The Shadow's Economy

[Bob T Dwarf]

All of which might be.

 

Problem is that, what with all the sniffing and skirt smoothing and spanking and debasing and posing and posturing, there never seemed to be enough time or pages for Jordan to lay any of the "How It Works" out for us.

 

If that's OK with everybody, great.  Hang in there with whatever theory for "How" rocks your boat.

 

For myself, it's simply gotten to be too much of too little.  I can't sustain the suspension of that much disbelief for this long.  I can't any longer take the Trollocs and Myrddraal seriously as a threat.  The menace and impending doom for the Light I should be feeling at this point in the story just isn't there.

[RAND AL THOR]

I can't any longer take the Trollocs and Myrddraal seriously as a threat.  The menace and impending doom for the Light I should be feeling at this point in the story just isn't there.

 

I know.

They were so intimidating in the beginning but it has reduced drastically now. However, luckily RJ introduced still more chilling forces of the dark like the gholam etc to make up for it.

 

How many people were with Rand in KOD when the attack came? Not too many I think. Surely less than 100 channelers overall. They managed to beat of a very strong attack. When all the Forces of the Light are arrayed along the Blightborder, I can't see the trollocs as posing a major threat.

[Mysterious]

Bob the answer you're looking for is in The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time by Teresa Patterson. I can't exactly remember how the Trolloc economy sustains itself but I do remember that the society has stagnated to a tribal culture and has not progressed any further.

 

 

 

 

Mysterious

[Jonn]

I can't any longer take the Trollocs and Myrddraal seriously as a threat.  The menace and impending doom for the Light I should be feeling at this point in the story just isn't there.

 

I know.

They were so intimidating in the beginning but it has reduced drastically now. However, luckily RJ introduced still more chilling forces of the dark like the gholam etc to make up for it.

 

How many people were with Rand in KOD when the attack came? Not too many I think. Surely less than 100 channelers overall. They managed to beat of a very strong attack. When all the Forces of the Light are arrayed along the Blightborder, I can't see the trollocs as posing a major threat.

 

That small group that got attacked at the farm in Tear included four of the strongest in the  world in the Power, two of them who are at least forsaken comparable in strength plus Rand being probably the strongest of all, besides Morridin.

 

Also note that Lews Therin interceded with weaves specifically designed to kill shadow spawn. There were also no Dreadlords to counter either, which leads them to believe that the paltry 100,000 were there simply as an opening jab at Rand. They were probably led in by Elza somehow. They effectively forced Rand to play his hand sooner than he actually wanted to.

 

So to think that the Shadow has the resources to send so many to die just to flush Rand out, that thought alone is kind of chilling, that is if you can get past the staggering logistical problems you can perceive. 

 

I have the eerie feeling that we're going to find out something very disturbing about how it all works in the final books.

 

Why? Because until Death Gates, it honestly never even occurred to me to wonder why the Forsaken couldn't just use Gateways to pour in thousands of Trollocs into a city in an instant. I mean, I did wonder fleetingly, but I guess I just put it down to availability of numbers...I mean I did wonder in the beginning.

 

If you really think about it...God, it never was clear to us how many trollocs there were until Knife of Dreams. We had read about how they swarmed the world during the Trolloc Wars and the War of Power. We even saw a number of them in an army in the first book at Tarwin's Gap, but then again, that was only about 20-30 thousand, right? I don't remember, but it wasn't that many compared to 100,000 in Tear.

 

If the shadow can send 100,000 just as an opening jab, that's kind of startling. With the world split apart as it is at the moment, the only real chance to survive would be to have either a large number of channelers nearby, and even so, when the Dreadlords reveal themselves, that's no guarantee of safety, or you must be in the company of some of the strongest channelers.

 

The odds of that aren't great for your average Joe farmer in Ghealdan.

 

There was a note on that in Knife of Dreams. I think it was Rand who offhandedly mused to himself how every farm and village between the Spine of the World and that farmhouse in Tear might have be totally destroyed, their inhabitants all killed and digested by the trollocs they were burning at that moment. The reason they received no warning would indicate that this fact was likely.

 

I think that the reason the trollocs and myrdraal have lost a lot of their bite is because the narrative is following the heroes of the story who are uniquely equipped to deal with those threats as relatively minor ones. If we had it from the perspective of Joe the Farmer in the Tairen countryside, the narrative for that segment would have been rather abruptly short.

 

So in that case I do think we need to have another scene similar to the Two Rivers siege sequence where the protagonists can't just vaporize a hundred trollocs with a glance.

 

Happily I think this is definitely going to occur in the next book. What the attack on the farmhouse showed us as an audience is; The Shadow hasn't even shown a tenth of what they are capable of unleashing upon the world up to this point.

 

Take note of how Sanderson talks about the books in his re-read of the series. I think he gives us notes of how things are coming to be in his thoughts leading up to the end. 

[RAND AL THOR]

The Shadow hasn't even shown a tenth of what they are capable of unleashing upon the world up to this point.

 

The Cleansing of Saidin was a major blow against the Dark.

The Shadow would have wanted to prevent it at all costs.

The Shadow knew it was due to occur and had plenty of time to prepare.

 

It was not prevented.

 

The Forsaken screwed up big time there.

The Forsaken are the heads of the Dark directly beneath the Dark One.

I doubt we are going to see a sudden surge in efficiency among the Shadow.

If we do, I am guessing that it may not be very convincing.

The only opportunity that I can see for the Shadow to suddenly become strong and efficient would be if Shaidar Haran takes total control of all Shadow activities immediately. They are all scared of him.

 

[Lord Nik]

hmmm i know they messsed up on the oops saidin is clean now buisness but i think the shadow is going to have a major offensive and pwn the world storming out of the blight

[RAND AL THOR]

Since we are all expecting a surge of trollocs from the Blight, it would be nice if TG initiated in a completely different way!

[Jonn]

The Shadow hasn't even shown a tenth of what they are capable of unleashing upon the world up to this point.

 

The Cleansing of Saidin was a major blow against the Dark.

The Shadow would have wanted to prevent it at all costs.

The Shadow knew it was due to occur and had plenty of time to prepare.

 

It was not prevented.

 

The Forsaken screwed up big time there.

The Forsaken are the heads of the Dark directly beneath the Dark One.

I doubt we are going to see a sudden surge in efficiency among the Shadow.

If we do, I am guessing that it may not be very convincing.

The only opportunity that I can see for the Shadow to suddenly become strong and efficient would be if Shaidar Haran takes total control of all Shadow activities immediately. They are all scared of him.

 

 

I can't agree totally with what you are asserting here. The topic I was discussing was the number of forces the Shadow could throw into the south lands.

 

The Cleansing was an event that I think no number of trollocs would have made any difference even if the Shadow could predict where the event would occur.

 

I'm not even convinced the Forsaken really knew what was happening at Shadar Logoth even after they got there. All they knew is that Rand was doing something big, very big and he was using the Choedan Kal. Naturally, they weren't too keen on just launching a direct attack at him, and as it turned out, he had planned well to set up a defensive ring so that he was not bothered.

 

Even so, the Forsaken nearly got off a shot that would have ended it all in probably a huge disaster, had Elza not ironically interfered and unknowingly killed Aginor. Had "Dashiva" managed to disrupt the process, who knows what might have happened?

 

Yet, as for what this has to do with how much of a threat shadowspawn are...

[Lord Nik]

Since we are all expecting a surge of trollocs from the Blight, it would be nice if TG initiated in a completely different way!

and have what... all the seanchan throw off there disguises to have.. TROLLOCS! AND THEY STORM FROM THE SOUTH MUHAHAHAHA

[Luckers]

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.

 

Many of the creatures that inhabit the blight were created by Aginor--Graendal states this. They survive without any access to untainted meals, and if they can the Trollocs can. And do, this we know as a fact since raids into the borderlands could not sustain the Trolloc population we know to exist.

[Jonn]

I just had another thought about trollocs...I would gather that most trollocs don't actually live that long. Given how prone to violence they are, their violent life circumstances as a whole and how corrupted their natural environment is, i would think their motivating factors would boil down mostly to survival and fleeting status amongst their clan mates.

 

That being so, perhaps we can assume that like animals who live in such circumstances of pure survival, trollocs must grow and mature at an elevated rate.

 

Your standard race horse is bred to reach its peak within just a few years of having been born, yes?

Still a standard race horse is amazingly strong and fast. And as has recently been highlighted, they have been drugged up for the most part to improve their performance in the short haul, sacrificing their health in the long haul.

 

Taking the animal model further, perhaps we can guess that female trollocs don't produce just one offspring during birth, but perhaps are made to produce larger broods or litters.

 

So if we have animals that mature fast and come in broods, their ability to populate in a smaller amount of time would be evident. It would also explain the limited intelligence of most of the population if what they're mostly used for is to kill in battle. This would neatly explain why myrddraal are often needed to act as the will of many trollocs at once. Their inherent ability to survive and specific strength and supernatural abilities are obvious assets that the trollocs would likely think useful.

 

The other thought that I have has to do with the hive mind model or perhaps the elder/shaman model. While most trollocs live a relatively short span of a lifetime, there are probably a select minority that do survive longer than most, gain experience and special skill and status to take a senior role in how groups of trollocs operate. Then again it may be a myrddraal taking the lead most of the time, but there might be a more sizeable number of older "wiser" trollocs that stand nearer to the top. I think Narg is a good example, as he is certainly not typical of most trollocs, but surprisingly this trolloc had developed the ability to speak the human language, which could lead us to believe that trolloc limits of intelligence may not be entirely understood by the human population.

 

Think about the standard skills a trolloc has. They possess their own language. They instinctively know how to fight and kill. They wear clothes, and judging by their size and the lack of human run Trolloc clothiers, they either buy their accessories at the Ogier depot or they in fact make their own clothes as well as their tools and weapons.

 

Think of the environments humans can live in. The Aiel live in one of the most extreme environments described in the books, yet we have relatively few who have major qualms about how they are able to survive and support large numbers in the Waste. The seafolk live their lives on the open seas, rarely touching solid land if they can help it.

 

These environments are pretty extreme, but as humans we know what we are capable of doing in extreme environments.

 

The Blight is more of a concept to us and understandably we have a hard time coming to grips with what it would be like to try to live there. How could a human or animal live there? Well, most humans can't live there BUT as has been pointed out by many already, animals do live there and thrive and this includes trollocs.

 

I think of the Blight as a swath of land corrupted by the radioactive waste of the Shadow's power. Now, we know radiation is deadly to us, but we also know that at some levels radiation will not kill immediately. It would be unwise to live in places that are contaminated, and if you did live in such a place, you probably wouldn't live long if you weren't especially equipped to.

 

When it comes to the blight, how do we know that the trollocs over the years haven't become specifically adapted to survive in this environment of corruption?

 

Like I supposed before, the general population probably doesn't live that long anyway, but the traits they could have might make it possible for them to thrive in such a place where a normal human would find it impossible to survive.

 

High birth rate.

Rapid maturation.

Natural physical strength and heartiness.

Hive mind, Chieftain/Myrddraal minority rule.

Developed compatible constitution to survive the corrupted environment.

 

With these factors in play, who is to say that there aren't large encampments where clans have adapted the environment to suit their needs?

 

I can go with the ideas that have already been posted about the trollocs being able to eat whatever is necessary for them to sustain themselves. In the blight they would have had 3000 years to have developed their affinity to their surroundings. Like they often say on the Travel channel, if you want to know what to eat in a foreign place, eat where the locals eat.

 

As no one has ever come back to tell the tale of where trollocs eat in the blight and what, there's no basis to deny that it is plausible to find adequate food there for the local population.

 

[Cockta]

Maybe the trollocs have farms where they grow animals that can live in the blight! I have said this before, but no one seems to listen to me! If you want to sustain an amry of millions of trollocs and myrdraal, then you need something more than just hunting for "deer" to survive; you would need farms to sustain every trolloc and myrdraal, and other species in the army.

[Bob T Dwarf]

High birth rate and rapid maturation just magnify the problem.  You need more food, not less.  You'd have more time alloted to securing that food and less available for making tools and equipment; for training of any kind.

 

The hordes that periodically come boiling out of the Blight is a real discrepancy from Jordan's whole "this-is-a-world-of-ordinary-cause-and-effect-with-slightly-different-laws-of-physics" mythos.  They don't obey any rules of cause and effect.  They just magically appear, fully formed, fully armed and armored; hale and hearty, with blood in their eyes.  And, in numbers their home environment cannot support.

 

[RAND AL THOR]

 

When it comes to the blight, how do we know that the trollocs over the years haven't become specifically adapted to survive in this environment of corruption?

 

 

To adapt, you need to be born with a mutation which is helpful for your survival in the environment. Over time, the others die out when there is some sort of limiting factor and you and your offspring survive because you have the advantageous characteristic.

 

Hence for adaptation we need a complete set of a series of life cycles. But you also proposed that trollocs are killing machines that likely will not live long.

 

3000 years is a long time. But truly, it is not enough for such dramatic evolution.

[Llewin]

Since we are all expecting a surge of trollocs from the Blight, it would be nice if TG initiated in a completely different way!

 

Agreed... Like maybe armies of 100,000+ trollocs/myrddraal/etc pouring out of the way gates in Andor, Tear, Cairhien, Tar Valon, etc...all at the same time... Oh wait, they already locked all the way gates...damn!

[Llewin]

I just had another thought about trollocs...

 

I can go with the ideas that have already been posted about the trollocs being able to eat whatever is necessary for them to sustain themselves. In the blight they would have had 3000 years to have developed their affinity to their surroundings. Like they often say on the Travel channel, if you want to know what to eat in a foreign place, eat where the locals eat.

 

As no one has ever come back to tell the tale of where trollocs eat in the blight and what, there's no basis to deny that it is plausible to find adequate food there for the local population.

 

 

This is a really good point, the Blight did not just appear overnight, it was a slow, steady growth to the state we saw it in at the end of eye of the world, who knows how many years/generations/centuries it took for the blight to fully form, or if even 300 years ago it was as 'corrupt' as it is now, in the past generation what with the seals weakening and the DO's influence growing...

 

Trollocs probably had centuries to learn to adapt to their slowly changing environment, to figure out which things they could get away with eating and which they could not.

[Lord Nik]

Maybe the DO has his own supply of evil food to feed the Trollocs.

Maybe he has an endless stream of Mcdonalds Hamburgers streaming from the bore to corrupt the monsters. This is plausible because we know Trollocs will eat almost ANYTHING no matter how gross.

[Llewin]

Maybe the DO has his own supply of evil food to feed the Trollocs.

Maybe he has an endless stream of Mcdonalds Hamburgers streaming from the bore to corrupt the monsters. This is plausible because we know Trollocs will eat almost ANYTHING no matter how gross.

 

Quite right... and it would certainly explain where the "mcnugget" came from..

[Shaidar]

Actually in the threads about whether the Dark One is winning or not, like this one, I raised the exact same issue of how the Blight can support so many Trollocs, to illustrate how the DO is at least superficially weaker than we think.

 

For what it's worth I'll reproduce it here since I think it is very germane to the discussion:

 

The Shadow

 

I am including 4mn Trollocs. I think it's safe to assume they are a hunter-gathering society (unless someone's seen intensive food production in the Blight...but I doubt it). Hunter-gatherers are at most ten times less dense in population than settled agricultural societies. Furthermore, I kind of doubt the Blight is exactly a bounteful paradise with lots of edible fish, game and berries. Rough calculations. Westland population is 50mn ppl (it's settled areas are consistent in size with those of Dark Age Europe, when pop was at 20-30mn; however unlike them the Westlands have big cities with hundreds of thousands like Caemlyn, Tear, Illian, Tanchico, Bandar Eban and Tar Valon). So Trolloc population is at most maybe 10mn, since the area of the Blight that is in the Westland-Aiel-Share continent seems to be twice as big as the Westlands. Females don't fight so that's 5mn Trollocs. Some are young, but they mature quickly, so let's assume there's 4mn of them. 1 Myrddraal per 50 Trollocs (in reality probably closer to 1 in 200...but let's be generous with the Shadow, they need it).

 

4,000,000 Trollocs *3

80,000 Myrddraal *20

 

4.080mn soldiers (13,600 points)

 

So numerical odds of 2.8 to 1, value-based odds of 3.2 to 1, in favour of the Shadow.

(Or those currently controlled by/allied with Rand, 1050mnvs4080mn and 3110vs13600, so 1 to 3.9 numerically and 4.4 by value.)

 

(More evidence - the fact that on Shayol Ghul, when Demandred was there, only a few people were waiting to be sacrificed to make the Fades' black blades. They wear out every few months...say 4 months. If that's a typical rate - one sword every 10 minutes, then there's 360 swords in a day, 10,000 in a month, 40,000 Myrddraal. Make that 80,000 as it says the Fades were gnashing their teeth over the fact that their swords weren't being renewed fast enough.)

 

It's tricky counting the Trolloc population and rests on assumptions and inferences. I've explained my reasoning. Blight = 2x area of Westlands. Westlands = 50 million people. Hunter-gatherer population density = 1/10 those of agricultural societies. Therefore 10mn Trollocs. Half are male, 80% are of fighting age = 4mn Trollocs. (If anything, that number is inflated. Trollocs presumably need a higher caloric intake than humans, plus the Blight is hardly a garden of Eden teeming with nice edible meat.)

 

If we take 4mn, we know Trollocs work in fists of 100-200 - let's say average of 150 (also the basic human military unit). If we assume a Fade for every 150 military age Trollocs, that's about 25,000 Fades. Also read Demandred's POV at the start of LoC.

If we assume one sword every 10 mins and renewal has to be done every 6 months, and currently 1/2 of the Myrddraal are gnashing their teeth over not having a new sword, then 50,000 Myrdraal. If a sword every 20 mins, then 25,000 Myrrdraal. In any case we can assume the range of Myrrdraal is 20,000-100,000. But I still tend to the lower figures, like for Trollocs.

 

In the BWB, RJ says that Trollocs do indeed reproduce sexually. Their females do nothing but breed (something they enjoy doing). Trollocs mature very quickly, a matter of two to three years (this is a matter of the animal strain manifesting itself). Presumably, they die after 15-25 years. They are 'in the wild', the only 'state obligation' being to perform military service until they die.

 

This brings me to my next point. Like with animals, the population can flunctuate wildly (something which further complicates efforts to work out their population based on stats). A loss of 100,000 is small, even if it represents 100,000/4,000,000 = 2.5% of the population, because of the huge rates of natural increase Trollocs are capable of. This loss can be covered in a month or so.

 

But aevogt brings up a valid point. It is hard to estimate the Trolloc population. My guesstimate of 4mn is based on the long-term sustainable population. It would be prudent to assume that since the debacle at the end of tEotW, steps have been taken to bolster the Trolloc population and keep from mounting attacks on the Borderlands. Dark strategists might have decided, two or three years ago, that yes, this population pressure will strain the carrying capacity of the Blight - but why worry, when most of them will be going south in a few years (Last Battle) anyway?

 

So I admit that it is quite possible that there are 8mn, or even more, fighting Trollocs - meaning a total Trolloc population of around 20mn. Maybe female Trollocs will also be recruited into the Shadow's armies for the Last Battle, bringing the total of fighting Trollocs to 15-20mn.

 

In summary...

 

To have a balanced physical confrontation you will need the Shadow to have something in the order of 20mn+ Trollocs, including their females and young.

 

Based on comparing the carrying capacity of the Blight to human prehistoric societies, you have at most 10mn Trollocs. In fact considering the much larger mass of the Trollocs, their predilection for meat and their and the blighted nature of the, erm, Blight, their population in reality cannot number more than in the low millions and in fact probably in the hundreds of thousands.

 

I can only conclude that, contrary to conventional wisdom, RJ did not throughly think through every last detail of the books and that we must just accept the idea of many millions of large heat-emitting beasts roaming and living in a wasteland as it stands. After all he was a physicist not an anthropologist.

 

Of course there can always be some kind of dark supernatural explanation. For instance, that Trollocs, like Fades, are not of this world and are actually the constructs of the sum of the world people's fears and imaginations, which take physical form in some kind of nightmarish timeless Zone around Shayol Ghul and when within it require no material sustenance. Would also explain why the Shadowspawn in Seanchan were weaker and smaller in number.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Maybe the DO has his own supply of evil food to feed the Trollocs.

Maybe he has an endless stream of Mcdonalds Hamburgers streaming from the bore to corrupt the monsters. This is plausible because we know Trollocs will eat almost ANYTHING no matter how gross.

 

Bbbbbbuttttt - they'd want fries with that.  And EVERYTHING would hafta be SUPER-SIZED!

 

He'd go broke in a week ;D

[Bob T Dwarf]

Nice work Shaidar! 8)

 

 

 

[Llewin]

I am curious Shaidar, does your estimate of even odds put the average soldier of the light (Borderlanders, Seanchan, Aiel, Rand's crossbowman, and all the various other standing armies which are/will be wandering around) as an equal fight with the average Trolloc? How about the average Myrddraal?

[Mysterious]

Trollocs are omnivores not carnivores. They just prefer meat.

 

From The World of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time:

 

Trollocs were omnivorous, but preferred meat: animal, human, or even Trolloc—it did not matter.

 

Some other useful info:

 

While it is certain they wielded more deadly weapons in the Age of Legends, in the present day Trollocs make their own weapons and armor, crude and unfinished compared to the products of human armorers, but quite deadly. They wear no helmets because of the difficulty in crafting adequate protection for the wide variety of misshapen bestial faces. Some Trollocs demonstrate individual preferences through tattoos, carved bone adornments, and the way they wear their hair.

 

Outside of the military unit of the fist, Trollocs are divided into tribelike bands. The known tribes include the Ahf’frait, Al’ghoi, Bhansheen, Dhjin’nen, Ghar’ghael, Ghob’hlin, Gho’hlem, Ghraem’lar, Ko’bal, Kno’mon, Dha’vol, and the Dhai’mon. They are the only constructs from the War of the Shadow known to have developed a social structure and tribal system.

 

 

Also we are basing their population limits because of the nature of the blight. We do not actually know if the blight adversely affects the shadowspawn population.

 

I'll try to compare the Blight to the Aiel Waste in the nature of harshness of environment and edible material.

 

We have seen that the Aiel have large populations even though they live in such a harsh environment. During the Aiel War it was estimated that 4 clans could field 70 000 spears effectively.

 

The Alliance had raised an immense force, approximately one hundred and seventy thousand men, an army of a size certainly not seen since Artur Hawkwing’s day. The Aiel force is often claimed to have been twice as large as the Alliance army, but more reliable estimates put the actual number at one hundred thousand, and possibly less. Recently it has been possible to question the Aiel; they claim that at no time did the four clans have as many as one hundred thousand spears west of the Dragonwall. They put the number in front of Tar Valon at seventy to eighty thousand, half the size of the Alliance army or less. Given the proven reputation of the Aiel as soldiers and their unified command under Janduin, two-to-one odds in favor of the Alliance in no way contradicts the actual outcome of the battle.

 

 

So because they haven't built cities of a great extent and that atleast 1/2 of the population would have to stay behind in the holds I'll calculate as follow.

 

For every fighting spear there would be 4 supporting units (for most nation-states it's around 1 fighting unit for 10 supporting units).

 

So 70 000 x 5 = 350 000.

Double that we get 700 000, so that is the effective population of the 4 clans.

700 000 x 3 = 2 100 000. Total Aiel Population.

 

Now for geographical size the Blight is around 3 times the size of the waste. It stretches from Saldea all the way to Shara. (Sorry can't seem to insert the image)

 

So 2 100 000 x 3 = 6 300 000 (as the Trollocs also have 12 clans) Total population of Trollocs.

 

Now this is all conjecture because it's all based on hypotheses that can't really be backed up with any hard evidence that can be provided in the books.

 

 

 

 

 

Mysterious

[Bob T Dwarf]

Yes, they're omnivores, but...

 

They are fusions of ordinary stock.  Augmented.  Twisted.  But, still they come from ordinary creatures.  Humans.  Boars.  Rams. Raptors., etc. 

 

With magic, almost anything is possible, but magic seems to be in ill favor around here, so how much can Power subject to scientific rules alter them and still end up with something that can survive and reproduce?

[RAND AL THOR]

Nice work people, I didn't expect such detailed calculations.

 

But the question is, did RJ do these calculations? ???