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How does Balefire work?

"When anything is destroyed with balefire, it ceases to exist _before_ the moment of its destruction, like a thread that burns away from where the flame touched it. The greater the power of the balefire, the further back in time it ceases to exist. The strongest [Moiraine] can manage will remove only a few seconds from the Pattern...For as far back as you destroy [something], whatever it did during that time no longer happened. Only the memories remain, for those who saw or experienced it." (TFOH: 6, Gateways, 119)

That pretty much explains it. Something that is BFed is erased backwards in time, the amount of erasing depends on the amount of Power put into the BF. Rand, at full power, with an angreal, managed to erase Rahvin back about half an hour. Note that Balefire does NOT erase every single action the victim performed in his life. When Rahvin was BFed, Morgase did not become un-compelled, sitting back in the Caemlyn palace. If Lanfear were balefired, the Bore would not cease to exist, since it was created over 3000 years ago, and I doubt that the capacity for creating that strong a beam of BF exists. (Plus, if it WAS done, the poor Pattern would probably unravel completely. See below.)

Why doesn't somebody just balefire the dark one back to before where the taint was created?

Read the previous paragraph about what BF does, and why it is dangerous to use. Now, supposing that the DO has a corporeal body which could BE balefired, and enough BF could be produced to zap the DO back 3500 years (neither of which is at all certain), consider what would happen to the poor Pattern of All Creation if one of the prime movers in its weaving was BFed. The end of the world would probably happen for sure, then.

Remember that the DO is the source of the whole history of the 3rd Age. Everything everybody has done for the past 3500 or so years has been affected in some way by the DO. Why is Joe Al'Schmoe of the 2 Rivers a farmer in a forgotten province of Andor, and not a citizen of one of the most powerful, strongest nations in Randland? It's because Manetheren was destroyed in the Trolloc wars, which were initiated by Ishamael, who was the DO's right-hand-man throughout the 3rd age.

Another point (via G.G. Kay) is that maybe the DO doesn't even have a thread to balefire. After all, the DO's prison exists "outside the Pattern." Perhaps the DO himself does, too.

(NB: the no-body/no-thread argument applies to "Why doesn't somebody BF the DO," no matter if you try to BF him back 3500 years or 3 seconds. The "Pattern" argument does, as well -- if there is no DO, what happens the next time the Wheel comes around to the AOL/3rd Age again?)