Help Fish Understand The Sammael Story Arc in FOH/LOC/COS

[The Fisher King]

One of my biggest gripes in WOT was that RJ BEGAN several semi-compelling SLs, hinted and hinted at their many and dire complexities through often torturous build-up...then, POOF!!! ... A plot ''Twist'' wipes out everything that had been hinted at and that storyline is destroyed and the original mechanics of it never hinted at again...relating to this gripe, I never really did get the whole Rand/Mat/Bashere/Illian/Sammael/Graendal Storyline of FOH, LOC and COS.

 

Lots of talk about ''Settling Sammael - just as soon as Im ready'' ... him ''Only thinking in straight lines'' ... ''They have to see you coming, Mat'' and talk of the ''Big Surprise'' and ''He'll never see it coming'' with advice that 'Speed was essential, yet haste must be made slowly - its ESSENTIAL to THE PLAN'' along with talk of being cracked like a walnut.

 

HUH??? ... *Sometimes Fish Slower than a turtle walking backwards up a hill made out of glass*

 

 

- Fish

[John E. Kelley]

The wholepointof the PLAN was that Rand, Bashere and Mat wanted all of Sammael's attention focused on that huge "Hammer" of an an army to distract him from the fact that Rand always planned to strike at Sammael in Illian with just his few male channelers and the few thousand Saldean (sp) light calvary. He wanted to draw all of Sammael's defenses out into the nearby countryside, leaving the capital pretty much undefended, basically making it a one on one match, Rand vs. Sammael. The entire massive army gathering on the Plains of Maredo was one big diversion. It was planned out by Mat and Bashere beforehand.

[The Fisher King]

The wholepointof the PLAN was that Rand, Bashere and Mat wanted all of Sammael's attention focused on that huge "Hammer" of an an army to distract him from the fact that Rand always planned to strike at Sammael in Illian with just his few male channelers and the few thousand Saldean (sp) light calvary. He wanted to draw all of Sammael's defenses out into the nearby countryside, leaving the capital pretty much undefended, basically making it a one on one match, Rand vs. Sammael. The entire massive army gathering on the Plains of Maredo was one big diversion. It was planned out by Mat and Bashere beforehand.

 

 

 

Thanks alot for the refresher...sadly, as we know now, though, that army gathering on the Plains of Maredo never reached Illian and neither did Mat's band...though, for the life of me, I can't remember why those two groups never went though with it and reached Illian :(

 

 

- Fish

[Elgee]

My biggest gripe is the BA Hunt.

[The Fisher King]

My biggest gripe is the BA Hunt.

 

The BA Hunt??? BEYOND Horrible!!! As was Elayne/Nyn/Luca - even though my girl Nyn was HYSTERICAL through most of it.

 

 

- Fish

[Elgee]

Well, to clarify: I loved the BA hunt, I hate the fact that it went ... nowhere. Might as well not have happened. AARRGGHHH!

[herid]

The particular storyline with Mat moving the Band south lasted all of a few chapters in LoC. Hardly anything to gripe about. I do agree with Elgee about the BA hunt but that is a different story altogether.

 

Back to the original topic, the Band was only a small force at the time (a few thousand people), the rest continued to gather against Sammael according to the original plan. Nothing changed about that. They were only meant to draw Sammael's eyes away from Illian, not to be the actual attack force, which is why they never got to Illian.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

this thread has me wondering if there's a WOT version of Risk.

 

because it might be easier to visualize all these moving armies if there was.

 

to me, all the battle and army stuff is mightily confusing.

[yoniy0]

The wholepointof the PLAN was that Rand, Bashere and Mat wanted all of Sammael's attention focused on that huge "Hammer" of an an army to distract him from the fact that Rand always planned to strike at Sammael in Illian with just his few male channelers and the few thousand Saldean (sp) light calvary. He wanted to draw all of Sammael's defenses out into the nearby countryside, leaving the capital pretty much undefended, basically making it a one on one match, Rand vs. Sammael. The entire massive army gathering on the Plains of Maredo was one big diversion. It was planned out by Mat and Bashere beforehand.

The important bit was making Sammael himself leave the city so that Rand would have time to disable Sammael's Wards before he knows anything is happening. The reason for that is that the Ward would enable Sammael to kill Rand instantly were he to Travel to the city while Sammel's there. And the reason we know this is that when Rand awakes, he comments on all his planning now being moot because of the dagger in Fain's hand (i.e. Sammael heard of Rand's illness and decided it was safe to join his army - where the plan was to convince him it was safe by other means, such as Mat's presence and Rand's seeming occupied elsewhere).