Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time

[CelticBrennus]

But yea, if they can take out guys in heavy plate, its going to be friggin ugly to sit around unarmored.

They can only pierce armor at very short ranges when they get a perfect shot that lands at a 90% angle to the armor. Otherwise they ricochet off. Look at Agincourt – the French march heavily armored men through a muddy field facing a constant barrage of arrows yet suffer almost all their casualties engaged in hand to hand combat with the English lines. 10,000 or so archers, firing at least 40 or 50 arrows at virtually stationary targets and most of them still get through…the value of the longbow was not penetrating armor, but the devastation it would bring to the ordered ranks and formations of the enemy as well as the psychological damage it would cause.

[kedlav]

Well aware of the range issues with heavy plate. I think it was Discovery that did a really awesome program in conjunction with the British Army testing the effectiveness of arrows against different armor types. At Agincourt, there were significantly less than 10000 archers, and the majority of their physical damage was against the idiot mounted infantry and infantry they baited into charging. To top it off, you have the idiot knights in 30-35 kg of plate riding big horses and sinking very, very deep in to the mud. Once the archers broke the charge of the lighter-armed men, it was easy enough for them to go in and hamstring the sinking idiot Frenchmen. More to the point though, 300 to 400 well trained archers, like the Two Rivers men were at Dumai's, supported by appx. 10000 crack Aiel spears, 2000 or so medium to heavy Mayener and Cairheinin calvary approaching an already begun battle with little to no warning will screw up your day. Top it off with some wolves, Asha'man, and the Dragon Reborn, and its no real surprise they won. The annoying part was Jordan's hackish writing of having Sevanna strip the scouts when its clear its a bad decision, and the ever so powerful and omniscient wise ones not doing anything about it.

[Seventh Pup]

I still read those books and think that if you dropped Tywin or Littlefinger into Randland they would rule the world in 6 months.

I agree. The poor bastards of Randland wouldn't know what hit them.

[Werthead]

Yeah. And Randyll Tarly would become the new Dark One.

[Seventh Pup]

Yeah. And Randyll Tarly would become the new Dark One.

Which would help the books TREMENDOUSLY.

[Crazydog7]

Yeah. And Randyll Tarly would become the new Dark One.

For he is of the Night.

[Wouter]

Werthead; IIRC RJ has stated in an interview that people who get balefired still can be reborn; the difference is that the Dark One is unable to intervene directly in the process by picking out a particular soul for immediate "rebirth" with preservation of memories and such. Apparently the DO has to intervene immediately (or very quickly, at least) when one of his forsaken dies, and Balefire makes this impossible with its time effects.

You're otherwise right though that much of the supposedly empty space is populated; the Black Hills area near Kandor/Arafel (where Dashiva supposedly was from) is another example.

[Werthead]

Yeah, the Dark One has to know that the person is going to be balefired before it happens. My guess is that the Dark One has very limited temporal powers and can reach backwards in time and grab the life-thread of the person at the point the balefire has burned it back to and resurrect them. However, the Dark One cannot do this after the fact. It's possible that Be'lal could have been saved, for example, since Moiraine's balefire blast was probably not as powerful as Rand's (even with her angreal) and the Dark One had a few seconds' warning, but it's also likely that the Dark One did not have as much influence in the world at that point.

But people who are balefired cannot be reborn. Their thread has been burned out of the pattern for good. That seems fairly conclusive.

[Gerold Hightower]

When somebody is (re)born a new thread is woven into the pattern. When they die that thread ends. The trick about reviving dead Forsaken is to mend their threads so that they can resume their old lives. Balefire makes that impossible because it does more than just severe the thread of the balefired person. By removing part of their past it makes resuming their old lives impossible. But that doesn't mean they can't be reborn.

[Wouter]

Gerold is right, from some of the books it seemed like Balefire completely stops rebirth but apparently that is a misconception (or deception) from the Aes Sedai. Even balefired souls can be reborn, RJ has stated this somewhere, quite possibly it was in his Q&A on the Tor site.

Balefired forsaken do lose all the advantages (such as immortality) from the bond with the Dark one, though.

[add-on]

See, that doesn't make any sense at all to me. If RJ said that, then it's just him backtracking again to cover another fowl-up, but I don't remember anything like that, and I used to be pretty avid about this series (and those Q&A's).

In the Aol after they BF'd those cities the whole pattern started to unravel. That's why both sides agreed to stop using such a potent and valuable weapon. If balefiring does not permanently burn a person's thread out of the pattern then why would the pattern start to unravel.

I'm with Werthead on this one, I think it's pretty clear from the text itself (which should really be what's most important) that if you get hit with balefire then you're done for good.

[Gerold Hightower]

A life thread represents a particular incarnation. When that person is reborn a new life thread is started. They don't resume the old. That would be what the Dark One does when he reincarnates the Forsaken. They continue their old lives. Real rebirth means you start anew, as Lews Therin did when he was reborn as Rand al'Thor. Balefiring a person removes that person's current incarnation from the pattern. It does not destroy the soul. It's very logical. Unfortunatey, the woman who wrote the BWB didn't get it.

As for the unraveling of the pattern: Removing things from the past obviously creates problems with causality. Thus reality as we know it unravels once you start changing the past, which is what balefire does.

[Moshe Goldberg Rubinshteyn]

Isn't the Two Rivers one of the 'unclaimed' but inhabited regions? I know, technically it belongs to Andor, but AFAIK they haven't seen any Andorian officials in generations.

[Gerold Hightower]

One could say so, though large chunks of Randland aren't even claimed by any nation. And the Two rivers is all that remains of a once powerful nation (Manetheren). Jordan essentially copies Tolkien, here. Gondor is all that remains of the once powerful kindgoms of Men. And all the good architecture is from another age. (Though before the Trolloc Wars isn't technically another age in Jordan's world.)

[kedlav]

Two Rivers is infinitely more Shire-with-tall-people than Gondor. Gondor still had the White City, a standing army, allies, a major fortress at Osgiliath, etc. Manetheren was a thousand years dead, the people there English style longbowmen and caring farmers. There are a number of other powerful kingdoms of men, unlike in LotR.

If you're going to rip Jordan for pulling things from LotR, hit the right spots at least.

[Wouter]

Isn't the Two Rivers one of the 'unclaimed' but inhabited regions? I know, technically it belongs to Andor, but AFAIK they haven't seen any Andorian officials in generations.

It is quite comparable to regions like Toman Head or the Black hills, yes. The Andorian claim to the Two Rivers is purely theoretical. Depsite this, the area is reasonably populated.

[Diva]

I just find it stupid that people can cross an invisible boarder and suddenly all the women are shorter, or have completely different colouring etc, with a completely unique language

yes, there is some diversity in europe, but it is gradual. in Randland it is instantaneous. And not particularly logical considering the mixed genetics of what would be the boarder zones.

And European languages belong to a few main groups, and have split off from there (such as the germanic and the romance languages).

Just . . . *stupid*

[Gerold Hightower]

Two Rivers is infinitely more Shire-with-tall-people than Gondor. Gondor still had the White City, a standing army, allies, a major fortress at Osgiliath, etc. Manetheren was a thousand years dead, the people there English style longbowmen and caring farmers. There are a number of other powerful kingdoms of men, unlike in LotR.

If you're going to rip Jordan for pulling things from LotR, hit the right spots at least.

We were talking about the concept of given-up land and the decline of civilisation in Randland. You find that in Tolkien's work already. The Two Rivers is of course Jordan's version of the Shire, not of Osgiliath. Except that it wasn't always Shire-like. It's one of those areas (mostly) given up by civilisation. The big cities with their Ogier-built centers are Jordan's version of Osgiliath. Not to mention the White Tower...

[Moshe Goldberg Rubinshteyn]

I just find it stupid that people can cross an invisible boarder and suddenly all the women are shorter, or have completely different colouring etc, with a completely unique language

yes, there is some diversity in europe, but it is gradual. in Randland it is instantaneous. And not particularly logical considering the mixed genetics of what would be the boarder zones.

And European languages belong to a few main groups, and have split off from there (such as the germanic and the romance languages).

Just . . . *stupid*

This is actually not so far from reality as you might think. If you take mountainous regions in Europe (Switzerland, Norway), language (or dialect) and culture can change quite dramatically from one valley to the other. In Switzerland, when you cross some mountain pass, you might go from a German-speaking valley to an Italian or French-speaking one (actually, the Swiss versions of those languages which are quite different from real German, French or Italian).

In Norway, dialects change quite drastically from one valley to another (to the point where it becomes difficult to understand). Culture changes too from a farming culture in the inner valleys to a fisherman culture around the mouths of the fjords.

Have you ever crossed into Mexico? In essence it's an artificial line drawn across a continent, but language and 'genetic makeup' (largely European vs. Hispanic/Indigenous) changes quite dramatically. Admittedly, this has to do mostly with migration of Europeans to the southern states along the border, but maybe Randland experienced some migration, too?

[Gregor Clegane Has a Posse]

A few months ago I finally broke down and read Knife of Dreams. After hours of intense scrubbing, I found that I actually enjoyed reading it. More amazingly, I enjoyed the Egwene PoV chapters.

For the record though, I downloaded it illegally. Jordan stole enough of my pocket change over the years.