The Shaping of a World

  The World of the Wheel of Time

  By Robert Jordan

  Imagine that time is a vast wheel, with ages that come and go, only to come again as the wheel

  turns endlessly. Look far enough into the future along the wheel and you can see the past. Look

  far enough into the past and you can see the future. The world of The Wheel of Time -- the Age of

  The Wheel of Time -- exists in that distant past that is also the distant future. We are the source

  of many of that Age’s myths and legends, and they are the source of many of ours. But our

  legends do not record the actual facts of that Age. What really happened has been altered over

  time. Events have become twisted by the years. What one person did has been split among

  many. What many people did has been compressed and given to one. Almost everything that

  could be changed has been changed. But a core remains. You are about to delve into that core

  and beyond -- to the truth. You are about to experience the world that gave birth to Arthur and

  Thor and Coyote and a hundred more.

  Imagine that you were born in that world. You do not know that you live in the breeding ground of

  legends. Very likely, you do not know how your world came to be as it is, and, if you know a little

  of it, almost certainly what you "know" is untrue -- a fable spun by the years. The truth...? Yes, the

  truth. Well.

  Three thousand years ago and more, civilization covered the Earth. Technology and science

  based on tapping into the power that drove the universe and turned the Wheel of Time, the One

  Power, had conquered disease and poverty. Ordinary people could expect to live as much as

  three hundred years. They traveled in vehicles driven by the One Power and sailed the seas and

  perhaps even to other planets in vessels driven by the Power. Men and women who could tap

  directly into the Power and use it -- channel it -- by their will and ability created that very science

  and technology. These men and women are called Aes Sedai. In the Old Tongue, that means

  Servants of All, or Those Who Serve All. You call this time the Age of Legends when you think of

  it at all. It was a time of great wonders or marvels. Unless you are a scholar, you may not really

  believe in it all. There are stories that are meant only for children, after all.

  The One Power had, and has, two parts, saidin, the male half, and saidar, the female half. By a

  complex process called Linking, men or women working together could channel either saidin and

  saidar, or both, but without the link of a Circle, only men could touch saidin, and only women

  could touch saidar. Some dreamed of finding a source of power that men and women alike could

  use, but in the attempt they drilled into the prison that held Shai’tan, the embodiment of evil. The

  Creator shaped this prison at the moment of Creation to seal Shai’tan away from the world of

  humankind. The opening was only a small hole, but it allowed Shai’tan to touch the world with a

  finger -- a finger of evil that touched everything, everywhere. Humanity quickly learned to call

  Shai’tan by other names, such as the Dark One or the Lord of the Grave or others, for to name

  him was to call his attention. Those who gained the Dark One’s attention often prayed for death.

  With evil caressing the world and seeping into every crack and crevice, civilization began to break

  down. Order shattered into chaos. Streets that had been safe to walk became havens of crime

  and violence. A world where only scholars knew a word for war discovered war. The War of the

  Power. The War of the Shadow. A war that covered the entire world and that was fought with

  weapons of immense destruction. A war that saw the creation of Trollocs, which are monstrous,

  murderous blendings of human and animal DNA, and the even more deadly Myrddraal, which are

  the occasional offspring of Trollocs. Other Shadowspawn came into being, as well, and some of

  these still survive. Brave are those who face Shadowspawn. Frequently, they who face

  Shadowspawn also are dead soon after.

  An Aes Sedai named Lews Therin Telamon led the forces of the Light. This man, who was called

  the Dragon, was a brilliant leader and a brilliant general. However, other Aes Sedai went over to

  the Shadow for the promise of immortality. The leaders among them came to be called the

  Forsaken, as they had forsaken the Light. After long years of war, it seemed that the Shadow was

  going to triumph. In an effort to win the war at one stroke, Lews Therin proposed a daring attack

  to seal the hole -- which is known as the Bore -- that had been drilled into the Dark One’s prison.

  He wished to seal it using a Circle of the strongest male and female Aes Sedai on the side of the

  Light. Critics claimed that if the seals were not placed with exact precision, the resulting strains

  would rip the Bore open, freeing the Dark One entirely. Their plan involved the use of two great

  sa’angreal, devices that allowed the channeling of more of the Power than anyone could do

  safely alone, to place a barrier around the hole. This plan also had its detractors. The Bore had

  grown larger since it was first made. Surely it would continue to grow within the barrier. The

  barrier constructed using the two huge sa’angreal would hold back the Dark One while he could

  only reach through the relatively small existing hole, but could it contain him if all the rest of the

  prison’s walls eroded away?

  The Hall of the Servants, the ruling body of the Aes Sedai, quickly divided into two camps, and

  those who supported one plan opposed the other. Support for using the great sa’angreal, and

  opposition to placing seals, was led by a woman named Latra Posae Decume, who finally

  gathered every female Aes Sedai of significant strength in what much later would come to be

  called the Fateful Concord. No woman in the agreement would support or take part in Lews

  Therin’s plan, thus killing it, or so it was thought. Everyone believed that precise placement of the

  seals required a Circle, and that required women, for although men could be brought into Circles,

  only women could form them. And for this task, only the strongest would do.

  Events quickly outran everyone’s plans, though. The forces of the Shadow overran the cities

  where the access keys for the two great sa’angreal were kept. Lews Therin argued for his plan

  anew, but Latra Posae maintained her opposition because of the perceived dangers. Surely the

  access keys, hidden from the forces of the Shadow, could be retrieved. Passions rose and

  tempers flared, and for the first time ever, a great division rose between male and female Aes

  Sedai. Even female Aes Sedai who were nowhere near strong enough to be part of placing the

  Seals joined the Concord, until every female Aes Sedai backed Latra Posae. The armies of the

  Shadow continued their seemingly inexorable advances, threatening the two great sa’angreal

  themselves, but in the heat of their beliefs, Latra Posae’s followers refused to yield. The risks of

  attempting to place the seals were too great. Thus Lews Therin resolved to make his attempt

  without consulting the Hall by using male Aes Sedai only and ten thousand soldiers that he

  assembled in secret. The male Aes Sedai became known as the fabled Hundred Companions.

  The result is well known, at least to scholars, though everyone thinks they know something about

  it. Even scholars know less than they believe, but they know enough for some of the truth to

  survive. The seven Seals were placed, and the Bore closed off, trapping the Forsaken inside the

  Bore, for they had been conferring with their master when the attack came. But in the last instant,

  the Dark One struck back, laying his taint on saidin. This was not detected for some time,

  however. All that was known for certain was that Lews Therin and the sixty-eight survivors of the

  Hundred Companions went insane on the instant of the Dark One’s counterstroke.

  The War of the Shadow effectively ended with the sealing of the Bore, for the forces of the

  Shadow, decapitated of their leadership, fell to quarreling and struggling for power among

  themselves. But sixty-nine of the strongest male Aes Sedai to be found were roaming the

  Earth…sixty-nine madmen who could channel the One Power. By the end of the first day after the

  Bore was sealed, Lews Therin Telamon had earned a new name, Lews Therin Kinslayer, and

  cities were burning. And as other male Aes Sedai continued to channel saidin, they, too, began

  going mad, until every man in the world who could channel was insane. The Breaking of the

  World had begun.

  Although blame for the Breaking has been laid at the feet of men, the outcome was perhaps the

  best result that could have been achieved at the time. Delay in an effort to recover the two great

  sa’angreal and the access
keys almost certainly would have led to victory for the Shadow, but

  had women not followed Latra Posae into the Concord, female Aes Sedai would have been at

  Shayol Ghul as well as men, saidar would have been tainted along with saidin, and with all of the

  Aes Sedai going insane, women as well as men, it seems unlikely that anything or anyone would

  have survived the Breaking. The worst of the War of the Shadow was nothing compared to the

  Breaking. The destruction of cities and the entire population of the world dead or turned into

  ragged refugees fleeing for their lives paled in comparison to the changes those men wrought in

  the face of the earth itself before they died. Entire mountain ranges were flattened and others

  raised. Dry land rose where oceans had been, and seas rushed in to cover once-dry land. Of

  what had been, nothing was left except a remnant of population struggling to find enough food to

  survive one more day. And thus began the formation of the world in which you were born. Worlds

  are always formed in fire, you see.

  Unless you are a scholar, you know nothing about the War of the Shadow and only fables of the

  Breaking. Even scholars know only scattered fragments, but those two events have shaped the

  world you live in as surely as hammer and anvil shape iron. Nations, and even an empire, have

  risen and fallen in the intervening millennia, and two immense wars, the Trolloc Wars and the

  War of the Hundred Years, have smashed civilizations almost as badly as did the War of the

  Shadow. Much of the history of the known world before the War of the Hundred Years and the

  Trolloc Wars is a tattered patchwork known only to scholars and full of errors even then. You

  know nothing of the world beyond a part of one continent, and likely you know little of that

  continent very far beyond your village or town, for you must journey by horse or foot or on wind-

  driven ships. Horse-drawn plows turn the earth, and human hands harvest the crops. Men with

  swords and pikes and bows fight wars, and disease kills many. Famine is not unknown, nor are

  plagues. To the north lies the Blight, which are lands where even the trees are twisted by the

  Shadow -- the haunt of Trollocs and Myrddraal. Few humans venture there, and fewer survive to

  return. In your world, no one thinks it remarkable if a woman is a magistrate or merchant, or a

  wagondriver or dockworker. Not many women follow the profession of arms, because upper body

  strength is at a premium when you must fight with swords, but those who do fight get no more

  than a second glance -- if that. Much changed when men, and men alone, Broke the World. The

  pace of life is slower than in what is now called the Age of Legends. People tend to think of what

  season it is more often than what the month is, and many of the common folk would scratch their

  heads if asked the year. And yet the intrigues among nations and the great noble Houses and

  even merchant and banking Houses have the intricacy of a labyrinth laid inside a labyrinth. In

  some lands, a smile or the nod of a head may set in motion planned events that will see a rival

  dead or ruined, or perhaps topple a throne.

  Your world has printing presses and books and mechanical clocks, though a clock is an

  expensive luxury -- a fairly large thing that must sit on a shelf or table. You are much more likely

  to think of how long past sunrise it is or how long to nightfall than by the hours of a clock. Only

  fragments -- individual items called ter’angreal -- remain of the great technology of the Age of

  Legends. They are hunted for and, when found, jealously guarded by Aes Sedai who no longer

  know what they were made for. So the Aes Sedai must try to find new uses, which is a dangerous

  and often fatal undertaking.

  Yes, there still are Aes Sedai. For most of the thousands of years since the Breaking, there has

  been one constant: the White Tower, center of the Aes Sedai. Its power over and influence in the

  world of humanity waxes and wanes -- sometimes struggling to hold to existence, sometimes

  deciding who would gain thrones and who would lose them. But only women hold the title of Aes

  Sedai, now, and the numbers of women who can learn to channel are growing smaller. Men who

  can channel are hunted down and gentled, which means they’re cut off from their ability to

  channel. Men who have been gentled inevitably fall into depression and die, but they must be

  gentled, for the Dark One’s taint remains on saidin. A man who channels eventually will go mad if

  he does not die first of a rotting sickness that also comes from the taint. In his madness and with

  his ability to channel the One Power, he will destroy. And yet, there is a prophecy that has run

  through all the rise and fall of nations. It is known as the Prophecies of the Dragon. This prophecy

  states that the Dragon will be reborn, that the Dark One will break free, and that the Dragon

  Reborn will face him in the Last Battle, saving humanity from the Shadow. And Breaking the

  World again.

  That is the world where you were born.

  ©2001 Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a division of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. Wheel of Time © and ™

  Robert Jordan. The d20 system logo is a trademark owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Wheel of Time is

  trademark of Robert Jordan. All characters, character names, and descriptions therefore are trademarks

  and/or copyrights of Robert Jordan. © 2001 Game Mechanic owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

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  Robert Jordan, The Shaping of a World

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