"Over the next century or so, society slipped into decline, with an increasing number of people, including many highly regarded ones, publicly pledging themselves to the Dark One. It eventually plunged into war, the first the world had known in an Age. Ten years of that until, with the the forces of Shadow creeping towards victory, roughly a hundred male Aes Sedai, led by Lews Therin Telamon, known as the Dragon, launched a desperate gambit to attempt to reseal the bore. It did work, sealing away not only him but thirteen of his most powerful followers who happened to be meeting at the time."

He pauses in thought, as he was not in fact personally present for the rest. "There was, however, a reprisal. As the Dark One was being sealed away, he reached back through the power they were using and tainted saidin. The surviving members of the men involved in the strike were driven mad immediately. The rest of the male Aes Sedai would inexorably follow over the next few hundred years. Imagine madmen with phenomenal power running rampant worldwide. Cities were leveled, mountains created and destroyed, the landscape itself would change until it was unrecognizable. That time is now known as the Breaking of the World."

He shrugs. "Since then, Aes Sedai, now by necessity all women, have hunted down men who can wield saidin and severed them from the Source, to prevent the same from happening again."