Cadsuane and balefire (Spoilers)

[cometaryorbit]

Why is Cadsuane so utterly horrified by Rand using balefire in TGS? She seems to be an 'independent' enough person that just the fact that it's against White Tower law shouldn't account for that degree of reaction. Sure, it's dangerous to the Pattern on really large scales - but entire cities were destroyed in balefire during the War of Power. Natrin's Barrow is maybe large enough to cause some concern but Cadsuane is even mad about Rand saying that the Forsaken need to be balefired to keep them dead.

And even with Natrin's Barrow, we're still talking a difference of 5 orders of magnitude probably... hundreds of people vs likely millions.

(On Natrin's Barrow, too... why is that taken as such a huge sign that Rand is off-the-cliff crazy? If he's right that Graendal's slaves are totally brain-dead due to Compulsion - and that does seem to be demonstrated to be true - nobody would be there but Forsaken, Darkfriends, and essentially zombies. It seems like a totally sensible tactical move -- yet both the characters and the plot seem to act as if it's just one small step from the about-to-destroy-the-world full-on insanity we see on Dragonmount?)

 

[Leyrann]

It's by far the largest scale balefire that we see used in the series. Just remember at the end of A Memory of Light, it is strongly implied that Egwene's stitching is the only thing that stops the Pattern from disintegrating entirely in the area. Rand's blast was probably close to as powerful as anything Demandred and M'Hael used together, considering Rand was using the Choedan Kal.

As for Cadsuane reacting like that, she's always been obsessed with controlling Rand and getting him to do what she wants him to do, which is part of it. Additionally, I'm not sure if she bought the "balefire is required" story. It's been a while since I read it though.

Oh, and for the "whole cities being destroyed", I am again not sure what the source was, but I think it's Aes Sedai sources, so it may be  exaggerated. Additionally, 20k people is also considered a city, if that happens three times then entire cities are getting wiped off the face of the planet occassionally, but you're nowhere near millions.

Plus I think the bigger problem is the strength of the balefire, not the casualties it makes. And again, Rand was using the Choedan Kal...

[cometaryorbit]

On 4/21/2018 at 6:19 AM, Leyrann said:

Plus I think the bigger problem is the strength of the balefire, not the casualties it makes. And again, Rand was using the Choedan Kal...

Ah, well that would totally explain it then. But I thought the reason balefire messed up the Pattern was because of all the actions being un-done? In that case, it would scale pretty strongly with the number of people balefired.

 

On 4/21/2018 at 6:19 AM, Leyrann said:

As for Cadsuane reacting like that, she's always been obsessed with controlling Rand and getting him to do what she wants him to do, which is part of it.

Yeah, probably. She honestly seems way too sloppy for someone who's accomplished so much and lived so long. I mean when she first meets Rand in ACOS she slaps him.. he had just been being beaten by Elaida's Aes Sedai and IIRC Cadsuane knew that. If Rand had been just a little farther into madness or less troubled by Moiraine's and the Maidens' deaths, she'd have got balefired.

[Leyrann]

I think Tam put it very well in TGS. She's a bully. She bullies people into doing what she wants them to do. That's always worked for her, also because everyone looks up to her, but with Rand, it didn't work. And at once she had no idea what to do.

[Wandering Investor]

You can think of the pattern as fabric, and people as the threads. Except the pattern isn't even like most fabrics, some strings are more important than others. Imagine you hit an important string, one that tugged a whole bunch of other strings. If that string was removed, every other string it pulled would shift, potentially with catastrophic results. So its not just the amount of balefire, but what is hit by the balefire. Imagine if you destroyed the equivalent of a fraction of Natrin's Burrow inside of Caemlyn? That results would be immensely more powerful.That's why its so terrifying, because even a little can have huge effects. Cadsune has little respect for political power, but she does respect actual power, and balefire falls under that. 

As for Natrin's Burrow and Rand, Rand did just kill a large civilian population in a preemptive strike, less a fight than a mass execution.  Throw in that the people in world believe that balefire is a permanent end. Normal death results in you eventually being respun into the pattern, but they think balefire destroys your thread so it can't be respun. From their perspective, Rand didn't just kill a fortress full of people, he destroyed their souls as well, and caused the pattern to scream in agony all in one go. Can you imagine an earlier Rand even conceiving of such a drastic plan, let alone being able to carry it out? This was Rand going off the deep end, as he is losing respect for life and beginning to hate everything.

Edited May 9, 2018 by Wandering Investor