Was the word/name 'Merrilor' ever mentioned in books 1-11? Even once?

[Didgya]

Never thought much about the fields before but Luckers is right about a better foreshadowed name with meaning. Another point that jars the classic WOT reader is the naming of "new" things, bloodknives, dreamspike, etc... They are...well just dorky

[The Fisher King]

Never thought much about the fields before but Luckers is right about a better foreshadowed name with meaning. Another point that jars the classic WOT reader is the naming of "new" things, bloodknives, dreamspike, etc... They are...well just dorky

 

That is all exacly what Ive been saying...which is why I started this thread.

 

 

Fish

[Byzantine279]

Does anyone know how many of the names BS made up and how many were in fact left from the notes, because there are some pretty cheesy names across the entire series if you stop to think about it?

 

Also, the field came out of the blue. Fortunately, so has pretty much every other major place where something serious has happened that was not a major city.

[Sid]

The Fields of Merrilor didn't strike me as anything off-track at all when I read it, even though (unfortunately) I can never completely shake the part of me that scrutinizes passages in TGS and ToM for stuff that seems out of whack. Obviously I'm not going to be right every time but this didn't make so much as a blip on the radar.

 

I'm betting a meeting place as crucial as this will likely be would have been named in the notes and outlines.

[Sharaman]

Ingtar (?) mentioned that as populations dwindled, vast tracts were untenanted and unclaimed by any kingdom. We've seen journeys through that in the first couple of books. We've also heard references to the bits between kingdoms several times. No reason why the FoM in particular would be mentioned earlier. It's one of dozen/ hundreds (?) of locations footnoted by historians and uninhabited but known.

 

The Dreamspike foreshadowing I think was given off-stage by RJ mentioning that in Travel-enabled battles there were ways (plural) to interdict Travel. Also as pointed out above, the walls around the BT, weren't just an exercise to train troops in using Saidin. In passing, you'd expect LTT to guess about this and diagnose the method if he tries even once to go there in TAR - Mesaana did recognise it straight off and LTT was a general, unlike her. He may also know ways around it, apart from Perrin's method.

[AltonJakeStorey]

My guess is that RJ picked a basic location, northern Shainar and closish to the Gap, and BS found it strange to tell Egwyne to meet him without giving her an exact location. So he just made up a likely sounding name, FoM, for an otherwise insignificant location.

[Bob T Dwarf]

I'm trying to remember and can't.

 

Was Maradon ever mentioned before Ituralde made his stand there? Before Rand went out and cut down Shadowspawn there like they were wheat?

 

Was Ebou Dar mentioned before the Wonder Girls went there? Was there any reason to mention it before they went there?

 

Kinda the same thing with the Field of Merrilor. Had we heard of Falme before it became the only place known throughout history where the Heroes of the Horn have ever made an appearance, as a group, on the whole planet? Other than earlier in that book, that is.

 

In fact the whole series has involved mostly going to new and unheard of places where BIG DOINGS take place.

 

As of now, nothing has happened at Merrilor other than most of the White Hats and more than a few of the Black Hats have gathered there, and we've known about it now for well over a year. So, Merrilor isn't really a sudden and unexpected place for something momentous to happen, now is it?

 

And, since this is King Arthur redux, the really definitive stuff will take place at Caemlyn ( Camlann ), anyway.

[Suttree]

Was Maradon ever mentioned before Ituralde made his stand there? Before Rand went out and cut down Shadowspawn there like they were wheat?

 

Yes

 

Was Ebou Dar mentioned before the Wonder Girls went there? Was there any reason to mention it before they went there?

 

Yes

 

Kinda the same thing with the Field of Merrilor.

 

I don't have a problem with it but it isn't really the same.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Was Maradon ever mentioned before Ituralde made his stand there? Before Rand went out and cut down Shadowspawn there like they were wheat?

 

Yes

 

Was Ebou Dar mentioned before the Wonder Girls went there? Was there any reason to mention it before they went there?

 

Yes

 

Kinda the same thing with the Field of Merrilor.

 

I don't have a problem with it but it isn't really the same.

 

Not doubting your assertions, but a citation or three would be welcome.

[Suttree]

Was Maradon ever mentioned before Ituralde made his stand there? Before Rand went out and cut down Shadowspawn there like they were wheat?

 

Yes

 

Was Ebou Dar mentioned before the Wonder Girls went there? Was there any reason to mention it before they went there?

 

Yes

 

Kinda the same thing with the Field of Merrilor.

 

I don't have a problem with it but it isn't really the same.

 

Not doubting your assertions, but a citation or three would be welcome.

 

http://idealseek.no-ip.com/IdealSeek.cgi?q=maradon

 

http://idealseek.no-ip.com/IdealSeek.cgi?q=ebou+dar

 

Cheers

[yoniy0]

Let me expand Sutree's post. Maradon, Ebou Dar and Falme are all on the map.

Perrin and Egwene made a story to explain their presence on the way to Caemlyn (one which the wolves immediately knew as false), and they made sure to mention not being to Maradon (they claimed to be Saldean) in case they meet someone who knows it (they didn't think of there being a Queen rather than a King, which was funny).

I think Thom tried to convince Rand and Mat that they might go to Ebou Dar, but I'm not sure. Either way, it was mentioned in passing long before the wondergirls used Need in the Dream World.

And Falme is mentioned by Verin when she, Siuan and Moiraine discussed the Dark Prophecy in the beginning of TGH (as the seat of the Watchers). You can hardly fault the scene of the second book's climax for not appearing in the first (outside of the map, that is), but it was mentioned long before Fain fled there.

 

These are all good examples of RJ's world-building. I'm sure you could find some others, but this is the rule, I think. However, I'm sure RJ had many notes of places we've never heard of, and my personal guess is that this is an instance where Brandon just picked one of them out to use as a meeting ground. I'm not sure if we could fault him for not realizing he'd need it when he wrote TGS, or for not picking one of which we've already heard. Likely, he thought that it would be better this way -- allowing us to learn more of the Wheel than if he'd chosen the black hills or something similar.

[Terez]

To a degree I don't understand Merrilor when they could have used Bekkar--it's within marching distance of the Two Rivers, and as such likely in the Caralain Grass. It has awesome throwbacks to the beginning of the series--for me, Moiraine's Manetheren story was THE moment when I knew I loved the Wheel--and it would have lent itself to the chapter title 'The Field of Blood', which is, lets be honest, awesome.

As we have discussed, Talidar would have been a good one too. Especially since it seems close by. I can understand why some think this is a Brandon-added reference to Tolkien, though.

 

 

RJ obviously planned the reference here—Minas Tirith is on a river like Tar Valon, and is close to a mountain like Dragonmount—but he never mentioned Merrilor before. Tar Valon is also a Camlann parallel (since the word 'camlann' means 'crooked riverbank'), and Merrilor is supposedly just north of Tar Valon.

 

Brandon Sanderson (31 August 2011)

Dang. I just pulled off something in A Memory of Light that is GRRM-esque. I'm not certain if I should apologize, feel awesome, or go take a shower.

SARAH WALTERS

Haven't read GRRM, should I? Also, I recommend feeling awesome and writing more of A Memory of Light, but I'm biased.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Depends on your threshold for content. His writing is genius, but he is very brutal. I could only stomach the first one.

BRANDON SANDERSON

His short stories are awesome, by the way. I've liked every one of those I've read.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Also, the Minas Tirith theme is playing on Pandora. Perfect.

TEREZ

Gah, now you've got me thinking Boromir/Gawyn.

FOOTNOTE—TEREZ

I have no idea if Brandon saw that tweet, but his next one came after it, for what it's worth. Some more info was given on this in the reddit Q&A, and there might be another clue here.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Some good mythological underpinnings and references in this scene, as I believe RJ would have done.

BRANDON SANDERSON

If I ever get to write the annotations for this book as I plan, this scene will be a nice one to talk about.

BRANDON SANDERSON

One of the challenges in writing these books is to get mythology right. Not too overt, with careful references. RJ left help, fortunately.

 

Let me expand Sutree's post. Maradon, Ebou Dar and Falme are all on the map.

Perrin and Egwene made a story to explain their presence on the way to Caemlyn (one which the wolves immediately knew as false), and they made sure to mention not being to Maradon (they claimed to be Saldean) in case they meet someone who knows it (they didn't think of there being a Queen rather than a King, which was funny).

They also didn't seem to consider that they might not look anything like Saldaeans.

[Bob T Dwarf]

They also didn't seem to consider that they might not look anything like Saldaeans.

 

There's another commonplace anomaly with the series. There's lots of exposition about how the Aiel were isolated and inbred, resulting in a specific genotype. Saldaeans, Andorian, Cairheinen, etc. not so. Yet each has specific characteristics that anyone would either simply recognize as "foreign" or specific to their place of origin if they'd traveled widely.

 

Some of it relates to clothing, but if you took an Aiel and dressed him as a Cairheinen, would anybody know the difference at-a-glance, given that the predominant superstition in the Wetlands is that all Aiel are "dark-eyed"? If we took a blonde Frenchman and dressed him in something ethnically Swedish, would anyone know just by looking at him that he was French? And, why is the predominant superstition that ALL Swedes are blonde?

 

Yet somehow, Perrin and Egwene are supposed to realize that they could never pass as Saldaean. How? Does everybody in Saldaea have a prominent hooked nose? Why? They have a decent road system that connects them to the rest of the world. They trade and travel widely. Yet they somehow have their own inbred genotype?

[yoniy0]

It surely is odd that the different countries has such strange accents and appearances (what with the Breaking, followed by the Trolloc Wars, Hawkwing's conquest and the Hundred Years War), but that's the way of Randland. Odd accents were the first thing Rand noticed when he left the TR, so Perrin and Egwene should've realized that they would never pass as Saldaeans, not if they meet anyone who's actually been to Saldaea. The best lies have a lot of truth in them, so the Mountains of Mist would probably have been a better idea.

 

Nevertheless, none of it would've fooled the wolves, of course. My point was, it's funny when Perrin goes on about the King.

[Terez]

The foreshadowing is nice too, especially since Perrin was the one going on about the King bit. Mr. Broken Crown himself, lol.

[LeeM.Erickson]

None of these things bother me really. I'm also curious to know whether the things mentioned (FoM, Bloodknives, Dreamspike) were named by RJ or Sanderson. They don't seem out of place in WoT to me. What makes a bloodknife "cheesier" than say, a shocklance? Or the Bowl of the Winds? These names don't seem out of place to me. And hell, RJ came up with bubbles of evil, which I think has to make everyone chuckle at least once the first time they read it. I don't really find it to be Deus Ex Machina since there are precedents already laid out. Or, if you do want to consider it Deus Ex Machina, at least it's somewhat explained. I've heard people complain about ta'veren being Deus Ex Machina. And maybe it is, but it least it has a valid explanation for being in the series, I'd approve of that over just trying to swallow insane coincidences that aren't explained. At least we have insane coincidences that ARE explained.

 

Sure, Sanderson (or RJ, if the ideas did in fact come from the notes) can seem to pull a random ter'angreal out of his ass, but we know there's tons of ter'angreal out there that haven't been found, or that don't have a use we're aware of, so within the context of the story, it could happen. We know the Forsaken have been trying to locate and secure objects from the Age of Legends, so I don't find things like Bloodknives (which really didn't affect much plotwise, just a few dead Aes Sedai...and possibly a dire turn of consequences if Gawyn does something stupid with them) or Dreamspikes to be out of place. How are they any more "Matrixy" than something like Tel'aran'rhiod?

[Mystica]

I agree with Imerickson. Nothing I have seen has bugged me to the point of it not being 'WOT'-like. The Seanchan stuff would be totally different and alien from the Randland stuff, since it' s a completely different culture, from the other side of the globe. I'm sure that if the Shara were involved any more, we'd see some very 'odd' things from them as well. Just because we're more familiar with Randland things, doesn't make the rest of the world not 'WoT'-like I don't think. The word Bloodknives fits in perfectly with the Seanchan style, just as Truth Speaker and Voice does. It is a literal identification of the person's job. The blood part directly links to their blood being poisoned by the ter'angreal they use, the sacrifice they make by giving up their lives (shedding their blood) by implimenting their duty to the Empress and can even be seen as a reference to them being in service of the Highest of all Blood (the name for nobles in Seanchan culture). So yeah, I don't see this being unusual as a name.

 

FoM I didn't know it was to the north of Tar Valon. I always assumed it was in the large spot where the words Caralain Grass are positioned on the map. It seemed to me that it's a perfect spot as it's completely neutral, has no 'known' history to any current nation and can therefore also not be claimed or opposed by any of the ones gathering there. Any part of Manetheren could be viewed as ominous by the Queen of Andor (as she's shown before to be sensitive about that name already with Perrin). It's a big place, plenty of room for the gathering armies of the world and their following, completely neutral and centralised so accessible. If it's in the north of Tar Valon, that still makes sense, as it's on the way to Shayol Ghul and again, no prior connection in favor or opposition to the location from anyone.

 

Introducing new names and places and even items in a story this size isn't anything out of the ordinary I think. If we knew everything from book one, there wouldn't be much to look forward to anymore. For me the point of reading is not just to get through the main storyline, but also to further explore the world I've been shown. And that includes being introduced to new locations and other things. In the story, there's never been a need to mention that location, so yeah, doesn't bother me at all.

 

As for the ter'angreal, it's been long since established that there was much lost since the AoL and that much of the ter'angreal stored in teh White Tower are a mystery still to the Aes Sedai, despite ages of studying. So that there are things the Forsaken know about that they don't seems perfectly valid to me.

[Dreggs Morlock]

Great, and very interesting topic; just not one that has much to do with the original thread, besides "new things introduced at the end of the book" that the OP casually mentioned to give credibility to his arguement. Seems we are talking more about his examples than the actual topic.

 

I'd love to see this as a new thread, tho...