How does Verin know about those things?

[Leyrann]

So, Verin has given some important messages to Mat, Rand (via an Aes Sedai, I forgot who), and a bunch of others, including Alanna, who I just thought of.

 

Now, I cannot remember this ever being discussed - WHY and HOW does she know all those things? This seems to be tied with her meeting Mesaana twice. Was she maybe in the High whatever-it-is-called, the leaders of the Black Ajah? But still, how does she know about other things, like the invasion in Caemlin and such things?

[herid]

good question. The most difficult one to understand is how she knew about the plans of the attack on Caemlyn so far in advance. By various timelines I've seen, Verin spent at least 28 days (some timelines make it much longer) in Trustair waiting for Mat. She was stuck there so she must have found out about those plans before she left Rand after the attack on Algarin's manor. That's 100 days before the actual attack on Caemlyn started according to team Jordan. Verin seems to have been off about the timing of the Caemlyn attack by about a month but that still means she knew about it a very long time in advance. The other things are less problematic as there was at least 10 days from her meeting with Mat to her death and who knows where she's been in that time.

[Viperswhip]

I am guessing that DFs in Camelyn would be given orders to kill people at certain date and time (guards on the waygate, special other people), many people were briefed. We don't know if only Camelyn is getting attacked, or many cities in the South who thought they were safe.

 

It makes sense there was a general briefing, especially to the higher ups in the Black Ajah.

[Whizbang]

She was a crafty old lady, who also had a rudimentary method of compulsion. She was incredibly observant and clever. She was a master of dissembling, or of fading into the background, so others would forget she was there or not take her seriously, and so reveal more than they intended. That is all the skills and mystique I need to craft an illusion of her omniscience in regards to BA plots.

[Barid Bel Medar]

Also, such a plot would be thoroughly planned. They would have had it all planned out way before Verin gave Mat the letter. They installed DF's into the loyalist armies just for one task.

[herid]

none of this explains how Verin knew of the Caemlyn attack at least 100 days before it started. The letter speaks of a huge mass of shadowspawn moving through the Ways. Verin left Rand the day of the attack on Algarin's manor and was governed by Mat's ta'veren pull from then on till they met in Trustair. The attack on Algarin's manor took place just 6 days after the meeting of the Forsaken in TAR where Moridin complained that somebody impersonating Sammael ordered the Trollocs into the Ways (no doubt the same group of Trollocs that attacked Algarin's manor). No plans of attacking Caemlyn are discussed at that meeting. Instead Moridin directs all present to try to kill Mat and Perrin.

[Viperswhip]

We are, presumably, not reading every briefing the Shadow has with its agents. We also don't know where she was in the heirarchy of the BA. Sheriam for one expressed surprise that Verin had been the one to turn traitor, which means she was probably more than a little nasty.

[Leyrann]

good question. The most difficult one to understand is how she knew about the plans of the attack on Caemlyn so far in advance. By various timelines I've seen, Verin spent at least 28 days (some timelines make it much longer) in Trustair waiting for Mat. She was stuck there so she must have found out about those plans before she left Rand after the attack on Algarin's manor. That's 100 days before the actual attack on Caemlyn started according to team Jordan. Verin seems to have been off about the timing of the Caemlyn attack by about a month but that still means she knew about it a very long time in advance. The other things are less problematic as there was at least 10 days from her meeting with Mat to her death and who knows where she's been in that time.

 

That would an inconsistency then, as she had wanted to come back to Mat only one day later to release him from his promise. It was only a backup for if she died, and thus, that should have been the day after. The next day, if she was still alive, she would have come back.

 

Also, she may have lied to Mat about being stuck there or in his Ta'veren, and maybe she has been gathering information in other places too.

[herid]

Making the gap between Mat meeting Verin and Verin's death to be only a couple of days would make their timelines completely impossible. There are many reasons for that but one major one is that Rand sees Mat riding through Caemlyn in tGS, ch 31 which is a few days before he meets Tuon and that meeting is itself a few days before the Seanchan attack on the WT. The only way I can see around this one is that Verin's plans may have changed unexpectedly after she left Mat. But even a gap of 10 days between the Mat - Verin meeting and her death is still problematic for a number of reasons. There is something screwy about Mat and Verin timelines in tGS and TOM which is why no fans have been able to make a timeline of tGS and ToM that makes sense. The best one I've seen is this one by msbee. But even that has a "time travel" gap in Mat's timeline of 20 days which is quite a lot. Unfortunately BS flat out refuses to discuss those issues every time he is asked so these problems may never be fixed.

 

As for Verin lying to Mat I find that very unlikely. I don't think the pattern would relax its grip on Verin before Mat showed up. If she left before Mat arrived there would not be any guarantee that she would come back. She definitely didn't lie about how she ended up in Trustair. Lastly, Mat saw her holding a bunch or red letters which she began distributing only after they parted.

[Mark Molzner]

One possibility is that Verin's experience with the portal stone in TGH showed her the likelyhood of an attack on the city of Caemlyn, and the approximate time/date. After that, a few random encounters can cement the time and date of the attack so that she can then tell Mat in the letter.

[Whizbang]

Re:Timeline not working

 

There is some hints that the timeline in aMoL will not be linear, or at least that not everyone will experience time at the same speed. Maybe this is already occurring in ToM and tGS. The Pattern is breaking up and warping. It stands to reason that time will get messy as well as the number of rooms in a palace or ghosts appearing or a single town turning into raving monsters by night only to completely revive and reset the next morning.

 

This may or may not account for Perrin's and Elayne's timelines seeming to draaaaaaaag on and on. Maybe we, the readers, are feeling this time distortion as well.

[avernite]

Re:Timeline not working

 

There is some hints that the timeline in aMoL will not be linear, or at least that not everyone will experience time at the same speed. Maybe this is already occurring in ToM and tGS. The Pattern is breaking up and warping. It stands to reason that time will get messy as well as the number of rooms in a palace or ghosts appearing or a single town turning into raving monsters by night only to completely revive and reset the next morning.

 

This may or may not account for Perrin's and Elayne's timelines seeming to draaaaaaaag on and on. Maybe we, the readers, are feeling this time distortion as well.

 

Nice idea, but of course everyone managed to keep track of when to get to Merrilor.

[Kamin_Majere]

The simple answer on how she knows about the attack on Camelyn is she ordered it. She is/was Black ajah after all and she supposedly had to do some "evil" things so they wouldnt just kill her off. Its entirely possible she is the one that was in charge of making the attack happen.

 

I doubt very seriously that the Black Ajah just had her around for her record keeping abilities. We all think of Verin as some hero, but i'm pretty sure she has more than her fair share of innocent blood on her hands. And to be in a position to know so many black sisters it stands to reason she rose pretty high in the rankings

[herid]

@Kamin_Majere Only a Forsaken could order the Caemlyn attack because only a Forsaken can command the myrdraal.

Re:Timeline not working

 

There is some hints that the timeline in aMoL will not be linear, or at least that not everyone will experience time at the same speed. Maybe this is already occurring in ToM and tGS. The Pattern is breaking up and warping. It stands to reason that time will get messy as well as the number of rooms in a palace or ghosts appearing or a single town turning into raving monsters by night only to completely revive and reset the next morning.

Nah, that can't be it. One of the people involved would have noticed a multiple day time jump for sure (we are talking about 20+ days here). And it would be too much of a Deus ex machina. Nothing of the sort has been hinted at in the books. I know the quote by BS you mean but whatever it is referring to I'm sure it will have an explanation according to the established rules of the WOT universe. For example, there seems to be a merging of TAR and the real world near Shayol Ghul and time in TAR can flow with different speed. Or it can be something to do with the heroes of the Horn. They are also partly in TAR when called by the Horn and they seemed to imply in TGH that they can slow down time when called by the Horn.

 

To his surprise, several of the small host behind Artur Hawkwing chuckled, and Birgitte, testing her bowstring, laughed. “You always choose women who cause you trouble, Lews Therin.” It had a fond sound, as between old friends.

“My name is Rand al’Thor,” he snapped. “You have to hurry. There isn’t much time.”

“Time?” Birgitte said, smiling. “We have all of time.”

--TGH, ch 47

 

IMO, the most likely explanation for issues with Mat and Verin timelines is that there is a mistake in one of the time markers somewhere. There were such time marker mistakes in ToM and they were acknowledged and corrected. Hopefully we'll find out once AMOL comes out.

[Sharaman]

If you check timelines by reference to VoG, it's clear that Mat had been a loong time in Caemlyn before Verin died.

We know when Verin died with ref to VoG

We know when Mat went to ToG with ref to VoG

We know when Perrin came to Caemlyn with ref to VoG

We know Mat spent weeks and weeks in Caemlyn before he went to ToG

 

There has to be a mistake here in the Mat timeline since the other timelines check out versus each other and versus Egwene/ Nynaeve, etc.

[herid]

@Sharaman actually, some of these are debatable. namely, we don't precisely know when Verin died ref VoG. It's commonly assumed that VoG happened 1-2 days after the Tower unification but it can actually be a few days more. It can be as much as 7-8 days in principle. We also don't know exactly when Mat left for the TG. People often forget that time can flow with different speed in the Finn world. That's what happened to Mat on his second trip there in TSR. He only spent about an hour there by his own time but it was 6 days in Rhuidean. The assumption that Perrin arrived at FOM just one day before the meeting doesn't have to be true either.

[Leyrann]

It is.

 

He came in one of the last chapters of Towers of Midnight, in an Egwene PoV, together with Elayne. Egwene then mentions to herself that Elayne had waited really long - she only came the last day.

[herid]

Elayne didn't come together with Perrin. They came separately. Perrin came through his own gateways in his POV when Mat leaves for the TG. When Elayne arrives at FOM Perrin is there already and has been for some time. That's mentioned explicitly in an earlier conversation between Gawyn and Egwene.

[Morden]

I was under the impression that VoG was the day after the tower unification, but i'd need to re-read the chapter where Sylviana informs Egwene about the sunshine on DM.

 

What I've been trying to work out is if Mat went to the tower earlier than the time he gave Verin that he would wait... (she wanted him in Caemlyn to lead the defence)

[Leyrann]

Whoops. You're right.

 

(ninja'd by Morden)

[herid]

I was under the impression that VoG was the day after the tower unification, but i'd need to re-read the chapter where Sylviana informs Egwene about the sunshine on DM.

go ahead. I scrutinized that scene closely. You'll find out that it doesn't say anywhere that it's the very next day. There are actually subtle hints in that scene that it's been a few days since unification because Egwene thinks

 

The woman [sylviana] was proving to be an effective Keeper indeed, far more skilled than Sheriam had ever been. The loyalist women respected Silviana, and the Red Ajah seemed to have accepted—at least in part—Egwene's offer of peace in choosing one of their own as her Keeper.

Also, the next day (when Rand shows up at the Tower) it's mentioned that Gawyn "spent the nights since the reunification guarding Egwene's doors, despite the fact that it angered her" (TOM, ch 3). This suggests that several nights have passed.

On the other hand, there are indications that VOG happens fairly soon after the unification, if not necessarily the very next day. In the scene in Egwene's study in tGS epilogue it's mentioned that the room is stripped of furniture, pictures, books etc. I doubt that would last very long after she became Amyrlin in the Tower. And Egwene is reading reports about the Black Ajah purge in the Tower which was carried out "in the hours following Egwene's raising".

[Viperswhip]

Well, though you can see the Tower from Dragonmount, and vice versa, Rand was hardly running, he more kind of strolled, chatted with a farmer, and was at the very summit of one of the higher mountains in Randland. I guess he might have made it down by the next day, that's how it reads, but if the days are a little confused, that's pretty common with the books at this stage.

[TootThatHorn]

I know Egwene saw the clouds clear over DM from the broken window in the tower that the masons were repairing after the Seanchan attack, which if I'm not mistaken was the day she was made the true Amyrlin.

 

Edit: Which says nothing one way or the other; I had always thought that it was the next day, but I can't remember. Didn't she only spend a day or two back at the rebel camp before that?

[Viperswhip]

I don't think it was the day she was made Amyrlin, I don't have the book, but it was the epilogue and she says how happy she is that she chose x as her aide and that Lelaine and Romanda were already causing trouble. It leads me to believe that it was at least a day or two later.

[Byzantine279]

It was at least the next day, probably 2 days based on what she had was thinking.