Egwene's Parallel from a previous turning of the wheel, wouldnt be that much of a stretch. She wasnt bound as a Hero of the Horn, could there be a reason for that? 

Could be that it will be Egwene rather than Nakomi in the next turning talking to the next Dragon Reborn.

I dont think Nakomi is the creator because quite frankly why would she involve herself with the Aiel. A previous age Egwene equivalent would involve herself though and she would tell the last vestiges of her former friend that he did well.

 

How many male channelers were with the Sharans? If Demandred recruited as he went along, put a stop to some of the Sharan practices, he could have taught them some weaves, and even set up his own "school" in Shara. He had access to darkfriend men who could channel from the west, no reason he couldn't have used some to help.

The men would have to completely rehabilitated from animals in less than a year. Plus his selection would have been scarce given the ages left alive. That's a small group.

Full blown compulsion could do it, totally strip their minds and then create a new one. Sort of like Graendal does with her pets and servants. So we know it is possible to varying degrees. Whether Demandred is good enough with compulsion is another matter, Graendal was an artist at it.

But yeah I think your right about the scarcety. If he had access to 1000 of the right ages to try and force them it would be pretty miraculous, but that would only cover those who come from Natural Sparker Bloodlines, not those which can be taught. With travelling parties he could gather them quickly like the BT did. But it requires a core to begin with.

We have too little information about the state of affairs in Shara. I still think the numbers are unnaturally low in comparisson to previous books but what's done is done and we'll never know what happened to those armies and channellers. Though I hope for BS's sake he's more consistent with his own work or has editors which pick up on that sort of thing without dropping the ball, because dropping stupid amounts of people off the map like this is not a good thing, it shows a profound lack of planning and foresight

 

The Black Tower was explained away in a true to the previous books fashion... Unfortunately that was one of the few explanations that fits within the WoT. When channellers fight it is a massacre which is why most of the Asha'man didnt survive it, so they werent really a strategic asset overall so it would have been women vs women overall.

It didn't make any sense actually. Half the BT was sent out in KoD. That should have been around 400 Asha'man, every one of them loyal to Rand. And as for those at the BT, I don't recall it ever being said that a huge amount of Asha'man died there. Taim had 100 with him later on, which is probably slightly less than he should have had, but still fairly close. I don't see any evidence that "good" Asha'man were slaughtered at the BT. It seems to me that after Androl and Logain broke free, Taim took his men and got the hell out of there. So, unless there were a bunch Asha'man running around in all the battles and BS just didn't bother mentioning it, there's a whole lot of Asha'man who fell off the map at some point. There actually should have been more Asha'man than Egwene had Aes Sedai, considering how many AS have been lost throughout the books.

Thats actually a superb point about the ones from KoD. Not actually sure what happened to those who went to the Borderlands to stem the trollocs either.

But it does say in the book somewhere that Logain and the surviving loyal Asha'man would be no use until they recovered and that most had perished in the battle, so it might well be that the ones who got slaughtered were the weaker/less well trained Asha'man who were still training. i.e the two rivers guys etc.

Either that or someone here said it and made it look convincing haha. I'll probably do a re-read soon but to be honest I dont think I can quite stomach dissecting the book if I read it too fresh.

If the KoD ones werent at the BT. then they were probably with the Wise Ones/Kin that were heating the water for the Grand Aiel Bath Appreciation week. Not sure where a lake big enough would be, but it must have been spectacular. Afterall Aiel are more afraid of water than the DO so their version of TG would be a big bath.

 

 

RJ made his magic system so superior that anyone having access was almost unbeatable compared to normal folk.Then he compounded this mistake by having large amounts of channelers in his series.Then when the LB came along poor Sanderson saw that these high no of channelers on the light side would make mince meat out of any no of trollcos.So he brought in a no of dreadlords from Shara and then promptly made 2/3 of the light channelers just disappear without any expanantion.!!

 

Curious how Jordan would have handled this same situation.For whatever his faults,Jordan would have thought up of something else to even the odds.

I don't necessarily disagree but the solution is very easy. Shara is as big as the Randland. They have been breeding channellers for the Light knows how long and they are battle-ready. They could easily counter however many channellers the Light had. The answer was not to make the existing channellers disappear, it was to balance the numbers. 400 was a ridiculuous number for Shara, and that is not even counting the Town.

 

 

Not without men. Remember they'd have virtually no male channelers. And they would have lost a lot of the females to the battle to take over their land. At most they'd counter the Seachan or the Aiel. At best. That still leaves White Tower, Black Tower, WindFinders, and The Kin, and one of those two aforementioned factions since they can't counter both. The shadow took roughly 20% or less from the WT and the BT and that's about it. 

 Even if they didnt fully counter the Lights Channeller forces it would have been a bit better to explain the sudden change of the battle. If say 2000 fresh faced Ayyad popped up, then damned straight they would pound the hell out of a load of tired Light Channellers(AS/Damane/WO/Kin) who were using a rotating schedule to counter fatigue so didnt have everyone active and none were fresh nor at the same battlefield.

The Black Tower was explained away in a true to the previous books fashion... Unfortunately that was one of the few explanations that fits within the WoT. When channellers fight it is a massacre which is why most of the Asha'man didnt survive it, so they werent really a strategic asset overall so it would have been women vs women overall.

It made sense for the 400 Ayyad to trash the weakened White Tower forces when you add them with Sharan/Trolloc Armies. But surely when the army gathered at Merrilor then they would have every single Channeller at the FoM linked with every Kin/WO/Novice anyone who can channel a candle flame basically. a Circles members do not have to be present at the battle to give their strength, they could have been sitting in Mayene. 

Quite frankly reserving channellers for healing is an admirable sentiment assuming the world is guaranteed to live another day. But when you get to the level of problems when the Sharan's turned up with their force it should have been obvious that if they won, then keeping people alive using the Power would be less useful than keeping the world alive. They could have continued to administer herbs and such and care for the sick. Something which the Kin especially are noted for. So that alone would have been dozens of battery packs for the Aes Sedai to bring the pain to the Ayyad.

As for Mats tactics. He excelled more at hit and run raids and trickery in earlier books. They dont work when your enemy is reading your mail. Personally I think holding the Seanchan in reserve like he did was a colossal waste almost like he was trying to keep his wife happy by giving her an army she can invade everyone else with later. However the numbers we have accounted for were according to books 1-13. Book 14 did not have the same numbers available apparently the Seanchan had to deploy a lot of their forces to defending their borders against Farmers and Bandits and the hostile armies of nearby realms(Obviously someone other than their neighbours at FoM...).

Someone earlier in this thread mentioned that their rule wasnt secure when from everything we saw in books 11-13 said that they were probably more secure than any other realm in many respects even if that security was bought by the sword. They should have easily had a crazy amount troops available if they stripped all their garrisons down to skeleton crews.

 

Was the number of Sharan channelers given as 400? I could have sworn there were more.

Demandred tells Taim he has 400 channellers with him.

Which Ironically would have allowed Taim to 13x13 at over 30x the rate which he managed with the pittiful amount of Black Ajah help he had.

Gotta love how Forsaken infight you really do, Taim should have pulled him up on it haha. "I would have had over a thousand had you lent me yours for a few months!" which would have been returned with a wave of the hand and "These are not the Ayyad you are looking for, move along."

Early Battles played out in a formulaic fashion--people discussed what needed to be done, wizz-bang general laid out innovative but likely impractical option, short sequence of Action-by-Adjective and then someone kindly explained to someone else (the reader) why what was done was good or bad.

 

The Last Battle was better, though still an Action-by-Adjective sequence. Though, I suspect to degrees my dislike of Demandred's arc through that chapter may be tainting that perspective and in re-reads I'll find it better than I did initially.

 

That being said my favourite scene in a book was a battle. Loial's charge was just beautifully written and so epic.

In many ways I agree, I just wish that BS had upped the shadow rather than nerfing the Light or at least give us a reason they wouldnt be doing anything, it would have made it easier to swallow and then they could have made it much more catastrophic.

Its a bit different losing 400k troops out of 800k or whatever was lost in the end. But if the numbers had been true to what it should have been, BS could easily have killed off 1-1.5mil and left a few hundred thousand alive. That would have at least been going with how bad seemed like it was going to be.

The Carnage we recieved seemed false somehow because of the lack of the Aiel and the almost none involvement of the seanchan. Overall the battles were however well written. BS has actually written some of my favourite battle scenes in any books(Kaladin in WoK is truly epic at times). Im just having trouble swallowing the "missing elements"

By playing numerous strategy games such as Starcraft, Warcraft etc..., I am indeed a battle hardened general. 

 

Btw, wtf were the Light forces thinking?

To be fair non of those games really cover the sorts of things which make true Generals. Tacticians study battles, Strategists study Logistics.

If we wanted to nit-pick real Strategy then I would point out that with the way Lan was using his Cavalry  every horse would have most likely died due to exhaustion within the first couple of days. They are not endurance animals unless you go very easy on them, Repeatedly charging an enemy army would require a Remount with fresh horses repeatedly over and over again, most of the time with those horses not recovering from it fully for a couple of days depending on the distance travelled. If you keep putting them through their paces, they are prone to all manner of problems. This is why Cavalry regiments generally had huge amounts of mounts with them and they rotated them constantly even on a normal journey if they wanted to keep a decent pace.

Then theres the minor problem that there were enormous food shortages, one of the largest stockpiles of food was in Caemlyn... So yeah by the time it all went down the Light had lost a staggering amount of food, Rand couldnt swan around and Ta'veren them some more so all the remaining foods would have had to come from Illian, Tear and Arad Doman whilst feeding the populace of those Kingdoms.... Yep they would have been eating all those fine Cavarly mounts long before the battles ended. Sorry Mandarb old pal its into a Tesco Burger for you...

So no we arent nit-picking or Arm-chair Generalling. Merely pointing out inconsistencies between books (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13) and the final book

 

 

It seems this community is blessed with numerous battle-hardened desktop generals, all with a better understanding of how (imaginative) large scale battles are being fought than the author of the book.

What makes you think Brandon would be any more experienced? RJ was in Vietnam and studied at the Citadel so you can quite clearly see why he was qualified...Brandon not so much. In fact he admitted it was an area he struggled with and consulted Bernard Cornwell in an attempt to get a better understanding.

Why would you think the armchair generals in this thread know better? BS writes about battles for his profession, people on this website play warhammer 3d and think that makes them Eisenhower.

Erm sorry but the battles Ive seen him write have generally been low key or intentionally inept. Take the Way of Kings. The entire Alethi army is basically the same size as a WoT nation (100,000 troops) and they fight like children in a sandbox using the battles as a constant game of one-up-manship. In Brandons worlds the magic systems are generally a lot more low-key and have very fixed uses. The WoT magic system is probably the most overpowered in all of the fantasy literature in existence... those ideals are diametrically opposite.

Simply put there is a reason even RJ didnt go into such massive detail about it, is that used effectively it turns into an absolute slaughter. Had both the Light and Shadow used their channellers to their pre-AMoL effectiveness there would have probably been a few dozen non channellers alive at the end of the battles aside from wounded sent away earlier, and perhaps a few hundred channellers on the winning side.

Have you actually read any of the other books? not meaning to be offensive Im really not, but have we been reading the same battles? At Maradon there were channellers on both sides at one point, before Rand turned up and Ituralda gave the trolloc horde attacking him such a royal pasting until the Dreadlords turned up and forced the weakened Asha'man to flee, and he had very low numbers of them.

Battles in Randland are not about Man vs Man or Man vs Trolloc UNLESS there are no channellers in the battle at all. As soon as you throw in even semi competant channellers whichever side has them steamrolls the other, it was shown time and time again, which is why the shadow was so desperately trying to make more dreadlords.

Note any battle with the Seanchan+Damane in decent numbers in it minus Rand and his 5k troops and a shed load of Asha'man and even then it was only his Asha'man which stemmed the tied of the Seanchan advance. Only counter to a channeller is another one simple as that. Dumies Wells is a prime example of an overwelming display of the One Power. 200 Asha'man destroyed and I say that emphatically  They destroyed an army 200x their size and broke them in mere minutes

That is why Trollocs and Fades have seemed weaker and weaker over the course of the series. Almost like they were being relegated from being the shadows primary force to merely being its expendable force. 

Once again I ask you this:  What does being an armchair General have to do with plot-holes, Missing Troops, Missing entire civilizations?

It seems this community is blessed with numerous battle-hardened desktop generals, all with a better understanding of how (imaginative) large scale battles are being fought than the author of the book.

Oh you mean the author who never actually got around to finishing off how the battle was meant to go other than Demandred turns up with the Sharans and gives the Light a pasting. RJ simply didnt have time to give adequate numbers and an in-depth flow of the battles. Brandon is a good author in general, but this is not his world, he seems to lack the same sort of ideals as RJ when it comes to magic systems in general which is very apparent here in that channellers went from being 18year old single malt scotch to being a Smirnoff ice.

That and the numbers do not add up to what has been shown repeatedly over the past 13 books. The glaring plot holes which were never explained. Machin Shin, the lack of Andor/Tear/Illian's armies, the true Aiel Clans. Not even going to say a thing about the lack of channellers. 

But I will say this, the reason the Seanchan were pretty much not really seen as being used onscreen is because they would have flattened the Sharan army. Demandred wouldnt use himself up so it would be channeller vs channeller and soldier vs soldier.

You do not need to be an arm chair general to see the world develop over 13 books. 2 of them which Brandon wrote for the world to change overnight and a black hole suck up most of the Lights elite troops and the lights main advantage overall to disappear. Personally I see it as a fault on too much detail about the battles, we could have glossed over the inconsistencies if we were not shown so many facets of the battles, so much so it makes anyone who has read the series think "Erm? where were the rest?" 

They've said the men are treated like animals. They don't even teach them to read or write and they don't see who they are bred with. I'm not saying he couldn't train the men, but could he train the men while taking over the rest of the country and stabilizing it? Didn't Moggy ask his little gf about never seeing Demandreds weaves. Teaching men while maintaining your illusion of a prophetical figure would be more than difficult.

 

Grendel too them, and knew the hierarchy or the channelers, thus dealt with them a little, before he got there since she didn't know where he was. So at that point he was not gathering armies.

 

So, the few men who are alive at any given time, all sub 18, would ave to be gathered and trained, while creating and maintaining your illusion, and gathering armies and prepping them to fight alongside shadow spawn. Where'd he fine time? That's my point. It's totally illogical if not plain impossible

Moggy asked because she used the True Power rather than Saidar. I assumed Demandred had demonstrated he could channel without using Saidin. But the truth is even if Demandred did channel, no woman would have been able to see the weaves...  (+ he was channelling Saidin during the battle at Merrilor so they knew he could channel and presumadly had known for a long time, he was playing some alternate Dragon Reborn part out over there, so why wouldnt the Dragon... the most famous channeller that has ever lived Reborn or not be able to channel.)

Thats the real question though, is Shara stable now? If yes then why would he care more about that than the army and power that he should have been gathering for the Last Battle, if no then where is the rest of the army he should have had. personally I think he could, all he would need to do is take over the Ayyad and everything else would be cake once you factor in compulsion. The Ayyad would have been harder than the rest of Shara combined. 

But that still leaves very very large holes in the entire plotline. If Shara's standing army was 200k which is entirely reasonable due to the size of it and the nature of the realm. Then why did he not add a buffer of crazy amounts of slaves wielding spears. It would not have mattered if they had died easily, every man they killed would have been one less for the real army.

And if the Ayyads total numbers were only 400, then they should probably be extinct by now, that is a ridiculously low number for a society which breeds the gene. Granted they most likely lose out on diversity but thats a few villages worth of people. That is not enough to keep it going.

Maybe he only took control of 1 village? and then gathered some slaves and the regular army from a small sub-district of Shara. But if it was the entire nation's showing then it was pathetic and the Seanchan alone would have steamrolled them in an afternoon and had tea and biscuits shortly afterwards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instead of culling the light side channelers to make the OP users on both sides equivalent,I wonder why Sanderson did not just bump the no of channelers from Shara to make up the difference.Instead of 400 why not have them bring 3000? 

Because it wouldn't have been enough. Plus, they had no males. At the most they would have matched the Aiel, which leaves the windfinders, the seachan and the BT/WT to outnumber them. So, still over 2 to 1

 

They had males channelers.And the difference could be made up by the Aiel red veil channelers. I think Sanderson missed a chance here.

Think Vards means they shouldn't have had many male channelers as they are all killed once they reach a certain age.

Unless Demandred followed Taim's tactics for the black tower, all the Ayyad bloodlines up until 17 would have been available and they could have most likely forced anyone from 13 upwards. Morr wasnt exactly much older than that.

 

Add in scouring parties travelling across Shara and in the 2 years Demandred had there he could have gotten them all well and truly sorted, and thats assuming he wasnt smart enough to start before the cleansing. He could have 13x13'd them and gotten them protection against the taint.

 

The entire Demandred arc wasnt that well thought out in my opinion. I enjoyed it because I think he's a cool character. But it makes him look inept as hell that while in control of an entire continent that he managed such a piss poor army. Sorry but a few hundred channellers and a few hundred thousand troops is a little on the small side in comparison to any large nation and Shara is the better part of 2x Randland. He could have had an enormous slave army backed with a stonking load of channellers. And then we could have had the last battle we'd been led to believe was coming before the Aiel and Seanchan decided to have a bath and a tea party and sit out the last battle.

He hasn't been there two years unless he was in cohoots with Greandal, which we know he wasn't. Recall she stole the leaders in book 6 or 7. So a most he had a year. All the male channelers were used at breeding animals, thus were completely ignorant. How much training could he have done to subhuman animals in less than a year? Morr was at least 15 men start later than women. At most they'd have a handful of untrained men, it's barely feasible.

Sorry but if you think Demandred couldnt train men to be weapons in a year then you seem to be under the impression that Taim is superior to him at leading channellers which is something I do not think is possible. The men who fought at Dumies Wells had under 6 months training on average. 

As for the Ayyad males, we've limited information on how they bring them up, I was under the impression that they use them as breeding stock from 13-18 then execute them that doesnt necasarily mean they are caged like beasts, they could be raised to believe they have to be killed at 18 and live a good life until then, This seems more likely as the mothers etc would handle that much better than seeing their kids abused. As for sub-human animals... We have the Demane kennels? They're perfect examples of using people as sub-human weapons. 

Men might spark later than women, but that does not mean he couldnt have tried to force some of them. And that is discounting that he could scour Shara in the same way Taim did. Not just for men, but for women who could learn.

As for Graendal, she was there to collect specimens and Demandred knew she was there, it could well be that Demandred went to Shara around the time Rand faced Ishammael at Falme, because just after that the entire Sharan nation experienced a lot of internal problems. Also Graendal didnt go after the Ayyad, I doubt she went near them. She went after the Sh'boan and Sh'botay who were mere mortals. Perhaps Graendal took them and thats what caused the internal strife, but that would mean she pulled them out of Shara long before they were shown in the books. 

 

 

 

 

Instead of culling the light side channelers to make the OP users on both sides equivalent,I wonder why Sanderson did not just bump the no of channelers from Shara to make up the difference.Instead of 400 why not have them bring 3000? 

Because it wouldn't have been enough. Plus, they had no males. At the most they would have matched the Aiel, which leaves the windfinders, the seachan and the BT/WT to outnumber them. So, still over 2 to 1

 

They had males channelers.And the difference could be made up by the Aiel red veil channelers. I think Sanderson missed a chance here.

Think Vards means they shouldn't have had many male channelers as they are all killed once they reach a certain age.

Unless Demandred followed Taim's tactics for the black tower, all the Ayyad bloodlines up until 17 would have been available and they could have most likely forced anyone from 13 upwards. Morr wasnt exactly much older than that.

Add in scouring parties travelling across Shara and in the 2 years Demandred had there he could have gotten them all well and truly sorted, and thats assuming he wasnt smart enough to start before the cleansing. He could have 13x13'd them and gotten them protection against the taint.

The entire Demandred arc wasnt that well thought out in my opinion. I enjoyed it because I think he's a cool character. But it makes him look inept as hell that while in control of an entire continent that he managed such a piss poor army. Sorry but a few hundred channellers and a few hundred thousand troops is a little on the small side in comparison to any large nation and Shara is the better part of 2x Randland. He could have had an enormous slave army backed with a stonking load of channellers. And then we could have had the last battle we'd been led to believe was coming before the Aiel and Seanchan decided to have a bath and a tea party and sit out the last battle.

Along with Maradon, and the fact that no less than 5 channelers admit they could level a city with certain items and circles proves it can be done. Why assume it was a plant it something when no evidence points to it?

 

Hell, the queen AS that leveled Manathren did it solo too. She had a Sanangreal too. But she did it. Is that not evidence either?

Doubtful that it will class as evidence to those who feel that the Lights forces didnt have their knee's cut off before the action started.

Myself I would have been happier if they had powered up Shara even more and given a bit of back story to it. I.e 2 years training every man/woman and slave to fight in preparation and then drop 4-5million of the best in gateways 5-10 miles from the lights armies and have them totally swarm the light to counter how seriously overpowered the Light would have been.

That would have actually been believable and plausible, because we know for a fact that Shara was secretive and that they dealt in slaves, that they specifically bred channellers. Yet managed to field only 400 Ayyad...

Sorry but Shara is meant to be larger than Randland, and if they only have 400 yet specifically breed those bloodlines then they would be on similar % as the AoL for channellers which is 2-3x higher than Randland. Add in the larger size, even if the population density was lower they should still have had substantially higher numbers. If Shara's total population was 10million (Which is Andors supposed population) with 3% channellers (Randland apparently has 1% I believe) they should have had 300,000 Ayyad....  

That quite frankly isnt possible in the WoT universe it would just be too overpowered so drop it to say 0.03% of a 10million population and thats 3,000 which would have been enough when you had 4-5 million soldiers/slaves added with the trollocs it would have been a true last battle where the Light would really struggle to win.

Not having 400 Ayyad pop up, yet have the light afraid to use its Seanchan advantage which was the better part of 2x the Sharan channellers.. all of whom were trained as weapons...

Im still half expecting that we'll get some sort of "This was a portal stone variant of what was meant to happen, and the forces/abilities/people you were expecting had already died in the lead up to TG."

 

 

 

Actually no it isnt in a trollocs nature to fight, its in its nature to slaughter, they are base cowards and opportunists who run away from a challenge if they are not forced by fades.  

 

As for the wards, your probably right but it would have been more fitting with how the other 13 books had gone than. "I have a great plan, we shall wait for those cowardly mongrols to attack us, dont worry it wont take long, they have no food in Caemlyn... oh what you say? they will eat our friends/family/neighbours? oh no dont be daft trollocs are vegetarians... they will attack us before the night is done."

 

Its like reading a different series with the names of a few people we've seen in other books. Honestly the battles seem like out of the Stormlight Archive. The difference is that in The Way of Kings, the armies are fighting the wars as a sport and competition, not to win the war, which explains why they fight so stupidly. You dont expect that from people who know they are fighting for the lives of every human alive.

 

It's in their nature to fight until they realise they can't win, even if it was the case they didn't look for fights without fades, there are still fades there to drive them. 

 

And how many people do you think the trollocs had to feed on? Probably close to a hundred thousand if you discount those who escape/died in fires. That's not enough to get them to turn down a fight they think they can win without fades pressuring them to stay put. The trollocs behaved unusually because the Shadow made them, you could argue the light should have seen this earlier and changed the plan, but that's a tactical mistake and the Light had enough reasons to make those by that point. 

 

Caemlyn had around 300k pemenant inhabitants or close, add in atleast a 200% growth of refugees if not more, Caemlyn was the only place in Andor getting food so a 1mil population is not out of the realm of possibility, Suttree could probably give an accurate count. If they got half of those out before the Trollocs started sealing the exists then they would have been lucky. Then you have the ones which Talmanes got out, thats probably another 100k if you believe in wishful thinking.

 

No sorry just dont buy them not leaving a good 200k dead or still alive hiding under their beds, the trollocs were intentionally leaving people alive to make the forces of light come into Caemlyn after them.

 

As for the Trollocs, in almost every scene we see of them in aMoL they are being driven by fades because they're cowards. None of them want to be the first to die, and in their minds why attack the army infront of them when they can swan off into the country side and eat some farmers. They dont give a damn about fighting, they care about eating and killing. The Fades held them together but even if they didnt, they wouldnt have been charging off into an army between 200-400k large. they would have split into a hundred small groups.

 

Sorry the entire Caemlyn front was a terrible plot hole, ignored the lore of the series as a whole (how they got so many through the waygate) it simply served to explain why part of the lights forces couldnt do anything productive whilst the lights most useful troops(those that were in the book) were decimated... i.e the borderlanders, the aes sedai.

 

I would have been more understanding if they had sent 50k, destroyed caemlyn to demoralise the light and to give warning that other attacks might occur at the home cities of other rulers and had them pull back large chunks of their forces. At least that would actually be fitting with the series as a whole. There is absolutely no way based on 13 books worth of information that Machin Shin would have let millions of trollocs through the waygate and there were no portal stones nearby. so machin shin was ignored and sensible options went out the window with the Aiel, the Seanchan, the Great Captains... (Why didnt Elayne give them a Foxhead....)

 

I'm not saying there weren't plenty of questionable things around Caemlyn, but you may be taking it a little too far.

 

Also, they weren't expecting trollocs to charge a few hundred thousand troops. They expected them to charge after a small group attempting to harass them.

Perhaps your right, you probably are, but this didnt really feel like it was written in the same world the other books take place in. Overall I liked the book. But its a bit like waiting all day for Steak and then someone hands you a beef sandwich. Yeah its nice and fills the void, but it wasnt the steak I was promised. Thats sort of how I feel about the book as a whole. I enjoyed it but it wasnt very Wheel of Time'ish. It didnt follow the same world rules as the other 13. and anything which was inconvinient because it made the premise of the overall flow of how the battle was written on paper was ignored. To me that is wrong, better to leave it unsaid so we dont actually know that someone forgot to tick several things off the box when they were remembering what needs to be in the book. Its not all Brandon either in many respects, his writing wasnt the problem, but his style fits in with well detailed and pre-planned/explained scenario's.

That doesnt work with the Wheel of Time, not unless you cross every T and dot every I. And that quite frankly was not done. The editors failed to pick up on it.

And i'm not sure but i got the impression that the second host of Trollocs in Cairhain also came out of Caemlyn.. they just split their armies on the march. Thats my point- as far as the Light knew the supply of trollocs was practically infinite and could be swarming out of that waygate indefinitely.

As far as the light knew up till this alternate world variant of RandLand that aMoL takes place in, knew that the Black Wind would have eaten them, that or they would have asked the Ogier to fetch their waygate growing tool, gateway in with a large force, seal it up and then get out of there again. or atleast gate in and close it after the trollocs had left Caemlyn

 

Actually no it isnt in a trollocs nature to fight, its in its nature to slaughter, they are base cowards and opportunists who run away from a challenge if they are not forced by fades.  

 

As for the wards, your probably right but it would have been more fitting with how the other 13 books had gone than. "I have a great plan, we shall wait for those cowardly mongrols to attack us, dont worry it wont take long, they have no food in Caemlyn... oh what you say? they will eat our friends/family/neighbours? oh no dont be daft trollocs are vegetarians... they will attack us before the night is done."

 

Its like reading a different series with the names of a few people we've seen in other books. Honestly the battles seem like out of the Stormlight Archive. The difference is that in The Way of Kings, the armies are fighting the wars as a sport and competition, not to win the war, which explains why they fight so stupidly. You dont expect that from people who know they are fighting for the lives of every human alive.

 

It's in their nature to fight until they realise they can't win, even if it was the case they didn't look for fights without fades, there are still fades there to drive them. 

 

And how many people do you think the trollocs had to feed on? Probably close to a hundred thousand if you discount those who escape/died in fires. That's not enough to get them to turn down a fight they think they can win without fades pressuring them to stay put. The trollocs behaved unusually because the Shadow made them, you could argue the light should have seen this earlier and changed the plan, but that's a tactical mistake and the Light had enough reasons to make those by that point. 

Caemlyn had around 300k pemenant inhabitants or close, add in atleast a 200% growth of refugees if not more, Caemlyn was the only place in Andor getting food so a 1mil population is not out of the realm of possibility, Suttree could probably give an accurate count. If they got half of those out before the Trollocs started sealing the exists then they would have been lucky. Then you have the ones which Talmanes got out, thats probably another 100k if you believe in wishful thinking.

No sorry just dont buy them not leaving a good 200k dead or still alive hiding under their beds, the trollocs were intentionally leaving people alive to make the forces of light come into Caemlyn after them.

As for the Trollocs, in almost every scene we see of them in aMoL they are being driven by fades because they're cowards. None of them want to be the first to die, and in their minds why attack the army infront of them when they can swan off into the country side and eat some farmers. They dont give a damn about fighting, they care about eating and killing. The Fades held them together but even if they didnt, they wouldnt have been charging off into an army between 200-400k large. they would have split into a hundred small groups.

Sorry the entire Caemlyn front was a terrible plot hole, ignored the lore of the series as a whole (how they got so many through the waygate) it simply served to explain why part of the lights forces couldnt do anything productive whilst the lights most useful troops(those that were in the book) were decimated... i.e the borderlanders, the aes sedai.

I would have been more understanding if they had sent 50k, destroyed caemlyn to demoralise the light and to give warning that other attacks might occur at the home cities of other rulers and had them pull back large chunks of their forces. At least that would actually be fitting with the series as a whole. There is absolutely no way based on 13 books worth of information that Machin Shin would have let millions of trollocs through the waygate and there were no portal stones nearby. so machin shin was ignored and sensible options went out the window with the Aiel, the Seanchan, the Great Captains... (Why didnt Elayne give them a Foxhead....)

 

 

If they just level the waygate that leaves 100k trollocs unopposed to plunder or attack them from the rear at their leisure, they needed to be destroyed.

 

I always thought Braem Wood was much closer than a weeks march, if it was a weeks march away then it does seem rather dubious, I'd have to go back and check though. 

 

They didnt need to be destroyed... if theyre sitting in Caemlyn they arent a threat. If they leave Caemlyn they are in the open and can be harrassed by an observation force and dealt with at leisure. They are walking, they wont get anywhere vital for many days. The greatest advantages the light has is traveling and a huge cavalry, which would be perfect for dealing with such an isolated trolloc army if and when they decided to move. In the meantime the entire force of the light (less a covering force in Kandor) could have fallen on the trolloc army in Shienar and destroyed it, and then pivoted to deal with Kandor. If that trolloc army flooded south? So much the better, its empty land between Kandor and Tar Valon with hundreds of miles in between. They'd probably starve or if nothing else not arrive until the Last Battle was long over. The depopulation of huge portions of Rand Land was a huge advantage to the light.

 

The logic for drawing them to the Braem Wood was that it was more easily defensible and would be difficult for the sheer number of trollocs to overwhelm the forces of Light. This way, they got to choose their battleground and set up a defensive position. Had Bashere not been making "mistakes," they may never have been driven out of the Wood, and have finished there. The trollocs behaved oddly in not engaging Perrin's group immediately. Perrin's long march needs further elaboration, though. It could be done, but not without the best horses and maybe remounts along the way. It would be grueling, and we deserved to see it.\. Trollocs need to sleep, too. I feel that we should also have seen leveling Caemlyn considered, and need a solid explanation as to why it wouldn't work. It's not that what happened is impossible, but some things would be better served with an explanation.

I was under the impression that Elayne took the largest force to Caemlyn. Lans force was the smallest with just the borderland armies which was over 200,000men.

and not to be blunt if 200k was the smallest Elayne must have had a good 350-400k, even if they sat near Caemlyn in Square formation with the channellers inside on horseback killing trollocs if would have been quicker and more effective than running for over a week. The battle attrition would have been higher for the battle, but lower for the overall Light because they could have reinforced Tarwins Gap and the other fronts like they were meant to do.

It was another plot hole in space which vaccuumed up the lights forces just like it did Machin Shin or they would never have gotten that many Trollocs in Caemlyn anyway

 

 

 

 

They split up into 4 because they thought Caemelyn could be won quickly and they could hold back the other two armies until then, thus limiting the damage.

 

Yes. And then they hatched a strategy that would ensure Caemlyn could not be won quickly. That made no sense to me, even if Bashere was already compromised. Nobody raised the point that waiting a week for the trollocs to chase Perrin back to the Woods would allow several hundred thousand additional trollocs to come through the way gate? And that in the meantime the bulk of the light forces would be standing idle?

Pretty sure they were under the impression the trollocs would be hungry and itching for a fight. If the trollocs charge out immediately then it's a decent enough plan. Levelling the city would have been the ideal choice but levelling Caemelyn is easier said than done, even with dragons and channeller it's still a massive job. I would have started to destroy the city if I could get the dragons close enough without the trollocs being able to catch them as a way of drawing them out but drawing them out and destroying them was the best way. 

Several hundred thousand humans had been killed in Caemlyn. The trollocs there were probably the least hungry in the world. Not to mention the people still trapped inside...

 

They could have warded the city like Rand did the waygates, invert weaves on all the exits and the trollocs would die shortly after leaving. it would have hurt them more than just sitting and waiting for them to come after them. Hell use a full circle and ward the entire city so that all shadowspawn inside die and the job is done. But that would mean that trollocs/fades arent as strong as they have been since erm book 1 when they were actually dangerous...

Trollocs are always hungry and looking for a fight! It's in their nature. 

 

The second bit is easier said than done and I can guarantee if Rand had done that people would have gone MENTAL on here. I'm guessing you can't just ward every entrance to a city like Caemelyn.  

Actually no it isnt in a trollocs nature to fight, its in its nature to slaughter, they are base cowards and opportunists who run away from a challenge if they are not forced by fades.

As for the wards, your probably right but it would have been more fitting with how the other 13 books had gone than. "I have a great plan, we shall wait for those cowardly mongrols to attack us, dont worry it wont take long, they have no food in Caemlyn... oh what you say? they will eat our friends/family/neighbours? oh no dont be daft trollocs are vegetarians... they will attack us before the night is done."

Its like reading a different series with the names of a few people we've seen in other books. Honestly the battles seem like out of the Stormlight Archive. The difference is that in The Way of Kings, the armies are fighting the wars as a sport and competition, not to win the war, which explains why they fight so stupidly. You dont expect that from people who know they are fighting for the lives of every human alive.

 

 

They split up into 4 because they thought Caemelyn could be won quickly and they could hold back the other two armies until then, thus limiting the damage.

 

Yes. And then they hatched a strategy that would ensure Caemlyn could not be won quickly. That made no sense to me, even if Bashere was already compromised. Nobody raised the point that waiting a week for the trollocs to chase Perrin back to the Woods would allow several hundred thousand additional trollocs to come through the way gate? And that in the meantime the bulk of the light forces would be standing idle?

Pretty sure they were under the impression the trollocs would be hungry and itching for a fight. If the trollocs charge out immediately then it's a decent enough plan. Levelling the city would have been the ideal choice but levelling Caemelyn is easier said than done, even with dragons and channeller it's still a massive job. I would have started to destroy the city if I could get the dragons close enough without the trollocs being able to catch them as a way of drawing them out but drawing them out and destroying them was the best way. 

Several hundred thousand humans had been killed in Caemlyn. The trollocs there were probably the least hungry in the world. Not to mention the people still trapped inside...

They could have warded the city like Rand did the waygates, invert weaves on all the exits and the trollocs would die shortly after leaving. it would have hurt them more than just sitting and waiting for them to come after them. Hell use a full circle and ward the entire city so that all shadowspawn inside die and the job is done. But that would mean that trollocs/fades arent as strong as they have been since erm book 1 when they were actually dangerous...

Trollocs/Fades should have been the counter to the mortal armies, give them a five-eight million advantage to make up for lack of skilled tactics.

But the real battles should have been dominated by channellers, both light and dark, which is what the books have been foreshadowing with how overpowered the OP is.

 

I'm honestly surprised at all the moaning about the battles, I'd have thought people would have spent their time discussing actual problems with the book like the lack of build up or explanation for any of the major events. 

 

Well you know this is the erm battles thread... Should we perhaps go to another thread, perhaps the prophecy thread to discuss it? not that it has anything to do with prophecy but to please people who dont want us to discuss things in the rightful place ;-)

The Aes Sedai are meant to be this all powerful force against the shadow, so yeah they should be able to display a decent showing i.e 1 channeller worth 1000 men which is afterall what we've been told over the course of 20 years and 13 books. But in a way the fact that we were shown so much of the battles is the problem, it makes the glaringly obvious plot-holes evident, if we were given more detail on things which were relevent, i.e like you say backstory, demandred, an explanation for why 2/3 of the lights forces did a houdini, why the lights channellers seem so whimpy, why the seanchan were used as a reserve force whilst everyone else was being systematically wiped off of the face of the planet..

where the Aiel went to? maybe they all discovered what a bath was and decided to go skinny dipping whilst most of the lights channellers heated the water of a big lake for them?.

The funny thing is, I find the Shayol Ghul battlefront most plausible because it was done off screen so we dont actually know what it faced except that it was enough to decimate the lights forces there. At the other fronts based on what has happened in the other 13 books we know 100% it should not have worked out like it did, because it was given so much screen time to make it totally and utterly implausible without totally ruining any sort of continuity. 

Even assuming everything we saw such a tiny amount of what had been gathered or what could have been gathered that it makes no sense half the time.

Take Caemlyn for example, they could have used a full circle and warded the place with shadowspawn killing weaves, something which is known to all Aes Sedai/Rand etc and then gone to another battlefront while those shadowspawn died a few hours later. Yes they would have had some Black Ajah with them, but they would not have been able to do a whole hell of a lot about it because the damage would have been done.

Armies lost their versatility, became static and used none of the tactics they had vaunted over the past 13 books. tbh the only really innovate tactic was the Dragons and the gateways. Bows/Crossbows were underused, in part because of poor locations but that still does not explain the lack of use.

The Kin had over 1700+ (The AS were amazed because they out numbered them so highly), the Aes Sedai after purges had about 700-800 + several hundred novices. Asha'man had around 1k - 100 to 200 dark side guys who left. Seafolk is probably another 2-300(if not more but each ship had one). Aiel is easily another 1000 if not a lot more(The Shaido had over 200 most which were taken by the Seanchan and if 1 clan has 200+ how many do the other 11 clans have... could easily be 2k).

Then you have the Seanchan, thats easily got to be 500-1000. The whole thing wasnt really thought out, the numbers were nerfed to make Shara look better. 

Take the conversation between Taim and Demandred. If Taim had been given more support(More female channellers for 13x13) he could have given the dark side the better part of 1000 Dreadlords, which is a hell of a lot better than 400 that Demandred brought and he did that training them himself. Yet Shara a whole continent could only field 400 in a land where they breed channeller stock, in a land where he had pretty much total control to have people search out those with the spark...

better to have left Shara out of it than make it so that it isnt much more effective than if it had been something the size of Andor rather than 100 times the size of Andor.

 

Sizes of various forces have been vague and/or inconsistent throughout the whole series. Lan had 12,000 men charging through the Gap towards 10 ten times as many trollocs. He lost half of them in the initial charge. They lost a great many Aiel to the bleakness.

Ald, come on mate. Not only were the numbers off but entire groups of channelers simply disappeared and it gos far beyond "vague". It is problematic to say the least, especially considering how much time was dedicated to the endless slog of "battle porn" in this book.

 

Not to mention in regards to battles Shara pretty much eclipsed the shadow. It really was not well done by any stretch of the imagination.

I wouldnt have minded the whole Shara thing if they had gone into more PoV Demandred scenes where he basically says he's spent the last couple of years training every slave in Shara and promising them freedom/land etc if they help him win the last battle.

A lot of it could have just had a couple of view point scenes and then a summery given to Mat on how the battle went etc later, which is most likely what RJ would have done based on the older books. Like how he did the Cairhien-Shaido battles and how little detail he gave Mat killing Couladin.

I just found there was far too little backstory, too many plot holes. I mean jesus would it have been difficult for the Aes Sedai to ward their General's dreams/keep one near them at all times to prevent compulsion, They were kinda key figures...

As for Demandred and sharks with freakin laser-beams on their heads... I would have understood that if Moridin had lied to him, or if he was somehow trying to kill so many of Rands friends that he gave up at SG and went to him. If he had studied Rand at all in any way shape or form he would have known if Rand/LTT was there then he would have faced him or at least partook in the battle.

Personally I think one of the reasons why it played out like this was that RJ didnt write many notes for the battles because he never planned on most of them being onscreen, which is why there was so much emphasis on fatigue and such, I think we were meant to believe that the un-ending swathes of trollocs were meant to tire the Channellers  Lets assume that every channeller could kill say between 1,000 and 20,000 trollocs unaided before they were a shattered wreck asleep on the ground for a few days. Rand managed over 100,000 in ToM but hes the Dragon Reborn so lets hold him above. If there were 10,000 Light side channellers which is a very high number, I think it should have been about 7k. but even with 10k killing 1000 trollocs each thats 10 MILLION trollocs down. and even if there were 5k thats still 5 million.

Consistency where are you?

Not to mention the fact that Trollocs also use Bows and could have probably wiped out every human in the light side army 3-4 times over just by having the reserve troops pelting them with arrows while the front lines get turned into molten piles of furry lard.

Nope seems to me that the only channellers who actually stayed as powerful as they should have been were the Dreadlords, Egwene and the Forsaken. Taim turned into a useless sack of bones as did his dark side Asha'man. Anyone else wonder what happened to the stuff he trained them to do for DW? if he and a chunk of his men gatewayed into the middle of Mats army and did the whole rolling earth and fire trick that army would have broken and been ploughed under.

I would have been more impressed if the shadow managed to slip them forkroot, it would have explained the uselessness of them rather than countering 13 books worth of awesomeness and turning them into a book club. The shadow spent so long trying to weaken the Aes Sedai but it wasnt needed as we all thought.

The big question for me is why not tie off gates? Why not do a full circle and let Androl just gate away the trollocs? Why didn't Androl or other channellers just open gates on people?

Haha imagine Androl with a full circle and a decent Angrael... he could have done a horizontal gateway and dropped it on the hostile armies head. Job done, that would probably be hundreds of metres wide/long if not kilometres based on the gateway Demandred managed. When Androls talent magnifies the size he can make compared with others.

Pre aMoL numbers we knew for a fact are pretty accurate:

Borderlanders: 200,000

Lan: 50-200,000ish (its hard to judge based on what was said at the end of ToM)

Andor: 200,000+ Minimum. Elayne had dozens of Mercenary bands let alone Andoran houses which each had very large levies, wouldnt surprise me if they were closer to 3-400k

Perrin in ToM had better part of 80,000 due to the Wolfguard

Band of the Red Hand was 20-40k depending on how much more they had recruited or lost.

Illian had better part of 100,000 when Sammael was in control if not a lot more and thats without people rallying for Tarmon Gaidon.

Tear: probably atleast equal to Illian.

Aiel: Each clan had around 40-80,000 based on Shaido numbers coupled with the 2 clans who sat it out during the Battle of Cairhien so thats 500k-960k and thats not counting the fact that the women who were not Maidens would have fought as well.

Seanchan with their allies is probably another 500k

Then you have literally millions of commoners who would have volunteered  it would be almost impossible to arm everyone who would have wanted to fight.

Shadow Forces are harder to guess because we have no numbers:

Trollocs - should have had a good 6-7million. They have been throwing away 100k armies like they are nothing afterall. 

Myrrdrall - 50,000 (This is basically just less than 1% birthrate compared with Trollocs)

Shara: (Bare in mind they use slaves: Actual army 500,000 + 1mil slaves)

Overall I think the numbers were probably between 1/2 and 1/3 what they should have been really