Wheel of Time, minor question about something I didn't get (spoilers)

[total1402]

I just read the bit quite early in the first book where Moraine is confronted by the Children of the Light as the heroes try to leave that town and she scares them by making herself look like a giant using an illusion spell. Aside from being a WTF moment, I didn't get how she stepped over the wall if she was just casting an illusion to make herself look like a giant? Did she walk through the wall, or fly over or something?

Plus, if her aim was to avoid attracting attention, how is doing that "display", as she herself puts it, going to help? She may have lost her temper but surely there are easier ways for an Aes Sedai to deal with the Children of the Light than that?

Pretty lol worthy at any rate.

[dietl]

not sure, but the title somehow sounds a bit spoilery to me...

[total1402]

Sure I'll change the title. I thought it was fairly vague aside from suggesting that Moraine is an Aes Sedai.

[dietl]

Thx. I didn't read the Wot so even that was new to me. I probably wont read it anyway, so no harm was done :-)

[Dr. Tachyon]

Has been a while since I last read that book. It's early in the series and Jordan's world building was far from complete. I think I wondered about the thing too and it probably really doesn't make sense. As for why she was using Illusion to scare them, Aes Sedai can't use the One Power as a weapon except in self defence or against Shadowspawn.

[Maithanet]

I'm not a WoT expert, but I believe that was later explained to be an illusion, and that she did not actually grow to immense size. Given that fact, she should not be able to step over the wall. As I understand it, that is a discontinuity/error in WoT, as a lot of the details of the magic system were still getting worked out in the first couple of books.

And yeah, Moiraine's options for scaring off the Children are sorta limited since she is barred from using the power against them unless she is personally threatened.

[total1402]

Yeah I got that it was an illusion, but didn't get how she got over the wall and then returned to normal.

Bit odd for an author to put such a blatent discontinuity in since the text states a page later it was an illusion. I guess the author just assumes that we all know Aes Sedai have powers so walking through walls whilst maintaining the illusion isn't that much of a stretch.

[Brendan Moody]

I don't think she actually goes over the wall; that's just part of the weave of Illusion. She goes through the gates like the rest of the party.

Mild spoiler for a future book:

Other Aes Sedai use the same weave to make themselves appear larger at two points in Lord of Chaos.

[Poobah]

Yeah... while the magic system later becomes one of the most well-developed out there, and one of my favourites, the early books do have some inconsistencies.

Edit: minor spoiler to highlight some inconsistencies, how 'power levels' change and such -

And if we're going by later books, Moiraine with even a weak Angreal should have been able to kill all the trollocks encountered in the early parts of Eye of the World with ease.

[peterbound]

OP,

The early books, although they are the best of the series, don't really have the whole of it worked out. RJ liked to play that he had it all figured out the whole time, but the more he changed shit, the more I started to think he was making the shit up as he went along. He was kinda famous for say RAFO, I have a pet theory that he didn't fucking know himself.

Look, the books aren't all /that/ great. They helped invigorate a genre, but only because they were simple, and easily accessible, not because they were groundbreaking or though provoking. Think of them as Dan Brown for fantasy geeks.

Suspend a shit ton of disbelief when you read them. No one really makes any rational or logical decisions in the books, the characters are like cardboard cut outs that walked off an amish colony, and they fucking love to tug some hair.

[Reposado]

Suspend a shit ton of disbelief when you read them. No one really makes any rational or logical decisions in the books, the characters are like cardboard cut outs that walked off an amish colony, and they fucking love to tug some hair.

And everyone is in lurve

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

He definitely had a lot of it figured out, since there were prophecies in early books that took 10 books to come true. That said, there are definitely inconsistencies with the magic system in the first couple of books.

I think the popular interpretation is that Moiraine used an Illusion (Mask of Mirrors) that seemed to step over the wall while she actually went through the gate. You'll notice that the gates do not shut until after the Illusion has exited the city (by the way, it's possible that I remember the scene wrong).

That's not the only inconsistency in the book - there's also two different scenes that imply that men can sense women channeling directly (once when Rand sees a faint glow around the Illusion and once he seems to actually feel Saidar).

[peterbound]

That's not the only inconsistency in the book - there's also two different scenes that imply that men can sense women channeling directly (once when Rand sees a faint glow around the Illusion and once he seems to actually feel Saidar).

They can, can't they?

[Brendan Moody]

Men who can channel get goosebumps when women embrace the Power, but that doesn't seem to fit either of the two mentioned instances. In the case of the Illusion, though, the only glow Rand sees is "a silver nimbus from the hidden moon." Unless there's something else that links that glow to channeling, I don't know why it wouldn't be simple moonlight.