R.J. didn't lie but "Mazrim Taim" is Demandred

[Majsju]

 

 

There isn't a limit to the number of Chosen there can be. Before the Bore was patched up by Lews Therin, there were 30ish Chosen. Of the Forsaken, however, there are only 13. "Chosen" and "Forsaken" are not the same thing. The Forsaken are 13 specific Chosen who got caught in the Dark One's prison because their timing sucks.

 

Well, no. Chosen was the name the Aes Sedai who turned to the shadow during the AOL gave themselves. So Chosen and Forsaken is the exact same thing.

The 13 Chosen who got caught with the DO happened to be the highest ranking Chosen at that particular time, but ranks with the Shadow had a tandency to constantly change, so had LTTs attack come a week later, half of them could have been replaced.

[Mr Ares]

Why are you guys talking about kilts and skirts, when this is a thread about MAzrim Taim, and the fact that he is Demandred.

Because Taimandred is a theory which has been comprehensively destroyed, has no backing at all, the author has flat out stated is wrong, and is disproved by evidence in the books, thus leaving this topic utterly redundant if debate is to remain on topic. Either we all leave this thread, or we chat about off topic stuff. Kilts are as good a topic as any, as are skirts.

 

so if he said he never posed as taim then he could still be taim right?

No. Absolutely not. He has never gone around claiming to be called Taim is what it means. Taim does go around claiming to be called Taim. Therefore Taim is not Demandred. Demandred didn't recognize Flinn at the Cleansing. Taim would. Demandred is not Taim. Taim is Taim. He is not anyone else and no-one else is him. Moridin is not Taim, Demandred is not Taim, Be'lal is not Taim, Asmodean is not Taim, I am not Taim, you are not Taim, Majsju is not Taim, Luckers is not Taim, no-one, with the possible exception of Taim, is Taim.

 

Now, can we get this thread back on topic? I think the forces of the Light would be much better equipped going into TG if they were wearing kilts. Because they could terrify the Shadow by threatening to reveal the greatest secret of the British Armed Forces - what is worn underneath.

 

Before the Bore was patched up by Lews Therin, there were 30ish Chosen.

You think the Shadow managed to nearly conquer the world with only 30ish channelers? All of their channelers were called Chosen by the Shadow, and Forsaken by the Light and there were thousands, if not millions of them.

[Avery]

Hmm, I was under the impression that "Chosen" was a higher rank of Dreadlord, and there were only a small group of them, half-ish of which got caught in the bore.

[Majsju]

Dreadlords is what the channelers who fought for the shadow during the trolloc war were called.

[Generic Aelfinn #2]

did someone get kicked out of the club then?

 

There isn't a limit to the number of Chosen there can be. Before the Bore was patched up by Lews Therin, there were 30ish Chosen. Of the Forsaken, however, there are only 13. "Chosen" and "Forsaken" are not the same thing. The Forsaken are 13 specific Chosen who got caught in the Dark One's prison because their timing sucks.

 

the terms 'forsaken' and 'chosen' refer to the SAME PEOPLE.  whichever name you use simply depends on whether you were a member of the Light or of the Shadow, respectively.  roughly half of all aes sedai(both male and female) in the AOL turned to the dark during the war of power.  'THE forsaken'(the most common usage of the term 'forsaken' in the books) refers to the thirteen forsaken who were trapped in the Bore as a result of Lews Therin's Strike on Shayol Ghul.

 

also, dreadlords were CHANNELERS THAT TURNED TO THE DARK DURING THE TROLLOC WARS while forsaken CHANNELERS THAT TURNED TO THE DARK DURING THE WAR OF POWER

[Sabio]

In the big white book it makes it sound as if Dreadlord and forsaken are the same. 

Under dreadlords it states:

 

"All of the dreadlords, as they were known, traveled to the Pit of Dhoom in Shayol Ghul to dedicate their souls to the Dark Lord.  The best of them were given power and ability beyond thast of others, making them almost demigods.  Among themselves they were known as "Those Chosen to Rule the World Forever", or simply "the Chosen".  To all others, they were known as "the Forsaken". 

 

And were many of them but says by last year of the war none of the Aes sedai who went to the shadow who equaled or approached the strength of those now called Forsaken were alive, yet not one of them was reported to of died by enemy action.  The ones sealed in the bore were the 13 strongest of the Chosen that survived this winnowing process.

[Majsju]

The BWB is wrong about that, as with a number of other things. Which is deliberate, RJs idea was that it should look like it was written by a historian in Randland, and as such with flawed and fragmented information about a number of things.

 

 

[CatinaSedai]

i dont wanna come across as a wheel of time nerd, but i got that big white book which is like a textbook about wheel of time.  it describes the dreadlords as those who were once aes sedai who forsook the light and worshiped the dark one.  among them were the chosen which were also called the forsaken.  wasnt there only supposed to be 13 of them like lanfear brought up?  when she had her pow wow with rahvin and them she mentiones that there are only 9 or so of them left.  so there is a finite amount right?

[Majsju]

Lets try this again...

 

Chosen/Forsaken: The Aes Sedai who turned to the DO in the AOL.

 

Dreadlords: The channelers who turned to the DO during the trolloc wars.

 

And there are only 13 Chosen/Forsaken in the books, because the rest of them died 3000 years ago.

[CatinaSedai]

there is something about the number 13 in these books.  like 13 of the black ajah and 13 people needed to still rand.  i am pretty sure that there were only 13 forsaken or chosen too.  it was hard to keep track with those two forsaken coming back and all.  maybe taim replaced one of these guys or maybe he is like rand in that he doesnt know he is a forsaken reborn or something. 

[Majsju]

Not sure if I follow you here but...

 

There are 13 Forsaken in the books because they were present at SG when LTT led the strike that sealed the bore in the AOL. Thus, these 13 were the only forsaken that survived. The rest of the forsaken were hunted down, died in the Breaking, or went into hiding until they died from old age.

 

4 forsaken have come back, not two.

 

Rand is most definitly not a forsaken reborn.

 

Whether or not Taim had an AOL incarnation that was a forsaken is quite irrelevant, since except for those bound to the Wheel like Rand and the Heroes, the soul is Tabula Rasa with every new incarnation.

[CatinaSedai]

so who do you think taim is then?  it does seem like he hears voices in his head as much as rand does.

[Majsju]

 

 

Taim is taim, a third age character who decided the grass was greener on the other side. (He can not have visited the Blight before turning ;D)

[algspkr]

I believe that a big part of the problem people are having with dreadlords and forsaken/chosen is that the definitions of the words have changed somewhat.

 

Originally the Forsaken/Chosen were men and women who could channell in the Age of Legends and served the shadow.  Those two things were the only requirements.  There were thousands of them and so they did have some sort of hirearchy, at the top were the thirteen we have met.  When LTT sealed the bore these thirteen were meeting with the Dark One at SG resulting in them being trapped inside the seal, think of a bug caught in the rim of a jar as you close it not in the jar, but not in the world.

 

As the third age progressed the other forsaken were forgotten leaving only the thirteen at the top of the food chain in memory changing the meaning of forsaken/chosen from a person who can channell to a servant of the shadow whose authority lies just beneath the Dark One.

 

Ishamael was not fully sealed and achieved a limitted freedom every thousand years.  During his first trip out he started the Trolloc Wars.  One strategy he employed for this fight was the recruitment of channellers.  These seem to have been split into two groups, one the Black Ajah who worked inside the Tower and the Dreadlords who led the Shadow's armies into battle.  The Black Ajah survived to present time and is generally thought of as a step below the Forsaken, which if true (it is not completely true, but may be a good general assumption) they are a huge step below the Forsaken.

 

The title Dreadlord has come to represent a high rank in the shadow, somewhere between the Black Ajah and the Forsaken, this is shown in the prologue of TGH when Carridin sees himself as having a shot at becoming a Dreadlord and expecting to be at a higher rank than the Aes Sedai present at the party.

 

Now that I read this it seems that I have not communicated my thoughts very well, oh well clearness is not exactly a requirement on a Taimandred thread, so I will end by saying that I believe that Taim was born in the Third Age, and has authority equal to the Forsaken.

 

 

[CatinaSedai]

do you think that taim decided to join the dark lord before or after he claimed to be the dragon reborn?

[Sabio]

After, I don't even think he was a darkfriend when he went to Rand.  Since he gave Rand the seal to the darklords prison.  No way if he was serving the darklord that would of been allowed. 

 

I think his being so ambitious made it easy for the forsaken to recruit him.  Most likely Osan'gar did it after hiding in the black tower.

[Mr Ares]

it does seem like he hears voices in his head as much as rand does.

Does it? What makes you think that? Oh, and Taim is Taim is Taim. He is no-one else and no-one else is him, nor have they ever been.

 

This might be helpful to some people who still struggle with the distinction between Dreadlords, Forsaken and Chosen:

Week 12 Question: In Winters Heart, you mention that back in the Age of Legends, there were several other Forsaken that the Dark One had killed because he suspected they would betray him. What's their story? Were those people ever as high ranking as the 13 survivors, or where they more like high-ranking Dreadlords then actual Forsaken?

 

Robert Jordan Answers: First off, Dreadlords was the name given to men and women who could channel and sided with the Shadow in the Trolloc Wars. Yes, the women were called Dreadlords, too. They might have liked to call themselves "the Chosen," like the Forsaken, but feared to. The real Forsaken might not have appreciated it when they returned, as prophecies of the Shadow foretold would happen. Some of the Dreadlords had authority and responsibility equivalent to that of the Forsaken in the War of the Shadow, however. They ran the Shadow's side of the Trolloc Wars, though without the inherent ability to command the Myrddraal that the Forsaken possess, meaning they had to negotiate with them. Overall command at the beginning was in another's hands.

 

Forsaken was the name given to Aes Sedai who went over to the Shadow in the War of the Shadow at the end of the Age of Legends, though of course, they called themselves the Chosen, and despite the tales of the "current"Age, there were many more than a few of them. Since they occupied all sorts of levels, you might say that many were equivalent to some of the lesser Dreadlords, but it would be incorrect to call them so. At the time, they were all Forsaken—or Chosen—from the greatest to the least.

 

Some of those Forsaken the Dark One killed were every bit as high-ranking as the thirteen who were remembered, and who you might say constituted a large part of the Dark One's General Staff at the time of the sealing. With the Forsaken, where treachery and backstabbing were an acceptable way of getting ahead, the turnover in the upper ranks was fairly high, though Ishamael, Demandred, Lanfear, Graendal, Semirhage, and later Sammael, were always at the top end of the pyramid. They were very skilled at personal survival, politically and physically.

 

In large part the thirteen were remembered because they were trapped at Shayol Ghul, and so their names became part of that story, though it turned out that details of them, stories of them, survived wide-spread knowledge of the tale of the actual sealing itself. Just that they had been sealed away. Other Forsaken were left behind, so to speak, free but in a world that was rapidly sliding down the tube. The men eventually went mad and died from the same taint that killed off the other male Aes Sedai. They had no access to the Dark One's protective filters. The women died, too, though from age or in battle or from natural disasters created by insane male AesSedai or from diseases that could no longer be controlled because civilization itself had been destroyed and access to those who were skilled in Healing was all but gone. And soon after their deaths, their names were forgotten, except for what might possibly be discovered in some ancient manuscript fragment that survived the Breaking. A bleak story of people who deserved no better, and not worth telling in any detail.

 

Since he gave Rand the seal to the darklords prison. No way if he was serving the darklord that would of been allowed.

Why not? Because you say so? Can't someone high up in the Shadow's hierarchy have decided to give it to him? To give to Rand? To help get Rand to trust him? You believe his story of how he found it?

[CatinaSedai]

when rand first meets taim he thinks the man is a bit crazy and he acts like he senses a raging anger about him.  i think that taim also has someone like lews in his head. 

[Mr Ares]

when rand first meets taim he thinks the man is a bit crazy and he acts like he senses a raging anger about him.  i think that taim also has someone like lews in his head.

You're the only one that does. I can't say I've seen any evidence of it. Quotes?

[Hybrid]

Ishamael, Demandred, Lanfear, Graendal, Semirhage, and later Sammael, were always at the top end of the pyramid. They were very skilled at personal survival, politically and physically.

 

LOL.  This quote cracked me up.  Sammael was skilled enough at personal survival to survive betrayals of other Chosen and the Dark One's anger, but not skilled enough to outrun a slow, glowy mist.  I always hated that death.  So anticlimatic.

 

Back on topic, remember this post of yours, Mr. Ares (from the thread Traitors)?

I also think he is actually Mazrim Taim, cunningly disguised as Mazrim Taim. It's a brilliant plan. Who would ever expect the man of being himself?

It is indeed a more brilliant plan than you can imagine, because NO ONE can believe that Mazrim Taim is in fact Mazrim Taim... ::)

[Majsju]

 

LOL.  This quote cracked me up.  Sammael was skilled enough at personal survival to survive betrayals of other Chosen and the Dark One's anger, but not skilled enough to outrun a slow, glowy mist.  I always hated that death.  So anticlimatic.

 

 

 

A bit hard to outrun something that appears from out of nowhere due to Rands balefire...

[Hybrid]

He could have just gated away...

I mean, Sammael is characterized as not liking to give ground to an opponent, but that's kind of ridiculous.  I would have preferred something more like the Rand vs. Rahvin battle.

[Majsju]

Gating away still takes time.

 

Sammael stands ready to lay the smackdown on Rand as soon as Rand appears, so obviously Sammael would have a good check on his surroundings. Then from out of nowhere mashadar appears. Read the incident again, Rand is convinced that there was not enough time to weave a gateway, and he should have quite a good grasp on how long that would take.

[Hybrid]

Will do.  I am on LOC on my rereads, and I'm taking the time to read much more slowly, since I tend to miss things.

 

I will still think it's a bit anticlimatic, though.

[Majsju]

Would not most of Rands encounters with the forsaken be more or less anticlimatic?

 

Be'lal: We see the trap, we have recently seen Rand defeat Ishamael, not once but twice, so we should get an epic battle. What happens? Be'lal trashtalks a bit, pwns Rand until Moiraine balefires him from behind. If Ishamael had not showed up the end of TDR would have been even more anticlimactic than ACOS.

 

Rahvin: Oh my, Rand is royally pissed from the beginning because he thinks Rahvin killed Morgase. He does not get happier when he sees mat and Avi die. But what happens? They run around for a while in T'A'R until Nynaeve shows up and sets rahvin on fire. Ok, not That anticlimactic, but maybe not the epic showdown we were hoing for.

 

Semirhage: We see the trap, we know something big is coming...Rand falls off his horse, and when he wakes up the others have dealt with Semirhage. And, we do not even get to see how that happened!

 

But this is one of the things I love with WOT, Rand is not a "superhero" who overpowers everything that comes in his way.