Shara, and padding

[Loophole]

After looking at that map, the land of madmen sort of reminds me of Australia.

 

Just its position and rough shape.

[Lynchgrinch]

After looking at that map, the land of madmen sort of reminds me of Australia.

 

Just its position and rough shape.

 

 

yeeah, me too....also seanchan is america and westland/waste/shara is europe/asia....no africa though...

[Whatsie]

Randland and shara are africa... Blight seems to be eurasia (and Canada, above seanchan)

 

Regarding the bit about "someone should be rounding them up" in Shara... My money is on Demandred. Since he isn't Taim, I'm going with that.

 

 

Sent using Tapatalk

[TheNextMovement]

Leaving aside your Shara theorising, I would just like to address this. From what I can gather, RJ initially pitched WoT to Tor as a trilogy, but Tom Doherty felt that the amount RJ wanted to include made this unlikely. Instead, he persuaded RJ to sign for six books, on the understanding that if the series came in at less than that RJ could write some other books to fulfill his obligations. RJ's planned first book was to include the material from EotW and TGH, possibly even TDR, so the idea of it being a trilogy went out the window before the first book even hit the shelves. Even so, he still felt he could do it in under six, but as time went by he had to revise his views. However, KoD was announced as the penultimate book some months before any announcement was made on his amyloidosis. While we don't know for sure when he was diagnosed, it seems quite likely that he decided to wrap it all up before he was diagnosed, so I would say it is unlikely that it was his illness that convinced him to bring it to a conclusion.

 

I think I may have misremembered, but from what I had read previously it seemed that tDG was supposed to be the end book. I remember reading starting in 94 and reading an interview where Jordan had said he had intended only 3 books. I think I mistakenly assumed that since tDG seems to be a wrap up book (Rand defeats Ba'alzamon, who is mistakenly believed to be the DO) that it was altered from the assumption that Ba'alzamon was the DO to now being Ishamael. I'm probably just remembering wrong though since I hadn't read many interviews with RJ up until his blog appeared on this site during his fight with amyloidosis.

[WhiskyJack]

After looking at that map, the land of madmen sort of reminds me of Australia.

 

Just its position and rough shape.

 

 

yeeah, me too....also seanchan is america and westland/waste/shara is europe/asia....no africa though...

 

I agree..Africa is missing..

[Talmanes]

Why hello there Sergeant, how's it going? And yeah it isn't a perfect representation of our world, but then again it is fantasy.

[Whatsie]

After looking at that map, the land of madmen sort of reminds me of Australia.

 

Just its position and rough shape.

 

 

yeeah, me too....also seanchan is america and westland/waste/shara is europe/asia....no africa though...

 

I agree..Africa is missing..

 

After looking at this on my computer instead of my phone, I'm changing my mind. I agree that Africa is missing. Presumably the AoL landscape was fairly similar to our own, since we supposedly live in the First Age. When they broke the world, they sunk (sank?) or destroyed Africa and bits of Europe.

[anabellee]

I'm so happy I found this thread. :) I was just about to google search for a thread discussing the same thing and ask the same question.

 

 

Another theory I have is that Shara is a land completely ruled and run by the Dark. It might possibly be where Demandred has been all this time regardless of the mentions that Graendal had Sharan servants. In LOTR there was an entire country of men who allied themselves with Sauron. It might be possible that RJ intended to use the Sharans similarly. No one really knows for sure the exact number of Shadowspawn the blight contains, but Trollocs seem easy fodder, Mydraal too sparse, and Darkfriends, although they sprout up in unexpected places, are too busy plotting and trying to gain power to be a militaristic force as they were during the War of Power. The Sharans may be just that. An entire nation (comparatively, a lot more than the forces of the West due to Shara's size) united and secretly ruled by one of the Forsaken to amass a wealth of new Dreadlords (outside of the Black Ajah, since their numbers were sparse as well, and outside of the very very few male channelers that are DFs) and human bodies meant more to fight physically than they were meant to plot and plan from the shadows to disrupt things.

 

I wanted to re-read the series before I read ToM. I'm currently on tSR and plan on buying ToM as soon as I finish the other books. I don't want to know if Shara is mentioned in ToM. But I really hope that something happens with Shara, be it their trumpet call turns the tide of Tarmon Gaidon, or they arrive as the forces of the Dark One in human form.

 

Well *spoliler alert*

 

 

 

You were pretty much dead on Hahaha. I was hoping they were good and would have an awesome ayyad force to rebuild the world into a new age of legends but it was still pretty cool!!!

[dawnflower8]

 

Wow, the Blight is a lot bigger than I thought. I didn't know there was that much up north. I'm wondering, does the Blight also go underneath the Aryth Ocean, because it looks like it does.

 

I'm interested in learning more about Shara also. We know virtually nothing about it, and it's one of the least-developed places in the series. Also, the Land of Madmen. 

 

Looking at this map makes me curious of even more things...what was the event between The First Age and AoL? Whatever it was, it must have COMPLETELY rearranged the landmasses. But we'll never know...

[BFG]

Shara's probably joined at the top of the map via the ice cap, think of the difference in the shape of Antarctica on different projections.

[dawnflower8]

For some reason I think that the Land of Madmen could be Australia. But based on that, Seanchan would be North and South America, The Westlands could be Europe, Aiel Waste the Middle East, and Shara Asia...except that wouldn't explain where Africa went. At first this didn't make sense to me, but the 3rd age HAS to be in our very, very distant future - because the plates will have had to shift a lot, and form all these completely different landmasses and new mountain ranges. The Ages could actually very easily be millions of years long. The 3rd Age was a few thousand and that was considered to be a very short age.

 

I think most people DO think that the Aryth Ocean is the Atlantic Ocean, which makes sense because the Atlantic Ocean is actually spreading and the Pacific is coming together, which explains why the Aryth Ocean is so huge and why the Morenal Ocean is so small. I'm pretty sure that the Sea of Storms is the Indian Ocean. 

 

I'm still trying to figure out what the heck happened to Africa, though.

[BFG]

Interesting rifting in Seanchan then. I think probably best not to think too hard about it, but if you wanted to then Randland, the Aiel Waste and Shara would all have been separate continents at some stage.

[dawnflower8]

Now I wanna do a ton of research on this...

[NeverTame]

I've always wondered why the Land of Madmen exists... Like, what is the point of this place. Why is it there? What madmen? It's on that one map and otherwise just doesn't exist, like, what is the point of you?

[MasterAblar]

There's more than Africa missing. Shara would only constitute a small fraction of Asia. The Westlands are about the size of the US, so around 33% larger than Europe. Shara looks like it's only around 50% larger than the Westlands. So there's a whole lot of Asia that's gone missing, even taking into account the Blight.

[dawnflower8]

I think a lot of the islands and low parts sank. (Indonesia no longer exists)

 

Also, based on the Blight, it seems that all of Eurasia moved even further north than it is. 

[ga2014]

I've always wondered why the Land of Madmen exists... Like, what is the point of this place. Why is it there? What madmen? It's on that one map and otherwise just doesn't exist, like, what is the point of you?

 

We need Australia in the future/past.

[dawnflower8]

 

I've always wondered why the Land of Madmen exists... Like, what is the point of this place. Why is it there? What madmen? It's on that one map and otherwise just doesn't exist, like, what is the point of you?

 

We need Australia in the future/past.

 

But apparently not Africa.

[NeverTame]

Yeah, well, I've never really taken our world/"Age" as being literally intended as the First Age or whatever age before the Age of Legends.

[dawnflower8]

There were references to our age as being the First Age in the book though.

[NeverTame]

There are details that can be interpreted that way, yes. I always saw it as a neat easter egg kind of thing rather than something that was meant to cement our world as a part of the canon timeline.

[dawnflower8]

There were A LOT which were also kind of obvious. Lenn flying to the moon in the belly of an eagle made of fire? Salya walking among the stars? Materese, the wondrous mother of Ind? Elsbet, Queen of the World? Mosk and Merk the giants fighting with spears of fire? The Mercedes-Benz logo?

[NeverTame]

If I have a choice between interpreting them as I said in the previous post, as easter egg kind of "spot the real life reference" things, or as indication that the World of the Wheel is the same world we live in, I'm going to go with the former. I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from the other interpretation, but personally I find it jarring. I prefer my fantasy worlds as completely separate worlds.

[dawnflower8]

I'd rather have it be our world an the past/future, because just thinking about it that way is kinda cool.

[Magicana]

My understanding is that our world pre-dates the Age of Legends - Most likely the 'cataclysm' that created the new age was the discovery of the One Power.