#but even though he's tall and even though rj always said mat is tall

[markantonys]

they're everything to me

[wot-tidbits]

RJ’s notes Part 18 by TEREZ - Moiraine Damodred

 SOURCE

 New stuff is coming! Terez and Linda Taglieri visited Charleston and got through the notes one more time. Here is the first and major reveal, the entry for Moiraine Damodred. 

Also SPOILERS and FEELS!!!

Damodred, Moiraine:

Pg 162

She knows that Lanfear survived passage through the doorframe ter'angreal with her; she saw Lanfear dragged off. She knows that a man she did not recognize (Moridin) came to see her in her captivity and said she was the wrong one, it must be the other. She suspects that Lanfear was freed.

[stuff in books]

When Mat and Thom find and rescue her, Moiraine is suspended in mid-air, naked except for the blue jewel on her forehead, her Great Serpent ring, and the "acrobat" bracelet angreal. She seems asleep or unconscious, slowly turning in the air, writhing slowly, murmuring. She appears to be in a haze, so they cannot really make her out at first. (I think actually

Pg 163

getting to her engenders feeling of being burned. It is Thom who actually does it, in the end.)

They have been rummaging through her experiences, making her relive them in the form of dreams that seem like real life, raping her mind in effect. They concentrated on things that engendered strong emotion, whether love or hate or fear of whatever, so long as it is strong. The point is to feed off the engendered emotion. When repetition dulls the emotion, they would alter the events to make the emotions strong again. They always made these changes in slow increments, just enough to strengthen the emotion again without wasting any. Example: Lan dumped in the pond, first just as it really happened, then he became rougher at it until [he] beat her first, and she was so shocked she could not channel; then he made love to her; then he raped her; then she killed him. Slow progressions through possibilities, however improbable they were in reality, just so long as they intensify the emotions. They could not introduce things outside of her memory -- for example, somebody she has never seen -- but anything in there already could be rearranged any way they wanted. Example: she could as a grown woman watch her mother (dead before she reached adulthood) plot and execute the murder of her father (who died in battle when she was a child) with a collection of people glimpsed during her travels.

There have also been periods where she was brought back to consciousness. Awareness of what is happening also increases the emotional aspects.

This is the same thing that was done to Lanfear, until she was "rescued" by Moridin/Ishamael.

Moiraine doesn't know what happened to Lanfear. When they passed through the doorframe ter'angreal, she only clung to consciousness long enough to know that they had both passed through, that the doorframe was burning. When she woke, she was floating in air, and they were explaining to her what was going to happen. To heighten her emotions. She believes that she had relived a number of incidents for them before that. While floating, she could not speak.

One set of memories never had to be heightened or changed. Memories of Thom always produced as strong an emotion every time, just as they were. She thinks they are what have kept her sane. She is surprised that years have not passed.

One consequence of what was done to her is the erosion of her ability to channel. With the bracelet angreal, she is stronger than she was before, as strong as Nynaeve, true "Forsaken class". Without it, she has so little ability left, that if she had come to the Tower that way, they would have taught her enough to be safe and hustled her out before her feet had more than touched down. Without it, it is an effort for her to light a candle; she can pick up a book with effort, but the blow she could deliver would be lighter than her arm could give.

She hopes that Lanfear is still somewhere there, undergoing the same fate, or at least that she underwent it long enough to suffer the consequences she herself has.

She will recall that once she was brought back to consciousness to find a man there (Ishamael, though she doesn't know it, 

Pg164

already as Moridin), apparently young, tall, muscular, beautifully handsome. She was not the woman he wanted. He wasn't interested in her at all, and he seemed irritated at having his time wasted, impatient. She was returned to the "sleep" in moments, but she recalls his appearance very clearly; he frightened her for some reason, and maybe because he was part of her memory, as was her fear of him, the snakes(?)/foxes(?) incorporated him into her dreams when they went to making things more complicated for her. The reinforcement, plus the things done in those particular dreams, have increased that fear to the point where she shivers thinking of him and her teeth might chatter if she saw him in the flesh.

[stuff in books]

She has fallen in love with Thom Merrilin, in part for what she claims is a foolish reason: He makes her laugh.

[stuff in books]

Pg 165

Moiraine got three answers inside the doorframe ter'angreal in the Stone of Tear. Her answers came before she went to the Waste and so could not in any way involved what her visions were in the testing ter'angreal in Rhuidean. I DO NOT THINK ANY OF HERS HAVE BEEN REVEALED. Where and when did she say that she knew the face of the man she would marry better than any of the others knew who they would?

 NOTE LightOne

The bold text part is blowing my mind. I wish some of that had been included in the Companion, or better yet in a Moiraine POV in ToM or AMoL. It would have showed the extent of her sacrifice and helped explain her feelings for Thom a bit more. Probably this is the reason for the description of Moiraine/Lan acting “distant”. Moiraine probably spared Lan from knowing everything that happened to her and she bears her horror alone.  

It also speaks to the Finns capabilities, and makes them even more terrifying than ever before.