The Camelyn Front in Last Battle

[Guest bodyelectric]

I am hoping someone can help me out. As the plans for the final battle are shaping up the main front is in Camelyn in hope that they can win a decisive victory quickly and move to help the other fronts. I was under the impression they were sending the bulk of the forces of light there and that they only had at most 100,000 trollocs to fight. Why do they struggle do much even with Bashere inadvertently working against them? everyone else seems to have an endless horde of trollocs and dreadlords and does better. Did I miss something?

[Barid Bel Medar]

Unfortunately, this is a problem with AMOL. We do not have any accurate information regarding most of the forces present in the Last Battle. 

 

In addition, various forces have disappeared (the Asha'man produce 200 for Logain, around 100 for Taim. However, the additional Asha'man, - estimates in PoD put the total of the BT above 400 and growing - at a very conservative estimate, 100 Asha'man disappeared. Similarly, hundreds of Wise Ones are not present. 

 

The numbers of regular soldiers, Aes Sedai and the Seanchan damane are not specified, nor are the numbers of Shadowspawn and Dreadlords. 

 

Basically, we all missed something. 

 

The validity of the outcome cannot accurately be predicted, since we don't have even approximate numbers, let alone specific. 

 

I am sure that members will have theories regarding what happened, and estimates - however, there really is no "answer" to this question, or any of the specifics of the battles. 

 

The only other way would be to ask Team Jordan for clarification. 

[Suttree]

 Similarly, hundreds of Wise Ones are not present. 

Thousands actually. These things fundamentally changed the nature of the Last Battle.

[avernite]

I seem to recall missing Kin too, though they may have been used for healing/logistics... but I thought not.

[Aulduron]

Most of the Kin could not channel strongly and were mentioned being used in circles for healing and gateways. Many of them were probably killed during the invasion.

[Cybertrolloc]

Elayne took the Kin (those in Caemlyn? there's supposed to be like 2000 of them total) to Merrilor iirc. Or at least it's the reason given in Talamanes' section of why they couldn't get help.

 

Granted, we've already gone over for pages and pages about these things in the Battles thread and yah I consider this campaign the most wtf.

[Aulduron]

I think there was 2,000 on the books. Many in Seanchan conquered lands. I don't know how many went to Camelyn.

[BFG]

I thought their were 'only' a couple of hundred in Caemlyn if that.  They were scattered to prevent the AS from finding out about them, a couple of dozen taking turns in Ebou Dar, up to a hundred or so at the Farm.  But when they reached Caemlyn they started to lose members due to the BA and the ones that wanted to leave to find family or to warn the other Kin were allowed to.  I'm not sure if anyone would have bothered to find the others, if they were truly scattered (village here and farmhouse there) it may not have been worth the effort, especially given the relatively weak strength and lack of training that most of them have in the Power

[mbuehner]

I am hoping someone can help me out. As the plans for the final battle are shaping up the main front is in Camelyn in hope that they can win a decisive victory quickly and move to help the other fronts. I was under the impression they were sending the bulk of the forces of light there and that they only had at most 100,000 trollocs to fight. Why do they struggle do much even with Bashere inadvertently working against them? everyone else seems to have an endless horde of trollocs and dreadlords and does better. Did I miss something?

 

You didn't miss anything, the military parts of the writing were bad and nonsensical. The only way to really mitigate it is to assume the great captains were compromised before they decided to split their forces so erratically (essentially all the channelers to one front, a cavalry force to hold a gap, sending the bulk of forces to win a quick victory by executing a delaying action(?)).

 

The misused channeling (and missing channelers) enigma is much worse though. Assigning a huge portion of your channelers to healing and logistics simply ensure the need for much more healing and logistics, since you arent out winning overwhelming victories. Heck, they even had Rand's help (albeit minimized) for the first phase.  Rand has shown himself capable of destroying armies comparable to any of the 3 invasion forces personally. 

All of that had a much simpler (and more expected) solution- make the dark forces bigger, not the light forces disappear. Trollocs could be essentially infinite. You can toss in as many Sharans and red veiled Aiel as you need, there are nothing limiting their numbers given their backgrounds. But my guess is it was easier to track a radically smaller Last Battle,  which it would seem was no different in scale than a campaign of the Trolloc Wars. Thats disappointing.

[Carnacarn]

The Caemlyn front went bad right away. Even by trapping the Shadown force in the city and burning it, they still had a mass of Shadowspawn to deal with. There was also the fact they had Lan and his forces in a hopeless fight as it was. And Arafel had a huge force. The Shadow would have had a good estimate of how many channelers the Light had, but using them all at once or to break the initial waves would be pointless. Wearing out channelers to exhaustion for quick victories would only have helped the Shadow.

[Suttree]

The Shadow would have had a good estimate of how many channelers the Light had, but using them all at once or to break the initial waves would be pointless. Wearing out channelers to exhaustion for quick victories would only have helped the Shadow.

What you are missing about mbhuener's post is huge numbers of light side channelers were simply dropped from the story in AMoL. It fundamentally changed the nature of the last battle and surely has ramifications for how Caemlyn was handled.

[mbuehner]

The Caemlyn front went bad right away. Even by trapping the Shadown force in the city and burning it, they still had a mass of Shadowspawn to deal with. There was also the fact they had Lan and his forces in a hopeless fight as it was. And Arafel had a huge force. The Shadow would have had a good estimate of how many channelers the Light had, but using them all at once or to break the initial waves would be pointless. Wearing out channelers to exhaustion for quick victories would only have helped the Shadow.

 

Right- but thats my point. Not only were a huge swath of the light forces nerfed or disappeared, the ones left behaved inexplicably stupidly. Day after day of fighting and healing and travelling wore out the channelers- one afternoon of giant circles, Sa' angreals and devastation would have tired them out a lot less... AND killed a lot more trollocs. Husbanding your channelers just means they end up having to heal more and travel more.

 

I understand BS wanted to give every Ajah their 'place', but its just kinda ridiculous. Far better to have 10x as many trollocs pouring across the world, which (i think) is more what we all expected. My point is the Trolloc Wars were FAR more devastating and had far more shadowspawn and dreadlords attached than the LB did. Talk about anti-climactic.

[Orderofolde]

Elayne took the Kin (those in Caemlyn? there's supposed to be like 2000 of them total) to Merrilor iirc. Or at least it's the reason given in Talamanes' section of why they couldn't get help.

 

Granted, we've already gone over for pages and pages about these things in the Battles thread and yah I consider this campaign the most wtf.

From what I gathered, there were still many unaccounted for, trapped in Seanchan lands, likely collared and beginning their training.  

[Orderofolde]

 

The Caemlyn front went bad right away. Even by trapping the Shadown force in the city and burning it, they still had a mass of Shadowspawn to deal with. There was also the fact they had Lan and his forces in a hopeless fight as it was. And Arafel had a huge force. The Shadow would have had a good estimate of how many channelers the Light had, but using them all at once or to break the initial waves would be pointless. Wearing out channelers to exhaustion for quick victories would only have helped the Shadow.

 

Right- but thats my point. Not only were a huge swath of the light forces nerfed or disappeared, the ones left behaved inexplicably stupidly. Day after day of fighting and healing and travelling wore out the channelers- one afternoon of giant circles, Sa' angreals and devastation would have tired them out a lot less... AND killed a lot more trollocs. Husbanding your channelers just means they end up having to heal more and travel more.

 

I understand BS wanted to give every Ajah their 'place', but its just kinda ridiculous. Far better to have 10x as many trollocs pouring across the world, which (i think) is more what we all expected. My point is the Trolloc Wars were FAR more devastating and had far more shadowspawn and dreadlords attached than the LB did. Talk about anti-climactic.

 

I think thaat BS needed a lot more help than he actually got for this.  He laid the framework but so much was missed, and for all the extra time that they took.  They did not make use of proof readers and extra people with continuity, not to mention the help with the battles in general BS was supposedly supposed to be getting.

[Suttree]

They did not make use of proof readers and extra people with continuity, not to mention the help with the battles in general BS was supposedly supposed to be getting.

Well we know Alan helped with strategy etc. and at some point Bernard Cornwell offered some insight.

 

As for for the rest there were rounds of "alpha/beta reads" but they seem to have been mainly cosmetic.

[mbuehner]

Plus I'm sure Team Harriet was working very hard to keep details from leaking out, and I appreciate that. It was a huge job, no question.

[GenPender]

You didn't miss anything, the military parts of the writing were bad and nonsensical. The only way to really mitigate it is to assume the great captains were compromised before they decided to split their forces so erratically (essentially all the channelers to one front, a cavalry force to hold a gap, sending the bulk of forces to win a quick victory by executing a delaying action(?)).

 

Agreed.  It seemed like the plan was, "We're going to send a huge force to quickly wipe out the Caemlyn Trolloc army, use blocking forces to pin the other armies in place, then concentrate against them in turn and destroy them."  I don't know why you would need to set up blocking forces when you can travel instantaneously, or why your first focus would be the enemy in Caemlyn, as they're either pinned down already by needing to occupy the city, or will weaken themselves considerably when they leave it, but let's set that aside for right now.  It is--on the surface, once those flaws are overlooked--a decent enough plan.

 

But then what do they do?  Send their absolute weakest force to Caemlyn, with no significant force of channelers, and then proceed to fight them by demonstrating in front of the city and then drawing them on a long-drawn out chase that (IIRC) goes on for over 100 miles before forcing an engagement.  Hello!  Was anyone actually paying attention at that meeting?  This is the exact opposite of what everyone agreed they were going to do.

 

The plan itself wasn't perfect, but the execution was wretched beyond belief.  Easily one of the more frustrating parts of a very frustrating book for me.

[avernite]

Well, it was, but I can attribute it to forsaken manipulation (in itself a brilliant plot device; keeping up standards of 'excellent leadership' throughout the campaign for someone who sin't a military genius is hard); Davram Bashere was telling them what to do, and while Elayne and Perrin (and Rand, supposed second-age military genius who visited the front a few times) really should have seen something was wrong, they probably kept thinking 'I am missing some bigger picture'.

 

 

Still, the blocking force strategy (the strategy devised the last time anyone but the compromised generals had an overview) was actually also sound for a different reason: they wanted to have the enemy armies start bleedng troops from day one, so more reinforcements would deploy and not stay around Shayol Ghul.

[Plato]

I did find it interesting that at first, the trollocs did seem like an endless horde, but eventually they dwindled down and died.  The problem I have with the whole 3 way split of the armies, and the bulk going to Caemlyn, is how do you supply that many trollocs with food, water, etc.

[Drewf91]

 

I am hoping someone can help me out. As the plans for the final battle are shaping up the main front is in Camelyn in hope that they can win a decisive victory quickly and move to help the other fronts. I was under the impression they were sending the bulk of the forces of light there and that they only had at most 100,000 trollocs to fight. Why do they struggle do much even with Bashere inadvertently working against them? everyone else seems to have an endless horde of trollocs and dreadlords and does better. Did I miss something?

 

You didn't miss anything, the military parts of the writing were bad and nonsensical. The only way to really mitigate it is to assume the great captains were compromised before they decided to split their forces so erratically (essentially all the channelers to one front, a cavalry force to hold a gap, sending the bulk of forces to win a quick victory by executing a delaying action(?)).

 

The misused channeling (and missing channelers) enigma is much worse though. Assigning a huge portion of your channelers to healing and logistics simply ensure the need for much more healing and logistics, since you arent out winning overwhelming victories. Heck, they even had Rand's help (albeit minimized) for the first phase.  Rand has shown himself capable of destroying armies comparable to any of the 3 invasion forces personally. 

All of that had a much simpler (and more expected) solution- make the dark forces bigger, not the light forces disappear. Trollocs could be essentially infinite. You can toss in as many Sharans and red veiled Aiel as you need, there are nothing limiting their numbers given their backgrounds. But my guess is it was easier to track a radically smaller Last Battle,  which it would seem was no different in scale than a campaign of the Trolloc Wars. Thats disappointing.

 

 

I think in terms of the military aspect of the writing it comes down to this. Jordan was a military man and had a decent knowledge of military concepts. It WASN'T Jordan, however, who ended our beloved series it was Sanderson. I think that Sanderson had a much less of an understanding and although this is true I found it easy to grasp the meaning and intent between each scene. The only thing I really had trouble with was envisioning 200,000 men medieval armies but I suppose that's the idea behind epic fantasy ;) 

[Carnacarn]

There were 200,000 man armies during the medieval ages. People think purely Western Europe, but Eastern Europe faced the Ottoman's and the Mongols and their large armies during that time. They were also affected by the 'dark ages' to an extent.

[Heloc]

They did say that they didn't have a good count of the number of trollocs in Camelyn and probably wouldn't have had very good information after as they drew them through the forest.  They were also never able to get it in a destroy the way gate so I always assumed that more trollocs were coming in that way.  To me, it seemed to be BS's way of saying, "There are as many trollocs confronting this force as I need there to be."

 

IIRC, many of the members of the Kin were with the Camelyn force.  After their march to Cairhien they said something about them being exhausted from making gateways (for short hops I'd guess) and Elayne was the only channeler with the group that wasn't exhausted.  They also had the dragons with them which are as effective as channelers in many situations.  I kind of think that they should have used the dragons to shell the eff out of Camelyn while they had them bottled up but they didn't for...reasons, I guess.  I also seem to remember there being something about there not being any dreadlords with the Camelyn trollocs.  Since they didn't know how many they'd face elsewhere, I think it made sense not to send many to Camelyn since about the only thing that can counter the shadow's channelers is other channelers.

 

The gap is tight enough that they didn't need a huge force there to keep it stopped up.  They knew that there were dreadlords with the force in Kandor because Rodel Ituralde faced them in Maradon.  I'd also say that, by committing the bulk of your channelers to any one front, they were hoping to force the enemy to do the same to match them.  My impression was that the tollocs in Kandor were a large enough horde that they would have needed either a much larger force of troops or nearly all the channelers just to fight it to a standstill.

 

There are a couple of explanations for why the forces got split the way that they did.  I think that the reader has to assume that the four greatest military minds (Mat aside) on the planet made the best decisions they could with the information that they had and that not all of that information was disclosed to the reader since it would have been REALLY boring and added a ton of extra pages.