[Full Prologue Spoilers] The Red Veiled Aiel

[Luckers]

The women become Sea Folk. True story.

[Barid Bel Medar]

The women become Sea Folk. True story.

 

[TristanWebb]

Slayer thinking that the 13x13 continuing after the taint has been cleased leads me to believe that it protects against the tant. Or atleast makes the insanity service to the DO.

[The Fisher King]

I thought the same thing, BC.

 

 

Fish

[Barid Bel Medar]

Slayer thinking that the 13x13 continuing after the taint has been cleased leads me to believe that it protects against the tant. Or atleast makes the insanity service to the DO.

 

I think he was referencing the fact that Aiel should have stopped sending male channellers to the Blight now the Taint is cleansed.

 

Edit: having said that, I agree that they are protected from the Taint.

[Frogtastic]

Hello everyone, first time post here though ive followed the foums for a few years now lol

 

Has anyone considered that the channelers in this town might actually control the True Power from the DO himself and that id what makes them so unique?

 

Some things I've noticed that could back that up would be:

-Their name, the Eye Blinders could be a reference to using the TP and saa eventually blinding the user

-They tried to kill Moridin when he first arrived but he killed a dozen of them because,

"The constraints that held them did not hold him." Which could mean that, since Moridin is given special privledges, hes allowed to to touch the TP at Shayol Ghul, while they aren't allowed to use it/harm Moridin with it. (Why they might still kill with weapons, ToM)

-It also seems to increase the significance of these people because there seems to not be an overwhelming number of them in this Town but a few people using the TP would be much deadlier then the same number channeling normaly.

-It also makes it seem like a more powerful tool for Isam by getting 2 of them to kill Rand. Rand is surrounded by male and female channelers that will be detect someone chaneling, but none of them will know when someone is using the TP against them, except for Rand. Also it seems, from tGS, that a few given full access to the TP could cause massive amounts of devistation.

[Swithin]

To be fair, I haven't read every post in this thread very closely (somewhere above skimming, but my interest is keyed more onto certain topics.) Anyway, I haven't noticed this brought up anywhere:

 

None of the Samma N'Sei have become (can become?) dreadlords. Moridin compliments Taim on reintroducing dreadlords to the world, even though there have been loose Forsaken to train the Samma N'Sei for quite a while (Ishamael himself, given absences, for centuries.) They just behave like twisted Aiel, although the "typical" examples we've been introduced to have dark eyes - suggesting a multigenerational breeding program.

 

Something is wrong with these guys. Seriously wrong. As in "suboptimal".

 

My understanding is that the captured Aiel were turned, 13x13 style, and then became breeders. Whatever other effects the turning has, it obviously didn't diminish the original population's commitment to Aiel culture. They apparently don't mind defiling their cultural background in a way that would be considered an abomination by the Aiel of the Three Fold Land, but they didn't discard the shoufa (subverting it, but retaining it,) or oosquai, or the prohibition against using swords (and the Dark has some pretty effective swords to go around.) The problem is - if the originals were used as breeders, why would the Dark allow them to pass on their quirky desert culture to the products of the breeding initiative? If you could just collect the channelling male offspring and train them as highly effective dreadlords, using weaves from the Age of Legends, why not just do that? (There are two good counterarguments here: first, if you have a tradition that churns out warriors as tough as the Aiel, why not take advantage of it? Second, the ratio of outcast Aiel to offspring might be higher than I'm assuming.)

 

My current feeling is that offspring of 13x13'ed individuals come out warped. Not full-on Myrddraal warped, but something less than fully human (note the filed teeth and the lack of speech - we have yet to see a Samma N'Sei actually say anything.) Apparently the Samma N'Sei go through rigorous training, but it sounds more like a "throw the toddlers into the Blight unarmed, train the ones that come back alive" type of training than a "sit in scholarly contemplation for years learning the ins-and-outs of channelling" academic program.

 

It's the only way that this makes sense to me. If these guys could be employed as channelling sleeper agents, they would have been. I have a feeling that they're limited in their faculties - the Aiel training (and even there, only the basest physical parts of it,) is the most they can handle. They probably channel more intuitively than cerebrally, and enjoy spearing someone in the gut as much as they do setting that person on fire with the OP. I don't think any of these guys is the equivalent of a FS or even an Asha'man as a battlefield channeller, although they probably make a great surprise shock troop of fireball slinging bruisers. If this is true, then having ten to fifteen thousand of them isn't as balance-breaking as it would first appear.

[daavorian]

That seems highly possible to me. I mean, we've already seen via Avi that Rand's children were able to channel on a whim and always were embracing the source. Clearly that's not just an effect of having channeler parents, but some Light-magic-stuff to do with his dragon-ness. So maybe the powerful touch of the dark one does something to these guys and makes them channel intuitively in a more brutal way.

[Barid Bel Medar]

It's the only way that this makes sense to me. If these guys could be employed as channelling sleeper agents, they would have been. I have a feeling that they're limited in their faculties - the Aiel training (and even there, only the basest physical parts of it,) is the most they can handle. They probably channel more intuitively than cerebrally, and enjoy spearing someone in the gut as much as they do setting that person on fire with the OP. I don't think any of these guys is the equivalent of a FS or even an Asha'man as a battlefield channeller, although they probably make a great surprise shock troop of fireball slinging bruisers. If this is true, then having ten to fifteen thousand of them isn't as balance-breaking as it would first appear.

 

First, any Channeller who fights for the Shadow is technically a Dreadlord.

 

I agree with you in some respects, but their killing prowess is much more dangerous than simple fireball slinging bruisers. More like the most deadly weapons on the planet.

 

Of course, they are not bred for leadership, they are bred for killing. They wouldn't be very good at being a Chosen, and I doubt their education is quality. The Shadow would teach them to kill, and like killing.

 

They probably don't know much besides destroying, which makes them only so useful, but at TG, killing will be much needed.