Balthamel



To Forever and Beyond:
Eval Ramman and the Quest for Eternal Youth

Even during the idyllic purity of the Age of Legends, well before the Dark Lord cast his Shadow upon the world, Eval Ramman seemed obsessed with the passage of time. Time, the Great Serpent, seemed Eval’s fiercest adversary.

As an Aes Sedai of incredible strength, living in an Age of unparalleled Restoring Talent, Eval had a potential lifespan that could be measured in centuries. Indeed, Eval put this seemingly limitless youth into productive, if not always ethical, use. Lecherous to a fault, the youthful and handsome Eval enjoyed the company of women, and surprisingly, given that he would later become one of the most reviled people in the world, Eval was quite popular with them.

Despite the centuries of youthful vitality ahead of him, Eval still seemed focused on the temporal predator that lurked in waiting for him, the cycle of death and rebirth that accompanied the turnings of the Wheel. Eval had a lifespan ahead of him that many of his contemporaries could only dream of. But Eval wanted more. He craved eternal life. He craved eternal youth.

Within the boundless opportunities available to an Aes Sedai within the Age of Legends, Eval chose to study his nemesis. He chose to study time, becoming a historian specializing in vanished cultures. Though we can only speculate, Eval’s studies likely made plain to him that he was born in the wrong time. In the annals of wealth of ancient cultures Eval studied, where war, crime, and violence had yet to be eliminated, Eval himself might have flourished.

In an Age of idyllic peace, however, Eval’s character flaws threatened to ruin him. Possessing an uncontrollable temper, Eval’s consorting with rougher elements in society, his dealing with criminals, and the poor quality of his work, left him not only unable to earn a coveted third name, but also coming very close to being bound with the Power against doing violence. Far from being anywhere close to distinguishing himself in service, Eval seemed only able to hold onto academic position at M’Jinn at the barrel of a gun --- that gun being his great strength in the One Power.



The Enemy of my Enemy:
Eval Ramman and the Fall into Shadow

With the drilling of the Bore and the rediscovery of the Dark One, Eval saw an opportunity and made his journey to Shayol Ghul, pledging his soul sometime in the middle years of the Collapse. Unlike many drawn to the Shadow, Eval was not pulled to the Dark out of envy, or greed, or disillusionment with his lot in life, or even the promise of power. Eval was drawn to the Shadow by the promise of immortality. To live forever and never age--Eval’s motives were as simple as that.

Through the Shepherd of the Night, Eval saw a means to defeat his old enemy. The Great Lord of the Dark pledged to slay Eval’s old foe, the Great Serpent. He would break the Wheel of Time, ending the cycle of birth and rebirth, and remaking all the Ages in the image of the Shadow. Under the Dark Lord’s reign, Eval need never worry about growing old or dying. It did not matter that the world Eval would spend eternity in would be under the cloak of the Shadow. All that mattered to Eval was that he would finally escape time’s grasp and achieve the eternal youth he so desperately sought.

Though the Great Lord’s reward was eternity, it had to be earned in a world where death was all too possible. In order to secure his position when the Dark Lord broke free, Eval Ramman was forced to compete in a deadly contest among "Those Chosen to Rule the World Forever," or simply "the Chosen." In a process that the Dark One encouraged, the Chosen winnowed each other out until only the strongest remained, those who today are known as the Forsaken. Eval was one of those thirteen survivors whom the citizens of the Age of Legends granted contemptuous names, names that the Forsaken embraced as symbols of their rebirth into the Shadow. Eval’s name was Balthamel.



Ride with the Dark One:
Balthamel and the War of Power

Although Balthamel stood high in the councils of the Shadow his exact role is unknown. Unlike some of the other Forsaken, Balthamel never held a field command. Balthamel may have headed an intelligence network to rival the one run by Moghedien. Possibly, he served as a governor in Shadow held territory. What is a veritable certainty is the number of large-scale atrocities Balthamel participated in during the War of Power. Balthamel was said to have set up camps to breed humans as fodder for Trollocs.

But Balthamael’s success in the Dark One’s ranks would serve to fuel his downfall. While attending a meeting of the Dark One’s top thirteen servants, Balthamael was trapped along with the other Forsaken, when Lews Therin Telamon and his Hundred Companions sealed the Bore.



The Serpent’s Venom:
Balthamel and the Third Age

Trapped in a dreamless sleep for nearly three thousand years, Balthamel would awake to find that the Great Serpent had not slept, and his Dark Lord had not been able to fully shield him from his old foe. Balthamel had been trapped too close to the surface of the seal. Though Balthamel’s soul and spirit were still vital, the Great Serpent had taken his revenge. Balthamel’s once handsome body had rotted to the point that he could not bear to have it seen. Balthamel was forced to cover every bit of his flesh. But on head and face, he wore a tight black leather carapace, the front of which was worked into a perfect face, a young man’s face, laughing wildly, insanely, frozen forever. Though Balthamel could no longer speak with his own tongue, he still laughed. Time had not won the final victory. He was still alive, and in possession of the knowledge of the Age of Legends, in an Age where that could make him a virtual god. And the Eye of the World, a huge Well of pure saidin created in the Time of Madness, had the potential to restore his youth.

Traveling along with Aginor, Balthamel needed only to find a few helpless ta’veren, among them an untutored shepherd who would become the Dragon Reborn. It seemed almost too simple. Tracking the ta’veren through the evil of a Shadar Logoth dagger, Aginor and Balthamel were able to locate the Eye of the World and with it could fulfill their dreams for restored youth.

Though they may have had seen reason to be overconfident, Aginor and Balthamel would come to regret it. Balthamael’s arrogance led to his demise, not by the Great Serpent he so feared, by the last of the Nym, the Green Man, who slew Balthamel at the Eye of the World.

But with the Lord of the Grave, death is not always final.

~ Written by Tel Janin, July 2002 ~


Companion article: Aran'gar




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