Thought I'd share with you the Wheel of Time series from Robert Jordan! Yes, I've read all volumes...except the final one - and anyone who tells me what happens to Rand al'Thor before I get to will suffer my wrath! :)
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In the series's fictional mythology, a deity known as the
Creator forged the universe and the
Wheel of Time, which, as it turns, spins all lives. The Wheel has seven
spokes, each representing an age, and it rotates under the influence of
the One
Power, which flows from the True Source.
Essentially composed of male and female halves (saidin and saidar) in
opposition and in unison, this power turns the Wheel. Those humans who can use
this power are referred to as channelers; the principal organization of such
wielders in the books is called the Aes Sedai or
'Servants of All' in the Old Tongue.
The Creator imprisoned its antithesis, Shai'tan (or
Dark One), at the moment of creation, sealing him away from the Wheel. However,
in a time called the Age of Legends or the
Second Age, an Aes Sedai experiment inadvertently breached the Dark One's
prison, allowing his influence into the world. He rallied the powerful, the
corrupt and the ambitious to his cause and these servants began an effort to
free the Dark One fully from his prison. In return, the Dark One promised them
worldly power and immortality. Few even among the servants of the Dark One
realized that one of the consequences of freeing him might be the breaking of
the Wheel of Time and the end of existence itself.
In response to this threat, the Wheel spun out the Dragon as the champion of the
Light. The Dragon was a male Aes Sedai named Lews Therin Telamon, who rose to great
influence and power among the Aes Sedai. A century after the initial breach of
the Dark One's prison, a time during which the Dark One's influence spread
throughout the world, causing society to become corrupt and decayed, open
warfare broke out between the forces of the Dark One and those of the Light.
After ten years of a grueling, world-wide war filled with atrocities on a scale
never before imagined, the Light found itself facing the real possibility of
defeat.
In desperation, Lews Therin led a hand-picked force of
channelers and soldiers in a high-risk, daring assault on the site of the
earthly link to the Dark One's prison, and was able to seal it off, although
imperfectly. However, at this moment of victory the Dark One tainted saidin,
driving male channelers of the One Power insane. The male channelers, in the
"Time of Madness," devastated the world with the One Power,
unleashing earthquakes and tidal waves that reshaped the planet, referred to in
subsequent ages as "The Breaking of the World."
In his insanity, Lews Therin himself killed his friends, his
family and anyone in any way related to him, and was known afterwards as Lews
Therin Kinslayer. Given a moment of sanity by Ishamael, chief among the Dark
One's servants, Lews Therin realized what he had done. In his grief, he
committed suicide by drawing on far more of the One Power than even he could
handle unaided.
Over time, the remaining male Aes Sedai were killed or cut
off from the One Power. In their wake, they had left a devastated world: the
land and the oceans reshaped, people scattered from their native lands,
civilization itself all but destroyed. Only women were now able to wield the
One Power safely. The female Aes Sedai reconstituted and guided humanity out of
this dark time. Men who could channel eventually became objects of fear and
horror, as they would inevitably go insane unless stopped, and even the Dragon
became a loathed figure. Among the Aes Sedai there were women whose sole
function was to hunt such men down and cut them off from accessing the One
Power.
What followed was three and a half thousand years of history
that was marked by a series of rises then inevitable declines in civilization,
a time of troubles and chaos that stood in marked contrast to the now mythical
Age of Legends. Nations and civilization itself fell, rose, and fell again.
Occasional periods of uneasy peace were punctuated by warfare. There were two major
conflicts that were of particular importance, in terms of their effect on
civilization as a whole. The first were the Trolloc Wars,
in which servants of the Dark One tried to destroy civilization once more, in a
more or less continuous war that lasted for several hundred years. This period
finally came to an end thanks to an alliance of nations led by the Aes Sedai.
The second was the War of the
Hundred Years, a devastating civil war that followed the fall of a
continent-spanning empire ruled by the High King, Artur Hawkwing.
These wars have prevented the human race from regaining the
power and high technology of the Age of Legends, and left humanity divided.
Even the prestige of the Aes Sedai has fallen, with their terrible power and
shrinking numbers, and the emergence of organizations such as the Children of the Light, a
militant order who hold that all who dabble with the One Power are servants of
the Shadow. The human race has clawed its way back to a level of technology and
culture roughly comparable to that of our 1450 to 1600 (although without the
sciences, formalized learning, or the military use of gunpowder), with the
difference that women enjoy full equality with men in most societies, and are
superior in some. One likely explanation for this is the power and influence of
the female-only Aes Sedai spilling over into everyday life.
During the last war of note, called the Aiel War and taking
place 20 years before the start of the series, the nations of the modern era
allied themselves against the warrior-clans of the Aiel, who crossed into the
western kingdoms on a mission of vengeance after suffering a grievous insult at
the hands of one of the western Kings. The Aiel have since returned to the Aiel
Waste, with some saying that they were defeated and fled, but others saying
that they got their vengeance and left on their own terms. Despite this
confrontation, little is known of these fierce warriors in the kingdoms of the
east.
In the time in which the novels are set, mankind lives under
the shadow of a prophecy that the Dark One will break free from his prison and
the Dragon will be reborn to face him once more, raining utter destruction and
chaos on the world in the process of saving it from the Dark One.
Plot summary
The prequel novel New Spring,
takes place during the Aiel War and chronicles the end of that conflict and the
discovery by the Aes Sedai that one of the Prophecies of the Dragon has been
fulfilled, that the Dragon has been Reborn. Aes Sedai agents (including a young
Moiraine Damodred) are dispatched to try to find the newborn child before
servants of the Shadow can do the same.
The series proper commences almost twenty years later in
the Two Rivers, a near-forgotten backwater
district of the country of Andor. An Aes Sedai, Moiraine,
and her Warder Lan, arrive mysteriously in the village of
Emond's Field, secretly aware that servants of the Dark One are searching for
one particular young man living in the area. Moiraine is unable to determine
which of three youths (Rand al'Thor, Matrim
Cauthon or Perrin Aybara) is the Dragon Reborn, so she takes all
three of them out of the Two Rivers, along with their friend Egwene
al'Vere. Nynaeve al'Meara, the unusually young village
Wisdom (a healer or wise-woman figure), later meets up with them at the town of
Baerlon. The men are mystified why Moiraine has allowed Egwene and Nynaeve to
travel with them, until it is revealed that both of them can channel the One
Power and learn to be Aes Sedai. A mysterious old gleeman named Thom
Merrilin also travels with the group, claiming he wants to travel in
safety when leaving the Two Rivers. The first novel depicts their flight from
various agents of the Shadow and their attempts to escape to the Aes Sedai city
of Tar Valon.
From then on, the story expands and the original characters
are frequently split into different groups and pursue different missions or
agendas aimed at furthering the cause of the Dragon Reborn (revealed to be Rand
al'Thor), sometimes thousands of miles apart. The original group of characters
from the Two Rivers make new allies, gain experience and become figures of some
influence and authority. As they struggle to unite the western kingdoms against
the Dark One's forces, their task is complicated by rulers of the nations who
refuse to give up their authority and by factions such as the Children of the
Light, who do not believe in the prophecies, and the Seanchan, the
descendants of a long-lost colony of Artur Hawkwing's empire across the western
ocean (Hawkwing had once united the mainland continent under his rule, and sent
his son across the ocean to unite those lands as well) who have returned,
believing it is their destiny to conquer the world. The Aes Sedai also become
divided over the overthrow of their previous leader (an Amyrlin Seat) Siuan
Sanche and the installation of Elaida
a'Roihan as the new leader. The two sides are split idealogically
between those who believe the Aes Sedai should be kept together in this time of
crisis and those who believe that Elaida became the Amyrlin Seat through
illegal means and want to remove her as an unfit leader. As the story expands,
new characters representing different factions are introduced: although this
expansion of the narrative allows the sheer scale of the growing struggle to be
effectively depicted, it has been criticized for slowing the pace of the novels
and sometimes reducing the appearances of the original cast to extended cameos.
By the eleventh novel, it has become clear that Tarmon Gai'don, or the Last
Battle, caused when the Dark One is able to exert its influence directly on the
world once more, is imminent.
Tarmon Gai'don
Tarmon Gai'don is both feared and anticipated in the lands
of the Wheel. Deriving its name from the final battlefield of Armageddon (Har-Magedon)
in Christian eschatology, it will be the apocalyptic (some say final) battle
between the forces of the Shadow and the forces of Light; if the Dark One wins,
he plans to break the Wheel of Time itself to prevent another challenge. Even
though the Dragon Reborn might prevail and thwart the Dark One, many fear that
the Last Battle and its aftermath will be as bad as the Breaking, if not worse.
As the series winds toward its conclusion, signs begin to point to the nearness
of this final struggle.
Within the storyline, there are characters who believe that
the death of Rand before Tarmon Gai'don would prevent it from happening and
therefore plot his premature death; others (mainly Elaida's Aes Sedai) just
believe his mere presence would ensure their victory and therefore wish to
capture him and keep him safe until the time comes. Before his death, Pedron
Niall speculated that the Creator had abandoned mankind to its own devices, and
that the Last Battle would be between armies and not include a non-existent (to
his thinking) Dragon Reborn (in fact, he did not even believe Rand could
channel). One member of the Black Ajah had her mind warped to believe that the
Dragon Reborn must make it to Tarmon Gai'don in order for the Dark One to
defeat him, and thus she has pledged to protect Rand al'Thor from anyone who
tries to take his life.
Events and portents that are believed to lead to the Last
Battle take place in Knife of Dreams and The Gathering Storm. The Last
Battle takes place in A
Memory of Light.
Special Powers
Some men and women are able to use something known as
the One
Power; using the One Power is called channeling. The One Power is split
into two sections: saidin and saidar. Men channelsaidin,
and women channel saidar. Not all people can channel. Specific
flows of saidin or saidar are called weaves.
Women can join together and form circles, but without a man, which only a woman
can bring into it, the circle is restricted to thirteen members, with one
person maintaining control by directing the weaves.
At the start of the series, saidin has been
tainted by the Dark One for over three thousand years. Any man who channels it
will eventually go insane and die. Because of this, the female Aes Sedai hunt
down men who can channel and if they cannot gentle them (cut them off from
saidin) they kill them.
There also exists a power of evil, dubbed the True Power.
The tapping of this power caused the bore into the Dark one's sanctum in the
first place. Some higher levels of authority in the shadow have been granted
access to this power by Shai'tan, and explain its use less as graceful, and
more as ripping through the seams of fate and time itself, to force one's will
on nature.
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