Musings on Good and Evil in WoT

[Ozymandias]

I was lying awake last night after reading some fine WoT and considering the nature of good and evil in these books.

Most of the time in fantasy you have good and bad, and thats that. I was reading a blog... somewhere, that was using that as an explanation for the rising popularity of fantasy in a world (real world) where life is increasingly a moral gray area. But back to the point.

It isn't a simple spectrum in this series, which is fascinating. I see it as more of a triangle... you have the Dark One, supposedly the personification of evil, and his minions on one side, and Rand & Co on the other as the representation of good. And then, to complicate it, is Mashadar. Which is also evil incarnate, but an evil that hates the ultimate source of evil just as much as it hates good. So instead of a spectrum... you have a triangle, with each point hating its neighbor equally. Which is odd, and unprecedented in fantasy, in my readings.

I was trying to figure out the relationship (the moral, not the actual, thats in the books) between these three, and couldn't really do it. The best I could come up with was that the Dark One's evil is beyond human comprehension and experience; he may be pure evil, but its an evil different than anything a human being could experience. In a way, he's the personification of chaos. If the Creator is the ultimate good and orders the universe(s), then the opposite of him must be evil, and that would mean chaos is evil. But the struggle of order vs chaos, while common in many books, is not necessarily the struggle that Rand is fighting to win.

Mashadar/Padan Fain is much more closely the representation of what the two sides are fighting over. If Mashadar is the conglomeration of all human ill and ill will made solid, wouldn't he (I'll use that pronoun out of expediency) be true evil? Not only is it an evil that we as humans can understand, its an evil that we as humans create. Its the same evil that the Forsaken and Darkfriends follow; even though they acknolwedge the Great Lord as their master, aren't they really just doing so out of greed and arrogance and jealousy and lust for power? And since those are very human failings, wouldn't that mean they much more closely are associated with Shadar Logoth and Mashadar? Not in terms of faction... but in terms of overall belief?

Its a dichotomy that I find uniquely interesting about Jordan's work. For as much as the Creator and Dark One are using proxies to fight their battles, the minions they employ aren't fighting for their goals. Normally, I would see the Dark One as an integral part of the universe; good is defined by its counterpart; evil. But in this instance, the metaphysical evil of Shai'tan is NOT the evil around which good defines itself (and visa versa, of course). That evil, the evil of human failings and negative emotion, is just as opposed to the evil of the Dark One as the Light is. Which makes you wonder what the fight is all about.

The Dark One is out to destroy order, destroy the Pattern and the Wheel. The Forsaken know this. But in their heart, they desire order, because they desire power and rule over others. Mashadar, or the feelings that spawned it, is this same exact emotion. It needs order and it needs good, because it cannot have existence outside of it. So who is this fight between? The Light and the Shadow? Or is it a fight between the positive and the negative within each person. The Dark One influences the world, for the most part, through his lieutenants. But if his lieutenants aren't fighting for the same goal as the Dark One, does his victory amount to a true achievement of his goals?

I don't know. It confused and interested me, so I thought I'd share.

[Gandelail]

Nice post Ozy, good to get a chance flex the brain a bit. :D
I've thought about this a lot actually, how exactly these pieces interact...

It has always seemed to me that Jordan's portrayal of Good and Evil in the WoT is not so clear-cut as other books, or even as clear cut as your triangle, Ozy. Especially given his background in theoretical physics, and from talking to him a little about such things at a signing for about 5 minutes... he seemed to relate many things to that experience or that science. And I have always noticed that influence in his books.

To me, it seems Jordan tried to tell us, hey, Good and Evil's not so easy as which 'Diety' you side with... like you said, Ozy, Good and Evil are not in a spectrum, so much as they are an intersection of fields of influence (think interaction of magnetic forces pulling on a particle or object).

You've got two major opposite poles exerting influence on the world... the Dark One and the Creator... if you imagine them in 2D as in my illustration below, they'd be pulling against each other across the span, with each one exerting it's greatest pull as you get closer to the origin of the pull, because as you get further from one, you are affected to a greater extent by the other, for example:

If you are 100% pulled by the Dark One, you're being affected by 0% of the Creator's own pull.

If you are less than 100% pulled by the Dark One, you are being pulled to some extent by the other pole, the Creator...

as you get toward the perfect center of influence, you approach an asymptote at minimal influence by either diety.

As you said, however, it's not so clear-cut as that. You also have modulating factors, or forces external to the traditional Good-Evil scheme in fantasy that I've just described. We have Mashadar, an "independent" source of Evil that hates both sides of the spectrum of evil between the dieties. This influence would then pull relatively perpendicular to the the previously discussed field of influence.

As Mashadar and any other field of influence modulating factors pull against the dark one and the creator (I'm assuming a 50/50 split in the case of my illustration, for the sake of conceptual idealism). It's force, though consistently exerted across the Diety Spectrum, can have the greatest influence in the middle region where the influence of the Dark One and the influence of the Creator begin to cancel one another out. The point of minimum influence between the Creator and the Dark One would be the point of Maximum influence for Field of Influence Modulating Factors (on the whole... I'm ignoring the interplay between the fields of influence of the individual modulating factors and looking at them as a group for simplicity). Some of modulating factors may be looked at as evil strictly because they don't pull toward the Creator, though Mashadar is undeinably reprehensible according to the standards on the side of the light well beyond the fact that it exerts a different influence.

In my mind, both the Dieties and the modulating factors like Mashadar though commonly misconceived as THE Good or THE Evil and THE Good must fight THE Evil or all is lost... but I think what you're after Ozy is the morality underlying all of this. All of this I've discussed and that we are talking about is external to the problem that we're looking at. The Dark One, The Creator, Mashadar, etc, truly serve only to augment human nature as much as possible in order to suit their desires. Good and Evil are human concepts, part of the human experience and as such it is definitions and rationalization from human kind that allows for the comprehension of the incomprehensible Deities and modulating factors... The Dark One want's power and control and same goes for the Creator, and the extent of their intent is truly unknown. What we have seen from the DO certainly implies Evil (lack of regard for human life, willingness to do anything to win) but it's possible the DO doesn't intend to be evil... if it feels imprisoned without justification, thinks it has a better way to format the universe to provide a better way to live... well, people often do reprehensible things in order to facilitate revolution, and though the non-rebels would see them as evil at the time they are often later harolded as heros.

Anyway, I digress, it is Human Evil and Human Good that are at the heart of the morality issue here, not necessarily the source of influence. Is one who will kill 100 children for Mashadar more or less evil than one who will kill 100 children for the Dark One, or for that matter, worse than one who will kill 100 children for the sake of the Light? Each person would feel justified. We can't discount human reason and free will either... you could be heavily under the influence of any source and be less Good or Evil than one who is less influenced by that same source by way of your own decisions and actions. One cannot be so deep in the shadow that they cannot be returned to the light is a pretty accurate statement... it's all about influence and choice.

How much influence must be exerted to force someone to do Evil who would not do Evil on their own compared to the influence that must be exerted on someone who is more likely to make that choice on their own?

That's where the morality of Good and Evil comes in... not only must we factor in the sources of influence on any behavior to determine morality, but also the way we (or other intelligent beings) respond in the face of the totality of influence.

So, anyway, here's an idealized illustration of my proposition: Fields of Influence on Morality in Human Behavior:
http://adaptiverealitytech.com/webimagehosting/goodevilandother.jpg

Edit: YAY! :D that was my first substantive post!

[Terez]

I think that good and evil in RJ are a great deal more clear-cut than in other writers' worlds...but that's in comparison to GRRM and Erikson...

There's a good quote from RJ on his blog about good and evil...lemme see if I can find it...

Here we go: (http://www.dragonmount.com/RobertJordan/?p=31)

For Jacham, I am not saying that there is no relative evil, no shades of gray. What I am saying, and complaining about, is that allowing shades of gray has led us all too often to believe that there is nothing except shades of gray. All truths are equal. By that reasoning, Hitler’s reasons for murdering millions of Jews, and others, in the death camps carry as much validity, and are as “right,” as any other opinion regarding him and the camps.

You might say that I have front loaded that, but it wasn’t so long ago that I heard of a number of students in a college class who refused to write papers which called on them to condemn the Holocaust, not because they didn’t believe it happened and not because they were Nazi sympathizers, but because doing so would have required them to be judgmental. All versions of the truth must be given equal weight. That’s the current thinking. And it’s bull. Yes, there are gray areas. Yes, there is relative evil. But that is all too often today taken as an excuse to say that it’s all relative. One man’s perceived evil is another man’s inconvenience. That last is a quote from a man, now dead, who was a terrific writer and a great intellect. I could never argue him down on that one, however. But I never stopped trying.

Relativism or no relativism, however many shades of gray you want to call up, evil still exists, and if you won’t expend the effort to figure out where and what it is, then one day it will swallow you whole.

[Ozymandias]

Thanks for the cool graphic, Gand.

Perhaps its possible that Mashadar, and the darkness in the heart of every human being, resides precisely in the middle of the "spectrum". Most people tend towards one side or the other. But Mashadar was created by people who hated the Shadow so much they were no longer willing to follow the Light. In the end, perhaps they transcended the normal spectrum of good and evil. Its the age old question of whether there is a goal so important that one can sacrifice the principles behind the goal in order to achieve it.

Its an interesting reversal. Aridhol was so desperate to defeat the Shadow in the name of the Light, they end up switching. Instead of using the Light to defeat the Shadow, they use the methods of the Shadow, which in turns works against the goals of the Light. Very strange.

[Weird Harold]

Its an interesting reversal. Aridhol was so desperate to defeat the Shadow in the name of the Light, they end up switching. Instead of using the Light to defeat the Shadow, they use the methods of the Shadow, which in turns works against the goals of the Light. Very strange.

Aridhol/Shadar Logoth, Mashadar, the Ruby Dagger and Padan Fain are not a "third locus" apart from the Creator and Shai'tan; they are simply an illustration of the moral principle, "Evil Is, As Evil Does".

In RJ's world, actions speak louder than words in a very literal way and doing evil deeds, even with the purest of motives, is evil and Evil will consume you if you persist -- literally consume you in the case of Mashadar.

[Terez]

Yeah, I would consider the 'Finns to be more in the middle of the spectrum than Mashadar. The evil of Shadar Logoth is just that...evil, despite being anti-Shadow. No ifs, ands or buts about it...evil.

Also...the creation of the evil of Shadar Logoth was not so much an act of desperation in fighting the Shadow than a tactic of Mordeth's. In other words, the people of Aridhol would never have created it on their own, despite being desperate to fight the Shadow. The intention to fight the Shadow using the Shadow's tactics doesn't make the evil of Shadar Logoth any less evil...

[Ozymandias]

Yeah, I would consider the 'Finns to be more in the middle of the spectrum than Mashadar. The evil of Shadar Logoth is just that...evil, despite being anti-Shadow. No ifs, ands or buts about it...evil.

Also...the creation of the evil of Shadar Logoth was not so much an act of desperation in fighting the Shadow than a tactic of Mordeth's. In other words, the people of Aridhol would never have created it on their own, despite being desperate to fight the Shadow. The intention to fight the Shadow using the Shadow's tactics doesn't make the evil of Shadar Logoth any less evil...

In no way did I mean to imply that the men and women of Shadar Logoth were somehow less evil than the evil embodied by the Shadow... just different. Thats why I was saying a spectrum is not an appropriate term for the morals of this book. Mashadar doesn't fit anywhere on that line. It equally evil to the Shadow, but it also hates it as much (or more) as it hates the Light. Its goals just happen to be very different.

And despite your protestations, the people of Aridhol DID create Mashadar on their own. Mordeth may have been the catalyst, but he brought out nothing that was not lurking in their hearts anyways. Thats why its such an interesting question. If Mashadar is no more than the basic evil lurking with in each person, then what is the Shadow? The forces of chaos? The goals and intentions of these two forces are not at all aligned, yet both are evil; they're not even the same kind of evil. Hence, this isn't merely a struggle between good and bad, despite what RJ may say. Even the most ardent follower of the Light harbors some of that which created Shadar Logoth within him; the most stalwart champion, someone such as Rand. He's never for one second considered turning to the Shadow, he is the paragon of the Light. And yet, his methods at this point, and attitude, are hardly what we would term "good".

[Terez]

Sorry, but I don't believe that Mashadar could have come into existence without Mordeth's assistance. What makes the people of Aridhol different from other people? If Mashadar really is no more than the basic evil lurking within each person, then explain why it came into existence while the Dark One's prison was sealed, and not when it wasn't.

[Ozymandias]

Sorry, but I don't believe that Mashadar could have come into existence without Mordeth's assistance. What makes the people of Aridhol different from other people? If Mashadar really is no more than the basic evil lurking within each person, then explain why it came into existence while the Dark One's prison was sealed, and not when it wasn't.

Well firstly, thank you for proving my point. Mashadar came into existence when the prison was sealed... hence, its unrelated to Shai'tan and the Shadow. Which was my original point; its an entity separate from our defined "evil" being, hence it must be a different sort of evil.

And I already pointed out that Mordeth acted as a catalyst. I'm sure you missed it in the many rambling tangents I went off on. But Mordeth wasn't the source of the evil, any more than an angreal is the source of the Power; its a terrible analogy, I guess. Mordeth brought out the hateful emotions each citizen had, and when they were all out in the open, worked to amplify those emotions. Something I've always been interested in is how much of Mordeth's motivation was actually geared towards defeating the Shadow. But thats tangential. The point is that Mordeth, and Aridhol, were very much diametrically opposed to the Shadow, so much so (and this plays nicely into the cyclical nature of Randland and the Wheel) that they ended up becoming much like that they hated.

My point being, that Mashadar is not evil in the sense that the Dark One is evil. His evil is beyond human comprehension, whereas Mashadar is the manifestation of the human perception of evil. They are not at all the same, nor are they on the same spectrum of evil, hence my triangle idea.

[Terez]

lol, Ozy...my point is that the open prison causes the evil within everyone to come out. That's what happened after Mierin drilled the Bore. Mordeth is what makes the evil of Shadar Logoth different. And just because the evil has different sources doesn't make it in any way fundamentally different...Mordeth was not only the catalyst but obviously the only reason the specific evil of Shadar Logoth came into being at all.

[Mort]

And despite your protestations, the people of Aridhol DID create Mashadar on their own. Mordeth may have been the catalyst, but he brought out nothing that was not lurking in their hearts anyways. Thats why its such an interesting question. If Mashadar is no more than the basic evil lurking with in each person, then what is the Shadow? The forces of chaos? The goals and intentions of these two forces are not at all aligned, yet both are evil; they're not even the same kind of evil. Hence, this isn't merely a struggle between good and bad, despite what RJ may say. Even the most ardent follower of the Light harbors some of that which created Shadar Logoth within him; the most stalwart champion, someone such as Rand. He's never for one second considered turning to the Shadow, he is the paragon of the Light. And yet, his methods at this point, and attitude, are hardly what we would term "good".

Are you saying RJ doesn't know what his own series is about? :)

I remember we've had a huge discussion about the Dark, Light and SL before, probably several times over. I can't remember what we came up with though, if we came up with anything at all :D

It's a very interesting topic indeed. The properties of the entities like the DO, Creator and SL evil define what kind of ending we might expect in book twelve. And how Rand fits into the whole thing. This is a topic with lots of related topics which can easily go off-topic fast :)

Maybe a little off topic musing: I've always been a little bugged with fantasy and their "solutions" to winning against the big bad, or just premisses that are taken for granted.
Example: LOTR, how can they really be sure that the One Ring actually can be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom? Maybe it says so in the Silmarillion (havn't read) but for point of argument I'll let it slide for now :)

There are other truths in fantasy where stuff just seems to be fact, without any real idea of how that is possible to know, like how to kill the big bad and other "has never happened before as far as we know but this is how it's done" type of things.

Example no 2: How can we be sure that at the point of creation, The creator locked the DO into his prison?

Maybe this is just hopes and wishes from a distant past that has now become fact. What if the DO and Creator are both locked into a prison, or seeing it in a different perspective: Locked out from the world of the living. With another agenda than what we have been told.
What will happen if the Light ultimatly wins for example? Is the Creator also out to reshape the world in his image and destroy the Wheel? (Because, how can we know that he actually created the world and wants good?).

I'm thinking, and kinda hoping, that we don't know the whole truth about the WoT world that we've been fed by RJ and taken for truth because the characters in the book take it for the truth.

If the Creator and the DO are two entities who really want the same thing, but have different methods of doing it (The Creator using the good in humans to fight the DO and the DO using the evil in humans to fight the Creator), maybe the only way for the humans to "win", is to have both the Creator and the Do at a stalemate. Hence why for ages and ages, the Bore has been resealed and everything has gone back to normal, because that is the only way the humans can win, or "not lose" is maybe more accurate.

Seeing it in another scale. The fight is an internal struggle within each human being from succumbing to evil. A small portion of people lost that battle, the people of Aridhol, but an evil not projected from the DO, but at the DO, and eventually at everything else too.

Whatever else I've stated up there might or might not be true, maybe the Creator truly is the good guy and all that which the people in WoT takes for granted but I'm thinking this though whch is my main idea (everything else is just several possibilities from this idea:

If evil can spawn from the evil of humans, an evil with real powers that seem magical if you will, maybe the DO and the Creator were both created from the possibility of evil and good from when the first humans came to exist, because they have that inborn possibility in them. This means the Creator did not create the world, he himself along with the DO were manifested as the inborn properties of humans.

Probably didn't make much sense, I should go through the text and fine tune it, but that's not my style at 2 am :D

[Terez]

Maybe a little off topic musing: I've always been a little bugged with fantasy and their "solutions" to winning against the big bad, or just premisses that are taken for granted....

...Example no 2: How can we be sure that at the point of creation, The creator locked the DO into his prison? I get the feeling that no one knew about the Creator until they found out about the Dark One, but how did they find out about the Creator then, or before for that matter? The only thing I can think of is through the Heroes. Since it's been forever since anyone blew the Horn, that would have to be in Tel'aran'rhiod, unless the knowledge of the Creator has been preserved since the last time the Horn was blown (doubtful). We know they've interacted with incarnate people because Gaidal speaks of it when he warns Birgitte against doing it again. The Heroes probably weren't there when it happened, lol...and of course it's a paradox anyway because time technically has neither beginning nor end, and you can see both ways along the wheel. But the dead Heroes remember not just many Ages worth of memories...but full Turnings worth of memories. Where else would the knowledge come from? Who is better equipped to be a philosopher than an immortal being that hangs out in what is essentially the skeleton and the essence of reality? Who better to observe the Pattern of the Ages? They normally can't cheat at the game, either (back to the precepts, and of course the loss of past life memories with each new incarnation). They just watch it unfold. After each life is over, they return to that knowledge of past Turnings, and the fellowship of about 100 others, all of whom are central to important events in each life they live, and together they can put things into perspective between lives. What else do they have to do? As far as we're concerned, the Heroes might not have it all perfectly figured out either, but the details fit rather well for the most part, so it's as good a hypothesis as any for the time being. :D

There are other things in WoT that raise similar questions, and some of them I wouldn't have answered quite the same way of course. :) Just remember....everything is a plot device...everything is a plot device...

[Ozymandias]

Example: LOTR, how can they really be sure that the One Ring actually can be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom? Maybe it says so in the Silmarillion (havn't read) but for point of argument I'll let it slide for now :)

There are other truths in fantasy where stuff just seems to be fact, without any real idea of how that is possible to know, like how to kill the big bad and other "has never happened before as far as we know but this is how it's done" type of things.


Well, being an even bigger LotR fan than WoT (in days long past... I've since upgraded from Aragorn to Rand), I can tell you the answer to that.

The only fire hot enough to melt the magically infused metal of the One Ring was in Mount Doom, and they know this because it was forged there (had to be melted in the forging). Since the One was forged during the lifetimes of the many of the characters of the end of the Second Age, they all knew this, and besideswhich, Gorthaur's instrumental role in creating the other rings probably gave some hints as to how he created the One, and by association, how to destroy the one.

Plus its a symbolic gesture. Bringing the item that holds the enemy's power within it into the heart of his impregnable realm and casting it into the fire... awash with meaning.

[Weird Harold]

I get the feeling that no one knew about the Creator until they found out about the Dark One, but how did they find out about the Creator then, or before for that matter?

One thing that has always bothered me is the assertion that Evil had been forgotten until the Bore was drilled and the DO was able to touch the world.

That may well be, but Semirhage was still a sadist and Moghedien was still a con-artist and Greandal was still an unethical "svengali" and Lanfear was still the archetypal chearleader-from-hell -- I can't see where they were any less "evil" before the bore was drilled than they wer afterwards, they just were more open about their evility.

[caladanbrood]

While there may be an extent of shades of grey in WoT, it is still, at it's base, a fight between the good guys and the evil guys. This takes quite a few forms, be it the struggle against the Black Ajah in the Tower, or the very obvious Dragon vs Shadow, but I see it everywhere within the books. The only possible group you could describe as a shade of grey, I think, is the Seanchan, because they come upon the fight kinda randomly and went about it their own way anyway.

WoT is, in fact, quite regularly one of the first series that gets recommended when someone asks for a good vs evil story. If you compare it to other fantasy that truly is shades-of-grey, it becomes clear exactly how un shady WoT is...

The basis, I think, lies in the motivation for bad acts. In WoT, the evil people are evil purely because they are evil. There's no apparent mitigating circumstances, if you will. The good people are good because they seem to have been born that way (though the good characters in WoT are considerably better written, in general, than the evil ones - many more character flaws etc). Like was mentioned, the Forsaken are helping the Dark One is trying to detroy the world. Which will, in turn, destroy themselves, and despite being in full knowledge of this, they continue to do so. That right there is evil at the very principle of unselfishness. There are no other motivations, other than just being evil.

When a character is evil because of insane amounts of pain inflicted on them, irreparable bitterness to those that caused it etc, like the Crippled God in malazan, that's a shade of grey. When they do evil things because they've been brought up to dominate and take what they want, like the Lannisters in aSoIaF, that's a shade of grey. When they do it because they're getting paid better by the nasty people like the Bondsmagi in the Lies of Locke Lamora, that's a shade of grey.

I'm afraid to say that the good and evil in WoT is remarkably clean cut. Argue all you like about different types of evil that don't like each other, but that's got very little bearing on the fact that it is evil, and for not other reason that being evil.

[Weird Harold]

(though the good characters in WoT are considerably better written, in general, than the evil ones - many more character flaws etc).

I disagree with this contention: For the amount of screen time they actually get, the Forsaken are extremely well defined characters -- complete with major flaws that really define thei characters.

Like was mentioned, the Forsaken are helping the Dark One is trying to detroy the world. Which will, in turn, destroy themselves, and despite being in full knowledge of this, they continue to do so. That right there is evil at the very principle of unselfishness. There are no other motivations, other than just being evil.

Again, I disagree: The only person in the whole series who really seems to understand that the DO's victory means total destruction of the world and everything in it is Ishmael/Moridin. All of the other Forsaken seem to believe the promise of "living forever" and "power over everone else;" most of them would actually prefer a qualified victory that leaves the DO imprisoned and themselves in charge.

[caladanbrood]

Again, I disagree: The only person in the whole series who really seems to understand that the DO's victory means total destruction of the world and everything in it is Ishmael/Moridin. All of the other Forsaken seem to believe the promise of "living forever" and "power over everone else;" most of them would actually prefer a qualified victory that leaves the DO imprisoned and themselves in charge.
Well in that case I think it's simply bad characterisation - they don't show anything near that level of naivety in any other aspects of what they do.

[Weird Harold]

Well in that case I think it's simply bad characterisation - they don't show anything near that level of naivety in any other aspects of what they do.
I don't see that as naivete, but as part and parcel of the self-centered world-view that the Forsaken all have -- that all DF's have, really.

They're not alone in missing the implication of "re-make the world in his own image," BTW. Moridin, Herid Fel, and possibly Min are the only characters in the entire series who make the connection that nobody and no thing will survive if the DO breaks completely free.

The Forsaken -- with the exception of Moridin -- are essentially just small-minded, petty criminals, who thrived under the patronage of the DO; much as anti-semites at all levels thrived under Germany's Third Reich. The Nazi's didn't create the evil of anti-semitism, they simply unleashed it.

Likewise, the DO didn't create the Human Evils (typified by "the seven deadly sins") He simply suppressed the normal restraints that keep people from indulging in them publically.

I'd say that the DO's "evil" is simply a supression of Empathy -- those who would have little consideration for others' feelings without his influence have NO consideration for others' (become Evil) and those who would otherwise have a great deal of empathy for others' feelings simply have less (but remain Good.)

[Uno]

I don't think anything in WOT is very clear-cut at all. The series if full of characters that all think they are on the side of good confronting other characters that do the same. Rand thinks it's his task to unite the Land before the Last Battle, which to him and his dedicated followers is in the service of goodness, but other characters oppose him for good reasons of their own, whether in the service of king and country, or whatever.

To many people in Randland, the Aiel are basically evil, yet the Aiel as a collective despise Darkfriends more than anything else. Meanwhile, the Red Ajah has done some terrible things, but think they do what they do to save the world from the threat of male channelers. The Seanchan represent an authoritarian and extraordinarily repressive social and political system, and they're indirectly working for the Shadow, yet few Seanchan individuals are actually Darkfriends. Many Seanchan officials are selfless and (in their own way) honourable people tirelessly working for the benefit of their empress.

Not even Darkfriends are necessarily completely evil people. Some joined up to become part of something larger than themselves, to feel empowered, or to dabble in some occasional wickedness. Misguided, yes, but not necessarily evil. I don't imagine your basic DF gets any kind of pleasure out of seeing women and children being slaughtered by trollocs. Until an actual agent of the Shadow shows up to draft them into the service of the master they have really never known, they're probably pretty normal people. Hell, Ingtar was basically an accommodationist, believing that since the Shadow seems invincible, it's better to strike some deal with it while you still can.

Innocence lost is one of the major themes running through the entire story. By book four, Rand's doing some things he would never have imagined he could do when he left the Two Rivers. He's increasingly steeling himself to become the heart of stone he believes is required to defeat the Shadow, and while he's clearly a "good" character, he's also doing some rather terrible things. He's willing to sacrifice the lives of many people for what he sees as the greater good.

The Forsaken are pretty evil characters, granted, but they're also pretty human. With the exception of Ishamael, who comes across as an ideologue and true believer (which is basically a form of idealism), they're motivated by quite understandable human desires, whether ambition, resentment, greed, the desire for immortality, or, in one case, love unrequited.

[Ozymandias]

One thing that has always bothered me is the assertion that Evil had been forgotten until the Bore was drilled and the DO was able to touch the world.

That may well be, but Semirhage was still a sadist and Moghedien was still a con-artist and Greandal was still an unethical "svengali" and Lanfear was still the archetypal chearleader-from-hell -- I can't see where they were any less "evil" before the bore was drilled than they wer afterwards, they just were more open about their evility.

Wouldn't this also further my point? They were clearly evil, and this is the type of evil Mashadar represents; the basic negative instincts of every human being. The Dark One was a rallying point, a banner to flock to, so to speak, for those who succumbed to those darker desires, but his form of evil is beyond the comprehension and understanding of humans, even the lieutenants who claim to follow him.

[Neilbert]

Sorry, but I don't believe that Mashadar could have come into existence without Mordeth's assistance. What makes the people of Aridhol different from other people? If Mashadar really is no more than the basic evil lurking within each person, then explain why it came into existence while the Dark One's prison was sealed, and not when it wasn't.

I would argue that the continued existence of the blight renders this a moot point.

[Ozymandias]

The basis, I think, lies in the motivation for bad acts. In WoT, the evil people are evil purely because they are evil. There's no apparent mitigating circumstances, if you will. The good people are good because they seem to have been born that way (though the good characters in WoT are considerably better written, in general, than the evil ones - many more character flaws etc). Like was mentioned, the Forsaken are helping the Dark One is trying to detroy the world. Which will, in turn, destroy themselves, and despite being in full knowledge of this, they continue to do so. That right there is evil at the very principle of unselfishness. There are no other motivations, other than just being evil.

This is about as far from the truth as you can get. I can thnk of half a dozen examples off the top of my head of people who are working for what they think is good, but in the end is a bad end. The Whitecloaks, especially Niall, who tried to undo what Rand had done because he thought his vision of the Last Battle was correct. He didn't mean to hurt humanity, but his actions inadvertantly did. Elaida, who has probably done more harm to the world than any other currently living person.

And as for poorly written characters... given how little time and background we get one people like Semirhage, their personalities are incredibly well defined. The two most. I thought one of the best written characters in the book was Sammael, to be honest. I thought his personality and actions were consistent throughout, which cannot be said of other people in the story.

There are incredible amounts of shades of gray in this story, but that wasn't what I was referring to. Both Mashadar and the Dark One are beings of pure evil; however, they're not the same evil, and they are as far apart as they are from the light. This doesn't constitute a shade of gray, its something greater than that. What was interesting me was how to define that separation.

[Terez]

One thing that has always bothered me is the assertion that Evil had been forgotten until the Bore was drilled and the DO was able to touch the world.
If the Dark One wasn't forgotten, then why did it take over a century for Lews Therin et al. to figure out what was going on? I think there's a big difference between general human selfish tendencies and human action under the influence of the Shadow's evil.
I don't think anything in WOT is very clear-cut at all. The series if full of characters that all think they are on the side of good confronting other characters that do the same. This is about as far from the truth as you can get. I can thnk of half a dozen examples off the top of my head of people who are working for what they think is good, but in the end is a bad end. Just because individual characters do not often have clear-cut loyalties to good or evil does not mean that good and evil are not clearly defined in WoT, and represented clearly by the Dark One and the Creator (though I think the Heroes represent "good" even more clearly, since the Creator does not interfere). After that, it starts to get less clear who's serving who, and yes, there are Darkfriends that will surprise you by showing sympathy or some such. Many authors create multiplicitous characters, and that's good since it reflects real people, but some create worlds where good and evil have no true face, and RJ's world is not one of them. I think this is what Brood was trying to get at. :D
If Mashadar really is no more than the basic evil lurking within each person, then explain why it came into existence while the Dark One's prison was sealed, and not when it wasn't. I would argue that the continued existence of the blight renders this a moot point. Not really - the Blight came into existence when the Dark One was uncovered and grew a great deal over the ~100 years before the Strike. In comparison, it's hardly grown at all for the last 3000 years. It came into existence because of the Dark One. The evil in people came out because of the Dark One.

Mashadar came into existence because of Mordeth. How? Who knows...we know next to nothing about what Mordeth was before he came to Aridhol and what kind of powers he had. He could have been a channeler that was hunted by Aes Sedai, and maybe he figured out how to do something with Tel'aran'rhiod and play with people's dreams. Maybe he figured out how to go there in the flesh...that's supposed to be bad. Maybe he was gentled but could still enter Tel'aran'rhiod. We could probably sit here all day and come up with a bunch of equally plausible scenarios...working with the little bits that we know about Mordeth (mostly from Fain), and the bits we think we know (mostly from Moiraine).

One thing that's obvious is that the evil of Shadar Logoth came into being for a specific purpose in the Pattern, and it's ultimate purpose was to play a part in cleansing saidin. Considering the principles behind the Cleansing, there was no place or thing in existence coming even close to meeting the necessary requirements for destroying the taint. For it to work, it had to be every bit as evil as the Shadow and also opposed to the Shadow. Other than that, is it really all that different from the evil of the Shadow? Evil is evil...

[caladanbrood]

I don't see that as naivete, but as part and parcel of the self-centered world-view that the Forsaken all have -- that all DF's have, really.

The Forsaken -- with the exception of Moridin -- are essentially just small-minded, petty criminals, who thrived under the patronage of the DO; much as anti-semites at all levels thrived under Germany's Third Reich. The Nazi's didn't create the evil of anti-semitism, they simply unleashed it.I would say that analogy is better suited to all darkfriends. The Forsaken are effectively the Dark One's direct messengers, if you like, to the outside world. To stretch a parrallel, the officers and ministers of the party. The very fact that they are where they are implies and necessitates a greater level of understanding.

I'd say that the DO's "evil" is simply a supression of Empathy -- those who would have little consideration for others' feelings without his influence have NO consideration for others' (become Evil) and those who would otherwise have a great deal of empathy for others' feelings simply have less (but remain Good.)
Surely this is the definition of any evil, not just that in WoT - everyone knows, to some extent, what is right and what is wrong. Evil is finding a way to excuse to yourself to doing the wrong things. The point I was trying to make was that they have no apparent reason for doing it other than simply doing evil for evil's sake, and this makes it very clear-cut evil with no mitigating circumstances.

And as for poorly written characters... given how little time and background we get one people like Semirhage, their personalities are incredibly well defined. The two most. I thought one of the best written characters in the book was Sammael, to be honest. I thought his personality and actions were consistent throughout, which cannot be said of other people in the story.
Poorly written is not what I meant by bad characterisation. They're well written characters, but it doesn't mean their actions have that internal consistancy that makes any character in any story believeable. Sammael is probably one of the best exceptions, yes, but the inherant contradiction between what they are doing, and what they should be doing to further their own aims I think is too big to be believeable. And I also don't think it's possible to rise that high without being aware of certain basic fundamentals of what they are doing. At base, they are all very intelligent, which is why I find the belief that they'll somehow be saved from the doom to be so unbelievable.

There are incredible amounts of shades of gray in this story, but that wasn't what I was referring to.
Fair enough, then I was talking about the wrong thing. But evil, especially that of the Dark One is at heart purely selfish. Thus it makes perfect sense that it sees as much of an enemy in anyone who doesn't have the same aims as it, even if that enemy (Mashadar) is generally aspected in the same way.

[Weird Harold]

If the Dark One wasn't forgotten, then why did it take over a century for Lews Therin et al. to figure out what was going on?

I didn't say the DArk One hadn't been forgotten, I said "Evil" had been forgotten:

Up to this time, the denizens of the world had only to deal with the evil within themselves. If motivations for war and hate were removed, then so were the resultant activities. The bore changed all of that. Like a small finger hole in a prison wall, the bore was not large enough to allow the Dark One’s escape, but it was large enough to allow him to touch the world. His touch subtly altered everything that came with its influence. All the base motivations and emotional problems of mankind were enhanced and manipulated, enlarging envy, greed, and anger despite lack of any true motivating factors. All those dissatisfied with their lot in life felt that dissatisfaction intensify. Thievery, assault, murder and even wars began to appear with increasing frequency.

That description of the Age of Legends implies that Evil -- with a capital -- didn't exist, only "evil within" that was more misunderstanding or illness than a force unto itself.

But the existance of the binders, chair of remorse and other restraints and behavior modifiers -- and Semirhage's recollection of finally being given the choice of stilling or binding -- suggest that evil did exist in the AOL, it just wasn't very widespread or problematic.

[the silent speaker]

Not really - the Blight came into existence when the Dark One was uncovered and grew a great deal over the ~100 years before the Strike. In comparison, it's hardly grown at all for the last 3000 years.
Come again? Until the Battle of Tarwin's Gap, there hadn't been a year in living memory that the border stones didn't get moved back. Before the Trolloc Wars, maps showed countries reaching all the way to the Mountains of Dhoom; now people never get close.

[Ozymandias]

Just because individual characters do not often have clear-cut loyalties to good or evil does not mean that good and evil are not clearly defined in WoT, and represented clearly by the Dark One and the Creator (though I think the Heroes represent "good" even more clearly, since the Creator does not interfere). After that, it starts to get less clear who's serving who, and yes, there are Darkfriends that will surprise you by showing sympathy or some such. Many authors create multiplicitous characters, and that's good since it reflects real people, but some create worlds where good and evil have no true face, and RJ's world is not one of them. I think this is what Brood was trying to get at. :D


See, were on very different pages here. I agree, there is a very definite and stated sense of who and what is evil, and what isn't. As in, you can clearly point to certain characters and say "bad guy". But you have that in everything. Just because Mashadar is evil, does not mean it is AS evil, or the same type of evil, as the Dark One. A murderer and a kidnapper are two whole different breeds of criminals, but both are evil.

My point is that its interesting how many different levels of evil there are. I don't mean that as in "A is a 9 on the evil scale, and B is a 10", but that both A and B can be 10's and yet not only be totally different from each other, but both equally diametric in goals and motivations to the faction that is a 0 on the evil scale. Thats what interests me. Both Mashadar and the Dark One are beings or constructs of pure evil and malice. And exactly opposite this, are the forces of the Light, who for the purposes of simplification, are the opposite and a 10 on the good scale. And yet, the two factions that are evil 10's hate each other as much as they hate the good faction. Stupid way to put it... but I hope my point got across.

[Yuri33]

Just because individual characters do not often have clear-cut loyalties to good or evil does not mean that good and evil are not clearly defined in WoT, and represented clearly by the Dark One and the Creator (though I think the Heroes represent "good" even more clearly, since the Creator does not interfere). After that, it starts to get less clear who's serving who, and yes, there are Darkfriends that will surprise you by showing sympathy or some such. Many authors create multiplicitous characters, and that's good since it reflects real people, but some create worlds where good and evil have no true face, and RJ's world is not one of them.

In fact, there is an RJ quote that very clearly states his intention to create a pure evil and a pure good. Humans may not embrace one or the other fully or consistently, but they exist in the WoT.

One thing that's obvious is that the evil of Shadar Logoth came into being for a specific purpose in the Pattern, and it's ultimate purpose was to play a part in cleansing saidin.

No doubt the genesis of Mordeth\Mashadar, and the evil it created, was influenced by the Wheel, since it served as the nexus of many fateful events, as you've explained. However, it does highlight a fundamental paradox--if Mordeth\Mashadar\Shadar Logoth was part of the Wheel's plan, how does it give rise to Padain Fain, who by RJ's own admission, has stepped "outside the Pattern?" I'm not trying to threadjack, but it does highlight one of my objections to the Mirror World=Simulation theory.

Other than that, is it really all that different from the evil of the Shadow? Evil is evil...

I disagree here--to me, there are two fundamental evils at play, and conveniently, they represent two opposing forces.

The evil of the Dark One is nihilism. That is, the world as it exists is without meaning, and so the Dark One aims to remake this "meaningless" world in his image. This is the philosophy that Ishmael\Moridin buys into completely, which separates him from the other Forsaken\bad guys. Hand in hand with nihilism (though it represents a corruption of pure nihilism) is anarchy. Anarchy idealizes a world where the powerful rule the weak (because there is no collective authority), and this is the idea that motivates followers of the Shadow, including all of the Forsaken (except Moridin). Every single Darkfriend is looking for a reward for their service, from immortality (the Forsaken) to more power (mundane Darkfriends). The followers of the Shadow are trying to destroy all connections between man, because that is what a belief born of selfishness and egotism breeds.

The evil of Shadar Logoth was born from a different motivation: paranoia. Mordeth obviously enhanced and cultivated this sentiment, but the paranoia of the citizens of Aridhol caused them to try and find any way they could to discover and rid themselves of what they believed was the Shadow's taint, no matter the cost. Born from this idea is the concept of totalitarianism, or the complete absence of trust of one another (which leads to an absence of privacy). You could say that the Whitecloaks are the modern representatives of this idea (though they remain much less harmful, probably because they don't have Mordeth corrupting their ranks for hundreds of years). The citizens who succumbed to Mordeth\Mashadar wanted to create too many connections between man, a way to constantly monitor and control man, because that is what a belief born of paranoia breeds.

Two evils, representing two extremes\corruptions of human urges, both equally destructive to human virtue, yet fundamentally opposed to one another. In this framework, RJ maintains his idea of absolute good and absolute evil, but still creates the necessary tension within evil to give rise to something like the Cleansing.

[Terez]

Come again? Until the Battle of Tarwin's Gap, there hadn't been a year in living memory that the border stones didn't get moved back. I didn't say it hadn't grown at all - just that, in comparison to how it grew during the 100 or so years between the drilling and the sealing, it hardly grew at all over those 3000 years. ;)
I disagree here--to me, there are two fundamental evils at play, and conveniently, they represent two opposing forces. Just because they represent opposing forces doesn't mean they aren't both equally evil. The motivating factors don't mean much to me - both are equally evil, no matter the flavor.

[Yuri33]

Just because they represent opposing forces doesn't mean they aren't both equally evil...both are equally evil, no matter the flavor.

I never indicated one was more evil than the other. In fact, the Cleansing supports the idea that they were equal. I was just trying to put forth an explanation that would be consistent with what happened at the Cleansing.

The motivating factors don't mean much to me

Those who neglect history are doomed to repeat it... Know thy enemy... etc.

The Whitecloaks are proof that Shadar Logoth's flavor of evil has reared it head again (though with Galad in the lead, that's changing).

Plus, this is TL, isn't this the kind of thing we do? :)

[Marie Curie 7]

Back to one of the original comments about Mashadar:

It isn't a simple spectrum in this series, which is fascinating. I see it as more of a triangle... you have the Dark One, supposedly the personification of evil, and his minions on one side, and Rand & Co on the other as the representation of good. And then, to complicate it, is Mashadar. Which is also evil incarnate, but an evil that hates the ultimate source of evil just as much as it hates good. So instead of a spectrum... you have a triangle, with each point hating its neighbor equally. Which is odd, and unprecedented in fantasy, in my readings.
Yeah, Mashadar "hates" the forces of the Shadow as much as the forces of the Light. In some sense, because it is an entity of some sort, you might say that it is evil incarnate, but it does not really have a mind. RJ refers to Mashadar as unthinking and mindless:

TITLE: Eye of the World
CHAPTER: 20 - Dust on the Wind

"The evil of Shadar Logoth," Moiraine replied. "Mashadar. Unseeing, unthinking, moving through the city as aimlessly as a worm burrows through the earth. If it touches you, you will die." Rand and the others let their horses dance a few quick steps back, but not too far. As much as Rand would have given to be free of the Aes Sedai, she was as safe as home compared to what lay around them.

TITLE: Crown of Swords
CHAPTER: 41 - A Crown of Swords

Head ringing like a struck gong, Rand convulsed, saidin and the Void shattering. Everything was doubled in his eyes, the balconies, the chunks of stone lying about the floor. There seemed to be a pair of the other man overlapping one another, each clutching his head between two hands. Blinking, Rand searched for Mashadar. The wave of shining mist was gone; a glow remained in the balconies above, but dimming, receding, as Rand's eyes began to clear. Even mindless Mashadar fled balefire, it seemed.
We ascribe evilness to Mashadar in part because it grew in some way from the evil of the men of Aridhol. In that sense, it reminds me very much of Machin Shin, which grew somehow in the Ways as a result of the taint on saidin. Unlike the Dark One, however, Mashadar has no conscious plans to remake the world in its image, or any other plans that we would ascribe to a thinking being of pure evil. It seems to me that Mashadar simply hungers, and it is an equal opportunity consumer, whether Trollocs or Sammael or Liah.

I never indicated one was more evil than the other. In fact, the Cleansing supports the idea that they were equal. I was just trying to put forth an explanation that would be consistent with what happened at the Cleansing.
It depends upon what you mean by "equal". :) I would say that the power of Mashadar is certainly not equal to that of the Dark One. Yeah, the evil of Shadar Logoth was enough to "cancel out" the taint. So, we might equate the amount of evilness within Shadar Logoth with the amount of evilness in the taint on saidin, but the taint was just a result of the backlash when the Bore was sealed and is of course not even close to what sort of power it is believed the Dark One could unleash if freed.

[Ozymandias]

No doubt the genesis of Mordeth\Mashadar, and the evil it created, was influenced by the Wheel, since it served as the nexus of many fateful events, as you've explained. However, it does highlight a fundamental paradox--if Mordeth\Mashadar\Shadar Logoth was part of the Wheel's plan, how does it give rise to Padain Fain, who by RJ's own admission, has stepped "outside the Pattern?" I'm not trying to threadjack, but it does highlight one of my objections to the Mirror World=Simulation theory.


I wish you had been around a couple years ago when I had a huge fight with Callandor about this. I believe the Pattern isn't all knowing and all powerful. For example, the Pattern technically controls everything. It is arranging all of the events in Randland to its choosing. Yet, there is a possibility that the Pattern is destroyed, because the Dark One could get free. The opposing view, of course, is that all of this is just nonsense and that the Dark One has been scheduled for a timely demise, in order to save the day. Personally I think thats a load of crap, but some people just don't get off their beliefs no matter what.

[Yuri33]

I wish you had been around a couple years ago when I had a huge fight with Callandor about this. I believe the Pattern isn't all knowing and all powerful. For example, the Pattern technically controls everything. It is arranging all of the events in Randland to its choosing. Yet, there is a possibility that the Pattern is destroyed, because the Dark One could get free. The opposing view, of course, is that all of this is just nonsense and that the Dark One has been scheduled for a timely demise, in order to save the day. Personally I think thats a load of crap, but some people just don't get off their beliefs no matter what.

I'm with you on this, Ozy. See my comments in the following two topics:

http://theoryland.yuku.com/topic/419/t/Is-The-Wheel-of-Time-a-Game.html

http://theoryland.yuku.com/topic/2027/t/What-it-means-to-be-Aes-Sedai.html

I would say that the power of Mashadar is certainly not equal to that of the Dark One.

Fair enough, though it doesn't take away from my assertion that the two kinds of evil I presented represent a plausible framework for the mechanics of the Cleansing.

[Marie Curie 7]

Fair enough, though it doesn't take away from my assertion that the two kinds of evil I presented represent a plausible framework for the mechanics of the Cleansing.

Of course. But RJ explained that straight out on his blog and elsewhere, anyway. :)

For foxhead, I think you'll find this covered elsewhere, but here goes. The evil of Shadar Logoth and the evil of the Shadow might be considered positive and negative poles. They attract, as do the positive and negative poles of two magnets, but if they make contact, the result is more like making contact between the positive and negative poles of your car battery. Big sparks. Really big sparks.

[Yuri33]

I was referring to the characterization of RJ's "positive and negative poles" as nihilism\anarchy vs. totalitarianism, or selfishness\egotism vs. paranoia.

[a dragonburned fool]

Thank you very much for this topic, Ozy, even if I don't completely agree with you, you brought up the base for something really interesting.

If I'm understanding it correctly, the main basis of the statement that Shadar Logoth evil would be as high ranked evil as the Dark One himself are Jordan's words, that "The evil of Shadar Logoth and the evil of the Shadow might be considered positive and negative poles." Without this saying the evol of SL would look rather like something on the level of the Taint, that is not the same as the level of DO himself.

However here, when RJ is speaking about both poles, there is another side of the question. RJ is speaking about two poles in the same sense in that he is speaking about saidin and saidar being two poles. In the explanations about the Cleansing he is definite that Taint and SL-evil are opposite in the same way as the saidin and saidar are opposite. Saidin and Saidar however, opposite poles as they are, represent actually one single entity - the One Power. Thus when RJ is speaking about two poles in this context, he is speaking about two halves of one thing. Therefore the Shadow's evil and the SL-evil should be making together one thing. Simple conclusion.

This makes me also to suspect that mentioning "Shadow's evil" RJ could mean not exactly the full nature of the Dark One, but rather a class of evil nature that derives from DO's direct intervention (as the Taint in the case) as opposed to an evil nature caused by human efforts. But in both cases that evil nature is not the root of the evil itself, but rather a sideeffect, that once created becomes independent in it's existence from it's originator.

It's a common thing in WoT universe, that both the Dark One and the Creator gevie the only the initial impulse, and then the results have their evolution of their own. The Creator even doesn't interfere. The Dark One interferes and strives to control his workings, but actually it's a post factum control. The most frappant example of this is Machin Shin. It came to existence solely because of the taint. It has therefore the nature of Shadow's Evil. But it's independent of Taint's Cleansing, and it's incontrollable by the Shadow - it kils Shadowspawn as eagerly as any other being. But it doesn't touch Fain-Mordeth because of, as RJ had put it, "professional courtesy". In other words, it finds Mordeth-Fain more it's own than any true dark minion. And if we take into account also the striking ressemblance between Mashadar and Machin Shin, it's seen no matter of the negative and positive pole difference, both share the effects of a standalone rogue after-effect mode of existence.

Another consideration is, that we don't know what exactly would be the relation between the Dark one and the usual human evil. I mean that after we saw how much he does inflict spread of evil after his last Bore opening, we have to consider also far echoes from the impact he would make during his previous Bore openings during uncountable previous turnings of the Wheel. In some sense the Dark One always has intervened into the world again and again, as far back into the past as teh Wheel is turning. Thes fact makes it possible that certain amount of DO-influenced residue was never totally cleared from the world.

I would propose something instead of the "traingle" Good - DO - SL. It would be rather the Evil from the one side with it's polarity and from the other side the good, that possibly has it's own polarity. But the Good and Evil are not like a positive and negative poles, RJ never said that about them. They have another kind of opposition. Some that doesn't involve circles and simultaneous attraction and repulsion. A linear, not circular opposition.

and Yuri,
Two evils, representing two extremes\corruptions of human urges, both equally destructive to human virtue, yet fundamentally opposed to one another. In this framework, RJ maintains his idea of absolute good and absolute evil, but still creates the necessary tension within evil to give rise to something like the Cleansing.Actually paranoia is something very prominent in the descriptions RJ gave about DO himself. We don't know what exactly DO wants to do wiht the world, but we know with certaincy that DO suffers paranoia and it's his only known permanent motivation driver save the desire to get free from his prison. And there is a very close similarity of how most people become darkfriends and how Aridhol decided to turn to Mordeth:

tEoTW, ch.19:
"Once it was called Aridhol," Moiraine replied, "and was one of the Ten Nations, the lands that made the Second Covenant, the lands that stood against the Dark One from the first days after the Breaking of the World. In the days when Thorin al Toren al Ban was King of Manetheren, the King of Aridhol was Balwen Mayel, Balwen Ironhand. In a twilight of despair during the Trolloc Wars, when it seemed the Father of Lies must surely conquer, the man called Mordeth came to Balwen's court."
"The same man?" Rand exclaimed, and Mat said, "It couldn't be!" A glance from Moiraine silenced them. Stillness filled the room except for the Aes Sedai's voice.
"Before Mordeth had been long in the city he had Balwen's ear, and soon he was second only to the King. Mordeth whispered poison in Balwen's ear, and Aridhol began to change. Aridhol drew in on itself, hardened. It was said that some would rather see Trollocs come than the men of Aridhol. The victory of the Light is all. That was the battlecry Mordeth gave them, and the men of Aridhol shouted it while their deeds abandoned the Light.Note - it's despair. the same thing that Darkfriends according to RJ usually use to approach potentioal recruits - how the Shadow is deemed to win.

[Ozymandias]

Another consideration is, that we don't know what exactly would be the relation between the Dark one and the usual human evil. I mean that after we saw how much he does inflict spread of evil after his last Bore opening, we have to consider also far echoes from the impact he would make during his previous Bore openings during uncountable previous turnings of the Wheel. In some sense the Dark One always has intervened into the world again and again, as far back into the past as teh Wheel is turning. Thes fact makes it possible that certain amount of DO-influenced residue was never totally cleared from the world.

I would propose something instead of the "traingle" Good - DO - SL. It would be rather the Evil from the one side with it's polarity and from the other side the good, that possibly has it's own polarity. But the Good and Evil are not like a positive and negative poles, RJ never said that about them. They have another kind of opposition. Some that doesn't involve circles and simultaneous attraction and repulsion. A linear, not circular opposition.


I don't agree. I see the evil of the DO and the evil of Mashadar as two totally separate things. And the evil of Machin Shin is a blend of the two; its not under the Dark One's control, but nor is i the mindless, man-made beast that Mashadar is. I don't believe it fled from Padan Fain because of "professional courtesy;" it fled because it found something both totally insane and totally evil. The power of Machin Shin isn't to kill, its to drive people insane. We never hear of it actually killing anything; people get driven mad and get lost in the ways, and starve or fall off into the depths. So if it confronts something as similar to itself as Fain is; the embodiment of both evil and insanity, it naturally would attach itself to Fain. We know that;

TITLE: Great Hunt
CHAPTER: 33 - A Message From the Dark
"No one knows exactly what Machin Shin is," Verin said, "unless, perhaps, it is the essence of madness and cruelty."

We also know that....

TITLE: Eye of the World
CHAPTER: 47 - More Tales of the Wheel
"He escaped, and he did not," Moiraine said. "The Black Wind caught him-and he claimed to understand the voices. Some greeted him as like to them; others feared him.

So we see that Fain is the very essence of madness and cruelty, if Machin Shin (which is also that same essence) greets him as a kindred spirit.

All of which is rather off topic. My point is that the Dark One is a separate evil from Mashadar. When his prison was whole, and he could not touch the world at all, there was still evil in the world. But it was a human evil; greed, ambition (to excess), murders... all that existed. It wasn't, as someone put it so well, the nihilistic evil of Shai'tan. The Forsaken, Ishy excepted, and Darkfriends all want to RULE the world, not destroy it, and this is a very human impulse. Even Shadowspawn have very understandable motives, if more primitive. The Dark One is an evil that most humans cannot understand, which is why its so different from Mashadar. Mashadar is the embodiment of human evil; whatever created it, it still has a basic hunger and thats all that drives it, much as humans have a basic hunger for something, be it power or wealth or knowledge or whatever. And this is a far cry from what the Dark One wants. We even have evidence he supports the use of balefire, which is chaos itself. He can't advocate its use too strongly, or his pawns will desert him, and for the moment he must act through them (and their very HUMAN desires), but in the end, his goal isn't to dominate the Pattern, but destroy it, and thats what makes his such a different breed of evil than that of Mashadar.

I suppose you could view this as two totally separate wars being fought, rolled into one. The forces of Light represent order, which they unwittingly fight for on behalf of the Creator, the ultimate orderer of the universe, against the Dark One, the ultimate producer of chaos. But on a more local scale, Light fights Shadow to maintain the principles of justice and goodness, and much more... limited form of the Light. They fight for their own goals, but in the end represent a much larger and more primordial struggle, without knowing they do.

[a dragonburned fool]

I don't agree. I see the evil of the DO and the evil of Mashadar as two totally separate things. And the evil of Machin Shin is a blend of the two; its not under the Dark One's control, but nor is i the mindless, man-made beast that Mashadar is.How is Machin Shin a blend of two? It is a product of the Taint. Probably Tant's influence on the living matter of the original Ways, but still it's Tant's effect, there's nothing in him that would be manmade. And I don't find any significance in the fact that Mashadar is mindless. Mashadar is only one part of SL-evil, and I still don't understand, why do you speak about Mashadar exclusively. Mordeth has a large range of supernatural forces, all of them as evil as DO's powers, and whatever essence is there behind his powers, it's not reductable to Mashadar. Mashadar itself is not under the control of Mordeth, it's as rogue as a effect as the Black Wind is a rogue effect from Shadow's evil.

I don't believe it fled from Padan Fain because of "professional courtesy;" it fled because it found something both totally insane and totally evil."Professional courtesy" is not my expression but Jordan's. It's figurative of course, but it definitely means, that RJ has some recognition of similarity in his mind when he wrote abou the reaction of Machin Shin to Fain. "Some greeted him as like to them" as the book said in the quote you brought. And Machin Shin didn't fled. And it wasn't mashadar, what the Black Wind met there, but Mashadar's creator - Mordeth, who is a more advanced and more original level of the same Shadar Logoth Evil.

The power of Machin Shin isn't to kill, its to drive people insane. We never hear of it actually killing anything; people get driven mad and get lost in the ways, and starve or fall off into the depths.No, it directly killed Trollocs in the ways. We have seen remnants of Trollocs in the Ways all covered in some black stuff.

So if it confronts something as similar to itself as Fain is; the embodiment of both evil and insanity, it naturally would attach itself to Fain.
And who is Fain? The guy who carries Mordeth, who is the creator and embodiment of Shadar Logoth evil. So Machin Shin naturally atachs to the most Shadar-Logothish thing there is to be found in the world (again Mordeth is more a representation of Shadar Logoth evil than Mashadar).


My point is that the Dark One is a separate evil from Mashadar. When his prison was whole, and he could not touch the world at all, there was still evil in the world. But it was a human evil; greed, ambition (to excess), murders... all that existed.
However when Lanfear driller the Bore it wasn't the first time that Dark One was half-released from his prison and enabled to influence the world. It wasn't the second or the third time either. There is no beginning in the turnings of the Wheel and every time the Wheel turns, DO is released again. He was already released incountable times. And we know that once DO is resealed (again and again) the effects of his interventions do last. The evil he woke up in his followers doesn't diminish. The Blight stays as it is. The Taint stays. The various supernatural effects stay. This means that the working of DO's evil are standing. DO doesn't reinforce them while sealed, so they don't grow and don't get repaired, but they exist. And his workings have a really large scope. The Ages after the next Tarmon Gaidon heal most of these effects. But is everything healed. Healing is a slow process and the Shadow's evil may be quite sneaky if needed.

Even the evil in human behavior remaining in AoL before the Bore, might be the last weak remnant from the previous turning of the Wheel seven Ages ago, when DO was in the world for the last time.
The Dark One is an evil that most humans cannot understand, which is why its so different from Mashadar. Mashadar is the embodiment of human evil; whatever created it, it still has a basic hunger and thats all that drives it, much as humans have a basic hunger for something, be it power or wealth or knowledge or whatever.
Yes it looks like something akin to human motives, but it's let be honest, a good metaphor. It is something to describe Mashadar behavior when it is said "hunger", but since Mashadar doesn't express signs of starvation from the many years, so it doesn't eat in the exact sence of the word, so it's "hunger" is not literally a hunger, but only something ressembling a hunger. And well, Mashadar is quite a primitive being to be understood as embodiment of human vices. The sum of human vices is an integral part of how Mashadar became, but this is one of the example when the whole is not simply the sum of it's parts. What we got as Mashadar is definitely non-human.

But enough about Mashadar. Shadar Logoth Evil is, again, not only the Mashadar. Don't forget Mordeth's supernatural background.

And this is a far cry from what the Dark One wants. We even have evidence he supports the use of balefire, which is chaos itself. He can't advocate its use too strongly, or his pawns will desert him, and for the moment he must act through them (and their very HUMAN desires), but in the end, his goal isn't to dominate the Pattern, but destroy it, and thats what makes his such a different breed of evil than that of Mashadar.Well, DO's motives seem more similar to human motives then Mashadar's. Mashadar is not sentient, but DO is, and as sentient he has plans, desire to have power, control etc, logic etc. Yes, he is not a human and his logic is different from the human logic and his motivation is different. But RJ must remind it to us explicitely, it's not so obvious that he is so different. There are lot of thinks in his motivation, that are easiest to be explained by parallels with human motivation. So RJ describes DO as an "ur-control freak" - something quite understandable for the humans. Well, DO is much more, but he is not so totally different. *finns for example seem to be quite further from human understanding than DO.

I suppose you could view this as two totally separate wars being fought, rolled into one. The forces of Light represent order, which they unwittingly fight for on behalf of the Creator, the ultimate orderer of the universe, against the Dark One, the ultimate producer of chaos.
The Creator being the embodiment of Order? Please! Order is allways something to be permanently maintained. You cannot just write a Constitution of Order and left it to it's own workings. It wouldn't be a real order. And DO has his order too. He is an "ur-control freak". Anybody who could be qualified as "ur-control freak" cannot like chaos as such. DO just needs chaos for another ends. Control needs order. And DO does some quite hard set of discipline. As about Chaos, the Wheel is using Chaos not less than the Shadow in their struggle. The productive side of Chaos is a concept Jordan gives quite good illustrations for it in the books.

But on a more local scale, Light fights Shadow to maintain the principles of justice and goodness, and much more... limited form of the Light. They fight for their own goals, but in the end represent a much larger and more primordial struggle, without knowing they do.We don't know how exactly DO relates to Shadow and how the Creator relates to the Light. But if you want to say here that there is a level in the struggle between Light and Shadow, that isn't quite sentient and that is out of understanding of their divine originators, I would tend to agree. Both deities in WoTonly originate what they do, their work has after that it's life for it's own. On many levels. The law of unwanted effects is true even for the Creator and DO. It's how both Evil and Good can be far from being cohaerent in themselves.

[Ozymandias]

And who is Fain? The guy who carries Mordeth, who is the creator and embodiment of Shadar Logoth evil. So Machin Shin naturally atachs to the most Shadar-Logothish thing there is to be found in the world (again Mordeth is more a representation of Shadar Logoth evil than Mashadar).

I disagree here. I don't think Mashadar was a creation of Mordeth. Mordeth set off the process that created Mashadar, but by no means did he "create" it. Its the creation of thousands of souls so paranoid and hateful that their negativity coalesced into one literal cloud of spite and evil. Mordeth was a catalyst, not a creator. Even during the Trolloc Wars, he had no real power over the citizens but what they granted him. He nurtured and directed their hate, but he did not create it; it was something in all of them that he brought out, and thats a key difference. The Dark One created the Taint. Aes Sedai created the Ways. Mordeth did not create Mashadar. The people of Aridhol did.

However when Lanfear driller the Bore it wasn't the first time that Dark One was half-released from his prison and enabled to influence the world. It wasn't the second or the third time either. There is no beginning in the turnings of the Wheel and every time the Wheel turns, DO is released again. He was already released incountable times. And we know that once DO is resealed (again and again) the effects of his interventions do last. The evil he woke up in his followers doesn't diminish. The Blight stays as it is. The Taint stays. The various supernatural effects stay. This means that the working of DO's evil are standing. DO doesn't reinforce them while sealed, so they don't grow and don't get repaired, but they exist. And his workings have a really large scope. The Ages after the next Tarmon Gaidon heal most of these effects. But is everything healed. Healing is a slow process and the Shadow's evil may be quite sneaky if needed.

Even the evil in human behavior remaining in AoL before the Bore, might be the last weak remnant from the previous turning of the Wheel seven Ages ago, when DO was in the world for the last time.

This is an argument we will never settle, but my opinion, which I say I have no way of proving, is that humans are, well, human. They're going to want wealth and power no matter what. In fact, this is proven by the very fact someone drilled a hole in the DO's prison. Ambition. They wanted a way to do greater things, to have more power. Maybe this is the crux of our disagreement, but I am of the honest belief that the people of Randland in every Age wre just people, with all the strength and weakness that people in our world have. The Dark One may exploit that weakness, much as Mordeth did to Aridhol, but he is not the root cause of it. But... in an instance where nothing can be proven, I suppose we agree to disagree.

Yes it looks like something akin to human motives, but it's let be honest, a good metaphor. It is something to describe Mashadar behavior when it is said "hunger", but since Mashadar doesn't express signs of starvation from the many years, so it doesn't eat in the exact sence of the word, so it's "hunger" is not literally a hunger, but only something ressembling a hunger. And well, Mashadar is quite a primitive being to be understood as embodiment of human vices. The sum of human vices is an integral part of how Mashadar became, but this is one of the example when the whole is not simply the sum of it's parts. What we got as Mashadar is definitely non-human.

But enough about Mashadar. Shadar Logoth Evil is, again, not only the Mashadar. Don't forget Mordeth's supernatural background.

Well the human hunger for power is not technically a "hunger" either. But I think you understand the sense I use it in; it is always looking for, and wanting, to consume more souls. Hunger is used for the word "want" here; it doesn't imply a physical need, but merely that its only goal is to consume.

, DO's motives seem more similar to human motives then Mashadar's. Mashadar is not sentient, but DO is, and as sentient he has plans, desire to have power, control etc, logic etc. Yes, he is not a human and his logic is different from the human logic and his motivation is different. But RJ must remind it to us explicitely, it's not so obvious that he is so different. There are lot of thinks in his motivation, that are easiest to be explained by parallels with human motivation. So RJ describes DO as an "ur-control freak" - something quite understandable for the humans. Well, DO is much more, but he is not so totally different. *finns for example seem to be quite further from human understanding than DO.

Couldn't disagree more, DBF. The *finns seem to be well within the range of human emotions; they want something, once again I'll use hunger, and they trade value for value. Thats a very human trait. Human beings may not have the same needs, nor understand precisely the need, but the basic principle is the same.

The DO is totally different. He wants to destroy the universe. I mean, in a nutshell, thats what it is. He doesn't want to rule the Pattern, he wants to destroy it. That kind of nihilism is beyond comprehension; no sane individual wants to destoy everything, merely to rule it, and the Chosen prove this to us. His most devoted, most evil lieutenants... and they fight for a totally different cause!


don't know how exactly DO relates to Shadow and how the Creator relates to the Light. But if you want to say here that there is a level in the struggle between Light and Shadow, that isn't quite sentient and that is out of understanding of their divine originators, I would tend to agree. Both deities in WoTonly originate what they do, their work has after that it's life for it's own. On many levels. The law of unwanted effects is true even for the Creator and DO. It's how both Evil and Good can be far from being cohaerent in themselves.

[a dragonburned fool]

I disagree here. I don't think Mashadar was a creation of Mordeth. Mordeth set off the process that created Mashadar, but by no means did he "create" it.WHo knows what Mordeth's exact role was. But it's not about him being exactly "creator" what I intended to say here. Mordeth got something from the Shadar Logoth, something very different from every sitizen of Aridhol. He ended as a singular personality with very impressive supernatural powers. That's a very important component of the Shadar Logoth Evil. Mordeth got some special power - and when there is a single guy with powers and thousands of sitizens just consumed by some cloud of this power, I couldn't help but to decide, that this single guy has a level of importance at least comparable to the level of importance of the cloud as whole. How else is it so that all the Aridhol sitizens perished and only Mordeth remained with his powers?

This is an argument we will never settle, but my opinion, which I say I have no way of proving, is that humans are, well, human. They're going to want wealth and power no matter what. In fact, this is proven by the very fact someone drilled a hole in the DO's prison. Ambition. They wanted a way to do greater things, to have more power. Maybe this is the crux of our disagreement, but I am of the honest belief that the people of Randland in every Age wre just people, with all the strength and weakness that people in our world have. The Dark One may exploit that weakness, much as Mordeth did to Aridhol, but he is not the root cause of it. But... in an instance where nothing can be proven, I suppose we agree to disagree.All the "hust humans" in Randland are ultimately created by a sentient being that is supposed to be Good. Which fact couldn't be meaningless about the human nature as such. It is not an accident that caused the human nature to be what it is. There are too much sentience involved in the very foundation of the universe. And too much moral alignment too. Many things could be blamed on Creator's imperfectness and the scope of freedom and responsibility he wanted the humans to do the things for themselves. But to blame everything on the Creator would mean that we just ignore the fact that DO had numerous times during the Ages already massively intervening into the world. When Lanfear drilled the Bore she did it not for the forst time. She re-drilled the Bore. The would before the Bore was far from be guaranteed free from any DO's previous influence. And old influence doesn't stop to be influence only because of being Ages old.

Well the human hunger for power is not technically a "hunger" either. But I think you understand the sense I use it in; it is always looking for, and wanting, to consume more souls. Hunger is used for the word "want" here; it doesn't imply a physical need, but merely that its only goal is to consume.Of course you used it metaphorically and it was my point. You used "hunger" as a metaphor for wanting something unspecified. The metaphor was good. But it doesn't cahnge the fact that we don't know what Mashadar exactly does want. We know only that it ends in killing of living beings. But all we know that there are allways many possible motivations behind any case of "wanting" that ends in killing living beings. If I understand you correctly, Mashadar should want exactly what the sitizens of Aridhol wanted before they died. It would be a good hypothesis, but unfortunately it's a hypothesis not supported by any evidence I could think of.

Couldn't disagree more, DBF. The *finns seem to be well within the range of human emotions; they want something, once again I'll use hunger, and they trade value for value. Thats a very human trait. Human beings may not have the same needs, nor understand precisely the need, but the basic principle is the same.

The DO is totally different. He wants to destroy the universe. I mean, in a nutshell, thats what it is. He doesn't want to rule the Pattern, he wants to destroy it. That kind of nihilism is beyond comprehension; no sane individual wants to destoy everything, merely to rule it, and the Chosen prove this to us. His most devoted, most evil lieutenants... and they fight for a totally different cause!
Are you saying that just destroying something that is not you and that does annoy you a lot is a desire beyond human understanding? I have the feeling that some desire like that occurs to me every time when I here a mosquitto buzzing around my ears. Well with DO and the world the scale is ... er ... different, but DO's scale couldn't be small in any case and the world as whole is actually nothing else as something outside of him and something he was hardly been asked whether he would agree with it's existence in the moment of Creation.

And the idea for him to rule the Pattern, well, the Pattern is a work of the other guy, bearing all the style and mannierisms he wouldn't approve. I'm not surprised he wouldn't like to rule it. He might rebuild it after his image or not, I don't know, in either case this wouldn't make any diffference for the current world's inhabitants. But he is not an inhabitant of the universe. He was never such an inhabitant. For him it is not The world, but just some unpleasant stuff.

[Ozymandias]

All the "hust humans" in Randland are ultimately created by a sentient being that is supposed to be Good. Which fact couldn't be meaningless about the human nature as such. It is not an accident that caused the human nature to be what it is. There are too much sentience involved in the very foundation of the universe. And too much moral alignment too. Many things could be blamed on Creator's imperfectness and the scope of freedom and responsibility he wanted the humans to do the things for themselves. But to blame everything on the Creator would mean that we just ignore the fact that DO had numerous times during the Ages already massively intervening into the world. When Lanfear drilled the Bore she did it not for the forst time. She re-drilled the Bore. The would before the Bore was far from be guaranteed free from any DO's previous influence. And old influence doesn't stop to be influence only because of being Ages old.

Nonsense. There was an initial moment at which the prison was whole. This we know, both from the books and from common sense. Therefore, there was a time when the Dark One was incapable of influencing the world. I acknowledge and agree that his influence from each successive drilling would echo throughout even Ages he was imprisoned in, but there WAS a first drilling. And before that... what was the cause of evil prior to the first touch of the Dark One on the world?

course you used it metaphorically and it was my point. You used "hunger" as a metaphor for wanting something unspecified. The metaphor was good. But it doesn't cahnge the fact that we don't know what Mashadar exactly does want. We know only that it ends in killing of living beings. But all we know that there are allways many possible motivations behind any case of "wanting" that ends in killing living beings. If I understand you correctly, Mashadar should want exactly what the sitizens of Aridhol wanted before they died. It would be a good hypothesis, but unfortunately it's a hypothesis not supported by any evidence I could think of.

But that isn't my hypothesis at all. Mashadar isn't some soort of super being, a fusion of the living will of Aridhol. Its a synthesis of all the negative emotion that emanated from the city prior to its destruction. If any of you have read Richard Matheson, you'll know of his story where one man, who is bitter and angry all the time, has such intense emotion that inanimate objects in his house absorb it and begin attacking him, they're so infused with hate.

Mashadar is the same thing. It doesn't have a will, in the sense that you or I or Mordeth does. Its a cloud of hate, built off the collective negativity of an entire city, a city that hated everyone and everything so strongly that their emotion took on a form of life (a primitive form) and destroyed them. It hungers in the sense that it lives, such as it can be said to live, to destroy other things and consume them. It has a small degree of sentience; it shys away from balefire. What it wants is immaterial. What matters is that it does want, and it obviously wants something that is not aligned with what the Dark One wants, as it is not under its control.

you saying that just destroying something that is not you and that does annoy you a lot is a desire beyond human understanding? I have the feeling that some desire like that occurs to me every time when I here a mosquitto buzzing around my ears. Well with DO and the world the scale is ... er ... different, but DO's scale couldn't be small in any case and the world as whole is actually nothing else as something outside of him and something he was hardly been asked whether he would agree with it's existence in the moment of Creation.

Put it this way. We can safely say there are three primary forces in the world. The Creator, who for all intents and purposes does not intervene any longer, the Pattern, which works the will of the Creator, and the Dark One, who is nihilistic and wishes to destroy everything simply because it exists.

I swat a mosquito because it bothers me, and interferes with me living my life. That is a very human desire, the desire for comfort and happiness. If I swat the mosquito, there is an entire world to live in. The Dark One breaking the Wheel is not at all analogous, and its incredibly disingenuous to imply it. If the Wheel is destroyed, then what? We know the Dark One isn't as powerful as the Creator, so he will not be able to challenge him (or her) for supremacy in the void that would result. In fact you could easily make the argument that the Dark One exists only in relation to reality, and that destroying all the worlds and universes would entail his own demise. But I won't go there.

The point is that the Dark One desires annihilation for the sake of annihilation. There is no ulterior motive. No desire to rule, or have power and wealth. He wants to do away with existence merely because he feels like it, and this is without question a feeling outside the human experience. Its not a question of revenge, nor of ultimate power. He just wants everything to burn.


And the idea for him to rule the Pattern, well, the Pattern is a work of the other guy, bearing all the style and mannierisms he wouldn't approve. I'm not surprised he wouldn't like to rule it. He might rebuild it after his image or not, I don't know, in either case this wouldn't make any diffference for the current world's inhabitants. But he is not an inhabitant of the universe. He was never such an inhabitant. For him it is not The world, but just some unpleasant stuff.

Which doesn't explain why he would want it destroyed. And hypothetically, if he does destroy everything the Creator has wrought, wouldn't THAT make the Creator intervene? And we know that the Creator is far more powerful than Shai'tan, just as God is more powerful by far than Satan.

[Yuri33]

The DO doesn't want to destroy the universe\Pattern\Wheel. He wants to remake it in his image. But that isn't incompatible with nihilism--he believes the current incarnation of the Wheel is without redeemable meaning.

ADBF, the Shadow doesn't recruit through despair:

TOR QoW Feb 05 - July 05
Week 4 Question: How exactly does one become a Darkfriend? How does the recruiting structure for the Black Ajah work? Being Mistress of Novices, was Merean particularly active in recruiting?

Robert Jordan Answers: By and large, each cell of Darkfriends recruits people it thinks are likely candidates, though they need to do so very carefully, studying them, sounding them out slowly. Darkfriends are always on the lookout for new members, since they feel very much like an oppressed minority and want to increase their numbers. Once a move to recruit is made, though, either it succeeds or the failed candidate dies.

For someone seeking actively to become a Darkfriend, generally one begins by trying to attract the attention of those who already are Darkfriends. One fairly safe way is to let comments drop that indicate that you don't think the Light is all it's cracked up to be, that praying to the Creator seems useless etc. If this comes to the wrong ears, you might be in varying degrees of trouble depending on what country you are in and who it is that overhears, but you are unlikely to get worse than a flogging from the authorities and possibly only a stern warning to watch your talk from somebody in a tavern, perhaps accompanied by a clout on the ear. Although someone might decide to slip a knife into you in some rougher areas of some towns. It's only relatively safe. By the by, claiming not to believe in the Creator is a good way to avoid recruitment by the Darkfriends. After all, if there is no Creator, how can the Dark One be imprisoned, and if he isn't, then why hasn't he taken over and rewarded the faithful? One of the fastest ways to attract attention is to show yourself willing to kill to advance yourself or simply for gain. That doesn't mean that every strongarm who's willing to slit a throat to steal a purse is a Darkfriend. Some of those might well be horrified by the suggestion. This method has its drawbacks, of course, since if you attract the attention of the authorities first, you are very likely to end up with a noose around your neck or a trip to the headsman's block.

In the White Tower, Black sisters watch novices and Accepted closely for any indication that they might be leaning toward the Shadow or susceptible to the promises of the Shadow. They also watch other sisters, since people do change. Not every Black sister was recruited on the day she gained the shawl nor soon after. Merean had a fine position for watching novices and Accepted, but many sisters teach. Some do little else, but others take turns at it for various periods, so Merean was not necessarily the primary recruiter during her time as Mistress of Novices, not even among those in her charge.

The Shadow recruits through selfishness and the desire for personal gain.

As far as the DO being an "ur-control freak." RJ does indeed use this description, but it's in a very specific context. From the same source:

Week 9 Question: We've read in the Forsaken's POVs that channeling in the Pit of Doom would have some...unpleasant...effects. Is this related to the nature of the opposition of the One Power to the True Power or is it the Dark One consciously acting against the channeler? If so, why should the Dark One care?

Robert Jordan Answers:It is a matter of the Dark One consciously acting, though interactions between the One Power and him, the source of the True Power, can be unpredictable. The Dark One is not pleasant. He is also highly distrustful. He…dislikes…things that happen outside his control or not at his order. Call him the ur-control freak. Combine these two facts, and anyone channeling in the Pit of Doom without permission can expect swift punishment on the assumption that failure to ask permission means you intend to do something he won't like. It isn't that he believes anyone can harm him, just that he is in charge, and your failure to ask permission, your presumed intention to do something he wouldn't like, means that your faithfulness quotient has just suffered a severe downturn. Myself, I'd sell you short in a skinny minute.

I'm not claiming that the DO doesn't desires control, but his reasons for control stem from considering himself the most powerful being in existence (he doesn't believe anyone can harm him). He's the strong, you're the weak. If he believes you are doing something he doesn't like, "your faithfulness quotient has just suffered a severe downturn. Myself, I'd sell you short in a skinny minute." This isn't incompatible with a lawless, anarchist ideal.

Besides, a more direct representation of his intentions\goals is echoed multiple times in the series:

"Let the Lord of Chaos rule..."

[Marie Curie 7]

And I don't find any significance in the fact that Mashadar is mindless. Mashadar is only one part of SL-evil, and I still don't understand, why do you speak about Mashadar exclusively. Mordeth has a large range of supernatural forces, all of them as evil as DO's powers, and whatever essence is there behind his powers, it's not reductable to Mashadar. Mashadar itself is not under the control of Mordeth, it's as rogue as a effect as the Black Wind is a rogue effect from Shadow's evil.
I disagree, since you seem to be suggesting that Mordeth is in some way a greater or more important part of the evil of Shadar Logoth than Mashadar. But from everything said in the books, the evil of Shadar Logoth is Mashadar - they're equivalent:

TITLE: The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time
CHAPTER: 10 - Rise and Fall of the Ten Nations

Other nations fell from within. Such was the nation of Aridhol, once closely allied with Manetheren. Its capital city, also called Aridhol, fell to something dark that was not of the Shadow. King Balwen Mayel, known as Balwen Ironhand, in great despair over the course of the wars, gladly welcomed a man called Mordeth to his court; Mordeth won Balwen's ear and mind; Aridhol would use the tactics of the Shadow against the Shadow. It is said that Aridhol festered under the poison Mordeth spread, turning in on itself to become hardened and cruel. Its people spoke of the Light while abandoning the Light. Eventually, their suspicion and hate created something unspeakably evil that began to feed on that which created it. Now nothing remains of the people and nation of Aridhol. The ruined city that was once known as Aridhol still stands, but it bears a new name: Shadar Logoth, the Place Where the Shadow Waits. The evil that was born there still lives, locked in the bedrock beneath the city, hungering for wayward souls. That evil has been named Mashadar. Late in the Trolloc Wars, an army of Trolloc, Myrddraal, Dreadlords and Darkfriends camped within the ruins. They never came out. Since that day, no Trolloc or Shadowspawn will willingly set foot in Shadar Logoth.

WHo knows what Mordeth's exact role was. But it's not about him being exactly "creator" what I intended to say here. Mordeth got something from the Shadar Logoth, something very different from every sitizen of Aridhol. He ended as a singular personality with very impressive supernatural powers. That's a very important component of the Shadar Logoth Evil. Mordeth got some special power - and when there is a single guy with powers and thousands of sitizens just consumed by some cloud of this power, I couldn't help but to decide, that this single guy has a level of importance at least comparable to the level of importance of the cloud as whole. How else is it so that all the Aridhol sitizens perished and only Mordeth remained with his powers?

According to RJ, Mashadar did not consume the people of Aridhol. The people of Aridhol killed one another - RJ said that everybody was dead before Mashadar formed.


Everyone in SL killed each other. Mashadar occurred after everyone in SL was dead.

Of course you used it metaphorically and it was my point. You used "hunger" as a metaphor for wanting something unspecified. The metaphor was good. But it doesn't cahnge the fact that we don't know what Mashadar exactly does want. We know only that it ends in killing of living beings. But all we know that there are allways many possible motivations behind any case of "wanting" that ends in killing living beings. If I understand you correctly, Mashadar should want exactly what the sitizens of Aridhol wanted before they died. It would be a good hypothesis, but unfortunately it's a hypothesis not supported by any evidence I could think of.

On the contrary, we know exactly what Mashadar wants - from the BWB quote above, Mashadar hungers for souls.

[Neilbert]

The DO doesn't want to destroy the universe\Pattern\Wheel. He wants to remake it in his image.

Well, there is some debate about this. Most of the Forsaken would fall into the "remake it in his image" category, with Ishamael believing in complete destruction of everything.

The fact of the matter is that we don't know what the Dark One would do if he won. RJ even took the time to avoid answering the question.

[GonzoTheGreat]

RJ even took the time to avoid answering the question.
Did he say "Read and find out"?
If so, that would suggest a somewhat different end to the series than most people assume there will be.

[Ozymandias]

According to RJ, Mashadar did not consume the people of Aridhol. The people of Aridhol killed one another - RJ said that everybody was dead before Mashadar formed.


Well, your quote from the BWB directly contradicts that, then, when it says that it "created something unspeakably evil". Mashadar might not have taken a physical manifestation yet, but it existed while the city still lived.

[a dragonburned fool]

There was an initial moment at which the prison was whole. This we know, both from the books and from common sense. Therefore, there was a time when the Dark One was incapable of influencing the world. I acknowledge and agree that his influence from each successive drilling would echo throughout even Ages he was imprisoned in, but there WAS a first drilling. And before that... what was the cause of evil prior to the first touch of the Dark One on the world?Do we know it? It there anything that could be without an internal paradox refered as the first touch of the Dark One? I don't think so. The books are repeatedly speaking about how there is neither a beginning nor an end of the Wheel's turnings. The only book reference about the "moment of creation" that I can remember is the saying that "DO and all the Forsaken are imprisoned by the Creator in Shayol Ghul in the moment of creation", something that is far from the truth. So the books do not support even the mere existence of such a "moment of creation".

As about the common sense, well our common sense is against the very idea of the circular time, that is the core of the "Wheel of Time" concept. Therefore the common sense in the WoT universe should be slightly different. It's an universe without the second law of thermodynamics and without stars going nova, without all the physical consequencies of linear time. The world is created, but you cannot pick up any time and say "this is the moment, Year 1 After Creation". There is no such Year 1 though. Every world's year you could think about has Ages and Ages and Ages before it. Or at least, if you pick the first turning of the Wheel, you wouldn't be able to distinguish it as first against all the consecutive turnings. In this sence the hypothetic "moment of creation" cannot be placed in the "Time". "Time" is circular and has no beginnings - that's the axiom. Eventually DO, if he wins, would break the Wheel and this means he will destroy time. If he does this, it would be something beyond the frames of Time. There would be no moment in the time when the world would end, but "Time" itself would perish. Thus the option that DO breaks the Wheel will not contradict the axiom that the Wheel has no ends. There are no beginnings and ends inside the Wheel. The only ultimate beginnings and endings are outside the Wheel. The Drilling of the Bore is an event inside the Wheel. Therefore a Drilling of the Bore just cannot be a real beginning. If there is a "Frist Drilling" you wouldn't be able to think about it in the terms of the Lanfear's Drilling. The "First Drilling" because of being first should be in some sense outside Time. Which means that it would be incomparable to the Drilling we know. Any Drilling that is comparable to Lanfear's Drilling is not the First Drilling. You cannot place the "first touch" of DO into the WoT Universe's chronology, exactly as you cannot place there DO's ultimate touch. From the point of view of the WoT universe DO always had (periodically) a touch into the world. Speaking about his first touch is meaningless in the context of the WoT Universe.

Look it in such a way: The world of the Wheel of Time is fundamentally dependent of the Time being eternally turning. If the Time doesn't turn eternally, than it's not the world at all. It's something different, whatever, but it's not the world. The world is world only if the time is in something like a inertial frame of reference. Before the time was set to turn forever there was no world, in the best case there was a would-be-world, something that we from the real world could possibly consider a full-fledged world, but a randlander couldn't. For a randlander a world is only something where time is turning in Ages without beginning and without an end. Anything else is not an world. In the moment of creation the proto-world might, who knows, be undistinguishable against a full-fledged world by a superficial observer, but fundamentally it would be something absolutely different, something totally incomparable. That's why breaking the Wheel would be necessary a total disaster. Afret the Wheelbreaking, there could be another world, maybe (who knows) undistinguishable from the WoT-world by a superficial observer. But the fundamentals of the current WoT-world are in the Wheel, so without the Wheel the world cannot persist. From the material of the dead world something could (or couldn't) be created anew, but there would be absolute discontinuity between the WoT-world and the After-Wheelbreaking world. As there is absolute discontinuity between the WoT-world and the In-the moment-of-creation-world. From the perspective of the WoT-world anything before or after the Wheel absolutely doesn't matter.

But there are still two entities for them it deos matter what is there before and after the Wheel. Those are the Creator and Do, the only two ones who are outside the Wheel. The beginning and the end of the Wheel doesn't mean a discontinuity for them. DO and the Creator are the only beings who can have meaningful goals beyond the Wheel and it's world. DO is the only one (save the Creator) for whom the destruction of the world wouldn't be destruction of the All.

In fact you could easily make the argument that the Dark One exists only in relation to reality, and that destroying all the worlds and universes would entail his own demise. But I won't go there.It never occured to me to think about DO existing only in relation to reality. But it's a concept unappliable to WoT cosmology. From the real-world teachings about similar dependance it's seen that such a statement is allways bound with denial of deity's transcendence. But it is explicitely stated that DO is outside of the Wheel, this means that DO is a transcendent entity. THis implies that he is independent of the world existence. Sorry, but there is just no place for Angelus Silesius in a WoT context. :)

We can safely say there are three primary forces in the world. The Creator, who for all intents and purposes does not intervene any longer, the Pattern, which works the will of the Creator, and the Dark One, who is nihilistic and wishes to destroy everything simply because it exists.

I swat a mosquito because it bothers me, and interferes with me living my life. That is a very human desire, the desire for comfort and happiness. If I swat the mosquito, there is an entire world to live in. The Dark One breaking the Wheel is not at all analogous, and its incredibly disingenuous to imply it. If the Wheel is destroyed, then what?Wait just for a moment. You say that he wants to destroy "everything" simply "because" it exist. Where is this "because" from? He might desire to destroy the Wheel because of any possible motive. How do you know that he is nihilistically motivated? The only definite thing said by RJ about his inner motivation was that he is an "ur-control freak", not that he is a nihilist.

Inhabitants of the world cannot have any meaningful goal beyond the existance of the Wheel, because the existence of teh Wheel is fundamental for everything that matter for them. But that is not true for DO. Because he is outside the Wheel. That's the meaning of the difference between being inside the Wheel or outside it - if you are inside, your existence is function of It's existence, but if you are outside you have a scope beyond the Wheel. For randlanders it's impossible to have meaningful goals beyond the Wheel, but DO can have such goals. And for randlanders the Wourld of the Wheel is everything, but not for DO. For DO the material of the world left after the destruction of the Wheel might be a quite acceptable "everything".

The main difference between human and DO's motivation here is not a qualitative one (about what exactly he wants) but a quantitative one - it's a matter of scope, of level of existence. DO is not restricted by things that restrict the human nature. He is not restricted in his existence by the Wheel. What is "everything" for him is different from what is "everything" for humans. After that he can have a human-like motivation or he could have something completely different, it doesn't matter actually. He is so different from humans, because he applies his motivation to something different from the "everything" humans apply their motivation to. He's on a different level of existence, and he could have a completely human psychology after that, it doesn't matter, he would be different from humans.

It's a situation like that of a dreamwalker finding a rogue nightmare in TAR. The dreamwalker comes into the dream and annihilates it by disbelieve. Every creature inside the nightmare will stop to exist. From the perspective of the nighmare beings it's the destruction of everything. But not from the perspective of the dreamwalker. If a creature inside a nightmare would have own sentience it could reason that the dreamwalker would want to destroy everything just because it exists. But the nightmare creature is unlike the dreamwalker existentially restricted to the nightmare.


ADBF, the Shadow doesn't recruit through despair
~~~ the quote omitted~~~
The Shadow recruits through selfishness and the desire for personal gain.

As far as the DO being an "ur-control freak." RJ does indeed use this description, but it's in a very specific context.No, the Shadow recruits through a combination of despair and personal gain. Some darkfriends like Ingtar seem to be recruited by despair only. Some would be undoubtedly recruited only by promises of personal gain. But the quote you provided and I had in mind previously, does say that the most usual case is a combination of despair and selfishness. The recruits are not approached in the manner of "You want to become rich and powerfull no matter how?". They are approached by "Whatever you want, you cannot hope to achieve it by going the ways of the world and the Pattern and the Light". This means that darkfriend recruiters doesn't need those who would like to get a dark promise just because it's quicker or easier than getting it by Light's way. No the DF-recruiter wants those who don't believe that a way other than the dark way could help. That's despair.

And to compare it to Arhidol sitizens, the end of the city with all the splash of greed and envy, does mean that they besides of being in despair were also quite succeptible to selfishness, so it's sasfely to be said they were droven into Mordeth's hands also by the combination of despair and selfishness.

And about the context of the "ur-control freak phrase" it was not about how DO's opinion on the world in general, but it's the only example of how RJ explain's DO's motivation to react to any specific events inside the world. As such it does express a style. It is only a singular occurence of this style, so the common style could be misjudged, but this single occurence means also that the hypothesis that the "control-freak" is description of his style in general, is much more supported than any hypothesis that this is not his style.

I'm not claiming that the DO doesn't desires control, but his reasons for control stem from considering himself the most powerful being in existence (he doesn't believe anyone can harm him). He's the strong, you're the weak. If he believes you are doing something he doesn't like, "your faithfulness quotient has just suffered a severe downturn. Myself, I'd sell you short in a skinny minute." This isn't incompatible with a lawless, anarchist ideal.Is this the "lawless, anarchist ideal" or just the despotic ideal? In the anarchist ideal the strong one would like the other ones be independent and lawless too. In the despotic ideal there is a strict distinction between one I, who is lawless, and everybody else who has to obey strictly. Dark One's ideal is rather the second one, not the first one, right? DO puts his Chosen to fight against each other, but he never enjoys anything that could be noted as chalenge against him. An anarchist would rather enjoy such a chalenge.

Fain-Mordeth expresses the same ideal - strict laws for everybody else, and no rules binding me.

I disagree, since you seem to be suggesting that Mordeth is in some way a greater or more important part of the evil of Shadar Logoth than Mashadar. But from everything said in the books, the evil of Shadar Logoth is Mashadar - they're equivalentYes I'm really stating that Mordeth is the more important part of the Shadar Logoth evil. Mashadar is just the more visible evil. So it's easy to refer to it as "the Shadar Logoth evil" when lecturing before the uneducated (as is the case in the quote you gave, Marie). Moiraine is prone to use somewhat exaggerated rhetorics in such a cases.

Mashadar is not the only thing that is refered as "the evil of Shadar Logoth" though. For example:
tEotW, chapter 41:
"Oh, it is catching," Moiraine said, "and your... protection would not save you." She pointed to the ruby-hilted dagger, careful not to let her finger touch it. The blade trembled as Mat strained to reach her with it. "This is from Shadar Logoth. There is not a pebble of that city that is not tainted and dangerous to bring outside the walls, and this is far more than a pebble. The evil that killed Shadar Logoth is in it, and in Mat, too, now. Suspicion and hatred so strong that even those closest are seen as enemies, rooted so deep in the bone that eventually the only thought left is to kill. By carrying the dagger beyond the walls of Shadar Logoth he freed it, this seed of it, from what bound it to that place. It will have waxed and waned in him, what he is in the heart of him fighting what the contagion of Mashadar sought to make him, but now the battle inside him is almost done, and he almost defeated. Soon, if it does not kill him first, he will spread that evil like a plague wherever he goes. Just as one scratch from that blade is enough to infect and destroy, so, soon, a few minutes with Mat will be just as deadly."It definitely doesn't mean that Mashadar is in Mat now. But later fain/Mordeth contemplates how the ruby dagger is actually a part of him, how he is whole when getting back the dagger.

But it doesn't cahnge the fact that we don't know what Mashadar exactly does want. We know only that it ends in killing of living beings. But all we know that there are allways many possible motivations behind any case of "wanting" that ends in killing living beings. If I understand you correctly, Mashadar should want exactly what the sitizens of Aridhol wanted before they died. It would be a good hypothesis, but unfortunately it's a hypothesis not supported by any evidence I could think of.According to RJ, Mashadar did not consume the people of Aridhol. The people of Aridhol killed one another - RJ said that everybody was dead before Mashadar formed.Nobody said that Mashadar consumed the people of Aridhol. I said that Mashadar is known to kill living beings after it begun to exist, for a reason not exactly known. And I said that unlike all the sitizens of Aridhol who perished, Mordeth survived and this fact is enough to point out Mordeth's exceptionality.

On the contrary, we know exactly what Mashadar wants - from the BWB quote above, Mashadar hungers for souls.Which means what? Thet Mashadar would need souls for it's maintaining, or that it is attracted to them for reason it doesn't understand and it just happens that said souls perish, somehow, or that it hates the very existence of outer souls, or that ... whatever. Please, saying that it hungers for souls is an impressive metaphor describing Mashadar's behavior, describing what to expect from Mashadar, but saying exactly nothing about Mashadar's inner reasons to behave so. It's a description, not an explanation.

[Ozymandias]

Do we know it? It there anything that could be without an internal paradox refered as the first touch of the Dark One? I don't think so. The books are repeatedly speaking about how there is neither a beginning nor an end of the Wheel's turnings. The only book reference about the "moment of creation" that I can remember is the saying that "DO and all the Forsaken are imprisoned by the Creator in Shayol Ghul in the moment of creation", something that is far from the truth. So the books do not support even the mere existence of such a "moment of creation".


Yes, we do know it. I'll get to the rest of this pleasingly long post (will kill some of the boredom at my internship) in a bit, but this one I actually have a quote to refute with, and not just opinion... so, hooray.

TITLE: Lord of Chaos
CHAPTER: 18 - A Taste of Solitude
Herid shook his head. For a moment he stared at his pipe, once more realizing it was unlit, and Rand thought he might have to recall him again, but instead Herid blinked and went on. "Someone had to make it sometime. For the first time, that is. Unless you think the Creator made the Dark One's prison with a hole and patch to begin." His eyebrows, waggled at the suggestion. "No, it was whole in the beginning...

Now Herid Fel isn't the be all and end all of information on the Dark One, but this seems to make a lot of sense. Everything in Randland is cyclical, of course, but there IS an initial moment, because there is a Creator, and he certainly wouldn't have trapped the most evil being possible in a flawed prison. I think its pretty safe to assume there was a time when the Dark One had not yet touched the world in any capacity.

And our common sense, is, by the way, very much in line with the sense of circular time. The phrase "history repeats itself" is a common one... and if you dismiss that, which you very well can, the entire nature of our universe is cyclical (or we have scientific evidence to support such a theory, at least); expansion, contraction, explosion. Rinse and repeat. Over and over.

Of course, its not precisely the same as the cycle of the Wheel, but some allowance has to be made for this being a fantasy novel. My point was that the idea of cyclical time is very much ingrained in our consciousness.

[a dragonburned fool]

A good quote Ozy. But I think it is not about what we argued about. What Herid Fell is speaking here is not about a hypothetical first turning of the Wheel, but of the need for somebody to make the Prison whole again once each turning. Actually Herid Fell underlines the eternal repetition, not the initiality. The prison has to be whole before Mierin drilled it. It has to be whole each time before the next Mierin drills it. Therefore the making of the Prison whole must happen inside teh time, again and again. That's unless the Prison is created with the patch. Herid's conclusion here is rather that making the Prison whole is not necessarily Creator's task. It is rather a task that can be done repeatedly from inside the Wheel. Or it means that the Creator periodically intervenes. But in all cases it means that the Prison being whole is not an initial setting, but a periodical occurence. No absolute beginning, no absolute end, every beginning and end is relative. So thank you for the quote Ozy, it speaks also for me.

[Ozymandias]

Do we know it? It there anything that could be without an internal paradox refered as the first touch of the Dark One? I don't think so. The books are repeatedly speaking about how there is neither a beginning nor an end of the Wheel's turnings. The only book reference about the "moment of creation" that I can remember is the saying that "DO and all the Forsaken are imprisoned by the Creator in Shayol Ghul in the moment of creation", something that is far from the truth. So the books do not support even the mere existence of such a "moment of creation".

As about the common sense, well our common sense is against the very idea of the circular time, that is the core of the "Wheel of Time" concept. Therefore the common sense in the WoT universe should be slightly different. It's an universe without the second law of thermodynamics and without stars going nova, without all the physical consequencies of linear time. The world is created, but you cannot pick up any time and say "this is the moment, Year 1 After Creation". There is no such Year 1 though. Every world's year you could think about has Ages and Ages and Ages before it. Or at least, if you pick the first turning of the Wheel, you wouldn't be able to distinguish it as first against all the consecutive turnings. In this sence the hypothetic "moment of creation" cannot be placed in the "Time". "Time" is circular and has no beginnings - that's the axiom. Eventually DO, if he wins, would break the Wheel and this means he will destroy time. If he does this, it would be something beyond the frames of Time. There would be no moment in the time when the world would end, but "Time" itself would perish. Thus the option that DO breaks the Wheel will not contradict the axiom that the Wheel has no ends. There are no beginnings and ends inside the Wheel. The only ultimate beginnings and endings are outside the Wheel. The Drilling of the Bore is an event inside the Wheel. Therefore a Drilling of the Bore just cannot be a real beginning. If there is a "Frist Drilling" you wouldn't be able to think about it in the terms of the Lanfear's Drilling. The "First Drilling" because of being first should be in some sense outside Time. Which means that it would be incomparable to the Drilling we know. Any Drilling that is comparable to Lanfear's Drilling is not the First Drilling. You cannot place the "first touch" of DO into the WoT Universe's chronology, exactly as you cannot place there DO's ultimate touch. From the point of view of the WoT universe DO always had (periodically) a touch into the world. Speaking about his first touch is meaningless in the context of the WoT Universe.

Of course they support the idea of an immediate moment of creation. There is a Creator (yes, capitalized), in case you had forgotten, and the very existence of such a being means he CREATED something (ahhhhhh...), which implies a definite beginning point.

Your entire concept of the Dark One always having influence on the world is predicated on the belief that time is infinite in either direction and also cyclical, and therefore that no matter how many Ages back you go, there will always be one previously where the Dark One was loose, or not as constrained. Its an excellent theory, aside from the major flaw that we're told there is a moment of creation, because the very existence of a creator Being implies that the world and the Wheel had to be made and set to spinning by that being.

Your point that there are no beginnings and endings inside the Wheel and the Pattern is a good one. However, the Dark One's ability to "remake" the Wheel implies existence outside of it. Otherwise, he would be under the control of the Wheel and therefore would pose no threat. And if the Dark One exists outside the Wheel, he has the potential to make a final ending of the Pattern, just as the Creator made a beginning.

Look at it in such a way: The world of the Wheel of Time is fundamentally dependent of the Time being eternally turning. If the Time doesn't turn eternally, than it's not the world at all. It's something different, whatever, but it's not the world. The world is world only if the time is in something like a inertial frame of reference. Before the time was set to turn forever there was no world, in the best case there was a would-be-world, something that we from the real world could possibly consider a full-fledged world, but a randlander couldn't. For a randlander a world is only something where time is turning in Ages without beginning and without an end. Anything else is not an world. In the moment of creation the proto-world might, who knows, be undistinguishable against a full-fledged world by a superficial observer, but fundamentally it would be something absolutely different, something totally incomparable. That's why breaking the Wheel would be necessary a total disaster. Afret the Wheelbreaking, there could be another world, maybe (who knows) undistinguishable from the WoT-world by a superficial observer. But the fundamentals of the current WoT-world are in the Wheel, so without the Wheel the world cannot persist. From the material of the dead world something could (or couldn't) be created anew, but there would be absolute discontinuity between the WoT-world and the After-Wheelbreaking world. As there is absolute discontinuity between the WoT-world and the In-the moment-of-creation-world. From the perspective of the WoT-world anything before or after the Wheel absolutely doesn't matter.

But we know that ALL worlds are subject to the ONE Pattern, or at the very least it is strongly implied (and makes a great deal of sense, at that). So once again, your basic idea is predicated on a false assumption. We have evidence that all worlds are related in the Pattern in several instances, most notably tGH. Lets start with the basic assumption that a thread in the Pattern cannot jump out of the Pattern. As in, if travel between worlds is possible, which it is, then every world must be a part of the same Pattern.

TITLE: Great Hunt
CHAPTER: 16 - In the Mirror of Darkness
"She is a fascinating woman, isn't she? Some of the Elders don't know as much as she does about history-especially the Age of Legends-and about-oh, yes. She says you were right about the Ways, Rand. The Aes Sedai, some of them, studied worlds like this, and that study was the basis of how they grew the Ways. She says there are worlds where it is time rather than distance that changes. Spend a day in one of those, and you might come back to find a year has passed in the real world, or twenty. Or it could be the other way round. Those worlds - this one, all the others - are reflections of the real world, she says. This one seems pale to us because it is a weak reflection, a world that had little chance of ever being. Others are almost as likely as ours. Those are as solid as our world, and have people. The same people, she says, Rand. Imagine it! You could go to one of them and meet yourself. The Pattern has infinite variation, she says, and every variation that can be, will be."

If I can jump to another world, that means that world must be part of the Pattern. Case closed. The entire universe of these books is dependant on the Wheel turning, your right, because the entire universe is contained within the Pattern, which in turn is woven by the Wheel. However, we have established that the Dark One must exist outside the Pattern, outside the physical universe, and therefore the Creator must as well. If the Creator exists outside the Pattern, then he must have been the one to set the Wheel turning. There was a SINGLE moment of Creation (nd imprisonment), so time is NOT infinite. It is most definitely finite, and this is a major hole in your philosophy.

just for a moment. You say that he wants to destroy "everything" simply "because" it exist. Where is this "because" from? He might desire to destroy the Wheel because of any possible motive. How do you know that he is nihilistically motivated? The only definite thing said by RJ about his inner motivation was that he is an "ur-control freak", not that he is a nihilist.

Marie already mentioned this, but your taking this control thing way too far. Robert Jordan never said his inner motivation was that he's a control freak. In fact, there was a very rational motivation for his paranoid control. We only see this in relation to channeling at the Bore, and he is controlling about it because he feels that anyone channeling without permission is going to do something to harm him. Which is a pretty reasonable belief, given what he is and how most of the world DOES want to harm him. He doesn't necessarily desire control over worlds. He wants to break the Wheel of Time and remake it in his own image.

We do not know what his own image would be; his nature is a mystery. But we know he wants to break the Wheel. Since the Wheel drives the Pattern, and the Pattern is all physical existence, every world in every universe and all its Mirror Worlds, that means that the Dark One wants to end existence as we know it. Thats not control. If he wanted control, he would aim to control the Wheel, not break it. He wants to destroy it. That, my friend, is called nihilism.

Inhabitants of the world cannot have any meaningful goal beyond the existance of the Wheel, because the existence of teh Wheel is fundamental for everything that matter for them. But that is not true for DO. Because he is outside the Wheel. That's the meaning of the difference between being inside the Wheel or outside it - if you are inside, your existence is function of It's existence, but if you are outside you have a scope beyond the Wheel. For randlanders it's impossible to have meaningful goals beyond the Wheel, but DO can have such goals. And for randlanders the Wourld of the Wheel is everything, but not for DO. For DO the material of the world left after the destruction of the Wheel might be a quite acceptable "everything".

BUT THERE ISNT ANYTHING OUTSIDE THE WHEEL!!!! We know that the Pattern encompasses all physical reality. All that exists outside of it is the Creator, and the Dark One (and this discussion has led to some interesting thoughts on the Creator I'll post later). The Dark One is NOT more powerful than the Creator; we know this because his imprisonment proves it. The Dark One can be considered the embodiment of chaos; his references to letting the "Lord of Chaos" rule could very well be references to himself, no? I don't think thats canon, but its at least as textually and logically tenable as your philosophy, and probably a great deal more so in most cases.

In any case, the only evidence we have of the motivation of Shai'tan is his desire to break the Wheel of Time. the Wheel represents reality, and everything therein. Therefore, the Dark One wants to destroy reality. Easy. We can't make wild assertations that he's going to use the rubble to make his own Wheel; there is NO basis for this and an be none, and you can't argue that just because you don't like the alternative option of total destruction.


It's a situation like that of a dreamwalker finding a rogue nightmare in TAR. The dreamwalker comes into the dream and annihilates it by disbelieve. Every creature inside the nightmare will stop to exist. From the perspective of the nighmare beings it's the destruction of everything. But not from the perspective of the dreamwalker. If a creature inside a nightmare would have own sentience it could reason that the dreamwalker would want to destroy everything just because it exists. But the nightmare creature is unlike the dreamwalker existentially restricted to the nightmare.

This is just silly. Your not making comprehensive arguments. The obvious flaw with this one is that eventually, there is an ultimate level of existence. The Dark One and the Creator aren't two neighbors on some higher level of reality fighting over a loom; they are metaphysical beings. Robert Jordan tells us through the story that there is a God (the Creator), in the Deist tradition of the word, and a Satan, Shai'tan (see a phonological similarity?). How or why they exist is unimportant except that they do. We only have what RJ told us, and I don't recall him saying that the Dark One is a dreamwalker and we're his dream. So lets get off these silly tangents; your distracting from the main argument and not even doing it convincingly, besides.


Yes, I'm really stating that Mordeth is the more important part of the Shadar Logoth evil. Mashadar is just the more visible evil. So it's easy to refer to it as "the Shadar Logoth evil" when lecturing before the uneducated (as is the case in the quote you gave, Marie). Moiraine is prone to use somewhat exaggerated rhetorics in such a cases.

Mashadar is not the only thing that is refered as "the evil of Shadar Logoth" though. For example:
It definitely doesn't mean that Mashadar is in Mat now. But later fain/Mordeth contemplates how the ruby dagger is actually a part of him, how he is whole when getting back the dagger.

I won' go through and find all the quotes, but we know that the evil of Aridhol settled into its very foundations. As in, into every single object in the city limits. If we assume, and we certainly can, that the evil settled equally into every object, then when the dagger goes, a part of Mashadar and its foundational evil is missing.

As for Mordeth... it isn't outside the realm of possibility that he is a manifestation of Mashadar's will. How it would happen, I do not know, but clearly he isn't human any longer. When he slips through the wall, he displays many fog or mist-like qualities (well, one, but its an important one). What if he is the part of Mashadar that wants to spread and consume? If would make perfect sense that he considers the dagger a part of him, then, and would also explain the motivation of Mordeth AND Mashadar.

Which means what? Thet Mashadar would need souls for it's maintaining, or that it is attracted to them for reason it doesn't understand and it just happens that said souls perish, somehow, or that it hates the very existence of outer souls, or that ... whatever. Please, saying that it hungers for souls is an impressive metaphor describing Mashadar's behavior, describing what to expect from Mashadar, but saying exactly nothing about Mashadar's inner reasons to behave so. It's a description, not an explanation.

It absolutely is an explanation, and if you took the time to look into it, you'd see that. Marie provided the quote, so I won't waste space providing it again, you can scroll up and look, but it says in the BWB that the people of Aridhol became so hateful and paranoid that they gave birth to something that was the embodiment of hate and suspicion. The reasoning is obvious; it hates all life and desires to consume it (and we KNOW it desires to consume souls, this is stated in not one but two distinct places, from Moiraine in EotW and the BWB) because its very nature is built off of hating and being suspicious of other living creatures. In many ways, its motivation is immaterial; all that matters is that it DOES desire to consume souls. Its not my metaphor, if it even is a metaphor, its Robert Jordan's, so don't tell me its a meaningless bit of word fluffery.

[a dragonburned fool]

Of course they support the idea of an immediate moment of creation. There is a Creator (yes, capitalized), in case you had forgotten, and the very existence of such a being means he CREATED something (ahhhhhh...), which implies a definite beginning point.

Your entire concept of the Dark One always having influence on the world is predicated on the belief that time is infinite in either direction and also cyclical, and therefore that no matter how many Ages back you go, there will always be one previously where the Dark One was loose, or not as constrained. Its an excellent theory, aside from the major flaw that we're told there is a moment of creation, because the very existence of a creator Being implies that the world and the Wheel had to be made and set to spinning by that being.But who said that the creation should happen necessarily in one singular moment placeable in the world's chronology? Couldn't the Creator do the Creation in some other manner? As a process through all the time of world's evolvement, or on some plane of existence beyond Time, or in any other convoluted relation to world's time? Why should the only option for the world's creation be a Day 1 in world's history? Honestly I don't see why such a concept on the relation of the Creation of Everything to chronological time to be more understandable by human common sense than any other more exotic relation. Such a concept of Creation seems to be obvious in a cultural tradition grown uner the influence of the christianity or the judaism or the islam. But all those religions go together with the concept of linear time. In the religions that have a cyclic time the singularity of the creation would be no more so obvious. Whether the universe is created periodically again and again or something else, the options are immense. We cannot forget that the world has a Creator, but we cannot forget what every book says us in the beginning of chapter 1 either. Unfortunately you try to comprehend the WoT concept of World's Creator by just discarding the idea of cyclic time. However in WoT universe the cyclic time is not just the repetition of the four seasons and of some cycles in historical developement. In this universe the second law of thermodynamics (about the enthropy) is not valid and the stars never go nova. It does mean that the circularity if time is valid not only for civilisations and for the biological entities, but it is ruling also over the most fundamental physical substructure of the universe. If a natural law of our world contradicts the idea of eternal cyclical repetition of everything, than we see this law made invalid for the WoT universe. So we cannot discard the eternal circularity of Time. We should find a way to keep both the Wheel and the Creator in the WoT unification theory, no matter how tricky it could appear to be. ;)

I personally prefer for the following hypothesis: The Creator made all the material needed for the world to function and then he started teh Supreme Controlling Process known under the name of "Wheel of Time". Once the Wheel started to turn all the things became Organized in a manner, that their state became absolutely undistinguishable from the state as if it was so forever. The universe was created so that it was from the very first moment undistinguishable from an universe that was allways such. So despite of being created, the universe was effectively from forever. It's like how if a physical object is in a inertial frame of reference, than looking on the objects parameters you would be unable to deduce anything about how this object came into the inertial frame of reference, or even whether it ever was sometime outside this frame. You should need a source of information external of the frame of reference. Any event outside this frame of reference would be ... er well... unreferable.

Your point that there are no beginnings and endings inside the Wheel and the Pattern is a good one. However, the Dark One's ability to "remake" the Wheel implies existence outside of it. Otherwise, he would be under the control of the Wheel and therefore would pose no threat. And if the Dark One exists outside the Wheel, he has the potential to make a final ending of the Pattern, just as the Creator made a beginning.Yes DO's ability to remake the world implies existence outside the Wheel. Now only DO and the Creator are outside of the Wheel. But that's now when there is the Wheel. But once there is no more Wheel, then everything will happen to be suddenly outside of the Wheel. Think about the Wheel as the unlimate mechanism of control. The Wheel controls everything that is except both deities. It organizes everything. Once the Wheel is destroyed, the everything is no more organized and DO is free to organize it otherwise. Well, he's free to do so only in the measure of his ability and of whether the Creator would let him do it, but this is a secondary question. What matters here is that for DO the everything will not vanish with the destruction of the Wheel. Only the system that organizes everything will vanish. But for the inhabitants of the WoT Universe, who are dependent in their existence from the organization system, it would make no difference against the absolute destruction of everything. It doesn't matter for a randlander whether the Wheel-less would will have some other organization or will it have nothing at all. But for DO it does matter. DO is not dependent of the Wheel's organization and he can afford trying to make another organization.

And you are right to make the connection between the moment of Wheel's destruction (if DO wins) and the Creation. What is valid about the relation to Time of one would be valid also for the other. My point is that both the moment of Creation and the moment of Wheel-destruction can be only placed outside of the Wheel itself, outside of everything referable to anything inside the Pattern. The rules of how things relate to each other are governed by the Wheel. If DO breaks the Wheel, all the system of relation would be gone. This moment couldn't relate to any single event inside the Wheel's history, because every event has sense, is event only in the context of the Wheel. Every event, every topic in history consists of interrelation between threads. No more Wheel means no more threads. What would interrelate then. The material of the threads maybe. But the material of the threads cannot be meaningfully refered as this or that moment in the history. To point a moment in a history, to say this event follows that event, you need a system of coordinates. It you destroy the system of the coordinates you may still have all the stuff, but you cannot restore the order between them. A new coordinates system may appear, but if you have no rule to translate between both systems (and you can have such a rule if you have a meta-system common for both the old and the new system), you would be still unable to refer to any of the points of the old system.

Probably this metaphor could help: let imagine a game of chess. Every piece has a very definite potential, rules of what can happen and what not are very strict, and from a certain position in the game one could conclude that it would end with checkmate in three moves. But suddenly one of the players (DO) says: stop playing this stupid chess, from this moment on we play with different rules. And he gives a set of rules and the game continues with the new rules. The pieces are still there and their positions between them are still the same, but everything is different. The king is no more a king, the queen is no more a queen, it's no more the 47th move in the game and the next move is not the 48th. It's a different game having nothing in common with the original, despite of all the common pieces left. The original chess game even has no end. Nothing happened at the 47th move from the original game's perspective. There are rules that say when a chess game ends and these rules are not met. The chess game is left unended whatever DO would make thereafter. The original chess game never continued. It's just gone.

In these metaphor the pieces are left intact, while in Tarmon Gaidon it would be hardly so, but actually it doesn't matter. If, for the sake of argument, we assume that for some reason an observer from outside would see no difference at all between the world before the Wheel is broken and after that, this would change nothing from a randlander's perspective. We may have Jonny Randlander with incact body and intact mind and intact memory and intact environement, but it would be not the same person, not the same one from the Wheel Universe. It's another game having nothing in common with the game of the Wheel. It would be not the end of the Third Age. Whatever Jonny Ex-Randlander could think he is remembering, it would be nothing like continuation and the Third Age would be something that never existed. Neither any other Age.

Once DO wins, he will achieve a state that the Wheel's Universe never existed. Never! And I have a very good proof in the books that this will be exactly so:
Balefire.

Balefire is deletion of part of a thread (or threads). Once balefire strikes it deletes all the events before it happens. There's no time for this thread for a period before the hit. But balefire destroys only part of a limited number of threads. DO's destruction of the Wheel means that all threads of all times are gone at once. This means taht if DO succeeds so, then it would appear that nothing never happened in the worlds of the Wheel. Actually if Do wins, there would be never such thing as Wheel's universe. We don't know what would it mean for DO. With balefire we had still the Wheel to carry about the Pattern's integrity and it re-arranged the events and took control over the lose areas of teh reality. If there is no Wheel to take care more, who knows what would be there. It could be anything. It could be the Big Bang in it's real-world meaning if you want. Or it would be just DO's way to shut down the music of Creator's party, that doesn't let DO sleep. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. It doesn't say anything definitely about the state without the Wheel. But it is very definite, that the moment of destruction has no place in the timeline of the Wheel.

And because the moment of destruction cannot be part of Wheel's timeline, the moment of Creation also couldn't.

Marie already mentioned this, but your taking this control thing way too far. Robert Jordan never said his inner motivation was that he's a control freak. In fact, there was a very rational motivation for his paranoid control. We only see this in relation to channeling at the Bore, and he is controlling about it because he feels that anyone channeling without permission is going to do something to harm him. Which is a pretty reasonable belief, given what he is and how most of the world DOES want to harm him. He doesn't necessarily desire control over worlds. He wants to break the Wheel of Time and remake it in his own image.Naming somebody "control-freak" seems like a hinting about inner motivation. You are right that RJ might not mean it. He might mean inner motivation he might not. But it is the only known for me piece of DO's characterisation, that could possibly count as inner motivation. It's limited in the context too, no objections. It might be just external behaviorial description - that looked from outside DO acts just like a control-freak. Any theory build on this "freak" words would depend on whether an interpretation is right, and it means it's never solid, only likely. But what is certain is that there is (as I know, if you find something to counter this please point it) no mentioning by RJ either in the books or outside them that DO follows a nihilistic ideal. It is completely your conclusion based solely on your view of how DO should look on everything. More specificaly, correct me if I'm wrong, that you states that for DO "everything" is the same as the Wheel. I disagree with this statement. For all the insiders of the WoT universe it would be true, but NOT for DO and for teh Creator. They are outside the Wheel. That means that the Wheel doesn't govern their inner organisation. That means that they can possibly have principles of organisation different of that of the Wheel. And if they have it, they could apply it as coordinate system for the All. The Wheel is there and it obstructs DO to apply his principle freely, because the Wheel is already there impressing it's ways. But if DO removes the Wheel, he could have the chance for the infamous "remake". Because he has a principle of universe's organisation different from that of the Wheel. It doesn't matter how sound and effective this principle could be. It doesn't matter even whether DO really would have such a principle. My point is that there is a place for such principle in DO's nature, and that makes his relation to the Wheel radically different from the relation of any randlander to it. My point is that we cannot know what DO wants after the Wheelbreaking, because he has too many options.

Since the Wheel drives the Pattern, and the Pattern is all physical existence, every world in every universe and all its Mirror Worlds, that means that the Dark One wants to end existence as we know it.True, he wants to end all the existence as we know it. I'll underline it again : as we know it. Under the Wheel there is no other possible mode of existence. Because the Wheel takes care for it to be so. Without the Wheel to take care, who knows what possible mode teh existence can have. Possibly DO knows. Well, then after the Wheelbreaking he'll have existence as DO knows it. Not as we know it, but as he knows it. Because of his existence outside the Wheel his knowledge is not restricted by the Wheel and he can know quite more than us.


But we know that ALL worlds are subject to the ONE Pattern, or at the very least it is strongly implied (and makes a great deal of sense, at that). So once again, your basic idea is predicated on a false assumption. We have evidence that all worlds are related in the Pattern in several instances, most notably tGH. Lets start with the basic assumption that a thread in the Pattern cannot jump out of the Pattern.If I used the word "world" in such a manner, that it could be confused with the many worlds encompassed by the same Pattern, than it is my fault. Under "world" I meant Universe, the compound of all world currently under the Wheel. Of course all the worlds are subject to one Wheel, because it's exactly what the Wheel and the Pattern are for - to govern everything. The Wheel and the Pattern are the Universal Controlling Mechanism. Which make the situation for the insiders and teh outsiders totally different. For the outsiders (the Creator and DO) it's only a big mechanism currently turned on. For one of the outsiders, whom I wouldn't name, it's even not the best possible mechanism and he might like to replace it with another mechanism. For the insiders though it's effectively everything possible, because the organization of these insiders is part of the big organization of the Wheel, and without the Wheel they cannot be refer to anything and be refered by anything. Without the Wheel they would be totally out of context.


The Dark One is NOT more powerful than the Creator; we know this because his imprisonment proves it. The Dark One can be considered the embodiment of chaos; his references to letting the "Lord of Chaos" rule could very well be references to himself, no? I don't think thats canon, but its at least as textually and logically tenable as your philosophy, and probably a great deal more so in most cases.Well, I'm against the idea that DO=Chaos, because chaos has a very creative side. Actually usually philosophies trying to think the concept of creativity usually cannot avoid the concept of creatice chaos. An element of chaos is needed for something new to have birth - it's so often people say things like that. And since creativity has to overpass some initial order, it has to include elements of Chaos. The process of destroying is chaos, but the process of giving birth is chaos too, right?. Well even a good entertainment has to include the element of chaos to be really fun! DO has special relation to chaos in this phase of his struggle, because he has a very strong order against him. But ince this order is made no more a problem for him, would he be an embodiment of chaos anymore? I personally doubt very much. But that's another question.

In any case, the only evidence we have of the motivation of Shai'tan is his desire to break the Wheel of Time. the Wheel represents reality, and everything therein. Therefore, the Dark One wants to destroy reality. Easy.No, the Wheel doesn't represent reality, it controls reality, it organises reality. One may say - it's task is not representation of reality, but the presentation of it. Roughly we could look at the Wheel-Reality relation like at the soul-body relation. Remove teh soul from Johnny Randlander, and there is no more Johnny Randlander, but his body might remain fully functional and even able to host a Forsaken you would like to recycle into him. Break the Wheel and you get Wheelless reality - useless for us not necessarily useless for DO.

The obvious flaw with this one is that eventually, there is an ultimate level of existence. The Dark One and the Creator aren't two neighbors on some higher level of reality fighting over a loom; they are metaphysical beings. Robert Jordan tells us through the story that there is a God (the Creator), in the Deist tradition of the word, and a Satan, Shai'tan (see a phonological similarity?). How or why they exist is unimportant except that they do. We only have what RJ told us, and I don't recall him saying that the Dark One is a dreamwalker and we're his dream. So lets get off these silly tangents; your distracting from the main argument and not even doing it convincingly, besides.The purpose for me to bring this analogy is because the dreamwalker is transcendent relating to the dream. The WoT universe is not Creator's dream, but that's not important. Important is the very relation of transcendence to certain closed system. The Wheel is also a closed system, right? A very huge closed system, but a closed system. The dreamowner and the dreamwalker are transcentent to this system. It is not important where is the ultimate level of reality where the dreamwalker and teh dreamowner could meet in the waked world. It is not important whether there is such a reality or not. The dream-owner could have experienced nothing but halutinations all his waked life, it doesn't change anything about the fact that he is dreaming in the Gap of Infinity and this dreaming causes a standalone bubble in the void. For anything inside the dream it doesn't matter where the dream-owner ultimately lives, it doesn't matter whether there is any "somewhere" where the dream-owner ultimately does live. The only thing that matters is that he is. The sleeping one is like a god for his dream. His dream might go to other people or they can go in TAR proper and begin to live without their originator. In this case such a dream would have a deist god. A bodyless (while in GoI dreamwalkers are bodiless) dreamwalker can go to the Dream and if she is e.g. Lanfear, she can go in and pull the dreamowner out thus destroying the dream. This would parallel DO's role. The scale is very small here, and many details are very different, but the relations are still relations of transcendence.

And why it's important to mention these things about dreams? Because Jordan wrote these examples of transcendent relations, thus we have an example of how Jordan is possible to handle a transcendent relation. If he handles this transcendent relation so, then he is more likely to handle also another transcendent relation in a similar manner than otherwise.

As for Mordeth... it isn't outside the realm of possibility that he is a manifestation of Mashadar's will. How it would happen, I do not know, but clearly he isn't human any longer. When he slips through the wall, he displays many fog or mist-like qualities (well, one, but its an important one). What if he is the part of Mashadar that wants to spread and consume? If would make perfect sense that he considers the dagger a part of him, then, and would also explain the motivation of Mordeth AND Mashadar.Well that would mean also that Mashadar is something more than the mindless thing that only ravages around. The cloud should be then only one of Mashadar's manifestations.

Meawhile it's not true that the SL-evil was spread equally, Jordan refuted this at DragonCon2005:
Isabel: When Mat had the dagger, and Verin and Moiraine thought he would contaminate other people with the evil of shadar logoth, and they would contaminate other people. Fain does seem to be influencing without contaminating people. Is it as dangerous as it seems, could also normal people become evil and would they also contaminate other people?

Jordan: No. Fain can contaminate people because he has the dagger, it is the dagger. What Verin and Moiraine thought was incorrect. They were extending it too far.

Back to the original reason we became to speak about Shadar Logth Evil here - it was whether the motivations of this evil are more understandable for a human mind than DO's motivation. I have the feeling that the more we speak about Mashadar, the more alien to normal human understanding it becomes to appear. "Hunger for souls" - well, excuse me but I personally cannot think about such a feeling. We might understand what it means as a behavior, we might create a good theoretical construction about it's workings in relation to other high topics, but we cannot feel it. It might derive from human feelings, but during the process it seems that all these stuff transformed. Not surprising when it is about hyper-intensive emotions. I doubt that a berserk's battlefrenzy could be understood on the basis of the moderate annoyment a theorist would feel when using the right words to word his thoughts. It's not only quantity. There are too many additional things that happen when certain boundaries are trespassed...

Its not my metaphor, if it even is a metaphor, its Robert Jordan's, so don't tell me its a meaningless bit of word fluffery.
Reply With Quote"Meaninless fluffery"? Oh dear, is it really what it looked like in my words. What I said is, that it was an external description of a behavior, not an internal explanation. External behaviorial descriptions in some cases are much better then internal explanation. Espetially in practice. To deal with most dangers you don't need to know it's internal working, but to know what to expect, so you can avoid it or react properly if you cannot avaoid. Metaphors are very powerfull tool to create good descriptions, because they may contain very much information in very few words. They are less precise than analytical descriptions, but in practice often you need rather a compact container of much information, not so much precision. So I don't think Moiraine in this case could find something better to say about the Mashadar than a good metaphor. She has a talent in making difficult ideas to come fast to unprepared minds, Moiraine, and Jordan has a talent to show her doing it.

[Terez]

Ozy, it's your fault. You unleashed him...

[Ozymandias]

Don't worry, terez. In Ages past, Davian and I have fought, and he's turned me to the Shadow (his evil theories) almost as many times as I've defeated him.

But who said that the creation should happen necessarily in one singular moment placeable in the world's chronology? Couldn't the Creator do the Creation in some other manner? As a process through all the time of world's evolvement, or on some plane of existence beyond Time, or in any other convoluted relation to world's time? Why should the only option for the world's creation be a Day 1 in world's history? Honestly I don't see why such a concept on the relation of the Creation of Everything to chronological time to be more understandable by human common sense than any other more exotic relation. Such a concept of Creation seems to be obvious in a cultural tradition grown uner the influence of the christianity or the judaism or the islam. But all those religions go together with the concept of linear time. In the religions that have a cyclic time the singularity of the creation would be no more so obvious. Whether the universe is created periodically again and again or something else, the options are immense. We cannot forget that the world has a Creator, but we cannot forget what every book says us in the beginning of chapter 1 either. Unfortunately you try to comprehend the WoT concept of World's Creator by just discarding the idea of cyclic time. However in WoT universe the cyclic time is not just the repetition of the four seasons and of some cycles in historical developement. In this universe the second law of thermodynamics (about the enthropy) is not valid and the stars never go nova. It does mean that the circularity if time is valid not only for civilisations and for the biological entities, but it is ruling also over the most fundamental physical substructure of the universe. If a natural law of our world contradicts the idea of eternal cyclical repetition of everything, than we see this law made invalid for the WoT universe. So we cannot discard the eternal circularity of Time. We should find a way to keep both the Wheel and the Creator in the WoT unification theory, no matter how tricky it could appear to be.

Well, I agree that the entire universe didn't have to come into existence all at once. In fact, evidence from the etxt seems to strongly support that the Creator continues to create new worlds all the time. However, the existence of a being called the Creator, implies that at one time there was nothing, and then he created it. I'm not discarding the idea of cyclic time at all. I'm merely pointing out that there would not be a Creator if everything had been in place to start with. How do you reconcile the idea of a Creator being with the idea of time eternal which has no beginning and no end? You ask me to keep the Creator in the picture while you simultaneously disregard the entire implication of his existence.

I have a hard time understanding how your theory circumvents the theory of a start point for time. Perception and fact are different. Your theory implies they are the same. That just because we can't tell when the universe began means it's gone on forever. If your theory is that the Creator disguised Creation so that we don't know when it occured, thats fine, if strange. But it doesn't explain that there WAS an initial moment of Creation. And it doesn't explain the initial point, either, which is that there was a moment when the Dark One had NO influence on the world. Or are you implying that the Creator simultaneously locked the Dark One away to eliminate his influence, but also mimicked his powers and let evil touch the world? Your theory, if I understand it correctly (and its so complex and ridiculous I'm not sure if I do), implies a direct contradiction in actions and reasoning on the part of the Creator. Which I am extremely hesitant to accept.

Yes DO's ability to remake the world implies existence outside the Wheel. Now only DO and the Creator are outside of the Wheel. But that's now when there is the Wheel. But once there is no more Wheel, then everything will happen to be suddenly outside of the Wheel. Think about the Wheel as the unlimate mechanism of control. The Wheel controls everything that is except both deities. It organizes everything. Once the Wheel is destroyed, the everything is no more organized and DO is free to organize it otherwise. Well, he's free to do so only in the measure of his ability and of whether the Creator would let him do it, but this is a secondary question. What matters here is that for DO the everything will not vanish with the destruction of the Wheel. Only the system that organizes everything will vanish. But for the inhabitants of the WoT Universe, who are dependent in their existence from the organization system, it would make no difference against the absolute destruction of everything. It doesn't matter for a randlander whether the Wheel-less would will have some other organization or will it have nothing at all. But for DO it does matter. DO is not dependent of the Wheel's organization and he can afford trying to make another organization.

Right... but once again your supporting my initial theory, which is that the Dark One is a nihilist. He wants to destroy everything because everything is flawed. He may want to rebuild it, he may want to float in his void with nothing to bother him... who knows. The point is that his impulse to end existence as we know it is very much in contradiction with the desire of his lieutenants, which is to RULE existence as we know it. They don't want to rule a world where nothing exists; they want to rule the world they know.

Balefire is deletion of part of a thread (or threads). Once balefire strikes it deletes all the events before it happens. There's no time for this thread for a period before the hit. But balefire destroys only part of a limited number of threads. DO's destruction of the Wheel means that all threads of all times are gone at once. This means taht if DO succeeds so, then it would appear that nothing never happened in the worlds of the Wheel. Actually if Do wins, there would be never such thing as Wheel's universe. We don't know what would it mean for DO. With balefire we had still the Wheel to carry about the Pattern's integrity and it re-arranged the events and took control over the lose areas of teh reality. If there is no Wheel to take care more, who knows what would be there. It could be anything. It could be the Big Bang in it's real-world meaning if you want. Or it would be just DO's way to shut down the music of Creator's party, that doesn't let DO sleep. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. It doesn't say anything definitely about the state without the Wheel. But it is very definite, that the moment of destruction has no place in the timeline of the Wheel.

Firstly, it was an excellent metaphor. Or simile, I suppose. There is an exactly similar scene in World of Warcraft, where you play chess against a godlike being and he changes the rules midway through. But back to the point.

Once again, you advocate nihilism as the Dark One's motive. He wants to destroy the WoT universe. So I'm not sure why you objected to my initial point, which was exactly that.

But what is certain is that there is (as I know, if you find something to counter this please point it) no mentioning by RJ either in the books or outside them that DO follows a nihilistic ideal. It is completely your conclusion based solely on your view of how DO should look on everything.


Maybe nihilism is the wrong term. I think the Dark One is dissatisfied with the current form of existence, and desires to destroy it and remake everything. The evidence for that... is in the saying that the Dark One wants to do just what I said.

In fact, your very theory supports this; the Dark One wants total annihilation of reality, and to impose his own reality. For emphasis, I'll ask again; this is in agreement with my original point of the differing evils of Mashadar and the Dark One. What are you arguing against? For the record, I have a theory about the Dark One's ultimate aims in the oven which somewhat resembles this discussion.

The Wheel is also a closed system, right? A very huge closed system, but a closed system.

I may be mistaking your meaning... but its not. Its an open system. The Wheel is powered by the One Power, and the energy consumed is not put back into the system... it continues on into infinity in the form of the Pattern. So its very much an open system, on the whole... but I'm not sure thats what you meant, so I won't go on any further.

Meawhile it's not true that the SL-evil was spread equally, Jordan refuted this at DragonCon2005:

Firstly, the quote that came after this did not refute the idea of the evil being equally spread; it merely asserts that the dagger is evil. Since the dagger is the only object to leave Shadar Logoth, we don't know if removing a pebble would have the same effect. RJ states in an interview that all artifacts from Shadar Logoth contain the evil in equal amounts. So maybe pebbles were an exaggeration... but the point stands.

Secondly, that quote is wrong. RJ is either confused about his own storyline or wrote tSR wrong, because Fain does corrupt people (his Whitecloak detachment) when he doesn't have the dagger.

And Mashadar, I feel, is a very human-ly motivated force. It was formed when all the inhabitants of Aridhol killed each other. It was born of death and genocide, and desires to continue that. Its origination and its motivation are equal. It may not make sense to a human being, but a human can understand how it comes to be.

The basic difference is that Mashadar seeks (as much as it can be said to seek anything) an existence within the already functioning reality, which is logical for anything on that plane of reality, whereas the Dark One seeks the destruction of this reality, which is not logical for anyone existing inside that reality. Hence the innate difference between the two.