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1.6.2: Mordeth, Mashadar and Machin Shin
- Mordeth
- Mordeth was the councillor whose evil brought Aridhol to its
doom. As far as we know, he was an actual person at the time
of the Trolloc wars. He was the power behind the throne of
Balwen, and led Aridhol to the policy of "The victory of the
Light is all....while their deeds abandoned the Light." When
the city was consumed by its own evil, only Mordeth remained,
bound to Shadar Logoth. One supposes that at some point he
died, leaving his spirit to haunt the ruins. Mordeth's way
out was to convince someone "to accompany him to the walls,
to the boundary of Mashadar's power, [where he was] able to
consume the soul of that person." That person was Fain, and
it didn't quite work out that way, due to the DO's influence
on Fain. Anyway, Mordeth no longer haunts Shadar Logoth, he
is inside Fain, merged with him. [TEOTW: 19, Shadow's
Waiting, 244]
- Mashadar
- Like Mordeth, Mashadar is connected with Shadar Logoth.
However, Mordeth and Mashadar are NOT the same. Mordeth is/was
a sentient being, an individual. Mashadar is some sort of
physical manifestation of the evil nature of the city: "No
enemy had come to Aridhol but Aridhol. Suspicion and hate had
given birth to something that fed on that which created it,
something locked in the bedrock on which the city
stood. Mashadar waits still, hungering." [TEOTW: 19, Shadow's
Waiting, 244] In particular, Mashadar is a slightly glowing
fog. "Mashadar. Unseeing, unthinking, moving through the city
as aimlessly as a worm burrows through the earth. If it
touches you, you will die." [TEOTW: 20, Dust on the Wind, 249]
It is not sentient. It just moves around and kills whatever it
touches, in a rather painful fashion, if Liah's reaction to
being touched by it in [ACOS: 41, A Crown of Swords, 660] is
any indication. Mashadar, or something similar to it, seems may have
existed prior to the Trolloc Wars. In [TEOTW: 50, Meetings at the
Eye, 628], Aginor refers to the Shadar Mandarb, or the taint on
it, as "An old thing, and old friend, an old enemy."
[ACOS book signing: Vancouver, 24 August, 1996;
report by Lara Beaton], RJ said that Mashadar
appeared after everybody in Aridhol had killed one another.
- Machin Shin
- The Black Wind of the Ways. It is a part of the
"Darkening of the Ways": "About a thousand years ago, during
what you humans call the War of the Hundred Years, the Ways
began to change....they grew dank and dim...some who came out
had gone mad, raving about Machin Shin, the Black Wind."
[TEOTW: 43, Decisions and Apparitions, 545] People who run
into the Black Wind end up mad, or a mindless husk like the
Ogier in [TGH, 36, Among The Elders, 435]. After TEOTW,
Machin Shin gained a new feature: it somehow seeks out
Rand. Whenever Rand tries to use the Ways, Machin Shin is
found at the Waygate he is using. Note that this ONLY happens
to Rand. When Liandrin, etc use the ways in TGH, and when
Perrin does in TSR, they do not find the Black Wind waiting
for them at the Waygate. This new effect is probably somehow
due to its encounter with Fain in TEOTW. It seems to have
picked up Fain's drive to seek out Rand. Note that it is
probably NOT under Fain's control; Fain wanted Rand to follow
him to Falme, but Machin Shin prevented him from doing so.
Where did the Black Wind come from? Nobody really
knows. Moiraine makes some speculation in [TEOTW: 45, What
Follows in Shadow, 576]: "Something left from the Time of
Madness, perhaps....Or even from the War of the Shadow, the
War of Power. Something hiding in the Ways so long it can no
longer get out. No one, not even among the Ogier, knows how
far the Ways run, or how deep. It could even be something of
the Ways themselves. As Loial said, the Ways are living
things, and all living things have parasites. Perhaps even a
creature of the corruption itself, something born of the
decay. Something that hates life and light."
Some people believe that Mashadar and Machin Shin are somehow connected,
that Mashadar somehow got into the Ways through the Shadar Logoth Waygate
and then became the Black Wind. This is very unlikely, for the following
reasons: 1) Mashadar dates from the Trolloc Wars, Machin Shin from the
Hundred Years' War. That is about a thousand years' difference. Thus, the
time scale does not agree. 2) Mashadar is a slow-moving glowing fog that
kills everything it touches. Machin Shin is a black, howling wind
that eats your soul, but doesn't kill your body. So, there is no
similarity of appearance, or effect. 3) If Mashadar could get
into the Ways from Shadar Logoth, logic says it could get
out of the Ways at some other point, and spread itself across
Randland. This clearly hasn't happened.
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