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Can Black Ajah break the Oaths?
- They can violate the 3rd oath: In TSR: 38, 863, Hidden Faces, 438, Liandrin wishes she had
the ability to kill with the Power, like Chesmal (another BA. This implies that Chesmal can, and has done so.)
- They can violate the 1st oath: In TFoH: 34, ??, A Silver Arrow, 394, Liandrin attacks a
wounded Moghedien, attempting to Compel her. Moggy strikes back, and Liandrin says, "Y-you do not understand,
Great M-mistress...I only wished to help you to have the good sleep." This was DEFINITELY not her intention.
Her intention was to have Moggy be her obedient slave. A few pages later, Liandrin tells Moggy that she will
be Moggy's "faithful dog," and in the next sentence tries to get Temaile and Chesmal to try to betray Moggy.
If she meant one, the other must be a lie. In TFOH: 19, Memories, 260, Alviarin says to Fain,
"Now answer my questions, or two corpses will be found here in the morning instead of one." (The one being the
dead Accepted -- see? the dagger does leave a corpse.) Fain thinks to himself, "There would be two in any
case, whether he answered her with suitable lies or not; she did not mean to let him live." Obviously Fain
thinks she can lie, and do you really think Alviarin meant to let him go?
- In ACOS: 40, Spears, 626 Galina makes it clear that the BA are not bound by the Three Oaths:
"She had broken free of the Three Oaths on joining the Black Ajah, replacing them with a new trinity..." So,
the BA are not bound the the Three Oaths that the non-black AS swear.
However, the BA still have the Ageless look and the shortened lifespan
which are characteristic of people bound by the OR. They have to, in
order to blend in with non-black AS. So, it is likely that the "new
trinity" of Dark Oaths sworn by the BA are taken on an Oath Rod (not
necessarily _the_ OR; we know that there are more than one in
existence.
While that is the most likely explanation, there are some other
possibilities:
- The BA are made to swear something trivial on an OR in order to give them the Ageless look and the shorter
life, but they take their Dark Oaths without a binder. This is unlikely; if they have access to an OR, it
would only make sense for their superiors (Ishy, generally, since he was the only Forsaken around for
thousands of years) to force them to be bound by it, if they were going to be using it, anyway.
- The old oaths are not removed by the OR (as mentioned by Sammael in ACOS: 40, Spears,
630-631, and the new ones are not sworn on it, because the BA don't have access to an OR. The 3 Oaths
are removed in some unknown manner which removes the oath-binding, but not the agelessness and the
life-shortening. This, of course, assumes that the agelessness and the life-shortening are not merely side
effects of the binding process, but independent effects. (Who came up with this idea? tell me so I can give you credit.)