The Wheel of Time

Ta'veren works like all things in pattern: in a kind of balance. Take Mat for instance, as will be explained a bit more latter on, his Ta'veren-ness manifests as crazy awesome luck, but that luck works both ways. He tosses up a bag full of coins and they all land heads up, he runs smack dab into a enemy foreign dignitary and has to kidnap her to avoid detection, and so on.

And then there's the just plain and weird stuff that happens all around them: two strangers that have never met bump into each other in the street and deiced to get married, a balcony collapses killing four, and old man falls down twenty flights of stairs and lives, while a soldiers swallows a feather and chokes to death.

Ta'veren bends probability for and against our Heroes to make sure everything is playing out around them as it's supposed to, good and bad.

edited 30th May '12 9:48:21 AM by LMage

I had the impression that the Dark One himself could alter the pattern too in subtle ways (like by increasing the probability of the group coincidentally bumping into Darkfriends)

Least that's the impression Moiraine seemed to be giving off

edited 30th May '12 9:45:39 AM by gingerninja666

Well, there's supposed to be a balance. I personally disagree with that. Spoiled for Ginger:

For example, I remember dozen of spears that were thrown at Rand making a perfect circle around him. I don't remember, say, someone shooting an arrow in the air and its trajectory somehow changing in mid-air so that it hits Rand in the eye.

@The Wanderer

Yes but it also prevented Mat from escaping the battle with the Shaido Aiel and insured he ended up in the ''most dangerous situation

@ginger

The Dark One can touch the pattern, and even influence probability to a degree, but it's largely limited to his supporters. his influence has more to do with....things. :P

edited 30th May '12 9:51:53 AM by LMage

Things?

I'm gettin' Joffrey vibes from Galad

Y Ou...Galad....I....Joffery??!!!?!

Please don't do that. blackcat

edited 30th May '12 3:48:36 PM by blackcat

Careful, L Mage. We are only allowed to post one image at a time; forum rules.

@Galad = Joffrey:

He's just... I dunno. He feels like Joffrey when he was pretending to be kind to Sansa. Asshole in the smooth. That kinda thing

Since when? XD

Ah, ginger. There is no one more un-Joffery like in this entire series then Galad, Bela is more Joffery like then Galad, Loial is more Joffery like then Galad.

But make no mistake he is an asshole, just a different kind of ass hole.

Is Galad a snitch?

Man, you guys have no patience. Don't you ever want to find things out for yourselves?

Galad is Lawful Stupid. He's convinced that he only does what's right, and that no one who is good could possibly be adversely affected by it. Relatively mild case of Black-and-White Insanity.

edited 30th May '12 10:24:40 AM by TheWanderer

@Mage: Since about year and a half ago. Seriously dude, Eddie does not like it. Several threads have been locked because of it.

So what's coming up for me now.

At the moment I'm at "ZOMG EVIL MAT!!"

Yeah, hosting and then embedding all those images makes it more expensive to keep the site up. The image macro thread in the it just awes me forum got hit with a couple of warnings about that, for example.

If in doubt, better to link to an image.

edited 30th May '12 10:31:58 AM by TheWanderer

OO boy... you got a *looong* journey ahead then.

Also, who the cluck is Joffery?

A violent psychopath teen ruler from A Song Of Ice And Fire.

que?

Ah, no wonder, I don't read ASOIAF...I don't like the...shall we say...tone

edited 30th May '12 12:13:01 PM by ryzvonusef

Y'know, Ba'al is so fucking insecure it's actually beginning to get a bit distracting.

I'm beginning to feel sorry for the poor bastard

L Mage, you also need to not post really long strings of text like you did, it jams the end of the page to the side.

Also, this isn't exactly fair for the Dark One. The plot Pattern is actively bending reality in order to contrive a method for the group to reach the Eye Of The World!

This is actually a huge point in the series latter on, because The Dark One only need to win once, part of Ba's line of of thinking (that got him really famous in the Age Of Legends) is that the Dark One will eventually win because he has an infinite number of tries and chances to win, and that there's not point to all the suffering caused by the Pattern maintaining "balance" because it' all just going to happen again in X number of eons.

My apologizes.

edited 30th May '12 4:07:23 PM by LMage

But again, it's impossible for the Dark One to win even once.

Reality is physically shifting to make sure the heroes don't fail

That's not entirely true, reality is forcing the Heroes onto their course but weather or not they fail is up to them. A character with a....larger...understanding of the Pattern explains it: the trials are on the champion the pattern chooses but failure is still a possibility.

Hmmm, we'll see.

They could've set up this Eye of the World beforehand (or at least told us what it does)

and I'm dissapointed in Ba'al. The guy just sounds too pissed off. He doesn't feel in control of the situation. I think he sounds nervous actually

Whenever he says "The Eye Of the World will never serve you!" I keep feeling like he's trying to convince HIMSELF of that fact... not the heroes