Rand's Late Channeling

[Cockta]

Yeah, but you don't get killed if you don't obey rules. The DO don't like people who slack, and at the same time leech off being immortal and all the toerh bonuses. Being a DF, or DF-channeler is like a job, the same way as AS and Asha'man have jobs as well, or tasks, if you wish to call it that way.

[Mr Ares]

Implication is that if you are mortal, you have reason to fear the Great Lord.

In my family, we're taught that the gods should be afraid of us.

 

You forgot the part about comparing penis size!

I always thought that what you do with it was more important than how big it was.

 

Why would you assume Lews Therin didn't really know what he was getting into? The very fact that he came up with a plan to seal a hole in a prison whom his ex-lover drilled and it worked is reason enough to assume that he knew what he was doing to at least some extent.

I think that's it. I don't think he knew, don't think he could have known, that Shai'tan could taint saidin. I'm not sure whether he still would have tried it if he had known. Could you carry out a plan like that, even knowing not just the potential price of failure but of success? Also, I wouldn't want LTT in charge of the Power at the Last Battle. He plans on going suicidal, remember?

 

Does it strike anyone else that LTT's plan at the sealing was one which completely ignored the immediate threat of the Shadow? Basically, the plan was to seal away Shai'tan, but that still leaves the Shadow's armies at large. The Light is still mere months away from being completely overrun. In fact, any losses in the Strike would only have hastened the end. Alright, with the Shadow being what it is, it needed Shai'tan at the top in order to add some measure of stability, but it is a sign of how desperate the Light was that their plan was amounted to 1: Get rid of Shai'tan. 2: Wait for Shadow to implode. They could easily have been finished off during the early days of the Shadow's collapse into civil war (the three generals leading attacks on the Light were all men who had joined the Shadow through a personal dislike of LTT). The Shadow may eventually have ended up with various "evil empires" ruled by former Chosen with the Light crushed firmly under heel. The inadvertant loss of the most senior Chosen during the Strike undoubtedly benefited the Light and hastened the collapse of the Shadow, but that wasn't planned. Essentially, they were forced to accept a plan that completely ignored the short term problem. Something to be said for LPD's plan after all. Shame it had already failed.

[Cockta]

Yeah, tell me, what exactly happened to the forces of the Shadow right after the DO was leased away? I presume that they went inot a civil war as Mr Ares suggested, but does anybody have something more presise, somehting explaining.

[Luckers]

Actually there is no indication of any form of civil war. We know that Latra Posae Decume became First Amongst Servants after Lews Therin died, and then proceeded to continue to persecute the war against the Shadow for upwards of forty years into the breaking--a period during which she earnt the name Shaidar Nor, the Shadow Slicer, which suggests she was at leas moderately successful. We also know that during the same period the male Forsaken went insane, just as did the male Aes Sedai.

 

But as to internal fights... there's no evidence. Not that i don't think thats possible, but yeah....

[Cockta]

But why did the male Forskaen go nuts, if they were on the side of the DO? And if they went insane, why are they still alive now, and pretty much sane, only a little bit arrogant.

[Luckers]

The male Forsaken you are talking about are those that were trapped in the bore. They were not the only male Forsaken--hundreds of thousands were left in the world when the bore was sealed, and they went just as nuts as their Aes Sedai brothers. As for why those went insane--presumably either the Dark One could not offer them protection, or else chose not to.

 

Both options are possible--the first signs of the Dark One being able to shield men from the taint occurs in the Trolloc Wars nearly 1,500 years later, and its possible the seals had been worn down enough by then to enable him to do what he could not when the bore was first sealed. On the other hand he may of intentionally withheld his protection in order to double the destruction of the Breaking.

[Cockta]

There were so many male forsaken, or dreadlords as they should be called, in the world?!!

[Sabio]

Both options are possible--the first signs of the Dark One being able to shield men from the taint occurs in the Trolloc Wars nearly 1,500 years later, and its possible the seals had been worn down enough by then to enable him to do what he could not when the bore was first sealed. On the other hand he may of intentionally withheld his protection in order to double the destruction of the Breaking.

 

Possible there just wasn't time for him to do it or he couldn't do it.  Is he capable of sheilding every male Forsaken in the world at once, or do they need to go to SG to do it?  Had he shielded them it is possible he might of still won instead of his own armies succumbing to the insanity.

[Luckers]

There were so many male forsaken, or dreadlords as they should be called, in the world?!!

 

Actually they shouldn't be called dreadlords. Dreadlords was the name given to darkfriend channelers during the Trolloc Wars. Those that joined the Shadow in the Age of Legends were called, one and all, Forsaken. Or Chosen by themselves.

 

And yes, there had to be that many of them--roughly 3 percent of the population could channel in the Age of Legends, and their world population had to be somewhere near a billion. Had the Dark not had hundreds of thousands of Forsaken then the Aes Sedai would have destroyed them during the first years of the War.

[Cockta]

Do we knoe exactly how many citizens the world had in AOL?

[Luckers]

A highly industrialized single world culture? Probably not as high as our own due to their high consideration of the world as a whole, but it would be quite high. Hence the billion. It could be higher--and probably was--but i prefer to err on the side of caution. Not that it makes a difference to this discussion--even were it no more than a few dozen million, it still spells hundreds of thousands of channelers. Even in modern times there would be somewhere around 200,000 channelers in the westland area, and likely near four times that over the face of the planet, and currently only one percent of the population can channel. The Age of Legends had a greater population--we know that as a fact--in which three percent could channel, and all would be found--though some few did resist training.

 

 

The Forsaken had to have many hundreds of thousand amongst their number or they would have been shrugged aside in the early days of the war.

[Sabio]

I don't think they had that many channelers.  the Forsaken fought each other as much as they fought their enemy.  The more Forsaken the more they would try to kill each other for power and they didn't need as many channelers since they had numbers.  The huge amount of trollocs would make up for fewer channelers.

[Cockta]

That is why all the DF channelers isn't called Forsaken, but mere Dreadlords.

[Sabio]

Actually they shouldn't be called dreadlords. Dreadlords was the name given to darkfriend channelers during the Trolloc Wars. Those that joined the Shadow in the Age of Legends were called, one and all, Forsaken. Or Chosen by themselves.

 

But like Luckers said in the AOL they were Forsaken.

[Cockta]

Lol, then why are they called Dreadlords now?

[Dakeyras]

As Luckers previously pointed out, "Dreadlords" is the name given to DF channelers during the Trolloc Wars, after the AoLs War of Power when all the original Forsaken were sealed away.

 

The Forsaken are seen as the "Generals" of the Dark One. They're 3000+ years old and have the knowledge from the age of legends. In Randland many view them almost as semi-gods or atleast powerful and evil enough to scare people. I think the BWB claims the Dreadlords didn't take the name "Chosen" because they didn't want to overstep themselves.

[Luckers]

I don't think they had that many channelers.  the Forsaken fought each other as much as they fought their enemy.  The more Forsaken the more they would try to kill each other for power and they didn't need as many channelers since they had numbers.  The huge amount of trollocs would make up for fewer channelers.

 

They did not have huge amounts of Trollocs. When first deployed in the early days of the War they proved fractious and unreliable--ultimately ineffective. It wasn't until it was discovered myrdraal could be used later on in the war that they were brough under control. Even so they would have been low in number as Aginor utilized natural procreation as his method of creating their population. He began long before the war began, but even so it would have taken several generations for them to become a sizeable force. In most part the War of the Shadow was fought by Darkfriend armies suplemented with Shadowspawn aid. A more persuasive argument might be in that normal soldiers were more capable of fighting Aes Sedai using weapons like shocklances... but even that I doubt. The Shadow was winning the war, and in displays of pure strength of arms. Sammael, Demandred and Be'lal were barreling through Light defences, crushing armies that opposed them.

 

There would have been well over a million Aes Sedai prior to the war. If the Forsaken could not field numbers sufficient to meet them--perhaps not equal them, though frankly given they were winning the war I do have a problem with that--then they would have been swept aside.

 

On the subject of Dreadlords/Chosen. Let me see if I can clear it up for you Cockta.

 

Chosen - Short for 'Those Chosen to Rule the World Forever'. This was what the Aes Sedai who joined the Dark One during the War of the Shadow called themselves.

 

Forsaken - This is what the rest of the Light called those Aes Sedai that joined the Dark One during the War of the Shadow.

 

Dreadlord - The name used by both the Light and the Shadow for the darkfriend channelers that fought in the Trolloc Wars. The name was created by the darkfriend channelers themselves, who as Dakeyras pointed out, did not with to overstep themselves. Later it was adopted by the Light.

 

The thirteen surviving Forsaken were one and all leaders of the Chosen in the War of the Shadow, but both they and those they led were called Chosen (or Forsaken by the Light).

 

As an unrelated but interesting side note, they were not the only great leaders of the Shadow. At least sixteen other Chosen held positions of equal power to them during the course of the War. Some were killed by the Light, some by fellow Chosen, and some by the Dark One himself. Some survived through the War of the Shadow, but weren't present at the meeting of the bore. Of those, the men went insane and the women... well they were probably all hunted down and killed by Latra Posae Decume, though some few may have survived and died during the Breaking.

 

 

 

 

[Sabio]

According the the infamous BWB, "It is certain that the creation of trollocs began well before the War of Power, becuase they appeared in large numbers on its very first days."  And "It has been estimated that in excess of ten thousand men, women, and children were taken away every day from the very beginning of the war of power to its end, and this number may of have been doubled during the last 5 years of the war." Initially they were failures but they were effective at causing terror. So they would basicly just let them loose at a city and kill and usually eat everyone they encountered.  Most effective at making your enemy decide wether standing and fighting or running is the best option.

 

It was the capabilites of the Lights generals that made the light hold its own for awhile against the DO's numbers.  Once they lost Sammael, Demandred and Be'lal the light was deprived of most their best talent.  The ones who remained weren't good enough and LTT couldn't do it all by himself.

 

 

 

 

[Luckers]

I'm sorry, but you touch on only part of the reality. That they appeared in 'large' numbers is relative, they appeared in considerable numbers, showing they had been bred prior to the beginning of the war, but did not rival the number of human armies until very late in the war, which the very paragraph you quoted goes on to state. "Prolific breeders, the Trollocs went on to to become the bulk of the Shadow's armies by the end of the war."

 

And your second quote, on the numbers, is not of the numbers of trollocs. The men and women taken were raw material, none of them individually became Trollocs. Aginor utilized breeding as the source of his production, they men and women provided genetic material which was then manipulated and added to animal DNA. The women, as well as the female animals, likely also served as incubators, but these people did not become shadowspawn, and their shadowspawn offspring took time to be brough about. Again from the BWB "The Shadowspawn were created by the Forsaken Aginor from existing genetic material, and designed to breed true whenever possible as natural procreation served a much more reliable method of creating a population than did labratory vats."

 

Initially they were failures but they were effective at causing terror. So they would basicly just let them loose at a city and kill and usually eat everyone they encountered.  Most effective at making your enemy decide wether standing and fighting or running is the best option.

 

You understate the reality. They were complete failures in military use, often turning on their own soldiers. Setting them free on random populations is all well and good, and doubtlessly effective in spreading terror, but what does that have to do with facing channelers? As the BWB states, "if the trollocs were more afraid of the foes than of the commanders they would turn and run, often trampling those commanders in the process."

 

If, as you suggest, the Forsaken did not have a comprable number of channelers, then what is your point in this? Clearly the Trollocs would not be useful against channelers, and thus its a moot point.

 

I'm afraid im confused by your latest post, in what way has anything you've raised stood in evidence that the Shadow could in some way have stood when the light had hundreds of thousands of more channelers than they did?

 

A few points against your initial position, by the way.

 

"During the War of Power far more Friends were seriously dedicated to the Dark One than in modern times, in large part due to Forsaken leadership and the large amount of high ranking officials that were turning to the shadow."

 

They apparently didn't think the Forsaken as an organisation were weaker than the Aes Sedai.

 

And, come to think of it, what evidence do you actually have to suggest the Forsaken would number less?

[Cockta]

I have always thought that the Dark had a lot more units than the Light.

[Luckers]

Units of what?

[Cockta]

Oh sorry, it was the general in myself speaking. I was talking about trollocs and other Shadowspawn.

[Luckers]

Ah. Well then, they didn't have more units of shadowspawn during the first years of the war, though it seems entirely possibly that their armies were larger than the Lights since we know there were a much higher number of Darkfriends in those days, and that those Darkfriend armies were larger than the Shadowspawn ones.

 

During the later years the shadowspawn came to exceed the Darkfriend armies, at which time its probable that they became the strongest military force in the world, and had more units than the Light. This was when the Light began to lose, of course.

 

Btw, did my description of the darkfriend channelers clear up your confusion on the issue? There was a post by RJ that summed up the situation if you want more information. I could probably find it.

[Majsju]

Btw, did my description of the darkfriend channelers clear up your confusion on the issue? There was a post by RJ that summed up the situation if you want more information. I could probably find it.

 

That post is in Question of the Week.

[Sabio]

Luckers brings up many good points.

 

If, as you suggest, the Forsaken did not have a comprable number of channelers, then what is your point in this? Clearly the Trollocs would not be useful against channelers, and thus its a moot point.

 

The point is usually quantity beats quality. You can channal all you want but the over whelming numbers usually wins, the shadow might not had as many channelers but all you need is enough so your armies aren't totally wiped out.  Plus most likely the shadow channelers had the advantage of probably learning destructive weaves before war began added with the shadows willingness to do anything to win.  I think the American civil war is a good example, North had the numbers and South had the better generals.  Once the best military leaders the Light had went to the shadow, the Light couldn't win. 

 

During the War of Power far more Friends were seriously dedicated to the Dark One than in modern times, in large part due to Forsaken leadership and the large amount of high ranking officials that were turning to the shadow."

They apparently didn't think the Forsaken as an organisation were weaker than the Aes Sedai.

 

Don't forget many leaders were forced to the shadow. Some went for power, some outta fear, others through forced compulsion. Frocing one to your side and having them make a public alliegence to the shadow was a favorite tatic of the shadow.  Imagine all the despair that created.

 

Sorry, didn't mean to suggest all the people taken became trollocs just put that in to show the vast numbers being taken for whatever purpose Aginor choose. Wether it was to increase trolloc numbers in the Lab or just to test on.  But even if a fraction taken added to the trolloc numbers, would still be a pretty sizeable number by the end.