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Amandera

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Posts posted by Amandera

  1. Yes they are killed. By no male channelers, I mean none who are trained. And only a few who would be of channeling age at the time Demandred took over. Since they're only used for breeding stock, and kept ignorant and treated as animals. Demandred would have to overcome years of that abuse in order to begin training, he wouldn't have had enough time to do it. Thus when they came, they'd have none, or nearly no male channelers, yet they brought some with them. Odd. 

    This feels like we're arguing about two different things man. Yeah, it was extremely weird there were male Ayyad among them. I never said otherwise. But what does that have to do with what I'm saying? There are no male channellers anywhere until the BT. Why should the presence/absence of male channellers matter at all? They are on equal grounds.

     

    Shara is as big as Randland + Waste. If we assume their population is the same as well, 400 is a ridiculuous number. If they have 50 million population in total, then they have 250.000 potential female channellers. How in the Light are they going to miss all of those people? Even the White Tower is better at recruiting and their recruiting until Egwene is practically nonexistent.

  2.  

    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. 

    What difference does that make? There are no male channellers anywhere. And on top of that most female channellers of Light (AS, damane, Kin) very rarely get pregnant.

     

    Plus, Shara does have male channellers. They are used as breeding stock for women who can channel then murdered. And there are strict rules for Ayyad. They keep their bloodlines absolutely pure.

  3. 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.

  4. TL;DR: Nuke Caemlyn, make sure channeler numbers are accurate, don't mess with the rules of OP too much and for the love of Light make sure the whole war takes no more than 200 pages. Tell us about the psychology of the war, not the mindless "Person X killed a Trolloc, then another, then another, Cauthon must be a genius, then another"


    My humple opinion of how the battles should have gone. First let's start with numbers. Mind you, I am excluding camp followers, these are fighting men only. The post is too long as it is so I'm not going to include my explanation for numbers. I think they are accurate enough. Also, the numbers ignore pretty much everything we see in AMoL because I think they were wrong. No one can make me believe Shara can only house 400 Ayyad, sorry.

    Light
    Regular Troops
    Aiel: 500k
    Borderlands: 250k
    Andor/Cairhien/Band of the Red Hand: 250k
    Tear: 150k
    Illian: 100k
    White Tower: 100k
    Wolf Guard/Two Rivers/Ghealdan/Mayene/Whitecloaks: 75k
    Arad Doman/Murandy: 40k
    Seanchan: 800k
    Dragonsworn/Mercenaries: 30k fighting men perhaps
    Total: 1.665.000
    Channellers
    Aes Sedai: 600 total AS = 400 fighter + 200 healer / 1000 novices+Accepted to provide circles for healers and logistics (each gets 500)
    Wise Ones: 2500 = 1000 fighter + 1000 healer/circle + 500 logistics (pure gateway duty for supply and troop deployment)
    Windfinders: 200 = 100 at SG using BotW + 100 logistics
    Damane: 1000 fighter
    Asha'man: 600 fighter = 400 that Rand ordered sent out in CoT or KoD + 200 Logain brings out
    Kin: 1000 = 500 healing + 500 logistics (I'm assuming the rest 700 is just hiding)
    Total: 6900 = 3000 fighter + 2200 healer + 1600 logistics

    Shadow
    Regular Troops
    Shadowspawn: 2 million
    Sharans: 1 million
    I don't think DFs would make good soldiers so I'm excluding them. They are better as spies among the armies of Light.
    Channellers
    Black Ajah: 150
    DF/Turned Asha'man: 200
    Turned Aiel: 1000
    Ayyad: 7000
    Total: 8350


    Deployment and Tactics:
    Caemlyn
    Shadow: 100k Trollocs + 100 channellers
    Tactic: Move as many civilians as you can through gateways to other armies and delay the enemy as long as you can.
    It is only a distraction and demoralisation tactics by the Shadow. Also the civilian population makes a nice food supply. So don't commit any channellers for anything but making gateways to move prisoners. 200k civilians here + however much Kandori they got + dead enemy soldiers should be enough to keep the Shadowspawn fed for the duration of the War. Only deploy 200k Shadowspawn here to sack the city and take prisoners. Don't engage the enemy for anything but holding them off. Let the Shadowspawn die but move your channellers out.

    Light: 100k soldiers + 500 channellers including reserves
    Tactics: Nuke the city
    The original idea is a good one. Beat the enemy here and go to other battlefronts as soon as possible. Siege serves no purpose, fighting in the city is better for the Shadow, drawing them out is meaningless. So option four: obliterate the entire city with the enemy. Caemlyn has 5 gates and a hole in the city wall made by Talmanes earlier. 50 channellers choosing targets and 10k soldiers at each gate to trap the enemy inside. Use as much oil as you can to start fires all over the city and lightning/fireballs to finish the job. A day to destroy the city then you're off to other battlefronts.


    Thakan'dar
    Light: 400k soldiers + 1000 fighting channellers + 100 Windfinders to operate the Bowl
    Tactic: Hold until you cannot
    Keep it as simple as you can. 5000 thousand soldiers and 100 channellers to guard the slopes of SG. 1000 guards for Windfinders. The rest to hold until they can't.

    Shadow: 1m Shadowspawn + 1000 channellers
    Tactic: Overwhelm the enemy
    You have the numbers in troops and you can match the enemy channellers. Tire the enemy channellers, bloody the enemy soldiers. After that unleash the Wild Hunt, pretty much what actually happens in the book.


    Kandor and Tarwin's Gap
    Light: 400k soldiers + 1000 fighting channellers
    Shadow: 900k Shadowspawn + 350 fighting channellers
    Seanchan: 800k soldiers + 1000 damane
    Demandred: 1m Sharan soldiers + 7000 Ayyad

    Tactics: Seanchan, Elayne and Logain arrive and give the Light obvious advantage until Demandred. Gap is a defensible position so deploy the bigger part of your soldiers and channellers in Kandor. Because of Compulsion on Great Captains, Light can't achieve a victory. Then Demandred comes, divides his Sharans and takes each armies of Light from behind. Light is screwed, loses large numbers, they immediately retreat to FoM.

     

     

    Shienar gets completely destroyed like Kandor. Light gains some time to rest, Mat takes command. Then the Battle of Merillor starts. Trollocs and Sharans surround FoM. Armies of Light commit everything, pull a miracle victory but lose 90% of their soldiers, Rand seals the Bore.

  5. There is no need for a full circle. All it takes is a circle of Narishma with Callandor + Alivia with Vora's sa'angreal + random female with the second strongest sa'angreal with Alivia melding the flows. They should be enough to obliterate Caemlyn from what we saw earlier and Rand doesn't need to spend a drop of his strength.

  6. Why did Elayne/Bashere have people making bridges to cross the Erinin when they could have just used a gateway to get across either when they got to the river or before?  Their goal was to lure the trollocs there which they did even before the bridge was finished.  They planned to destroy the bridge anyway before the trollocs could use it so the bridge itself was not needed besides getting Elayne/Bashere's army across.

    Plot convenience.

     

    Other questions with the same answer: Why didn't they burn Caemlyn to a cinder while the Trollocs were inside? Why did only the WT fight at Kandor? Why did Lan only have 5 channelers? Where did the WOs disappear to?

     

    For a book mainly about war, battles sucked.

  7. Also, if I can take us back, I don't believe anything in the books or interviews hints at an ability to Travel to parallel worlds, or mirror worlds. Traveling to a different planet in the same world isn't akin to that at all.

    Parallel and Mirror Worlds are part of the Pattern and Travelling is a matter of altering the Pattern. That is why I said it should be possible in theory. I also said it would not be possible in practicality because it would require more Power than possible. I gave the Travelling to other planets quote to make comparaments. If it takes that much Power to Travel to other planets, then it should take more Power to Travel to Mirror and Parallel Worlds. As for hinting at the possibility, it is possible to open a gateway to TAR. Granted, TAR is not a Parallel or Mirror World, but it is similar. It is another reality.

     

    In a mixed circle, I guess the leading channeler could choose which half is channeled.

    Semirhage's use of the male adam seems to be an indicator of that.

     

    Most channelers seem to channel just their own half when linking.  I guess that would have been so pre-Cleansing.

    Yes and no. In every description we have seen, the opposite half is used to strengthen and reinforce their own half. The women of the circle only actually channel saidar and the men only actually channel saidin. The leader of the circle controls all though.

     

    And look, Nynaeve wasn't the only only one linked that day either or even previous to that day. There were 3 other mixed circles, one of which was using Callandor and not one of the women leading those circles mentions being affected by the taint.

    With the way men always describe it, it would have been something the women would not only have mentioned but would not have participated in a circle if they had. Most of those women had linked previously as well.

    There is simply no way that any of those women would have continued to link if they felt even the slightest amount of the taint was affecting them.

     

    I always think of it like Nuclear power. Standing in the heart of the reactor is obviously going to produce high levels of radiation but the electricity it creates, that we all use, is not carrying that radiation with it.

    A simplified way of looking at it for sure but also a valid one IMO.

     

    Even in the descriptions by women after the cleansing, they have trouble seeing much difference because it didn't affect them in the first place.

     

    Cot-23 is a good chapter to read about it.

     

    I don't think we saw that reinforcing saidin with saidar thing before Brandon. The first time it happens, I believe, is when Grady links with the women to create a massive gateway. RJ never used the circles that way that I remember. It was always flows of two separate halves. Which doesn't really make sense because you can't mix saidin and saidar. I believe that was a correction by BS.

     

    She expected to have to plead, but the taller woman hesitated only a moment before nodding and passing control to her. Almost immediately Merise’s mouth softened, though it could never be called soft. Fire and ice and filth welled up in Elza, and she shuddered. Whatever the cost, the Dragon Reborn had to reach the Last Battle. Whatever the cost.

    Elza is clearly affected by the taint.

     

    CoT, Ch23

    Corele practiced linking with Damer, too, but the Yellow was so focused on her futile efforts to reason out how to do with saidar what he did with saidin that she would not have noticed the Dark One’s taint sliding down her throat.

    ...

    “I do not know, Cadsuane. Saidar is a calm ocean that will take you wherever you want so long as you know the currents and let them carry you. Saidin . . . An avalanche of burning stone. Collapsing mountains of ice. Itfeels cleaner than when I first linked with Jahar, but anything could hide in that chaos. Anything.”

    So is Merise. And Cadsuane believes the taint affects women. At this point, they already made multiple gender-mixed circles so we can't just say "Cadsuane doesn't know everything".

     

    For the nuclear reactor metaphor, you're wrong. Flows made of saidin contain the taint as well as the male half of the True Source.

    WH, Ch11

    The feel of filth remained, though, the Dark One’s taint oozing into him from the weaves he had tied off around himself.

    At this point, Rand already released saidin. There is only the tied-off weave.

     

    For the descriptions of women. They know very well saidin is cleaner. They just are not sure all of the taint is gone because saidin is foreign to them.

  8. I'm not really convinced a woman melding the flow would have solved the problem because taint affects a woman in a circle too. Maybe Cadsuane was simply wrong. It happened before. Anyway it shouldn't matter now that saidin is clean.

     

    I have been wondering about that, what happens if a woman go around and links with a man all the time, let us say we have a pair of wilder siblings who do it by instinct, will she then go insane as well as him eventually?

     

    Not quite sure where the idea of men and women linking, prior to the cleansing, would lead to the women also going mad.

    I might be wrong but I don't recall ever hearing of the like other than from modern AS's who think or believe this but don't actually have a clue if it's actually true or not.

    Women in the AoL stopped linking with men because they were going insane not because they thought they would also go insane.

     

    Think about this...if it were actually true, then Nynaeve would have been exposed to it in massive quantities when her and Rand linked to cleanse saidin and there has been absolutely no indication at all of this happening.

     

    Also not sure where the idea of the women using the Domination Band were subjected to the taint either.

    The danger of the Band for the women was that the man would eventually excert some control back through them onto the women.

     

    Again, I could be wrong but I don't think I am.

    I just read Moghedien's description back in tSR and I think you're right about the Domination Band. Words like seepage, flow and exposure made me think of the taint but she is talking about the control issue.

     

    But I still think I'm right about women being affected by the taint in a circle if she is the leader. For one thing, they feel the taint. It's not like the Warder bond where they sense the men's revulsion of the taint. They personally feel it, and saidin. They also have to fight saidin to control it, as men surrender to saidar. Nynaeve had a very brief exposure to it before Rand took control of the circle and they were not drawing the full power of CK until that.

  9. Doing a reread of aCoS at the minute, but for the life of me I can't remember whether Old Cully turned out to be someone significant later on? I'm assuming it was either him or Shiaine who set the beggars on Nyneave and Elayne and later on on Mat but it's nagging away at me.

    That's why we have eWoT.

    http://encyclopaedia-wot.org/characters/op/old_cully.html

     

    Another question on Callandor...

     

    We know that the sword can only be used safely if it's in a circle with two women and one of the women guides the circle. But by safely do they mean just that since the male channeler isn't controlling the circle it doesn't matter if he goes nuts as he's not weaving, or does it actually mean the taint isn't magnified in the man?

     

    Additionally, do we know yet if Callandor still needs to be wielded in a circle - as I understand it at the moment the only reason (that we know now - there is the as yet unknown second flaw) for the circle is to stop the magnification of the taint, so if the taint has gone what is the circle needed for?

     

    Thanks.

    I'm not really convinced a woman melding the flow would have solved the problem because taint affects a woman in a circle too. Maybe Cadsuane was simply wrong. It happened before. Anyway it shouldn't matter now that saidin is clean.

     

    Reason for the circle is that Callandor doesn't have a buffer like other angreal. Circle solves that problem because when you link, the leader can't overdraw the Power. It's a subtitute for the buffer that normally exists in other angreal. So it still needs a circle if you want to be safe, yes.

  10. Technically, a gateway should take you to Sindhol. Though, in practicality, it may not be possible because of the Power requirements.

     

    www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=6#19

    Week 19 Question

    How far can a channeler Travel with the One Power? I know they can Travel anywhere on the globe, and enter Tel'aran'rhiod through a slightly different weave, but is it possible to Travel to other planets, or even planets in other galaxies?

    Robert Jordan

    Travel to other planets within the solar system would require a circle of fairly strong channelers, though not necessarily as many as thirteen, depending on exactly how far out they wanted to go. Travel to a planet in another solar system would require a rather large circle (of the maximum possible size) of very strong channelers, and there would a limit on how far they could go in one jump. They could planet-hop, of course. Travel to another galaxy would be beyond them even if they began on the planet in this galaxy nearest the target galaxy.

    It's likely same applies to Mirror Worlds or Parallel Worlds but it would obviously take huge amounts of Power. I'm guessing Choedan Kal level of Power. So Moridin probably used the Tower of Genjei the same way Mat did but exited by the doorway in Tear as Finnssss said.

     

    As for how they were discovered, they were not discovered by humans. Finn made the portals per Birgitte in ToM.

  11. There is that "Resonance" test.

    That works for learners too. Unless the test gives a different resonant for sparkers, which I doubt.

     

    Right, but I was wondering a timeframe, as days or even months after taking the oaths you do not yet have the ageless face, so when does it set in? One year? Two?

    Might be longer. In CoT, Ch23 it says "Beldeine saw her step out, and stiffened, twitching at the green-fringed shawl she had worn fewer than five years". She doesn't have the ageless face. The question is how fewer than five years.

     

    Edit: according to EWoT Beldeine was raised in late 996 NE, we are currently at June 1000 NE.

  12. Finally, it's not true that 13 of the weakest female channelers can overwhelm any man. I said 13 AS, just as Asmodean did:

    Thirteen women who can barely channel could overpower most men, linked. The thirteen weakest women in the Tower could overpower you or any man, and barely breathe hard.

    This is as conclusive as it gets. 13 Morgase can shield, say, Damer Flinn, but not Rand. That would take 13 Daigian Moseniellin.

  13. Except for 1 man-1 woman, 2 man-1 woman or 2 man-2 woman, a circle must have more women than men. So a circle of 72 can have 35 men and 37 women. It is impossible to make a circle of 1 woman and 6 men.

     

    And they can't come at any point. Women can form a circle of 13, then to add another woman they have to add a man first. So you have a circle of 13 women, you add one man, then you can add another 13 women. Or you can just go ahead and add the man in the first place but the man cannot come last.

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