You? No!
Posted Jul 5, 2022, 2:28 AM UTC
82347
It was so strange to me because from the beginning it seemed like that was what his story was leading up to and there was a good deal of one of the books (can't remember which one atm) spent with Rand and his relationship with him/personal change.
90
It would have to be TFOH where they interacted. Rand defeats him at the end of TSR and he dies at the end of TFOH.
I think Asmodean's internal dialogue tells us he was far from redeemed or seeking redemption, however.
77
The reluctant redemption is amazing though
30
I think RJ's main purpose for Asmodean was to boost Rand's power level early on. Practically all his lessons and training with Rand happen off-page so it's a pretty expedient way to just give Rand access to a bunch of advanced saidin techniques that he wouldn't have had otherwise, and then remove Asmodean from the picture just in time (taim, ha) for Taim to become relevant.
25
Asmodean was such an interesting character and then just... poof. He's gone.
50
BALEFIRE
37
Imagine like 3 books later he just hits a forsaken with balefire strong enough that Asmodean just randomly pops up beside him.
114
If Rand's plan at Natrin's Barrow killed Graendal, after the balescream suddenly Asmodean is there like "How do you do fellow non-Darkfriends?"
89
Honestly depending on the numbers you pick out, if you do the math it could actually have worked...
Hypothetically:
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Rand's battle with Rahvin seemed to take a decent chunk of time. At least 30 minutes, maybe a full 60 minutes. We'll assume that Rand was exactly on time to resurrect Mat, Aviendha, and Asmodean.
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Rand's fat man angreal was fairly potent as an angreal, but not excessively so. Lets say it doubled the amount of power he could draw.
Rand's thoughts on Callandor's ability to enhance his strength give the greatest need for hypothesis:
Now he held more than ten men could have unaided, a hundred, he did not know how many.
The way the sentence flows, and in particular the way it concludes with "he did not know how many" after the mention of 100, would suggest to me that 100 is another "dismissed" number. Like he had dismissed 10 at the start of the sentence. I would, thus, hypothesize that Callandor provides an enhancement of at least 500x, and more probably 1000x.
From there, we know Callandor is overwhelmingly outdone by the Choden Kal. The amount of power Rand channeled at the cleansing of Saidin was enough to be felt across the continent, covering several hundreds of miles, maybe even a thousand miles. No one even dozens of miles away from Callandor ever mentions sensing the power drawn.
Plus, anecdotally, it appears that over the course of the cleansing, Rand might have drawn the entirety of Saidin over those hours. The Choden Kal are fucking powerful. We also see that they are fucking huge, several thousand times the volume of other angreal...
Thus, I would again hypothesize the power enhancement of the Choden Kal is substantial. At least 25,000x, and more probably in the range of 100,000x.
All of this would put the Rand+fat man vs Rand+Choden Kal power difference at 12.5k times to 50k times, depending on the numbers you go with. Lets be pessimistic and say I'm overestimating things and that we need to make the lower end of the range 5k.
So, lets take those numbers and do some math.
Starting with the lower range of potential time reversal, we're looking at 30 minutes times 5000. That's 2500 hours, or 104 days. And the numbers that align with my gut feel, which I will call the upper estimate, would correspond with 1042 days. If we assume TFOH reversal was an hour, we're looking at double all of those numbers.
According to the timeline, Asmodean dies Sept 21, 999. To my knowledge, there's no timeline available for the Sanderson books. But considering the general significance of it and the way it lines up (KoD ends in April 1000), I would make another hypothesis that the conclusion of Tarmon Gai'don is on summer solstice, which is late June, generally June 20 or 21. That gives us a maximum end point for Rand balefiring Graendal's palace. The battle itself seems to have taken at least 20 days, so lets call it June 1.
Going from Sept 21 to June 1 covers 253 days. Not within the lowest estimate for half an hour of time reversal, but tantalizingly close for a 1 hour reversal and easily within the range for my gut feel estimates.
I think if Rand had actually gotten her that Asmodean would have come back.
82
So so so much would have been undone. It would be so convoluted to write that if this was exactly how balefire worked. Maybe the weave itself has diminishing returns per power put in. I mean the real excuse is, it would just be insane to write the changes. Even hiding graendal did big stuff.
35
Sad thing is Rand would probably just balefire him after being startled by an "ex"-forsaken randomly appearing.
11
[deleted]
1
Anyway, here's Wonderwall
6
Ba-ba-ba-ba-balefire
1
Yeah, such a waste. Asmodean was one of the most interesting characters and his relationship with Rand one of the most compelling in the series.
28
Me looking at that single scene where Asmo decides to follow Rand in harm's way despite him being mostly useless and Rand explicitly telling him to stay away from the battle:" this counts as an redemption arc right? Right?"
21
For some reason, I always imagine his redemption arc tying into Logain's. I just feel like they would get each other. Homies.
20
Well, their sense of humor was pretty similar and they could have easily been foil of each other, so yes their interactions would have been glorious.
14
Why does this comment chain make me want a Logain and Asmodean buddy cop movie where they take down Taim so much?
9
Because it would be glorious and hilarious
6
1/10
Not a Chel Vanin meme
16
Fair
4
Brilliant
11
Asmo was a wasted opportunity !
11
Not everyone needs to be redeemed. Especially not the kind of people that sever their mother and give her to Myrddraal.
5
Redemption isn’t something that is ‘needed’ or ‘deserved’. It is hard for someone to truly achieve redemption, especially someone of Asmodean’s caliber. The important thing is that he was an interesting and great character with a lot of potential, who was basically killed for no reason off screen. There definitely should have been more of him, whether you think he is an irredeemable person or not
9
It would have been nice to see more than a single dark friend redeemed. Ingtar was good but every other dark friend is 100% comically evil till the end. It’s actually one of my bigger complaints with the series.
5
Verin and her warder?
2
I thought he was reborn as Osan'gar
3
Nope. Osan'gar and Aran'gar were Balthamel and Aginor who died in EotW.
7
Aginor became Aran'gar? Didn't know males could become females
1
The DO's resurrection abilities just take a soul and stick it into an available body. Nothing says the body has to be the same gender as the one the soul originally had. I do remember some of the other Forsaken thinking the situation was hilarious, though.
It's alluded to on several occasions and finally outright revealed that Aran'gar was channelling saidin the whole time.
3
Was kind of aran’gar’s whole point lmao, still channeling saidin undetected among the rebel aes sedai
2
Aginor was reborn as Dashiva / Osangar
Balthamel became Halima
2
I flaming wish
3
Do you expect us to steal twenty horses from Warders like falling out of bed?
2
Same, I also wished Taim wasnt a darkfriend just an assholish but loyal comrade to Rand. And I was so sure of it when he saved Rand in book 6.
3
I honestly thought for a while that Logain was going to turn out to be Demandred and Taim was going to turn out to be loyal, just because it was too obvious that Taim was evil and nobody could be as good as Logain.
2
I prefer him dead. He was pretty unrepentant.
1†
I wish he made it till the last battle. So much potential lost.
Thom vs Asmodean: The Last Ballad
Dueling Harps!
Rap Battle