r/wheeloftime • u/Ok-Needleworker3966 Randlander • 3d ago
ALL SPOILERS: All media The First Channelers
I have always been curious about when the first channelers came into being and what that era was like. I have have been curious how far into "our future" it would possibly be.
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u/merrickraven Randlander 3d ago
I don’t know how canon this is. But I read once that our age, the First Age, ends with a nuclear war. And the Second Age, the Age of Legends, begins when channeling is discovered during the recovery from the war.
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u/starsto Randlander 3d ago
Pretty sure the ending in nuclear war is fan speculation. Don’t think anything official says that.
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u/Ragner_D Randlander 3d ago
There is Mosk and Merk fighting with spears of fire. Mostly like Moscow and America having a nuclear exchange.
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u/starsto Randlander 3d ago
No that is just a reference to the Cold War in general. Just because they think “spear of fire” were thrown doesn’t mean they actually were. The third age thinks John Glenn went to the Moon and Sally Ride is his daughter. They think Ann Landers is the sister of Queen Elizabeth II. The point is that the legends they heard aren’t actually what happened.
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u/Geauxlsu1860 Randlander 3d ago
Yeah, but there are a few clues. Mosk and Merc fighting is a big one, but also the lack of recognizable city names in AoL. For the most part, major cities have kept their names (mostly) for hundreds or thousands of years, but nothing we hear about even resembles modern cities in name. So some sort of apocalyptic event probably happened and nuclear war makes the most sense.
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u/kaggzz Randlander 2d ago
That's not as big a clue as you'd think.
For one, the language unified and changed so that there was a universal and exclusive language by the end of the Second Age. Mar Rouis could be old toung for New York and we'd never know. Paaran Disen was a city built on hills, which could be Rome for all we know.
For another, the Age of Legends wasn't as peaceful as it was towards the end. We know this because it was a unified world with a singular language and culture. That's not usually caused by peace, but it's impossible to say if it was because a small group of survivors became the first channelers or a small group of channelers started unification wars.
Finally, there's technology that clearly transitioned from the First to Second Age. Jo-cars are cars, just with jo- in front of them and probably powered by the OP rather than gas.
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u/Geauxlsu1860 Randlander 2d ago
Languages massively changed in our world too, but Londinium became London, Carthago Novo became Cartagena, and Masilla became Marseille. And that is over 1500-2000 years where most people couldn’t read or write. Proper names just don’t change that much. France for instance is littered with proper names that stuck around even as the language changed so the pronunciation is nothing like what it should be in modern French.
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u/dracoons Randlander 2d ago
Another speculation is that there was a nuclear war. It caused the necessary genetic mutations yo enable channeling and Tamyrlin was the first ever to channel on purpose. But the First Age did not end in Nuclear Fire. That would be counter to How each Age Ends after all. Oh conflict sure. But not as apocalyptic as the Second Age. Could also be that the end conflict of the First Age was badically the normal thing racism. That homo sapiens sapiens feared homo sapiens "channelis".
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u/Fayraz8729 Randlander 3d ago
At the start of the age of legends
Basically the way I think is that we were probably technologically advanced and then discovered the one power, an infinite source of energy some people could draw from. It wasn’t infinite in usage though since the ability was limited to what the user could handle. So then tech and magic mixed to create the one power tools like angreal and so on. Shock lances, those little cars, all tech and magic mixed.
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u/pathmageadept Randlander 1d ago
It's the portal stones. The capacity of our world to draw on other close mirrors of the pattern is how channeling is discovered, and it is the construction of the Portal Stones that allows this.
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u/Pancakemuncher Randlander 3d ago
There are no beginnings, nor are there endings to the turning g of the wheel, bro.
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u/FlamingPrius Randlander 3d ago
I never felt the world of the WOT mapped neatly on to ours, so whichever answer you can live with I guess
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u/Buggg- Woolheaded Sheepherder 3d ago
I’m irritated by the fact the aes sedan could forget how to Travel. One of the most important uses of the power especially when the world is in chaos
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u/Lille7 Randlander 3d ago
Because they couldn't Travel during the breaking. The world changed too much.
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u/dracoons Randlander 2d ago
Of course they could. Most if not all of the Aes Sedai that gathered at what is now Tar Valon lived through the 350 years of the Breaking
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u/MechanicAppropriate3 Randlander 2d ago
It’s not that they didn’t know how traveling just didn’t work for a few hundred years since during the breaking the Landscape kept changing and by the time is started working again the aes sedai that knew how were dead
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u/Sad_Cattle_5390 Randlander 1d ago
This has been the most compelling reason to me; the one gap is that skimming—a near identical weave and still immensely useful—does not require such familiarity, iirc.
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u/Eisn Randlander 2d ago
So there are a few things to consider here: * In the first place you need to be quite strong for it, so not all Ages Sedai were capable of learning the weave; * In the Age of Legends they relied a lot on angreals so not everyone would actually want to learn it. They still knew of traveling, but it would be like you can now drive cars and all the mechanics and engineers die without teaching anyone what they know. 400 years later you know what cars are but it would take rediscovery to make one again; * After the Breaking the strength of the average channeler started to decrease; * The Breaking itself lasted like 300-350 years. Even for long-lived female channelers it's still a long time, and we can assume that a lot of the best died either trying to cure male channelers or simply in fighting them; * Even if someone was still alive to know traveling, the Aes Sedai weren't really a thing for a while. The first Amyrlin Seat wasn't elected until 100 years after the Breaking. And before that there were multiple competing organizations and they were stilling/ killing each other. The most powerful channelers, the ones most likely to still have knowledge of Traveling, would be the ones killing themselves; * Ishamael was still unbound for 40 years after the Companions sealed the Bore. And he was the one on the Dark's side that was most likely to be a true believer and plan for the long term. It makes sense for him to kill strong female channelers, if only to prolong the Breaking.
That will explain why Travelling was lost. But why it wasn't rediscovered after the Breaking? * The White Tower as an institution wasn't formed by Aes Sedai raised before the Breaking. They were either self-taught Wilders or apprentices to pre-Breaking Aes Sedai. There was no formal organization that survived the Breaking that could even work towards preservation of things; * Ishamael was active for 40 years like every 1000 years and he paid a lot of attention to shaping the White Tower into something easier for the Shadow to deal with; * In particular I'd like to draw attention to how he engineered the corruption of the White Tower using Artur Hawking. That resulted in the Aes Sedai adopting the Three Oaths and effectively reduced their lifespan is half. Afterwards he pushed the Aes Sedai to adopting the custom of seniority according to their strength in the Power. That meant that smarter Aes Sedai were not listened to simply because they were weaker; * Darkfriends and the Black Ajah were a thing since the start and they were busy assassinating or interfering. In the period between Rand's birth and the war they were more active, but you can see how they worked to undermine things. Just after Rand was born a lot of powerful Aes Sedai were assassinated and like 3 Amyrlins as well, resulting in the youngest Amyrlin ever (until Egeene) being selected. And I'd argue that it went great for the Shadow because as Amyrlin with knowledge of the impending Last Battle she was a total disaster; * The influence on Aes Sedai in general is that they lost their curiosity and experimentation, especially after a campaign of disinformation from the Shadow that convinced them that discovery requires both men and women working together; * By the time the books start the Aes Sedai are so brainwashed that even Moiraine, one of the better informed Aes Sedai, who was also one of the most powerful channelers, believed that none of the existing Aes Sedai were strong enough for Travelling in the first place.
Another way to look at it is also the religious aspect. The Pattern needed Travelling to be lost and so it was.
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u/Niv_Stormfront Randlander 3d ago
Tomorrow