The Shadow's Economy

[Bob T Dwarf]

I have the perfect recruitment slogan for the DO:  (for those as old as me, or knowledgeable of old-time radio)  "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  The Shadow knows!"

 

Aaahhhhh... Orson Welles at his best.  Boston Blackie and Inner Sanctum weren't bad, either.

[Mr Ares]

Well, since the trollocs eat only meat

Do they? Does anyone have a quote confirming this? Also, even if they don't farm the Blight's animal life, they can still hunt it. Also, the Blight borders on the Waste (not much good for food, but theyy could get they odd male channeler and so on) and Shara. They could well get a lot of food from there.

[RAND AL THOR]

Aiel male channelers go north to fight the DO.

 

That would be so rare that it can, for all purposes, be ignored in the problem of deciding how trollocs are fed.

 

There are many ideas on this thread but are they really feasible on the huge scale that is needed to support the trollocs?

 

In the world where trollocs won the trolloc wars, they eventually died out. That is most probably because they ran out of food. That world is quite 'dead.' This more than suggests that trollocs are not capable of supporting themselves. Of course an alternative solution would be that the DO/Forsaken no longer needed them after world conquest and just let them all starve and die.

[Mr Ares]

That is most probably because they ran out of food.

So grolm are inedible? And I think that feeding on the Blight's ample plant and animal life, supplemented by Borderlanders and Sharans, is a quite feasible way of feeding a large trolloc population.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Well, since the trollocs eat only meat

Do they? Does anyone have a quote confirming this? Also, even if they don't farm the Blight's animal life, they can still hunt it. Also, the Blight borders on the Waste (not much good for food, but theyy could get they odd male channeler and so on) and Shara. They could well get a lot of food from there.

 

I'm certainly not suggesting they eat only meat.  What I pointed out is that they will eat any kind of meat.  For confirmation of that see Rand's POV during the battle with the Trollocs inside the Stone of Tear.

 

Since it's only meat where they are specified to be omnivorous, my guess is that they must be at least a little picky about grains, vegetables, and everything else.

[Bob T Dwarf]

That is most probably because they ran out of food.

So grolm are inedible? And I think that feeding on the Blight's ample plant and animal life, supplemented by Borderlanders and Sharans, is a quite feasible way of feeding a large trolloc population.

 

Your turn.  Please supply a quote demonstrating that there is anything like "ample plant and animal life" anywhere in the Blight.  I mean it's called "The Blight" for some reason, don't you think?

[Mr Ares]

That is most probably because they ran out of food.

So grolm are inedible? And I think that feeding on the Blight's ample plant and animal life, supplemented by Borderlanders and Sharans, is a quite feasible way of feeding a large trolloc population.

Your turn. Please supply a quote demonstrating that there is anything like "ample plant and animal life" anywhere in the Blight. I mean it's called "The Blight" for some reason, don't you think?

When they visit the Blight in EotW, it seems to have a fair bit of both.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Would you describe any of it as edible?

[Mr Ares]

Would you describe any of it as edible?

To a human, no. To a trolloc, yes.

[RAND AL THOR]

I'm just getting tired of all this talk about the blight having plants that can support any living thing. I am giving some nice quotes now from the chapter "The Blight" from Eye of the World.

 

-Rand looked at the forest around him, every leaf and flower diseased, every creeper decaying as it grew,and he could not repress a shudder.

 

-There were a few leaves now, on trees that were not evergreen. Rand reached out to touch a branch, and stopped with his hand short of the leaves. Sickly yellow mottled the red of the new growth, and black flecks like disease.

 

-As the mountains drew closer, so did the true Blight. Where a leaf had been spotted black and mottled yellow before, now foliage fell wetly while he watched, breaking apart from the weight of its own corruption.

The trees themselves were tortured, crippled things, twisted branches clawing at the sky as if begging mercy from some power that refused to hear. Ooze slid like pus from bark cracked and split. As if nothing truly solid

was left to them, the trees seemed to tremble -from the passage of the horses over the ground.

 

-Rand's sword was in his hand; he did not remember unsheathing it. He struck out again and again, the heron-mark blade slicing through corrupted limbs. Hungry branches jerked back severed, writhing stumps-he

almost thought he heard them scream-but always more came, wriggling like snakes, attempting to snare his arms, his waist, his neck. Teeth bared in a rictus snarl, he sought the void, and found it in the stony, stubborn

soil of the Two Rivers. "Manetheren!" He screamed back at the trees till his throat ached. The heron-mark steel flashed in the strengthless sunlight. "Manetheren! Manetheren!"

 

 

If anyone can honestly say that anything can eat stuff like this.......well I have no more to say on that.

 

And lets not forget that trees were actually moving in the Blight. Looks like they are not as easy targets as they are in the real world!

 

Trollocs share many things in common with any other animal. (Humans are animals too). It is difficult to think of them as being capable of surviving on poisoned leaves.

 

[Luckers]

Your ignoring the obvious Rand... for such an elaborate ecology to exist, they have to be eating each other--ergo, the tainting of the blight is not poisonous to the creatures of the shadow that are born to it.

 

Trollocs were born to it, just like the jumara and all the other indigenous life to the blight. The Dark One's power--the True Power--is what twists that life. All have it. And the majority don't raid into the borderlands, so they live on it alone. Thus yes, the Trollocs can live on the life found in the blight--and tainted or not its a very highly populated area.

 

As for the trees... they have to be eat... and be eaten in turn. Nothing said life in the blight was easy.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Exactly.

 

The trees are so poisoned by their environment that they can barely cling to life.  The Jumara have been so poisoned by the environment that they can no longer progress beyond their larval wyrm stage.  Likewise everything else we get to see in the Blight.

 

Trollocs are hale, hearty, strong, and fearsome.  They aint gettin' that way by eating anything existing in the poisoned environment around them.

[Luckers]

Was that a response to me, because my post was directly against all that. The Blight's ecology is thriving--tainted, poisonous, hostile, but positively booming with life.

 

And the nature of the 'poison' once again quite clearly does not effect anything tainted by the same evil. Oh, they rot with it, yet live with it too. So yes, the Trollocs are staying healthy and strong by eating the 'fruits' of that enviroment. Indeed, the surviving of the hostility of that landscape makes the Trollocs more resiliant. But then, so does simply surviving being a member of the Trolloc society.

 

And your comment about the jumara is incorrect. We do not know the reason that they don't progress beyond the larval stage, which is called a worm, not a wyrm.

[Bob T Dwarf]

I'm not sure you can use a general rule to create an exception.

 

From everything we see, nothing native to the Blight is healthy.  Everything native to the Blight exists by consuming other unhealthy life existing in the Blight.  IOW, eating bad stuff makes anything, including what 'lives' in the Blight, sick.

 

Trollocs aint sick.  Ergo, they aren't eating what exists around them.

[Dhaos]

Beyond that, you're back to simple numbers problems.  Even if Trollocs could survive by eating the plant material in the Blight, there's still a ton of them.

 

When humans exist in that sort of number, they -need- civilization to survive.  Organized agriculture.  It takes two acres of cultivated, arable land to feed one human.  Presumably, if the Blight produces edible material, it does so at a rate much worse than good, arable land.  So unless there are huge (and I mean huge), constantly tended farms deep inside the Blight, it doesn't work.  And surviving off the land doesn't work either...an army of 100,000 can't live off the land and remain an organized army.  And if there are -millions- of Trollocs, they'd have the be spread far and wide to subsist.

[Llewin]

I fail to see why they would need an economy like you suggest, there is no population base that would need an economy.  The monies they need they can get several ways, they have a cadre of nobles who would certianly fund any project they were told to, they have many Aes Sedai that would also help in this area.

 

That is a neat plot-line... stop the villainous dark-friend noble from transporting iron ore or somesuch north of the borderlands...

[Bob T Dwarf]

Ahaz Flagg -

 

I don't think any of us are suggesting that the Dark needs 'an economy' per se.  That's simply shorthand for the infrastructure needed to support meaningful activity.

 

They'd need roads to transport raw materials.  They'd need means of refining and working those raw materials.  Even crude leather requires a lot of work, and other materials to be rendered useful.  Useful boots are an entire art unto themselves.  Weapons even more so.  To work anything you first have to make, find, or steal the tools.

 

Everything they'd need requires building and then maintenance.  All of it requires some level of acquired skill and training.

 

Except for a few brief periods when Ishy may have been 'active', Trollocs and Myrddraal have been entirely on their own for over 3,000 years.  Who kept them organized?  Who gave them the necessary training?  Who kept them from killing each other off?

 

Meaningfully menacing forces require an enormous logistical base.  Where did that base come from?  How is the Dark able to breed and train-up such huge forces?

 

By giving us 20 years to consider the problem, Jordan may have forced us to suspend our disbelief just a little too long.

[Llewin]

I'm not sure you can use a general rule to create an exception.

 

From everything we see, nothing native to the Blight is healthy.  Everything native to the Blight exists by consuming other unhealthy life existing in the Blight.  IOW, eating bad stuff makes anything, including what 'lives' in the Blight, sick.

 

Trollocs aint sick.  Ergo, they aren't eating what exists around them.

 

I disagree... The trees look sickly and nearly lifeless to Rand's eye, but when the various creatures of the Blight actually attacked, they did not do so in a listless, barely able to move, manner... They did so ferociously, with strength, and almost succeeded in taking out the entire party...they would have done so in moments had the worm pack not fluted in the distance...

 

Wolves have POV where they 'talk' about how trollocs taste horrible and myrddraal blood is poisonous (paraphrasing)... Clearly for humanity to eat these things would cause sickness and perhaps death... Yet  Trollocs and Myrddraal are hale, strong, and deadly... Why would you think otherwise about the rest of the blighted, shadow-twisted creatures (many of which we know nothing about beyond glimpses in eye of the world...)

[DemandredFO]

They are pure evil, they are far from human.  I am willing to suspend my disbelief.  You are projecting our culture onto a completely alien on that can never exist.

[Llewin]

Ahaz Flagg -

 

I don't think any of us are suggesting that the Dark needs 'an economy' per se.  That's simply shorthand for the infrastructure needed to support meaningful activity.

 

They'd need roads to transport raw materials.  They'd need means of refining and working those raw materials.  Even crude leather requires a lot of work, and other materials to be rendered useful.  Useful boots are an entire art unto themselves.  Weapons even more so.  To work anything you first have to make, find, or steal the tools.

 

Everything they'd need requires building and then maintenance.  All of it requires some level of acquired skill and training.

 

Except for a few brief periods when Ishy may have been 'active', Trollocs and Myrddraal have been entirely on their own for over 3,000 years.  Who kept them organized?  Who gave them the necessary training?  Who kept them from killing each other off?

 

Meaningfully menacing forces require an enormous logistical base.  Where did that base come from?  How is the Dark able to breed and train-up such huge forces?

 

By giving us 20 years to consider the problem, Jordan may have forced us to suspend our disbelief just a little too long.

 

Apart from the roads built during the growth of the roman empire (many of which decayed over the first 200 years that they were no longer being kept-up) most of 'dark-ages'/medieval europe was without true roads for hundreds of years... Roads only become necessary when large groups gather in one place for extended periods of time, which leads to either depleting the resources immediately available, or living in an area where some resources are scarce and others are plentiful...

 

Trollocs do not give evidence of any higher society, however, a basic tribal society is certainly plausible, similar to the way most north american natives lived for thousands of years before the influx of western technology...

 

We know Myrddraal are exceptionally intelligent and ruthless, and some trollocs (narg) appear to have some degree of intelligence as well, we know trollocs are intelligent enough to have formed lasting 'familial' bonds in the form of the various clans, why do we assume they have to have evolved beyond that? Why can they not just live in losely organized, possibly completely or partially migratory, tribal groups?

 

Beyond that, any urging for greater civilization that was necessary could easily come from Ishamael since he was partially free (and I venture to guess could atleast communicate with Myrddraal) and every so often was completely free of the bonds of the Seals...

 

From Lan's comments at the beginning of EOTW we know that it is exceptionally rare for multiple clans or groups of trollocs to work together, even in the borderlands, so when it is necessary for huge numbers of trollocs to work together, they are invariably under the gentle guidance of 1 or more myrddraal and/or forsaken...

 

Since Trollocs are born for savagery, I would not be surprised if the different tribes/clans/groups fight with eachother often,though perhaps the Myrddraal and ishamael worked to ensure that did not escalate beyond 'keeping their skills honed' in to all-out slaughter...

[Bob T Dwarf]

Amerinds, prior to the arrival of European explorers, were still a largely migratory, stone-age culture.  Leather they knew how to tan.  Mining, refining, and forging metal?  Not so much.

 

Trollocs, and the Myrddraal who control them came into being before the first battle of the War of Power.  In fact, they were the surprise shock troops of the very first battle.

 

Aginor would have needed an encyclopedic knowledge about the twisted flora and fauna of what is now called the Blight in order to create creatures capable of thriving there.  And, he would have needed that knowledge before the area and the flora and fauna existed. Given the state to which the wyrms have descended, he obviously had no such knowledge.

 

It's all just waaaay too convenient to be truly believable.  Even for a fantasy series.

[Llewin]

I don't know... I think you are leaving out the part of the creation of the blight (and trollocs/myrddraal) which was the Dark One's doing... Trollocs were made atleast in-part by the "True Power" from the Dark One...and Myrddraal...well heck they can do things even Aginor could not explain, which is evidence that those abilities come directly from either the DO himself or from his essence...eg, the True Power... Why is it so hard to believe that that same essence, which created the Blight, would create these things in such a way that they could not co-exist, albeit in a horribly twisted, violent, destructive fashion?

[benr]

In this world we have huge "animal farms" that have meat grown from birth to slaughter without ever seeing the light of day.  If it can happen here, the Shadow could certainly do some semblance of it.  There is no evidence for this, just a supposition.

 

We know the Trollocs eat; but do they NEED to eat?

[Llewin]

We know the Trollocs eat; but do they NEED to eat?

 

It is a valid question and I do not know that it has a solid 'canon' answer...but I get the impression trollocs are not 'constructs' in the sense that Nym, Gholam, and the Makers at Tha'kandar (sp?) are... They are...genetic manipulations...

[RAND AL THOR]

We know the Trollocs eat; but do they NEED to eat?

 

It is a valid question and I do not know that it has a solid 'canon' answer...but I get the impression trollocs are not 'constructs' in the sense that Nym, Gholam, and the Makers at Tha'kandar (sp?) are... They are...genetic manipulations...

 

I can't give a 100% accurate answer but all the evidence suggests that trollocs do need food to stay alive. Maybe not mydraal- I haven't seen a mydraal at the dining table yet-but most certainly trollocs require it.

 

I think I can see what Bob T Dwarf is trying to say. Trollocs are able to eat human flesh/blood. They have a brain and are capable of thinking and do possess some degree of intelligence. They perspire. They have all the features of a typical animal. They are (almost) just like any other carnivorous beast. You could almost say that they are a bit like in between humans and animals. They have no superhuman powers (while mydraal do). They eat, kill and die.

 

So, it is difficult to think that a being that resembles a normal life form so well would be able to survive on vegetation that other life forms would find lethal.

 

And as he said, the Blight came into existence after the drilling of the bore. Before that people didn't even know that the DO existed! (This was stated somewhere-I think it was Fel). Aginor did various experiments to create these beings. They must have been supported somehow even early in the War of the Shadow. And how could he have designed them such that they are able to consume stuff like the plants in the Blight when those plants were yet to exist? I understand what Luckers says that the 'same evil' created both. But I prefer to think of the Blight as something that formed due to the corruption and evil that seeped out of the Bore. Aginor meanwhile created the trollocs and I can't see how he would be able to use that 'evil and corruption' in the same way. He may have used the One Power, True Power or who else knows what but I can't seem to equate the two.

 

They are pure evil, they are far from human.  I am willing to suspend my disbelief.  You are projecting our culture onto a completely alien on that can never exist.

 

Mydraal yes. But trollocs are not that far.