structure with people going back to prevent events, and perhaps providing knowledge. This could also explain why technology has not seemed to advance much since the beginning of time, and keeps getting lost.
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1
Tamyrlin: 2004-01-16
(Frenzy for Tamyrlin)
Ok, you had a plausable theory until you added that last paragraph. Then it went flying out the window faster than a Saldaean farmgirl's petticoats during Harvest. So i won't comment on it.
Balefiring Lanfear back 3000+ years could do what you've theorized. It could also unravel the Pattern. (it'd be a pretty sloppy way to end the series, too, but that's just my opinion.) But it DOES do the one thing Rand worries about: it gets him around the mess of trying to match the Creator. But it would also require the Wheel to re-weave 3000+ years of life threads and history into the Pattern. Messy, to say the least.
2
dragonsceptor: 2004-01-16
Not only is it Messy, it's scary. There are multiple comments about how even the Forsaken are afraid of using balefire too much because of the consequences. There is not much information on it other than that the mess it created was incredible. So much so that all factions argreed to stop using it. I don't think the pattern would survive this. Now, if you are of the opinion that the pattern will be destroyed, this is one way I could see to do it.
3
Dorindha: 2004-01-16
Following on from Frenzy, I think it would be a very bad thing for the pattern: balefireing Lanfear back 3000+ years would be bad enough, but it would also remove the DO's influence on the pattern from the last 3000+ years, and I am sure that would destroy the pattern - it has had too much impact on EVERYTHING.
4
Zaela Sedai: 2004-01-16
Besides the fact that I would throw the book out the window if that was the ending, it's just not plausible. Rand himself may cease to exsist if they balefired that much, as well as the WT, countries, etc. Another thing is that I'm not sure any amount of power could produce such a huge amount of balefire to do such a thing.
5
Callandor: 2004-01-16
Sorry, but that would almost certainly destroy the Pattern. The Pattern nearly unraveled in the War of Power when cities were destroyed by (I'm guessing, since it was in battles) small balefire weaves. Imagine removing 1 very important thread for 3000+ years: EVERYTHING in the 3rd Age goes back. An entire Age unwoven; that would surely destroy the Pattern.
6
Anubis: 2004-01-16
it would also create a paradox... lanfear would never have made the bore, so there would never have been a war of power, so the aiel would never have become warriors, so rand would never have been born.
7
Rand alThor15: 2004-01-17
In other words, he'd be doing the DO's job.
8
Unicorn: 2004-01-17
Very neat and easy solution, execpt the obvious details that has been mentioned, to give one exact illustration of the implication : If Lanfear is toast all those many years ago, the series from book 2 onwards would most likely have to be rewritten, since Rand, Hurin and Loial would still be messing around in some parallel world or other, Lanfear(Selene) is the one who tells Rand how to return(gives the symbol for the real world on the portal stone), also Rand didn't want to use the portal stone to get home in the first place.(of course there is some statistical chance that eventually, he would have to and by chance hit home so to speak). Of course if Lanfears thread was burned out, how would AoL have ended?. Here is another thought on this thing. A rather precise control of the balefire would be needed. What happens if the thread is burned say 3200 years back(I haven't the faintest Idea how old Mierin was when she made the Bore, the point is what if it was burned back to before her birth would her parents die and disapear, grandparents........ This is almost worse than the old "If I go back in time, and kill my father before the met my mother, what would happen.", If RJ has the answer to that, well It would be a wholly differnet Nobel prize he'd be rooting for :). Besides Can it even be done, Lanfear is Dead and has been Transmigrated(or whatever) to a different body Cyndane(belive that is the general consesus anyway), will the burning stop at the "creation" of Cyndane, will it follow back to Lanfear(in which case Moiraine would be alive) or will it burn through the life of whoever Inhabited Cydane's body before?
9
brigitta: 2004-01-19
you? no, no, no, NOOOOOO, and I'm not the first to say this. but then again Rand just might be mad enough... still, no. It would be like a jumping CD- where it goes-goes-it goes-it-it goes- it- all nuts. besides, if he is reluctant to harm women why should he suddenly change his mind? and I think that if he killed Cyndane, Lanfear's actions wouldn't dissappear, but I'm not too sure about that because we don't know for a fact if she is Cyndane and if so, did she die or was she changed in some other way
10
Mairashda: 2004-01-19
if an inanimate object is hit by balefire, only those bits cease to exist that were hit directly. If a living being is hit, it disappears completely... probably because balefire does not only interact with matter but also with it's victim's soul. so...imho, yes balefire on cyndane would affect lanfear as well- if it were strong enough.
there are however the risks of channeling enough of the power to obliterate more than three milennia of lanfear... and the resulting MASSIVE paradox. wouldn't that just be a crappy half-assed deus-ex-machina ending to a great work?
11
Callandor: 2004-01-19
**but I'm not too sure about that because we don't know for a fact if she is Cyndane**
No, we know that Cyndane is Lanfear reincarnated. From the WOT FAQ:
**WH: 35, With The Choedan Kal, 641
"So he had found a woman to use the other access key. She would have faced the Great Lord - faced the Creator! - with him. She would have shared the power with him, let him rule the world at her side. And he had spurned her love, spurned her!"
TSR: 9, Decisions, 129
[Lanfear, to Rand:]"'You and I can rule the world together under the Great Lord, forever...Two great sa'angreal were made just before the end, one that you can use, one that I can. Far greater than that sword. Their power is beyond imagining. With those, we can challenge even...the Great Lord himself. Even the Creator!'"**
And then the Alivia "was stronger than Cyndane had been before the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn held her!" (WH: 35, With the Choedan Kal, 648-649)
So, there is only one psycho ex-girlfriend of LTT who invited Rand to use the super-sa'angreal with her to challenge the DO and the Creator, who was the strongest known woman channeler, and who spent time in Finnland: her name was Lanfear. Now it is Cyndane.
**did she die or was she changed in some other way**
That is the question we don't have an answer for.
**If a living being is hit, it disappears completely... probably because balefire does not only interact with matter but also with it's victim's soul.**
It doesn't interact with the person's soul, it interacts with the person's thread in the Pattern. If Lanfear was transmigrated into Cyndane's body, the balefiring her wouildn't take her back 3000+ years, just back to when she was born or so, and hence do some major confusion to the Pattern, but not the super-ultra-Apocolptical damage of destroying Lanfear back 3000+ years. However, if Cyndane is an un-enhanced Lanfear, then it would still undo those 3000+ years if balefired with that amount.
12
Unicorn: 2004-01-20
That! Callandor was exactly my point is it the thread of the soul or the person, but I think you are right.
On a totally different note I noticed something in the quote from TSR: 9 Decisions, Lanfear say to Rand that they could challenge the Graet Lord and EVEN the creator - to this implies that Lanfear sees the Creator as being more powerful than the DO!! it could be a glitch, I would think the forsaken are this sort of power hungry cowards who sides with the strongest, because they want the glory but don't have the guts to be real heroes, I just find it a little weird
13
Callandor: 2004-01-20
**That! Callandor was exactly my point is it the thread of the soul or the person, but I think you are right.
On a totally different note I noticed something in the quote from TSR: 9 Decisions, Lanfear say to Rand that they could challenge the Graet Lord and EVEN the creator - to this implies that Lanfear sees the Creator as being more powerful than the DO!! it could be a glitch, I would think the forsaken are this sort of power hungry cowards who sides with the strongest, because they want the glory but don't have the guts to be real heroes, I just find it a little weird**
It would seem the Creator is more powerful then the DO, since the DO is imprisoned and the Creator is not. Think of it as matter and anti-matter, and at the moment of the Big Bang they were egual. When they come in contact the destory each other, so since there is things in the universe, made of matter, we have to assume that matter was more numerous then anti-matter. Same concept applies to the DO, but in a sckewed POV. Stronger Creator, weaker DO, DO gets imprisoned and the Creator can create the universe.
TITLE: Fires of Heaven, CHAPTER: 6 - Gateways
"That sounds just fine to me," he told her. "Mat's alive because of it." "It is terrible, Rand." An urgent note entered her, voice. "Why do you think even the Forsaken feared to use it? Think of the effect on the Pattern of a single thread, one man, removed from hours, or days, that have already been woven, like one thread picked partly out of a piece of cloth. Fragments of manuscripts remaining from the War of Power say several entire cities were destroyed with balefire before both sides realized the dangers. Hundreds of thousands of threads pulled from the Pattern, gone for days already past; whatever those people had done, now no longer had been done, and neither had what others had done because of their actions. The memories remained, but not the actions: The ripples were incalculable. The Pattern itself nearly unraveled. It could have been the destruction of everything. World, time, Creation itself."**
It is threads that balefire destroyes, not souls.
