Author Topic: Verin in The Great Hunt-very slight spoiler  (Read 1133 times)

Iahawki99

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Verin in The Great Hunt-very slight spoiler
« on: March 11, 2009, 09:30:50 PM »
As I was re-reading The Great Hunt one thing jumped out at me that I found weird. It was when Verin, The Shenarians, Rand, Matt, and Perrin were visiting Stedding Tsofu in Chapter 36. Alar, Eldest of the Elders, asked Verin to touch an Ogier named Trayal who was the last Ogier to come out of the Waygate alive since they were requesting permission to use the Waygate on their way to Toman Head. What she found was an Ogier who was completely empty inside. No soul, nothing. Now I was under the impression that once inside a stedding the True Source basically does not exist. Anyone able to touch the True Source would feel an "emptiness" where the Source had previously been. Yet Verin lays her hands on Trayal and comes away sayings that he's empty inside. How would she do this if she was unable to touch the Source?

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Re: Verin in The Great Hunt-very slight spoiler
« Reply #1 on: March 11, 2009, 09:52:30 PM »
As I was re-reading The Great Hunt one thing jumped out at me that I found weird. It was when Verin, The Shenarians, Rand, Matt, and Perrin were visiting Stedding Tsofu in Chapter 36. Alar, Eldest of the Elders, asked Verin to touch an Ogier named Trayal who was the last Ogier to come out of the Waygate alive since they were requesting permission to use the Waygate on their way to Toman Head. What she found was an Ogier who was completely empty inside. No soul, nothing. Now I was under the impression that once inside a stedding the True Source basically does not exist. Anyone able to touch the True Source would feel an "emptiness" where the Source had previously been. Yet Verin lays her hands on Trayal and comes away sayings that he's empty inside. How would she do this if she was unable to touch the Source?

Seen this before, no big deal.

Imma steal the answer so i don't have to type it.
From a WoT FAQ:

Quote
EXPLANATION: At a post-ACOS signing [Vancouver, 24 August, 1996], RJ told Lara Beaton that "we're going to find out something in the next few books about people without souls and characteristics of them. (he started out saying that we're going to find out something significant about Verin, then stopped)." After Perrin's too-long sojourn in the wolf dream in WH, we learn that Aes Sedai are apparently familiar with these characteristics. Berelain, to Perrin: "'You slept like a man already dead. [Annoura] said you almost felt like someone who had lost his soul, cold no matter how many blankets were piled on you. I felt it, as well, when I touched you'" [WH: 5, Flags, 145]. So evidently, anyone who knows what they're looking for can tell when the soul is gone from a body, and Verin's examination of the Ogier in the stedding didn't have to involve channeling at all.

Verin could also have used a Well, per WH. Though a rather ex post facto solution to the discrepancy (and superfluous, given the above about soulless bodies), we now know that channeling is possible in a stedding. We have no evidence, however, that Verin actually possesses a Well, though if she did it would be interesting to speculate on how that relates to her arrest warrant in Far Madding...

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Iahawki99

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Re: Verin in The Great Hunt-very slight spoiler
« Reply #2 on: March 11, 2009, 10:00:56 PM »
Thank you for the explanation.