Cuendillar. [quote][B]The World of RJ's The Wheel of Time, pg. 46.[/B] The discs themselves are ter'angreal made of cuendillar, or "heartstone," designed to absorb any force used against it, including the One Power, and become stronger from the assault rather than break.[/quote] And [quote][B]The Shadow Rising, Ch. 54[/B] Even balefire cannot destroy cuendillar[/quote] And [quote][B]The Fires of Heaven, Ch. 2[/B] ... and nothing made of cuendillar could be broken[/quote] And [quote][B]Lord of Chaos, Ch. 2[/B] Nothing could break cuendillar[/quote] I think you get the idea. Indestructible and gets stronger if attempted to be broken. Whether through use of say a hammer, or the One Power. Far as I know, age doesn't diminish its strength. So why would the Seals of the DO break down? If it's because only the True Power can damage it, then why can't the One Power? How is the True Power any better? It would seem to me that the One Power and True Power are at best equals. Seems a bit inconsistent with what we've been told about cuendillar. The Seals should've held. Here's what I'm thinking. Cuendillar as we know it is made through use of the One Power, so when you attack it using the One Power, it just gets stronger. So you have to attack it with an opposing force, such as the True Power. This is would explain why the DO was able to weaken the Seals even though they were cuendillar. For example if you have a bowl of water assuming you can only "attack" the water, you can't do it by using water. That's just going to put more water in the bowl and make it stronger. (ahhh see?). Instead you need to use a lot of fire and then the water in this bowl will decrease because of evaporation and all that good stuff. This process takes time though. In the same way, if you have a raging bonfire and you throw more fire into it, you're gonna make the fire stronger. Instead you need a lot of water. So the point is, as we've seen you can't use One Power vs. One Power. Which is why cuendillar (made with the OP) gets stronger if attacked with the OP. So what if you made a cuendillar object using the True Power? This is where my theory comes in. Since this is the energy the DO uses, if you made new cuendillar seals made from the True Power, the DO could never weaken them or destroy them; he'd simply make them stronger. It'd be like throwing fire against fire, or water against water, or however you want to see it. And guess what? Rand has access to the True Power. You could argue then, well the DO might not be able weaken the Seals then, but others might be able to with the OP? Well, even so, the DO has taken a long time in weakening the seal and he is the essence of the True Power, so it's still not an instantaneous destruction of the seals. Remember like in the fire against water example, it takes time. In the case of cuendillar as we've seen, it takes a super long time. More than anyone's lifespan. So a few things could fix this. 1. The Seals are hidden away, which will prolong the time it takes the Shadow in getting their hands on the Seals and thus the time they can dedicate to destroying them. Even so, it'd take longer than anyone's lifespan, so they'd need to pass it on to their dreadlord counterparts. And if the DO who is the essence of the True Power takes this long to destroy the OP-made cuendillar seals, it would take regular OP channelers who can't even channel all of the essence of the OP even longer. So we'd be taking an even longer period of time that the DO would be able to break free. 2. Make Seals made of the OP and the True Power. Rand can make use of both sources. Pretty neat, huh? Then, the DO can't destroy nor weaken the Seals because of the True Power used. And regular OP channelers can't destroy the Seals because of the OP used. You could say, hey Juan, using your own examples of water and fire as the OP and TP, you can't blend the two! One would fight the other out. And to that I say that's the beauty of channeling. When you create objects made of saidar and saidin for example, the weaves are all separate. They're opposing sides, yet they can be used together in the creation of objects. The weaves from saidin and saidar are still separate but work together in this object. Saidar and saidin never actually BLEND and become the same thing. Think of a yarn ball that uses black and white yarn. All together it looks like one object. One ball. But if you really look, you'll see that the white and black yarn are still separate; they didn't blend, but they are working together in the creation of this yarn barn. In the same way, you can use the True Power and One Power to create the new Seals of the Dark One without having to BLEND the two Powers. You just use them as separate things used to create one object, like in the yarn ball example.