Latest / WoT Spoilers / Near Avendesora & Court of the Sun - Towers of Midnight chapter 48 & 49 - EP576

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Near Avendesora & Court of the Sun - Towers of Midnight chapter 48 & 49 - EP576 · WoT Spoilers

0:00
Speaker 1: Whatever, it's a velociraptor funk off.
0:02
Speaker 2: I just realized Calendar from Wheel of Time is the
0:07
Speaker 2: holy Grail, right, because my god, it's a perforated chalice,
0:12
Speaker 2: which is a calendar, and a calendar is calendar, and
0:16
Speaker 2: so calendar is the holy grail.
0:21
Speaker 1: That is less on the nose than being the sword
0:23
Speaker 1: in the stem.
0:27
Speaker 2: That's a bad pun, but you know, uh, can you.
0:30
Speaker 1: Tell we've been podcasting for hours, we're getting punch druck.
0:34
Speaker 2: You should you got to cut that one into a
0:36
Speaker 2: Wheel of Time episode. Oh my god, episode totally.
0:53
Speaker 1: This is the Wheel of Time spoilers podcast. So we're
1:04
Speaker 1: here for a very fun doubleheader today.
1:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's we're doing it. It's two chapters. But this
1:10
Speaker 2: is Avienda's dream sequence through the blah I should call
1:14
Speaker 2: a dream sequence, but her visions through the Crystal Tarangreol.
1:19
Speaker 1: The first of the new visions, the first of the
1:21
Speaker 1: new visions. Right, if we assume that this is a
1:23
Speaker 1: permanent sea change in how the columns work, this is
1:26
Speaker 1: the moment of that change.
1:28
Speaker 2: So Near Aven Desra and Court of the Sun are
1:31
Speaker 2: the two chapters. Or of the Sun's an interesting chapter title.
1:34
Speaker 2: I think that'll be because that's referencing a post last
1:38
Speaker 2: battle group.
1:41
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And as we were saying before we turned
1:44
Speaker 1: it on, before we turned recording on, we're going to
1:47
Speaker 1: do this in traditional Watt spoilers reverse order, where we
1:53
Speaker 1: work through it chronologically across the two chapters, rather than
1:55
Speaker 1: in the order that the author gave it to us,
1:57
Speaker 1: because we are little rebels and we have to be original.
2:02
Speaker 2: I just think it helps to understand what's going on.
2:05
Speaker 2: When you go into chronological order. It feels like you
2:08
Speaker 2: know what's going on backwards, but it's like turning a
2:10
Speaker 2: painting upside down. It can kind of help you see
2:12
Speaker 2: the flaws and see like where the connections are being
2:15
Speaker 2: made and everything like that.
2:16
Speaker 1: So helps you see the spoilers, see.
2:18
Speaker 2: The spoilers exactly. So we're gonna do the initial like
2:21
Speaker 2: her going you know, obviously, her approaching the columns. We're
2:24
Speaker 2: gonna do that, and then jump to the end of
2:26
Speaker 2: the second chapter and then start working the way backwards
2:28
Speaker 2: through the vision, so it'll be a vision how aviand
2:31
Speaker 2: reacts to it, jump back Yeah.
2:33
Speaker 1: And then at the very end, obviously, we'll do the
2:35
Speaker 1: actual readout where she gets out of the columns and
2:38
Speaker 1: it's like.
2:38
Speaker 2: Whoa, okay, anyway, okay, I gotta change some shit. And yeah,
2:43
Speaker 2: I feel like there's just a bunch of philosophical questions
2:46
Speaker 2: around this in terms of like what does this vision mean,
2:49
Speaker 2: how real is it? What does it have to do
2:52
Speaker 2: with Like you know, obviously she's able to change some things,
2:55
Speaker 2: right because the ieel or in the dragon of the
2:58
Speaker 2: piece in the real world and not in her vision.
3:01
Speaker 2: So like, you know, for me, it's pretty I think
3:03
Speaker 2: I know what's going on. But I've definitely had arguments
3:05
Speaker 2: where I've heard other people argue that this is what's
3:07
Speaker 2: really going to happen, and I think probably going up
3:09
Speaker 2: to her vision, this was what was going to happen.
3:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is definitely my impression is that this is
3:15
Speaker 1: what's going to happen unless you change something. And because
3:19
Speaker 1: we know that the iel do get written into the
3:21
Speaker 1: Dragon's piece, we know that this is not set in stone,
3:24
Speaker 1: we know it is malleable. But I don't think that
3:26
Speaker 1: it's one of an infinity of variations, right, think it's
3:30
Speaker 1: what was going to happen.
3:31
Speaker 2: I agree, I think with it's as true as men's visions,
3:35
Speaker 2: except that this these can change, whereas men's visions can't.
3:40
Speaker 1: Right right, well, because Men's not getting a total vision, right,
3:42
Speaker 1: She's getting this tiny little summary of a summary of
3:45
Speaker 1: a summary, whereas Avanda's getting it's a much more thorough view.
3:51
Speaker 2: It really leads to interesting questions around how deterministic is
3:54
Speaker 2: the pattern? Right, because if men can have these visions
3:57
Speaker 2: that you know are always going to come true, and
4:00
Speaker 2: abviend it can have these visions that she can absolutely change,
4:04
Speaker 2: how do you reconcile those two things? You know, you
4:07
Speaker 2: have these like anchor points that are unchangeable, but around
4:10
Speaker 2: them you can change a bunch of other stuff like it.
4:13
Speaker 2: It just adds a lot of very interesting questions around
4:15
Speaker 2: the wheel of time universe.
4:17
Speaker 1: I mean, if we go with the kind of the
4:20
Speaker 1: foundation logic, you know, then yeah, most things are very
4:25
Speaker 1: very flexible and open, and other things are absolutely determined
4:29
Speaker 1: because if you go at a big enough scale, you
4:31
Speaker 1: can predict what's going to happen. Right, So right, maybe
4:34
Speaker 1: these kind of maybe this kind of works on a
4:37
Speaker 1: similar principle, like there's just three things ever that are
4:40
Speaker 1: actually fixed, and everything else is a falling degree of
4:43
Speaker 1: probability from that or something.
4:45
Speaker 2: I was thinking that the kind of visions that the
4:48
Speaker 2: prophecies are things that are true on every cycle, and
4:51
Speaker 2: so you know them because you know history, and you
4:54
Speaker 2: can predict the future because you know history. Right, the
4:56
Speaker 2: dragon will arise every time, like it is a lot
4:58
Speaker 2: of his blood will be shed on rocks of show gool.
5:00
Speaker 2: That's already happened. You know it's going to happen. And
5:03
Speaker 2: then there's other things that are actual magical visions of
5:06
Speaker 2: the future given to you by the pattern or buy
5:09
Speaker 2: these columns right, and those feel or by like min
5:12
Speaker 2: has a connection to the pattern, and those feel like
5:14
Speaker 2: they're actually foretelling the future in a way that knowing
5:19
Speaker 2: what happened in the past still has the opportunity to bury.
5:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, I agree with Foujie that the columns
5:26
Speaker 1: in the future are going to kind of be a
5:29
Speaker 1: warning thing for their yea of like, hey, there's this
5:31
Speaker 1: big road bump, there's this big cliff, there's this big
5:33
Speaker 1: fork in the road coming up, and you need to
5:35
Speaker 1: think about what you want to change in order to
5:38
Speaker 1: avoid that. Like that's kind of what I imagine the columns
5:42
Speaker 1: are going to be moving forward, because you used to
5:44
Speaker 1: need to remember where they came from. And as you
5:47
Speaker 1: know she talked about with Nacomi like that kind of
5:49
Speaker 1: is passing in the rear view. Now, so what can
5:52
Speaker 1: the columns do help you remember where not to go?
5:56
Speaker 1: I guess I.
5:57
Speaker 2: Kind of think of it like a grad school project, right,
5:59
Speaker 2: Like it's the point of grad school or getting your
6:01
Speaker 2: phgd is to investigate something that nobody else has ever
6:04
Speaker 2: looked at before. And the columns are being like, all right,
6:06
Speaker 2: so you're your grad project now is to solve a
6:09
Speaker 2: problem that no one's ever encountered before.
6:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, totally. You're in a unique situation. You will
6:15
Speaker 1: have unique outcomes. Here's a warning about how to maybe
6:19
Speaker 1: try to avoid one of two pitfalls.
6:20
Speaker 2: And I guess we should revisit Nikomi, as Padoinko is asking,
6:24
Speaker 2: because this vision, this change is absolutely inspired by her
6:27
Speaker 2: conversation with Nikomi, right, yes, And I want to talk
6:31
Speaker 2: about a little bit more when we get into what
6:32
Speaker 2: the columns are and when she has that connection with
6:34
Speaker 2: the columns. Right. But like to me, it feels like
6:37
Speaker 2: these are the actions of the creator that somehow Nikomi,
6:41
Speaker 2: because like you know, we decided based on the word
6:44
Speaker 2: of Sanderson, Right, Nikomi was the last of the Geni
6:48
Speaker 2: Yel who was inhabited as an avatar of the Creator. Right,
6:51
Speaker 2: That's that's the final you know, said by Sanderson, and
6:56
Speaker 2: it fits most of the evidence. She's obviously one of
6:59
Speaker 2: the last ie Genieel.
7:02
Speaker 1: Right, I think she's the time traveler. Sanderson says, she's
7:05
Speaker 1: just from a you know, tribe of people who somehow
7:06
Speaker 1: didn't inbreed for the last three thousand years. Reasonable people
7:09
Speaker 1: can disagree, but whatever.
7:13
Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, I want to say she was trapped in
7:17
Speaker 2: the dream world of Rudian for all that time.
7:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was stuck in the fog like mists around
7:24
Speaker 1: a magical island style, like, she was not just living
7:27
Speaker 1: like a real person Sanderson whatever.
7:29
Speaker 2: Whatever. So she's the avatar of the Creator and she
7:31
Speaker 2: is poking the pattern a little bit to get the
7:35
Speaker 2: ideal on a better path.
7:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, just a little nudge, just a little thought experiment
7:39
Speaker 1: that leads to a different set of decisions. Because as
7:42
Speaker 1: we see in the visions like and as we've seen
7:45
Speaker 1: in Rand's visions, this kind of large cultural trend in
7:50
Speaker 1: massive patterns, they do ultimately come from small decisions. It
7:53
Speaker 1: is small decisions that add up to these big things. Right,
7:55
Speaker 1: The butterfly effect is very much in evidence in these
7:58
Speaker 1: sorts of progressions, and so the way you think about
8:03
Speaker 1: a problem walking up to it may have very profound
8:06
Speaker 1: implications for three centuries later.
8:08
Speaker 2: And to me that that has everything to do with
8:10
Speaker 2: the way Jordan attacks information over time and space. Right,
8:14
Speaker 2: it changes over time and space. Those changes lead to
8:18
Speaker 2: other changes which lead to outcomes, And that's sort of that.
8:20
Speaker 2: It's a combination of, like he likes to he's investigating
8:23
Speaker 2: with these stories, how information alters and changes, legends fade,
8:27
Speaker 2: a myth, that sort of thing, and that is applying
8:31
Speaker 2: here as well.
8:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, which then also, you know, kind of gets
8:34
Speaker 1: us around the concept of the paradox of time travel. Right,
8:37
Speaker 1: if you know about something from the future and you
8:39
Speaker 1: change it, then doesn't that make it real? Like if
8:41
Speaker 1: it's more about choice and agency than it is about
8:45
Speaker 1: literal the facts of what happens, then that sort of
8:48
Speaker 1: just let's a sidestep causality paradoxes.
8:51
Speaker 2: Also, the cycle means like not every cycle has to
8:54
Speaker 2: be exactly the same, so you can make different choices
8:55
Speaker 2: and they kind of incorporate into the cycle. And yes,
8:58
Speaker 2: that cycle might be slightly different on this round. That
9:00
Speaker 2: doesn't mean there's a.
9:01
Speaker 1: Paradox, right, yeah, exactly, or you know.
9:04
Speaker 2: Or you know, your prophecy might be slightly wrong, and
9:06
Speaker 2: that's the details might be weird, or you know, he
9:08
Speaker 2: who follows after then this cycle might be completely insignificant.
9:14
Speaker 1: It could have been significant in a slightly different turning.
9:17
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly. And that's why it's a prophecy, because sometimes
9:20
Speaker 2: it matters. And that's why you have all these prophecies
9:21
Speaker 2: about some significant things and some insignificant things.
9:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So with that, should I read us into
9:28
Speaker 1: this mess of a chapter set?
9:31
Speaker 2: We're going to do, yes please.
9:38
Speaker 1: Chapter forty eight near a vendosura and our symbol is
9:42
Speaker 1: the Ayel spears and buckler. Avianda took one final step
9:46
Speaker 1: and was out of the forest of glass pillars. She
9:49
Speaker 1: took a deep breath, then glanced back at the path
9:52
Speaker 1: she had taken. The central plaza of Ruidian was an
9:55
Speaker 1: awe inspiring site. Smooth white flagstones carpeted the entire square.
10:00
Speaker 1: For the absolute center, there stood an enormous tree, branches
10:04
Speaker 1: spread wide like arms reaching to embrace the sun. The
10:07
Speaker 1: massive tree had a perfection. She could not explain it
10:10
Speaker 1: had a natural symmetry, no missing branches, no gaping holes
10:14
Speaker 1: in its leafy upper reaches. It was particularly impressive since
10:18
Speaker 1: when last she'd seen it, it had been blackened and burned.
10:21
Speaker 1: And she goes on for a while describing the plaza
10:24
Speaker 1: of Rudian and what it looks like and what's going
10:26
Speaker 1: on there. But I think that's a good reading.
10:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, just the things that are left are
10:30
Speaker 2: the columns, the rings, the tree. I think that's it, right, Yeah.
10:34
Speaker 1: That's it because Moraine took away a huge amount of
10:37
Speaker 1: the tarungrioll and the people living in Rudian now have
10:41
Speaker 1: squirreled away the rest of it somewhere less public. It's
10:44
Speaker 1: less of just a yard sale of turrungrioal and now
10:47
Speaker 1: it's like a clean public square. And she says that
10:50
Speaker 1: when she first showed up, they were like doing yard
10:53
Speaker 1: work essentially, like removing fallen branches and leaves from the tree,
10:57
Speaker 1: and they all cleared out when they saw her. But yeah,
10:59
Speaker 1: this place looks very different from what Rand and all
11:02
Speaker 1: the other chiefs have wandered through.
11:04
Speaker 2: And aven Dosurra healing itself basically, I.
11:08
Speaker 1: Mean really fast, magically fast.
11:12
Speaker 2: Feels like there's some link with the dragon there.
11:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe also that it's a little bit out
11:16
Speaker 1: of time and place too, which you know again Nakomi,
11:19
Speaker 1: I think is you know, out of time and place,
11:21
Speaker 1: not just out of place. But yeah, if there was
11:25
Speaker 1: ever a tree that represents Rand's connection to the land,
11:28
Speaker 1: it would be literal of Ndosa. Also, yeah, it is
11:31
Speaker 1: the magically gene altered tree from the Age of Legends, right,
11:33
Speaker 1: this is a sprouting, a sprouted sapling clone. Yeah, it's
11:38
Speaker 1: a geor tree. It's just one of many chora trees.
11:41
Speaker 1: It's like if you took you know, one of those
11:43
Speaker 1: awful trees that are all blooming in town right now,
11:45
Speaker 1: and you know, took a branch of one away, and
11:47
Speaker 1: then people like, wow, it's so amazing how it stinks
11:49
Speaker 1: like garbage special?
11:51
Speaker 2: You know.
11:51
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, this usould just be on a
11:53
Speaker 1: random street in a college town. This is nothing special.
11:56
Speaker 2: My entire street is lined with those because it.
11:58
Speaker 1: Was what are they called? I can't I remember what.
12:00
Speaker 2: They're uh, dogwood not dogwood, hawthorn, Bradley pears Bradford Bradford, Yeah, yeah,
12:10
Speaker 2: which they don't produce any pears. The only way they
12:12
Speaker 2: call them that No, they.
12:13
Speaker 1: Just smell like hot garbage.
12:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, right now specifically specifically, yes, Now, most of my
12:19
Speaker 2: yard maintenance is just it's also a very dirty tree.
12:22
Speaker 2: It sheds a lot of flowers and it's petals, and
12:25
Speaker 2: it's just it's it's a lot of stuff coming off
12:28
Speaker 2: that tree.
12:29
Speaker 1: Yeah. How anyone thought that was a good tree for
12:31
Speaker 1: urban infrastructure? I will never understand.
12:33
Speaker 2: No. Yeah, but my whole, my whole streets lined with them.
12:36
Speaker 2: So and you know, is it better to have a
12:38
Speaker 2: tree that provides shade in my front yard than not
12:41
Speaker 2: have a tree? Yes? Absolutely? Am I happy it's a
12:44
Speaker 2: Bradford pair, Nora.
12:45
Speaker 1: They're like literally a bajillion other trees that could have
12:48
Speaker 1: been chosen.
12:49
Speaker 2: For that purpose exactly. But it's not like I can
12:51
Speaker 2: regrow a you know, twenty year old tree overnight.
12:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think the point of all this is
12:55
Speaker 1: that we're going to headcanon the event a store might
12:57
Speaker 1: look beautiful, but it smells like a Bradford pair.
12:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it spells like a magnolia combined with the
13:07
Speaker 2: honeysuckle and jasmine. Fine, that's my head cannon. So yeah,
13:11
Speaker 2: and she thinks about how the glass pillar is like
13:14
Speaker 2: no one else has gone through them since Rand essentially.
13:18
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I feel like there's very strong evidence here
13:21
Speaker 1: to suggest that she is the first wise one to
13:23
Speaker 1: come since Rand exploded everything.
13:25
Speaker 2: Which seems weird, but like the Shaidow wouldn't have sent
13:28
Speaker 2: any like she geos with the logic, and the logic
13:30
Speaker 2: makes sense.
13:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems a little bit weird to us, just
13:33
Speaker 1: timeline wise, but the evidence on the page is that
13:36
Speaker 1: no one has come. It's just they've been busy. They've
13:38
Speaker 1: just been busy, like the only apprentice that needs to
13:41
Speaker 1: be rushed through this process.
13:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, didn't. Yeah. No. They later say they send somebody
13:47
Speaker 2: who's almost ready, just to check out if Avienda's visions.
13:52
Speaker 1: No, they suggest that, and then I think AMI's one
13:56
Speaker 1: of the wise ones says no, no, no, I'm going to go, oh, okay,
14:00
Speaker 1: because you know, Avianda's special and excellent, and we should
14:03
Speaker 1: actually send a real wise one through before we just
14:05
Speaker 1: start hurling there because they can't all be Avienda. It
14:09
Speaker 1: wasn't to Amy's because she wasn't a channeler. Okay, Well,
14:11
Speaker 1: one of the wise Ones that she tells it to,
14:13
Speaker 1: they suggest, oh, well, there's this other woman who's about ready,
14:15
Speaker 1: and then one of the wise ones is like, no, no, no, no, no,
14:17
Speaker 1: I gotta throw myself on that grenade first. Ah bear
14:20
Speaker 1: bear Yeah, but yeah, Avianda comes out of this experience
14:24
Speaker 1: being disappointed because she knew what was coming right already.
14:28
Speaker 1: She's having this kind of weird empty let down of like, yes,
14:32
Speaker 1: that was an interesting history lesson. It was good to
14:36
Speaker 1: learn how the transition actually happened as opposed to what
14:39
Speaker 1: I thought had happened. But it's not quite the level
14:43
Speaker 1: of emotional trial yeah that it used to be.
14:47
Speaker 2: It's not revealing anything that she doesn't already know. It's
14:50
Speaker 2: not even that necessarily that relevant to the ideals current.
14:54
Speaker 2: You know. It's like, this is essentially saying you must
14:56
Speaker 2: fight in the waste for generations in order to be
14:58
Speaker 2: ready for last battle. She's like, gay, yeah, we're fighting
15:00
Speaker 2: last battle anyway, you know, like this.
15:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's good to fill in the details, but
15:04
Speaker 1: it doesn't really change her sense of purpose, right, because
15:10
Speaker 1: that's what this is supposed to be, right, It's supposed
15:11
Speaker 1: to galvanize the leaders to lead their people. Well, this
15:15
Speaker 1: isn't doing that for her. She's not galvanized.
15:18
Speaker 2: So then we sort of get I feel like The
15:20
Speaker 2: next thing to really talk about is sort of the
15:21
Speaker 2: origins of the columns. Okay, yeah, right, because she says
15:24
Speaker 2: it couldn't have been created specifically for the iel, could they?
15:27
Speaker 2: And I think they absolutely were, right, I think these
15:30
Speaker 2: were created. You know, we go back to that first
15:32
Speaker 2: vision where the wise ones are saying, you have to
15:35
Speaker 2: learn about your history.
15:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I.
15:39
Speaker 2: Think they were absolutely created in that moment for the ideal.
15:42
Speaker 1: Well, and it makes no sense to imagine that they
15:44
Speaker 1: were like transported from elsewhere, right, It makes much more
15:47
Speaker 1: sense to imagine that they were created here on site
15:52
Speaker 1: for this purpose. Maybe the technology, the knowledge of this
15:57
Speaker 1: kind of tarangrial existed from elsewhere.
16:00
Speaker 2: You know.
16:00
Speaker 1: It's like this is not the only time that glass
16:02
Speaker 1: columns have been used for ancestral memory, but like this
16:05
Speaker 1: set was crafted for the IEO for sure.
16:08
Speaker 2: And then there's the question is how were they crafted?
16:12
Speaker 2: Because these you know, right, we know how Taron Greoll
16:15
Speaker 2: are crafted.
16:16
Speaker 1: Right do they get? You have a seed template, you
16:18
Speaker 1: throw a bunch of power into it, you sleep powered
16:20
Speaker 1: for three weeks, you have a new toy.
16:22
Speaker 2: No, that's ongre all oh right right right right?
16:24
Speaker 1: I forget the process is different.
16:27
Speaker 2: It's funny enough on greall are created by tear Arran
16:29
Speaker 2: Greol were first use tearon greol to create on Grioll
16:33
Speaker 2: right right right the seed the seed Tearran Greoll is
16:37
Speaker 2: used to create on Grioll. But Taroon Greol are created
16:40
Speaker 2: by you know, imbuing an object with power one the
16:43
Speaker 2: one power. And yet these seem to be more potent
16:48
Speaker 2: than any Taran grioll she had handled the lane. Indeed,
16:50
Speaker 2: the pillars seemed a live somehow. I have to wonder
16:54
Speaker 2: if somehow lives weren't put into these columns.
16:58
Speaker 1: Take a hundred volunteers and transform them into sentient computer
17:04
Speaker 1: chips for this processor.
17:06
Speaker 2: What if the objects that were imbued with the power
17:09
Speaker 2: weren't objects but were people.
17:12
Speaker 1: I mean.
17:14
Speaker 2: Maybe it's it's it's rough, like can you can you
17:18
Speaker 2: think of the gen? And also right, that would explain
17:21
Speaker 2: where Nikomi's been, Yeah, right, if she was part of
17:25
Speaker 2: these columns.
17:27
Speaker 1: If you managed to break one column and let the
17:29
Speaker 1: magic smoke out, and that was an ecomy.
17:33
Speaker 2: But yeah, I know where most of the last where
17:35
Speaker 2: the gen went, right, Like that's the lost tribe, right,
17:39
Speaker 2: like you don't you don't have that many left? Then
17:40
Speaker 2: you imbue the ancestral memory of your people in you know,
17:45
Speaker 2: and that's maybe why you need to be genetically related
17:47
Speaker 2: to them. That's for it to work. Yeah, that's why
17:50
Speaker 2: you have to be genetically I yeeld to go through
17:52
Speaker 2: the columns, because you have to be related to the
17:55
Speaker 2: people who became the columns.
17:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I could see that some sort of you know,
17:59
Speaker 1: grand and last gesture kind of thing, like we're all
18:03
Speaker 1: going to die out slowly, or we can all go
18:05
Speaker 1: out in a blaze of magical glory that serves our
18:08
Speaker 1: descendants for the next two and a half thousand years
18:11
Speaker 1: so that they can save.
18:12
Speaker 2: The world exactly right. You can see it whise when
18:15
Speaker 2: having a prophecy that the gen will die or they
18:17
Speaker 2: will disappear from the world.
18:18
Speaker 1: And so yeah, yeah, no, I mean even reading the
18:21
Speaker 1: books the first few times, I remember having that kind
18:24
Speaker 1: of thought, like what if the loss of the last
18:26
Speaker 1: of the gen is connected to the creation of the columns?
18:29
Speaker 1: Like I'm pretty sure that I was contemplating that, like
18:31
Speaker 1: in my early reads of the books, like it there's
18:35
Speaker 1: two things that fit really well together, right, It's like
18:38
Speaker 1: South America and Africa. You're like, are these things do
18:41
Speaker 1: these things go together, because there's a whole bunch of
18:43
Speaker 1: lost people, and there's a bunch of mysterious columns where
18:48
Speaker 1: the lost people were. Maybe it would be very like
18:52
Speaker 1: the gen right we you know hear about them sacrificing
18:55
Speaker 1: themselves in the thousands to try to bring insane men back, Right,
18:58
Speaker 1: This would be relative small potatoes to turn into magic
19:01
Speaker 1: glass columns for your descendants.
19:03
Speaker 2: Right, And let's talk about the other things that were
19:05
Speaker 2: made at the same time as the columns, right, the
19:08
Speaker 2: eye of the world was made, and we know a
19:10
Speaker 2: bunch of isid I sacrifice themselves to create that object
19:13
Speaker 2: of power, right like, and to hide away the horn
19:16
Speaker 2: and the banner, and to create a well of power
19:20
Speaker 2: for Rand, you know. And that's just one thing they're
19:23
Speaker 2: creating for Rand. What if something else they were creating
19:25
Speaker 2: for Rand were the ideal people? Yeah?
19:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yes, Fuji, I agree. It does give it
19:31
Speaker 1: a slight jonestown over tone if you think about it
19:34
Speaker 1: in too much detail, But like, it's for the creators
19:38
Speaker 1: greater good.
19:39
Speaker 2: I don't know, they're just there's something going on with
19:41
Speaker 2: these columns that's beyond normal Tyran real, they're alive, They're
19:45
Speaker 2: more power. Something else is going on with these.
19:48
Speaker 1: Or is it just because they're really really big? Is
19:50
Speaker 1: it because they're made out of some sort of thread
19:52
Speaker 1: pulled out of tel irun Riod? Is it because there's
19:55
Speaker 1: actually a bigger thingy connecting them underground, like roots of
19:59
Speaker 1: a tree.
20:01
Speaker 2: I don't know, right, And yeah, she so this one
20:04
Speaker 2: gave her a chill. Was she touching the pillar or
20:06
Speaker 2: was it touching her? Right? There's this awareness, this this
20:10
Speaker 2: life that exists inside the columns in a way that
20:13
Speaker 2: life doesn't exist inside other tarangriol.
20:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, it also makes me think of Wrinkle in time
20:19
Speaker 1: and they go to get her dad and he's in
20:21
Speaker 1: the He's stuck in the column like Ariel in the
20:23
Speaker 1: tree in the tempest, that whole thing. Obviously there's not
20:28
Speaker 1: a single person trapped in the column, but it kind
20:29
Speaker 1: of reminds you of that, like there's someone in there,
20:32
Speaker 1: there's some one on the other side.
20:34
Speaker 2: And then there's a transformation that happens. Right that she
20:37
Speaker 2: tried to read the tearran griol as she's done before,
20:41
Speaker 2: but this one is so vast, it's incomprehensible, like the
20:44
Speaker 2: one power itself. Right, So in somebody. The column is
20:48
Speaker 2: linked to the one power, linked to the Creator, linked
20:51
Speaker 2: to Nacomi again, a.
20:53
Speaker 1: Jen who exists out of time and space. Yeah, and
20:56
Speaker 1: I mean there's this line too. She was an insect
20:59
Speaker 1: trying to grasp size and massive a mountain, which makes
21:02
Speaker 1: you think of Masana throwing herself against the White Tower. Yes,
21:05
Speaker 1: and you know, popping her brain right. This is a
21:07
Speaker 1: good guy version of that. But it's a similar kind
21:10
Speaker 1: of These are more than they seem. These have an
21:14
Speaker 1: institutional cosmic power behind them that is belied by their
21:19
Speaker 1: fragile appearance on the outside.
21:22
Speaker 2: It was as if she felt she had suddenly fallen
21:24
Speaker 2: into a deep, dark pit. And then she snaps her
21:26
Speaker 2: eyes open, pulls away, and the columns are changed.
21:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's flipped some switch. She's input some new code,
21:36
Speaker 1: you know something, she inserted a new memory card. However
21:39
Speaker 1: it is that this thing works, She's changed it.
21:42
Speaker 2: You know what I think it is. I think Nikomi
21:44
Speaker 2: used her like a thumb drive. Nikomi interacted with her
21:49
Speaker 2: in the dream and printed some code onto her. And
21:51
Speaker 2: then when she went and interacted with the columns and
21:55
Speaker 2: did her little reading the columns thing, that was enough
21:59
Speaker 2: that the els read back into her read the code
22:02
Speaker 2: that Nicomi had implanted, and that reconfigured them.
22:05
Speaker 1: So you're saying this has nothing to do with Avienda.
22:07
Speaker 1: She was just an information mule.
22:08
Speaker 2: Absolutely, she was absolutely just a vector for Nacomi to
22:13
Speaker 2: make that change for the ideal people.
22:16
Speaker 1: Huh. Maybe that was what she was always there to do.
22:19
Speaker 1: Is like, once phase one is completely and someone left
22:21
Speaker 1: behind to help shift it into phase two.
22:25
Speaker 2: Well that's that's just fun, headcan and that's probably not
22:27
Speaker 2: what's going on. But yeah, I more feel like Avienda
22:32
Speaker 2: basically the column read her, read her situation, read her
22:35
Speaker 2: hopes and dreams, and change based on the knowledge. But
22:39
Speaker 2: I also feel like it somehow has to be linked
22:40
Speaker 2: to her power to read the tarangrell.
22:42
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe that's just what allowed her to make
22:44
Speaker 1: any kind of contact at all, And if she didn't
22:46
Speaker 1: have that ability, she wouldn't have even like gotten past
22:50
Speaker 1: the front door.
22:51
Speaker 2: Or the idea that Like, maybe the ability to read
22:53
Speaker 2: Taron Greal is just the surface level over skill, Like
22:56
Speaker 2: her interaction with Tyaron Grehol is like she's been reading
22:59
Speaker 2: the code this whole time, but turns out she can
23:01
Speaker 2: write it too.
23:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, She's not so much in the creating tur
23:04
Speaker 1: ungry All businesses and the programming T Hungrill. She'd be
23:07
Speaker 1: the kind of person who could put a new book
23:10
Speaker 1: into the fiction and nonfiction T hungari All. She could
23:14
Speaker 1: actually put new books in there, whereas a Lane could
23:16
Speaker 1: figure out how to make another one.
23:18
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, one's a computer engineer, one's a software engineer.
23:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, totally, totally.
23:25
Speaker 2: And I think that brings us to the actual visions.
23:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, so with that, we're going to not immediately read
23:31
Speaker 1: the very last of her descendants. We're going to go
23:33
Speaker 1: back to the first of her descendants.
23:37
Speaker 2: The only thing that I want to say about the
23:38
Speaker 2: first vision is that she turns away from the pillars
23:42
Speaker 2: and takes a step, and the first vision occurs as
23:45
Speaker 2: she steps away from the pillars, and then she walks
23:48
Speaker 2: further away. After that first vision, nothing happens, and she
23:51
Speaker 2: has to walk back into the columns to get the
23:53
Speaker 2: rest of the visions. So it seems like there's this
23:56
Speaker 2: moment where the columns reach out and say, hey, I've
23:58
Speaker 2: got something else for you.
23:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like a little teased It's like, do
24:01
Speaker 1: you want a free sample? This cheese is on sale?
24:04
Speaker 2: So again, there's this interesting interaction between Avien. It's almost
24:07
Speaker 2: like a conversation where they change what they're going to
24:10
Speaker 2: be doing in the future.
24:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is very much like they're actively in the
24:16
Speaker 1: sandbox playing with the code. It's not fixed in a way.
24:21
Speaker 1: There's a conversation happening, And I wonder if that's what
24:23
Speaker 1: it's going to be like for all future wise ones
24:26
Speaker 1: that go through. Is something much more conversational between their
24:29
Speaker 1: hopes and dreams and what the potential future is, or
24:32
Speaker 1: if it's just she had the most access to it.
24:36
Speaker 1: You know, we don't get a lot of insight into
24:40
Speaker 1: what comes after for wise ones.
24:43
Speaker 2: I know, but that was a lot of fun speculation
24:45
Speaker 2: about the columns, like because we don't get we never
24:48
Speaker 2: get a canon about what they are, or how they're
24:49
Speaker 2: connected a viand or why they change.
24:52
Speaker 1: No, the implication is just that she's so good with
24:54
Speaker 1: the software programming of Tarankreal that she somehow gets in
24:58
Speaker 1: and changes the code, or was just a virus carrying
25:02
Speaker 1: thumb drive from Nikomi.
25:04
Speaker 2: I mean, I certainly think the idea was implanted by Nacomi.
25:06
Speaker 2: Whether or not she's doing it consciously, well.
25:09
Speaker 1: It's all about the question right, Nacomi made Avien to
25:11
Speaker 1: think exact question is what she's carrying in her heart
25:14
Speaker 1: as she's you know, disappointed by the original visions and
25:17
Speaker 1: thinking about what can the columns do? Like that's the
25:20
Speaker 1: uppermost question in her mind.
25:22
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm hmm. Just so yeah, and in a lot
25:24
Speaker 2: of ways does feel like it's implanted by Nacomi, right,
25:27
Speaker 2: like even if it was just making Avienda think about
25:30
Speaker 2: that before she walked into the situation.
25:32
Speaker 1: So, yeah, do we actually want to do the which
25:34
Speaker 1: vision do you want to do? First? Do you want
25:36
Speaker 1: to do Padra Padre?
25:37
Speaker 2: Let's jump into the daughter of the Dragon Reborn and
25:39
Speaker 2: the daughter of Avienda here?
25:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I think is weird to have the vision
25:45
Speaker 1: go all the way to the point of like being
25:47
Speaker 1: in your own daughter's head, Like that's kind of weird,
25:50
Speaker 1: Like if it's you know, your fifth back great grandparent,
25:53
Speaker 1: like okay, that's distant, but like your daughter, like this
25:55
Speaker 1: is a person you're going to like have and raise.
25:58
Speaker 1: Well probably not, don't know, that feels weird. Probably Padra
26:02
Speaker 1: is probably the one whose name she's gonna change, Like no,
26:05
Speaker 1: not that bitch. So yeah, we open with Padra, who
26:22
Speaker 1: is killing some shan Chan, right, they're dealing with a
26:25
Speaker 1: raid on sean Chan. Her first thought is like, curse
26:28
Speaker 1: the ones who taught the shan Chan traveling.
26:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I love the even though the weaves weren't
26:36
Speaker 2: very elegant because they learned them from Elia, who wasn't
26:38
Speaker 2: very elegant at them in the first place, so her
26:41
Speaker 2: incompetence went through the the sean Chan.
26:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because they don't think highly of isaid I
26:47
Speaker 1: weaving in general, and Padra and her siblings are like
26:51
Speaker 1: next level savants with the power. So yeah, the poorly
26:55
Speaker 1: translated Also, I imagine sean Chan weaves aren't very elegant
26:58
Speaker 1: given that they're all forced and coerced and for harm, Like,
27:02
Speaker 1: it's gotta be worse than white people dancing. Right, There's
27:04
Speaker 1: just no rhythm to it at all.
27:07
Speaker 2: I've tried. It just doesn't work. I've tried. I've got
27:11
Speaker 2: no rhythm. You were at my wedding, you know.
27:16
Speaker 1: But you know there's savants that channeling, so they're really
27:19
Speaker 1: elegant at it.
27:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, and do you want to talk about the whole
27:23
Speaker 2: like channeling twenty four to seven even in your sleep,
27:26
Speaker 2: not having any risks being lost to it? Like, what
27:29
Speaker 2: the fuck is going on there?
27:31
Speaker 1: Some Quez Chadarack bullshit right yere?
27:34
Speaker 2: The some of the dragon like is it cause? Like
27:37
Speaker 2: I mean, and we can talk about are they Rand's
27:40
Speaker 2: children or are they rand in Mordan's children.
27:44
Speaker 1: I mean, I always assumed that they were conceived with
27:46
Speaker 1: that shower scene right before the last battle, so I
27:51
Speaker 1: figured that they were Rand Rands.
27:53
Speaker 2: But some of them have black hair, and neither Avienda
27:55
Speaker 2: nor An they're going to have kids with black hair
27:57
Speaker 2: in their current bodies, I mean, and there's four of them.
28:01
Speaker 1: Genetics are weird, but yeah, yeah, the concept of having
28:07
Speaker 1: quadruplets is perhaps more unbelievabaturally. Then yeah, whether or not
28:11
Speaker 1: they have black hair, it's they're Tams TAM's black hair.
28:18
Speaker 1: And then yeah, men did say that there's something weird
28:20
Speaker 1: about them in the vision. But god, I hate the
28:23
Speaker 1: idea of Aviander hooking it with the Morid and body.
28:25
Speaker 1: That just gives me the ick.
28:27
Speaker 2: But it's still Rand.
28:28
Speaker 1: But it's not that body was stolen. It's icky.
28:32
Speaker 2: Maybe he casts mask of mirrors so he looks like himself.
28:35
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that makes it so much better.
28:38
Speaker 2: It's yeah, Avianda having four babies. Men saying there's something
28:43
Speaker 2: odd about them them channeling the one power naturally. It
28:47
Speaker 2: all adds up to something very wonky, and it implies
28:51
Speaker 2: that Rand's genetics are special somehow, or what something he
28:55
Speaker 2: did to him hisself or his soul is affecting his
28:58
Speaker 2: children somehow.
29:00
Speaker 1: Be like they actually got conceived into dream or something
29:03
Speaker 1: so they got like superpowers. Mmmmm yeah, I don't know,
29:07
Speaker 1: it's weird. I think it's cool though, that they all
29:11
Speaker 1: channel the power constantly. I kind of think it's neat
29:14
Speaker 1: that they're like almost this next evolution in what the
29:17
Speaker 1: power can be, right, because it's you know, canonical. It's
29:21
Speaker 1: a genetic thing, so it makes sense that you could
29:24
Speaker 1: have a combination of recessive genes coming together to just
29:27
Speaker 1: make a whole new kind of thing. I think it's
29:29
Speaker 1: kind of cool if they're going to be weird, make
29:31
Speaker 1: them really really weird, give them all the weird.
29:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. Mars Pan makes a good point, like the power
29:35
Speaker 2: that lets Ran light his pipe appears to also let
29:38
Speaker 2: his children have this meta power around the one power.
29:42
Speaker 2: It's like they can control the one power.
29:45
Speaker 1: That's a cool idea.
29:48
Speaker 2: Four kids sound legs really weird, Like.
29:51
Speaker 1: They're just gonna name it Sleepner, It's fine.
29:54
Speaker 2: I mean with Matt, they're down an eye, so yeah,
29:56
Speaker 2: I really.
29:56
Speaker 1: Matt's the one who should be having a weird kids
29:58
Speaker 1: if we're going to continue with the well, no, no,
30:01
Speaker 1: because he's Odin. Loki's the one that has all the
30:04
Speaker 1: weird kids.
30:05
Speaker 2: Because didn't Loki. He's the shape shifter so he can
30:07
Speaker 2: keep changing shape and having sex.
30:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, Loki is the non binary chaos monster who's like,
30:14
Speaker 1: I'll just have an eight legged horse baby and then
30:17
Speaker 1: give it to my brother Odin to be his steed.
30:19
Speaker 1: It'll be great.
30:21
Speaker 2: Yeah that does sound more like Matt.
30:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, it's like I kind of want to
30:24
Speaker 1: be like it's like, no, Matt's Odin. I don't know
30:27
Speaker 1: who the Loki is in this situation.
30:29
Speaker 2: We don't really have much of a Loki chaos character,
30:35
Speaker 2: Tom maybe or Faine Fain. But Fine's the evil one, right.
30:39
Speaker 1: That's the thing is Loki's supposed to be ultimately a
30:41
Speaker 1: good guy, even though he's mostly causing problems with the
30:44
Speaker 1: good guys, which again more like Matt, right right, And yeah,
30:48
Speaker 1: Matt is the most roguey trickstery and Odin and Loki
30:52
Speaker 1: have a lot of overlap. There's even some interesting scholarship
30:55
Speaker 1: that suggests that Loki's kind of an aftermarket addition to
30:58
Speaker 1: the pantheon who may not have existed for Christian people
31:02
Speaker 1: started inserting themselves into that.
31:04
Speaker 2: Well, explains why he's an adopted you know, ice mountain
31:07
Speaker 2: creature and not part of the original family.
31:10
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, totally, totally. So. Yeah, if anyone's going to
31:14
Speaker 1: be giving birth to an eight legged horse, it's going
31:16
Speaker 1: to be Matt.
31:17
Speaker 2: Would he give birth to it or would he just
31:19
Speaker 2: impregnate you know, tavern wench horse.
31:22
Speaker 1: Well, Loki's the one giving birth. Oh he is shape changing, Yeah, okay,
31:27
Speaker 1: Loki changes shape quite.
31:29
Speaker 2: Dramatically, shape and gender.
31:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, Loki's non binary man. Loki identifies as a problem.
31:38
Speaker 2: I guess a lot of them. A look Loki lore, there's.
31:41
Speaker 1: A lot of it, the very popular character. Yeah, exactly,
31:45
Speaker 1: I Fuji. The story goes, Loki turns into a mare
31:47
Speaker 1: and gets impregnated while in mayor form, and thus gives
31:52
Speaker 1: birth to a horse. But the horse has eight legs
31:54
Speaker 1: because you know, cosmic weudness. So anyway back to they're
32:01
Speaker 1: basically at this aeal city that isn't a city, it's
32:04
Speaker 1: just a camp that's been there for decades, so it's
32:06
Speaker 1: not a city, but you know, and there's this the
32:11
Speaker 1: ieal have changed and in ways that Avianda would clearly
32:14
Speaker 1: find very disappointing. Like already in one generation.
32:17
Speaker 2: We're always disappointed with our children.
32:19
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but you know, like they're living in essentially
32:21
Speaker 1: a city. They've got this weird almost like noble class
32:24
Speaker 1: of the Dragon's lineage. They're fighting as though fighting itself
32:29
Speaker 1: is honor. Right. There's a lot about Padra and Onkala
32:32
Speaker 1: where you see the erosion of the concept that g
32:36
Speaker 1: Itto is built on just getting like compressed further and
32:39
Speaker 1: further and further. It's kind of like a nineteen eighty
32:41
Speaker 1: four like progression of Mobi Dick, right, Like first you
32:43
Speaker 1: simplify the words, and then you start turning them into symbols,
32:46
Speaker 1: and then pretty soon it's just like a single line
32:48
Speaker 1: of emoji and that's Mobi dick, right, that's it. And
32:52
Speaker 1: you kind of see Geto going through that process, right,
32:55
Speaker 1: Like the concept that touching an enemy and capturing him
32:58
Speaker 1: without hurting him is the most honor like that has
33:00
Speaker 1: completely gone by the wayside. Already in Padra's generation, it's
33:04
Speaker 1: totally gone by on college generation.
33:07
Speaker 2: Because that takes skill and you have to have doing
33:10
Speaker 2: that comes from a place of privilege and being able
33:13
Speaker 2: to capture them without having your you know, civilization destroyed.
33:16
Speaker 2: And they're beyond that point. You know, they're in a
33:19
Speaker 2: civilization ending conflict with the shawan Chan. And that's really
33:23
Speaker 2: the central theme of these visions going forward is we're
33:26
Speaker 2: seeing the decision to fight the sean Chan is destroying
33:31
Speaker 2: the ideal people.
33:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you know, they were left out of the
33:36
Speaker 1: Dragon's Piece. They're trying to find their way into this
33:39
Speaker 1: you know, ostensibly more or less water tight system and
33:42
Speaker 1: there is no crack for them to come in.
33:46
Speaker 2: And on top of that, because there is no enforcement
33:49
Speaker 2: mechanism of the Dragon's Piece, all the other nations are
33:53
Speaker 2: fracturing and falling apart and not providing a unified front
33:56
Speaker 2: to the shan Chan, leaving the Ideal to fight on
33:58
Speaker 2: their own right.
34:00
Speaker 1: And yeah, so your point about the honor thing, like
34:01
Speaker 1: the shon Chin make terrible prisoners, right, They talk about
34:04
Speaker 1: it like shan Chan make horrible guys. Shine. There's no
34:06
Speaker 1: point at all. It's kind of like a yell make
34:09
Speaker 1: terrible daco veil, right, Both sides don't play by the
34:13
Speaker 1: rules of engagement that the other recognizes. And so yeah,
34:16
Speaker 1: only there can be only one, right, this world is
34:18
Speaker 1: not big enough for the two of these powers. And yeah,
34:21
Speaker 1: they I yell, don't want to take over the world,
34:23
Speaker 1: but the shan Chan jew and so that still puts
34:26
Speaker 1: them into existential conflict.
34:28
Speaker 2: Mmm. And I really do think there is this moment
34:31
Speaker 2: where the shan Chan could have changed, and that clearly
34:34
Speaker 2: didn't happen in this timeline, right, they're still living on
34:38
Speaker 2: you know, she says like, oh, we almost had peace
34:41
Speaker 2: with the old Empress, the one who had ruled during
34:43
Speaker 2: the days of the last battle, had been considered a
34:45
Speaker 2: woman of honor, right, so that's Tuon right.
34:48
Speaker 1: And agreement had almost been reached with her. There was
34:51
Speaker 1: almost a taunt, and then one assumes that there was
34:53
Speaker 1: some sort of massive coup in which her and Matt
34:56
Speaker 1: both died because the palace got you know, leveled by
34:59
Speaker 1: the power or something.
35:01
Speaker 2: Right, And again this is just sort of I'm assuming
35:03
Speaker 2: that in the actual future this is all going to change,
35:06
Speaker 2: because you have the Dragon's piece enforced by the ideal.
35:09
Speaker 1: Right, and even if Tuan and Matt do get completely
35:12
Speaker 1: flattened in an assassination, like the reality of all the
35:16
Speaker 1: political alignments will still play out differently because the ideal
35:20
Speaker 1: are incorporated, welcomed, understood, accounted for in the Dragon's piece
35:25
Speaker 1: across the continent.
35:27
Speaker 2: And we later find out that the Io really started
35:29
Speaker 2: to lose the war once the rest of the nations
35:32
Speaker 2: got involved in finding the sean Chan.
35:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, then here's this quote that refers to Avianda, this
35:38
Speaker 1: larger problem. What was it to be ideal? Now that
35:41
Speaker 1: they're now that their duty to the past had been fulfilled,
35:45
Speaker 1: they think that it's starting war with the shawn Chin.
35:47
Speaker 2: Right. They think that's their purpose now, because if you
35:50
Speaker 2: have no purpose, you got to find one.
35:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have this whole idea that it's going to
35:54
Speaker 1: restore their honor because they've lost their honor to the
35:56
Speaker 1: point that they don't even know what honor is right
35:59
Speaker 1: from where a Vianda is sitting.
36:01
Speaker 2: And a big part of that is their leaders have
36:03
Speaker 2: been wise women who are channelers, who have been taken
36:06
Speaker 2: captive by the sean Chan.
36:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, the shan Chan have had a very long term
36:10
Speaker 1: plan with how they have approached the pre war conflicts. Right,
36:16
Speaker 1: we're not even in the war but yeah, and so
36:18
Speaker 1: then they talked to this old guy who actually saw Rand.
36:23
Speaker 2: Who and we've seen him before in other scenes, right,
36:25
Speaker 2: Ronan is not let's see, let me pull him up
36:30
Speaker 2: or maybe not.
36:31
Speaker 1: No, because I think he's a kid. Right. He says
36:33
Speaker 1: that his father really was the one who told him
36:35
Speaker 1: about Rand and stuff like, I don't think Rona was
36:38
Speaker 1: old enough to technically count as a survivor of the
36:40
Speaker 1: Last battle.
36:41
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, he says he remembers Rand visiting Cold
36:43
Speaker 2: Rocks Hold, so he has to be like ten or
36:46
Speaker 2: so at the time of these books. But you're right,
36:48
Speaker 2: this is I thought he was in it mentioned in
36:50
Speaker 2: an earlier chapter. He's not.
36:52
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, they talked to you the earlier. They
36:54
Speaker 1: talked to this guy Bruin, who had actually like lived
36:57
Speaker 1: through the last battle. He was old enough to survive it.
37:01
Speaker 2: A lot of new names in this section, and I
37:03
Speaker 2: looked them up. None of them appear to be named
37:07
Speaker 2: after fans.
37:09
Speaker 1: So, yeah, they make the decision to initiate war. They
37:11
Speaker 1: don't have a plan for exactly how they're going to
37:13
Speaker 1: do that, but you know, they have all the ideal
37:17
Speaker 1: captives as an excuse to initiate war.
37:20
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, Ronan's father. So Ronan talks about his father,
37:24
Speaker 2: who is Ruark, right, My father called ruth Or a
37:27
Speaker 2: clever man then a great leader, but one who did
37:29
Speaker 2: not know what to do with the ideal. I remember
37:31
Speaker 2: him saying that when the car Krn was among us,
37:33
Speaker 2: he did not feel like one of us, which mean,
37:35
Speaker 2: just like do Ruark saying that, no, come on, like.
37:40
Speaker 1: I mean at the beginning, but then after he spent
37:43
Speaker 1: no months practicing hand to hand combat with Ruark and
37:47
Speaker 1: stuff like, yeah, that of all the clan chiefs who
37:50
Speaker 1: have said that Ruurke's the one I believe.
37:51
Speaker 2: It of least right exactly exactly, especially.
37:54
Speaker 1: Because like after the battle, there's no more time for
37:56
Speaker 1: Ran to develop that relationship. Like that's referring to stuff
38:00
Speaker 1: we've seen already.
38:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's just like nah, no, that don't buy it.
38:05
Speaker 1: I mean, rand was kind of uncomfortable with them for
38:07
Speaker 1: a good chunk of that relationship, but not always not
38:12
Speaker 1: in the end. In the end he kind of like
38:14
Speaker 1: got it together and made peace with it.
38:15
Speaker 2: I mean that he doesn't know what to do with him,
38:17
Speaker 2: but that's not making him uncomfortable. It's just the description
38:21
Speaker 2: doesn't match what I know over w.
38:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels weird, and yeah, they kind of talk
38:24
Speaker 1: briefly about like well maybe we could just go to
38:26
Speaker 1: the wasist and it's like, now we'll get left out
38:29
Speaker 1: of the world and the world is coming to us
38:31
Speaker 1: whether we want to or not.
38:32
Speaker 2: Basically, what ends up happening in the shidow They go
38:34
Speaker 2: back to the waste and fade to nothing and eventually
38:37
Speaker 2: die out.
38:38
Speaker 1: And what happens to these people descend it, Yes, because
38:41
Speaker 1: of you know what happens, Yeah, to be forced into
38:45
Speaker 1: the waste, either by choice or by military might. Either way,
38:48
Speaker 1: it's not going to work for the idea. They have
38:50
Speaker 1: to stay out of the waste now.
38:52
Speaker 2: And I feel like we should save a Vienna's reaction
38:55
Speaker 2: till the end of to the end. So let's go
38:57
Speaker 2: back to the previous pov.
39:04
Speaker 1: Okay, So now we're going to Padra's daughter. We're only
39:08
Speaker 1: going one generation down on Caala on Calla, which is
39:12
Speaker 1: a cool name for being honest. And this is the
39:14
Speaker 1: most bitchy of all of them. This is the most problematic.
39:18
Speaker 1: Avianda's granddaughter is the biggest problem in the entire lineage.
39:22
Speaker 2: Because I feel like you're at this point where you know,
39:25
Speaker 2: what is it? Businesses only last three generations, right, You've
39:29
Speaker 2: got the founder, the son who manages it for a while,
39:32
Speaker 2: and then the grand children who run into the ground
39:35
Speaker 2: because they don't appreciate what they've got and they've been
39:37
Speaker 2: spoiled since they grew up. And this is the grandchild
39:40
Speaker 2: running the iel into the ground.
39:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is the peak of arrogance, right. This
39:45
Speaker 1: is someone who was riding high on id, the granddaughter
39:48
Speaker 1: of the dragon. I have people carrying a banner around
39:51
Speaker 1: with me. I'm always surrounded by bodyguards. I shouldn't have
39:56
Speaker 1: to be on an equal footing with anyone ever, even
40:00
Speaker 1: my literal cousin essentially, right, Like the queen that they're
40:04
Speaker 1: going to talk to is essentially her cousin. And she's
40:08
Speaker 1: just she's so angry at the Andorans for needing them, right,
40:13
Speaker 1: Like that's why she hates these people, just because she
40:15
Speaker 1: needs them. Like that is just pete arrogance.
40:18
Speaker 2: Mars Bam makes a good point. We don't actually know
40:20
Speaker 2: if this is like twenty years later, like one hundred
40:23
Speaker 2: and twenty years later, because channelers can live long enough,
40:27
Speaker 2: you can have like a you know, this is the
40:28
Speaker 2: back to like, when do Channelers have children? Is it
40:30
Speaker 2: always within the first like thirty years of their life
40:32
Speaker 2: or do they go on and continue to have children
40:34
Speaker 2: for like one hundred years if they want to.
40:36
Speaker 1: Well, we know that Padra is having her experiences seventeen
40:40
Speaker 1: years after the end of the last battle. They say
40:43
Speaker 1: that in that POV, and then with on Cala it says,
40:50
Speaker 1: after decades of war things have been going the way
40:54
Speaker 1: it is.
40:55
Speaker 2: So, but three decades or you know, fifty decades, five decades,
41:00
Speaker 2: it's you know, six decades, seven decades. We don't really
41:03
Speaker 2: know how long it's been.
41:04
Speaker 1: I feel like it can't have been more than five decades.
41:07
Speaker 1: I feel like it's more like three because of the
41:08
Speaker 1: age of the queen and the fact that they named
41:11
Speaker 1: themselves as being so many generations removed. Now where's the Yeah,
41:15
Speaker 1: Talana is a middle aged woman and on Calla seems
41:20
Speaker 1: like twenty five at best. And they're great mothers, you know,
41:25
Speaker 1: grandmothers were for sisters, so they're not multiple generations separated.
41:29
Speaker 1: They're both the same number of descendantes. But she's she's
41:34
Speaker 1: not old enough to have married yet, right like, whereas
41:36
Speaker 1: Tallana is middle aged.
41:38
Speaker 2: So but there's clearly some bad blood between these two lineages.
41:42
Speaker 1: Of Rand, at least between these two women. On Calla
41:45
Speaker 1: seems to be holding up the entire feud on her own.
41:47
Speaker 1: But yeah, it seems like Avianda and Elane's bond has also.
41:54
Speaker 1: I got to wonder where Lane and Avianda are, right,
41:57
Speaker 1: because if we're only, you know, fifty years after the
42:01
Speaker 1: end of the last battle, they should both still be
42:03
Speaker 1: kicking pretty hard.
42:06
Speaker 2: It's one of the things that's never addressed in these
42:08
Speaker 2: future visions is how long channelers live. He just acts
42:12
Speaker 2: like everyone dies after eighty years or gets old and
42:14
Speaker 2: fades away, when it's like, most of our characters should
42:17
Speaker 2: still like they survived the last battle, their channelers, they're powerful.
42:21
Speaker 2: Twenty years later, forty years later, they should be completely unchanged.
42:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little weird, a little weird.
42:28
Speaker 2: Little weird, Like why is Elane not the ruler of
42:32
Speaker 2: and Or still?
42:33
Speaker 1: Oh, it says right here, forty years of war and
42:35
Speaker 1: and Or had not been touched. Yes, we get a
42:38
Speaker 1: number of decades. There is boom, right.
42:41
Speaker 2: So two generations, right, So it's the very typical average
42:44
Speaker 2: twenty years then later and then twenty years after that.
42:47
Speaker 2: People are having babies so yeah, it's just it's a
42:52
Speaker 2: it's just one of those things that feels like a
42:54
Speaker 2: very easy oversight that channelers are just not living.
42:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess they all just fucked off on a
43:02
Speaker 1: yacht and got hit by a random whale.
43:05
Speaker 2: I mean, even forty years later, you know, if Elaine
43:08
Speaker 2: was living a normal human lifespan, she should still be sixty.
43:13
Speaker 1: Yeah. And if she was assassinated, that would be like
43:16
Speaker 1: a big important plot turning point in the war kind
43:20
Speaker 1: of thing. I mean, it's like the whole thing that
43:22
Speaker 1: hinges on here is like plans for the assassinations of
43:25
Speaker 1: the heads of state, Right, So if Elaine had been assassinated,
43:28
Speaker 1: you think that would have borne mentioning mm hmmm mm hmm.
43:32
Speaker 2: But yeah, even if like let's say channeling goes away,
43:34
Speaker 2: if channeling doesn't go away, you clearly have like lots
43:37
Speaker 2: of channelers. You know. She's not like I'm the only
43:39
Speaker 2: one who can channel. She's like, I'm the weird one
43:41
Speaker 2: who can channel by holding the power all the time.
43:44
Speaker 1: Well that was her mother. Even it's not even on calls,
43:47
Speaker 1: not even thinking about that stuff. So I don't even
43:49
Speaker 1: know where she's at with her channeling powers.
43:52
Speaker 2: Right, the Raven empires, techniques and skill was shaping and
43:55
Speaker 2: one power were growing, So like, clearly the one Power
43:57
Speaker 2: exists and is being used. But yeah, and yes, channeling
44:02
Speaker 2: does have to go away at some point, but I
44:04
Speaker 2: believe that's not this age.
44:07
Speaker 1: Oh, I think it's the end of the fourth Age.
44:09
Speaker 1: Is the loss of power?
44:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's how the fourth agents right, Yeah,
44:14
Speaker 2: but yeah, just just a lot of arrogance in her mind.
44:16
Speaker 2: She thinks why they might equals these soft wetlanders. She
44:21
Speaker 2: hates them. You know, there's so many reasons why she
44:23
Speaker 2: hates them because she needs them. And it's like, what
44:26
Speaker 2: is wrong with you? What? How did this hatred and
44:28
Speaker 2: bigotry get into your mind?
44:31
Speaker 1: Again? It's like did your grandmother not like smack some
44:34
Speaker 1: sense into you when you were talking shit as a child?
44:36
Speaker 1: Like how has Avianda not course corrected you? Where is
44:40
Speaker 1: Avianda in all of this?
44:41
Speaker 2: Also someone who should be still be alive and old
44:44
Speaker 2: or not old?
44:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. She's the whole foot mangling thing
44:48
Speaker 1: means that she's probably been kept quite safe because she
44:51
Speaker 1: can't go running around on raids, right, she has to
44:53
Speaker 1: sit in a chair and dispense wisdom. It's rare, and
44:56
Speaker 1: you know, the Queen of and Or clearly doesn't particularly
44:58
Speaker 1: like the a yell either. There's a antagonistic relationship like, oh,
45:01
Speaker 1: I assume you're here to beg for aid again, Like,
45:04
Speaker 1: clearly the bad blood is long standing already.
45:08
Speaker 2: And here's where the disinformation campaign comes in.
45:10
Speaker 1: You know, here's the false flag that's not a false flag.
45:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, the weapons of mass destruction, right, Like, yeah, exactly,
45:17
Speaker 2: that's what this feels like to me, where it's like,
45:19
Speaker 2: we have this information that they're coming to attack you,
45:23
Speaker 2: and it's like, no, they just they wrote a contingency plan.
45:26
Speaker 1: They did a wargame and they took notes on the
45:28
Speaker 1: wargame that you're allowed to do that as a superpower.
45:31
Speaker 2: Especially because like yet you are expecting at some point
45:34
Speaker 2: that this could break down, you're breaking the agreement. So like,
45:37
Speaker 2: clearly they were right to keep those plans.
45:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also we learned that hey, y'all, the man
45:43
Speaker 1: that she's you know, probably going to marry at some
45:45
Speaker 1: point had spent a great deal of time over the
45:48
Speaker 1: last decade seeding the question of how much the Sean
45:51
Speaker 1: check could be trusted in all the great courts of
45:54
Speaker 1: the world of their side of the war. They have
45:57
Speaker 1: been doing a decade long not exactly misinformation campaign, but
46:03
Speaker 1: an eroding of trusts whisper campaign, a whisper campaign, and
46:07
Speaker 1: being like, well, you know that the shan chanin can't
46:09
Speaker 1: be trusted. Everyone says it, right, Hey, y'all has been
46:12
Speaker 1: deliberately making sure that everyone says it. He's been injecting
46:16
Speaker 1: this thread into the conversation. That is just for the
46:19
Speaker 1: Ideal's propaganda purposes. It does not reflect anything other than
46:23
Speaker 1: how much the IEAL hate the sean Chan. It does
46:25
Speaker 1: not reflect something with the Seawan Chan. Actually, we have
46:28
Speaker 1: no evidence that the Sean Chann are on the brink
46:30
Speaker 1: of renegging on all of their agreements, Like maybe maybe not.
46:34
Speaker 1: They don't care.
46:34
Speaker 2: And it's because the Idel want back up to attack
46:37
Speaker 2: them and get back the wise ones who've been captured
46:40
Speaker 2: and are being held.
46:41
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they feel like they are owed to the
46:44
Speaker 1: backup of the nations of the world on this side
46:46
Speaker 1: of the conflict. And and or and the other nations
46:49
Speaker 1: don't really agree because they don't really know how to
46:51
Speaker 1: interact with the Ieal. They don't feel like they have
46:53
Speaker 1: a relationship or an enforcement codependency or anything, and so
46:58
Speaker 1: they have to be co work lied to into this,
47:02
Speaker 1: and so they get given this information that the shan
47:04
Speaker 1: Chin have this complete plan for how to take apart everything,
47:08
Speaker 1: leaving out the page that explains that it was an exercise.
47:11
Speaker 2: And I believe that the Dragon's Piece avoids all of this, right,
47:14
Speaker 2: because you have United Front and you have this agreement
47:18
Speaker 2: between the shan Chin about channelers, right, that agreement between
47:24
Speaker 2: Laguain and Tuon, I don't think would have existed without
47:28
Speaker 2: the Dragon's Piece, even though they kind of make it
47:30
Speaker 2: outside of it, but they make it in the context
47:32
Speaker 2: of the Dragon's Piece.
47:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it means that every time there's a conflict
47:36
Speaker 1: over the next few decades, there's going to be a
47:40
Speaker 1: common mortar through which the conflict gets resolved. There's going
47:45
Speaker 1: to becomroadery and rapport built between the nations through their
47:48
Speaker 1: ideal counterparts, and it's just going to be a completely different,
47:52
Speaker 1: more flexible, more resilient political system than this fractured and divided,
47:57
Speaker 1: individualistic isolationists sort of thing that we're dealing with in
48:02
Speaker 1: these visions.
48:03
Speaker 2: And so it does seem like that little change in
48:05
Speaker 2: the beginning can actually lead to significant piece over time.
48:10
Speaker 1: Again, it's all about the questions, how do you approach
48:13
Speaker 1: the tangled issue? What's your setup?
48:17
Speaker 2: Approaching it in this order is helping me see just
48:19
Speaker 2: how much like the little choices that are being made
48:22
Speaker 2: around the Dragon's piece is what's leading to this conflict.
48:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Oh, and then this is the line where
48:28
Speaker 1: we get the chapter title. We're reading from the Court
48:31
Speaker 1: of the Sun. If and Or entered the war, and
48:34
Speaker 1: the other nations would go as well, particularly those in
48:36
Speaker 1: the Pact of the Griffin and those in the Court
48:38
Speaker 1: of the Sun.
48:39
Speaker 2: So the Pact of the Griffin has to be and
48:41
Speaker 2: Or's allies, in the Court of the Sun has to
48:43
Speaker 2: be kyrieene In's allies.
48:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I would imagine is that if kyrie
48:47
Speaker 1: In is the center of that alliance, then that's where
48:51
Speaker 1: you get that title from. And then pack to the
48:53
Speaker 1: Griffin just has to be everyone else who's not in
48:56
Speaker 1: the Court of the Sun arrangement.
48:58
Speaker 2: And again there is a separation between Kyriene and and Or.
49:03
Speaker 2: You don't have like Elaine's descendants ruling both.
49:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that doesn't work out so well, That
49:08
Speaker 1: unification doesn't work out great. I don't know.
49:10
Speaker 2: Again, it's just there's a lot of details in this
49:12
Speaker 2: vision that don't apply based on how we know the
49:15
Speaker 2: last battle ends, in the agreements around it, and a
49:17
Speaker 2: lot of it.
49:18
Speaker 1: Doesn't even seem probable based on what we know of
49:20
Speaker 1: the characters already exactly, And it implies so many weird
49:24
Speaker 1: rocks have been thrown in the pond between the end
49:26
Speaker 1: of the Last Battle and whenever this is happening.
49:30
Speaker 2: So to me, it's this feels like a potential future,
49:33
Speaker 2: but to me it doesn't necessarily. I know, we read
49:35
Speaker 2: it was like probably the most likely, but I'm not sure.
49:37
Speaker 2: I think it's almost just like a warning. It's like,
49:40
Speaker 2: what if everything aligned to be bad?
49:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe it's.
49:44
Speaker 2: Almost the worst possible future type situation.
49:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of holes in this that. Yeah,
49:49
Speaker 1: it does make me feel like maybe this isn't the
49:51
Speaker 1: most definitely going to happen, but it is a very
49:54
Speaker 1: present danger. That's something this problematic would happen, and that's
49:58
Speaker 1: why the visions are warranted.
50:00
Speaker 2: Right right, No, and it's clear that by joining the
50:03
Speaker 2: Dragon's Piece, she steers very far away from this happening.
50:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, because this is all about the idea of feeling
50:09
Speaker 1: out of place and excluded and not a part of
50:12
Speaker 1: what is happening.
50:13
Speaker 2: Mmmm hmm, I mean, and the sewan Chan are still
50:16
Speaker 2: going to be a problem. I think That's where I
50:18
Speaker 2: get stuck on is like this being part of the
50:20
Speaker 2: Dragon's Piece doesn't necessarily necessarily solve the seon Chan problem.
50:24
Speaker 2: But what it does do is give the ideal allies
50:27
Speaker 2: and creates a unified front against the shawn Chan while
50:30
Speaker 2: also creating pathways of communication with them to improve the
50:35
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, I think it has to go
50:37
Speaker 2: back to the fact that I think the shawn Chan
50:38
Speaker 2: society needs to change. You know, you can't have Suldam
50:42
Speaker 2: dominating Domane knowing the soul dam can channel if they
50:45
Speaker 2: choose to.
50:46
Speaker 1: Right, And that's not something that the Dragon's Piece is
50:48
Speaker 1: going to solve. That's something that sean Chen has to
50:50
Speaker 1: sort for itself. But yeah, how resilient can you be
50:53
Speaker 1: while sean Chan implodes and explodes at the same time.
50:57
Speaker 1: That's what the rest of the world gets to deal
50:59
Speaker 1: with is how do you handle the fall of a
51:00
Speaker 1: slave empire when it is driving the global economy. I'm
51:04
Speaker 1: sorry what anyway, We're fine, We're fine.
51:08
Speaker 2: I'm so glad these books have no relevance to current events.
51:11
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to talk about those.
51:14
Speaker 1: And Kala thinks that she deserves to rule and that
51:16
Speaker 1: the Dragon Empire is going to come out of this
51:19
Speaker 1: and that she's you know, paternalistically making decisions for everyone
51:23
Speaker 1: else in the whole world. You know, it's better for
51:25
Speaker 1: the Queen of ant Or to enter the war and
51:27
Speaker 1: not know that it was a lie, and it's just
51:29
Speaker 1: peak arrogance, just peak peak peak arrogance. And that's how
51:34
Speaker 1: that pov ends and Avianda's reaction is, oh my god,
51:37
Speaker 1: I want to kill that pitchy.
51:38
Speaker 2: Basically that creature had no honor. She has ruined us.
51:43
Speaker 2: And then and she realizes that's her granddaughter and is
51:45
Speaker 2: like crying going into the final vision.
51:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, She's like, this is my fault. I literally
51:50
Speaker 1: made this person.
51:53
Speaker 2: So moving back, forward, forward, and back, I do kind
51:57
Speaker 2: of miss that there was she doesn't do these She
51:59
Speaker 2: took us step forward, and it would be I wanted
52:03
Speaker 2: to say it does say Avienda took a step forward,
52:05
Speaker 2: but there you know, with rand it was always took
52:07
Speaker 2: a step forward and back, and it would be interesting
52:10
Speaker 2: to be took a step forward and ahead and forward
52:15
Speaker 2: and ahead.
52:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, like forward and forward doesn't sound forward and ahead.
52:19
Speaker 1: That would have been good. But she doesn't realize what's
52:21
Speaker 1: happening till like halfway through, so like the rhythm of
52:23
Speaker 1: it would have been lost right right, but that would
52:25
Speaker 1: have been cool.
52:26
Speaker 2: I agree.
52:39
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this next pov Ladle ladel In, which is
52:43
Speaker 1: the first POV of chapter forty nine, Court of the Sun,
52:47
Speaker 1: which has the same symbol as the last chapter that I. E.
52:51
Speaker 1: Spears and Buckler's.
52:52
Speaker 2: Really telling us it should have been one chapter.
52:54
Speaker 1: Someone in the editorial board was like, no, split it.
52:58
Speaker 2: So here's where we get to the point where it
52:59
Speaker 2: does feel like most of the channelers have been called
53:02
Speaker 2: from the ideal.
53:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we are now with an old woman who
53:06
Speaker 1: is worn down by a war. The war of Attrition
53:08
Speaker 1: has flashed by in the jump that we just made.
53:12
Speaker 2: And do we know her relationship to.
53:16
Speaker 1: Oncala Ooh where is that? No, they mentioned something about
53:21
Speaker 1: Ladelene's mother, but it doesn't say who the mother was,
53:28
Speaker 1: And she also says, this is our fault, not that
53:30
Speaker 1: of my distant great father. So she sort of blurs
53:34
Speaker 1: how many generations there are? And one of the other guys.
53:37
Speaker 1: In the scene, says, I refuse to follow the memory
53:40
Speaker 1: of a man my great fathers barely knew. Again, not
53:44
Speaker 1: really specifying how many generations we've got here.
53:46
Speaker 2: It's interesting because in the rand generation, I feel like
53:49
Speaker 2: we always have a connection to the previous vision.
53:52
Speaker 1: Eh, there's some pretty gappies.
53:54
Speaker 2: There's some gaps, there's some gaps, Okay.
53:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh. She mentions that Ladelene's mother had
53:59
Speaker 1: spoken at the days when there had still been Guyshine.
54:02
Speaker 2: I feel like that's like the days when we still
54:04
Speaker 2: had enough idle time to have servants, right, Like, that's well, the.
54:07
Speaker 1: Days when they didn't need every hand for the war effort.
54:10
Speaker 2: Yeh, exactly exactly there not all fighting.
54:12
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. I kind of always assumed that it was
54:15
Speaker 1: just one generation per jump, but this could be one
54:18
Speaker 1: or two. Maybe it does suggest it's not that long, though,
54:22
Speaker 1: because she's known the war her whole life. But like,
54:25
Speaker 1: the war clearly was at a very different point when
54:27
Speaker 1: she was a little girl, and now she's an old woman,
54:30
Speaker 1: So like the war can't have been new when she
54:32
Speaker 1: was born, which would suggest that she is on Calla's Well,
54:36
Speaker 1: I guess maybe she's not on Calla's daughter. Maybe she's
54:38
Speaker 1: the daughter of one of the other three. Right, we
54:40
Speaker 1: don't actually know because there are four branches, and she
54:43
Speaker 1: says she's the last of them, that the other three
54:46
Speaker 1: branches have all been killed off. We don't actually know
54:47
Speaker 1: that she's on Calla's line. She could be one of
54:50
Speaker 1: the other three.
54:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, she had served stories about her mother and great
54:53
Speaker 2: mother's days, but they seem incredible to war. So it
54:56
Speaker 2: implies that there was no war during her mother's.
54:58
Speaker 1: Day, right, And we know on Kala starts the war
55:03
Speaker 1: as an adult. So, and there's two boys and two
55:06
Speaker 1: girls of of Vianda's children, So again doesn't have to
55:11
Speaker 1: be on Calla. It could be the other daughter. And yeah,
55:14
Speaker 1: she can't channel. Right, We've had Padra who could channel
55:18
Speaker 1: like bonkers, and all four of the kids could channel
55:21
Speaker 1: it crazy, And now Ladelin doesn't have that ability.
55:26
Speaker 2: And very few people do. Right, the shan Chan really
55:29
Speaker 2: have concentrated on capturing and eliminating those people, she says it.
55:33
Speaker 2: And in this moment, the important thing is the White
55:36
Speaker 2: Tower has fallen, right.
55:37
Speaker 1: Yes, big turning point in the war.
55:40
Speaker 2: Right, this is sort of the moment in which there
55:42
Speaker 2: is no longer a resistance channeling group against you know,
55:48
Speaker 2: they said the Black Tower still fights, but in exile
55:50
Speaker 2: because the Black Tower has fallen.
55:51
Speaker 1: As well in secret, right, Like they are gorilla fighters, right,
55:55
Speaker 1: they're the resistance, they're the underground.
55:57
Speaker 2: And the shan Chan has captured Rudion, which you know
55:59
Speaker 2: in the last vision they said, Oh, they'd never do that.
56:02
Speaker 2: That's you know, would violate essentially, that'd be a war
56:05
Speaker 2: crime essentially, is what they're saying.
56:06
Speaker 1: Well, that's part of why they justify it. Right, They're like, well,
56:08
Speaker 1: they shouldn't have attacked Ruiddian. That's what gives us the
56:11
Speaker 1: right to do this, right, And the last vision that
56:13
Speaker 1: Shaun Chin attacking Ruddian was seen as a war crime.
56:16
Speaker 1: That opens up the can of worms, which we cannot
56:19
Speaker 1: relate to at all. At two point thirty on the
56:22
Speaker 1: seventh of April twenty twenty six. We cannot at all
56:26
Speaker 1: empathize with that feeling of they wouldn't do that, that
56:30
Speaker 1: would open up a whole can of worms.
56:32
Speaker 2: They might close the strait of hold on dragon, the
56:36
Speaker 2: dragon straight, Yeah, the straight of the dragon, the strait.
56:39
Speaker 1: Of Tamuz that.
56:41
Speaker 2: Moosool nice.
56:47
Speaker 1: So, yeah, this is the council. They're talking about essentially,
56:51
Speaker 1: do we have to retreat? Right, that's what is happening here.
56:56
Speaker 1: We've got you know, there's less clan chiefs than they're
56:59
Speaker 1: use to be. There's less clans than there used to be,
57:01
Speaker 1: there's less wise ones than there's used to be. There's
57:03
Speaker 1: no guyshine because every single hand is needed for the
57:06
Speaker 1: war effort.
57:07
Speaker 2: And guyshine means one. Now guyshine just means the shameful one.
57:11
Speaker 2: It's not like something you did to get your honor back.
57:13
Speaker 2: It just means you've been shamed.
57:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no honor to be found. The whole concept
57:19
Speaker 1: of honor is really falling apart. Right, They've got the
57:22
Speaker 1: Mia Goma has had three chiefs in as many years.
57:25
Speaker 1: And yeah, now that Ruidian has not just been attacked
57:28
Speaker 1: but captured, now they don't know how to raise leaders
57:31
Speaker 1: and that is going to be a problem, right because
57:34
Speaker 1: we know that the ideal have been held together by
57:35
Speaker 1: the magical rituals that they've accessed in Ruitian for their
57:38
Speaker 1: entire history. So if they literally can't go to Ruidian,
57:42
Speaker 1: who are they as a people? Right? They really can't
57:45
Speaker 1: keep the covenant?
57:46
Speaker 2: Now, she talks about the wise Ones and the dragon Blooded.
57:49
Speaker 2: He is the one power in battle. I assume dragon
57:51
Speaker 2: blooded is the male channelers of the ideal.
57:56
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I just thought she meant like all the
57:58
Speaker 1: descendants of the dragon.
58:00
Speaker 2: But they've all been eliminated except for her, so how
58:02
Speaker 2: could they fight?
58:03
Speaker 1: Okay? Yeah, yeah, so male channelers are dragon Blooded and
58:08
Speaker 1: deference to him who cleansed the male half and all that.
58:11
Speaker 2: That's that's what I assume, right, because wise ones would
58:14
Speaker 2: be the female ideal channelers and we don't have any
58:16
Speaker 2: male ideal channelers right now, you know, in our current,
58:20
Speaker 2: but in the future, they'd have to have a name
58:22
Speaker 2: for them. So I think dragon blood. It is what
58:24
Speaker 2: they call them.
58:24
Speaker 1: I like it.
58:25
Speaker 2: I like it. And that's why you distinguish between the
58:27
Speaker 2: wise Ones and the dragon Blooded. Sure, the female and
58:30
Speaker 2: the males.
58:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we get to part of the heart
58:33
Speaker 1: of why the Dragon's piece needs modified, right, one of
58:36
Speaker 1: the wise Ones says, you know, we have to go
58:37
Speaker 1: back to the Threefold land and seek penance for our sins.
58:41
Speaker 1: What sins? And they're like, well, the dragon wanted piece.
58:44
Speaker 1: The dragon left us right, like they were not incorporated
58:48
Speaker 1: into the Dragon's piece, and so they're left out, and
58:50
Speaker 1: one person wants to be self blaming, like, well, we sinned,
58:54
Speaker 1: we have to go back and pay for it again,
58:55
Speaker 1: and likeways we talked about with Nacomi, Like that's a weird,
58:58
Speaker 1: prideful thing to do. That's not right, it's not what's happening.
59:01
Speaker 1: But like, yeah, how are you supposed to find honor
59:04
Speaker 1: if the Dragon left you out of the system that
59:07
Speaker 1: the new world order that he left behind, Right, the
59:09
Speaker 1: Dragon made a whole world order and just left you
59:12
Speaker 1: his most important allies out of it. Like where is
59:15
Speaker 1: their honor for you? That's a really valid question.
59:17
Speaker 2: And the question that Nakomi was asking her, right this
59:20
Speaker 2: is she's seeing this question come up in history and
59:23
Speaker 2: be like, oh, this unanswered question is haunting our people
59:26
Speaker 2: and has led us to disaster. The question needs to
59:29
Speaker 2: be answered, which is what used to the ideal now
59:33
Speaker 2: that they're no longer the Dragon's spear, you know, and
59:37
Speaker 2: what they turned to is the hatred of shan Chan
59:39
Speaker 2: and continued war and that's just not a solution for them.
59:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then this one chief says that this is
59:47
Speaker 1: Rand's fault, and Ladeline for some reason is like no,
59:50
Speaker 1: it's our fault, and I'm like, I disagree respectfully, since
59:55
Speaker 1: Avanda has to tell rand that he's wrong. I do
1:00:00
Speaker 1: you think it's kind of more Rand's fault than your fault.
1:00:02
Speaker 2: I mean, it's one of those things where like, could
1:00:04
Speaker 2: the people have made better choices and not gone to war?
1:00:09
Speaker 2: Right on, Collin's decision to send them to war is
1:00:12
Speaker 2: kind of their fault.
1:00:13
Speaker 1: Sure, so they can take responsibility for their actions, but
1:00:16
Speaker 1: to let Randolph the hook entirely is not.
1:00:19
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, absolutely right. Yeah, he's leaving behind this dangerous
1:00:23
Speaker 2: group of people with no purpose, like they're going to
1:00:25
Speaker 2: get into trouble. But yeah, he tried to give them
1:00:30
Speaker 2: the opportunity to determine their own fate without his interference,
1:00:34
Speaker 2: because you know, one of his guilt points was that
1:00:37
Speaker 2: he felt like this entire people, this entire generation of people,
1:00:40
Speaker 2: suffered for him for three thousand years, and he wanted
1:00:46
Speaker 2: to give them a chance to make their own fate.
1:00:48
Speaker 1: But he did that without talking to them about it,
1:00:51
Speaker 1: which is just the same paternalistic bullshit he thought he
1:00:54
Speaker 1: was getting away.
1:00:54
Speaker 2: Exactly, and the ideal had this inherent instinct to serve. Right,
1:00:58
Speaker 2: their goal is to serve when they were you know guyshine,
1:01:02
Speaker 2: like back in the age of legends, they served. Whether
1:01:05
Speaker 2: they're serving the dragon as the way of the spear,
1:01:07
Speaker 2: they need a purpose and they need someone to serve.
1:01:10
Speaker 2: Now we get in the whole aspect of deciding that
1:01:13
Speaker 2: a people is one of these house elves, right, like.
1:01:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're genetically predisposed to serve, and they'll ruin themselves
1:01:22
Speaker 1: if they're given too much agency. Is a weird argument.
1:01:25
Speaker 2: It's a little bit weird. It's a little bit weird. Yeah,
1:01:27
Speaker 2: it's definitely a patronizing kind of bullshit argument about lots
1:01:33
Speaker 2: of groups of people that justifies why they're dominated by
1:01:36
Speaker 2: you know, lesterners.
1:01:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there is something to be said for massively
1:01:43
Speaker 1: for de radicalizing someone in stages. Sure to be said
1:01:48
Speaker 1: for not just ripping them away from everything they've ever
1:01:51
Speaker 1: known and tell them figure it out with no support,
1:01:54
Speaker 1: no follow up, no community, Like this is a big boat.
1:01:58
Speaker 1: You can't turn it in a single moment. And two,
1:02:02
Speaker 1: I mean, what this guy says here is that our
1:02:05
Speaker 1: honor was taken from us. We were crafted to be
1:02:08
Speaker 1: a spear. He used us then cast us away. Right,
1:02:11
Speaker 1: That's the problem is It's like you were used for
1:02:14
Speaker 1: your purpose and then you were given no direction on
1:02:17
Speaker 1: what to do next, nothing but trauma and coping mechanisms. Like, Yeah,
1:02:22
Speaker 1: there has to be a path, there has to be
1:02:24
Speaker 1: a plan. There has to be communication between the ideal
1:02:28
Speaker 1: and the dragon, not just the dragon dictating what he
1:02:30
Speaker 1: thinks they would like. You have to actually listen to
1:02:33
Speaker 1: the marginalized people who have been oppressed and made subservient
1:02:36
Speaker 1: and only know how to function. You have to listen
1:02:38
Speaker 1: to them when they say that they have feelings and
1:02:40
Speaker 1: not just dictate to them.
1:02:42
Speaker 2: And the spear can be used for peace, although I
1:02:45
Speaker 2: mean using the army for peacekeeping mission. There's a whole
1:02:47
Speaker 2: other can of worms that we should get into with
1:02:50
Speaker 2: the American system and how well that's worked.
1:02:53
Speaker 1: I do have a lot of questions about having just
1:02:55
Speaker 1: an armed military force that's accountable only to itself and
1:02:58
Speaker 1: a well armed society's a politis. I definitely have some
1:03:02
Speaker 1: questions there. But I feel like, you know, Rand, before
1:03:06
Speaker 1: he gets the update from Avianda and Paren, to an extent,
1:03:09
Speaker 1: Rand just thinks that he can order everyone around like
1:03:12
Speaker 1: little ponds, and Avianda and Paren are both like people,
1:03:17
Speaker 1: especially Paren, right, Paren We think of him mostly as
1:03:19
Speaker 1: affecting the decision about the seals, but Paren also factors
1:03:23
Speaker 1: largely into the Dragon's piece decision. He really helps contribute
1:03:27
Speaker 1: to that. Like, you know, maybe armies are made out
1:03:29
Speaker 1: of people who all have motivations and you need to
1:03:32
Speaker 1: speak to their motivations if you want to redirect them
1:03:36
Speaker 1: to some other enemy.
1:03:38
Speaker 2: And that really is Parent's art, right. Paren does something
1:03:41
Speaker 2: that Rand has never been able to accomplish, which is
1:03:43
Speaker 2: taking forces from multiple different nations and uniting them together
1:03:47
Speaker 2: into one cohesive force. That his storyline is his ability
1:03:51
Speaker 2: to really bring people together in a way that Rand
1:03:55
Speaker 2: forces them together, forges them together, you know, threatens them together,
1:03:59
Speaker 2: but they never they're all always allies, they're never won people.
1:04:03
Speaker 2: Parent is able to forge a new people out of
1:04:07
Speaker 2: you know, he's the blacksmith. He forges a new group
1:04:11
Speaker 2: of people out of these desperate pieces.
1:04:13
Speaker 1: And in his credit, Randon is a force of destruction.
1:04:17
Speaker 1: He is prophesied and described as a force of destruction,
1:04:20
Speaker 1: not construction.
1:04:21
Speaker 2: He's the plow that breaks people apart, not the blacksmith
1:04:24
Speaker 2: that forces them back together again.
1:04:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And.
1:04:27
Speaker 2: That's why I think Parents should have played a bigger
1:04:29
Speaker 2: role in the dragon the unifying of the armies, right, Like, yes,
1:04:33
Speaker 2: he does have some role in the Dragon's piece, but like,
1:04:37
Speaker 2: you know, I think he should have been the battlefield
1:04:40
Speaker 2: leader in the way that like Matt is out there
1:04:44
Speaker 2: making plans, he should have been sort of the planner,
1:04:47
Speaker 2: but parents should have been out there at the forefront
1:04:50
Speaker 2: of the charge. Yeah.
1:04:52
Speaker 1: He's a bannerman, he's a play caller, he's a coach.
1:04:56
Speaker 2: You know. I think, you know, Matt should be doing
1:04:58
Speaker 2: things like okay, and need you guys to cross over
1:05:00
Speaker 2: that river, and parents should be outside out there being
1:05:02
Speaker 2: like all right, grab.
1:05:03
Speaker 1: The logs, you know, yeah, totally.
1:05:05
Speaker 2: Matt says, hold this side of the river, paren does
1:05:09
Speaker 2: it right?
1:05:09
Speaker 1: Yeah? But alas the Ayel are death spiraling, Yeah, because
1:05:16
Speaker 1: they were left just repeating the traumas of the past
1:05:19
Speaker 1: rather than moving forward into the future. And at that point,
1:05:24
Speaker 1: Avianda is nearly at the center of the ring of columns.
1:05:28
Speaker 1: She is midway through the arc. She's putting it together,
1:05:31
Speaker 1: she's figuring out what's actually happening. She's not confused at
1:05:34
Speaker 1: this point in the process, and she's you know, seeing
1:05:38
Speaker 1: the hints of ideal culture that have been warped, right,
1:05:41
Speaker 1: battle stripped completely of point or reason, the lack of honor,
1:05:46
Speaker 1: the disintegration of everything she believes in. Yeah, yeah, that's
1:05:51
Speaker 1: a good question, Marzapan. Have they learned to dance aside
1:05:54
Speaker 1: from the spears? Their only songs are battle chants, are
1:05:57
Speaker 1: dirges for the dead. Yeah, you have to really go
1:06:00
Speaker 1: through it intentional community process of deciding who are we
1:06:04
Speaker 1: and what are we doing? And Rand couldn't dictate that
1:06:07
Speaker 1: for them, but he certainly could shut it down before
1:06:10
Speaker 1: it even got started, which is clearly what happened in
1:06:12
Speaker 1: this timeline.
1:06:13
Speaker 2: I mean, when everyone in the society is dedicated to
1:06:15
Speaker 2: battle and you can't fight anymore, Like you can't do
1:06:18
Speaker 2: your hobby, you can't do your favorite thing, you can't
1:06:20
Speaker 2: do you know, your job. I mean, just just take
1:06:23
Speaker 2: away everybody's job in a society and see what happens, right,
1:06:25
Speaker 2: Like everyone's the existential dread that people go through when
1:06:29
Speaker 2: they lose their purpose.
1:06:31
Speaker 1: In life, right, or when you know, take away their religion,
1:06:35
Speaker 1: their farming techniques, their cottage industry, the land they live on,
1:06:39
Speaker 1: the language they speak, the way that they style their
1:06:41
Speaker 1: hair and food, like you know, genocide basically right, Like
1:06:46
Speaker 1: the Iel are facing this like do or die point
1:06:50
Speaker 1: for their entire cultural identity, and yeah, what avienda. What
1:06:54
Speaker 1: Nacomi really asks is like, who do we want to
1:06:58
Speaker 1: be if we had choice? Let's sit down and think
1:07:01
Speaker 1: about it, because yeah, just winding up into an endless
1:07:04
Speaker 1: war with the Shaun Chain, who are going to get
1:07:05
Speaker 1: stronger the more they capture. Yeah, it's a war of attrition,
1:07:08
Speaker 1: You're never going to win. Yeah, all the societies all
1:07:11
Speaker 1: exist to hold done different aspects of battle technique. Right.
1:07:15
Speaker 1: I mean we even see it in one of the
1:07:17
Speaker 1: other visions, right, that the Stone Dogs are one of
1:07:19
Speaker 1: the last battle societies to exist. Like what if those
1:07:21
Speaker 1: societies reinvented themselves? Kind of like how the Red Adja
1:07:25
Speaker 1: has to totally reimagine what its purpose is. If men
1:07:29
Speaker 1: don't have to be gentled for the sake of everyone's safety,
1:07:33
Speaker 1: what does the Red AJA do? They can pivot, but
1:07:36
Speaker 1: they have to actively and intentionally pivot.
1:07:40
Speaker 2: And you have to look at what your bigger mission
1:07:42
Speaker 2: statement is. You know, your narrow mission statement is we
1:07:46
Speaker 2: deal with men who can channel and kill them because
1:07:48
Speaker 2: that's the only way we know how to deal with them.
1:07:50
Speaker 2: But look at your bigger mission statement, we deal with
1:07:52
Speaker 2: men who can channel, and now that killing them is
1:07:54
Speaker 2: not the only way to deal with them, how do
1:07:55
Speaker 2: you pivot to? Okay, if what we're doing isn't killing
1:08:00
Speaker 2: them and hunting them down, maybe it's bonding them.
1:08:02
Speaker 1: Right, Maybe it's innovating. Maybe it's building.
1:08:06
Speaker 2: Stuff, building stuff with them, because dealing with them now
1:08:10
Speaker 2: is not just dealing with them but working with them.
1:08:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, you know, for the idea, how do
1:08:14
Speaker 1: you turn your skills and tools of violence into something
1:08:19
Speaker 1: productive in a world we're fighting each other? Isn't the point? Well?
1:08:22
Speaker 1: Enforcing peace does sound on the surface of it like
1:08:24
Speaker 1: a very good pitch, as much as we might, you know,
1:08:27
Speaker 1: question if that's going to work long term, Like, it
1:08:29
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense as a pivot for people
1:08:32
Speaker 1: who know nothing but war.
1:08:34
Speaker 2: And as much as fuck the police is a you know,
1:08:37
Speaker 2: police with honor is something that you could There are
1:08:39
Speaker 2: better police systems in place than the ones we have
1:08:42
Speaker 2: in America.
1:08:43
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, No. The concept of people that are empowered
1:08:46
Speaker 1: to fix problems quickly and decisively, like that's not bad.
1:08:51
Speaker 1: American cops are bastards, But the concept of people that
1:08:54
Speaker 1: are like hmm, let me step in and break up.
1:08:56
Speaker 1: This fight is not inherently bad, particularly when you're talking
1:09:00
Speaker 1: about you know, these fantasy nations on the brink of
1:09:02
Speaker 1: like a second World War right after they finished the first, Right,
1:09:06
Speaker 1: it really makes a lot of sense instead of just
1:09:09
Speaker 1: now figure it out.
1:09:11
Speaker 2: All cops are bastards, sorry, especially.
1:09:13
Speaker 1: The cop in your head. Kill the cop in your head.
1:09:17
Speaker 1: So yeah, Avian does at this point very much wondering
1:09:20
Speaker 1: how could this happen? And with that we will take
1:09:22
Speaker 1: another step forward and back.
1:09:26
Speaker 2: We're going back through the chapter. So for us it's
1:09:28
Speaker 2: forward and back through the chapter.
1:09:36
Speaker 1: So if we hop back farther, I think this one
1:09:38
Speaker 1: is more generations.
1:09:41
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, it's I mean, we're seeing the dissolution,
1:09:45
Speaker 2: the dissolving of a society, and so as we go forward,
1:09:50
Speaker 2: there's less and less information about the society and what's
1:09:52
Speaker 2: been going on because the people are becoming more and
1:09:54
Speaker 2: more ignorant, less, they're just like, I'm living in terror
1:09:57
Speaker 2: and pain and poverty. I don't know we got here,
1:10:00
Speaker 2: but it's bad.
1:10:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and yeah this is now we're again with
1:10:04
Speaker 1: a child, right, we're with a fourteen year old right.
1:10:06
Speaker 1: Lateline was like old and now we're with a much
1:10:09
Speaker 1: younger child, and clearly a lot more has happened. Very
1:10:12
Speaker 1: hard to say how many generations we've gone on, but
1:10:16
Speaker 1: it's a while. This is the one where we learned
1:10:18
Speaker 1: that the Stone Dogs are one of the only societies
1:10:21
Speaker 1: left that most of them have just dissolved.
1:10:24
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, again seeing the pieces of the Iel society
1:10:27
Speaker 2: fall by the wayside, piece by piece by piece, the
1:10:30
Speaker 2: societies are basically gone. Guy, shine, We're gone. In the
1:10:33
Speaker 2: last vision, Honor is essentially gone, is what they're saying
1:10:36
Speaker 2: at this point.
1:10:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, Honor, it's not even gone in the sense that
1:10:41
Speaker 1: like choices have been made, like it's been gone. There's
1:10:44
Speaker 1: just dust where Honor used to be. The shan Chan
1:10:48
Speaker 1: have clearly switched to a much more genocidal war of extermination, right,
1:10:53
Speaker 1: I mean we even here in the last one of like,
1:10:55
Speaker 1: oh if we retreat, the Shawn Chank said that they'll
1:10:57
Speaker 1: do a genocide if we retreat. If we don't, then
1:11:00
Speaker 1: they will make sure we all die. And here we
1:11:02
Speaker 1: are seeing evidence of that.
1:11:04
Speaker 2: Right.
1:11:05
Speaker 1: This is a tiny little hold built out of absolutely
1:11:07
Speaker 1: nothing in the middle of nowhere, and it's still being
1:11:10
Speaker 1: raided and firebombed because the shan Chan promised, we will
1:11:13
Speaker 1: exterminate every last one of you if you don't surrender
1:11:16
Speaker 1: right now, and they didn't.
1:11:17
Speaker 2: So and they're in effective bureaucracy that are just they're like, oh, yep,
1:11:22
Speaker 2: that's still the order, and no one can change that order.
1:11:25
Speaker 2: So we're going to keep doing it until there's nothing left.
1:11:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And it's this and then the other one.
1:11:30
Speaker 1: I mean, all the visions in the waste always make
1:11:32
Speaker 1: me think of what the American Southwest would have been
1:11:35
Speaker 1: like in like the eighteen eighties. You know, just this
1:11:38
Speaker 1: this railroad crawling its way across the landscape. Yes, these
1:11:42
Speaker 1: waves of people with metal clothes and boomsticks just keep
1:11:46
Speaker 1: destroying your villages because they were, you know, in the
1:11:49
Speaker 1: way of the railroad and just finding where the women
1:11:52
Speaker 1: and children are and burning them out and driving them
1:11:54
Speaker 1: off to just starve in the desert. Like it feels
1:11:56
Speaker 1: like the Southwest at the turn of the last century.
1:11:59
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, the Native American being the ael and the
1:12:03
Speaker 2: Europeans expanding out west.
1:12:05
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, specifically the Southwest with the railroad. It just
1:12:09
Speaker 1: it gives me gold rush energy. And yeah, so this
1:12:13
Speaker 1: this girl Tava is clearly still descended from from the
1:12:18
Speaker 1: line of the dragon. Right, they're all Aveanda's descendants, and
1:12:21
Speaker 1: her father like has red hair and keeps his face
1:12:24
Speaker 1: shaved and still wears the clothes of Ayeel is practical
1:12:27
Speaker 1: enough to pick up a sword because it's just a weapon. Right,
1:12:30
Speaker 1: He's so rand coated, he's so rand coded.
1:12:33
Speaker 2: It's interesting the Iel now have thick beards and they
1:12:37
Speaker 2: shave as tradition where and the people who don't have
1:12:40
Speaker 2: beards are the weird ones, whereas the Aeel I feel
1:12:42
Speaker 2: like in it certainly in the age of legends. But
1:12:44
Speaker 2: I thought in Avienda day, Avienda's days, the men didn't
1:12:47
Speaker 2: really grow beards.
1:12:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've they've always been a clean shaven people, which whatever.
1:12:51
Speaker 2: But I thought in terms of they didn't grow beard like,
1:12:54
Speaker 2: they didn't really grow much of a beard, right, Like,
1:12:57
Speaker 2: they didn't have to shave because they didn't actually grow
1:12:59
Speaker 2: much faike.
1:13:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess they don't talk about shaving much. So Yeah,
1:13:02
Speaker 1: maybe it's a matter of so many Wetlanders have come
1:13:06
Speaker 1: into the gene Pool because of the you know, half
1:13:08
Speaker 1: century that they spent on the other side of the
1:13:10
Speaker 1: dragon Wall.
1:13:11
Speaker 2: That's kind of what I'm imagining, you know, it's a.
1:13:13
Speaker 1: Lot more of the beard growing gene.
1:13:15
Speaker 2: Right, and they now they have to shave in order
1:13:17
Speaker 2: to maintain traditional clean shaven but that was genetically ieel
1:13:21
Speaker 2: just didn't grow beards, right, Yeah, way that like a
1:13:24
Speaker 2: lot of Asian men don't grow, you know, a thick
1:13:27
Speaker 2: beard and don't have to do a lot of shaving,
1:13:29
Speaker 2: you know, Like there's that that mix of genetics or
1:13:31
Speaker 2: Native Americans.
1:13:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, that's gotta be That's got to
1:13:35
Speaker 1: be a reflection of how many of the bearded Wetlanders
1:13:39
Speaker 1: inter bred into the population during the decades that they
1:13:42
Speaker 1: were working together, fighting together. Even despite the fact that
1:13:45
Speaker 1: there wasn't a Dragon's peace, right, there's still definitely many
1:13:48
Speaker 1: men and women who were like, ah, the Iel seem
1:13:50
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I'm going to go live with them instead.
1:13:52
Speaker 2: I mean, you can have more in a breeding when
1:13:54
Speaker 2: there's not peace.
1:13:55
Speaker 1: Well, I more just meant that they weren't like having
1:13:58
Speaker 1: good like exchange program relations between all the allies was
1:14:03
Speaker 1: making it the Shan shan. But just like yeah, the Andorans, right,
1:14:06
Speaker 1: they don't have the dragons alignment, but like individuals are
1:14:10
Speaker 1: still going to be trading and falling in love and
1:14:12
Speaker 1: you know, moving it because it's like they just live
1:14:14
Speaker 1: on the other side of town. Like it's not like
1:14:16
Speaker 1: they're far away, on the other side of a mountain range.
1:14:18
Speaker 1: They're just right there.
1:14:19
Speaker 2: We also get like just how far they've fallen in
1:14:21
Speaker 2: terms of battle, Like her dad kills one invader and
1:14:23
Speaker 2: that's the only victory in the entire fight. They killed
1:14:26
Speaker 2: one person. And it's like what happened to the Ieel,
1:14:29
Speaker 2: these incredible fighters who could take down two or three
1:14:32
Speaker 2: warriors at a time, And it's like they technologically have
1:14:34
Speaker 2: been just completely outclassed.
1:14:36
Speaker 1: And they've lost all of their knowledge of the waste. Right,
1:14:38
Speaker 1: they were in the wetlands for decades and then they
1:14:41
Speaker 1: were forced to retreat as part of a war of attrition,
1:14:44
Speaker 1: and as we see in the last visions, like they
1:14:45
Speaker 1: don't know the plants to eat, they don't know how
1:14:48
Speaker 1: to find water, like the knowledge of the land has
1:14:51
Speaker 1: been lost. It's again very much like the genocide of
1:14:53
Speaker 1: the Native Americans. They're like, if we move you to
1:14:56
Speaker 1: a different location, if we forbid you your language, then
1:14:59
Speaker 1: in like just one generation now when your kids run
1:15:02
Speaker 1: away from the residential school, they don't know how to survive.
1:15:05
Speaker 1: So they'll come back on their own, even though their
1:15:07
Speaker 1: grandparents go to survive out. They're just fine. The chain's
1:15:10
Speaker 1: been broken.
1:15:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we see them not wearing cotton sword because
1:15:13
Speaker 2: that makes them a target, wearing the clothing of their people.
1:15:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, to be known as ayeale means death right. You
1:15:19
Speaker 1: can either assimilate or die, and assimilation has been made
1:15:23
Speaker 1: a matter of subterfuge rather than just you know, kissing
1:15:26
Speaker 1: the ring of empire.
1:15:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't ask, don't tell situation, except they will ask.
1:15:31
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, they will be asking. They will be asking.
1:15:33
Speaker 1: They will probably be you know, family tree rattling and
1:15:36
Speaker 1: genetic testing. Just as soon as they figured that out.
1:15:39
Speaker 1: You know, they think of swords as.
1:15:40
Speaker 2: Bad luck, not really forbidden, just bad luck.
1:15:43
Speaker 1: They're just bad luck and there's no connection to why.
1:15:46
Speaker 1: So it's like it's a sword, like use it to
1:15:48
Speaker 1: kill people, which you know, was the logic that the
1:15:50
Speaker 1: ideal used to go from being peaceful to warriors in
1:15:52
Speaker 1: the first place. Was like, you know, they made that
1:15:56
Speaker 1: one rule about swords, and now we've were reiterating that
1:15:58
Speaker 1: to the points that yeah, even the prohibitional swords doesn't
1:16:01
Speaker 1: make sense anymore. Now we just need to protect ourselves.
1:16:03
Speaker 1: But yeah, that whole rate, only one guy died, only
1:16:06
Speaker 1: one guy of the enemy. Yeah, of the enemy. And
1:16:09
Speaker 1: then they talk about, Okay, maybe we can rebuild, maybe
1:16:11
Speaker 1: we can move deeper into the waste, and they say no,
1:16:13
Speaker 1: the ray of an Empire has sent word to the
1:16:15
Speaker 1: far Ones, the Sharans, and they hunt us at the
1:16:18
Speaker 1: eastern border.
1:16:18
Speaker 2: Right.
1:16:19
Speaker 1: This is literally the noose is closing. The space in
1:16:23
Speaker 1: which they have to hide is shrink. Yeah, totally, they're
1:16:26
Speaker 1: totally going to go with phrenology would be them.
1:16:29
Speaker 2: And we reached they've reached a point where they've invested
1:16:32
Speaker 2: so much. They've invested the last of everything they had
1:16:36
Speaker 2: in this settlement. Months and months of work wiped out
1:16:38
Speaker 2: instantly before we can reap any benefits from it. He's like,
1:16:41
Speaker 2: we can rebuild again. It's like we can't. We have
1:16:42
Speaker 2: nothing left. We put everything we had into rebuilding the
1:16:45
Speaker 2: settlement and so no longer are they a people. They
1:16:48
Speaker 2: are scattering as individuals. This is the last moment when
1:16:51
Speaker 2: they were a people.
1:16:52
Speaker 1: And it reminds me of when the Tuatha On split
1:16:57
Speaker 1: from the gen It's the same thing of I can
1:16:59
Speaker 1: do better on my own, We are better when we
1:17:01
Speaker 1: abandon our cultural markers. We are safer if we just
1:17:06
Speaker 1: stop being a people.
1:17:08
Speaker 2: It's very interesting that this feels like the death of
1:17:11
Speaker 2: the ieeal and the same way that the death of
1:17:13
Speaker 2: the Zen felt like the death of the Ieel. The
1:17:16
Speaker 2: difference is the warrior society was able to survive and
1:17:19
Speaker 2: continue to exist. This is very much the elimination of
1:17:22
Speaker 2: the genetic line entirely.
1:17:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not just the culture. This is down
1:17:26
Speaker 1: to the literal genome.
1:17:28
Speaker 2: Which it's interesting, right because over enough time, you either
1:17:32
Speaker 2: become everyone's ancestor or nobody's ancestor, right right, There's always
1:17:37
Speaker 2: at some point in the genetic timeline we all share
1:17:39
Speaker 2: an ancestor, and so you know, as your children go down,
1:17:43
Speaker 2: either like your genetics spread so you have a little
1:17:45
Speaker 2: bit of genetics in everybody, or they come down to
1:17:47
Speaker 2: a point so your genetics are irrelevant. And I feel
1:17:51
Speaker 2: like that is what the tran real is really designed
1:17:54
Speaker 2: to do. It shows you visions of a future where
1:17:59
Speaker 2: the genetic line that you found goes down to zero.
1:18:02
Speaker 1: Hmm. Maybe that's kind of how it extrapolates forward in
1:18:05
Speaker 1: the timeline, right.
1:18:06
Speaker 2: And that's how it shows you. It shows you basically
1:18:08
Speaker 2: enough visions to get to that point to where your
1:18:11
Speaker 2: genetic line ends, and that gives you enough foresight to
1:18:15
Speaker 2: try and change that outcome and expand your genetic line
1:18:18
Speaker 2: to expand into everybody.
1:18:19
Speaker 1: So it's like eugenics, but good because it's for your
1:18:22
Speaker 1: whole culture.
1:18:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't isn't that the whole point of evolution and genetics,
1:18:28
Speaker 2: which is to get your genes into as many offspring
1:18:31
Speaker 2: as possible.
1:18:32
Speaker 1: It is true. That is the only thing evolution quote
1:18:34
Speaker 1: unquote cares about is did you manage to reproduce before dying?
1:18:37
Speaker 1: That's literally all that matters.
1:18:39
Speaker 2: And so I feel like the columns just do that
1:18:41
Speaker 2: on a more extensive, multi generation, multi generational level, now
1:18:46
Speaker 2: where like, is there any point is there something that
1:18:48
Speaker 2: will result in the the winnowing and death of your offspring?
1:18:51
Speaker 1: So then Vouji raises an interesting question, what if an
1:18:54
Speaker 1: individual is not going to have kids?
1:18:57
Speaker 2: How is this is this going to work in the
1:18:59
Speaker 2: same same way that you saw through maybe one of
1:19:02
Speaker 2: the other you didn't see the direct line. You didn't
1:19:04
Speaker 2: see that, you know on Colla's child, maybe you saw
1:19:07
Speaker 2: through one of her sisters. Right, So you have relationships,
1:19:09
Speaker 2: you have people around you who will continue to have kids.
1:19:12
Speaker 2: So maybe you see through your sister's genetic line.
1:19:16
Speaker 1: Kind of like how in Boba verse he's like, Okay,
1:19:19
Speaker 1: these are my descendants, even though they're technically his sister's
1:19:21
Speaker 1: descendence here, Yeah.
1:19:22
Speaker 2: Close enough, close enough, they're they're descendants of his parents,
1:19:26
Speaker 2: right right.
1:19:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it is an interesting thought to think that
1:19:30
Speaker 1: maybe certain Naiel wise ones will be unable to experience
1:19:34
Speaker 1: the tarungreal because they're from a very small dying family
1:19:37
Speaker 1: and they're kind of where that point ends, and like
1:19:39
Speaker 1: you just don't see anything.
1:19:41
Speaker 2: It's like I went in and I saw my I
1:19:43
Speaker 2: saw my nephew's life where she then died without having
1:19:46
Speaker 2: children and that was it. And you go to your
1:19:48
Speaker 2: nephew and you're like, you have to have kids.
1:19:51
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, totally totally. It's it's a weird implication. Well,
1:19:55
Speaker 1: of course everyone has a large family. That sounds more
1:19:59
Speaker 1: warm griping into this.
1:20:01
Speaker 2: Maybe I mean, I just I think with the iel again,
1:20:04
Speaker 2: because this has worked on the genetics and the idel
1:20:06
Speaker 2: are so closely genetically related that basically, as long as
1:20:09
Speaker 2: the ideal have descendants, you are closely enough related to
1:20:13
Speaker 2: those people to see the iel going forward in the
1:20:16
Speaker 2: same way that like if your IEL you have grandparents
1:20:19
Speaker 2: who are I EL and you know, it's a little
1:20:21
Speaker 2: more direct.
1:20:21
Speaker 1: But the thing will find some common descendants for you
1:20:25
Speaker 1: that you do share a direct ancestor with and be
1:20:27
Speaker 1: like they're close enough.
1:20:28
Speaker 2: Assuming the ideal people continue as a people, which is
1:20:31
Speaker 2: what the whole point of the columns.
1:20:32
Speaker 1: Is, right, So then at what point do the columns
1:20:35
Speaker 1: recognize that the ideal people are gone as a people?
1:20:38
Speaker 1: Did the columns somehow know when like critical mass has
1:20:41
Speaker 1: been lost? You know, right?
1:20:43
Speaker 2: Right? What if it just what if they just die
1:20:45
Speaker 2: out through inbreeding? Right?
1:20:46
Speaker 1: Which is again why I don't think that Nacomi is
1:20:48
Speaker 1: like a regular flesh and blood person from No, the
1:20:53
Speaker 1: inbreeding aspect is too weird. But uh yeah, so one day,
1:20:57
Speaker 1: like the columns just like crumble and die because there's
1:20:59
Speaker 1: like a no one left for them.
1:21:01
Speaker 2: I'm an intrub reading not necessarily in it. Oh oh
1:21:04
Speaker 2: between yet so between groups? Were you you know the
1:21:07
Speaker 2: way that the Anerthals died out, which is no one
1:21:09
Speaker 2: really killed them. We just fucked them out of existence.
1:21:11
Speaker 1: We outcompeted them. Sure, while also snagging some genetic souvenirs.
1:21:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, to take for genetic souvenirs.
1:21:22
Speaker 1: Nice, that's what we call these traits. It's four percent
1:21:24
Speaker 1: of party and it's a souvenir. Then they're done. That
1:21:27
Speaker 1: got the ridge teeth.
1:21:29
Speaker 2: And the autism.
1:21:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well it's a lot there we don't understand.
1:21:35
Speaker 2: But no, we we don't. That's all speculative, a.
1:21:37
Speaker 1: Lot of very interesting speculation.
1:21:39
Speaker 2: But yeah, so yeah, and that's sort of you know,
1:21:42
Speaker 2: the dropping of the sword, the dissipating of the Aeel.
1:21:45
Speaker 2: This is the last and the death of the Aeel.
1:21:48
Speaker 2: She's seeing. We're seeing the disillusionment of a people into individuals,
1:21:53
Speaker 2: and then the next visions we see are the death
1:21:55
Speaker 2: of the individuals.
1:21:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, it fractures into tiny little bits, and even those
1:22:00
Speaker 1: sparks burn out and die.
1:22:16
Speaker 2: So nor lesh.
1:22:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is perhaps the saddest one.
1:22:21
Speaker 2: Oh that anytime a woman loses a baby, does this
1:22:26
Speaker 2: happen in the original visions where one of the women
1:22:28
Speaker 2: loses a baby.
1:22:29
Speaker 1: We've got lots of child death, but I don't think
1:22:31
Speaker 1: there's an infant death in the original. I think there's
1:22:35
Speaker 1: mention of like a kid like struck down by fever.
1:22:38
Speaker 1: In his first year or something like that.
1:22:40
Speaker 2: Maybe God, I'm just I'm I'm I'm having deja vu
1:22:43
Speaker 2: about another woman struggling through the desert and discovering her
1:22:48
Speaker 2: child was dead. Maybe I'm just thinking of this scene.
1:22:51
Speaker 1: I think this only happens like this once. Okay, one
1:22:54
Speaker 1: can easily imagine that it happened to the gen in
1:22:57
Speaker 1: their time of wandering before hose Potentkle says it was
1:23:01
Speaker 1: in Dune.
1:23:02
Speaker 2: I believe you. Yeah, it very much could be. It
1:23:05
Speaker 2: very much could be that, like the scene, very much
1:23:07
Speaker 2: like this was in Doom.
1:23:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's it's hard to imagine that this hasn't
1:23:11
Speaker 1: happened every time a band of people has been forced
1:23:14
Speaker 1: to wander through the desert. Right, It's just like this
1:23:16
Speaker 1: has happened a lot. This is it's been inferred, directly,
1:23:20
Speaker 1: looked at, implied. But yeah, nor less has someone managed
1:23:26
Speaker 1: to have a lot of kids despite all the deprivation
1:23:28
Speaker 1: of their lives. Yeah, so this is basically this is
1:23:31
Speaker 1: what really gives me the gold rush energy the early
1:23:34
Speaker 1: days of settler colonialism in the American Southwest, because there's
1:23:38
Speaker 1: these outlanders who are you know, farmsteading and have a
1:23:41
Speaker 1: charter on the edge of the known world, and then
1:23:44
Speaker 1: these you know, native local people come up and they're like, hey,
1:23:47
Speaker 1: we have some of the ore that you want. Can
1:23:50
Speaker 1: we have any food at all in exchange for this ore?
1:23:53
Speaker 1: Because that's why you're here, right. They're not here to
1:23:55
Speaker 1: have a city, they're not here to build railroads. They're
1:23:58
Speaker 1: just here to get the ore. That's that's what they're seeing.
1:24:01
Speaker 1: They're unwilling to risk their charter by giving any amount
1:24:04
Speaker 1: of charity to these people, even in exchange for or
1:24:07
Speaker 1: And like, you know that guy spent weeks getting it's
1:24:10
Speaker 1: just like with the vision, the next vision with the hold.
1:24:12
Speaker 1: So when we just talked about, we're like it took
1:24:14
Speaker 1: them months to put together that hole. Then it burned
1:24:16
Speaker 1: down overnight. You know, this guy spent weeks dragging his
1:24:20
Speaker 1: family around looking for these rocks, and they're just rejected
1:24:23
Speaker 1: outright because you know, it's a it's a zero tolerance
1:24:26
Speaker 1: policy from the Raven Empire because there's so many people
1:24:29
Speaker 1: they can make be homesteaders, you.
1:24:31
Speaker 2: Know, and they probably aren't even that valuable of rocks, right,
1:24:35
Speaker 2: he probably got like low value versions of them, right
1:24:38
Speaker 2: that you know, if you've got a whole crew digging
1:24:40
Speaker 2: for these rocks. They're probably shipping tons and tons and
1:24:42
Speaker 2: tons of them, and this one guy with one rock,
1:24:45
Speaker 2: it's like that's really not worth anything anyway.
1:24:47
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also that which also speaks to the hopelessness of it, right,
1:24:50
Speaker 1: Like they're so desperate they don't even know at what
1:24:54
Speaker 1: scale to try to get into this. Right, it's like,
1:24:58
Speaker 1: we found a few rocks with like maybe you know,
1:25:01
Speaker 1: an ounce, we feel like enough bag of gold. There's
1:25:03
Speaker 1: maybe an ounce or enough back of dirt that maybe
1:25:05
Speaker 1: there's an ounce of gold in it. And they're like,
1:25:07
Speaker 1: we're here for like many ounces of gold. We were
1:25:11
Speaker 1: not going to risk our charter for you.
1:25:13
Speaker 2: No, And just like he was a good man, or
1:25:15
Speaker 2: had been once when he'd been strong and fit, like
1:25:18
Speaker 2: the lack of meals, lack of food, the desperation turns
1:25:21
Speaker 2: you into a bad person, turns you into a desperate
1:25:23
Speaker 2: person who will do things that aren't honorable, aren't good.
1:25:27
Speaker 1: And he's not even a bad person. He's not even
1:25:29
Speaker 1: doing anything that's not honorable. He's just like he's this
1:25:32
Speaker 1: tall man who appears to be groveling.
1:25:35
Speaker 2: He's just a starving person.
1:25:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, before these other people, right, and he doesn't fight
1:25:39
Speaker 1: for food. He just turns and walks away like he's
1:25:42
Speaker 1: not bad, he's just beaten completely and utterly hollowed out
1:25:48
Speaker 1: by a lack of options. Then they just they like
1:25:51
Speaker 1: wander off into the darkness and found like a shelf,
1:25:53
Speaker 1: you know, shelf of rock to sort of sit under
1:25:56
Speaker 1: for the night. No fire, no food, no water, which again,
1:26:00
Speaker 1: I'm like Avienda would have been able to find food
1:26:03
Speaker 1: and water, but they've been so many generations cut off
1:26:07
Speaker 1: from that ancestral knowledge of how to live off of
1:26:09
Speaker 1: the land that they're just going to starve and freeze
1:26:13
Speaker 1: out in the barren wastelands that their ancestors used to
1:26:16
Speaker 1: completely own.
1:26:17
Speaker 2: And at this point, we're at a stage where Avianda
1:26:20
Speaker 2: still thinks this is the past, and she's like, God,
1:26:22
Speaker 2: thank god rand didn't tell us about this part of
1:26:24
Speaker 2: our past, because she's she hasn't put together. She just
1:26:27
Speaker 2: sees people starving in the waste and doesn't realize that
1:26:29
Speaker 2: this is future yet, right.
1:26:32
Speaker 1: She thinks of the shame of how bad this is.
1:26:34
Speaker 1: She's not yet hit the despair of this is my fault,
1:26:37
Speaker 1: this is our future, this is her going. Oh, we
1:26:39
Speaker 1: came from even more destitute circumstances than I thought. How shameful.
1:26:43
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. She mentions that our people haven't been able
1:26:46
Speaker 1: to keep a home since my great mother Tava's day,
1:26:48
Speaker 1: So there we do get a sense of.
1:26:50
Speaker 2: How it's been two generations.
1:26:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, which means that Tava managed to live long
1:26:55
Speaker 1: enough and survive long enough to have at least one child. Right,
1:26:57
Speaker 1: she was fourteen watching all that stuff burn down. But
1:27:00
Speaker 1: I've still managed to keep going long enough that you know,
1:27:02
Speaker 1: two more generations have managed to be born. But here
1:27:05
Speaker 1: she is three children dead in the last eighteen months,
1:27:08
Speaker 1: and then one more dies in her arms. In this scene.
1:27:11
Speaker 1: She still has one living child, but like, the genocide
1:27:16
Speaker 1: is genociding along.
1:27:17
Speaker 2: Right, because she's like, what are we going to do?
1:27:19
Speaker 2: And it's he's just like we're going to die, Like
1:27:20
Speaker 2: I don't know, why are you arguing?
1:27:22
Speaker 1: Like yeah, he doesn't say really much of anything. Yes,
1:27:25
Speaker 1: you just keep running the same old routines, but you
1:27:27
Speaker 1: know you're insane because you're getting nothing from it. But
1:27:30
Speaker 1: everything you try doesn't work.
1:27:32
Speaker 2: You have no options and you've tried everything.
1:27:34
Speaker 1: So like's nothing to even talk about. And she can
1:27:37
Speaker 1: barely even someone in sadness for the fact that her
1:27:39
Speaker 1: child died, because it's like, well, what did we any
1:27:42
Speaker 1: of us expect? There's no emotion left in the tank,
1:27:45
Speaker 1: you know, it's uh, the Raven Empire sucks. Hot take
1:27:50
Speaker 1: like the seann Chan Empire sucks, but the Raven Empire
1:27:52
Speaker 1: sucks worse.
1:27:54
Speaker 2: And what we're seeing is an effectively carried out genocide,
1:27:57
Speaker 2: which is probably happened more often in our history. Reathon
1:28:00
Speaker 2: we'd like to admit. Yeah, yeah, there's all sorts of
1:28:02
Speaker 2: people who don't exist that we've never heard of, that
1:28:05
Speaker 2: were wiped out by some other society near them, who
1:28:08
Speaker 2: we've also never heard of, right, but like, yeah, you know,
1:28:12
Speaker 2: we very much I'm convinced by history that Homo sapiens
1:28:16
Speaker 2: have just absolutely devastated life in every place they've expanded
1:28:19
Speaker 2: into all large life, right, whether you're talking about predators, herd, animals.
1:28:25
Speaker 2: You know, the great extinction of our era follows the
1:28:29
Speaker 2: expansion of humans.
1:28:30
Speaker 1: Are we talking about human extinction or are we talking
1:28:32
Speaker 1: about animal extinction?
1:28:33
Speaker 2: Yes, humans are animals, right, Like you very much had
1:28:36
Speaker 2: this like, at what point do you draw the line
1:28:38
Speaker 2: between humans wiping out, you know, wooly mammoths wiping out
1:28:42
Speaker 2: in the interthals and wiping out another tribe of humans,
1:28:45
Speaker 2: and the.
1:28:45
Speaker 1: Degree of speed and intentionality, I think, is no one
1:28:48
Speaker 1: meant to get rid of the mammoths. But yeah, it's
1:28:51
Speaker 1: one of the things that I trip out on a
1:28:53
Speaker 1: lot when I get into YouTube videos about like the
1:28:56
Speaker 1: history of Europe specifically, just like how many the pottery
1:29:00
Speaker 1: the different kinds of pottery skills. Like there's this one
1:29:03
Speaker 1: YouTube channel I really like to watch that gets really
1:29:05
Speaker 1: into that stuff. Dude clearly has a history bender. Whenever
1:29:08
Speaker 1: he wants to write a book, he'll go on a
1:29:10
Speaker 1: history bender. And it's like very very cool because then
1:29:11
Speaker 1: he writes books that are well informed by archaeology. But yeah,
1:29:15
Speaker 1: the archaeology of anywhere that's been dissected over, you know,
1:29:20
Speaker 1: to three thousand years worth of human history is like,
1:29:24
Speaker 1: how many of these people that we're studying don't have
1:29:28
Speaker 1: any living descendants today because of how thoroughly this particular
1:29:33
Speaker 1: conflict we see the archaeological evidence of, you know, like
1:29:37
Speaker 1: was this like total extermination or just like a little
1:29:41
Speaker 1: bit of a fight because it changes, right, you can't
1:29:43
Speaker 1: always tell. Sometimes you can tell, but it does make
1:29:45
Speaker 1: me wonder sometimes, like of who invented the science of archaeology.
1:29:50
Speaker 1: How many of those people are at all descended from
1:29:53
Speaker 1: the people they're studying, and how many of those those
1:29:56
Speaker 1: entire family lines, those entire groups are gone because of
1:30:00
Speaker 1: those events, Like to say nothing of you know, subsequent centuries,
1:30:03
Speaker 1: it's hard to say.
1:30:05
Speaker 2: Well, and that's where you know, the wiping out of
1:30:07
Speaker 2: people means the wiping out of history, especially oral history.
1:30:10
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, food ways and weaving techniques and stuff like that.
1:30:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. Why do we know so much about the Greek
1:30:17
Speaker 2: and the Romans because they wrote shit down and.
1:30:20
Speaker 1: Those documents have managed to be preserved. S Watching a
1:30:23
Speaker 1: video recently about some stash I think as actually from
1:30:27
Speaker 1: the Library of Alexandria, some stash of documents that because
1:30:30
Speaker 1: of the fire, we still have them because the fire
1:30:32
Speaker 1: baked the clay tablets so that they wouldn't get washed
1:30:35
Speaker 1: away by rain over the subsequent several centuries before they
1:30:38
Speaker 1: were uncovered, a lot of this would have all melted
1:30:41
Speaker 1: away into mud because it was just clay tablets. But
1:30:44
Speaker 1: the fire did actually do us a solid in this
1:30:47
Speaker 1: one particular wing of the building.
1:30:49
Speaker 2: Destroyed all the papyrus, but preserved the clay.
1:30:52
Speaker 1: Baked the Clay, So, yeah, No, it's the ways the
1:30:58
Speaker 1: tenuousness which which in oral tradition exists, is a little scary.
1:31:04
Speaker 1: It's a little scary.
1:31:05
Speaker 2: So I had to admit reading the avienda sections, we've
1:31:08
Speaker 2: kind of been skipping over them. I don't Rand was
1:31:11
Speaker 2: devastated in a much more central way. I feel like
1:31:13
Speaker 2: Avian is kind of shrugging this off in a way
1:31:16
Speaker 2: I don't know. No, you think she's all right.
1:31:18
Speaker 1: No, she's got tears streaming down her face and is
1:31:22
Speaker 1: begging to not go on because the shame is tearing
1:31:24
Speaker 1: her apart. I feel like she's way more emotionally affected
1:31:27
Speaker 1: than Rand, because Rand is like, I don't know these people,
1:31:30
Speaker 1: Like he just feels the emotional pain of the person, right,
1:31:33
Speaker 1: He comes out of it feeling their pain, whereas Avienna's
1:31:35
Speaker 1: coming out of it putting it into context. And that's
1:31:38
Speaker 1: a very different angst.
1:31:40
Speaker 2: I think that's that's why it feels different to me,
1:31:42
Speaker 2: is because like she's like, oh yeah, within context, She's
1:31:45
Speaker 2: not like, oh my god, Tarva, this fourteen year old
1:31:49
Speaker 2: I cry for her as much as like.
1:31:51
Speaker 1: You know, she's not feeling the pain of having just
1:31:53
Speaker 1: had her child die in her arms. She's feeling the
1:31:55
Speaker 1: pain of the loss of honor.
1:31:57
Speaker 2: Right, right, right, And I feel like that's also writing distinction. Right.
1:32:00
Speaker 2: I feel like again Jordan was just better at making
1:32:03
Speaker 2: me feel the pain of the characters.
1:32:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, but she's not shrucking it off. She's just much
1:32:08
Speaker 1: more leaping to the end implication than she is experiencing it.
1:32:12
Speaker 2: It was probably a poor choice of words on my part,
1:32:14
Speaker 2: but like, I feel very emotion very differently emotion I
1:32:17
Speaker 2: feel very different emotionally between Avienda and Rand when I
1:32:20
Speaker 2: get to the end of these things, Like we're not
1:32:21
Speaker 2: really talking about Avianda's reaction the way I feel like
1:32:24
Speaker 2: we were devastated by Rand's.
1:32:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hadn't thought about that difference, but yeah, Avianda
1:32:28
Speaker 1: is always about the larger shame, the larger emotional structure
1:32:33
Speaker 1: of it. Was. Yeah, Rand was just going on a
1:32:35
Speaker 1: roller coaster.
1:32:36
Speaker 2: It felt like a much more Every tragedy felt like
1:32:39
Speaker 2: a personal tragedy for Rand, whereas with Avienda, this feels
1:32:42
Speaker 2: very much like a society ending tragedy, which in a
1:32:45
Speaker 2: lot of ways, like we're more disconnected from society ending
1:32:50
Speaker 2: tragedies than personal ones. Right, That's why you have to
1:32:52
Speaker 2: tell personal stories. To get people. Look, you can't give
1:32:55
Speaker 2: people statistics.
1:32:57
Speaker 1: Interesting that Avianda, a woman, has to carry the structure
1:33:02
Speaker 1: for her entire society, whereas Rand, a man, gets to
1:33:05
Speaker 1: have his own personal experience. At least Alevander got to
1:33:08
Speaker 1: wear her clothes this time, big fan of a big
1:33:11
Speaker 1: intense ceremony for a woman happening while she is not
1:33:13
Speaker 1: clad in the light. Yeah, so before we get to
1:33:16
Speaker 1: the last vision, she has a lot of thoughts in
1:33:20
Speaker 1: between the first and the second vision in the written order,
1:33:23
Speaker 1: Like you know, these columns had shown the ideal what
1:33:26
Speaker 1: they needed to know. This is a challenge to her.
1:33:29
Speaker 1: She goes into this super seeking knowledge. I think that
1:33:33
Speaker 1: might also be part of the difference between her and
1:33:35
Speaker 1: Rand is Rand's going there trying to fulfill a prophecy,
1:33:37
Speaker 1: whereas Avienda is choosing to do her dissertation on this.
1:33:41
Speaker 1: Rand didn't have a choice in the same way. I
1:33:46
Speaker 1: don't know if that makes it better or worse that
1:33:48
Speaker 1: they have different emotional reactions.
1:33:50
Speaker 2: No, And it makes sense because Avianda's seeing the death
1:33:53
Speaker 2: of her people, whereas Rand the people didn't mean anything
1:33:57
Speaker 2: to him at that point. It was the individuals he
1:33:59
Speaker 2: would connect with more.
1:34:06
Speaker 1: But yeah, then we get to the first of the visions,
1:34:10
Speaker 1: which is really cool. I mean as far as like
1:34:14
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic. Holy shit, we're not in Kansas anymore. Writing
1:34:20
Speaker 1: this one hits you across the face.
1:34:23
Speaker 2: It is the moment when you're like, oh my god,
1:34:24
Speaker 2: this is like advanced technology. This is the Age of
1:34:28
Speaker 2: Legends slash modern age come again, you know very much
1:34:32
Speaker 2: gives you this idea of what the future could be
1:34:35
Speaker 2: if it wasn't just quite as dystopian as it is
1:34:39
Speaker 2: in this vision.
1:34:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we have no idea the distance between this
1:34:45
Speaker 1: generation and the last one. Right, the folk barely have
1:34:48
Speaker 1: a proper spoken language anymore. Right, they have a harsh
1:34:51
Speaker 1: broken language of the folk. Right, they are really transcending
1:34:55
Speaker 1: down to animals at this point. We have no idea,
1:34:59
Speaker 1: Like they have names in ages, but no idea of generations.
1:35:03
Speaker 2: The men all have ragged beards, mishmash of clothing, nothing,
1:35:06
Speaker 2: you know, there's no uniform, nothing like hat and sore anything.
1:35:09
Speaker 2: They're wearing basically anything they can put on their skin
1:35:11
Speaker 2: to keep the sun off.
1:35:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. They've got no weapons, no pots, no hats, nothing.
1:35:16
Speaker 2: And they're scavenders. They're living off the trash and the
1:35:19
Speaker 2: discards of another people.
1:35:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are doing the cockroach last extreme of humanity, right.
1:35:26
Speaker 1: They do nothing but follow the light makers with their
1:35:29
Speaker 1: execute because they just shed so much trash. You can
1:35:32
Speaker 1: live off of their trash. But that's all they've got.
1:35:35
Speaker 1: That's the only thing they have is a parasitic existence
1:35:38
Speaker 1: that is still a war of attrition, even though the
1:35:41
Speaker 1: shon Chan seem to be basically over the war, right,
1:35:44
Speaker 1: like the way that the shan Chan talk about the
1:35:47
Speaker 1: iel in this is like the war's over, they won.
1:35:51
Speaker 1: There still there's these weird little dregs on the edge,
1:35:53
Speaker 1: and if you add on the frontier sometimes you still
1:35:55
Speaker 1: have to deal with some of the natives. But you know,
1:35:58
Speaker 1: the shon Chan imperial war machine has moved on to
1:36:00
Speaker 1: a different conflict at this point.
1:36:02
Speaker 2: And at this point, it's just amount of time till
1:36:04
Speaker 2: these last survivors are wiped out or just die in
1:36:08
Speaker 2: the waste. The waste will wipe them out. They can't
1:36:10
Speaker 2: survive on their own, they can't survive off the land.
1:36:13
Speaker 2: They have to raid people for sub sustenance and they
1:36:15
Speaker 2: will be killed for doing that.
1:36:17
Speaker 1: And I assume that this is the very last of
1:36:20
Speaker 1: Aveanda's descendants I assume that this is the very very
1:36:23
Speaker 1: last one of her entire genetic legacy, and that this
1:36:27
Speaker 1: is the end generation of them, at least as far
1:36:30
Speaker 1: as her family line goes.
1:36:33
Speaker 2: What are the shan Chan weapons guns? But they don't
1:36:36
Speaker 2: make a bang, They make like his sound.
1:36:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe they figured out how to make some sort
1:36:42
Speaker 1: of magic gun, like they figured out rifles, and they're like,
1:36:45
Speaker 1: that's too loud and stinky. We want to like use
1:36:47
Speaker 1: a magic trigger instead. But it's still you know, riffing
1:36:50
Speaker 1: off of the concept of a gun. Or maybe they
1:36:53
Speaker 1: reinvented shot glances. We really only ever hear about shock
1:36:56
Speaker 1: lances from the Age of Legends. Maybe this is some
1:36:58
Speaker 1: kind of like updated rediscovery or design of that.
1:37:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's entirely I was thinking some sort of gun
1:37:05
Speaker 2: that didn't use gunpowder, but I like the idea of
1:37:08
Speaker 2: shot lance of some kind. Maybe I'm thinking a rail
1:37:11
Speaker 2: gun magnetically propelled bullet, right, Yeah, yeah, that would totally
1:37:16
Speaker 2: make sense.
1:37:17
Speaker 1: And yeah, so they're creeping around this camp of the
1:37:20
Speaker 1: light makers and they have a massive wagon with no horses,
1:37:24
Speaker 1: large enough to house a dozen people, that moves magically
1:37:27
Speaker 1: during the daylight. They got a hummer yeah, and we
1:37:30
Speaker 1: also hear about this massive roadway that's being created in
1:37:33
Speaker 1: the waste made by laying down strange pieces of metal
1:37:36
Speaker 1: that were too big to.
1:37:37
Speaker 2: Pry up railroad tracks.
1:37:39
Speaker 1: One guy had shown her a large nail he had
1:37:41
Speaker 1: found that he uses to scrape meat off of bones
1:37:44
Speaker 1: and having grown up next to a very dare looked
1:37:46
Speaker 1: but still functional rail line. Yeah, you find railroad spikes
1:37:50
Speaker 1: all over the place. It's very easy to collect hundreds
1:37:52
Speaker 1: of them over just a couple of summers of wandering around.
1:37:55
Speaker 2: And it's like incredible and crazy that, like what is
1:37:58
Speaker 2: trash to the society is now one of the most
1:38:00
Speaker 2: valuable things they have because it's, you know, a piece
1:38:02
Speaker 2: of metal. Do you ever see the movie The Gods
1:38:04
Speaker 2: are Strange.
1:38:05
Speaker 1: The gods must be crazy.
1:38:06
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, The gods must be crazy.
1:38:08
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I have seen. The gods must be crazy.
1:38:10
Speaker 2: So it's the same way that like a coke bottle
1:38:12
Speaker 2: falling out of the sky becomes this artifact that is
1:38:14
Speaker 2: so advanced and harder than anything else they have, and
1:38:18
Speaker 2: they use it as this tool, and they fight over
1:38:20
Speaker 2: the tool, and it's like it's it's this. I feel
1:38:22
Speaker 2: like the spike is the same way where it's like
1:38:24
Speaker 2: this this object of power from another society that is
1:38:28
Speaker 2: made out of steel that you just can't make, and
1:38:31
Speaker 2: so it becomes this this object of power from a
1:38:35
Speaker 2: different society, but culturally it's very different because of the
1:38:37
Speaker 2: oppression and stuff like that.
1:38:39
Speaker 1: But like it shows you how far down that the
1:38:41
Speaker 1: ideal have come. That like a railroad nail is like
1:38:45
Speaker 1: mysterious and magical, much less the horses carriage, much less,
1:38:49
Speaker 1: the steady burning light, much less than just access to food, right.
1:38:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the ideal of today would find aviendez
1:38:56
Speaker 2: people advanced much less.
1:38:58
Speaker 1: Right, Exactly, the concept of having clothes you made yourself
1:39:01
Speaker 1: in a hold you own yourself, and food you grew yourself.
1:39:04
Speaker 1: It was like, that's so far beyond what these people
1:39:05
Speaker 1: are able to get anymore. All they have is a railroad,
1:39:08
Speaker 1: ties and scraps of dirty meat, the trimmed fat in
1:39:11
Speaker 1: the garbage.
1:39:12
Speaker 2: The one time she ate well was two years ago.
1:39:15
Speaker 2: That last time she was full, right, and she killed
1:39:18
Speaker 2: a man over that, right, like, which also makes her despicable,
1:39:21
Speaker 2: right because it's like you killed someone just to eat,
1:39:22
Speaker 2: but like, yeah, you kill somebody to eat.
1:39:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's what it is right, it's these these
1:39:28
Speaker 1: extermination policy and yeah, if you are dumb enough to
1:39:32
Speaker 1: go out there with resources and no guards, then a
1:39:35
Speaker 1: swarm of desperate people will eat you and all of
1:39:38
Speaker 1: your stuff because that's what your people have done to them.
1:39:42
Speaker 2: And then of course she's killed for being in the.
1:39:44
Speaker 1: Garbage, right, Yeah, the security light goes off, the guards
1:39:46
Speaker 1: come over and you know, shoot pepper balls that are
1:39:49
Speaker 1: actually lethal at the fleeing ayeel and she dies from it.
1:39:53
Speaker 1: And they're like, man, these are just pests. It's such
1:39:55
Speaker 1: a pain in the ass, like they weren't doing any harm. Well,
1:39:58
Speaker 1: I've seen them slit a man's throat, which, like she
1:39:59
Speaker 1: literally they just admitted to letting a mass throat for food.
1:40:02
Speaker 2: So like you know, so you understand, like, yeah, of
1:40:04
Speaker 2: course he's gonna kill them to defend himself, right, Why
1:40:06
Speaker 2: wouldn't he. These are a threat to his life when
1:40:08
Speaker 2: he sleeps, right.
1:40:09
Speaker 1: But it's also like they look at them like rabid
1:40:12
Speaker 1: dogs or poisonous snakes, not like people. They aren't an
1:40:17
Speaker 1: enemy worth fighting, they aren't a people worth being afraid of.
1:40:20
Speaker 2: They're just a natural hazard, like a cactus, poisonous lizard.
1:40:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's all that they are to them anymore.
1:40:27
Speaker 1: The a Yel are a mythic, bygone era villain, right,
1:40:31
Speaker 1: they are a story. They don't exist anymore. Even as
1:40:34
Speaker 1: this woman's blood pours out onto the ground, like the
1:40:36
Speaker 1: a Yel are long gone, long before she was shot.
1:40:39
Speaker 2: It kind of reminds me the way Avienda when she
1:40:41
Speaker 2: steps on the lizard and just spears it as she's
1:40:43
Speaker 2: walking through the desert, and it's like, yeah, it's poisonous,
1:40:45
Speaker 2: that's why you kill it as you're going by, right,
1:40:47
Speaker 2: Like that kind of how the light Bringers are now
1:40:49
Speaker 2: approaching that Yel is just another hazard of the waste
1:40:52
Speaker 2: that you eliminate.
1:40:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh well, next time we'll bury the trash and
1:40:55
Speaker 1: then we won't have to kill a child who was
1:40:57
Speaker 1: trying to eat the trimmed meat out of our guard.
1:41:00
Speaker 1: But you know, they're just a hazard, just bears turning
1:41:03
Speaker 1: over trash bins in your neighborhood that should never have
1:41:05
Speaker 1: been built into the bear's neighborhood in the first place.
1:41:09
Speaker 2: And it's just it's the last violation of every bit
1:41:12
Speaker 2: of honor that Avienda has. The scavenging, the begging, the
1:41:17
Speaker 2: lack of knowledge, the essentially being an animal. Right, it's
1:41:20
Speaker 2: just the final blow to Avienda's perception.
1:41:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they always are looking down on people who
1:41:26
Speaker 1: don't know how to find water, who don't know how
1:41:28
Speaker 1: to defend themselves. Like that's such a core part of
1:41:30
Speaker 1: a yell arrogance over soft wetlanders. And now she has
1:41:33
Speaker 1: seen even in the waste, this total degradation, this total loss,
1:41:39
Speaker 1: and it's a lot. And so with that, I think
1:41:43
Speaker 1: we can move forward to her last POV contemporary POV,
1:41:48
Speaker 1: the end of Court of the Sun.
1:41:55
Speaker 2: So after she's gone through all the columns, I've seen
1:41:58
Speaker 2: all these visionsorder.
1:42:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, after all of that, she was exhausted, Her mind
1:42:03
Speaker 1: was drained, her heart opened as if bleeding out strength
1:42:06
Speaker 1: with every beat. She is tired.
1:42:10
Speaker 2: How did one react to seeing the utter destruction? Know,
1:42:12
Speaker 2: the utter decay of one's people? That's really that that
1:42:16
Speaker 2: first vision and realizing that's where your people end up?
1:42:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, and should anyone have to see such terrible visions?
1:42:22
Speaker 2: Right?
1:42:22
Speaker 1: Is knowing that worth more trouble than it's worth? Like,
1:42:27
Speaker 1: what's what's the point? You know? She tries to get
1:42:29
Speaker 1: the columns to react again, and they're not. They're like, no,
1:42:32
Speaker 1: we need a long rest before we give you more magic.
1:42:34
Speaker 1: And yeah, you get one. You get one of these
1:42:37
Speaker 1: experiences per lifetime. If you want someone else to experience this,
1:42:40
Speaker 1: you have to send a new candidate. This is that's yours,
1:42:42
Speaker 1: that's your go.
1:42:43
Speaker 2: Do you think new candidates will see the future the
1:42:45
Speaker 2: vision of the past, or just see visions of the future.
1:42:48
Speaker 1: That's a good question. I bet they only see the future.
1:42:50
Speaker 2: You think that's the last time that anyone's going to
1:42:52
Speaker 2: see the history or the idell people.
1:42:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's going to pass into oral tradition
1:42:57
Speaker 1: and story only because now everyone knows right, it's no
1:42:59
Speaker 1: longer exclusive information. So I think that aviandas transitioned as permanent.
1:43:05
Speaker 2: For that, you don't think they're going to lose that
1:43:08
Speaker 2: information over time. I mean, the whole point of the
1:43:10
Speaker 2: columns was not you know, information fades over time and
1:43:13
Speaker 2: the columns keep it fresh. They keep you from forgetting
1:43:15
Speaker 2: because you're re experiencing it.
1:43:17
Speaker 1: But that was so that they would perform their duty
1:43:20
Speaker 1: at the last battle. And so once they perform the
1:43:22
Speaker 1: to date the last battle, then like to whatever degree,
1:43:24
Speaker 1: the oral story stays on, because like the oral story
1:43:27
Speaker 1: will stay right every ideal knows the story. Now it
1:43:29
Speaker 1: will become part of their oral tradition, but it doesn't
1:43:32
Speaker 1: have the same and this is to prepare you for
1:43:35
Speaker 1: what comes next, kind of deal.
1:43:36
Speaker 2: Bouji makes a good point written tradition too, because they
1:43:39
Speaker 2: do write and read.
1:43:39
Speaker 1: They are big fans of books. So I think that
1:43:43
Speaker 1: the columns don't need to hold the history anymore, and
1:43:46
Speaker 1: so they're only going to show the future. I mean,
1:43:48
Speaker 1: Loyle would probably be willing to help them go straight.
1:43:51
Speaker 1: It's encyclopedia of their knowledge.
1:43:53
Speaker 2: You know, he has already written a good chunk of
1:43:55
Speaker 2: their history in his.
1:43:56
Speaker 1: Books, exactly exactly.
1:44:00
Speaker 2: We also sort of get this statement right. She felt
1:44:03
Speaker 2: almost certain that what she had experienced was not simply
1:44:05
Speaker 2: one of many possibilities what she had seen would occur.
1:44:08
Speaker 2: So right, assuming she doesn't make any changes, this is the.
1:44:12
Speaker 1: Future, right, which, as we've pointed out, there's a lot
1:44:15
Speaker 1: of holes in that. But I don't think she's wrong
1:44:18
Speaker 1: that she does need to do something in response to this.
1:44:21
Speaker 1: This was a vision meant to change her behavior, and
1:44:25
Speaker 1: then she has the most important resolution to the question.
1:44:29
Speaker 1: I think the question that Nakomi pose, the question that
1:44:31
Speaker 1: all of this poses Can I change it? If I can't,
1:44:35
Speaker 1: will that stop me from trying? Like that's the core
1:44:39
Speaker 1: resolution of the question, is like, would knowing that I'm
1:44:43
Speaker 1: going to fail or knowing the end make me stop trying? No,
1:44:48
Speaker 1: because we are a fierce and independent people. Where it's
1:44:50
Speaker 1: a fierce, an independent avianda, a fear's an independent everyone. No,
1:44:55
Speaker 1: we're not going to accept this future. Even if we
1:44:57
Speaker 1: know that it's ironclad. We're still going to you know,
1:45:01
Speaker 1: scream defiance until the last breath and spit inside Blinder's eye, right,
1:45:04
Speaker 1: Like that's still who we are.
1:45:06
Speaker 2: I kind of feel the same way about free will,
1:45:08
Speaker 2: where it's like, whether or not you believe in free will,
1:45:10
Speaker 2: you have to act like you have it.
1:45:12
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. If you don't accept that free will is
1:45:16
Speaker 1: an important part of how you move through the world,
1:45:17
Speaker 1: you will make weird decisions for yourself, right right.
1:45:20
Speaker 2: If you just say, well, I'm not actually making any choices,
1:45:23
Speaker 2: it's like you might not be, but you have to
1:45:25
Speaker 2: act like you're making choices. Yeah.
1:45:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to act like you have agency, like
1:45:29
Speaker 1: you have choice, like you have flexibility. Otherwise you can
1:45:32
Speaker 1: just be an asshole and sad. But yeah, philosophically, free
1:45:36
Speaker 1: will is trickier, and I do feel like prophecy and
1:45:40
Speaker 1: free will are tied up very tightly together.
1:45:43
Speaker 2: It's one of the things I really love about the
1:45:44
Speaker 2: Like Genus trilogy, which I've talked about here plenty of times,
1:45:47
Speaker 2: but that's really sort of the central question of that
1:45:50
Speaker 2: series is given prophecy that is unchangeable, do you have
1:45:55
Speaker 2: free will? And it's it's sort of the central conflict
1:45:59
Speaker 2: between the good guys and the bad guys, right, is
1:46:01
Speaker 2: like the bad guys are like, no, we want to
1:46:04
Speaker 2: go back and change the past. That's what free will
1:46:06
Speaker 2: means is we can change decisions we've already made. And
1:46:11
Speaker 2: the good guys, you know, good guys in this situation.
1:46:13
Speaker 2: So I like those books because it's not as clear
1:46:15
Speaker 2: cut to me who's good and who's bad, even when
1:46:17
Speaker 2: you get to the end of the series. But the
1:46:19
Speaker 2: good guys are essentially saying, no, you've made your decisions,
1:46:22
Speaker 2: you have to live with them. And I think that's
1:46:24
Speaker 2: really the philosophy that is trying to convey, is like,
1:46:27
Speaker 2: once you make your decisions, you know, you can't live
1:46:30
Speaker 2: your life in the past. Wanting to change those things
1:46:32
Speaker 2: that only leads to death and destruction and regret. You
1:46:36
Speaker 2: have to make your choices and live with them.
1:46:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as a person who will not be playing
1:46:40
Speaker 1: on hero mode in balders Gate three, I don't appreciate
1:46:43
Speaker 1: that take. I am a save scum person save all
1:46:47
Speaker 1: the time, and I often wish that the world had
1:46:49
Speaker 1: the ability. Can I just go back to the last
1:46:51
Speaker 1: safe point and redo that was? That was not how
1:46:54
Speaker 1: I wanted to handle that. I would love to reload
1:46:56
Speaker 1: real quick.
1:46:57
Speaker 2: But life isn't like that, right, Like, every time you
1:46:59
Speaker 2: do something, every time you make a decision, you know,
1:47:02
Speaker 2: are there things I would have done differently had I known? Yes,
1:47:06
Speaker 2: of course, around everything, But that's not there's no point
1:47:11
Speaker 2: for me for ruminating over those scenarios. I mean there's
1:47:15
Speaker 2: a certain amount of like, yes, it's important to like
1:47:18
Speaker 2: think about the choices you made so that you can
1:47:21
Speaker 2: not continue to make bad choices, right Like, it's important
1:47:24
Speaker 2: on that level, but it's not. Oh, I don't like
1:47:28
Speaker 2: to go back and say, if only I had dated
1:47:31
Speaker 2: this person, taken the job up, gone to the college,
1:47:35
Speaker 2: not gone to the college, made the move across the country,
1:47:39
Speaker 2: not made the move across the country. Like, all of
1:47:41
Speaker 2: those things are choices. That I have made at some
1:47:43
Speaker 2: point in my life. And if I'd made the different choice,
1:47:46
Speaker 2: would I be in a different place? Absolutely? Would it
1:47:48
Speaker 2: be better or worse? Who knows? Doesn't matter, absolutely not.
1:47:51
Speaker 2: Can I make a change? Absolutely not, you know. And
1:47:54
Speaker 2: so I feel like I've gone on quite a tangent there.
1:47:57
Speaker 2: But free will is interesting. Free will's is is, you know,
1:48:01
Speaker 2: because you can't live two lives. You can only live
1:48:04
Speaker 2: the life that you live.
1:48:05
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah, So Avianda basically comes to the same
1:48:09
Speaker 1: realization that like worrying about it, you got to worry
1:48:13
Speaker 1: about it enough to have a good answer to the
1:48:15
Speaker 1: question of what do I want for the future, But
1:48:18
Speaker 1: you can't worry about it too much because you got
1:48:21
Speaker 1: to change it.
1:48:22
Speaker 2: And you can't not do anything about it assuming that
1:48:26
Speaker 2: what you've seen is inevitable.
1:48:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, all I have left is a nice, resounding,
1:48:32
Speaker 1: resolute reout go for it. She opened her eyes and
1:48:37
Speaker 1: gritted her teeth. I yell took responsibility, I yell fought,
1:48:41
Speaker 1: I yell stood for honor. If she was the only
1:48:43
Speaker 1: one who knew the terrors of their future, then it
1:48:45
Speaker 1: was her duty as a wise one to act, She
1:48:48
Speaker 1: would say, for people She walked from the pillars, then
1:48:51
Speaker 1: broke into a run. She needed to return to consult
1:48:54
Speaker 1: with the other wise ones, but first she needed quiet
1:48:57
Speaker 1: out in the threefold land time to think. She does
1:49:36
Speaker 1: a good think you think, right, she thinks on the
1:49:37
Speaker 1: way in, she has this really intense experience. Then she
1:49:39
Speaker 1: goes back up probably I'm assuming to the same rockshelf
1:49:42
Speaker 1: where she had dinner with Nakomi. That's like, who A
1:49:45
Speaker 1: lot has changed since I was here last.
1:49:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of.
1:49:50
Speaker 1: Course Nacomi doesn't visit her again, but I bet she
1:49:52
Speaker 1: was hoping it would happen.
1:49:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, Like, what do you now that I've
1:49:56
Speaker 2: had these visions? Can we talk a little more please?
1:49:58
Speaker 1: Nope?
1:49:59
Speaker 2: Nope.
1:50:00
Speaker 1: Fortunately you have excellent wise ones to go talk to,
1:50:03
Speaker 1: so right.
1:50:04
Speaker 2: And they I think they do a pretty good job
1:50:07
Speaker 2: of dealing with the information.
1:50:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, they process it pretty well. They take measured responses
1:50:13
Speaker 1: to it. They don't freak out and like throw a
1:50:16
Speaker 1: band off a cliff to make sure that none of
1:50:17
Speaker 1: that happens, you know, like they try to roll with it,
1:50:21
Speaker 1: roll forward with it. And I believe that what happens
1:50:24
Speaker 1: in the future will not be what we just saw.
1:50:25
Speaker 1: Because she will change some things. And so therefore, whatever
1:50:30
Speaker 1: the fallout is, it will be different. Will it be better,
1:50:32
Speaker 1: will it be worse, Will it come to the same
1:50:33
Speaker 1: sort of exterminatory end? Who can say? But it will
1:50:37
Speaker 1: be different.
1:50:38
Speaker 2: And I firmly believe that the iel now have the
1:50:41
Speaker 2: ability to continually course correct right, as long as they're
1:50:44
Speaker 2: sending wise ones too rudy on, they will continue to
1:50:47
Speaker 2: get visions of the future of worst possible case scenarios
1:50:50
Speaker 2: that are going to happen, and they're able to steer
1:50:52
Speaker 2: away from them. You know, it's the lookout of the
1:50:54
Speaker 2: future who's saying, you know, rocks ahead, turn left right.
1:50:57
Speaker 1: They've basically given themselves a cassand mechanic, but without the
1:51:01
Speaker 1: not being believed part.
1:51:03
Speaker 2: Right right, because the wise ones have established that they're
1:51:06
Speaker 2: very good at, you know, predicting the future already from dreams,
1:51:10
Speaker 2: I wonder if.
1:51:11
Speaker 1: They'll end up doing like oracle type behaviors for the
1:51:13
Speaker 1: whole continent.
1:51:15
Speaker 2: You know, I mean that's basically what she's doing, right,
1:51:18
Speaker 2: This is this is the future of everybody.
1:51:20
Speaker 1: What if every country like has an ideal soothsayer in it,
1:51:23
Speaker 1: and like because of the fact that they have an
1:51:25
Speaker 1: ideal advisor. That means that they can see the future
1:51:27
Speaker 1: of their nation when that person, like you know, does
1:51:30
Speaker 1: their visions or whatever.
1:51:31
Speaker 2: But I mean think they've got the sort of hints
1:51:34
Speaker 2: of future visions from the rings, you've got, the dreamers,
1:51:37
Speaker 2: you've got now now you've got the crystal Column visions
1:51:41
Speaker 2: of the future. There's a lot of prophecy going on
1:51:44
Speaker 2: in the wise ones. And I mean, and that's always
1:51:46
Speaker 2: been part of them, right back back from when they
1:51:48
Speaker 2: showed up and we're like, we weren't sure you were
1:51:50
Speaker 2: going to show up.
1:51:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's a letter that was going to get delivered
1:51:53
Speaker 1: months before you ever came to this address.
1:51:56
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, And if you came and he came,
1:51:57
Speaker 2: then you die. And if you came not him, hey
1:52:00
Speaker 2: you die. And like yeah, all these things about like
1:52:03
Speaker 2: but all the possibilities around that that travel very very detailed.
1:52:08
Speaker 2: Based on the dreams, I yield doomsayers, right.
1:52:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, doom sears, doom seer Yeah yeah, yeah, it'd be
1:52:18
Speaker 1: pretty cool. But you only get one vision per lifetime
1:52:20
Speaker 1: as ANIL, so that might be less utility to an empire.
1:52:24
Speaker 2: Yes, but you also have the rings, which has always
1:52:28
Speaker 2: been helpful, and you still have dreamers.
1:52:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
1:52:31
Speaker 2: I mean we don't really get to see how Teleronriod
1:52:34
Speaker 2: is affected after the last battle, right, we know the
1:52:36
Speaker 2: storm and chaos, but we have no idea what teleronriad
1:52:39
Speaker 2: looks like after the last battle. That would be something
1:52:41
Speaker 2: I'd be interested in seeing.
1:52:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, yeah, that was all a lot of food
1:52:47
Speaker 1: for thought. This is a rather long episode, but I
1:52:50
Speaker 1: think we had to do them together because there's I
1:52:51
Speaker 1: think we did do there's just too much chewy future
1:52:54
Speaker 1: speculation and paradoxes are free will to split.
1:52:57
Speaker 2: It up and just order in the way we took
1:53:00
Speaker 2: parts from the first chapter and put them with the
1:53:01
Speaker 2: second chapter and everything like else like that. I think
1:53:03
Speaker 2: that was and it wasn't no longer than some of
1:53:05
Speaker 2: our traditional episodes. We hit the two hour mark on recording,
1:53:08
Speaker 2: but like that used to be really common or eighty
1:53:11
Speaker 2: almost every episode. It was two hours when we did
1:53:14
Speaker 2: Jordan stuff. I remember, like, yeah, me too, not as many,
1:53:20
Speaker 2: but yeah.
1:53:20
Speaker 1: But I know this is a bit of a callback
1:53:22
Speaker 1: to that era.
1:53:24
Speaker 2: I mean, in many ways, these chapters are a callback
1:53:27
Speaker 2: to some of the greatest writing. You know, I have
1:53:30
Speaker 2: to say that, right, these chapters in Jordan's books right
1:53:35
Speaker 2: in the Shadow Rising is what I think makes The
1:53:38
Speaker 2: Shadow Rising one of the best books in the series,
1:53:40
Speaker 2: and what makes one of these scenes some of the
1:53:42
Speaker 2: best scenes written in fantasy novels of all time.
1:53:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm nodding, and Sanderson clearly is doing his best
1:53:50
Speaker 1: to echo that and to recreate that and to write
1:53:52
Speaker 1: his own bookend of that. And I mean he's riffing
1:53:56
Speaker 1: off of Yeah, some of our favorite writing.
1:53:58
Speaker 2: You know, does he pull it on off perfectly? No,
1:54:01
Speaker 2: But I like what he's able to do with it.
1:54:03
Speaker 2: I think that it's still very good. It's not quite
1:54:07
Speaker 2: the mind bending, you know, mind blowing, because it's a
1:54:11
Speaker 2: vision that changes, right, So in a lot of ways,
1:54:15
Speaker 2: it's like, Okay, that was cool, but it's irrelevant.
1:54:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think this is some of Sanderson's strongest
1:54:20
Speaker 1: writing in terms of trying to imitate Jordan and like
1:54:24
Speaker 1: me in Jordan's Wake and really like following the form.
1:54:27
Speaker 1: I think this is one of his strongest attempts at that. Although, yeah,
1:54:31
Speaker 1: it nothing can compete with Shadow Rising Jordan.
1:54:35
Speaker 2: There's nothing can not even other Jordan.
1:54:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, Shadow Rising Jordan is peak Jordan. But this
1:54:41
Speaker 1: was a really Sanderson took this attempt very seriously and
1:54:44
Speaker 1: was very thoughtful about it, and I think did a
1:54:46
Speaker 1: very good job with respect to how he did with
1:54:49
Speaker 1: all the other attempts. This has got to be like
1:54:51
Speaker 1: top shelf of Sanderson doing his best Jordan impression.
1:54:54
Speaker 2: Just I'm thinking about Memory of Light and like the
1:54:56
Speaker 2: way books are written, Oh my god, Memory of Light.
1:54:59
Speaker 2: I started digging into the number. There's so many povs
1:55:02
Speaker 2: in every chapter of A Memory of Light. There is
1:55:05
Speaker 2: one chapter in the entire books that has one pov
1:55:08
Speaker 2: in it. All the rest of them have two, three, four,
1:55:10
Speaker 2: five or more povs. So if we do two chapters
1:55:16
Speaker 2: of Memory of Light, we will be jumping. It's just
1:55:18
Speaker 2: so much jumping around between different povs. I'm almost wondering
1:55:23
Speaker 2: if it's worth going through and doing, like a chunk
1:55:26
Speaker 2: of paren a chunk. I mean, it's not because it's
1:55:28
Speaker 2: so broken up.
1:55:29
Speaker 1: But it's broken up.
1:55:30
Speaker 2: It's that broken up, and you're like, holy crap, we
1:55:32
Speaker 2: are going to be skipping around three, four or five
1:55:34
Speaker 2: times every single chapter. If we do two chapters, we
1:55:38
Speaker 2: may have six or seven povs to cover.
1:55:41
Speaker 1: Many people'll just have to do it. As written, because
1:55:43
Speaker 1: otherwise it'll be too confusing.
1:55:44
Speaker 2: I think so as well. And it is. It's it's
1:55:47
Speaker 2: a narrower number of people, right, it's a lot of
1:55:50
Speaker 2: the the you know Big five, plus you know, you know,
1:55:55
Speaker 2: a couple of the characters. And I have not even
1:55:57
Speaker 2: tried to figure out how we're going to do the
1:55:59
Speaker 2: Last Bat chapter, Like that's gonna be several episodes.
1:56:04
Speaker 1: Like the two months of the Last Battle. Yeah.
1:56:06
Speaker 2: No, Actually I was breaking down, breaking up the chapters
1:56:09
Speaker 2: and I got to that the Last Battle chapter, and
1:56:11
Speaker 2: I s went, I don't even know. I'm gonna have
1:56:13
Speaker 2: to read this to break it down and figure out,
1:56:15
Speaker 2: like how much.
1:56:17
Speaker 1: Well that's the chapter that is more pages than the
1:56:19
Speaker 1: entire Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, right, yes, yeah, exactly,
1:56:23
Speaker 1: So there's a whole special subunit of the pod onto itself.
1:56:29
Speaker 2: And then I'm kind of like, oh, well, if we're
1:56:30
Speaker 2: wating that into so many other pieces, maybe we should
1:56:32
Speaker 2: do other chapters quicker. But then I'm like, oh my god,
1:56:34
Speaker 2: three chapters. We're talking up to nine to twelve povs
1:56:38
Speaker 2: in one episode. That's just a lot. It's just a lot. Yeah,
1:56:42
Speaker 2: I think we would definitely, just in the same way
1:56:44
Speaker 2: that we edited together the Cleansing the Cleansing.
1:56:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, a supercut of the entire Last Battle will have
1:56:51
Speaker 1: to be an episode that gets release, even though we
1:56:53
Speaker 1: will have to create it and release it in chunks
1:56:56
Speaker 1: once we're done with it. Yes, a super cut would
1:56:59
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense.
1:57:00
Speaker 2: But I feel like we're going to have a very
1:57:02
Speaker 2: interesting time with this last book. It's going to be
1:57:05
Speaker 2: a very different rhythm than what we're used to.
1:57:08
Speaker 1: Weird, yeah, weird, weird, weird.
1:57:11
Speaker 2: But I think with that I am done talking. Yeah, huge.
1:57:16
Speaker 2: I just want to say a huge shout out to
1:57:18
Speaker 2: our patrons. We got the Patreon is changing what it's
1:57:23
Speaker 2: doing a little bit where I guess it's charging people
1:57:25
Speaker 2: who subscribe for a whole year all at once.
1:57:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can now do annual subscriptions. Patreon does a
1:57:30
Speaker 1: whole bunch of it's cheaper blah blah blah. I just
1:57:32
Speaker 1: clicked the buttons to let Patreon pitch y'all on that.
1:57:35
Speaker 1: But some of you did take the annual option, and yeah,
1:57:38
Speaker 1: over the weekend, it was like, Wow, all these donations
1:57:40
Speaker 1: and then I look at the fine print and it
1:57:41
Speaker 1: says we'll be charged again in you know, April of
1:57:44
Speaker 1: twenty twenty seven. It's like, oh, the annuals cool. So yeah,
1:57:49
Speaker 1: thanks everyone who decided to do an annual subscription. Patreon
1:57:52
Speaker 1: says that that's good for us, so thank you. It's
1:57:55
Speaker 1: been a thing for a while. Well, I don't pay
1:57:56
Speaker 1: attention to the platform where I make money, Okay.
1:58:00
Speaker 2: It's so fun. We just wanted to keep working, and
1:58:03
Speaker 2: like they keep offering more and more features to try
1:58:05
Speaker 2: and get you to use it, as like they want
1:58:08
Speaker 2: you to use Patreon as your platform, and it's like,
1:58:11
Speaker 2: that's not what we have other platforms. We're just using
1:58:13
Speaker 2: it as a donation center, and so sometimes we do
1:58:17
Speaker 2: not necessarily keep track of the most modern features on it.
1:58:20
Speaker 1: Which like, honestly, maybe we should, but I don't know.
1:58:23
Speaker 2: We should be doing abode yo.
1:58:24
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, for sure, that's the whole thing. But yeah,
1:58:27
Speaker 1: with that, I think we're done.
1:58:30
Speaker 2: I think we're done for the week.
1:58:31
Speaker 1: Yep, for sure, see y'all next week.
1:58:34
Speaker 2: Bye bye.
1:58:38
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast.
1:58:42
Speaker 1: Please rate and review us on your podcast app, and
1:58:44
Speaker 1: consider supporting us on Patreon for ad free episodes. Watt
1:58:49
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1:58:52
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1:58:55
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