Scents Unknown - The Gathering Storm chapter 44 - EP539 - WoT Spoilers

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is the wheel of Time Spoilers podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I'm not even gonna try and wrap my brain around
it or explain it. I would rather get into the
wheel of time.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
You don't want to talk about time. You just want
to talk.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
About time, the wheel of time.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Yes, okay, we got to put a wheel on it. Yeah,
and then we can talk about it, make it make sense, because.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Otherwise how do you explain time? I mean, that's really
it's just infinitely stretching forward back and forth like forever.
Our brains just don't do infinity. Mine certainly doesn't.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
No, you can try, you can have a very good
time trying, but I don't know if you can achieve.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
My favorite arguments online are when people argue about like, well,
you know, the wheel turns and the same things have
to happen again. And then people start arguing about how
long a turn of the wheel is, and they're like, well, no,
each one's about three thousand years, right, because this one was,
you know, so you've got seven ages three thousand years.
Some other people like, no, the last turn is the

(01:14):
age of the universe. It's billions of years, right, like,
and then you have a reset and a big bang,
like what is the time scale of the wheel, and
what's the timescale of an age? I think that that
that's something that's impossible to answer, and that's something that
totally changes what you can propose. The Wheel of time
actually is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's fictional, so it

(01:34):
is whatever it needs to be right for the.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Story that This is why we need artists just to
help us grapple with the reality of time. We're going
to read a book called The Wheel of Time, but
somehow breaks it down into smaller, bite sized pieces. Yeah,
so today we're doing Rand is mean to hearing. That's
all basically the event of the chapter.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Rand bullies his old friends.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, basic, Rand is having a very bad time and
poor hero it is caught in the crossfire.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Rand's very bad, no good day.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Uran's very bad no good day. Rewrites this whole chapter
from Huron's.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Perspective, Jesus the Borderlanders in general.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah yeah no, this they almost get nuked. This is
playing chicken with a moving train, is.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
What this is. But we're moments from his epiphany, right,
so we have to show him at his absolute worst,
which is raining fire and death down upon his allies
simply because they choose to act in a way that's
not one hundred percent in the way he wants, even
though he hasn't community communicated the way he wants, right, Like,
this is forsaken level badness where you're like, I'm trying

(02:44):
to help you. Well, fuck, you didn't do it right,
I'm cutting your throat and walking away right.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Right, And this he doesn't actually rain down fire, but
the fact that he's about to is what gets Ninive
to finally go find Tam, right, this is what makes
her decide to follow through with kat Swain's ask to
find Paren and to get that information from Rand. And
the fact that she cares and stops him is why

(03:11):
he gives her that information and tells her where to
find Paren. Like, this event really does precipitate getting Tam
on site. So with that, I guess I should read
us in.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, it's a ninative POV, even though it's a one hundred
percent of Rand chapter.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Very Rand, but yeah, all in nine Eve's voice, which
is fun because Naive is cranky.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
This is again I think Sanderson does a great job
with Ninieve. I don't understand how he got Ninive so
well and totally missed Matt because it's the same character.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, yeah, there's something there, because yeah, I agree, his
ninive feels very much like we've got her growth arc
since the early books and she's really come into herself
and her motivations are all still in alignment, and yeah
he gets her so so right. All right with that,
I'm gonna read us into chapter forty four Scents Unknown,

(04:00):
and our symbol is the snake into the wheel, and
the title obviously references here and going never smelled that before,
smells like the devil anyway.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
By the way, I got curious. I was sitting out
on one of the chatbots AI and I was like,
act like a Wheel of Time fan, and it gave
me a pretty good like summary about what they loved
about the Wheel of Time, and I was like, oh,
this is decently accurate, and I was like, hey, tell
me about Sense unknown since I was doing that recording,
what do you think? It was like great Parent chapter,
just fantastic, And I was like, oh.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
More proof that we don't need these stupid butts.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
It's just like, oh my god, Parent's not even in.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
That well, but it talks about smelling so cool.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
And then went on about how great Parent was in
the chapter and it was like from a totally different chapter.
And I even told it like it's chapter number whatever
it was in this book since unknown and it was like, oh, yeah, Parent.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
This is why you can't trust AI with anything, because
it's literally just slapping things together based on pattern recognition
with no di whatsoever. To say it's hallucinating is to
give it more capacity than it really has. It's not hallucinating.
It's just slapping shit together based on association. But anyway,
don't use AI anyway read it. Tarwin's Gap is the

(05:16):
place that makes the most sense. Nineve argued. She and
Rand rode on an overgrown road in the open grassland
of Moreto, accompanied by a crowd of Ayio. Ninive was
the only eyes to die there. Narshma and Naife rode
near the back of the group, looking sullen. Rand had
forced their eyes to die to stay behind. He seemed
particularly determined to assert his independence from them. Lately. Ninive

(05:41):
was astride of pure white mare named Moonlight, appropriated from
Rand's stable and tear. It still seemed odd that he
should have his own stable at all, let alone one
in each of the major cities of the world. Tarwin's gap,
Rand said, shaking his head. No, the more I think
about it, the more I realize that we don't want
to fight there. Land is doing me a favor. If

(06:01):
I can coordinate an assault alongside his own, I can
gain great advantage. But I don't want to distract my
armies with the gap. It would be a waste of resources,
a waste of resources. The gap was where Land was heading,
like an arrow loosed from a two rivers long bow,
heading there to die, and Rand said helping was a waste,
woolheaded fool. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to calm down.

(06:26):
If only he would argue rather than speaking in that
distant way he had recently adopted. He seemed so emotionless,
but she had seen the beast get free and roar
at her. It was coiled inside him, and if he
didn't let his emotions out soon they would devour him
from the inside. And that is the vibe of the chapter.
Is her going, oh God, oh god, ticking time bomb, Oh,

(06:49):
ticking time bomb. This is a problem.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
I don't definitely falling apart. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, sure,
you don't feeling her anymore? As he like exhibits all
the classic signs of over and over and over again.
You're like, okay, angry boy, seriously, like no anger for you?

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah, and like Ninive is you know Ninive? I'm not
shouting shouted Ninive Almeira, Yes, right, Like if there's ever
a character to be like, well, I think I'm seeing
a little bit of anger in the non angry person,
it would be Ninive.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
It takes one to know one, you know.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah, exactly. She is very familiar with being angry and
saying she's not angry. She knows he's angry.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
And yeah, this is this whole Like I want him
to argue because that's normal behavior. That's something where you
can have a discussion with somebody, Like an argument is
one thing. This is just like he's ignoring any input.
He's completely isolated himself from anyone he might trust. He's
doing whatever he wants, no matter what anyone else says.
It's it's basically impossible to deal with. But because he's
the dragon reborn, everyone just does what he says. Power crupts,

(07:52):
and he's very corrupted. I think in this situation where
he's like not listening to anybody.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
And he's this is a very specific kind of corruption,
because normally power corrupts means you get drawn into bullshit
with other human beings. This man is lost in a
maelstream of like magic induced madness and just his own
internal stuff. Like he's corrupted in a way that is
not usual.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
I would say he's a victim of his own success.
He's had so much success, taking over countries, winning wars,
becoming king. I mean, he's conquered half the world in
two years.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
He's got some Alexander the Great going on. But I
don't know that that's corruption in the tradition.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Okay, yeah, phrases you, that's fair, right, But I do
think in the he thinks he's right about anyone and
advisors always lead him wrong, so he only does what
he wants. Like the number of people, you know, reach
a measure, especially like directors people like that who have
this measure of success artistically and then use that power

(08:55):
to make what they want. And there's this balance between
making what you want and listening to people's feedback.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, it's it's a power hungry thing. I don't know
if it's corruption, just because words have to mean things.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
I can't no, And I think what there are I
think there are two very separate meanings of corruption here, right.
There is the I take money for I get bribed,
I take money, I do things to better myself alone, right,
and then there's just like things that are kind of
like falling apart and are corrupted. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Whatever I think if corruption is being very interpersonal, I
don't think buckling under the pressure of your existence is
the same. I don't know what the word is for that.
There's kind of a word for that.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
I like, my you know, their personality is corrupted by
this power that is like no longer makes them listen
to the people around them.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Right, I feel like there's a better word for that.
All right, Well it's not coming to mind.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
I was like, if you find it, go with it,
let me know. But in the meantime, I'm going to
say corrupt, okay, because people change with power, and one
of those changes is the not listening to advisors.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Right, Yeah, that's just corruption is specific, that's different.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Hmm. Okay, all right.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
So Ninieve is going back and forth with Rand about land.
There's this whole I mean, and Rand is to a
certain extent being kind of wise in the thing of like, yes,
I maybe shouldn't strike at this super obvious place because
maybe my enemy will have anticipated that. And it's like
the first rule of war to not do what your
enemy wants you to do or expects you to do. So, like,

(10:36):
we do need to be a little bit sneakier than
just throw everything at the exact spot where Land is pointed.
But he's not willing to save land, and that's a
real deal breaker for a nine eve. So they go
back and forth quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
He's also willing to sacrifice the border lands, right, He's
willing to say, you know what, while the talks are
ransacking the border Lands and most of probably Kyrie, Anne
and Or, they're not going to be at the last battle,
which is going to be at shale Ghul. So I'm
just going to gateway to shale Goul. Let them ransack
most of the civilized world. And as long as they're

(11:11):
distracted while I'm beating the Dark One, that's fine. Dark
One's gone. World can go fuck itself, you know, that's
his strategy right now. And he's like, I'm focused on
one thing and one thing only, which is beating the
Dark One. And I think I've talked about this how like,
that's really what they're afraid of. If he goes to
the last battle like this, he might win against the
Dark One, but the world is in for another three

(11:31):
thousand years of darkness and terror and pain and destruction.
We're not going to get the utopia of modern civilization
that Rand has really set up in the earlier books
before the Taint really became bad. And so this battle
strategy might win the last battle, but it's not going
to make the rest of surviving and existing in the
world fun for anybody.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Right, because you really do have to define what winning
means and what winning is for winning for who, right, Like,
Rand has just boiled it all down to winning, and
it's like, but beating the Dark One isn't the only
part of winning that matters. Right, Rand has boiled it
down to I have to defeat the Dark One in

(12:14):
that set, And it's like, hey, you need people who
can live in the world after. You need to be
able to live in the world after, even if you die,
you need to be pointed in such a direction that
you could live in the world after.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
And if you think about the statement that Robert Jordan
said is the Seals were weakened because of the corruption
of people in the world. Right, So the worse the
world you make, the more the presence the Dark One has,
the more likely is to come back, or we can
up you know, I guess it's not going to be
seals anymore because he sealed them up completely at the end.
But you know, I think there is some The Dark
One has to be able to influence the pattern for

(12:50):
people to still make evil choices, right, Like.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Well, right, the Dark One is necessary for humanity to
be what it is, right right, right, you need a
creator and a dark One to like be the dynamo
that makes human existence.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Makes choice possible, right yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Because sealing up the Dark One, he still exists, right,
so the choice is always possible to free him again.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Right, the bore can be remade. He just undoes the
fact that the bore was patched, right, he resets the
prison to zero. But like there is still a thing
inside that prison. And like you've had Cannon, there was
even an understudy dark One in the wings just in
case Rand did kill the Dark One, you know, like,
which I think makes a lot of sense. But now

(13:37):
I've always wondered you're talking about this like people brought
the Dark One into the world, like weakening the seals.
I have always sort of wondered.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Like just because that's a statement from Jordan.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, yeah, I have always really just wondered, like, why
is there things like oh, there was an uprising of
Dark Friends and they killed everyone, Like to what end?
You know, I've always wondered, to what end? Why are
people doing that when it's clearly not the end of days? Right?
And I wonder now or I guess it's obvious now
they were specifically trying to weaken the Seals enough that

(14:10):
the end of Days could come about. They're actually manifesting
the Dark One doing evil deeds because they know that
that is chipping away ever so slightly at these grand
cosmic bonds, and like it's it's just there's a whole
cosmology of why Dark Friends do what they do across
the millennia that I just hadn't quite put together. And

(14:30):
then now I'm putting it together.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
It's like double worship. They're literally trying to summon the
devil exactly.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
And I've just always been like, but why, like to
what end? Like what mechanic in the world makes that
makes sense? I've heard this thing about from Jordan, But
I never had connected it to this until you said
it just now, Like, oh they knew, the Dark Friends knew.
That's been part of like dark Friend tradition this whole time,
is like, we can bring the Dark One back if
we just do enough evil shit, and it will take

(14:57):
generations of us just being evil and perpetuating evil, but
eventually we can bring our dark Master back, et cetera,
et cetera.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
But you also have to remember dark friends are just
misinformation from a shameel and people and in a shameel
being like I'm the dark One, worship me and then
be like, oh yeah, let's go worship the dark One.
Like there's that level of like dark Being part of
a dark Friend group is like being dedicated to a
shameel more than it's being dedicated.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
To right, But Ashameo would be a great conduit to
be like, hey, we we can bring our world about
if you do these evil deeds. Here's how you can
max out your evil per lifetime. You know, let's see
he earns. I mean he really is nahbless by default, right,
He's doing the work to get the Dark One back

(15:42):
by building an army of people who will just do
evil shit for centuries upon centuries.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah. I always feel like there's two levels of dark friends, right,
because there's the people who actually worship the Dark One
and have like that, you know, go to shale Grul
and that sort of thing, right, the Forsake and some
of the more like advanced dark friends, right, I feel
like they do get to community with the Dark One itself.
And then there's like the people who think they're communicating
with the Dark One and are just like worshiping a Shawmael,
but are still dedicated to the Dark One.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
I mean, that's the difference between worshiping a saint versus
worshiping the deity, right, Like, it's all still part of
the same belief system. You're still devoted to the structure.
You just you know, have your personal patron saints and
supposed to going for the big granddaddy sky God or whatever.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Does that make land Fear Jesus's mother.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
I mean sure, it's kind of weird given the land
fear Ran relationship.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Well, you know, that's just.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Feels like a very Greek myth at that, right, Fine,
you know that's that's traditional. If we go back to
the Greeks or the Romans for that matter, since they
just pillaged the Greeks.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
They really did say God. Romans and Christianity were like
just robbed all the native cultures of all there, just
knocked him over the head and changed the names of everything.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Hot Take, The Romans are Christianity and the Christian world
is just the Roman Empire's latest duration. Just I'm sorry,
but the Roman Empire is my Roman Empire and it
isn't dead, guys. Rome is still one of the most
fancy pant city in the world. The Vatican Hill was

(17:21):
in Rome, even if technically now it's legally it's O country.
Like please anyway, hot take the book, That's what matters.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
Have we talked about the book yet.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Ninive tugs her braid? I love that for her.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Does she what got her to tugger braid this time?
I missed it?

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Okay? So Nineva's thinking about how she has literally been
about to leave Rant multiple times a day for days.
She is on the absence edge of just going to
be with Land, but she stays with Rand because she
thinks that there's something to be done. And she tugs
her braid in the middle of thinking about all that,
because she is again like in that like I should

(18:12):
just leave, I should just leave, and she tugs her
braid to be like, nope, stay, you must stay.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Thinking about how stubborn Rand is.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
What good would it do to help Land only to
let the world fall into shadow because of a stubborn
she pretty stubborn stubbornness against Sanderson gets ninety. It's just
that's so her.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
There's this mention of the storm building to the north,
and by the end of the chapter she's like, oh,
maybe it's not building to the north, maybe it's just Rand.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah, maybe it's just building yeah right here everywhere, yeply yeah,
which agreed, because this is really like he's three threads
away from completely breaking, you know, so he.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Breaks down his whole plan. I don't know. I think
we went into it right, like let them let them
flood in sacrifice, the Buffer States, attack Shale goal, win
the battle, and then whatever happens happens, and you know,
and I think this is a good line here where
she says the shawan Chan would wage their word of
the south and west, the Troks would attack from the
north and the east. The two would meet eventually and

(19:15):
Or and the other kingdoms would be turned into a
massive battleground. And I feel like that's where like World
War One, right, Like that's describing exactly what happened in
World War One, is these two massive forces meet and
just churn the ground into a bloody mess.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
It also sounds kind of like the prophecy Rand got
from the Finn. You know about the North and the
South must be as one, the East and the West
must be as one, the two must be as one,
And you're like.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
The two must be as one?

Speaker 1 (19:40):
Okay, So I feel like maybe this is a prophecy
could have gone a couple of different ways. This can
either be a strong alliance or it can be a
description of how everything turns into a giant battlefield, and
like maybe that's what the Finn actually meant. Oh no,
it's it's pretty bleak. Even as a reader crowing through
this the first time, you're like, I don't know. That
almost sounded like the Finn prophecy. The two will become

(20:03):
as one and everyone will die. That doesn't I.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Don't like that. There's also here where Rand says my
duty is to kill the dark One, and I think
this is one of those moments where he's like, no,
I'm not going in there to imprison like he needs
he needs Aviendic to give him the idea of taking
the Dark One and guy Shine rather than right, yeah,
just killing him out right the most time, and that's
the more honorable path, right. So here he's just on

(20:27):
that I'm gonna kill him and we learn later why
that's a bad idea. I do think it would have
been really cool if he did kill him, and then
he realized the mistake, and that's when you saw the
moment avoid in people's eyes, and he's like, what have
I done? And then he grabs Pad and Fane and
sticks them in the prison and shuts it behind him,
and it's like, you're a good you're evil good, you

(20:49):
can exist. And then and then that becomes the female
half of the Dark One, right, and so then you
have the alternating like every turning of the wheel, you
kill the dark One and get another one that alternates
between like the shadow Logoth evil and the Dark One evil,
which is like the male and the female half of
the true source of the True power, right, the true power.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
Binaries upon binaries upon binaries.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Absolutely, like like it would be really cool to have
a binary evil. Yeah, but I think of it more
as an external and an internal evil, right like one.
The dark one is evil to other people. The shadow
logoth evil is evil like more like domestic violence, right,
evil to one's own.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Right, right.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
The shadow logoth is police brutality. The dark one is
armies fighting wars. The shadow logoth is you know, attacking
la for riots by sending in the National Guard.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Riots, which are just protests against really violent and immoral
and illegal seizures of people. But not even riots, they're
protests that are being escalated by cops. Right, sorry, now
national Guard? Fine?

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Fine?

Speaker 1 (22:02):
What could she do to change it? She had to
come up with a new strategy to influence the Rand corporation.
Sorry what Rand?

Speaker 3 (22:10):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (22:10):
There's just there's a lot of talk about like, oh
my god, the farms are failing. Everyone can feel the storm.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
And they're defending themselves. Yeah, Rand's got two hundred people
with him, but these farmers are still all stalwart, and yeah,
I just and oh yeah. So then we get nine
thinking about how it's been a week since kat Swains
said find parent for me, and she still hasn't made
any progress on that. And like I said earlier, this

(22:37):
event with Rand in this chapter is what gets her
to really push to complete that mission. She doesn't want
to because she doesn't want kat Swain's plan to be
the one that works, but this pushes her to, you know,
set her pride aside and follow the assignment. It's been
a week that kad Swayn's been like, oh my god,
just do the assignment, which is ten days, right, yeah,

(22:58):
it's rand Land week.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
So she goes up to Rand and he's of course
talking to LTT right, we just see him uttering to himself,
and then she's like, hey, Ran. He's like, oh, yeah, sorry,
I was on the phone talking to my old uh
brain right, And so she kind of like, we know,
do you know where parent is? And he's like, yeah,
he's doing what he told him to do, which no
he's not, but whatever. No, No, he's gone off on

(23:21):
like six side quests and this was supposed to be
like one week mission and he's been one for like
months and months and months.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Right, And then nine he's like, well, parent's just too
peaceful to tell you. No, he's just your gopher. And
Rand's like, I've seen enough visions to know that Paren's
problem is not being too peaceful. No, yeah, that is
that ship has sailed. Yeah. She tries to hide why
she's asking about paren and he sees right through it
because she is particularly unaccustomed to lying, which is just

(23:50):
so cute. She tries to lie, and he's like, well
an attapt was made. That was that was adorable anyway, And.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
That's why he can trust her because she knows how
bad she isn't lying, like she doesn't necessarily have to
take the oaths right because she's lying, but she's just
bad at it.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
She's not a liar by inclination, she doesn't practice it.
It's not something she ever thinks of herself as doing.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
She's not inherently dishonest, and she's so blunting up front
that it's like, yeah, I'm gonna kick your ass, Like
why would I lie about that?

Speaker 1 (24:21):
You know exactly exactly. So when she tries to lie
because she's trying to do a good isidye subtrafuge, she's like, well,
at least I know that I can tell when you're
doing iside subtrafuge, so you know there's a calibration factor.
And he doesn't answer her question at this point. He
keeps the information to himself until after she talks him
down from doing mass murder.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Right, yeah, he doesn't. He has no intention of telling
her at this point.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah exactly exactly, but like, because you know she's doing
isidye shit. Whether or not she's good at it, the
point is she's trying and that is not his favorite.
But she does keep him from doing a chrocious war crimes,
which he does appreciate.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Eventually, they've gated into this crossroads that's near Farmatting, which
is where the Borderline said they wanted to meet.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, and we get there's the whole like traveling mechanics
thing threads through this chapter where Sanderson gets way too
into the weeds with how traveling can be used.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, well we'll get there.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Fine. I guess I do like the part where and
I need thinks about how it's surprising that the Iyeeal
are doing such a good job of scouting and blending
into the environment and adapting to the landscape because she
thought that the waste just all was the same. But
she's heard some of Yeel say the same thing about
the wetlands, and it's like, yeah, it's just one of
those fun cross cultural like yeah, every landscape is unique

(25:38):
and varied to the people that live in it.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
You get to know the little variations, so then it
looks like trees to you. It's like oak leaf, leather leaf,
right like or whatever the you know different versions are
and to them it's like, oh, that's you. They have
names for different kinds of rock that you've never even
heard of, probably exactly.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
They have like eighteen different words for types of sand
that kind of thing. Mm hmmm, whereasyeah and I need
just use Oh, it's just dunes. And it's like, well,
you know, but are these the tall shifting dunes or
are they the low rocky dunes? Are they the dunes
that are winds like you know? And so on and
so forth. There's always nubance.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
He U's The phrase the wheel of time turned is
like this whole sentence as a complete sentence. It feels
a little out of place to me. But I can't
put my finger on why, because the wheel of time
appears everywhere in the series, like characters say it all
the time. But I think it's because it's not a
character saying it. I think because it's in the narration.
I like the wheel of time turn and like you
save that for the intros.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Right, or at least to put in italics. Yeah, it's
clearly an inside thought, but it's not in italics, so
it just is the narrator voice. And yeah, it's another
one of those little stylistic things that lets you know
that Sanderson's writing it.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah, I feel like, yeah, the wheel turn would have
made more sense, That's exactly pants. That was my thought,
is like, I don't think you should have said the
wheel of time turn. But then I looked it up
and the characters say it all the time, and this
is not Eve's thoughts. So like, I don't know why
it feels so out of place to me, but it
really does in this sense. I like went back and
forth on that a bunch to be like, this isn't right,
and I couldn't figure out why.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
I think it's just the way that Sanderson has a
harder type separating the narrator voice from the character. Povja
was really good at that, and Sanderson is softer on
that boundary.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, yeah, because it's this does feel like omnipresent narrator
even though it's nine eves pov.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yeah, And I've noticed with a lot of books that
just that line is rarely as crisp as it is
with Jordan was really clear about that in a way
that most authors are more comfortable being more fuzzy.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah, yeah, because well Jordan, so much of his book
was based around what people thought in that moment in
place and time, right, and so it was really important
that this was that POV and they didn't know any
more than they did, and like their assumptions were really important.
How they phrased things really important. And I think you know,

(28:01):
you get a couple of paragraphs in and he's just
dump info dumping with this character's POV, and the difference
feels stark.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah, which, like you know, you switch to a different
book entirely, a different author entirely, like oh, different style,
but it is extra stark when it's within the wheel
of time books. Yeah, right, different author. This is one
of those moments where you really feel that different touch a.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Little bit of what Narishma as aschmon little some descriptions
of him as he's accompanying them.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah. She drops back to ride with a man who's
not quite as frustrating, and she has a pretty good
talk with Narishma because he grew up in the Borderlands
and they're going to meet the borderlanders. So she's kind
of trying to get someone else's perspective because you know,
she's only a borderlander by marriage. She hasn't lived there.
You know, she identifies with the Borderlands in a lot
of ways, but Narishma actually lived the experience of being

(28:55):
a borderlander. So she wants his take on why the
borderlanders are doing what they're doing, why they're here instead
of defending the borderlands. And yeah, he actually is very
Unrand like and just talks to her and gives his perspective.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
And in this whole chapter he's following after Rand.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Disappointment. Disappointment.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
I'm just saying, you could interpret that to say, this
is where he is the one who follows after No.
Shaking your head at me, He's like, no, that is
not No, I'm not interpreting it that way. I'm not
admitting that that's possible. That cannot be what the prophecy
said or the fulfillment of it. I refuse correct.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
No, this is this is just a person being willing
to talk to someone for once in these damn books.
And you know it's because it's been a couple of books,
right since we saw the Borderlanders mysteriously collect and start
on their mission, like they've really been back burnered.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Really since I got it. I even want to say,
like that was book seven. I'm pretty sure that they
went out on their journey like it was as.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, forever ago. So I like that, you know, we
use this moment to remind us of what's going on there,
like this is a deeply unusual thing for all the
leaders to leave.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Didn't Elaine use them to secure her throne? Didn't A
GWayne use them to help like take like secure power
as well? Somehow? Yeah, Like they've been used by everybody.
They've marched all over the countryside looking for him, They've
been stuck in the snow, and they have been absolutely
useless because there's been nothing going on on the Borderlands,

(30:33):
And so they went, see you peace out, which I
think is hiding all the activity that is probably going on,
right because there's nobody there to see it, right.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, So you know it's nice to have a Narushima
be like this is we live to defend. And yet
they left now of all times, good people can do
the wrong thing, particularly when men who channel are involved,
like he's not like nobody's clear on what's happening us
as the coming through for the first time, we don't know,

(31:02):
but maybe we forgot, so we need to reach meant
to remind us. You know, it's it's a very very
top secret mission. Only the leaders of the countries have
any idea what's going on. Every single person following them
is ignorant and sworn to secrecy.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Right, So, and this is all prophecy based, right, this
is all you.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Know, all of it, all of it one for telling,
like two thousand, eight hundred years ago, and they've held
onto it this whole time.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
I wanted to be guitar Moroso just because all the
good ones are Rand from her. But like that, Yeah,
I like that. This is just an ancient, ancient prophecy
that they held on too. Yeah, it makes sense. Like again,
if you send this Rand to the last battle at
the point, because they're not going to meet him until
right before the last battle, that's like and so if
you send that Ran off to fight the dark One,
you're better off killing him and trying again next time.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
Right, Literally, it would be better to go through the
lack of a utopia that is killing Rand and just
dealing with the consequences rather than yeah, seeing what he does.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Well the lego. But like if he stayed bad, he
would have just destroyed the world in veins of gold
and you wouldn't have had a chance to like slap him,
So like why even bother.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Right, because you need events to organize everyone else around, right, Like, yes,
the whole world actually hinges on rans like internal thoughts.
But like in order for him to have armies, people
need to see things happen. They need to have conversations
and symbols and exchanges.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
And I think it would have been interesting if he
met with them and he couldn't come up with the
name and they tried to kill him and he fled,
and like that was part of his revelation and part
of like his breakdown is like why are my allies
trying to kill me? And then he comes back and
he knows that he like has the revelation and knows
the name and can come back and be.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Like that would have been so cool because it would
have been like, oh no, all the prophecies broke down,
like where are we going now? It would have been
really unsettling after books and books have been like yeah,
we know how these prophecies are going to play out.
If likely they started to fall apart, that would have
been a really fun metaplot twist. Oh well, we got
a regular book instead.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
I you know, we could rewrite these million different ways
in a million different times.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
I mean, we have gotten to about half a million
rewrites at this point.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
And so then we get what I think is one
of the more disappointing reunions, right because I would have
loved to see that they were so close and Rand
cared about hearing in book two, and like, Herein was
one of those characters that, like, I was so excited
to see again because like, we didn't get to see
him for a long long time. We knew he was
with the Borderlanders. But you know, of all the characters

(33:40):
that were introduced in the first three books that get
complete storylines that are a big part of the first
three books, Haran is one of the few that, like,
I feel like, had a long storyline and no resolution
in any of the other books. He's just back to
the Borderlanders, never talking about him again, and it's like,
I don't know, he's not dead, give him some more plot.

(34:00):
He was a great character. He's got a unique ability
of the sniffers, right, Like, I'm so glad that Sanderson
brought him back, and I'm so disappointed with the way
Rand reads him, which I guess is kind of the point.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Yeah, yeah, you after. I mean because because Harin is
the first person who insists on calling Rand's lord right, right,
Like he's literally the first follower. He's he's the bulin
to land, right, He's the one that forces it to begin.
He's the first follower and he Yeah, it's like I mean,

(34:34):
I in a sense, I do like that Harin was
the character used for this because it cuts so deeply,
so deep. Yeah, but yeah, it's I feel like he
does apologize to Hearin later. Yeah, they're just like a
post Veins of Gold moment where Rand goes over to
him and it's like, you fucking rule, dude, I really

(34:54):
appreciate you. Sorry about being a complete ass waffle before.
Like I'm pretty sure that happen. But yeah, it's Hearing
deserved better, even though he is used very effectively here
to make that cut so better.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, I just I think he I'm even going back
on Jordan. I think I think Karen deserved more screen time.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, Karen should have come back after he delivered his
message to the Borderlands. He should have been like, and
I'm going back to Rand.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
Now, right to sell.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
One thing of like I have an order of odes,
but like I need to go back to be with
Rand and like use my sniffer abilities to help him.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
And and you know what has been a really cool
thing to see is Rand's fallen corruption through the smell
of hearing as he's like, oh, I just like he's like, oh,
I haven't been back to the palace in a while,
and he goes in. He's like, I'm smelling something really
off coming from the palace, you know, and then it's like, oh,
it's coming from Rand occasionally, and then like over time
he's like, oh it's really strong or it's happening more often,

(35:52):
and like you could sort of sprinkle that through the
books as you see like Rand's corruption becoming more and
more and more and the violence he does becoming more significan.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Right, Oh, but Nantoc makes a really solid plot point.
Hearin would have sniffed out dark friends way too easily
if he had been around Rand.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Because he sniffs out violence not necessarily, Like there's a
lot of violent people in this series who are not
Dark Friends.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah, but the people that Rand has been.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Around, Yeah, it is. I think it is a little
bit of a plot hole. The heroon can't sniff out
Dark Friends thing because it's like dark Friends again, and
this is canon where he's like, I can't smell Dark
Friends because you know, violence smells like violence, but there's
a few things that smell worse. And right, Faine was one,
Trollicks and shadow Spawn or another, and now Rand is

(36:41):
the third. Right, But like dark Friends in general don't
have that off smell.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Yeah, but I'm just saying Rand tends to attract very
high ranking dark Friends, so you know. But yeah, I
just Hearin should have gotten more of a plot reward
for being so present in all of book two and
so loyal even when he wasn't getting to be present
on the page. And yeah, it would have just been

(37:06):
nice to have this betrayal mean more because we'd actually
had subsequent interactions.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Right. You know who I would love to see here
and actually end up with is Matt in the Band
of the Red Hand, because he accompanies him back to
the White Tower, you know, yeah, right.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Right, and then and then Paren and Matt would each
have a sniffing of evil things ability with their armies
slightly different mechanisms, but two of his most important armies
would have that at the head.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
And then he could be like, oh, yeah, I remember
when Lord Matt was just a sick, little you know
nothing right right.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Right right until Monny's is like pretty sure that was
never true? In here, I was like, oh no, it
was true. It was true.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
And you know, he could have his worship of Lord
Matt at a Lord Rand at a distance and like
not really and be like, eah, but he's no. I
like Lord Matt, but he's no Lord Rand. That's for sure, right.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Right, And then Matt ends up really appreciating that because
here's one of the few people who like, doesn't hear
a worship hard because his hero worship is focused elsewhere, right.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah? Yeah no.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
And then and then when hearing goes back to him
being like, yo, Matt, there is something wrong with Rand,
Matt is like, oh, okay, notes taken because I'm used
to using your ability and I know that if something's
wrong with Rand, then you know, like they just mmm, yeah,
we could read these books. We should probably focus on
the way they were written. So Rand treats here and

(38:30):
like he might be another daughter of the Nine moons,
actually being semarog situation right, picks him up, spins him around,
asks him a trick question.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Right, what do the men look like? They weren't men,
they were frogs.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
Righty, exactly grow them whatever, froggish.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
So yeah, this is where we get the line. That's strange.
Never smelled that before? What Rand asked? I don't know
the air. It smells like a lot of death, a
lot of violence, only not it's darker, more terrible. You know.
That's that's Rand. He's smelling and in bail firing naturals Zaroh,
probably right. That's his most recent violent act of violence.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
And a truly outstanding amount of violence, Like it's it's
hard to kill that many people at once with more
conventional means.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
That also damage the pattern, and.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
It damaged the pattern at a more intrinsic level.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Or wait what am I thinking? Or it's just the
use of the true power right on the that's also
something he did.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, because the true power is I mean,
it's the power of entropy. So I guess you could
categorize that as violent, like at a very fundamental level.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
And the darker, right, the more terrible. Right, He's used
that it's touched him, that violence has touched him, the
violence of the dark one.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
That's a good question. Would Hearon smell a president that's
signed for a nuclear strike? Does that count as the
violence that would transcend to hear and smell sense? Or
if all you did was calmly write on a piece
of paper, then you didn't do any violence according to
his sense?

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Is it just or soon who drops the bomb? Is
it just the person who builds the bomb who has responsibility?
What if you have a drone and you have a
drone operator, do you just smell where the bomb was dropped.
Does the bunker where the people who are sitting and
dropping bombs on people smell of violence? I feel like
it would because there's people sitting in there all day

(40:20):
watching and dropping bombs. That's like the people are doing
the violence, even if the violence is happening elsewhere.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah. I guess the question is what is the magical
mechanic that is generating what Hearin is smelling? Is he
smelling the trauma done to your own soul when you
commit violence? Right? Is it like the Tinker thing where
it's like, if you do violence, you are harming yourself, Like,
is that actually what Hearin is smelling is like the
harm done to you by the act, Because then yeah,

(40:50):
I think signing a piece of paper would count. But
if it's like, you know, less navel gazy than that,
then maybe not.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Fooji is saying, could he smell a noble that arranged
for an assassination.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
For a more in world example, Yeah, for.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
A more in world example, right, Like that's something he
could actually smell.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
I feel like in the books it's no, it's like
the he would smell the assassin.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah, he smells the act of violence. I feel like
there has to be an act involved, right, and so
a stabbing of a knife.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Push pushing a button doesn't count.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Ah see, that's that's that's the.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Question we're getting in the question just pushing a button count?
Is it about how proximate you are to the act,
because that's where the drone thing comes into play, right,
that's the.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
Whole Well, in the same way that I mean is
pulling back an arrow and shooting a bow, right because
you're remote.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
And like that takes a lot more skill.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
Yeah, but it's you know the same thing, like the
arrow impacts them at a distance. From where you are,
you pushed a button, a signal was communicated, in this
case a signal of mass rather than a signal of electronics.
But then there's an impact and the person dies right like.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
You're far So does hear and smell ranged weapons?

Speaker 2 (42:05):
And I feel like he has to right, like you smell? Yeah,
Like but where does he smell it? Does he smell
it where the bowman is? Or would he smell it
where the people are getting shot and injured?

Speaker 1 (42:16):
I feel like he would smell a bowman. I feel
like that, Like if he's like infal Dara and someone
shoots an arrow and here and like runs around and
like finds the person who shot the arrow, Like I
feel like that. That's a scenario that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Because I feel like he's smelling two different things, right,
He's smelling the violence itself and then the the person.
It sticks to the person as they move around as
well and fades over time, So he smells both the
sights and the trail of the person where they go.
So I feel like he smells both.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
So yeah, it's just how far back up the chain
does it go. I think it has to be the
person who actually pushes the button. If you write the order,
you're not going to trigger here in But if you're
the one who pushes the button, no matter how far
away the act happens, the button pushers go to be
the one who who smells that.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
I agree, you can't just say you were a baying orders.
He still did the violence.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
Right, exactly. Literally, we as a civilization did decide that
following orders is not an excuse. We did decide that,
despite what some people apparently think, still in the year
of Our Lord twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Which doesn't mean you are immune from prosecution because you
gave the orders, right, Like, it's still a black.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, but we're talking about here and here, not international law.
Hearing is a slightly more specific thing.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Right, right.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
He smells the acts of violence, right, and then some
of the violence. There's a few examples where the violence
is so corrupt and so damaging and influenced by so
much evil, he smells something on top of that.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
Yeah, And I do think that touching the true power
probably is factoring into it. But the naturals barrow thing
has got to be just really massive. That's there's no
other mechanic in the world that could kill as many
people at the same time, right, Like, there's nothing else
I don't know in their world. They've only just figured
out prototype cannons.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Oh you, I mean I think the one power. I
think not necessarily bail fire, but the one power for sure.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Oh sure, Yeah. I was thinking of the mundane world,
the mundane, regular world of normal armies and kings and stuff, like,
they don't have weapons anywhere near that catastrophic. So you
know it's going to stand out to hear in sense,
is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
Other than somebody's like the White Cloaks lining up villages
of people and just cutting throats like one after the other, right.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Like, yeah, that would be comparable. It would still take longer,
but yeah, yeah, just like actual mass murder, what the
White Cloaks are capable of.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
I believe it absolutely one hundred percent, and we see
them doing it, right, Like there are villages that are
emptied out because of the White Cloaks, and like we
never get that POV. But like there's empty villages that
were used to be full of people that aren't anymore
because the White Cloaks were there.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
Yeah, yeah, I do assume they took a lot of
people to be oh, I don't indenture surfance No.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Because isn't there one where? Like they're trying to travel
in secret and like it's the questioners, but they just
wipe out a whole village just to keep the keep
them quiet and Bornhold's like we could have gone around.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah that happened anyway. So here In and Rand have
the negotiations or here and does not get to have

(45:36):
a reunion with Rand. He simply has to operate as
the mouthpiece of the Borderlanders and receive Rand's wrath as
a result.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Which is basically he says well for small rants like well,
I don't I don't get angry, and then proceeds to
get incredibly irate and angry that the Borderlanders are in formatting.
So yeah, I don't get angry. Yeah you do, Yeah
you do.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, And I need even has a thought at one
point like what's up with this anger or whatever he
wants to call it, Like whatever he's calling it, I'm
calling it anger. He can call it something else, which.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Mood so and then we get so once he finds
out that they're in formatting, he just basically cuts off
their kur and is like peace out, I'm going to
go there and we get the double gateway insta hop.
I saw you.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
Roll your eyes in the second I said that, Oh man, yeah, no,
it's It's both one of the most clever and most
infuriating things that Sanderson does, which is just like he
op's gateways instantly.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
Which, like, to be fair, Robert Jordan did set up
the rules to be broken that way. It's it's it's
it is there on the page. This is one of
Sanderson's great strengths is thinking way too hard about how
the magic system could work. But like it just feels
like suddenly we've got technology whizbangs. In my fantasy, if
magic was supposed to be like our cane and difficult,

(46:59):
not right clever.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
And like and it does, it feels like, okay, so
we're just gonna you know, end of Game of Thrones,
people got really upset because characters were teleporting all over
the place and weren't traveling real distances. And now just
in story, it's like, okay, we're just gonna ignore distances
from now on, and our characters can appear anywhere at
any time with no cool down and no penalty.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Yeah, it's it's been You start to get into the
higher levels in your D and D campaign and you
just have like god powers and more actions per turn
than you know what to do with, and it's like
skimming was enough.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
We just we didn't really was like I would rather
see him just skim there and be like let's go,
like there's not that many people.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
It's not like it's that far away, Like right, yeah, No,
I thought skimming was a fine mechanic and then gateways
for when you want to be fancied like this whole ooh,
look at me, I'm so clever. It's just like it's
skimming not good enough for kids these days, you know, m.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
So and this whole like I never thought of that, okay, Eve, right,
Like I just I should have thought. It feels almost
like Sanderson's saying, like, aren't I so clever? Even I
need didn't think of this.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Uh huh yeah, And I'm like, yes, you're a very
clever boy. And I sit down continue writing like whatever.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Do you think it comes from the voice in his
head LTT or do you think it's just I think
it's Rand being clever.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Yeah, I think it's just Sanderson making Rand more clever
than he's been before. And also Rand has historically been
a kind of clever person, and like he was paired
with Agwaine for a long time and she is very clever.
Like it's not out of character for them to just
think about a thing and come up with a new
way of doing it. But I think it's mostly Sanderson's
self inserting.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah, I mean a GWayne discovered how to channel le
her travel basically completely independently.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
Yeah, from first principles and just tinkering and thinking, she
figured it out. So I'm not surprised that Rand's mind
might also idly think about how to make traveling more
efficient while he's you know, just in the shower or
whatever shower thoughts.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Because we did get I believe we had Jordan's setting
up that you don't need to learn the area to
make short gateways.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
M Yeah, he said that.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
And I think he also said that making a gateway
helps you learn it, like if you made a gateway
to a place, like making that gateway in that same
location helps you get back out again. Right, So both
both of those things were true. But I wish it
just helped. I wish it slowered the cool down, not
made it instant. Yeah, I wish he still had to
sit there for like twenty minutes or something like that, you.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Know, brooding, yeah, marinating.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
Holding the gateway open from the last place or something.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Right, Yeah, but no, that's not what we get.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
No, we get we get into travel, which is again
not out of the realm. And it's fine, especially when
you got this battle coming up, and it's just like, Okay,
we're not gonna have to worry about the cool downs.
We're just gonna let them teleport anywhere, and if if
it's something where wouldn't have worked, we're gonna have to
do a short hot first and then just ignore the rest.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
Of the rules, right Yeah. And here in it's you know,
a ride back basically, which is cool. He doesn't have
a long ride back because you know, they go much
closer so that way they can overlook the army, which
is encamped around the city but within the boundary of
the Guardian right farmatting. Essentially, it's kind of like with
I mean, I need thinks about how the island itself

(50:18):
looks kind of like Tarvalent, and I think it kind
of looks like Tarvalent under siege because it's got the
city and then the river and then an army immediately
on the other side. Only in this case, obviously it's
not a siege, it's just camping on their front yard.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
And that business ran off. I remember he got captured
by farmatting right and was like codswayn had to come
get him out. And that was right before he cleansed
the source like that. He did not have a good time.
He was put back in prison. That was definitely super triggering.
He couldn't channel, right, like this hole, they're trying to
put me back in a box. I don't want to

(50:53):
let anyone else have access power over me, right, I
want by taking away the one power you are essentially
taking away. You know, he could go in with enough
armies that it wouldn't be a problem, but I think
he's very much worried about. There's also an area in
formatting where men can't channel and women can.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
Yeah, that's the ring that the armies currently can't do. Yeah, yeah,
where the thirteen Eyes to Die that are with the
Borderlanders are located. Right. Why would rand go into that
zone with thirteen eyes to die?

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Why who can channel and he wouldn't be able to? Yeah,
that's crazy, right.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Ridiculous ridiculous. I mean, I can see where he's not
prone to take this willingly, you know, like obviously as
zen rant, he does whatever. But like a reasonable person
would be like, I'm a little sketched out right now.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
But you also see why the Borderlanders do it because
they are commanded. They're told, hey, you need to kill
this man if he can't answer the question correctly. And
they're like, well, how the fuck do we do that? Well,
we need him in a trap, we need him in
a place where we can actually stop him. So I
get why they set it up, but I get also
why he's not willing to go in it is it
is a place of ambush.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
It is a box. He is correct to identify it
as a box.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
And so he goes to like he pulls out the
Choden call, which starts to glow right, and he's like, oh,
I'm not going to hurt the city. The city's fine.
I'm just going to destroy the fucking armies, which is like, no,
you're going to the last battle. These are the Borderlanders.
You cannot come down on the armies with lightning and fire.
First of all, they're innocent people. Second of all, they're
on your side. And you need them to fight the troulics,

(52:30):
Like you cannot do this, rand this is crazy.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Yeah, you can't murder huge swaths of your own allies
that you desperately need because twelve people have miscommunicated in
an email like that's ridiculous, It's ridiculous. It's a completely
disproportionate response, like, yes, these are armies that have loyalty
and a license to do violence, and you need them.

(52:56):
Why would you kill them just because their rulers have
not been properly clear with you about their mysterious prophecy,
Like totally, I disproportionate. You tuck, you hit reply all.
It's your your fault for ending the world, not the
reply all.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
Now you're bringing down the server. It can't handle the traffic.
And stop replying to all, saying stop replying to all.
It doesn't work that way. Yeah, take me off this list,
please please. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
So rand Is is seriously considering some ridiculous war crimes
and Nineva's like will you please not do that? Like, please,
for the sake of all that is reasonable, would you
please not do war crimes that it's so uncool right now.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
And she's she's like, I wish that had melted away
like the female half, which reminds you, A, that's what
happened to the female half and why she doesn't have
like a comparative power, and B it's like, yeah, he
really doesn't use this for anything important until he destroys
it on the mountaintop, right, Like, this is done. Calendor
is the thing he needs for the last battle. He
does not need chod and call. Right, that is not
the item that's going to help him win because it's

(54:03):
not about power. It's about having the ability to channel
the true power, right, because the true power is the
thing that allows him to seal off the dark One,
essentially turning his own you know, stop hitting yourself. Essentially
he takes the hand and punches him in his face
with his own hand, right, Like, that's that's what being
able to channel and control the true power and turn
that against the dark one, because it's like, go ahead

(54:24):
and corrupt it.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
It's your own hand, right, yeah, exactly, Exactly if you
bite the hand that punches you, that's okay because you're
just biting yourself.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
And then what he's doing is grabbing that hand with
sidar and sidean right and like using that to wall
everything off, so like.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
But yeah, he needs to chow it on call to
cleanse the source and then to cleanse his soul. Right,
That's what the Chi Yeah Call is really there for,
is to give him that that temptation that he is
able to destroy on the mountain top. It really is
a focal item in that last Veins of Gold ritual,

(55:01):
so to speak.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
And the Children Call was created to cleanse the source, right.
That seems to have been its whole purpose in being created.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Wasn't it created to do something in the war of
power and then it never got used? We don't know.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, I think it was just an ultimate weapon against
the Dark Side.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
But it was built before the Taint existed.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Yes, And my understanding is the Children Call, the building
of them, was the threat that pushed the Dark Side
to start winning because they were so afraid of them
they essentially and then because they were winning, Rand I'm
sorry LTT did his final strike, but it was really
basically like the Children Call escalated to the point where

(55:44):
it was endgame for both sides.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
So that's why they never got used, was because both
sides finished their knockout fight before the thing could actually
come into play. Huh. Interesting. So something to do with
dealing with the Dark One in a really intrinsic way
was clearly the point, even though the taint didn't literally exist,
but it was an appropriate scale problem to point the

(56:08):
Children Call at because that is just the dark ones,
like corruption in the world getting purged.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Yeah, simonosa I says, the Dark Side took over the
territory they're being built in, And I guess my head
canon is they took over that territory because they were
being built there, and that was the surge that led
to the Dark Side because the Dark Side was winning.
Right when Rand did his strike on shale Goool, they
were losing the battle. So you know, my head canon
is like it it was this, like the light was

(56:35):
building the Children Call that forced the Dark Side to
push into territory they hadn't done before they took the
Children Call. That caused the Light Side to start losing,
which forced the strike on shale Gool. It's sort of
how my head cannon goes in terms of the sequence
of events, right, because.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
We don't have a lot to go on. And yeah,
with the parallels to World War two and also Star Wars,
like yeah, it you know, it's probably in it's fine
to head canon that those patterns from art and history
may apply here as well.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Damn it, we got the death Star plans. We have
to escape with it anyway.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
Like Western Riders have one story that they're constantly chasing
the dragon on.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
We talk about Moonlight, which is Ninive's horse, which is
this is the only mention of that horse. I think
it's really there just to be like, Bella's a better horse.
Where is she?

Speaker 1 (57:25):
Yeah, she gets mentioned like three or four times throughout
this chapter is like part of Nineve's like increasing irritation
with her whole situation of just like, Okay, this horse
is too mild, this horse isn't right. I need a
better horse. I need a horse like Bella is a
good horse. Like it's it's almost like Egwayne's chair in
terms of just like being a little thread in the background.
But I don't think it's for anything to do with Ninive.

(57:46):
I think it's just there to remind us that Bella
is the best horse.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
I think it's just a little fan service. I think
it's a little nod the fact that like Bella is
the creator and everybody loves her, and like where has
she been? Because like, she's not mentioned for a couple
of books, and then Sanderson's like, oh, yeah, she's hanging
out in the White Tower or in the Rebel camp stables.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Yeah, she's fine, but she hasn't had some page time
in a while. So a mention of her is good.
We need these crumbs.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Mention of Tam a little foreshadowing. My feet started on
this path the moment Tam fell and found me crying
on that mountain. It's like, maybe Tam can divert you
from that path as well.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
Yeah, maybe Tam needs to be there with you at
the end because he was there at the beginning.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
So she begs him not to kill them, and he acquiesces.
He's like, all right, fine, I won't kill them today,
and then he sends here and back with you know,
join me or be left behind. I'll give a shit
whatever whichever one you want to do.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
It's a good threat. It's a better threat than join
me or die, because this actually pricks at what the
Borderlanders most will, their honor to protect the borderlands. Yeah,
their honor exactly.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Here and stayed behind. He looks shaken. His reading with
Lord Rand had obviously been far from what he expected.
Me too here and me too.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
Yeah, all of us are with you here, and we
all hurt for you.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
In this moment. And I feel like that's almost why
he did it, is to be like, yeah, Rand's a dick.
He's going to be a dick to Hearing, And so
you can sort of feel that like strangeness because you're like, man,
that feels really bad.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Yeah, as a reader, you're like, but this isn't the
Rand that we've been with. This is a different, darker
we need to fix kind of Rand now because Hearan
is like we all feel good for hearing. Hearing's like
the human cast equivalent of Bella, Like he's perfect, he
can do nothing wrong, you know, and Rand just treated

(59:37):
him like he was completely wrong. And yeah, it was
a good chose on Sanderson's part. I just wish RJ
had done more.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
In the meantime, I guess as thanks for that, Rand
gives her the thing she asked for earlier, because he's
I think there is part of him that's really he
didn't do that right, Like there's part of Rand that
didn't want to kill his allies.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
But yeah, because he is still Rand inside with all
these defense mechanisms, he is Rand under all that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
So he tells her that the statue, you know, he
describes a statue that's near where Parent is, and we
find that's on the road between Johanna and Luguard. Yeah,
sort of about halfway there, sort of in mur and
Dy kind of south of White Bridge.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Yeah. Yeah, because it's very close to where Parrin met
Elias and met no Gnome and all of that stuff
for back in that part of the world in.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
General, Giladawn, Murande, Altara, they all kind of overlap in
this little area where the road cuts through them, and
they're just on the other side of the two rivers,
right there's this giant wall that can forest of shadows
that separates the road they're on from the two rivers,
but they're actually geographically pretty close. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Yeah, and yeah, this was one of those parts where
I when I was first reading three D's I was like, oh,
so the timelines have like gone flying off in wildly
different directions because Parent is nowhere near a statue like that,
like this description here. When I was reading it the
first time, I'm like, but Parent's nowhere near a statue
like that. So either Rand is lying or Paren. We

(01:01:13):
have a lot of backtracking on the timeline to catch
up with Paren and like, you know, now, I know
we do, but yeah, that was I remember reading it
the first time, being like I would remember if Paren
was near a statue like that. Excuse me, when will
he get to a statue like that?

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
Right, that's going to give us a time sink later, right, Like, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
When he gets to that statue, then you know, oh,
we're catching up with the end of gathering Storm.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Cool. So that's that's a pretty good time stamp. And
there's a couple of visions like that. Ktswayne names the statue.
She said, it's a Mahan Rukhan old tongue name, but
there's no no parts of that appear in the Old
Tongue dictionary as any other words, so I don't have
a good translation for that. As far as I can tell,

(01:01:57):
there's no indication of the translation and no parent clues
from other known words in the old tongue. According to
Encyclopedia Watt huh interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Yeah, and it's a She describes it as a statue
that never actually got finished. It's a partially completed statue,
so there's some unfinished Old tongue comprehension construction.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
I guess the Old Tongue has never been finished either.
Is language, I don't think, you know. Apparently Jordan was
not a linguist.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
So yeah, we've gone back to Tyrs. That's where we
are now, and it's super toasty, and i Neive thinks
about how she shouldn't be wearing wool because the servants
all look cooler and.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Linen, Yeah, Lenin's great.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Linen is great. She thinks about Matt and how she
embarrassed herself in front of the Daughter of the Nine
Moons by defending him, which I just I think it's
cute that she sprang to Matt's defense ahead of her own,
like thoughts, like she just defended Matt and then after
the fact was like, oh no, I made a total
fool of myself. But like that's how much you care

(01:03:01):
about Matt Ninive And she thinks about how she feels
bad about abandoning him under a wall in Abu Dhar,
which like, yes, you should feel bad about that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Yeah, but she had to flee with a can and
all that kind of stuff because of the sean Chan
right she would have been captured, I.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Know, but she should still feel bad about it. Both
things can be true.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
And I think her defending Matt to the Empress to
Tuan was one of the greatest moments of ninive right
that we cheered that at the moment.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
So like her the moment, it's it's cute that she's embarrassed.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Yeah, exactly, And it's totally just embarrassment of like, oh,
I hope he's like actually not being a scoundrel, because
if I defended him and he went off into the scoundrel,
I'm going to be super embarrassed. It's like vouching for
somebody at work and later later finding out they were
like stealing from the company and being like, ooh, whoa.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
I can't imagine that would be really weird.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
One thing I want to talk about is the rain.
So they left and when they return there was a
wet scent to the air, a smell of new rain,
and she could feel that she'd missed a sprinkle, not
enough to clear the air or money the ground, but
enough to leave a wetted sections of stone and shaded corners.
So one of the issues with this constant overcastness is

(01:04:23):
that it never actually rains. Right, it's overcast, but it's
not raining. But while they're gone. There's a sprinkle, And
I was trying to find some meaning to that, and
I really couldn't. Are symbolism to it, and I really couldn't.
But it feels like if the dragon's away, maybe there's
a chance of normal weather, or maybe there was like

(01:04:45):
some tears falling with him, like almost destroying the Borderlanders,
or just Sanderson forgot that it wasn't supposed to rain.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Well, it didn't rain very much, so it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
Know, it doesn't really count. It's a little sprinkle, But yeah,
I thought one of the issues with this constant overcastness
is that they're not rain clouds. They're storm clouds, and
the storm is coming.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
I wonder if that means that the atmosphere is slowly
accumulating more and more water like as the land is
drying out.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Like well, think about it, like what makes their able
to absorb more moisture?

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Heat?

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Right, and so heat and energy, and so you have
all the energy of the Dark One coming and the
twisting of the pattern, and yeah, you don't necessarily need
to fall physical laws anymore because this is the Dark
One corrupting things. So like moisture and energy could be
accumulating in the atmosphere and building and building and building
way beyond when it would be reasonable physically for that

(01:05:41):
to keep building.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
Yeah, which then means that there could be some really
catastrophic storms that are going to get unleashed around the
world as the Dark One's control of things slips, et cetera,
et cetera. There's gonna be a lot of rebalancing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Those storms are also mirroring what's going on in of
Ran as the pressure is building and he's pushing down
that anger. That's just like, right, we're waiting for the
storm to erupt, which is his anger, and he's just
pushing it down, pushing it down, pushing it down, and
it builds and builds and builds and builds. And so
maybe we saw a little bit of a release of that, right,

(01:06:16):
a little bit of a little bit of emotion. He
did lose a little bit of control, he did let
them live, right, So there's just that little bit of
a sprinkle of rain that came out, Just that little
bit of a release of emotion that happened. That's the
best I got.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
Yeah, maybe maybe I'll take it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
Min is avoiding Rand right because men feels embarrassed. She
feels like a liability, so she is letting him. She's
hanging out with Codsway basically.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
Yeah, yeah, and I Neve goes to find kadswayin because
you know, she has this information and yeah, it looks
at men and it's just like, yeah, being around Rand
is hard, even if you're not his partner, but being
his partner it must be really tough. So I guess, yeah,
kat swayn is better company.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
We get a little backstory about how Nate and Neve's
room was totally cut off from you know, She's like,
I guess I was. I had to escape using a gateway,
and she doesn't consider that like other people might be
stuck in rooms that are totally cut off and like
dying and like they don't have like couldn't you like
maybe think about that and reflect on it. She's like,

(01:07:21):
I was mildly inconvenienced. I had a gateway, and it's like, yeah,
you can channel imagine all the people who couldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Yeah, that was my thought too, was like how many
people are dying because they got stuck in rooms with
outdoors and the hallways didn't shift back before they died
of thirst.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Or got stuck in rooms that just don't exist anymore, right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Like yeah, yeah, or turned into a wall.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
There's no guarantee the dark one doesn't just eliminate you, right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
Yeah, And yeah, the fact that she doesn't think about
the implications is just like, ugh, mild inconvenience, good thing,
I have a gateway, It's like, but.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
I think in a lot of ways, it's like change.
It's happening all around us, and we're all doing everything
we know how to do to solve the problem. But
the problem is bigger than us individually, and so we
just sort of live with it, and when it inconveniences us,
we do what we can to walk around it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
We turn on our ac if it gets too hot
outside and just keep living our lives. If something floods,
we no longer have insurance in Florida, and we just
keep living our lives, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
We can do better.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
Yeah, if something burns down, we just let the community
burn down and don't rebuild there, you know, or we
do because we have forest fires on this coast on
a regular yearly basis now.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Deserve so much better from our society.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
So you know, it's not so much that we are
adapting to climate change as we're just kind of working around.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
It, suffering through it while other people die first. Very honorable, and.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
I think there's something similar going on here.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
Right, No, Ninivea is trying to save the world three
different ways at the same time. I can see where
maybe she doesn't have the brain space to think about
scullerymaids getting stuck in doorless rooms. But still I would
have liked the omnipresent narrator to spend a little time on.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
It, Yeah, or at least think about that, Like, thank
god she had gateways, you know, think the creator she
had gateways, because you know, maybe just the line about
like how maybe this is where some of the missing
people have gone, that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Would have been a good line. Maybe some of the
disappearances could be explained through this. She should talk to
someone about that, and that that would have been a
good way to solve that one line. One line we
could have afforded that we really are on a rewrite bender.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
Today, we really are. Yeah, yeah, with this chapter. Yeah,
it just feels like a lot of wasted potential, that's all.
Like this particular plot line right leading up to him
having his revelation feel like the whole like Oh, your
father's here and you almost killed them. Therefore you need
to go on this like mind bender thing. Like, there's
so many different ways to approach that. And I don't
think that Tam it was an emotional moment, but it

(01:10:05):
doesn't for me make the most sense plot wise.

Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
Yeah, hence the desire to rewrite everything.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
And there's other ways to get that emotional moment with
him while having other things leading up to the breaking moment.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Yeah. So kat Swain praises Ninive, and Ninive gets mad
at herself for feeling pleased at the praise. But like,
I mean, have you seen how many compliments Kat Swayne
has handed out We are still counting. On one hand,
it is actually worth being pretty proud of yourself that
you've got a gold star from Kat Swayne.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
Yeah, but in a lot of ways, I see it
as a parallel to the way the shan Chan trained
the Demani, which is punished them constantly and only occasionally
give them praise, and then the praise feels amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
Yeah, that is Katswayne's sort of bullying tactic. It's not great.
It is effective, but it's not great. I think we're
supposed to see the parallel with Adam Lorna and Agwayne,
right where Ada Lorna is surprised that she feels good
that Agwayne is like, wow, you're so strong, like in
the aftermath of losing her warders during the battle and

(01:11:07):
all that, and she's like, why did this person make
me feel? But like the dynamic is totally different here
because kat Swayne is the elder one who's supposed to
be in charge. It's so yeah, but it's great proof
that Kats Swayne is very effective with her bullying or
not effective accomplished. She's a high level bullier. She's good
at what she does.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
And the way I see it also is that Ninive
respects Codswain and therefore respects advice from her.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
I mean, that's what it really means is you don't
get pride from compliments from people you don't respect, right, right,
no matter what she says, she's feeling pride. Therefore there's respect.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
And so she demands to know the whole plan before
she reveals where parent is.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
Right, just like Rand was cagey about handing the information over,
she is then going to try to sell the information
for the highest.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
Bid, and then what kind of follows is a whole
philosophical de bait about whether or not they can depend
on Men's visions in the future, because like Correll, who's
one of one of Codswayne's Diaidie who's like hanging out,
is like, oh, we know, we've already won because Men's
having visions about the future that happened after the last battle.

(01:12:16):
So for those visions to become true, which they have to,
that means we have to win the last battle. And
Codswayn's like yeah, except it's really sort of it. Men
can see what's happening on the film, but if someone
burns the theater to the ground, it doesn't matter what
was on the film.

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
Technically, Men's the one that makes that argument. In Katswanne
just backs her up. Well, okay, so Men is not
a sexy lamp. Men is a PhD psstudent.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
Yes, Men, you're right. Men does make that argument first
and basically says, it doesn't matter what I can see
if there's you know, no pattern for that to occur
on right.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):
Yeah, It's like I I yeah, her her power exists
while the pattern exists. It doesn't cut off a certain point.
It just won't exist if it doesn't exist. It's very simple.

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
I feel like all of her post last Battle prophecies
have to be started with if we win the last battle,
then blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Right, they're
all conditional kind of the way that like she's had.
I had a couple of other conditional prophecies. Two that
we know of, right, there's the suon Gareth Brynn, and
there was another.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
One Gwenna going the two paths, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
Right, and so like I feel like there's there's this
two path one too, that's like, you know, one goes
to a knoll which is the dark one winning and
the end of everything, and the other is assuming that
is not true, follow this loop.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we also have sort of here
like a scene it's almost like a repeat of the
Naturals Barrow revelation where nin he was like, oh yeah,
so he almost did Naturals Barrow again, like because it's like,
oh yeah, did he take it? The Borderlander proposition was
did he take it? Well, well, he almost did war
crimes and that's why I have information. And then Kat
Swayne gets to iterate again. Her goal is to make

(01:14:05):
Rand laugh iterating it again for us as the audience
that Kat Swayne is here to help Rand. You know,
Nine's like, oh, I won't let you hurt him. She's like, well,
why would you think I want to hurt him? I
want to make him learn how to laugh again.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
Because of all the history that you have with him.

Speaker 1 (01:14:20):
That's why, right exactly. But that's why she has to
say it out loud is because her actions do not
communicate that clearly. She has to say it with her
words in order for us to know what her actual
goals are, because her actions don't look like trying to
make him laugh. So then yeah, Nineva's like, I literally
can't bargain with this information, like it's literally too important,
even though she wants to bargain for it, like she tries,

(01:14:41):
and then they have this whole back and forth and
she has to sell for exactly the price that Kat
swayn asked.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
Yeah, but once she gives the information, she gets the information, right.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
Like right, Yeah, it's a little bit of a positive
bait and switch there, right.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
Right, It's like, I'm not going to tell you to
get in the information. Well, I'm not giving me the
information until you tell me, Okay, well, fine here here, Like,
why did the order matters so much? It's all that
it's powerplay between the two of them.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
Yeah, exactly, it's because it's two powerful women doing pecking
order of things. And yeah, now I got the reout.
That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
I think that's where we are here.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
Okay. Rand had to change for land for them all,
and she had no idea what to do other than, unfortunately,
to trust kat Swain. N Nieves swallowed her pride and spoke,
do you know the location of a statue of an
enormous sword fall into the earth as if stabbing it?
Corell and Maurice glanced at each other in confusion. The

(01:15:40):
hand of aman Rukhan cad Swain turned from men with
a raised eyebrow. The full statue is never finished. From
what scholars can tell, it rests near the Jahanna Road.
Paren is camping in its shadow. Kat Swain pursed her lips.
I assumed you would go eastward towards land al Thor

(01:16:00):
had captured. She took a deep breath. All right, we
are going for him right now. She hesitated, then glanced
at Nineve And answer to your question earlier, child, parent,
Actually isn't important to our plans. He isn't ninive, asked,
but Katswain raised a finger. There are people with him

(01:16:21):
who are vital, one in particular, and yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:25):
That's damn as we know. And just in case you
were wondering, Uh, someone asked Brandon Sanderson, what I'm on? Who? Whatever? Sorry?
What the stat name of the statue means? Response, stares
blankly for a long moment. What's been said on it before?
It's a sword sticking out of the earth called Swain

(01:16:45):
names it? Oh right, I don't know. You can probably
tell something about it from that, but it's not important.
Brandon Sanderson laughs again.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
Wow, okay, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
So it appears to be a name pulled out of
a hat for a statue on a road, so that
we can pinpoint paren it was.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
The end of the day and he had deadlines.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
I mean, yeah, I you know, I don't expect him
to remember every name of everything that he ever pulled out.
He was probably was asked that question at a con.
He probably didn't remember writing that scene. There may be
something in the notes, right, but like he didn't have
them on them at the time, so I'm not gonna
say it has no meaning.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
I got origins of the Wheel of Time right here.
Let me let me, let me try to look it up,
see if there's anything in it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
There's nothing. It confirms what's there's nothing other than what's
in the books.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):
Yeah, well that's a missed opportunity. Oh well, that's fine.
So this was fun ish. I guess we did a
lot of bitching about how the books were written.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
We did. We did a lot of we did a
lot of rewriting. But I think, like I do think
this is a little bit of a missed opportunity where
you could have had so many more threads coming together.
And I've never been a huge fan of the tam
reveal that triggers. I love, Veins of Gold not so
much big a fan of Like I have daddy issues,
therefore veins of Gold. Yeah, I just feel like there

(01:18:10):
could have been other triggers.

Speaker 1 (01:18:12):
No, Ran didn't have many other triggers to work with.
He was a pretty well adjusted person. It was really
only his daddy issues to work with.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
WHI She's like, the one thing he didn't have was
daddy Isu. His dad was actually a really good dude. Like,
other than trying to live up to the expectations and failing, right,
like that's the best.

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
Well and learning that he was adopted, like yeah, yeah,
in the middle of a bunch of us. He had
a little bit of dad issues, but like they weren't
long lasting and intrinsic to his personality. They were very recent.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
And he had and it's like, no, I've got a
good dad, and he like very quickly settled on, like no,
Tam was my dad, like he raised me. He was
a good dad, Like I don't need.

Speaker 1 (01:18:47):
I mean, I don't think vans of Gold is daddy issues.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
No, I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:18:51):
It's it's more it's kind of like what happened with
here and really is is being faced with someone who
remembers you before you became this broken version of yourself,
and like being faced with someone who knew you back
when you were a normal human being is.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
Question shows you the changes.

Speaker 1 (01:19:06):
Traumatizing and difficult, And it's not daddy issues. It's just
his dad is the person who can hold that mirror
up the most.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
Clearly, right, right, Yeah, it's yeah, And I see this
the symbolism of coming back together. Right. He was the
abandonment and he hasn't seen them since the eye of
the world when he left them, didn't even really get
say goodbye, like and the way that sort of uncertainty
around his past comes back around and he gets it
confirmed right like, there's there's something to that. Just it

(01:19:37):
feels like there was more that could have been done.
That's all I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
Oh yeah, no, for sure, I don't like it either.
It's just you know again, I think words need to
mean things, and I think daddy issues is separate from
whatever random tam have gone on.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
Well I'm talking about like random John Dowin right, like.

Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
The Janduin doesn't come into that scene, comes into that scene.
So yeah, yeah, I was.

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
Gonna say, I think that's my problem with it, is
that it reads like he has daddy issues and he doesn't.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
Yes, yes, yeah, but we'll continue to bitch about it.
We'll keep working our hypotheses and figure it all out
the time we get there for sure, next.

Speaker 3 (01:20:16):
Week, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
It's coming up real soon.

Speaker 1 (01:20:19):
Yeah, yes, we don't have very long to work shop
and bitch about it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:22):
No, no, you really don't. Thanks for the sympathy and

(01:21:03):
en talk for recording. I did get in a small accident.
I'm fine, my car is We'll probably be fine.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
Yeah, the armsling has nothing to do with the.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
Car, right. The arm sling is because I swam for
twenty years, wrecked my rotator cuff and then my dog
yanked on the leash and just caught me in a
bad place. And yeah, so I'm sure it's fine. I'm
sure there's no tendon damage that's permanent and there with scarring.
It's American health care. I don't need to know. I

(01:21:36):
don't want to know. Right. Yeah, it's like the rotator cuff.
It's for when I rotate my arm around, but it
turns around, turns out. If you do that a few
million times, those little rubber bands called tendons wear out
and tend to tear.

Speaker 1 (01:21:51):
Yeah, my biological father ruined his rotator cuff lifting heavy
objects over his head in grocery stores or bread trays
and bags of wheat and stuff. And then my stepfather
fucked up his rotator cuffs lifting heavy things over his
head as a contractor, you know, bags of cement and
ladders and dry wall. And it's I'm keeping my arms.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
Down, if I'll be honest. The time that I think
I actually tore it was not when I was swimming.
It's when I was working out in the weight room
after practice and I was doing military press, which is
lifting weight directly up over your head, and that's when
I felt the pop. And it's been you know, it's
gotten better, but it's you know, that's the one time
where I felt like I was injured, and then I
had a couple of weeks where I really had to

(01:22:33):
couldn't use it, and then the injury has always been
fine since then, you know, but it does if I
move it in the wrong way, it does hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:22:42):
So yeah, my chronic back pain is closer to my spine.
I have the quintessential under the shoulder blade, not thing
that's hurt ever since an injury in middle school right
got my shoulders. It's my back proper.

Speaker 2 (01:22:57):
It's so funny how these little like child injuries really
donaldam childhood young person injuries, but you think you've healed
from you don't. Yeah, I think it's why old people
always like be careful with your body, because it's like
they're in their forties and fifties going, man, I wish
I hadn't injured myself right when I was younger, because

(01:23:17):
I'm feeling it now.

Speaker 1 (01:23:19):
But also, like my injury was from me trying to
do high jump. I was in Pe and I knew
what I was doing, and I just fucked up one
high jump and like that this rib popped out, got
like dislocated or whatever. I had a chiropractor like put
it back, you know, like, and it's been prone towards
more injuries like that a couple of times. And like

(01:23:41):
and then I was playing cello for years and like
I guess hyper extending my back or something, and just
like and now I, you know, edit with my right hand,
and it's just like there's that repetitive chronic stress injury.
That's all still going back to that one point that
I remember fucking up that one beautiful June day in

(01:24:02):
middle school doing the fucking high jage.

Speaker 2 (01:24:04):
It's why it's so funny when I see people in
fantasy like get injured or get stabbed and they like
recover from it in a week and they never mentioned
it again. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no,
that's chronic pain for the rest of your life. You
don't you don't just get better from that. That's not
not something. The one thing I've been re listening to
the Dresden Files because sometimes it's a good background noise.
And one of my favorite little plot points in there

(01:24:26):
is that the thing that makes wizards wizards and makes
them long lived and the ability to like last for
hundreds of years without dying is they can basically heal
from anything, not fast, but like their body never stops healing,
so eventually scar tissue goes away, and so it's like
he Basically they're like, you've taken so much damage. You

(01:24:46):
should be like a punch drunk wrestler or a boxer,
right that you've taken so many hits to the head,
but it doesn't bother you because you just eventually actually
fully heal.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
Now that that seems like a thing, we could actually
try to figure out how to unlock in the huge
and genome with a little gene editing from like the
lizard regeneration whatever, you know. Like, no, not miraculous, healing
just never stops right, healing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:10):
Right. The only issue with that is that's also the
definition of cancer healing.

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
No, cancer is cell division growth healing, yeah, true, true, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
But healing healing is a measure of cell division, right,
Like you are creating new tissue through cell division, and.

Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
You're getting rid of the old shit too.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
It's just it's interesting to me that, like, yeah, there
is a link between cell division and growth and cancer, right,
it's very hard to have one without the other.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
Now I've been reading Song of the Cell. I think
I mentioned this a couple episodes ago, and it's so
deep into a level of nerdery that I just don't
know how to follow. But like, this person's a very
compelling writer. The way that we understand how cells work
and how they work at all, the different kinds of
cells and what they do, and how when those things

(01:26:05):
go wrong you get different diseases and illnesses and cancers,
is just like it's very hard for me to follow.
But if you're trying to treat like a fantasy world
and I'm just learning the world building, okay, like the
House of This does that with the Alliance like this,
you know, it's like, why can warn fantasy worlds? Why
can't I learned cell biology? If it's written.

Speaker 2 (01:26:25):
Because they're not narrated by Michael Kramer and Kate Redding,
That's why.

Speaker 1 (01:26:29):
Yeah, seriously, but this author, I'm forgetting his name, but
the author, he's very good. He's very he like switches
between like really deep cell biology and like very human
stories and like keeps the dynamic going back and forth
really well to make it make sense. You know, Like
I just listened to the chapter about AIDS and like

(01:26:50):
as he's like, so then in the eighties, this weird
illness came up. I'm like, oh, we're doing AIDS. Yes, yes,
that's where we're going. I'm sure enough. The next hour
is like is how we discovered from the symptoms and
worked backwards like what AIDS was, and like how it
fucks up the body and it's so weird, so fascinating.

(01:27:12):
And I have not read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lax,
but I am aware of hay Law cells. My dad
told me that the book was a lot about the
legal fight over them and less about the science of
the hay Law cells, like that was like a much
smaller part of the narrative. So I haven't gotten around
to it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:28):
But because the science is relatively simple, you know, you
can list all the things they've accomplished, but it's like, oh, yeah,
these are cancer cells that can live forever, and so
we can test out all these treatments on them and
duplicate them. And they're really easy to do that on
and they don't die in a petri dish.

Speaker 1 (01:27:43):
Yeah. So, I mean, and the book title says it right,
it's it's about the life of Henrietta Lax and less
about the science that she made possible.

Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
But there is some interesting like, oh, she's kind of immortal, right,
her cells live on forever.

Speaker 1 (01:27:58):
Yeah, like she in us sense is still going like what,
it's kind of weird, especially with the part where she
didn't consent to it. That part is extra weird.

Speaker 2 (01:28:08):
But you know, I I've subscribed more to that we
are information patterns rather than the cells and the DNA
necessarily that make us up. And so when the sort
of the pattern of our body disintegrates, we don't really
exist anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:28:23):
Unless you subscribe to the theory that information cannot be destroyed.

Speaker 2 (01:28:28):
Yeah, but that just because the information that you existed
cannot be destroyed doesn't mean that you yourself like continue
as an entity, right.

Speaker 1 (01:28:37):
I don't know. I've just read some sci fi where
that was kind of the crux of a totally totally
wrestling with that. That's all I know. I don't have
a strong take. I just know it's a theory or
not a theory. But a sandbox.

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
I think that's one of those things where like it's
that people take the saying, which is like a kind
of a misunderstanding and a twisting of like information theory
and make it like, oh, there could be an afterlife
because you are information and informs can't be destroyed.

Speaker 1 (01:29:01):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, I mean it's it's a logical
extension for artists to make. That's that's what artists do,
you know. They take those edges of reality and they say,
but what if a little do X makin it in there?

Speaker 2 (01:29:14):
It's the spin of electron is the thing we can't
get rid of. Like, the electrons can scatter all over
the place, and the organization that keeps them together take
constant energy input and that's an entry. Be can fuck
that up and no problem, right, Like and entropy we'll
get you, don't don't worry.

Speaker 1 (01:29:28):
Oh man. I watched her really one of the most
I don't usually get existentially depressed from watching science videos,
but I watched one about how the entire history of
the universe as we know it is like a very
short part of the overall timeline, No totally, and like
the actual timeline goes all the way down to like
protons falling apart in like a trillion billion years or something,

(01:29:49):
and I just like, I am not normally existentially depressed
by science, but that one fucking hurt. It was like
because I think, I think if it is like the
universe as we know, it will like you know, do
a big crunch or a big rip or something in
like reset and start over a wheel of time like
and this was just like, No, it's just going to
keep entropying until even the entropy eats its own self

(01:30:11):
and then it will just keep going and there will
be nothing and nothing will ever change ever again, and
it'll just keep getting bigger. And I just like, no,
I don't like that.

Speaker 2 (01:30:19):
I think there's some what can I say, reason to
believe that once everything settles out around that, like there's
enough quantum foam going on that you can get a
new Big Bang or something like that, right, like once.

Speaker 1 (01:30:32):
Right, that's what I want to believe, yeah, yeah, like or.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
Or there's an I kind of like the idea of
an infinitely and this is all you know sci Fi's
like slash Pops high the idea of an infinitely inflating
universe and that like if you have an infinitely inflating universe,
and you have a pocket where things slow down. That's
a new universe sort of start. That's a new big bang.
And so there's all these new big bangs going on everywhere.

(01:30:56):
But because the space in between the big bangs and
and the universes is separating so fast, they can never
communicate with each other. And so there's all these big
bangs going on all over the place, but they're just
being separated by dark matter. Yeah, right, Like, and also
we're fuck I mean, James Webb is telling us all

(01:31:18):
sorts of new stuff right like, we're learning. We're learning
that dark matter at all might not be like it's
the slowing down. We're looking at the third derivative now, right,
Because first it was like, oh, is the universe static
or is the universe changing? And we're like, oh, no,
it's changing, right, it's and then it's expanding. And then

(01:31:39):
it was like, ooh, there's a rate of expansion right, Like,
it's not just expanding, it's a single rate. The rate
is actually increasing, you know. And then we're going like, oh,
actually the rate at which the rate is increasing is decreasing,
is what we're discovering. So we're looking at what third
derivative at this point, right, it's kind of crazy, so
we don't understand and what is causing this effect because

(01:32:01):
it is at this point at least a third order effect.

Speaker 1 (01:32:04):
No, it's it's the James Webspace telescope is one of
the coolest things, like in the history of astronomy, like
since Hubble, right, because we've had this just laundry list
of questions that were like, Okay, once James Web's online,
we're going to be able to answer this, this, and
this question. Like we've just had this this list, this
giant list of questions and basically everyone we're coming up

(01:32:25):
against it's like, oh, that's not what we thought it
was going to be. Oh nope, that's not what we
thought it was going to be. That is okay, back
to the drawing board. Uh, back to the drawing board.
Like everything that we've been testing against its observations has
been like, uh, okay, we got to rethink everything. Like
it's the most exciting freaking time in that regard.

Speaker 2 (01:32:46):
Because there's the three things I've really heard of is
a we've got bigger galaxies than we expected to see
in the early universe with more.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
Yeah, more well defined defined.

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
More well defined. Yeh, heavier metals, right, we didn't expect
like that many. We expected mostly hydrogen and helium, right,
And we're seeing like a bunch of like carbon and shit, like, wait,
the stars haven't had time to make that yet. Where
it is? Where is it coming from? And we're seeing
like little red dots that have a very weird X
ray profile kind of indicate that something is going on

(01:33:15):
there that we don't expect. So there's like that we're
getting data that just doesn't conform to the idea that
if we track backwards from existing galaxies we're going to
get smaller, newer galaxies.

Speaker 1 (01:33:27):
Yeah, it's absolutely wild how many of our ideas about
the universe are being upset by these very solid observations
like oh no, yeah, oh no, because we're so wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:33:38):
We're finally in the point where James Web has been
up there long enough that it's had like a year
or two to collect data, and then another year or
two for people to actually like really start analyzing that
data and start pulling like meaningful information out of the data.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
Yeah, the papers are getting published and processed by like
regular pop scientists who can translate it out to the
rest of us and like, yeah, it's just from the
moment that it can came online.

Speaker 2 (01:34:02):
And they've had a few arguments where some of the
like the bad evidence has been like dismissed and gotten
rid of, where people are like no, no, no, that's
not real, right, we've ruled that out right, So we've
had a few arguments where things that they thought So
the first year of data, there was a couple of
things that were like we might be seeing this effect
and then the effect goes away with more data.

Speaker 1 (01:34:19):
Well, I mean Hubble had the whole being out a
focus thing at the beginning, you know, like it takes
a minute to get into the groove of using a
new space.

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):
It's not even that, it's just like with a certain
amount of data, you're going to see stuff in the noise,
and with more data that that noise goes away and
all of a sudden you don't see the results.

Speaker 1 (01:34:35):
So yeah, and now like it. Yeah, I'm so excited
about James Web. Like I was really like Hubble was
a very formative event in my childhood. I was a
very young child when it came online, so really like
defined my whole concept of astronomy, and like James Webb
really is like the second coming of Hubble, Like it's

(01:34:57):
just escalating our ability to look into space to such
an amazing degree because.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):
It's just we can look. It helps us look back
in time, which is also really cool. I think about it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:05):
So much farther, so much farther, and.

Speaker 2 (01:35:08):
Yeah, it's just like look at different frequency.

Speaker 1 (01:35:10):
We thought we were going to see the edge of
time and no, absolutely not. We're just seeing that there's
more stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:35:17):
Which yeah, I mean it's changing, which I think because
we have some holes. Right, we don't understand quantum gravity.
We don't understand how gravity fits in with the physics.

Speaker 1 (01:35:25):
We know lots of things we don't know, like mostly
by the edd by the edge of time, I mean,
like the formation of early galaxies like we were saying.

Speaker 2 (01:35:35):
And then a lot of ways we have seen the
edge of time because we've seen the background.

Speaker 1 (01:35:39):
The CMB classic microwave background radiation.

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):
Yeah, the background microwave radiation is the initial moment at
which lights started being able to pass through the galaxy, right,
because before that point everything was too dense, there are
too many like and then the universe went from a
plasma to gases and solids right, right, And so from
plasma to gas, and all of a sudden, light could

(01:36:02):
pass through the gas and we get all these X rays.
That's the CNB, right, and so's that's the edge of
the universe, right, So that moment matter essentially forms.

Speaker 1 (01:36:11):
But like we thought we knew what we were going
to see between that and the most recently the farthest
back galaxies, and that gap between those two things is
full of stuff we didn't expect. It's maybe a much
bigger gap than we thought. Like we're there's just a
lot more questions than answers. And it's cool. It's a
good time to be obsessed with astronomy. It's a really

(01:36:33):
good time for that because some of the biggest and
smallest things can be helped with cosmology, like quantum physics.
Stuff is informed by our understanding of like the biggest things.
You know, it's all comes around.

Speaker 2 (01:36:49):
Because you need the biggest things to have enough energy
to affect the smallest things, if that makes sense, right,
Like it's so.

Speaker 1 (01:36:56):
Weird, how like what is it? Gravity is the weakest
of the sex forces, and yet it's the only one
that like we experience in like a tangible human sense.

Speaker 2 (01:37:06):
I would say the other one we experience all the
time is electromagnetism, right, because pretty much everything, all your
interactions with the world around you that aren't keeping you
on the ground is electromagnetism, right, like light, sound, you
not phasing through your chair, right, being you being a
coherent atomic being, right, that's all depending on the electromagnetic force.

(01:37:28):
You don't see the weak force a lot because you
don't necessarily see atoms decaying.

Speaker 1 (01:37:34):
That's not right, right, That's that's the thing. The forces
that only work at the atomic subatomic scale. It's like
there's no way to experience.

Speaker 2 (01:37:42):
Them and the strong forces why atoms exist? Right, but
like you know, you are atoms, so like you're experiencing that,
but there's no Yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:37:51):
Literally possible to send yourself from the experience, which arguably
electromagnetism is kind of the same way. It's like, can
you experienced a thing without that? Kind of gravity is
pretty like we all get gravity. We've all been bit
on the ass by gravity, like you know, yeah, everyone
has tripped and fallen on gravity. That's just a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:38:13):
Yeh No. And then I like the idea of like
space as an emergent property of time. You know. So
there's some theories around that that I heard recently.

Speaker 1 (01:38:21):
Yeah, yeah, I've come across this before, that space and
time are emergent properties of something more fundamental.

Speaker 2 (01:38:28):
And it's like you what, now, Well, time's so crazy
because like nobody can really agree on it, Like it's
all based on your relative acceleration in your your frame, right,
so right, no one really can agree on the sequence events,
but not necessarily what time anything happens, which is a
I'm not even gonna try and wrap my brain around
it or explain it. I would rather get into the

(01:38:49):
wheel of time.

Speaker 1 (01:38:52):
Thank you for listening to The Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast.
Please rate and review us on your podcast app and
consider supporting us on pagere for ad free episodes. Watt
Spoilers is a production of Fox and Raven Media. For
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Scents Unknown - The Gathering Storm chapter 44 - EP539

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Scents Unknown - The Gathering Storm chapter 44 - EP539