Why are Trollocs "super-soldiers"?

[solarz]

Trollocs are stronger and more powerful than humans, but they lack discipline, and even when controlled by Myrdraal, they seem incapable of mounting any kind of effective strategy other than "the charge".

 

One would think that in the Age of Legends, where soldiers fought with "Shock Lances", a Trolloc army would be slaughtered.

 

Why then, do the Shadow continue to use Trollocs as their main fighting force?

[WhiskyJack]

As Galad said in ToM, what they lack in discipline, they make for that in ferocity and strength. Whipped into a frenzy, they could terrorize any army. With Shock Lance, a human army would be no better. Besides, shadow had human soldiers too in AoL.

[capuga]

Trollocs are stronger and more powerful than humans, but they lack discipline, and even when controlled by Myrdraal, they seem incapable of mounting any kind of effective strategy other than "the charge".

 

One would think that in the Age of Legends, where soldiers fought with "Shock Lances", a Trolloc army would be slaughtered.

 

Why then, do the Shadow continue to use Trollocs as their main fighting force?

 

Did you see how easily the Trollocs were destroying the well disciplined White Cloaks in ToM before Perrin showed up to help? Brute force and terror are effective tools in fighting a war against anyone other than channelers. Plus they are disposable and apparently breed in large numbers. And the Shadow only has a finite amount of humans willing to fight for them. Humans have to either choose (which seems to be a small percentage of the people) to be darkfriends or forced to fight for the Shadow (which involves a lot of work and the ability to conquer those people in the first place).

 

That said, they likely didn't turn out quite as well as Aginor had hoped. I agree that he would probably have prefered that his Shadow army be capable of a bit more discipline and complex tactics.

[Mats Spare Hat]

Big, scary, eats anything - hell, likes to eat what you generally want them to kill anyway, breed like rabbits, don't care about living in deplorable conditions, can treat them like garbage, totally into stark raving monsterous killing of anything living without displayed need or want of creature comforts...

 

From what we know of the AoL, the darky mcdarksalot side was doing a pretty swell job of piss-pounding the lightsiders with Narg's progenerators right on up to the point where LTT did his thing. In the Trolloc Wars it was the same thing, and that's whenabouts the military arts were peaking for Randland.

 

Mass numbers of big ugly scary things that will eat anything, love killing, can be treated like dirt, breed excessively and generally spook the bejesus out of folks?

 

[WhiskyJack]

Lets not also forget that shadow perhaps has 10s of thousands of Myrrdral. An army trendily made up of Fade would crush ANYONE unless they have channelers. It's like an army of blademaster, almost. Another reason to breed Trollocs, so that they can keep popping those Fades.

[solarz]

From what we know of the AoL, the darky mcdarksalot side was doing a pretty swell job of piss-pounding the lightsiders with Narg's progenerators right on up to the point where LTT did his thing. In the Trolloc Wars it was the same thing, and that's whenabouts the military arts were peaking for Randland.

 

Mass numbers of big ugly scary things that will eat anything, love killing, can be treated like dirt, breed excessively and generally spook the bejesus out of folks?

 

That's the whole point. In war, big and scary is worthless compared to smart and disciplined. Especially with shock lances, which I assume are akin to rifles, big and scary counts for even less.

 

The myrdraal are powerful, but they're only 5% of the Trolloc population, and they also represent a weak point: kill the myrdraal, and all the trollocs under his command dies as well. They have no chain of command.

 

You would think that Aginor, self-professed genius that he is, would have created a better super-soldier. At the very least, why didn't he try to create more myrdraal?

[capuga]

From what we know of the AoL, the darky mcdarksalot side was doing a pretty swell job of piss-pounding the lightsiders with Narg's progenerators right on up to the point where LTT did his thing. In the Trolloc Wars it was the same thing, and that's whenabouts the military arts were peaking for Randland.

 

Mass numbers of big ugly scary things that will eat anything, love killing, can be treated like dirt, breed excessively and generally spook the bejesus out of folks?

 

That's the whole point. In war, big and scary is worthless compared to smart and disciplined. Especially with shock lances, which I assume are akin to rifles, big and scary counts for even less.

 

The myrdraal are powerful, but they're only 5% of the Trolloc population, and they also represent a weak point: kill the myrdraal, and all the trollocs under his command dies as well. They have no chain of command.

 

You would think that Aginor, self-professed genius that he is, would have created a better super-soldier. At the very least, why didn't he try to create more myrdraal?

 

 

Because he had no idea how to create them. They were an unintended side-effect of the Trollocs and even Aginor doesn't really understand how they came to be.

 

Regardless, the trollocs, while not as effective of soldiers as one might hope, are still a very effective fighting force for the reasons listed above - strong, ruthless, they give the Shadow numbers which they wouldn't have if they just relied on their limited human allies, fast breeders, easy to feed, can survive in harsh environments, etc.

[ROB_88]

it is also said that the trollocs were created as a great soldier by a man who had never seen war.

 

what would someone with no battlefield experience think a good soldier looks like? perhaps something big, hairy and scary as all hell, ready to kill anything it sees. maybe some sort of mix between humans and animals to look extra scary.

he never really figured thinkiing capacity was a big deal for murderous animal-men

[dutchman1789]

I think it was mentioned that the Trollocs were worthless until the Mydraal came along to provide some discipline.

[brolie]

plus they wear out the real soldiers and are disposable. you don't see other trollocs crying about a fallen comrade. they go in to get the job done.

 

and somewhere they talked about how certain breeds were smarter than others, like the ones with wolf heads being called "minds" and what not. and the fact that they catapulted dead bodies along with living bodies as a trick... that's pretty tricky business.

[Dagon Thyne]

From what we know of the AoL, the darky mcdarksalot side was doing a pretty swell job of piss-pounding the lightsiders with Narg's progenerators right on up to the point where LTT did his thing. In the Trolloc Wars it was the same thing, and that's whenabouts the military arts were peaking for Randland.

 

Mass numbers of big ugly scary things that will eat anything, love killing, can be treated like dirt, breed excessively and generally spook the bejesus out of folks?

 

That's the whole point. In war, big and scary is worthless compared to smart and disciplined. Especially with shock lances, which I assume are akin to rifles, big and scary counts for even less.

 

The myrdraal are powerful, but they're only 5% of the Trolloc population, and they also represent a weak point: kill the myrdraal, and all the trollocs under his command dies as well. They have no chain of command.

 

You would think that Aginor, self-professed genius that he is, would have created a better super-soldier. At the very least, why didn't he try to create more myrdraal?

 

 

Because he had no idea how to create them. They were an unintended side-effect of the Trollocs and even Aginor doesn't really understand how they came to be.

 

Regardless, the trollocs, while not as effective of soldiers as one might hope, are still a very effective fighting force for the reasons listed above - strong, ruthless, they give the Shadow numbers which they wouldn't have if they just relied on their limited human allies, fast breeders, easy to feed, can survive in harsh environments, etc.

 

 

According to RJ, Fades are a natural side effect to the creation of Trollocs. Trollocs have the DNA of both their animal and human sides and Fades are simply a genetic throwback to the human side, with the human DNA being dominant instead of there being a mixture of both sides......There are also throwbacks to the animal side, but these animals die without minutes of birth.

[Gordar]

Trollocs are an endless supply of cannon fodder.

 

I don't know much about shocklances (nobody does), but I assume they're more like electric lances than rifles. Don't forget that there had not been a war for ages and the police usually doesn't need rifles. We don't know if these shocklances needed any kind of ammunition either, even if they were indeed rifles.

 

If the light side no longer had any ammo or, if it was, like I think, a weapon with a very short range, like 2 or 3 meters (approx. 6-9 feet), the trollocs would have been able to cause a lot of damage.

 

I hope one of the forsaken has found a shocklance (in a stasis box?), because I'd really like to know what kind of weapon it really is.

[Mats Spare Hat]

From what we know of the AoL, the darky mcdarksalot side was doing a pretty swell job of piss-pounding the lightsiders with Narg's progenerators right on up to the point where LTT did his thing. In the Trolloc Wars it was the same thing, and that's whenabouts the military arts were peaking for Randland.

 

Mass numbers of big ugly scary things that will eat anything, love killing, can be treated like dirt, breed excessively and generally spook the bejesus out of folks?

 

That's the whole point. In war, big and scary is worthless compared to smart and disciplined. Especially with shock lances, which I assume are akin to rifles, big and scary counts for even less.

 

The myrdraal are powerful, but they're only 5% of the Trolloc population, and they also represent a weak point: kill the myrdraal, and all the trollocs under his command dies as well. They have no chain of command.

 

You would think that Aginor, self-professed genius that he is, would have created a better super-soldier. At the very least, why didn't he try to create more myrdraal?

 

 

You've mentioned smart & disciplined w/shock lances a couple times, and how worthless big + scary is against that.

 

Yet, we know those same 'worthless' big and scary trollocs decimated the world in the war of power, and again carried the shadow to the goal line, breaking the 10 nations, in the Trolloc Wars, when it's noted that mankinds military arts were at a high point, even at a lower technological level than in the AoL. So, they were evidently more smart & disciplined...but still got their asses handed to them routinely.

 

On a funny note, you could say oh yeah well they were turned back! Yeah, thanks to the efforts of Aes Sedai. I say funny because there's folks on the boards that go out of their way to trash Aes Sedai, and yet they've saved the world time & time again.

 

Anyway, we're also given example, early on in TSR, where a Fade is slain, and dead Trollocs aren't always soon to follow as a result.

 

I'm not saying that smart & disciplined is worthless in contrast. I'm saying that despite how you may feel, you can't downplay the result of conflicts won on the backs of Trollocs.

[Dagon Thyne]

Trollocs are an endless supply of cannon fodder.

 

I don't know much about shocklances (nobody does), but I assume they're more like electric lances than rifles. Don't forget that there had not been a war for ages and the police usually doesn't need rifles. We don't know if these shocklances needed any kind of ammunition either, even if they were indeed rifles.

 

If the light side no longer had any ammo or, if it was, like I think, a weapon with a very short range, like 2 or 3 meters (approx. 6-9 feet), the trollocs would have been able to cause a lot of damage.

 

I hope one of the forsaken has found a shocklance (in a stasis box?), because I'd really like to know what kind of weapon it really is.

When I think of Shock Lances...I view the weapons that the Emperial Gaurds use in Star Wars....The double sides staves with electric currents on the ends.....

[solarz]

You've mentioned smart & disciplined w/shock lances a couple times, and how worthless big + scary is against that.

 

Yet, we know those same 'worthless' big and scary trollocs decimated the world in the war of power, and again carried the shadow to the goal line, breaking the 10 nations, in the Trolloc Wars, when it's noted that mankinds military arts were at a high point, even at a lower technological level than in the AoL. So, they were evidently more smart & disciplined...but still got their asses handed to them routinely.

 

On a funny note, you could say oh yeah well they were turned back! Yeah, thanks to the efforts of Aes Sedai. I say funny because there's folks on the boards that go out of their way to trash Aes Sedai, and yet they've saved the world time & time again.

 

Anyway, we're also given example, early on in TSR, where a Fade is slain, and dead Trollocs aren't always soon to follow as a result.

 

I'm not saying that smart & disciplined is worthless in contrast. I'm saying that despite how you may feel, you can't downplay the result of conflicts won on the backs of Trollocs.

 

The entire point of this thread is to point out that those "victories" by the Trollocs should not have happened. Given the trolloc's blood-thirstiness and low intelligence, it should be easy to routinely lure them into traps and ambushes.

 

It seems the only real advantage the trollocs have is their great numbers, yet even that doesn't make sense. Trollocs, being much more massive than humans, correspondingly require a much greater caloric intake. Being restricted to the Blight, where are they getting enough food production to build up their numbers? Raids against borderlands don't cut it either, not when the Trollocs outnumber the borderland armies, and even possibly the combined armies of the wetlands: the Trollocs would need to steal more food than the borderlands even produce!

[MasterAblar]

You've mentioned smart & disciplined w/shock lances a couple times, and how worthless big + scary is against that.

 

Yet, we know those same 'worthless' big and scary trollocs decimated the world in the war of power, and again carried the shadow to the goal line, breaking the 10 nations, in the Trolloc Wars, when it's noted that mankinds military arts were at a high point, even at a lower technological level than in the AoL. So, they were evidently more smart & disciplined...but still got their asses handed to them routinely.

 

On a funny note, you could say oh yeah well they were turned back! Yeah, thanks to the efforts of Aes Sedai. I say funny because there's folks on the boards that go out of their way to trash Aes Sedai, and yet they've saved the world time & time again.

 

Anyway, we're also given example, early on in TSR, where a Fade is slain, and dead Trollocs aren't always soon to follow as a result.

 

I'm not saying that smart & disciplined is worthless in contrast. I'm saying that despite how you may feel, you can't downplay the result of conflicts won on the backs of Trollocs.

 

The entire point of this thread is to point out that those "victories" by the Trollocs should not have happened. Given the trolloc's blood-thirstiness and low intelligence, it should be easy to routinely lure them into traps and ambushes.

 

It seems the only real advantage the trollocs have is their great numbers, yet even that doesn't make sense. Trollocs, being much more massive than humans, correspondingly require a much greater caloric intake. Being restricted to the Blight, where are they getting enough food production to build up their numbers? Raids against borderlands don't cut it either, not when the Trollocs outnumber the borderland armies, and even possibly the combined armies of the wetlands: the Trollocs would need to steal more food than the borderlands even produce!

 

The fades and dreadlords are the brains, the trollocs just follow orders.

 

What makes you think the trollocs can't eat what's in the blight? They're already blighted/tainted, so it's not likely it'll harm them. In any case they can't sustain the current numbers for long. It's just for the Last Battle.

[Suttree]

You've mentioned smart & disciplined w/shock lances a couple times, and how worthless big + scary is against that.

 

Yet, we know those same 'worthless' big and scary trollocs decimated the world in the war of power, and again carried the shadow to the goal line, breaking the 10 nations, in the Trolloc Wars, when it's noted that mankinds military arts were at a high point, even at a lower technological level than in the AoL. So, they were evidently more smart & disciplined...but still got their asses handed to them routinely.

 

On a funny note, you could say oh yeah well they were turned back! Yeah, thanks to the efforts of Aes Sedai. I say funny because there's folks on the boards that go out of their way to trash Aes Sedai, and yet they've saved the world time & time again.

 

Anyway, we're also given example, early on in TSR, where a Fade is slain, and dead Trollocs aren't always soon to follow as a result.

 

I'm not saying that smart & disciplined is worthless in contrast. I'm saying that despite how you may feel, you can't downplay the result of conflicts won on the backs of Trollocs.

 

The entire point of this thread is to point out that those "victories" by the Trollocs should not have happened. Given the trolloc's blood-thirstiness and low intelligence, it should be easy to routinely lure them into traps and ambushes.

 

It seems the only real advantage the trollocs have is their great numbers, yet even that doesn't make sense. Trollocs, being much more massive than humans, correspondingly require a much greater caloric intake. Being restricted to the Blight, where are they getting enough food production to build up their numbers? Raids against borderlands don't cut it either, not when the Trollocs outnumber the borderland armies, and even possibly the combined armies of the wetlands: the Trollocs would need to steal more food than the borderlands even produce!

 

Well we know their is game and organized food production in the blight. Just because something is noxious and inedible to a human doesn't mean it is so to a trolloc.

[Cybertrolloc]

Various: reread KoD ch 31 and RJ's blog here. Shocklances work at range and are pretty beefy.

 

ETA: Alright, dug up the quote and that is speculation. The pistol version of the shocklance does that, but we don't know what the normal ones do AFAIK.

[Superhal]

I agree they're terrible soldiers, not only for the reasons above but also because of how much larger soldiers need to eat.

 

But, as discussed in an earlier thread, maybe they needed soldiers who could survive by foraging/farming the plants and animals in the Blight, so the trollocs would be the only option.

 

Also, I think they should just kill all the trollocs except the breeding pairs, and then just churn out Myddrral. Apparently they're born with sword-fighting knowledge as well. Instead of 200k trollocs, just send out an army of 10k fades (assuming a 5% fade birth rate.) Or, if you waited a little bit, you could send out 100k fades instead of 2 mil trollocs.

[Durinax]

From what we know of the AoL, the darky mcdarksalot side was doing a pretty swell job of piss-pounding the lightsiders with Narg's progenerators right on up to the point where LTT did his thing. In the Trolloc Wars it was the same thing, and that's whenabouts the military arts were peaking for Randland.

 

Mass numbers of big ugly scary things that will eat anything, love killing, can be treated like dirt, breed excessively and generally spook the bejesus out of folks?

 

That's the whole point. In war, big and scary is worthless compared to smart and disciplined. Especially with shock lances, which I assume are akin to rifles, big and scary counts for even less.

 

The myrdraal are powerful, but they're only 5% of the Trolloc population, and they also represent a weak point: kill the myrdraal, and all the trollocs under his command dies as well. They have no chain of command.

 

You would think that Aginor, self-professed genius that he is, would have created a better super-soldier. At the very least, why didn't he try to create more myrdraal?

he created the ultimate super-soldier. the gholam, a creature so devestatingly powerful that even the forsaken feared them, and thus only created 4 of them. A creature so awe inspiring that they did not know pain until a freak accident starting the chain of events that led to its death

[Ashlyn]

From what we know of the AoL, the darky mcdarksalot side was doing a pretty swell job of piss-pounding the lightsiders with Narg's progenerators right on up to the point where LTT did his thing. In the Trolloc Wars it was the same thing, and that's whenabouts the military arts were peaking for Randland.

 

Mass numbers of big ugly scary things that will eat anything, love killing, can be treated like dirt, breed excessively and generally spook the bejesus out of folks?

 

That's the whole point. In war, big and scary is worthless compared to smart and disciplined. Especially with shock lances, which I assume are akin to rifles, big and scary counts for even less.

 

The myrdraal are powerful, but they're only 5% of the Trolloc population, and they also represent a weak point: kill the myrdraal, and all the trollocs under his command dies as well. They have no chain of command.

 

You would think that Aginor, self-professed genius that he is, would have created a better super-soldier. At the very least, why didn't he try to create more myrdraal?

he created the ultimate super-soldier. the gholam, a creature so devestatingly powerful that even the forsaken feared them, and thus only created 4 of them. A creature so awe inspiring that they did not know pain until a freak accident starting the chain of events that led to its death

 

I see the Trollocs vs Myrdraal vs gholam situation like this: just as in any other army, you have levels of proficiency and skill. The Trollocs are stormtroopers, there to terrify and subdue (and if a ton of them are killed it's no big loss). The Myrdraal are officers and commanders, the Dragkhar are sneaky infiltrators - and the gholam is that scary spec ops guy that no one has any control over.

 

I'd say Aginor actually did an exceptionally good job providing the Shadow with the kind of force it needed to augment its human subjects. Add to that, you wouldn't even need to take provisions along with the Trolloc army, because they can literally just eat what they kill.

[bsmnt23]

I'm seeing the shocklance as similar to the M1 rifle used in Korea before the US army adopted the M14. Semi-auto, throws a huge round, good for taking down a target at range and big enough to take a trolloc easy. I seem to recall that when Aginor first popped out the first batches of battlebeasts they were almost impossible to control untill they started producing Fades, that implies the majority of the armies in the AoL were human, presumably using shocklances as well. Thing is, the M1 was a great weapon until the Chinese started using human wave attacks (which would be a tactic tailer made for use by trollocs) which overwhelemed American lines untill tactics and technology evolved to counter them. In the AoL, the technolegy did not evolve; it regressed, they lost thir tech base to a point where the shocklances were replaced by sword and spear. Granted the "super-soldiers" of the AoL were created by a madman with absolutly no combat experience, but that doesnt change their effectivness as shock troops.

[Generic_Aelfinn_2]

I thinking that the VERY first trollocs were just effectively huge hulking masses of muscle and terror. They likely couldn't be controlled and were very, very stupid. Therefore, in order to make them into an effective army, Aginor breed-in the aggression phenotype and big 'litters'. If you can't control something, you might as well make it very good in its basic job and use quantity over quality. The fades were likely just a side-effect of too much tinkering and weren't part of the original plan for the trolloc army.

[Kal11]

I thinking that the VERY first trollocs were just effectively huge hulking masses of muscle and terror. They likely couldn't be controlled and were very, very stupid. Therefore, in order to make them into an effective army, Aginor breed-in the aggression phenotype and big 'litters'. If you can't control something, you might as well make it very good in its basic job and use quantity over quality. The fades were likely just a side-effect of too much tinkering and weren't part of the original plan for the trolloc army.

 

Yeah the Fades were unintentional. I have no idea where the quote is but they were originally thought to be useless and creepy little kids when they first showed up in the Trolloc offspring.

[solarz]

I'm seeing the shocklance as similar to the M1 rifle used in Korea before the US army adopted the M14. Semi-auto, throws a huge round, good for taking down a target at range and big enough to take a trolloc easy. I seem to recall that when Aginor first popped out the first batches of battlebeasts they were almost impossible to control untill they started producing Fades, that implies the majority of the armies in the AoL were human, presumably using shocklances as well. Thing is, the M1 was a great weapon until the Chinese started using human wave attacks (which would be a tactic tailer made for use by trollocs) which overwhelemed American lines untill tactics and technology evolved to counter them.

 

Absolutely false. The Chinese prevailed in the Korean War through superior strategy and tactics, not through so-called "human waves". The latter is a propaganda perpetuated by American media in order to make them look better for losing against the poorly equipped CVA.

 

Chinese tactics consisted of infiltration behind enemy lines, encirclement, and attacking at night, which helped negate the advantage of the UN firepower. Though the Chinese used their light infantry maneuverability to try to achieve local superiority, the total strength committed by the Chinese was 1.2 million, equal to the total strength of the UN + ROK forces.

 

The Chinese fought a very intelligent campaign in the Korean War, and it is frankly offensive to see them compared to Trollocs.