The Adventures of Lan Mandragoran

[Man Landragoran]

Hey guys, I've been tapped by Amazon to write the new Wheel of Time TV series. We've had to make some changes from Robert Jordan's original work to support the television format. TV audiences demand fast-paced action and likable characters, both of which are in unfortunately short supply in the Wheel of Time books, as you are all no doubt well aware. So we've renamed the series "The Adventures of Lan Mandragoran", accordingly. It's not as big a change as you're probably imagining. Lan was already pretty obviously the main character of the books, so we're just extrapolating on that a little bit. Anyway, enough talk - enjoy this sneak preview of Episode 1: "Lan Discusses Battle Plans with the Kin".

 

*** WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 1 ***

Lan approached a door in a dimly lit hall on the west end of the Sun Palace in Cairhien. As he reached for the doorknob, he noticed a sign at eye level, attached to the door with masking tape. In a crude, childish hand, the words “NO BOYZ ALLOWED” were written in magic marker. Ignoring it, he entered the room.

 

Three women gathered around a wide table in the center of the room, looking at an unfolded map with red and green markers placed all about.  From the door, it was hard to make out much detail. All three of them looked up as he entered, and none of them looked happy to see him.

 

The oldest of the three women, Alise, laid into him before either of the other two could open their mouths. “Who told you you could come in here? Didn’t you read the sign?”

 

Lan ignored her completely unwarranted hostility, apparently the only way in which Alise was able to interact with other human beings,  and nodded at the map. “Looks like you’re planning a battle,” he said. “I can help you out if you want. I like battles.”

 

All three women glared at Lan as if he had said something completely idiotic, which he hadn’t, at all. His huge, ridiculous frame filled the doorway, and he carried a cartoonishly massive sword on his back, which certainly gave the impression that he might know a thing or two about battles, but none of this seemed to connect for Alise, who carried herself with a demeanor of unnecessary indignance at all times.

 

“You’ll keep your fool mouth shut is what you’ll do!” Alise snapped, for no apparent reason. “This is women’s business in here, and I don’t need any idiot man sticking his big, dumb, masculine nose in it.” Lan folded his arms, not responding.

 

One of the other two women in the room, Lan’s wife, Nynaeve, looked a little taken aback. “Alise, he IS the last king of the Malkieri, an ancient line of warrior kings dating back to the dawn of civilization or something. I suppose we could hear him out at least.”

 

Alise somehow managed to make her awful face look even more angry, which had seemed impossible only moments ago. She took a step toward Lan, jabbing a finger in his direction. “I’m not taking advice from a man if he’s president of the world, even if every word of that advice is obviously smarter on its face than any five consecutive words that have ever come out of my mouth!”

 

“But Alise,” Nynaeve started to say.

 

Alise rounded on her. “And you! I don’t care if you WERE trained by an ancient society of female wizards and judged to be one of the most talented among them! I’ll not have some young woman like you tell me anything at all, even if it’s obvious that I’m a know-nothing country bumpkin who only gets respect by throwing her weight around and intentionally being the most annoying person in the room. Now the both of you had better submit to my irritating, aggressive, ignorant, unearned authority right now before I decide to vaguely punish you off page!”

 

Lan put his finger in the air, calling attention back to himself. He opened his mouth but didn’t quite have time to get a word in. Alise took another step toward him and got very close to his face. She tried to look even more angry, but there really wasn’t any way to, so she just sort of huffed and kind of bulged her eyes, and she put her finger right into Lan’s chest. “Sit down, you”, she said. “Men like you always think they know everything.”

 

“I don’t think…” Lan started.

 

“That’s right, you don’t,” Alise said, cutting him off. “You think just because you’re the last of a great line of kings, and that you’ve planned and fought in countless battles over a series of wars, and you’ve organized armies and studied military tactics, and you’ve watched all of your friends die in battle and your country fall to ruins, you think you’re just going to walk in here and tell us women how to do things? Huh? Is that what you think?”

 

“I…” Lan started to say.

 

“We don’t need a man’s input. I know everything I need to already, because I grew up in the country and supervised dozens of basket weavers, turnip farmers, and butter churners. And I am automatically in charge here because I am older and louder than you could ever possibly dream of, and that’s what counts for power in this room!” She stood down from his face and gestured at him, waving him away. “Your wife obviously needs to teach you your place a little more often.”

 

Expressionlessly, and without waiting for her to catch her breath after her dumb tirade, Lan drew his sword and plunged it directly through Alise’s heart. She fell to the floor, dead, still with that ridiculous look on her face. Lan said nothing and just stood there, looking down at her.

 

Nynaeve gasped, grabbing her braid with both hands and pulling on it. Her instinct told her to immediately become angry with Lan, even though Alise had clearly deserved that, but then again, he had acted on his own instinct, and even if he had done exactly what she wanted him to, it was necessary to call him out and embarrass him in front of everyone. Otherwise, he might get dangerous ideas in his head like thinking he was allowed to shave or go to the bathroom without asking for her explicit permission, and she couldn’t have that.

 

“Lan,” she said, as coldly as she could manage while still wilting in her lady parts over watching him violently end that terrible woman, “You will return to our chambers now. The women still have important matters to discuss. I will deal with your… inappropriate actions when I return.” She sniffed and pulled on her braid so hard that it seemed she might tear the thing right out of her head.

 

Lan hesitated for a moment for dramatic tension, then immediately swung his sword at Nyneave’s throat and took her head clean off at her shoulders. He watched with no expression on his face as her head fell to the floor. Her left hand went with it, still clutching that stupid braid.

 

Reanne, the last woman in the room, moved to stand next to Lan, looking down at the two corpses. “Truly, she died as she lived,” she said. “I honestly don’t understand why you married her in the first place.” Lan said nothing and felt nothing.

 

“Lan, not that what you did was wrong in any way,” Reanne went on, carefully, “because it really, seriously wasn’t, but I don’t think Rand is going to like this when he hears about it.”

 

Lan wiped his sword on his dead wife’s clothes and stared straight ahead, his face lacking any expression. “Don’t trouble yourself, Reanne,” he said. “I’ll deal with the Dragon Reborn.”

Edited January 9, 2019 by Man Landragoran

[2RiversFan]

Troll much?

I move that this thread be deleted.

[Man Landragoran]

It's not a troll, at least not completely. It's posted for your amusement. Besides, if you delete the thread, how are you going to find out what happens to our hero in the next episode? Like this, for example:

 

EPISODE 2: Lan Discusses the Last Battle with The Dragon Reborn

 

Lan walked along the top of the highest wall on the north end of the Stone of Tear, the wind flapping his many-colored cloak about him, making him sort of invisible from certain angles, but not really because he was huge and completely noticeable, and he walked around like he owned the place, which he may as well have.  He showed no emotion, for he had none. His face seemed carved into a boulder, sitting on top of a larger boulder, his eyes like polished stones, his shoulders the rocky peaks of mountains. More stone than man, he walked stonily, at times indistinguishable from the stone wall of the fortress below.

 

“Lan, are you listening?” Rand Al’Thor walked beside him on the wall, his head turned slightly, an expression of irritation on his face, as usual. He had been talking about the wound in his side. Again. Lan met his eyes with no expression on his face whatsoever.

 

“So anyway,” Rand went on, “It’s like one of the wounds has regular darkness inside of it, and the other one has this OTHER, different kind of darkness in it, and they’re fighting each other inside MY body! Can you believe that? I think I’ll have Asmodean write another song about it.”

 

“Fascinating,” Lan said, without a hint of sarcasm in his expressionless voice. Silence filled several awkward moments.

 

“You know,” Rand finally said, “These heron marks on my hands, the ones BURNED into my hands, are from blademaster swords. I killed a blademaster in single combat, so I’m a blademaster too. What do you think about that?”

 

Lan said nothing and kept walking. Rand looked at him sideways for a moment, then turned his attention forward again.

 

“I got these dragon tattoos on my forearms in Rhuidean,” Rand said. “I was in Rhuidean. No one was allowed in there except Aiel, but I went. I learned the secret history of the Aiel. Then I united all the clans.” He paused briefly. “Except the Shaido,” he muttered, with a sullen, childish look on his face.

 

He brightened again, suddenly. “You know, Sevanna wants to marry me. She’s attractive and has a gratingly terrible personality, so I’m thinking about giving her a call. She’s obviously perfect for me. You know, Lan, I have three wives, but four is an even bigger number, so it’s a win-win situation if you think about it.”

 

He looked at Lan sideways again and said, quietly, “It’s a shame about what happened to your wife, Lan”.

 

Lan stopped walking for a moment. “Yes, a real shame,” he said without looking at Rand.

 

“Not that I liked her, of course,” Rand said. “Nobody could, really, I mean, we all just put up with how awful she was because she was such a huge bully, and she was supposedly the strongest in the One Power and all, but then Cadsuane showed up out of nowhere, and everyone likes her, so as a character, there wasn’t much point to Nynaeve anymore, if you think about it. Anyway…”

 

Lan had stopped listening. He relaxed his mind and went to his quiet place, tuning out the insufferable drone of Rand’s useless, stupid voice. He concentracted and was surrounded by the sounds of swords clashing and men screaming and dying, of villages burning in the night, of horses’ hooves thundering to war, to victory, to death. He would have smiled if his face were capable of showing human emotion.

 

“Lan!” Rand said, turning to face him with his hands on his hips. “You’re not listening again! I was saying how I was going to take Nynaeve to Tarmon Gai’don, but now I’ll have to get someone else. I’d take Cadsuane, but she’s not nearly annoying enough. Elayne?” He fingered his chin, apparently deep in what he considered thought. “Hmm. Maybe too annoying...” He trailed off momentarily.

 

“Lan! Did you know it’s my destiny to fight in Tarmon Gai’don? It means Last Battle in the old tongue. Tarmon Gai’don. The last battle. My destiny. Lan! Lan!!”

 

Lan finally turned to face Rand and looked directly into his eyes with a level, expressionless gaze. Rand stared back with a dopey smile on his face, his eyes signifying nothing at all. Lan thought he saw a tiny string of drool forming in the corner of Rand’s mouth.

 

An age went by, the silence between them only broken by the sound of the wind whistling through Rand’s ears. “Tarmon Gai’don,” Rand said, again.

 

Without pausing at all, Lan lifted Rand from the ground by his throat with one hand. Rand’s eyes bulged from his head, and he tried to claw at Lan’s giant fist with his tiny, pathetic baby hands. With no expression on his face, Lan hurled Rand from the wall as hard as he could, which was very hard. As Rand plummeted toward his death, the wind carried his last words back to the battlement where Lan stood.

 

“I looooooove yoooou!”

 

Lan heard footsteps behind him and turned. Davram Bashere, one of Rand’s generals, was walking toward him.

 

“Finally,” Bashere said, looking down at Rand’s shattered corpse hundreds of feet below. “Everybody hated that guy.” He looked up at Lan, questioningly. “So, if you killed the Dragon Reborn, does that mean you’re the Dragon Reborn now? Is that how this even works? I don’t think anyone really ever understood.”

 

“No,” Lan said. “Thank the Light, it doesn’t work that way.”

 

Bashere shook his head, then grimaced. “What am I going to say to Rand’s three irritating wives?”

 

Lan’s expression never changed and never would. “You let me deal with those three, Bashere. I know just the thing for them.” He was fingering the hilt of his sword. Bashere nodded. There was nothing else to say, really.

[Maedelin]

This is really not in the right area, considering what you really want from us.  Instead, I recommend you bring your chaptered "screenplay" to somewhere more fitting on this board, or instead a site like: fanfiction.net

Edited January 10, 2019 by Maedelin

[Man Landragoran]

If it needs to be moved elsewhere, then that's obviously fine. It's your board. I vomited all of this out of my brain over Christmas because I guess that's what happens when I'm off work for two weeks and I stupidly spend my time reading six or seven books of WOT in a row. And if no one here thinks any of it is funny, I will certainly refrain from posting any more episodes.

 

Although I should mention, you'll be missing out - in Episode 3, our most action-packed episode yet, Lan utilizes an ancient strategy of the Malkieri to deliver the bad news to Rand's three unsuspecting widows.

Edited January 10, 2019 by Man Landragoran
Added commentary

[skoog]

you should at least have written it in a screenplay format. -1 for not trying hard enough.

[TheSociopath]

On 1/10/2019 at 11:43 AM, Man Landragoran said:

If it needs to be moved elsewhere, then that's obviously fine. It's your board. I vomited all of this out of my brain over Christmas because I guess that's what happens when I'm off work for two weeks and I stupidly spend my time reading six or seven books of WOT in a row. And if no one here thinks any of it is funny, I will certainly refrain from posting any more episodes.

 

Although I should mention, you'll be missing out - in Episode 3, our most action-packed episode yet, Lan utilizes an ancient strategy of the Malkieri to deliver the bad news to Rand's three unsuspecting widows.

Even if no one else is interested in this, I think its hilarious, and would ask you to tell me where I can find the rest of this.