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"It tellsh me that you should try READING books, inshstead of listening to them" Cannoli Send a noteboard - 01/06/2017 02:36:16 PM

I've rather slowing been making my way through listening to the audio books(tending to listen in burst), and while doing so I've found myself paying a lot more attention to all the surprisingly numerous examples of pre-retcon Traveling we see...I can't speak to the contents of the audio books, as having people read books to me at a glacial pace has never been very appealing, but while I am sure that Jordan didn't really have the rules for Traveling codified until tFoH, when he ready to having the main characters do it, he also was very careful not to be specific about how Traveling worked. For example, Rand's earliest ancestor in the Rhuidean columns was going to get to another city by having an Aes Sedai Travel with him, instead of open a gateway for him; but it could also be one of those changes in terminology mentioned in the glossaries about the names of Talents, or else a layman simply referring to all methods of One Power transport as Traveling, including Skimming.


Not just to the fact that "that happened" though, but how it actually looked to of worked as apposed post-retcon Traveling, and... You know, I had never really even THOUGHT about it that way before. It just... Answers SO many freaking questions. To say nothing about one or two out and out plot holes.


Pre-retcon Taveling. Well, it's basically just bog standard teleportation.

bog standard?
While slower to use(Pre-retcon Taveling seeming to be quickly spammable)the Portal Stones basically ARE pre-retcon Taveling ter'angreal. Well, extra-dimensional Traveling, but still more or less the same mechanics. Save for the Portal Stones likely being able to take more people along... I mean "not even one of the Forsaken could move an army with Traveling" being said by the same people who at the time saw said Forsaken as nigh godlike in power.
By people who had absolutely no idea what Traveling entailed. This is hardly a reliable reference or indication. The same person also said that men and women were equal in strength in the Power.

I mean... Just THINK about how different such a thing is to post-retcon's wormhole Gateways.
There is no demonstrable instance of people teleporting solely through the use of the One Power and not other factors in the early books, even if that was the idea Jordan was toying with.
Pre-retcon Traveling was a useful ability strong channelers had, and perhaps even only the REALLY strong ones. Useful, but still rather limited in scope and application.

Post-retcon Traveling... Is just out and out faster then light travel, and an extremely versatile form of it at that.

You have offered no proof the former exists. This is based, on your own admission, by impressions generated from listening to audio books. I somehow doubt that you just sit around doing absolutely nothing else while listening, that nothing else competes for your attention or distracts you from what is being said.



And then the thought comes that... The Age of Legends. The Breaking... Most of the ground laying of WoT's world building was set in place with PRE-RETCON Traveling in mind.
And suddenly... Everything from "why would the AoL with all their tech have overpopulation issues,
They didn't. Show me where it says they did.
when they could trivially colonize other worlds?" to "How the bloody hell did ALL the channelers in the Breaking forget the SINGLE most useful weave for dealing with the Breaking?" makes a lot more sense.
It doesn't need that explanation, though. That was always a ridiculous debate. Aes Sedai didn't forget anything. They died. New people assumed their title for the prestige it recalled, but there is no indication anywhere of institutional continuity between the Hall of Servants and the White Tower. According to the BWB, Aes Sedai, prior to the founding of the White Tower, was a generic term for channeler, and remains so among the less-informed at the end of the Age. Note Mat's discussion of damane in tGH: "They can channel...that makes them Aes Sedai. That makes (Rand) Aes Sedai..." The Aes Sedai running around in the first century AB, and likely for much of the Breaking era as well, had no more affiliation with the Servants of All in the AoL than the United States Senate has with that of the Roman Republic.

And setting aside the lack of any evidence of continuity, there is also the nature of Traveling and Skimming, both of which rely on certain knowledge of the position from or to which one intends to move. In the Breaking of the World, such knowledge was not at all certain, since the very geography was changing under their feet. What if one of the points of reference involved in "knowing" a place well enough to Travel from, or Skim to, was a mountain range in the background, that suddenly didn't exist? Or what if the location changed, WHILE you were Traveling or Skimming? How many channelers found themselves inside of a mountain or stepping out of a gateway where a plateau used to be, to plunge into a canyon?



While on the flip side, just picture the plots of any of the post-retcon books WITHOUT the ability to move around whole armies easily... Entire PLOT LINES just wouldn't of even of been able to happen. Yet even without them everything would gotten dragged out to hell and back in universe just be pure travel time alone. Well, ether that, or we would of gotten sick the overuse of the Ways.

There is still no real evidence that people Traveled with teleportation in the early books. There is a lot to suggest it, but RJ left himself sufficient wiggle room to argue it away, regardless of our convictions of his sincerity. You couldn't even indict him on the tangible evidence, let alone convict.

Cannoli
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
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Wow... I never really realized how bloody MASSIVE the Traveling retcon was. - 31/05/2017 06:59:07 AM 928 Views
Can you explain the retcon to those of us a few years out from the latest reread? *NM* - 31/05/2017 09:27:58 AM 319 Views
"It tellsh me that you should try READING books, inshstead of listening to them" - 01/06/2017 02:36:16 PM 754 Views
So... You'd rather just go... - 01/06/2017 07:30:27 PM 649 Views
Re: So... You'd rather just go... - 02/06/2017 01:01:07 AM 825 Views

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