Suggested by Source
Original material here: www.electricferret.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9493
Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, has successfully cleansed the taint in saiden, the male part of the True Power that it the source of power for channelers. He
he hasn’t had much action from that last battle, but he is going to receive bad news from Nynaeve. She arrived at Rand’s room as if she had recovered from fainting.
“What happened to you?” Rand said as he went over to her side.
“I..There’s going to be trouble. One which even I have never seen before. In fact this happened in a dream of mine.”
Nynaeve can feel how bad a future conflict is going to be through her perfect weather predictions, but never has such a thing happened in a dream. “Tell me what you saw.”
“All I remember is this realm exploding. Everything was consumed. No one survived. But then I saw multiple realms and you were in all of them. It must be the only way to stop this storm from happening.”
Go through other dimensions? This has never happened before. “How am I going to go to these other worlds?”
“I only know that you will find ways to do so. I can help you with your first destination. I may be able to produce enough balefire to tear the fabric of time itself.”
“That’s dangerous. You may not even survive doing such a thing.”
“If we are to secure this realm’s survival, I must do so, even at my sacrifice. Gather all your belongings and weapons, you’re leaving now.”
Rand scrambled to get anything that would help him for the journey. “And the others? Some of the Forsaken are still out there.”
“If you survive, you may come back seconds after you leave. We need to do this someplace less important.” The two of them left the castle and journeyed a few miles from the town, stopping at a grassy area. “Stand back.” Once Rand walked back to a safe distance, Nynaeve channeled the balefire into the air. Instantly, it appeared, but stopped ten feet into the air. A second later, the air itself started splitting and a man sized hole appeared, sucking in air, though not strong enough at the ground. “Whatever you do don’t fail.” Nynaeve went on her knees in exhaustion in keeping the rift. Without hesitating, Rand jumped to the air and allowed the vortex to suck him into the great unknown…
It didn’t last as long as he though as within seconds, he was falling at the same height into a man riding on a horse, knocking him to the ground. Both slowly got on their feet while two more riders rode back towards them, presumably yo check on their friend.
“I apologize for the unexpected lannding.” Rand said. “And your name is?”
“Richard.” The man answered. “Richard Cypher. And where did you fall from?”
“I come from another land far away. I have come to find an evil that is threatening my realm.”
“If this person you speak of is Darken Rahl, you’re in luck. We are on our way to defeat him right now.”
Both riders have arrived by now. “Richard are you okay?” Kahlan asked.
“I’m doing very well. This fellow wants to join our quest to defeat Darken Rahl.” Richard answered.
“Richard you can’t accept people who you don’t even know.” Zedd said. “For who we know he could be some spy sent from Rahl.”
“I see the good in him and I believe him enough to join us.” Richard said. “So I messed up a few times, but..”
“If you people are done arguing I must be on my way since you don’t want me.” Rand walked along the path.
“Zedd this person means no harm I can sense it. Just trust me on this.” After some silence, Zedd stepped out of Richard’s way. “I bet you you’ll need us to show the way.”
Rand stopped and walked back to Richard as both of them walked to Richard’s horse. “Thank you for taking me.” Rand said to sound polite. “I can see that you will be a powerful person in the future.”
“Pretty much everyone has been saying that to me,” Richard replied as he rode on with Kahland and Zedd behind them. “Sorry, what’s your name again?”
“Rand al’Thor. I’m on a mission to save my realm from the Dark One.”
“That’s similar to me too. You know, we have a lot in common.”
“Perhaps.”
“You arn’t much of a talker aren’t you.”
“No.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________
They arrived at Rahl’s personal castle at nightfall. Surprisingly, there were no guards at the entance. Zedd arrived at the door to inspect.
“There isn’t even a spell at the door.” Zedd touched the door, causing it to open. “It’s not even locked.”
“It has to be a trap.” Rand said. “No one would leave his defenses this low unless he was prepared.” He then turned to Zedd. “Wizard, can you teleport?”
“Rand, if it’s anyone who’s going there it’s me.” Richard stood ready with his sword, but Kahlan put her hand to his hand, lowering the sword.
“Rand’s right. Rahl would not expect this person in his presence.”
“But he’s underestimating Rahl,” Zedd said. “He’s an extremely dangerous wizard. Unless you are powerful enough to take on him.”
“I believe I can defeat him,” Rand answered back. Zedd chanted the words that brought Rand to a chamber inside the castle. He was next to a window, so it seemed that he was transported to a place where Zed knew. He wasted no time, going into the nearest room he saw. When he got there, his sword immediately hit
the ground. Rand tried to pull the sword out in vain.
“Do my eyes deceive me, or was Richard too scared to take on me himself. Out of the shadows stood Rahl himself.
“Rahl, do you know anything about the Wheel of Time?” Rand said as he continued to pull his sword.
“I know nothing about such a thing. In fact, you don’t look like anything I’ve seen before.”
“Then here’s a demonstration.” Rand channeled his energy to the ground, destroying the entire floor and sending both of them to the next floor. Rand got up and picked up his sword. Rahl also got up and found a sword to use.”
“You have great power in you. Let’s see how it holds up on me.”
With that the battle began.
Rand has his usual channel powers as well as his sword, the Callandor. Rahl has his usual magical powers from the Sword of Truth series as well as a sword.
So who wins?
TL;DR
Well I don’t care much for either so that’s probably why too….
Doesn’t Darken Rahl just have the same powers as Richard, but weaker? Since I think Richard killed him in, like, the first book?
And seeing as the consensus over at the Rand vs Richard thread appears to be that Rand would win ( although the admin might disagree, but if he does then he hasn’t posted anything there yet… ), it seems the outcome of this battle would be fairly easily decided, no?
And you also gave him Callandor, which we haven’t seen him use since he cleansed the taint on Saidin with the Choedan Kal. Callandor supposedly has a flaw that made him go more insane, and faster. With the taint gone, I’m not sure this would still happen, even though the flaw is still there. I don’t remember the exact details of the flaw, but I’ll look them up if it becomes important.
So either Callandor just makes him a lot stronger, or it makes him a lot stronger and more reckless/unaware of his own limitations ( when he was fighting a Seanchan army with one of his own, he used lightnings to kill the Seanchan – but also ended up killing about half his own army before someone stopped him ).
But during Knife of Dreams – The Gathering Storm he was already generally more likely to use his most dangerous skills right off the bat during a fight, so the insanity Callandor may or may not give him might not even do anything.
The flaw with Callandor is that the sa’angreal is unstable. Rand can pull incredible amounts of Saidin through it, but he can’t CONTROL it properly. The magnification of the taint was only a side effect when the taint was present. Rand would need outside help (in the form of two female channelers) to wield the sword properly.
Of course ‘properly’ in this case still means Rand can make it literally rain lightning over a huge area. If massive area attacks are a legitimate threat to Darken Rahl, Callandor is a massive advantage.
The problem here is more what Channeling currently does to Rand. Calling on the One Power makes him violently ill as of this point in the series. Unless that’s explicitly being excluded for this fight, that could be a real dangerous issue for him.
Well, even if it maybe should’ve been included, the admin didn’t know that, and Rand is already holding the One Power. Chalk it up to him being in a different dimension than Moridin, or something.
This doesn’t seem like the fight for massive area attacks, though, unless Darken is going to teleport ( I don’t know whether he can or not, though ), they can’t be very far apart. The fact that Darken Rahl grabbed a sword also suggests that he plans on using it. If that’s what he tries to do first ( and I don’t know how he fought Richard during the first book, I don’t know much about Darken at all aside from the fact that he’s probably a war wizard. ), Rand has a million ways of killing him before Darken could even reach him.
some spoilers from towers of midnight
Well if we are using the newest rand from towers of midnight then 1)Rand no longer seems to get sick when channeling 2)he is no longer insane. Also without Callandor he killed tens of thousand of trollocs by himself. Balefire would end this very quickly by easing him from existence.
“This takes place after the tenth book, Crossroads of the Twilight.”
I see this as being a stomp for Rand. He would just balefire Darken Rahl, end of story.
Well if Rand Al’thor can beat Richard without Callandor (which I think he can)
Than with Callandor even with the flaw lacking proper control I don’t think he would really need that much control to simply annihilate a single man.
But I know little to nothing about this guy. What I learned about Richard from the other thread didn’t leave me too confidant about their ability to summon and control their powers at will.
Someone will need to speak up for Darken’s abilities.
Regardless if Rand is holding the power before the fight begins and has a chance to recover from the channeling sickness than I think this definitely goes to him.
yup defiantly is a stomp
Take away Callandor and say he can use balefire and gateways and weaken Rand to 1/2 his power and he would still probably win but it would more than a balefire instant death or a gateway instant death.
As for Darken Rahl ability is that he can use additive magic which can control things around him and he has use of subtractive magic which sends things to the underworld he also has complete control over his magic.
This is based on the book Darken Rahl: legendoftheseekertv.wetpaint.com/page/Darken+Rahl
Explanations to additive + subtractive magic: www.associatepublisher.com/e/m/ma/magic_%28sword_of_truth%29.htm
I don’t know much about Sword of Truth story anymore though..
darken rahl isn’t a war wizard. he has additive and subtractive magic though, getting the latter from the keeper of the underworld. he is a master of magic, extremely impressing the first wizard of the midlands with how much he knows and can control. all of rand’s attacks would be null and void other than balefire. and balefire vs submagic is a touchy subject that i think would negate both since both have instant effects that render the other useless. that being said, i believe anyone with some knowledge of sub.magic from the sot series has a big advantage over any other magic users since sub.magic is basically balefire without the temporal effects, meaning it undoes from reality, and can be formed into anything you want ,offensive, deffensive, supportive, whatever you can think of, literally. yes actually literally, magic in sot universe affects everything from memories/feelings, to physical objects, to spirits, to the boundries between the world of life and the afterlife(underworld).
Rahl has the Additive Gift and Subtractive Calling.
Under normal match circumstances, Rand almost certainly wins crushingly.
That said … from the terms of the match, I think they’re fighting in the People’s Palace.
The People’s Palace more or less says “fuck you” to anyone other than a Rahl trying to cast magic, and boosts the magic of a Rahl. It doesn’t make it completely impossible, but it does become very close to impossible to do much casting if you aren’t a Rahl.
I think Rand is strong enough where he’d be able to do some magic, but nowhere near his typical power levels.
Because of the match conditions, namely, fighting in the People’s Palace, Rahl has a fairly good chance here.
But Callandor multiplies Rand’s power by about, oh, 10 times? Maybe more.
Probably enough to negate the effect that the Palace would have on him…
And balefire vs substractive magic isn’t a touchy subject for anyone but you, balefire can’t be blocked by anything ( except something completely immune to the effects of magic ) because it retroactively erases whatever it hits, minutes before it actually hits it.
the people’s palace has an effect so great on other magic users that even the first wizard zedd stated that he couldn’t even produce a simple flame there. and in terms of multiplying power, i don’t know if it ever says how much a rahls power is increased, but the whole palace is the spell, and the palace is bigger than most cities, and actually has a city in it.
i said touchy subject since wot fans have a big problem with accepting that balefire isn’t the most powerful magic out there. the simple fact of the matter is that both have instant effects that render the other useless. one(sub) undoes reality and sends to the underworld, the other(balefire) undoes reality and erases back in time. meaning that when they hit, balefire is in the underworld doing no more harm, and sub.magic is as if it wasn’t cast. it would look like they hit and both dissapear. there is no reasoning around this with any temporal effects, all properties of both are taken into account at all times they are there to do them.
one(sub) undoes reality and sends to the underworld, the other(balefire) undoes “reality and erases back in time. meaning that when they hit, balefire is in the underworld doing no more harm, and sub.magic is as if it wasn’t cast. it would look like they hit and both dissapear. there is no reasoning around this with any temporal effects, all properties of both are taken into account at all times they are there to do them.”
Except, if sub magic is as if it was never cast, balefire can’t be in the underworld. How would it go there if sub magic never hit it?
“i don’t know if it ever says how much a rahls power is increased, but the whole palace is the spell, and the palace is bigger than most cities, and actually has a city in it.”
That sounds…irrelevant. Oh, and you’re forgetting Rand destroyed the entire floor while being affected by this palace, so we can safely assume he can still use a moderately-sized balefire, or just create an explosion inside Rahl’s head. He doesn’t need all that much power for anything other than large area attacks, which he’s probably not going to need during this fight.
“Except, if sub magic is as if it was never cast, balefire can’t be in the underworld. How would it go there if sub magic never hit it?”
-because both are instant effects, not one before the other, and balefire has no way of effecting anything in the underworld and has no way out. sub.magic would be as if it was never cast, but the thing that caused that effect isn’t there to do anything more.
“That sounds…irrelevant. Oh, and you’re forgetting Rand destroyed the entire floor while being affected by this palace, so we can safely assume he can still use a moderately-sized balefire, or just create an explosion inside Rahl’s head. He doesn’t need all that much power for anything other than large area attacks, which he’s probably not going to need during this fight.”
-he only did so in the posters mind, but since we have to take the battle as planned out, then i suppose the inaccuracies of the poster will have to be taken as fact for this match.
-no magic other than balefire is going to affect rahl at all because of sub.magic shields, no outside interferance can happen in them and no magic other than erasing from existance properties has shown to affect it at all. that’s why i said it would come down to balefire vs. sub.magic.
-and with that being said, rand has no protection from sub.magic at all, just as he has no protection from balefire, because if you switch the temporal effects with the interdimensional effects of sub.magic, they are the same thing, both undo/erase from reality.
Rahl always has sub magic shields up? And is not dumb enough to attack Rand with his sword first ( which he probably grabbed for that purpose ), instead of using his magic?
“Except, if sub magic is as if it was never cast, balefire can’t be in the underworld. How would it go there if sub magic never hit it?”
-because both are instant effects, not one before the other, and balefire has no way of effecting anything in the underworld and has no way out. sub.magic would be as if it was never cast, but the thing that caused that effect isn’t there to do anything more.
The problem with that is that the instant effect of balefire means that yes, balefire affects sub magic before sub magic affects balefire. Several minutes earlier, in fact.
And it doesn’t have to affect anything in the underworld, because it affects the sub magic when neither is in the underworld. It doesn’t need a way out because it was never there in the first place.
“Rahl always has sub magic shields up? And is not dumb enough to attack Rand with his sword first ( which he probably grabbed for that purpose ), instead of using his magic?”
-shields- no but they are only a thought away(and actually if we take this match chronologically how it’s portrayed, rahl is protected by orden from putting one of the boxes in play(invincible).
-don’t know why “source” the person who requested this battle even said anything about a sword. darken rahl has never had one or said to use one ever in the sot books. if we are supposed to use the actual people put in this fight and not the posters view of them, then darken rahl would probably drop the sword imediatelly and wonder why the hell he picked up a sword, lol.
“The problem with that is that the instant effect of balefire means that yes, balefire affects sub magic before sub magic affects balefire. Several minutes earlier, in fact.”
-instant means instant. there is no before effects, and since both work once touching the other, and not before both effects take place at the same time. the effect of the instant effect, effects before it strikes….sounds weird….but both have instant effects so both work instantly. like i said, poof and both are gone.
@ mike
Balefire undoes the previous actions of whatever it erases. THis has already been told to you probably around 30 times, if balefire undoes sub. magics effects, then it wil undo the sub. magic’s action of sending it to the underworld. Making it so that it was never sent to the underworld in the first place, and leaving the underworld are two different things. In one case it actually escapes, in the other it was never actually in the underworld. But, to get a definite answer, we will ned to ask the admin. With the information given, does balefire trump sub. magic, or do they cancel eachother out?
@krazy
-and i’ve had to tell you “around 30 times” also, that there is no erasing from being in the underworld, no matter what you erase. the skrin and the veil are strong enough to keep the keeper of the dead in the underworld. balefire will fair no better.
-it cannot not be sent to the underworld in the first place, since the effect is instant.
-i really don’t see why people that are wot fans have such a hard time accepting that balefire trumps all with it’s time and erasing effects. you do realize that instant has no time frame right?
correction, “accepting that balefire doesn’t trump all”
“-and i’ve had to tell you “around 30 times” also, that there is no erasing from being in the underworld, no matter what you erase. the skrin and the veil are strong enough to keep the keeper of the dead in the underworld. balefire will fair no better.”
But in previous posts in the Richard vs Rand thread you claimed that people have actually returned from the underworld. If it can’t even keep people from getting out, then I doubt it would stand up very well against time alteration.
Not that it matters because balefire doesn’t go to the underworld, so…
@flargo
-the previous posts in the Richard vs rand thread you are talking about also talk about magical rituals and rights and spiritual protection(from actual spirits) before even going into the underworld to get out again. you need to read more thoroughly.
and it has to go to the underworld, since both balefire and sub.magic’s effects are instant and going to the underworld is one of sub.magic’s. there is no way around it. balefire can erase everything sub.magic did all it wants, because balefire will still be in the underworld
i suppose i should also mention that there is no time in the underworld, and that sub.magic can affect time also, but doesn’t in it’s pure form, only seen to do so in a bifuricated spell.
Arguing on the effects of Balefire vs Subtractive is mostly irrelevant, IMO, since they’re in the People’s Palace.
Far more relevant to determine if Rand can even cast Balefire or if he is restricted to lesser magics, and if so, what he can actually cast.
I think that extent to which Rand is restricted/inhibited is probably a determining factor in this match.
—
On the Balefire vs Subtractive front, though … if you open a magical gate/portal to somewhere else and shoot balefire at/through it, does the gate/portal disappear, or does the balefire pass through it?
@kytheros
- i thought the same thing about the peoples palace, but the poster didn’t seem to know much about anything in the sot series and had rand already use magic there and darken rahl pick up a sword……i’m not even sure “source” knew that where they were fighting would be the peoples palace, or that darken rahl cannot die due to orden protecting him durring the time line that rand was thrown in. i think “source” has to come here and clear a few things up before this can really move on as a debate.
Oh dear god of factpile don’t let this turn into the Rand vs Richard debate.
Even if sub-magic and balefire cancel each other out whats to stop Rand from making a gateway inside of Rahl. Also im not sure the palace can effect rand magic because their powers are fundamentally different. If the palace can effect Rand then Rand should be able to to effect Rahl and his power by severing or shielding. Since i’m sure this has been decide that Rand cannot do this Becouse their powers are different. So the palace should not come into play. Then again this is just my opinion.
“that darken rahl cannot die due to orden protecting him durring the time line that rand was thrown in”
Correct me if i’m wrong but did it not say that Richard could not kill him with the sword of truth not that he was invincible to every thing. I could be wrong but i don’t think i am
“Even if sub-magic and balefire cancel each other out whats to stop Rand from making a gateway inside of Rahl.”
-sub.magic shields don’t allow outside unnatural interference. and darken rahl is known to make full body covering sub.magic shields.
“Also im not sure the palace can effect rand magic because their powers are fundamentally different. If the palace can effect Rand then Rand should be able to to effect Rahl and his power by severing or shielding.”
-the peoples palace diminishes the level of power of all magic within it that is not by blood a rahls. the way of severing or shielding of magic in both worlds is completely different, because of where the magic comes from, one is an outside source and the other is internal.
“Correct me if i’m wrong but did it not say that Richard could not kill him with the sword of truth not that he was invincible to every thing. I could be wrong but i don’t think i am”
-no, the sword and the confessors powers were just examples of not being able to harm him. darken rahl(at the point in time the fight was established to happen) was protected by the power of orden. which if you don’t know is extremely powerfull, more so than anything in the wot series.
“-no, the sword and the confessors powers were just examples of not being able to harm him. darken rahl(at the point in time the fight was established to happen) was protected by the power of orden. which if you don’t know is extremely powerfull, more so than anything in the wot series.”
ive read the books and then richard should have been protected from harm in the last book when he was a player same with the sisters of the dark who put orden into play( cant rember their names). Also find me a quote were it says he is protected from every thing s
“-sub.magic shields don’t allow outside unnatural interference. and darken rahl is known to make full body covering sub.magic shields.”
The gateway does not even touch the sub-magic in any way shape or form. so how would sub-magic effect something that does not even touch it.
“-the peoples palace diminishes the level of power of all magic within it that is not by blood a rahls. the way of severing or shielding of magic in both worlds is completely different, because of where the magic comes from, one is an outside source and the other is internal.”
So your saying that SoT magic can weaken WoT magic yet the reverse is not true. Their magic is very different from each other so how would a spell meant to weaken Sot magic (magic that comes inside) be able to weaken magic that comes from a outside source. Dont really care since Rand has Callandor so that should make up for any weakening
“The gateway does not even touch the sub-magic in any way shape or form. so how would sub-magic effect something that does not even touch it. ”
-everything within the shield is protected hence the full body shields i’ve stated darken rahl has used before.
“So your saying that SoT magic can weaken WoT magic yet the reverse is not true. Their magic is very different from each other so how would a spell meant to weaken Sot magic (magic that comes inside) be able to weaken magic that comes from a outside source. Dont really care since Rand has Callandor so that should make up for any weakening”
-no i’m not saying it cannot work both ways, just that this is not the way(if there is one).
-with cutting off magic you need to know at least where it comes from to cut it off, with an area effect like the people’s palace the source wouldn’t matter since you are in it’s effects once there.
-having callandor should help him cast somewhat, but it still took 3 sisters of the dark having been given sub.magic by the keeper, to have taken multiple gifts from other wizards and sorceresses to magically combine themselves to get off one lightning bolt(the one that killed ex prelate ann). so that’s at the bare minimum 9 peoples power to get off one spell, and it’s probably quite abit more. i’d have to look up the sisters in question and see if the books specifically say how many gifts were stolen by them, but i really doubt it went into that much detail.
“ive read the books and then richard should have been protected from harm in the last book when he was a player same with the sisters of the dark who put orden into play( cant rember their names). Also find me a quote were it says he is protected from every thing s”
“”Now I have to tell you something you are not going to like.” His fingers tightened, almost painfully. “You cannot use the Sword of Truth on Darken Rahl.”
“What!”
Zedd gave him a shake. “He is too powerful. The magic of Orden protects him during the year of search. If you try to use the sword, you will be dead before it reaches him.”
“”The Con Dar is invoked for vengeance. Confessors who invoke it rarely survive; they give their lives over to the goal, give their lives to carry out the vengeance. Kahlan is going to use her power on Darken Rahl.”
Chase stared in shock. “You told me her power can’t touch him, can’t take him.”
“It couldn’t before. I don’t know if it can now, but I doubt it. Nonetheless, she is going to try. ”
-so even erasing magic won’t work(con dar is tapping into the sub.magic part).
-and given what orden can do(absolute power over life and death), i think it can protect him from pretty much everything, especially everything in this fight.
-and if i’m not mistaken(i might be) richard never had anything happen to him after being named a player by nicci.
Oh, Mike’s here…
This won’t end well…
^@Hawk
Your powers of deduction rival those of Sherlock Holmes…
Could one of the WoT experts answer my question about balefire and magic portals?
Also … if one considers the boost from Callandor to substantially mitigate the effects of the People’s Palace, what is Rand capable of without access to Callandor or another power source?
I would consider the People’s Palace’s aura of “fuck you, you’re not a Rahl, you can’t do magic” to affect Rand, but, Rand does have Callandor, so I don’t think that he’s utterly screwed, although I do think that he’s not anywhere near as roflstomp powerful as he normally would be.
@Blood Dancer
Har de har har….
“Far more relevant to determine if Rand can even cast Balefire or if he is restricted to lesser magics, and if so, what he can actually cast.
I think that extent to which Rand is restricted/inhibited is probably a determining factor in this match.”
A normal size beam of balefire doesn’t seem to require a huge amount of power, it’s just a weave known by only a few people during this age, and most of those people hesitate to use it.
As for your question, I think it might depend on from which side you hit it. Other magic has travelled through gateways unrestricted, since basically it’s like a rip in space. Like I said, it might destroy the gateway if it hits one of the edges, but since the actual portal doesn’t seem to have anything, magic or otherwise, for the balefire to hit, it would probably just go through. I can’t remember any instance of something like this happening in the books.
And as for what he is capable of without another power source? I’d go look up some feats, but I’m pretty sure that at least from Winter’s Heart (7) to A Gathering Storm (11) he was always using either Callandor or the male Choedan Kal.
Then when he does channel unaided in Towers of Midnight, he destroys an army of hundreds of thousands of Trollocs, but that’s probably more from suddenly getting about 500 years of channeling experience rather than him just still naturally growing in power ( which is why earlier feats don’t compare as good as newer ones would ) that much during about half a year. He wasn’t nearly that strong unaided in the earlier books.
“A normal size beam of balefire doesn’t seem to require a huge amount of power, it’s just a weave known by only a few people during this age, and most of those people hesitate to use it. ”
-lightning is very common in sot in add. and sub. form and it still took 3 linked, gift stealing, power granted by keeper sorceresses to make one.
and i should point out that rand didn’t kill hundreds of thousands of trollocs, he killed tens of thousands. I’ve read the quote of the whole battle on another thread. and it was only known to be about a dozen spells or so(don’t remember specific #s) and from the description killed so many because they were so close to each other(piles of bodies were being climbed over by waves of people).
“The field before him was piled with carcasses. Tens of thousands of dead Trollocs smoldering. Directly before al’Thor, a pile a hundred paces wide formed a ridge five feet tall, a mound of dead that had nearly reached him.” page 501 towers of midnight
only tens of thousands and alot in one spot.
It is [i]at least[/i] twelve spells.
Mike, the power of orden doesnt make you invincible, let me find my confessor book
@Fang
Good Luck……..Quotes won’t help if they go against Mike’s notions of what is possible in the SoT series.
“The distraction of Richard’s concern was throwing his timing off. He missed connecting with a thrust, leaving the man alive to come back at him. Only swift action saved hi from the blade doing more than making a shallow slash across the side of his shoulder”
-pg 374-375 confessor
“With an abrupt flash and heavy thud to the air, the soldiers all around Richard, including Bruce, were blown back as if by a blast. Yet there was no flame, no smoke, no flying debris, no ringing noise from a blast. Standing at the core of the event, Richard was left with his vision blurred and his flesh stinging from from the force of the concussion.”
-pg 376 confessor
no real efect to him but he obviously wasnt the target, it was to remove the soldiers.
“A spike of pain suddenly slammed into the base of Richard’s skull. It felt like he’d been hit from behind with an iron bar. The stunning pain droppe him to his knees. He recognized the sensation. He hadn’t been hit with iron; it was magic.”
-pg 376 confessor
sister of the light hits him in the head with magic. nice shielding orden
ill see your answer tomorrow, i gots to go to bed now, good night everyone
don’t know what to tell you fang, first book says one thing, second book says another. the only way to go i guess is to go by the one that actually was with darken rahl. and that one protected against everything zedd knew about.
richard’s problem could have been a few things….
-two people put into play at once(ulicia i think was the other one before him)
-chainfire messing with magic
-PIS
either way, the way it was said to work with darken rahl is different than when it was with richard. so we have to use it the way it was intended for Darken Rahl. and that was invincible from physical harm(sword, and was said to kill the wielder also), and magic(add. and sub. magic both from a confessor)…….although now that i think about it i think zedd thought you could feel pain while protected by orden, but that was never confirmed or denied(when he thought richard was darken and used a pain touch on him, then realized darken would have felt things more painfull and it was useless anyways).
ps. ptaine you are a moron and know nothing of me so don’t assume to know how i will react to things just because you are frustrated in other threads at me.
“As for your question, I think it might depend on from which side you hit it. Other magic has travelled through gateways unrestricted, since basically it’s like a rip in space. Like I said, it might destroy the gateway if it hits one of the edges, but since the actual portal doesn’t seem to have anything, magic or otherwise, for the balefire to hit, it would probably just go through. I can’t remember any instance of something like this happening in the books.”
- post #36
Interesting. Reason I ask is because when Subtractive sends shit to the Underworld, it may be operating as a form of interdimensional rift. I cannot confirm that at this time, though, but – if it does function that way, then it may, in fact, be a counter to balefire. Without confirmation one way or the other, though, it’s just speculation.
In addition, I forget which book this is from, though, there was a discussion about the differences between Additive and Subtractive magic. Both can be used to create a burst of fire, say, with Additive, you add heat and energy to create the fire, but with Subtractive, one would create a void that fire would want to fill.
I’m probably botching the explanation, but, what would balefire do if it encountered the subtractive equivalent of a firebeam – sure it would undo the flames, but then would the void that the fire wanted to fill still exist – thus restarting the flames in the current location/path of the void?
Again, someone will probably want to see if they can find the quotes for the conversation, check that I’m paraphrasing/summarizing it adequately. Then, assuming it’s mostly accurate … we need to determine how it would interact with balefire.
“and that one protected against everything zedd knew about.”
The key part of that is what Zedd knew about. Therefore there are many things from WoT that Zedd would not know about. I think balefire would kill Rahl. I’m not going to say that anything Rand had could possibly kill Rahl, but I think balefire could.
well kytheros, i do know that sub.magic does send things to the underworld and works on everything from physical to mental to spiritual to magical(i can give examples of these if needed). it sends things there because that’s where it originated.
i’ll have to get qutoes later
“The key part of that is what Zedd knew about. Therefore there are many things from WoT that Zedd would not know about.”
-anything from this world would be what zedd knew about. additive magic is what he knows and additive magic uses what is here or what you can create.
Balefire does not pass through gateways. This fact was clearly seen when a castle containing an open gateway was destroyed by a massive blast of balefire in ToM. A person on the other side saw the gateway “flash” with balefire and dissapear.
And just to preempt mike (not that I think it would matter much), balefire has a wierd effect on the perception of sentient beings who see it retconing reality, so you can’t deduce anything about its temporal charactaristics from that particular eye witness account.
ah, but who made the gateway and did they die in the balefiring? that’s the question.
and it’s funny you say you can’t deduce anything from seeing it’s temporal effects since in the richard vs rand debate that is exactly what was being talked about for 200 posts or so until the subject was answered by quotes from the new writer, lol.
The onlooker did. I refrain from revealing the onlooker’s identity to prevent spoilage.
I stated that you can’t deduce anything from that eyewitness account. I never said anything about getting info from another source.
said onlooker didn’t die btw.
Morning guys
@ mike
Well, show me a quote that says you’re invincible with the orden protection. It shields you from the sot true, but where does it say it protects from any weapon? There’s proof it shields from the sot on confessor, when samuel tries to stab him with it. And how do you know that darken didn’t have protection from confessor power with his own magic, boosted by the peoples palace? Strangley, confessor power wasn’t affected by the palace, maybe balefire does work?
My opinion is that rand could stomp darken out of the peoples palace, But in it I think darken has it. Admin, are they in the peoples palace or just some random *ss castle somewhere?
@Fang – Let’s give Source a day or so to reply, if not, I’ll make that determination.
@ admin
With the information that given, is it safe to say that balefire trumps sub. magic, or is it as mike says, they cancel each other out?
@fang
-you seem to be forgetting that orden and his own magic are protecting him, not just one or the other. and sub.magic would protect against everything with the exception of the balefire vs sub.magic part still being discussed
-orden is said to protect from(in darken’s case at least) specifically the sot, and confessors power. that means physical(sword), sub.magic and add. magic(the sword), add. magic(confessors power), and sub.magic(zedd said he doubted con dar would work). oh, and scarlet also(so dragons too). with these specific things we know it protects against everything in the sot universe(when working properly and only one person in play at least, not in richard’s case with many variables to take into account though).
“And how do you know that darken didn’t have protection from confessor power with his own magic, boosted by the peoples palace?”
-zedd said so
“Strangley, confessor power wasn’t affected by the palace, maybe balefire does work?”
-she didn’t show any level of con dar in the peoples palace even though in the “blood rage”. all she did was use the touching confessor power. take it how you want it, but either way you can’t show it didn’t lessen her power as it is supposed to do.
@krazy
-? really ? you are asking the admin to make a universal decision on how magic from two worlds interacts? that’s what debating is all about, until you convince the other side of the previously unknown. you don’t have someone make up everyones mind for them. no matter how much power someone has it doesn’t make them right. The sot series should have taught you that.
“-? really ? you are asking the admin to make a universal decision on how magic from two worlds interacts? that’s what debating is all about, until you convince the other side of the previously unknown. you don’t have someone make up everyones mind for them. no matter how much power someone has it doesn’t make them right. The sot series should have taught you that.”
Well, you make up the other side, and looking at the 1300+ Richard vs Rand thread…I’d say maybe krazy is right, if the alternative is debating with you.
And yes, the sot series should have taught everyone that power doesn’t make people right. Kicking 8 year old girls in the jaw ( and making them mute ), ordering your troops to slaughter civilians and cut off their ears as proof, murdering peace protestors “armed only with their hatred for moral clarity”…now THOSE are the things that make you right.
The other thing the sot series teaches is that if you, say, break free from prison and kill dozens of people on your way out, but get caught later, they’re not going to imprison you again, or kill you or something. Instead, they’ll ask you to play on their football team.
@ flagro
Lol
@mike
The orden protection is a safeguard against SPECIFICALLY the sot, not any weapon. Show me the quote that says orden protects against all magic, and saying it protects from the sot does not make him invulnerable to other magic. Also, show me the quote where zedd says darken has no protection from confessor other than orden.
@flargo
“Well, you make up the other side, and looking at the 1300+ Richard vs Rand thread…I’d say maybe krazy is right, if the alternative is debating with you.”
-not my fault if you can’t prove something conclusively
“And yes, the sot series should have taught everyone that power doesn’t make people right. Kicking 8 year old girls in the jaw ( and making them mute ), ordering your troops to slaughter civilians and cut off their ears as proof, murdering peace protestors “armed only with their hatred for moral clarity”…now THOSE are the things that make you right.”
-if you actually look at the reasons for it then yes it’s moraly right to them. and being right moraly is also just a personal opinion.
“The other thing the sot series teaches is that if you, say, break free from prison and kill dozens of people on your way out, but get caught later, they’re not going to imprison you again, or kill you or something. Instead, they’ll ask you to play on their football team.”
-they had a greater need for him and explained why
-flargo you really don’t seem to know what you are talking about
——————————————————————————————————————
@Fang
“The orden protection is a safeguard against SPECIFICALLY the sot, not any weapon.”
“”You cannot use the Sword of Truth on Darken Rahl.”
“What!”
Zedd gave him a shake. “He is too powerful. The magic of Orden protects him during the year of search. If you try to use the sword, you will be dead before it reaches him.”…………………
“Just against Rahl, it won’t work against him! Richard, I didn’t make the magic, I only know how it works. Darken Rahl knows how it works too. He may try to make you use the sword against him. He knows it would kill you. If you give in to the rage and use the sword against him, he will win.”
-so somehow orden will kill richard if he tries to use the magic against him. doesn’t say how or why. but it seems we can only know it’s the sot right now; other things should work the same but there is no way to know what or how. zedd and darken rahl don’t elaborate on how the magic works this way only that they both know.
“Show me the quote that says orden protects against all magic,”
“”Does it work on everyone?”
“Everyone human. Except Darken Rahl. The wizards warned me that the magic of Orden protects him from our touch. He has nothing to fear from me. ” wizard’s first rule
-so the sword and confession don’t work and one kills and the other doesn’t say if it kills or not
“”The Con Dar is invoked for vengeance. Confessors who invoke it rarely survive; they give their lives over to the goal, give their lives to carry out the vengeance. Kahlan is going to use her power on Darken Rahl.”
Chase stared in shock. “You told me her power can’t touch him, can’t take him.”
“It couldn’t before. I don’t know if it can now, but I doubt it. Nonetheless, she is going to try.”
-so the con dar isn’t supposed to work either, and that’s sub.magic which defeats all add. magic
“Zedd watched Kahlan as she stared across at Darken Rahl. If she could in fact touch Rahl with her power, they would be saved, but he doubted that she had the necessary power. In this palace, especially in this room, Zedd could feel that-his own power was virtually useless.”
-just found this in my searching for things; it shows even kahlan’s magic was diminished
“The wizard used every bit of strength he had, which wasn’t as much as he wished, and threw a bolt of lightning across the white sorcerer’s sand. He drained all his power into it. The blue lightning hit the sword, knocking it from Rahl’s hands. It flew through the air, landing a good distance away. ”
-well this shows two things
1) apparently you can use magic in the peoples palace if you aren’t a rahl and by your self but it takes all of zedd’s power(of which he hadn’t used any before) to make one bolt of lightning
2) he didn’t shoot the lightning at rahl because orden would protect him, and it’s not because of darken having sub.magic shields or anything, because he showed to be able to sense the shields in the fight where kahlan first used con dar. i’ll quote if you ask
-all of this is pretty much useless though, since sub.magic would protect against anything rand can bring to the fight except maybe the balefire. and orden can’t be used in defense of balefire since not that much about the protection it gives you is known other than it will protect against the sot, confession, condar confession, and sub.lightning(part of the condar. all of which can be stopped by sufficiently powerful sub.magic shields anyways and not showing protection from balefire specifically. so again i’ll say it, this comes down to a sub.magic vs balefire.
now, why do people think that balefire’s temporal effects will make it work against sub.magic when instantly both negate eachother? my way has all effects from both working perfectly and countering each other…….so……
@ mike
I was asking admin, because he is the definitive source for how things from two universes interact ON HIS SITE. We are debating on his site, and the balefire vs sub. magic subject gets brought up in SoT vs WoT arguments. If he gave an answer for which he thinks would win, then we have the answer for how it will play out Factpile fights. Is that how it would actually play out? We don’t know. We can’t use admin’s opinion on this subject on other sites, but we can on this one. For this particular agrument, we have given all the evidence that we will be able to. Yet, we still have different opinions, so either we can ask for the person that judges all the fights for his decision on which would win, or we wait for the two authors of the series to make a canon crossover between the series to determine which would win. Because, neither of us are going to change the opinion of the other.
If it depends on mike, Orden will protect Richie against nukes, Galactus’ cosmic power, Nihilus’ Force drain and even DR. Manhattans reality raping powers….
Hell, even Lucky Luke who draws and shoots his gun faster than his shadow won’t be able to do jack to Richie
“I was asking admin, because he is the definitive source for how things from two universes interact ON HIS SITE. We are debating on his site, and the balefire vs sub. magic subject gets brought up in SoT vs WoT arguments. If he gave an answer for which he thinks would win, then we have the answer for how it will play out Factpile fights. Is that how it would actually play out? We don’t know. We can’t use admin’s opinion on this subject on other sites, but we can on this one. For this particular agrument, we have given all the evidence that we will be able to. Yet, we still have different opinions, so either we can ask for the person that judges all the fights for his decision on which would win, or we wait for the two authors of the series to make a canon crossover between the series to determine which would win. Because, neither of us are going to change the opinion of the other.”
-that’s not how it’s supposed to work krazy
-if an outcome is not known it cannot be used and both sides of the argument are speculation
-which leaves Darken Rahl with sub.magic trumping all of rand’s other magic and gives him the win.
@blood dancer
-you seem to be just an angry irritable man, who only jumps in to insult with only your opinion to go off of. good luck with that. and i hope you do realize this isn’t orden being used, just a passive protection of it from putting the boxes of orden into play before opening one.
lol, oh and Dancer, this isn’t a richard rahl fight, so no one is even talking about “richie” lol
@Mike
no, Mike. I am not irritable, I am actually quite personable. I just don’t like it when people spout BS and platitudes (i.e. You)
you do realize you just admitted to being irritable though, lol. and everything i have said is not bullshit and has been significant to the debates i have been in, esspecially since i seem to be one of the only people defending sot things and i address what is asked or pointed out with quotes. so go away personal troll(you actually admitted this in another thread if you don’t remember) lol
“-that’s not how it’s supposed to work krazy
-if an outcome is not known it cannot be used and both sides of the argument are speculation
-which leaves Darken Rahl with sub.magic trumping all of rand’s other magic and gives him the win.”
You are an idiot. This is exactly how it works. Of course when debating how one universe would affect another we almost always use speculation. This is especially true if the powers we are discussing are magical in nature. If do not use things we are not 100% certain would work the way we say, then Factpile would not exist. Although logic dictates that sub. magic should work on Rand, it may not. You cannot prove that it does, so it is speculation on your part. We use powers as if they work in another universe as they do in their own. Balefire erases the previous actions of whatever it touches. If it erased the previous actions of the sub. magic, one of which would be sending balefire to the underworld. You claim that balefire should not work as it is supposed to. I was asking admin which theory he supported, because it would give a definite answer to this fight, and the Rand vs Richard fight.
“esspecially since i seem to be one of the only people defending sot things”
That is because most SoT fans know when something SoT related has lost.
@krazy
-you are wrong in so many ways it’s not even funny.
1)when there is no conclusive concensus on a fictional subject then the outcome is effectively not known and cannot be used either way.
2)sub.magic undoes reality and if rand exists then it works on him.
3)balefire erasing sub.magic’s previous actions? now you are assuming sub.magic works first? when both are instant, lol. whatever if you want to concede that sub.magic works faster and balefire isn’t instant then fine.
4)you would need to show that balefire is stronger than the forces that hold the keeper of the dead from the sot series in the underworld for it to come out of the underworld, and that it can still use it’s temporal effects in a place that has no time. both of which you cannot.
5)actually i’m claiming balefire works exactly as it is supposed to and so does sub.magic. the outcome is just not usual, but they both still work as they are supposed to.
6)it would not give a definite answer to either fight
6a)The peoples palace still makes rand’s power diminished bringing all sorts of troubles including a dodgeable sized balefire
6b)in the other thread richard still has two ways of countering balefire; dodging if it’s small enough, and the sot, which has shown to have the exact same properties as cuendillar in deflecting/absorbing balefire.
so to quote you “You are an idiot.”
“4)you would need to show that balefire is stronger than the forces that hold the keeper of the dead from the sot series in the underworld for it to come out of the underworld, and that it can still use it’s temporal effects in a place that has no time. both of which you cannot.”
It does not need to be stronger than those forces. It is not leaving the underworld. It is making it so that it was never there.
“5)actually i’m claiming balefire works exactly as it is supposed to and so does sub.magic. the outcome is just not usual, but they both still work as they are supposed to.”
No you are not having balefire undo whatever it erases has done. If it did, then balefire would never have gone to the underworld, so it would not ahve to escape. You are only appying the erasing property of balefire.
“6a)The peoples palace still makes rand’s power diminished bringing all sorts of troubles including a dodgeable sized balefire”
It is speculation to say that Rand is affected by the people’s palace because his magic is very different from SoT’s magic. It is also speculation to say that he is unaffected. According to you this means we should use neither theory. Also, admin said we should wait for the OP to clarify a few things.
“6b)in the other thread richard still has two ways of countering balefire; dodging if it’s small enough, and the sot, which has shown to have the exact same properties as cuendillar in deflecting/absorbing balefire.”
That is a different fight, also the majority of the discussion disagree with your opinion that the SoT can block balefire.
i also think that i should point out that even in your mind where balefire isn’t blockable by sot magic, sub.magic isn’t blockable by wot magic either. the balefire vs sub.magic part of the debate is just to see if balefire could penetrate/cancel out sub.magic. sub.magic is already know to penetrate/cancel out all wot magic. so even if it somehow turns out that balefire can trump sub.magic then the parties involved are of equal offensive trumping of the others defense.
“i also think that i should point out that even in your mind where balefire isn’t blockable by sot magic, sub.magic isn’t blockable by wot magic either. the balefire vs sub.magic part of the debate is just to see if balefire could penetrate/cancel out sub.magic. sub.magic is already know to penetrate/cancel out all wot magic. so even if it somehow turns out that balefire can trump sub.magic then the parties involved are of equal offensive trumping of the others defense.”
Just because we stopped discussing that point does not mean that we conceded it. To say so would be to use the ad nauseum fallacy. I have given my reasons why I think that Rand’s shields would protect him from sub. magic. Also if balefire trumps sub. magic then Rand would win the fight by hitting Richard with a stream of balefire too large for Richard to dodge, and it would erase any lucky spells Richard may have been able to hit Rand with. The winner would be Rand.
“It does not need to be stronger than those forces. It is not leaving the underworld. It is making it so that it was never there.”
-here’s your problem….it cannot make it not there anymore, since it cannot get out. once again you’d have to show balefire affecting a place without time and able to penetrate the viel and escape the skrin
“No you are not having balefire undo whatever it erases has done. If it did, then balefire would never have gone to the underworld, so it would not ahve to escape. You are only appying the erasing property of balefire.”
-”sigh” NO! i am taking into account the temporal factors. that’s why sub.magic wouldn’t have been cast also. which wouldn’t matter since balefire is stuck in the underworld.
“It is speculation to say that Rand is affected by the people’s palace because his magic is very different from SoT’s magic. It is also speculation to say that he is unaffected. According to you this means we should use neither theory. Also, admin said we should wait for the OP to clarify a few things.”
-true the OP has to clarify some things, but it’s not speculation that it will diminish rand’s powers. it has shown to diminish all magic in it so far(other than a rahl’s), and is an area effect of which rand would be in, and if their magic interacts at all then it will affect him.
“Just because we stopped discussing that point does not mean that we conceded it. To say so would be to use the ad nauseum fallacy. I have given my reasons why I think that Rand’s shields would protect him from sub. magic. Also if balefire trumps sub. magic then Rand would win the fight by hitting Richard with a stream of balefire too large for Richard to dodge, and it would erase any lucky spells Richard may have been able to hit Rand with. The winner would be Rand.”
-again alot of this is just wrong krazy, think before you post.
-there is a parallel between balefire and sub.magic that make it unable to be blocked by any wot magic. and that parallel is undoing of reality. balefire as it works in the wot universe proves that sub.magic goes through all defenses.
-and as i’ve said in the richard thread(which you should really post about it on there instead of here) the sword blocks the larger balefires no matter how big.
“-there is a parallel between balefire and sub.magic that make it unable to be blocked by any wot magic. and that parallel is undoing of reality. balefire as it works in the wot universe proves that sub.magic goes through all defenses.”
Speculation.
“-and as i’ve said in the richard thread(which you should really post about it on there instead of here) the sword blocks the larger balefires no matter how big.”
Nearly everyone else in that discussion disagrees.
not speculation, the same properties are in both. there is absolutely no speculation at all.
everyone can disagree all they want, i’ve shown for a fact all properties of cuendillar being in the sot also. so sot blocks balefire, and PLEASE POST A RESPONSE IF ANY TO THIS PART IN THE RIGHT THREAD. thank you.
“not speculation, the same properties are in both. there is absolutely no speculation at all.”
There are properties to balefire that there are not in sub. magic. It could be the properties that balefire has but sub. magic doesn’t that allows balefire to pass through shields in WoT. It is speculation to say that it is the properties that they have in common that allow balefire to ignore the shields.
“PLEASE POST A RESPONSE IF ANY TO THIS PART IN THE RIGHT THREAD.”
I said this many posts ago, not in as plain of terms. I mentioned that this was about a different battle, hinting that things about that battle should be discussed there, but you wanted to discuss that fight. Also as said many times there are properties to the SoT that are not in cuendillar that have led me to believe that it would not have the same effects on balefire as cuendillar.
@Mike
I’ll go away when you leave Factpile….
Mike, confessors power isn’t the only type of magic in existence in the sot series, neither is the sot. It looks to me like richard would die because his sword wouldn’t be able to touch darken, and darken would laugh and roflstomp him with magic. Back to the darken vs rand. So, we still have to try and agree which is better, sub magic or balefire, or if they just cancel each other out. If the sot has the same properties as cuendillar (I guarantee I spelt that wrong) than I don’t see why it can’t block balefire. Off topic and back on the richard v rand thing but still, just because the sot can do things the cuendillar can’t doesn’t mean that it suddenly won’t work when its been proven that the sot can do everything cuendillar can
@krazy
-you need to think things through
“There are properties to balefire that there are not in sub. magic. It could be the properties that balefire has but sub. magic doesn’t that allows balefire to pass through shields in WoT. It is speculation to say that it is the properties that they have in common that allow balefire to ignore the shields.”
-you are trying to say that balefires temporal effects are what makes it go through wot magic when the tempora effect erases also. so you are wrong. everything balefire does erases, and sub.magic erases.
@fang
-the orden protecting darken is what would have killed richard, it says so in the quote. zedd said darken knew how the magic worked and would try to get him to use the sword knowing it would just kill him.
Yet for some strange reason, samuel didn’t die when he tried to kill richard with the sot
@blood dancer
-”I’ll go away when you leave Factpile….”
-cool i got my own personal hate fan
@fang
-yeah, i know, there are inconsistancies with how orden protects between richard and darken, but as i’ve said before this can be explained with all the differences i’ve pointed out before.
-chainfire(specifically messes with magic after chimes corrupted it)
-two players instead of one
-maybe even pis but that doesn’t even matter because of the other two specifically altering the way the magic works.
and again it doesn’t even matter what orden protects from since all that it has been shown to protect, sub.magic has been shown to protect against also(in terms of what wot can muster not rand using sot or anything silly like that).
““And yes, the sot series should have taught everyone that power doesn’t make people right. Kicking 8 year old girls in the jaw ( and making them mute ), ordering your troops to slaughter civilians and cut off their ears as proof, murdering peace protestors “armed only with their hatred for moral clarity”…now THOSE are the things that make you right.”
-if you actually look at the reasons for it then yes it’s moraly right to them. and being right moraly is also just a personal opinion.”
That’s the problem, though. Richard Rahl is clearly meant to be portrayed as some kind of ideal hero ( following the same flawed philosophy as his creator ), but is willing to be exactly as ruthless as his enemies without questioning himself. Take a look at the speech where he tells his troops to kill innocent people in the Old World ( He doesn’t consider them to be innocent, of course, because they happen to be living under his enemies ):
“We must fight the war our way. We must fight it for what it really is: not armies on a field of battle acting as surrogates for ideas, but a war for the future of mankind.
As such, it is a war in which the Old World is totally committed, in which everyone on their side has dedicated themselves to the struggle. They are passionate about their cause. They believe in what they are doing. They think they have right on their side, that they are acting morally, that they are fulfilling the Creator’s wishes, and so they are justified in murdering whoever they wish in order to define how mankind will live.”
Alright, sounds like this Imperial Order is pretty terrible, right?
“We must bring this war home to the people who support and encourage it. It must not simply be the lives of our friends, our families, our loved ones who are thrown into the bloody cauldron these people of the Old World stoke. It must now be their lives as well.”
“From this day forward, we will fight a real war, a total war, a war without mercy. We will not impose pointless rules on ourselves about what is “fair.” Our only mandate is to win. That is the only way we, our loved ones, our freedom will survive. Our victory is all that is moral. I want any supporter of the Order to pay the price for their aggression. I want them to pay with their fortunes, their future, their very lives.”
Oh…yeah, you’re totally not being hypocritical here, Richard/Terry.
One of the men toward the back cleared his throat, then spoke up. “Lord Rahl, innocent people down there are going to die. These aren’t soldiers we will be attacking. A lot of children are going to die in this kind of thing.”
“Yes, that is unfortunately true, but don’t let your mind be clouded or your determination turned aside by such a spurious and irrelevant charge. The Order is responsible for conducting a war of aggression against innocent people who have done them no harm-including women and children. We seek only to end the aggression as swiftly as possible.
“It’s true that innocent people-including children-will be hurt or killed. What is the alternative? Continuing to sacrifice good people out of fear of harming someone innocent? We are all innocent. Our children are all innocent. They are being harmed, now. The Order’s rule will eventually harm everyone, including all those children in the Old World. The Order will turn many of them into monsters. Many more people will die in the end if the Order wins.
“Moreover, the lives of the people in the Old World are not our responsibility, they are the Order’s responsibility. We did not start this war and attack them-they attacked us. Our only proper course of action is to end the war as swiftly as possible. This is the only way to do that. In the end, this is the most humane thing we can do because in the end this will mean the least loss of life.”
Basically what Richard is saying here can be summarized as: “I’m telling you guys to act in the exact same way as the enemy I was just ranting about, but don’t worry because when we do it it’s absolutely right and moral. Because they started it and follow a different philosophy than we do, we are justified in slaughtering the people who happen to be living in their cities.”
Now, this is not an implausible way of thinking, in fact I could probably dig up several similar speeches with minimal effort. The problem is that you probably wouldn’t consider the sort of people who made these speeches good people, much less rolemodels and/or wish fulfillment, which is clearly how Goodkind intends people to view Richard.
Now, this is all getting extremely off-topic of course, especially considering the fact Richard isn’t even in this fight, but I just couldn’t help but reply to what you said.
@ flagro
You forgot to include the part where he talked about how they should only kill the citizens if they resist, its the soldiers they worried about
to the bailfire vs sub. magic: The way i see it sub magic acts instantly right? so let’s give it a value of zero. Bailfire burns something out of the thread so it basicly goes back in time, so lets give it a value of sub magic. Feel free to despute this, just adding my logic and a mathematical perspective.
For some reason factpile didnt like all my mathimatical jargon like (minus, add, one, etc.) so lets try that again
sub magic equals “zero”. bail fire equals “less than negative one”. i.e. “negative three”. so when they meet they combine, or add. so “zero plus negative three equals negative three”. Thats my reason for thinking bailfire trumps submagic. and i’ll repeat myself, feel free to dispute this, just adding my logic and a mathematical perspective.
“That’s the problem, though. Richard Rahl is clearly meant ….”
-uh?………i don’t care about your personal opinion on the books so…..ok.
@Ian.
-both work instantly when they hit something, balefire doesn’t work first since they both start working at the same time, instantly. part of it’s instant is to erase actions, part is to erase the thing itself. sub.magic works by also erasing the thing, and it also teleports to the underworld. with both doing what they are intended to do they would cancel each other out.
-i really don’t know what you were trying to get across with giving them arbitrary #s, it makes no sense. i mean that really doesn’t make sense at all
@mike
Maybe you don’t understand it, or maybe you do, we just disagree, as to how bailfire works. I forget which book it was but it was the WoT book where rand and the aiel assulted Ravhin at the andor palace. Mat, Asmodean, and that one aiel chick were killed by Ravhin’s lightning. Then rand hit Ravhin with a huge bailfire blast that erased his killing of those three. I believe that bailfire would act in the same way if it hit the sub. magic, making it so the sub. magic was never cast. You may argue that to make this comparison the bailfire would have to hit the lightning but I still beleive that the comparison works.
About my other post, i guess i didnt illustrate my idea well enough. What I was trying to say is that sub.magic works intantly so zero time passes; aka zero. While bailfire reverses time anywhere from several seconds to maybe hours or so, depending on the strength. So the time that occurs would be negative. All im saying is that bailfire would not be sent passed the veil. Everyone elses explanation will tell you, at least in my theory, as to what happens after that. So feel free to add your arguements to that.
“I believe that bailfire would act in the same way if it hit the sub. magic, making it so the sub. magic was never cast.”
-i have been saying that all along. sub.magic would have never have been cast, but balefire would still be in the underworld unable to keep going forward.
“While bailfire reverses time anywhere from several seconds to maybe hours or so, depending on the strength. So the time that occurs would be negative. All im saying is that bailfire would not be sent passed the veil. ”
-all the effects of both magics are instant, and there is no time in instant so one doesn’t happen before the other, both effects that cancel each other out happen at the same time. my way has all of the properties of both magics still working exactly as they are supposed to.
@mike
the way i see it, were are disagreeing on the fundamental effects of bailfire and submagic. I believe that bailfire happens before, or faster than, instantaniously. Sounds wierd but hey, its magic. And back to your first point, I just don’t see how bailfire would end up in the underworld if the sub magic was ever cast
“I believe that bailfire happens before, or faster than, instantaniously.”
-from how it works in the books that’s not true. it would have to erase things before it even hit them(visably seeing a wall disapear before the balefire gets to it) and that never happens.
“And back to your first point, I just don’t see how bailfire would end up in the underworld if the sub magic was ever cast”
-when dealing with time, instant effects(don’t take time to happen), and a place without time these sorts of things can happen. it effectively makes a paradox, but a paradox that is explained by the properties of the two magics. balefire is stucki in the underworld and sub.magic was never cast. they would just both look like they disapeared.
” “I believe that bailfire happens before, or faster than, instantaniously.”
-from how it works in the books that’s not true. it would have to erase things before it even hit them(visably seeing a wall disapear before the balefire gets to it) and that never happens.”
Are you being dumb on purpose or are you just being dumb?
It does erase things before it hits them, It just doesn’t show this happening before balefire actually hits it ( which wouldn’t make much sense anyways, because it would the world went back in time every time balefire was used ), but as we have already proven with the boat example, it does erase things before it hits them.
So why should it make a difference whether you actually see something disappear before being hit, or only see the effects?
“-all the effects of both magics are instant, and there is no time in instant so one doesn’t happen before the other, both effects that cancel each other out happen at the same time.”
But they don’t cancel each other out, because one does happen before the other.
“It does erase things before it hits them, It just doesn’t show this happening before balefire actually hits it ( which wouldn’t make much sense anyways, because it would the world went back in time every time balefire was used ), but as we have already proven with the boat example, it does erase things before it hits them.”
-it first has to hit to do anything, and in the instant it hits both magics powers happen at the same time.
“So why should it make a difference whether you actually see something disappear before being hit, or only see the effects? ”
-because it’s effects don’t take place before it initially hits. meaning it’s subject to the instant effect of sub.magic.
“But they don’t cancel each other out, because one does happen before the other.”
-instant has no time frame, the temporal effects and the teleporting effects happen at the same time. sub.magic didn’t happen in the past and balefire is in the underworld effects happen at the same time. it doesn’t matter if one messes with time or not, they both need to hit to do anything, and both are instant.
How can balefire be in the underworld if sub magic didn’t happen? What brought it there, then?
Mike the issue is that you are not applying all of balefire’s properties, and you are making a paradox that doesn’t exist.
Balefire erases subtractive magic’s actions which in this case happens to be sending balefire to the underworld. But according to how Balefire works it was never sent to the underworld to begin with.
So now you are saying because there is no time in the underworld it doesn’t matter if time is erased in the world of life. If this was the case then Richard could come back at whatever time he chose every time that he traveled to the underworld, but this isn’t the case because the underworld follows the linear nature of time in the world of life. Ch 61 Temple of the Winds
“…Here, time had no meaning, other than that which he brought with him. Time had no place to anchor in eternity. He could have been here a century rather than a mere couple of weeks, and only he would note the difference, and then, only if he chose…” “…Thousands of people had died because he had been so ignorant. Had he known then what he knew now, he could have merely cast a web spun with both sides of his power and the book would have been useless to Jagang. All those people dead–and it had been so simple. At least he was able to use his healing powers to halt the sickness among most who were afflicted before he had interrupted the currents of magic. At least the plague was ended…”
If it was a noncorporeal existence in the underworld as you are trying to assert Mike then Richard could come back at whatever time he chose, and he could have stopped the magic that started the plague from even happening in the first place. This isn’t the case, however, so clearly time in the underworld is linear in nature when applied to the world of life……which is where the time erasing properties of balefire are being applied.
So when the instantaneous action occurs between Balefire and Subtractive Magic it will be moments before this action happens according to Balefire’s properties. Subtractive magic will be erased, AND it will be a point in time before Balefire and Subtractive magic interact, AND balefire will be in the world of life continuing on its path, Even though subtractive magic sent balefire to the underworld. You are convoluting the issue with aspects of this interaction that do not matter, and creating a paradox where none exists.
Let me try and explain it another way. Let’s say we have 3 people, person A, person B, and person C. Person A can use Balefire. Person B can use subtractive magic. Person C is an innocent bystander.
Person B uses subtractive magic on person C sending them to the underworld. Person A then Balefire’s person B and that person’s actions are erased, so person C would now be in the world of life which is how balefire works. According to you though, person C would still be stuck in the underworld no matter what because of there being no time in the underworld. This isn’t the case though…..time has no meaning in the underworld in terms of the amount of time you are there, but it still follows time in the world of life. So if 5 minutes are erased in the world of life, 5 minutes are also erased in the underworld. This is a time BEFORE that person existed in the underworld and to a time when they existed in the world of life.
You are creating a paradox where none exists, and are using this paradox to negate an essential part of how balefire works then you are claiming to have everything working perfectly when you do not.
you need to understand what instant means. all of the effects happen at once. sub.magic would have not existed, and balefire would be in the underworld at the same time, not one before the other. and balefire has no power in the underworld to change reality of the past where the sub.magic didn’t exist anymore.
“Mike the issue is that you are not applying all of balefire’s properties, and you are making a paradox that doesn’t exist.”
-i am actually, as i have said before, applying all properties.
“Balefire erases subtractive magic’s actions which in this case happens to be sending balefire to the underworld. But according to how Balefire works it was never sent to the underworld to begin with.”
-all effects happen at the same time so sub.magic’s actions are erased, and balefire is in the underworld. no amount of time manipulation can trump canceling effects that happen instantly
your whole quote part is rediculous and guess what??? doesn’t take everything into account, huh, would ya believe that.
“If it was a noncorporeal existence in the underworld as you are trying to assert Mike”
-i never once said that or implied that
“This isn’t the case, however, so clearly time in the underworld is linear in nature when applied to the world of life……which is where the time erasing properties of balefire are being applied.”
-but in no way can affect things in the world of life while in there.
“So when the instantaneous action occurs between Balefire and Subtractive Magic it will be moments before this action happens according to Balefire’s properties.”
-no, lol, it won’t. all of your logic is flawed in the fact that balefire has to initially hit before doing anything. and both have instant effects. at that point of time where both are subject to the laws of time, the instant isn’t and that’s where both magics properties happen.
“Even though subtractive magic sent balefire to the underworld.”
-if you are in any way admitting it ever went to the underworld then you are admitting that it would be cancelled out by sub.magic. since there is no way to get out of the underworld for balefire. – finally you understand, lol.
WHOA big universe flaw on your part
“Person B uses subtractive magic on person C sending them to the underworld. Person A then Balefire’s person B and that person’s actions are erased, so person C would now be in the world of life which is how balefire works.”
-sot afterlife has ways of preventing people from getting out of the world of the dead, you’d have to show wot preventative measures of getting out of their afterlife if any and compare them to the viel and the skrin which would be impossible.
“This isn’t the case though…..time has no meaning in the underworld in terms of the amount of time you are there, but it still follows time in the world of life. So if 5 minutes are erased in the world of life, 5 minutes are also erased in the underworld. This is a time BEFORE that person existed in the underworld and to a time when they existed in the world of life. ”
-again assuming things work the same in both worlds when it is not shown to
“You are creating a paradox where none exists, and are using this paradox to negate an essential part of how balefire works then you are claiming to have everything working perfectly when you do not.”
-one has to exist because of the properties of both. and no part of balefire is being ignored. it is just being negated by forces beyond it’s control(underworld)
““If it was a noncorporeal existence in the underworld as you are trying to assert Mike”
-i never once said that or implied that”
–uhhhhh……yeah you did. Let me quote you from post 91
“and a place without time these sorts of things can happen.”
Without time implies “no time”……aka noncorporeal. So if you aren’t saying this then your whole argument is irrelevant because of this next point…
““-no, lol, it won’t. all of your logic is flawed in the fact that balefire has to initially hit before doing anything. and both have instant effects.”
–exactly Mike and what happens when they hit?……subtractive magic sends balefire to the underworld. Balefire erases subtractive magic and its actions. I don’t see why you can’t wrap your head around this concept. I never one time said they didn’t hit, but according to how balefire works it goes back to a time before they hit.
“-sot afterlife has ways of preventing people from getting out of the world of the dead, you’d have to show wot preventative measures of getting out of their afterlife if any and compare them to the viel and the skrin which would be impossible.”
–my point with the quote Mike was to show you that the ways of preventing people from leaving the underworld are irrelevant because they apply to leaving going forward in a linear fashion not going backwards to a time when that person didn’t exist in the underworld. When you go to the underworld in the SoT series you don’t exist at all times before and after you leave the world of life…..like I said if this was the case then Richard could have affected the world of life at any point, but the underworld is tied to the world of life including time, and he very clearly was a slave to the time in the world of life.
There is a very definite starting time to when you enter the underworld and time progresses linearly from that point. Time has no meaning in eternity, but that doesn’t mean it is a noncorporeal existence. So according to how balefire works in the timeline there is a point before it hits subtractive magic….then there is a point when it hits subtractive magic….then there is a point in the timeline when it is in the underworld.
So when balefire erases in accordance to the timeline it erases back to a point in time when it wasn’t in the underworld and it is in the world of life. You get around this by saying there is no time in the underworld, but that isn’t the case…..Time has no meaning in the underworld, but it still exists which is why this…
““This isn’t the case though…..time has no meaning in the underworld in terms of the amount of time you are there, but it still follows time in the world of life. So if 5 minutes are erased in the world of life, 5 minutes are also erased in the underworld. This is a time BEFORE that person existed in the underworld and to a time when they existed in the world of life. ”
-again assuming things work the same in both worlds when it is not shown”
…is not an assumption and is what my quote was trying to show you.
““Even though subtractive magic sent balefire to the underworld.”
-if you are in any way admitting it ever went to the underworld then you are admitting that it would be cancelled out by sub.magic. since there is no way to get out of the underworld for balefire. – finally you understand, lol.”
–I still don’t think that you have shown that magic is sent to the underworld, but I am doing what I have been doing a lot of, which is arguing that even if this is the case it still doesn’t matter according to the properties of both and how things work in their respective universes. I just don’t want to get into a long drawn out debate over magic being sent to the underworld so I decided to just use your argument instead and try and show you why it still doesn’t matter if it does send it to the underworld.
“-one has to exist because of the properties of both. and no part of balefire is being ignored. it is just being negated by forces beyond it’s control(underworld)”
–and just to drive the point home one more time, your reasoning for this paradox is flawed. You are basing it on a noncorporeal realm in the underworld even though the underworld very clearly follows the corporeal realm of the world of life.
Also when there is a way for magic to flow from one realm to the other the skrin don’t come into play. For example the magic that started the plague was tied to the winds which was why Richard could stop the plague in the world of life from the underworld by using that conduit created in the veil by the winds. Subtractive magic would act in the same fashion since it would be the conduit in the veil which sends the balefire to the underworld…….when time is erased balefire follows the same path back.
“–uhhhhh……yeah you did. Let me quote you from post 91
“and a place without time these sorts of things can happen.”
Without time implies “no time”……aka noncorporeal. So if you aren’t saying this then your whole argument is irrelevant because of this next point…”
-nice stretch, but no it doesn’t mean that. when richard stopped time with orden did he all of a sudden turn incorporeal? no.
“–exactly Mike and what happens when they hit?……subtractive magic sends balefire to the underworld. Balefire erases subtractive magic and its actions. I don’t see why you can’t wrap your head around this concept. I never one time said they didn’t hit, but according to how balefire works it goes back to a time before they hit. ”
-the effects of the balefire would still be there, but the balefire wouldn’t. THERE IS NO WAY FOR BALEFIRE TO GET OUT OF THE UNDERWORLD.
“–my point with the quote Mike was to show you”
-you do realize it is your point that is irrelevant since balefire cannot escape the underworld don’t you? time may be linear for something from the world of life when it’s in the underworld, but that still doesn’t mean it can get out.
“So when balefire erases in accordance to the timeline it erases back to a point in time when it wasn’t in the underworld and it is in the world of life. You get around this by saying there is no time in the underworld, but that isn’t the case…..Time has no meaning in the underworld, but it still exists which is why this…”
-like i’ve said before, you can affect time all you want, but you aren’t getting through the viel or past the skrin
“time has no meaning in the underworld in terms of the amount of time you are there, but it still follows time in the world of life.”
-oh, and this isn’t true either
“The magic. The magic of the Palace of the Prophets. It has Additive and Subtractive elements to it that are tied to the other worlds. That makes time move differently here.’”
“–I still don’t think that you have shown that magic is sent to the underworld”
-this even furthers my opinion of your sot knowledge, the books specifically say it does many times.
“–and just to drive the point home one more time, your reasoning for this paradox is flawed. You are basing it on a noncorporeal realm in the underworld even though the underworld very clearly follows the corporeal realm of the world of life.”
-read above
“Also when there is a way for magic to flow from one realm to the other the skrin don’t come into play. For example the magic that started the plague was tied to the winds which was why Richard could stop the plague in the world of life from the underworld by using that conduit created in the veil by the winds. Subtractive magic would act in the same fashion since it would be the conduit in the veil which sends the balefire to the underworld…….when time is erased balefire follows the same path back.”
-you really need to read the books again, you have completely forgotten or ignored what really happened, and are making conclusions of what would happen based on it. try reading TotW again and see why richard was able to stop the plague.
“He would have eliminated Jagang, and the threat from the Old World, too, but he couldn’t do so from this place. That was the world of life, and he could only affect those things taken from this place to the world of life, and the damage they caused.”
-nothing about what you said at all.
and you have to remember that the temple of the winds was put there with spiritual collaberation due to the price of going there was known to man and involved spirits. and the temple of the winds had skrin as guardians or under it’s control or whatever, and if you also remember, richard was able to command the skrin(to carry cara out) also. so if you forgot or are ignoring it, the only known way in all of the books to enter into the underworld or get out involves spirits or skrin along with magical rituals and rites. again i beg you to please look at it as a whole with all info put into play ptaine, this is getting old, very old.
@ptaine
-here is a quote so you don’t complain about magic going to the underworld, since you didn’t seem to believe it to be true from me pointing out that sub.magic sent the temple of the winds there.
“The beast is untouched by time. A constituent element of its makeup is the
eternity of the underworld, which is antithetical to the very notion of Creation,
since the underworld is the undoing of Creation. That mix, that internal conflict, is
part of the driving mechanism which churns its actions and makes it chaotic.
When Nicci used Subtractive Magic to eliminate your spent blood, the beast, from
its roots in the underworld, got its taste of you, or, more accurately, a measure of
your magic.
“Your blood carries both Additive and Subtractive Magic. The beast was
created to be able to know you by your essence, magic, thereby allowing it to
transcend typical worldly limits. The beast needed you to use magic the first time
so that it could link to you. Through that link, it could hunt you. But when it
received that taste of your blood, it became able to know you in a whole different
way.” chainfire page(text says 413, pdf says 330)