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Balefire is so confusing Datakim Send a noteboard - 05/01/2010 07:03:29 PM

So what could that "something else" be? The only (plausible) thing I can think of is ... Graendal's angreal.

Consider the following scenario:

Idiot emissary arrives. Graendal Compels him, using her angreal because the Compulsion needed to be strong/delicate/etc., and sends him back to Rand, as Rand predicted. However, the emissary's arrival makes Graendal very nervous. She considers that her position has been compromised, and so prepares to Travel out of there at a moment's notice (first ensuring all the inverted Wards around her mansion, which almost certainly existed, are in place). Sometime later, Rand arrives and triggers one of the Wards. In the meantime, Graendal has put down her angreal somewhere. So, when the Ward is triggered, she doesn't have it with her, and doesn't dare take the time to retrieve it before Traveling out of there. Which she does. Rand then balefires the mansion, and (amongst other things) destroys the angreal. But Graendal escapes.

I'm pretty sure that, in that scenario, the emissary's Compulsion would be erased, since the angreal was used to weave it, and the balefire made the angreal cease to exist before it was used. I'm not 100% sure about that, though.


I always used to believe that the way Balefire worked was that it only erased things with actual threads in the pattern backwards through time. That is to say, only living things like people and animals and such. That is why when balefire struck physical objects (like the walls in the palace during the Rahvin confrontation) it simply cut through them, creating grooves. But when it struck anything alive, the living being turned to glowing sparkling mist and then vanished completely.

If this view were correct, your theory simply could not work since as a physical object that was not alive, the angreal would not have a thread to be burned back. Its destruction, even by balefire would not reverse the compulsion. Only the death of Graendal herself by balefire would work.

But then we got to TGS and my understanding went right out the window. There are several cases where balefire in this books acts differently to the way it did before.

Compare for instance what happened during the final confrontation with Ishamael. Ishy weaves balefire at Rand, who somehow splits the balefire in two. The split balefire actually HITS Rands wool coat, igniting it, but just barely misses Rand himself. The balefire then strikes the colums, but again simply bores through them rather than causing them to disappear in sparkles. We see this again in the Rahvin confrontation. Balefire striking walls just bores through rather than causing the wall to sparkle away.

But thats not how it works in TGS. When Rand weaves balefire at his coat, rather than just making a hole into it (and the floor), the coat disappears entirely. This happens again during the Graendal confrontation. Rand's balefire, rather than just boring through the mansion (and erasing the living things it hits) actually erases the entire mansion. Even the parts that were not hit.

When asked about this, Sanderson actually said that the view I had was wrong and that physical objects in the pattern actually DO have threads, in which case your theory could be true.


The Gathering Storm Book Tour, Borders Dallas 14 November 2009 - Claireducky reporting

Claire: (comment regarding the thread on Dragonmount where some are arguing that by balefiring Graendal's palace, the compulsion disappeared since there'd never had been a palace in the first place, and others are arguing that it doesn't work that way, objects don't have threads).
Brandon: Everything has a thread, not just souls. Even a stone in a wall has a thread in the Pattern.


The whole thing gives me a headache.
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Graendal's Fate (Alive or Dead?) - 05/01/2010 05:44:12 PM 2295 Views
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Nynaeve's boat... - 05/01/2010 07:23:57 PM 888 Views
Balefire is REALLY confusing. - 05/01/2010 07:41:05 PM 773 Views
Good point ... - 05/01/2010 07:52:04 PM 746 Views
I'm somewhat surprised objects have threads. - 05/01/2010 08:45:52 PM 4479 Views
Re: I'm somewhat surprised objects have threads. - 05/01/2010 09:23:06 PM 716 Views
Re: I'm somewhat surprised objects have threads. - 05/01/2010 10:30:42 PM 741 Views
Wasn't there a quote somewhere - 06/01/2010 02:05:32 AM 666 Views
Probably a bit of retconning there by Brandon - 06/01/2010 03:34:55 PM 699 Views
BS is definitely wrong here - 06/01/2010 02:01:23 AM 709 Views
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There is another way... - 05/01/2010 07:00:31 PM 728 Views
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Nope - 06/01/2010 04:36:56 AM 765 Views
USe Occam's Razor yourself... - 06/01/2010 05:53:22 AM 884 Views
and why didn't she invert any of the weaves? - 06/01/2010 05:55:54 AM 707 Views
Exactly! *NM* - 06/01/2010 05:27:52 PM 374 Views
Maybe you cannot invert compulsion? - 06/01/2010 06:56:35 PM 742 Views
so it's the one and only thing we've seen that can't be inverted? seems a little - 06/01/2010 11:31:09 PM 647 Views
Re: so it's the one and only thing we've seen that can't be inverted? - 07/01/2010 12:02:00 AM 599 Views
I am inclined to agree with Datakim here. - 07/01/2010 02:04:42 AM 903 Views
Why aren't inverted weaves standard practice? - 07/01/2010 01:24:09 AM 765 Views
Balefire is so confusing - 05/01/2010 07:03:29 PM 771 Views
Re: Balefire is so confusing - 05/01/2010 08:52:57 PM 743 Views
She's dead as a bloody doornail. Or whatever that saying is... *NM* - 05/01/2010 07:20:36 PM 371 Views
Clearly dead - 05/01/2010 07:29:11 PM 910 Views
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Re: Clearly dead - 05/01/2010 08:41:15 PM 734 Views
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Re: No way. - 05/01/2010 10:16:03 PM 711 Views
Graendal's as dead as BS/RJ makes her. *NM* - 06/01/2010 02:40:46 AM 364 Views
She's dead as dead gets. - 06/01/2010 01:43:34 AM 661 Views
Dead is my bet - 06/01/2010 11:48:46 AM 678 Views
She's dead *NM* - 06/01/2010 11:58:34 AM 344 Views
Dead. *NM* - 06/01/2010 03:58:19 PM 350 Views
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Compulsion is rather useless isn't it? - 06/01/2010 07:44:42 PM 772 Views
It may take an exceptional Delver/Healer - 06/01/2010 08:49:37 PM 747 Views
What if.. - 06/01/2010 10:41:44 PM 647 Views
I'll roll my eyes, and snort if she's alive - 08/01/2010 04:21:20 AM 667 Views
Well... - 10/01/2010 03:24:39 AM 871 Views

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