It was the explosion of Elayne's Gateway. It destabilized the pattern for miles around it and caused weaves made in it to become more unpredictable and harder to control. 

If we we're talking D&D terms, it created a Wild Magic zone.

From what I understand the companion was based on RJ's original notes and he changed many power levels in the end. Cads was originally stronger than Egwene and Elayne but below Nynaeve. She ended up about the same level as Nicola which is above Moiraine and Siuan but below Egwene, Elayne and Avi.

However, Cads has A LOT of toys that I don't think we even found out what half of them do.

2 hours ago, Shawlee said:

@finnsss22 see I don't even remember! Which episode 🤔? I need to rewatch season one. Damn, I didn't realize it was that unremarkable! I can remember adley had thick eyebrows and hopwil had a big nose, but i can't remember Moiraine using an angreal on a visual media? Light help you,  Rafe Judkins.

She had it right off the bat and was using it to defend the Two Rivers.

You realise she had an angreal in season 1 and as far as we know she never gave it up or lost it.

On 10/23/2023 at 10:28 PM, WoT you say said:

I believe Cadsuane was mentioned in passing by an Aes Sedai in one of the WT scenes. I can’t remember which one though; would need to re-watch and update this thread. Anyone else remember noticing that? I was excited to hear it at the time, because I assumed it meant we would meet Cadsuane later, and I enjoyed her character in the books. 
 

My guess on Verin is that she is a Darkfriend. That’s such a fantastic element of the books that I can’t see it being left out without a good reason. With Verin having a sister named Adelas in the show, I assume Vandene is subsumed in Verin. So with the S2 example of Barthanes being ordered to kill his aunt, and possibly his own mother if necessary, maybe we’ll see Verin struggle with being ordered to kill Adelas?

I think in fact Cads has been mentioned in passing at least twice, possibly 3 times now. I know for sure she was mentioned in S1 and then again by Elayne in S2 when talking to Egwene about famous novices living next to each other.

I guess the real determining factor for Cads will be if Moiraine "Dies" or not. Cadsuane doesn't really have a "job" if Mo doesn't as Cad's was pretty much her replacement with Rand starting in book 7.

On 10/17/2023 at 9:46 AM, Jsbrads2 said:

the choen dal wouldn’t have solved that problem. Also, I have no idea what methods could be used to heal a tear in the fabric of the universe. Maybe they could have wrapped it temporarily, cutting off Darkfriends from DO, maybe even trapping Forsaken inside. Then with the head of the beast temporarily cut off, find a more permanent solution. 

There was no solution at that time. While LTT originally resented the Woman for not helping, the amalgamated Rand/LTT came to understand that the Woman not helping was the right call and that it was highly likely Saidar would've also been tainted.

Even though Callandor was made during the War of Power, it's flaw was discovered quite quickly and more or less shelved. Its importance wasn't revealed until about 80 years after the Sealing of the Bore during the Breaking when Deindre Sedai's foretellings of the Prophecies of the Dragon sent the Nym to the Eye with the Dragon Banner, the Horn and a Seal, constructed the Fortress of Tear to hold Callandor and eventually created Rhuidean setting up the Glass Columns and the Rings.

Naw, Manetheren at its peak had a whole system of paved roads and bridges. They traded easily and often with other Nations. They were a wealthy trade Nation. Most of those bridges were destroyed on purpose during the Trolloc Wars to slow them down.

You have it backwards, they adjusted from trade to defense during the Trolloc Wars.

The Fall of Manetheren was the beginning of the end of the Trolloc Wars. The Shadow threw the majority of its resources into destroying Manetheren and it cost them so dearly accomplishing this that they never took another forward step after, only backwards as they were pushed back into the Blight.

Malazan Book of the Fallen

10 books but fair warning, those 10 books rival Wheel of Time's 14+Prequel for total size and it drops info on you at a record pace at times.

Great series and some absolutely stand out characters.

It's loosely based on the adventures from multiple D&D table top campaigns in a custom world the author's created back in 1982. 

Many of the characters featured are based on actual player characters from those campaigns over the years and the story is a weaving of those campaigns together into an epic tale.

It's a very good and very fun series.

On 10/19/2023 at 1:52 PM, Scarloc99 said:

Think the tongue in cheek humor was lost here, it is clear they reproduce, RJ went into it in rather cringey detail lol 

My bad, that's what I get for posting right before I was going to bed.

1 hour ago, Scarloc99 said:

I like to think that Aginor read the Lord of the rings and decided to try making Orcs, only to be told he would be sued by the Tolkien estate for copyright breach, and so in a fit of rage went to the dark lord, and with his new found powers decided to create the Trolloc. I don't thik they reproduce, that sounds far to messy for a Foresaken to mess about with, I think they are just, created. Also, trollocs will eat anything i cant see baby trollocs lasting beyond the next time mummy is hungry. 

 

Ooo your pregnant mavis, well you know Miriam I was peckish and fancied a nice snack later. 

They have to be able to reproduce or Trollocs would've disappeared while Aginor was imprisoned for 3000 years and there certainly wouldn't have been enough to support over a 100 years of the Trolloc Wars.

This is flat out stated during one of the Forsaken's PoV's thinking about the mystery of how Fades come into being.

There's been many theories over the years from Fades simply being a by-product of using the True Power to Trolloc's actually having souls and that anytime a soul with the ability to Channel comes along it is born a Fade.

Yeah, not a lot is known about Shadowspawn.

Even their creator Aginor only knows so much about them as they were all created using the True Power which is basically pure chaos. To say it's unpredictable would be a gross understatement heh.

Aginor didn't even create the Myrddral, they would just sometimes be "born" along with Trollocs. Despite experimenting on them, he still couldn't discover how this happened, what they were exactly or how their control over Trollocs works.

We didn't even see every kind of Shadowspawn or at least we only heard of Jumara being worms but according to Sammy they are only the larval version, that their full grown version is one of the nastiest Shadowspawn there is.

Or the insect like swarms of Cafar we only heard of.

There were only 6 Gholam's, 3 male and 3 female. I always figured the male versions were immune to Saidar and the female versions were immune to Saidin but that was never confirmed or denied. 

2 hours ago, Ralph said:

 

I saw a leak that she goes with Rand and someone else is with Perrin, Bain and Chiad

49 minutes ago, Skipp said:

The leak I saw said a male aiel actor.

So Gaul and Faile  incoming then, sounds good to me.

On 10/14/2023 at 5:08 PM, Elder_Haman said:

I think we get a version of it in the season finale.

My outline is something like this:

 

Group One:

Rand, Moiraine, Lan, Egwene --> to the Waste. Rand meets Asmo and trains with the power. Trains on the sword with Lan. Tension generated by Lanfear being there, unknown to Rand. (Two actresses so audience knows a bunch that Rand & Co. do not.) Rand hooks up with Avi. Season ends with Rand returning from Rhuidean.

 

Egwene trains with the Wise Ones --> the vehicle to learn about Aiel culture, prophecies, and history.

 

Moiraine --> focused on prophecy. Figures out who Lanfear is and saves him from Lanfear's jealousy in the final episode by tackling her into the door. (This may require some major changes to how Rhuidean works).

 

Group Two:

Elayne, Nynaeve, Mat, Perrin --> to Camelyn on their way to the Two Rivers. Perrin splits away (wolf stuff) and heads directly home. Mat gets lost in Camelyn and manages to find his way to the Finn. 

 

First half of the season --> vehicle for learning about Andoran politics, Elaida, Morgase and the rest of the family. Introduction of a male Forsaken. Elayne and Nyn leave for Tanchico mid-season. Find Callandor (replacing BotW) at the end of the season. 

 

Perrin gets to the Two Rivers, finds it much changed. Trolloc assaults. Dain and Perrin become uneasy allies. Battle of the Two Rivers is the big finale.

Doesn't sound unreasonable but after NY CC we now know for sure we're mainly getting...

*Aiel/Rhuidean and Dreamwalking (Rand, Egwene, Moiraine, Lan)

*Two Rivers (Perrin, Loial, Bain and Chiad) +Tinkers reappearance

*Travel on a Seafolk ship most likely to Tanchico (Elayne, Nynaeve)

So we know pretty much where the season will go for the last 4-5 episodes, the question is where are they starting it and how do they get to these places?

If there is a White Tower reset is Mat going there as well? Or is he just going with Rand straight up?

Does Avi go with Perrin or Rand?

When/where do they introduce Faile?

Where does Thom reappear?

When do they introduce Elaida?

When/where are Gawyn and Galad coming in?

What I want/expect in S3 is 3 main lines.

Two Rivers defense 

Aiel waste/glass columns/Asmo capture 

Tanchico 

1 minute ago, Jaysen Gore said:

 

I also don't think we get the Cairhien Docks and Dumai's Wells in the same season. They're too big emotional moments to have them too close together. So I expect the first ends season 4, and the second season 5. 

 

Are we getting the docks though? Kind of predicated on whether we get the Foxes and Snakes and we just don't know about that yet. Nor do we know if we're getting Rahvin.

We have 6 of the 8 Forsaken confirmed and I think we all expect #7 to be Demandred. The 8th, going by Lanfear's comments, is another male. Granted Rahvin is probably the most likely with possibly Aginor being the other choice.

No Finn's though eliminates/changes a lot of stuff.

The bottomline is that we simply don't know and won't till S3.

Book 4 is the beginning of the road map for the rest of the series for pretty much every character and S3 will most likely be the same. Predicting anything prior to seeing S3 is pretty tough.

As I keep saying, S3 will make or break the show.

1 hour ago, Jaysen Gore said:

All of what you say is true, and were arguments discussed before the series started. But now, we have 2 seasons of actual evidence of Rafe's approach to adaptation and the depth of cuts. And its comparable to the usual measuring stick of fantasy adaptation (with similar artists' writing style, even)

 

The showrunners have already cut almost 1/3 of the covered plot content in the first two seasons, while adding maybe an hour of content not in the 14 main books per season. So maybe it's not 6 whole books worth of content, maybe it's only 3 or 4 more.  But more major cuts HAVE to be made. And the slog by itself isn't enough

 

Right but season 1 had a ton extra information dialog to pack in.

Season 2 was stated flatout would involve books 2 and 3. That they weren't going to rehash more chasing.

Season 3 is mostly going to be book 4.

Looking ahead I see no issue condensing the vast majority of the lull or as it's called now, the slog.

It wouldn't shock or pain me in the least to see books 7-11 mostly covered in 2 seasons with the majority of it being carried by book 7, the last half of 9 and a good chunk from 11.

Books 4 and 6 will be the hardest to condense by far imo.

As I said before S2 was a marked improvement over S1 but S3 will make or break it.

Your formula is flawed simply on the premise that all the pages have the same value and that's not remotely true.

The value of a page from books 4-6 are many times the value of a page from books 7-10.

My best educated guess for 8 seasons is something along the lines of...

S1 book 1+NS

S2 books 2+3

S3 book 4

S4 books 5+6

S5 and S6 books 7-11

S7 and S8 books 12-14

4 hours ago, Jaysen Gore said:

Okay, now that I’ve had time to digest where we are now, and inspired by the LOTR discussion in another thread to look at the rate of adaptation, here’s what I think we’re faced with:

 

TLDR: We’re about to lose fully ½ of the content of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time.

 

Based on my book versions:

Page Count: (529 + 442+ 378 = 1349 pages for LOTR) and (657+ 577+ 577 = 1811 for EOTW, GH, TDR)

Run time (12 hours for LOTR extended, 16 for WoT)

We were at 1.874 pages per minute for LOTR and are at 1.886 pages per minute for WoT, which is close, and can be used to project.

At that rate, adapting WoT's 10,173 pages would require 90 hours of television in total, of which we’ve already got 16.  But we’ve only got 48 hours left.

So, assuming 48 remaining hours of TV, they need to lose 2,929 pages of content, or about 5 entire books, without ANY additions to fit everything in.

 

But if you add more Rafe created stuff in, you have to lose more. Let’s say they add an hour of fresh content per season, which means they need to lose another 679 pages of Jordan / Sanderson content – another book – from the run of the series.

 

So now we come to the tough question - how to lose 6 books worth of material:

 

Easy Cuts – the slog main plots – plot points must happen, but don’t need to take long:

Faile’s kidnapping

Mat with Tylin and Tuon

Egwene at Salidar

 

Easy Cuts – side plots - can lose without impacting character arcs or plot

Sea Folk and the Bowl of the Winds (substitute Callandor / Male A’dam)

Shara (substitute Black Tower corruption)
Far Madding

Be’lal, Bathamel, Aginor

Elayne and Nynaeve with the Circus

Morgase’s Journey

Thom Merrilin (Lan protects the cave)

Aran’gar / Osan’gar (hard, confusing, and politically sensitive)

 

Medium Cuts – the Forsaken plot consolidation:

Rahvin in Camelyn + Sammael in Illian (only getting 1)

Demandred in Shara and Taim with the Black Tower (only getting 1)

Mesaana in the Tower or Semirhage with the Seanchan (only one’s in the show, but which one?)

 

Medium Cuts – can remove, but need to consider implication:

The Kin storyline in Tanchico (need 1 non-Aes Sedai Channelling society, and someone for Nyn / Elayne to interact with looking for the MacGuffin)

Berelain / Faile (Faile deals with the ghost of a dead wife)

The Red Veils (I think the Shadow needs human soldiers)

Any non-trolloc monsters (Draghkar, Grolm, Raken) (too much SFX budget)

Tear or Illian (keep 1 - Rand needs a non-Aiel army beyond Cairhien)

Galad (would need Dain to forgive Perrin)

Birgitte (important to Nyn and Elayne’s character development)

 

Hard Cuts – material re-writes to major plot points required:

Siuan / Leanne / Logain’s journey to Salidar (stilling, healing, redemption, and politics)

The Aelfinn / Elfinn / Tower of Genji (Mat, getting Moiraine back)

Moiridin / Cyndane (they need at least one soul switch before the end)

The Borderlands Compulsion arc (become the King you were born to be, Mat assumes command)

The Camelyn Civil War (swap the balefire end of FoH for the end of the Civil War)

Egeanin (to show Seanchan aren’t all evil)

 

For those of us who enjoy the political machinations, or complex world building, or even nuance, we can forget it. The Axeman cometh...

Not how it works. Not even remotely. 

RJ liked describing things in detail and took up a lot of pages.

The show can encompass pages and pages of description in seconds on screen.

Dialog also isn't an issue as the books are not what would be considered heavy dialog from a screen writer's perspective. 

The issue going from PoV to 3rd person information delivery. 

The books could deliver mountains of information on history, character/world background, prophesies and attitudes quite easily in multiple pages of internal dialogs. 

The show has to deliver it through straight up dialog most of the time.

Dialog just in general eats the most screen time by far and now you're adding even more.

Regardless a simple page count is not going to get any meaningful results.

First off, the characters didn't start to really develop their individual arcs till late book 3 and mainly book 4.

The show is still in a position to do that so that shouldn't be a valid complaint at this point.

That said, there were steps and/or hooks to set up those arcs laid throughout the first 3 books that the show hasn't done a very good job of for all of the characters Even having to kind of brute force some of them in (Perrin for example). This is for sure a valid complaint.

What shouldn't be a complaint is the underlying plot that they have stayed true to the books with.

Book 1 at it's heart was Ishamael manipulating events to get Rand to the Eye. Season 1 was exactly the same but the difference is the show, while it hid this as well, was actually more obvious about it than in the Book.

We were only able to piece it together through reveals in later books from rare Forsaken PoV's and discovery that Ishy used Farstrider to deliver the message about the Eye at that Stedding to point Moiraine and co at the Eye.

The same was done in the show only this time Ishy delivered the same message through Siuan's dream instead.

Books 2 and 3 was Ishy screwing with Rand through his friends trying to put cracks in Rand hoping to break him. Now granted the show ramped this up but they were also firing 2 books worth of cracks at Rand and Ishamael was a hell of a lot less insane by this point than he was in the books at the end of book 3.

They also had Lanfear drop a big ole wrench in the works by moving the timeline up of Ishy's plans up so Ishy doesn't turn or break him and Lanfear gets Rand to herself.

Should be obvious at this point that Ishamael's motives are to break or turn Rand. This was the case right up until the end of book 12.

Most think Lanfear's motives are because she loves Rand and sure that is part of it but mostly she is in love with the idea that Rand is her only chance of possibly defeating the Dark One himself and finally getting her hands on all that power she uncorked in the first place. This was always her true motive in the books, she loved power over anything or anyone else period.

The show needs to do better on the individual character arcs without losing the why of the underlying forces acting against them.

Season 1 was a mess, it's hard to say it wasn't. I didn't think it was horrible but it wasn't good imo either. I liked season 1 but it was a very luke warm like.

Season 2 was much better pretty much across the board, I definitely liked and enjoyed it a lot more than S1. It was good and at times excellent imo.

Do they need to do better though? Absolutely.

Season 3 will straight up make or break this show period. I know it and I think most people know it. Let's hope they nail it.

9 hours ago, Mirefox said:

Was Ishy’s intent clear?  I think the line could have worked no matter what; he’s saying “you did what I wanted you to do” whether than means killing him or accelerating or resurrection or whatever else he had in mind.  Ah well,  I big loss, I just think it would have be pretty cool.

It's pretty clear that Lanfear screwed his plans up, basically she made him spring his trap too soon. The conversation Lanfear has with Domon makes it clear she sent that piece of heartstone, more importantly the poem to Moiraine. She planned that Rand would take care of Ishamael and she would dump the remaining 6 Forsaken Seals in the ocean so she had Rand all to herself.

Ishy realised it, released all the Forsaken and was prefectly willing to gentle Rand and/or die himself and try again in a next life.

He may have thought he might be getting a true release at the end there but we all know the DO will never release him which is why I think a Moridin/Shadar Haran combo is incoming.

24 minutes ago, A Memory Of Why said:

 

I'm thinking it may be a trigger to the holes in his memories, though maybe I'm just keen for some fins.

You and I both. Let's hope!

1 hour ago, Pandemonium said:

Ishamael appears to be dead, which is unfortunate.  Will he return later as Moridin, or will they give the reigns to Demandred?  

 

Or are we getting a Shadar Haran/Moridin combo???🤔

Gonna require another couple of watches to really see where I end up but initially I really enjoyed it.

I did think the the big fire dragon thing was on the cheesey side but something across the sky or repeating what happened in the books would've probably been even more cheesey so I can live with it.

I knew Mat blowing the Horn would trigger his memories, I called that 2 weeks ago 🙂

3 hours ago, Samt said:

  Hide contents

Be'lal is probably the least developed, most generic, and least used on the forsaken.  He's just the generic bad guy in Tear.  If Tear doesn't happen, I don't see how Be'lal won't be cut.  

 

6 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

no, not really.

yes, he had a storyline planned in advance. he had some events that he knew he wanted to show. the first book already has some of min viewings related to mat adventures among the finns.

however, what he had was a vague outline. he didn't have a detailed plot before writing book 1. He didn't have a detailed plot even when he died.

when brandon sanderson overtook writing - after RJ spent his last months writing scenes and notes - what was there was less a cohesive plot and more a line of stepping stones; character arcs would go in certain directions, some main events would happen. the skeleton of a story, we can say. and some bits of flesh in the form of some written scenes. but some bones were also missing. iirc, there wasn't a single line on padan fain.

even what was there was an outline, and some of it was changed in revision. and before someone say "omg they changed his books", that's what always happens in the editing process. An author starts with an outline, but as he writes some things just don't work. some plot points are no longer consistent with who the characters have become. there are editors for this.

 

so, while it's not correct to say that RJ expanded his writing gradually as he came up with new ideas, it's also incorrect to frame him as a genius mastermind who plotted a 4.4 million words saga from the beginning before even writing the first book - and then always stuck to the initial plan, because the initial plan was that good. no, the truth is somewhere in between.

yes, he had a general outline. but he also wrote the first three books to be self-conclusive, because he didn't knew if he would get a contract for a new book afterwards - and those endings aged pretty poorly, because they tried to provide forced endings to a story that hasn't ended.

yes, he had a general idea of the arcs of his major characters. but he also had many minor characters he didn't knew what to do with. he had a lot of blank spaces to fill, and sometimes the stuff he used to fill those blank spaces took on a life of its own.

You're right, it wasn't that simple

The first 3 books were originally 1 book draft or drafts actually as his earliest draft was more LotR based because that's what he wanted to write for. That's why the first 3 books have a LotR feel. While he then began crafting his own story after failing to secure permission to write in the LotR world, he still wanted to pay hommage to his favourite author Tolkien.

I would have to look up and find the exact details of his first book deal but the jist of it was he needed to break it into 3 books and more to follow. I don't think it was clear if the cutting of Dannil Lewin as the 4th Ta'veren boy was something he did on his own beforehand or if that happened when he broke it into 3 books. I am almost positive though that I recall it being Harriet that got him to cut it beforehand.

What I do know is that the final scene between Rand and the DO was the ending in the original drafts which he obviously took out of book 3 and put in his back pocket for the actual end of the series.

5 hours ago, Vartija said:

I'm not sure if RJ actually wrote the ending when TEOTW came out, but he often said he could write the ending whenever he wanted to because he had it so clearly in his mind from the start. Outside of that he said he had certain events that he wanted to explore but the road to and order of those events could change during the writing process. Most of his notes weren't plot related rather than culture and character traits. The story itself was in his head and therefore probably very malleable during the writing process. 

The tEotW prologue and the final confrontation with the DO was the first thing he wrote. He had the bread, now he just needed to fill in the sandwich.