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I agree about the angreal, but not the 1 woman shield part... Shannow Send a noteboard - 13/11/2009 07:50:26 AM
Even if 5 women created the shield, if you reduce it to just 1 woman to hold it, then the strength of the shield is that of the 1 woman holding it.

We see examples of this. Even though 13 women created Rand's shield, 6 were enough to hold it, but 3 were not.

So although you can reduce the number of women holding the shield sligthly, due to the difficulty in breaking through an existing shield, you cannot reduce it dramatically, as in to just 1 or 2 people, if the captive is much stronger than the shielders.

An average strength Aes Sedai simply cannot maintain a shield on Semirhage, even if it was created by 10 women. The number that created it makes no difference. It's current strength is dependent on the number of women currenlty holding it in place.

While your argument is convincing, there is some prior evidence against it.

For example, given Egwene's strength (she's at full potential), there is simply no way Silviana can hold her shield, yet she does in the prologue of KoD. Amys mentions the difficulty of holding Egwene, and by Egwene's own estimation, Amys is stronger than Silviana or equal to her.

The only difference between Amys' shield and Silviana's is that it is entirely possible Barasine and Katerine linked to shield Egwene, and Silviana could still hold Egwene because she merely assumed the shield.

Should this be the case, it could be that a moderately strong Aes Sedai could indeed hold Semirhage, as long as the initial shield was woven by more than three women (am I right on the minimum here?).

Also, could it be that Cadsuane meant that if she left woman alone with an angreal, the woman can hold Semirhage, but the angreal was just not mentioned? That would certainly work, and be a minor mistake.


Two women could hold Nynaeve in CoS, and there is a big gap between Egwene and Nynaeve. Egwene admits this herself. So it might well be possible that 1 woman can hold Egwene. I cannot recall where Silviana lies on the strength table. My calculations in the past indicated that a woman could hold a shield on someone as long as you were approximately 60% as strong as the captive. But to shield them in the first place, with any degree of certainty, you had to be as much as 50% STRONGER than them.

What I'm saying is that in my view, if you are 60% as strong as someone, you should be able to hold an existing shield on them.

So if Silviana is a 25 on the strenghth scale, and Egwene is a 40, that makes Silviana just over 60% as strong as Egwene, and hence she should be able to hold the shield.

Regarding an angreal. That changes the picture completely. 1 Woman with a powerful enough angreal could hold Rand himself.
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