Wolfkin

[Thalia]

Week 13 Question: If a wolfbrother is reborn in another Age, will he be a wolfbrother again? In other words, is being a wolfbrother a trait related to the soul? Can women be wolfbrothers?

Robert Jordan Answers: Women certainly can be wolfbrothers, though the term would be wolfsisters. A wolfbrother or wolfsister reborn in another age would only be a wolfbrother or wolfsister again if that were possible in that Age. The ability to speak with wolves doesn't exist in every Age. In the "current" Age, it is a fairly new thing, appearing not too long ago. There are tales of it, sometimes just vague stories of people who supposedly "can talk to animals," without necessarily mentioning wolves, but remember that Elyas's ability was taken, at least by some Aes Sedai, as a sign that he was linked to the Shadow.

So, the Talent doesn't exist in every Age, but it does seem to be a soul related thing. But no specification on which Ages it manifested in beyond later in the 3rd.

Perrin is very worried that he will end up like Noam. That evening, after Simion brings him dinner, he goes to Moiraine to ask if she knows anything and can help him. She says she found a fragment of a book from the Age of Legends while studying at two friends' library.1 It describes Wolfbrothers, but even in the Age of Legends little was known. She warns Perrin that wolves live partly in a dream world and that dreams can be very dangerous to him. She has read that Dreamers have encountered wolves in their dreams.2 Perrin returns to his room and goes to sleep.

You could probably infer that either way. But unless anyone else can remember the LLT quote Jaxen's talking about, I would say if they at least knew about wolfkin in the AoL then they existed but were rare.

"This is an old thing, boy. Older than Aes Sedai. Older than anybody using the One Power. Old as humankind. Old as wolves. They don't like that either, Aes Sedai. Old things coming again. I'm not the only one. There are other things, other folk. Makes Aes Sedai nervous, makes them mutter about ancient barriers weakening. Things are breaking apart, they say. They're afraid the Dark One will get loose, is what."

Min, and the sniffers, and wolfbrothers appearing are all highly indicative, you know. New abilities, for this Age, are appearing, and that in itself indicates great changes coming.

The Aes Sedai, at least, believe the emergence of old talents (including wolfkin) in the 3rd age is connected to the weakening of the seals. And Jordan himself says the appearance of lost talents herald great changes in an Age. So if wolfkin didn't exist earlier in the AoL than the drilling of the bore then maybe it manifested around that time in a similar way to them returning to the 3rd Age prior to the Last Battle. It would explain the scant knowledge Moiraine mentions she found in the book, since it would have been new to them then too. 

I think Elyas probably means that wolfkin predate the AoL and have existed in ages where there are no channelers -- literally our primitive history. But even then, if the AoL had forgotten all knowledge of war it's unlikely they'd have managed to retain some random piece of knowledge about wolfkin from the age before. So they must have existed then too, even if they were only considered as stories (perhaps due to their rarity).

tldr: I think it's fine to use it for what you need it for, Jaxen.

EDIT: okay, this is the passage from TDR:

"I know very little, Perrin. While searching for other answers among the books and manuscripts two friends keep for their researches, I found a copied fragment of a book from the Age of Legends. It spoke of ... situations like yours. That may be the only copy anywhere in the world, and it did not tell me much [...] Perrin, even in the Age of Legends, they knew little of this. Whoever wrote it seemed uncertain whether it was truth or legend. And I saw only a fragment, remember. She said that some who talked to wolves lost themselves, that what was human was swallowed up by wolf. Some. Whether she meant one in ten, or five, or nine, I do not know. [...] Mostly, she wrote of dreams. Dreams can be dangerous for you, Perrin. [...] According to her, wolves live partly in this world, and partly in a world of dreams."

Moiraine talks a bit more about dreams after that, and old accounts of dreamers from the WT having mentioned wolf guides sometimes. It's right at the beginning of chapter 9, page 123 in my paperback. I can't see, from that, how they couldn't have existed in the AoL. It just looks like they weren't understood.