Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

I understand what you mean in your explanation. The Ren’Shai Gaidin focus on physical capability--of striving to excel in martial training, sports fitness, and the like. Here on DM, it's talking about surviving, Scifi, gaming, and being prepared for what is to come. The Me’Arearth Gaidin focus on strength in the mind--outsmarting your enemies. Tactics, strategy, assessing a situation and finding solutions--your mind's the weapon. The readers and thinkers among the Warders here on DM. The Cuen’d'eren Gaidin, when fighting, focus on "balance, speed, and PRECISION." Emotions, feelings, understanding people--it's all from the heart. Here its having quality time, laughing, having fun times together, and standing together in tough times. With a little biography, I'm wondering where you'd think I fit in. I had a brain injury when I was three that took away the use of my right arm and gave me a severe limp. I didn't give up, though--I did the exact opposite of that. From there, I began to grow to be a fairly tough kid. I had several surgeries throughout it all and I was a nerd, got deeply into fantasy. But I wasn't just a nerd. I tried to be an athlete. I got the reputation of being a good defender in basketball, and I succeeded in mastering the frisbee. I'm trying my one hand--at golf right now, and I'm getting accuracy in, if not distance. Walking and dancing aren't the same thing to our brains and so I'm also a decent dancer, despite everything. After all those surgeries and a lot of pain the summer of 2005 came--it was the summer before my senior year. I had a back surgery that left me bedridden for most of the summer and turned me into a ghost. When I was finally on my feet again late August, Hurricane Katrina nearly wiped my city away and that changed me completely. I spent the winter semester at a boarding school, but when I returned to our high school I had to be a leader just as much as any teacher--I was left in charge of two clubs and just about every student needed us seniors to look up to. I'm not sure how well I did, but the clubs survived the storm and when I graduated the clubs were becoming vibrant again. I was lost most of my college years. I didn't do well at all. But, sometime junior year, I snapped out of it. I wouldn't graduate with a good GPA, but I would graduate with a teacher's license and be able to enter a small Masters program for "Continuing Studies" at a university back home. I aced those classes and am now at the University of Edinburgh going for a PhD in medieval history because of it--Vikings took advantage of regions devastated by natural disasters to raid them. You can imagine how painful that might be, but I'm focused on winning. So, a nerd, incredibly into fantasy, into golf, in gaming I'm obsessed with the Witcher series, but I also have that crazy biography. If I'm a Warder, in what discipline do you think I'd fit in?

I'm sorry if I'm asking you to repeat yourself, but hat made you decide to be a Warder? I don't get the feeling most Warders are sidekicks. Yin and yang, you know? I always think about how Moiraine told Lan absolutely everything at the end of New Spring. A Warder might not be able to wield the one power like she does, but having someone use an ordinary weapon with skill is important too.

Well, it starts with the fact that I'm a WoT addict. And I've got special connection with it, weirdly, because a whole lot of people who knew him ended up in my social circle. I never met RJ, but in New Orleans one of his secretaries was my Latin teacher in eighth grade and I knew his niece during high school. Add to that, when New Orleans nearly got destroyed in Katrina, in the boarding school I was exiled to he was a family friend to one of my classmates. I became aware of DM through two avenues--the first was google, then when I looked it up on FB I found it was one of his niece's likes. I joined several months ago, intending to get involved, but only started exploring in the last three months or so.

Hey Warders, stopping by on my field trip tour of the Ajahs and Warders. My real name's Dan. I'm living in Edinburgh, Scotland at the moment, studying to win a PhD, but am originally from New Orleans, LA. I've always liked the Warders--viewed them as special forces, in a way, elite soldiers. The only Warders we really hear from are Lan and Gawyn, but I never really considered Gawyn to be much of a Warder. All the Warders who have a voice in the WoT aside from Lan are kind of last minute Warders--Gawyn, Gareth, Thom, or Adhol. As for Gawyn--I never thought he wanted to really be one. I thought he just wanted to be close to Egwene. Every Warder we meet--from Lan to Elias onward--seems to be of a special caliber. The Aes Sedai can be fairly petty sometimes--we never see a Warder that way.

@ChaelcaIt's been a while and I know it's a crazy long story, but I did meet the July-September challenge.

Quite a few made sense to me--I could see Siuan/Gareth coming once he started chasing her (and it made complete sense to me that a former general, now exiled and so just a country lord, would feel useless now that he's returned to a town already expertly run and decide to chase miscreants). I thought Mat/Tuon was somewhat comic. It did make sense, though. They both knew they were fated in a way, and Tuon was VERY playful. I still don't get how Lan/Nynaeve happened. It was a sweet relationship, though, develops, and both were very complex people. Berelain/Galad was a completely shallow relationship--love at first sight--but I didn't find either insufferable and it happened fairly late, so never has time to develop. When Galad took over the Whitecloaks--that was joyous. Egwene/Gawyn--we only had a few words from Elayne to signify that there might be something when Elayne told Egwene to stop looking at Galad. It never develops beyond "I like you," even though it had plenty of time to grow. And both of them were insufferable--especially Gawyn. You could see Egwene grow, even if all she grew into was an Aes Sedai spider. Gawyn, though? He was lost, bitter, and jealous throughout it. He started out with potential--but I found it funny how Elayne and Gawyn constantly criticise Galad as too pure, but Galad moves on from the White Tower coup and becomes a fairly significant leader. Gawyn never does. I didn't like Rand's three--Aviendha, Min, and Elayne--but that was primarily because Min/Rand made sense, the other two didn't. You can see the reasons why they fell in love--Elayne's walks with him in Tear and Aviendha's advice--but their relationships never developed from that. Min's reasons are less obvious, but you can see how Rand/Min grows--she's always there for Rand, even when the Dark One nearly turns him. So yes. I'd say my top three are Egwene/Gawyn, Rand/Aviendha, and Rand/Elayne.

@SabioI agree that they were overmatched and had no chance of victory. Yes, Perrin and the Seanchan had channellers and the Shaido did not. That's indeed, one of the contributing factors to their demise. But that's not everything to it. The main part of the battle we see was their attack on Two Rivers archers. And they couldn't charge the archers. They had lost mobility and had been trapped on an anvil--when Perrin and Tylee were carrying a mighty hammer. You'd think that, even though they had no chance of victory and were overmatched, since all the Shaido were veteran soldiers, they would do some damage. But once they were trapped, the Shaido couldn't fight Perrin or Tylee's trained soldiers in any effective way. Their losses were minimal. They instead decided to try to escape the trap by fighting UNTRAINED soldiers and made a fairly good attempt by destroying Masema's army. But they didn't succeed in any meaningful way. There was no Shaido retreat. Some escaped, but most of the Shaido ended up dead or da'covale. Hammer and anvil--just on a much larger scale than Lan's skirmishes with the Aiel in the Aiel War. THAT'S why I say I don't think the Aiel are particularly good at sieges. The Shaido really didn't know what to do when they faced Perrin and Tylee. If they had concentrated on Masema from the start and tried to remain mobile by fighting through him, I'm fairly sure they would have been able to fight a retreat, even if it was a difficult one. But instead they were a disorganised mess that couldn't charge Perrin's archers.

@solarzI see your points--maybe the best comparison to the Aiel AND the Seanchan is WW2's Japan. I disagree about defense, though. Their defense during the Aiel War was simply to keep on offense. The way the different nations fought the Aiel during the Aiel War was by bringing them to a head--and then attacking their flank, hammer and anvil tactics. That cost quite a few lives and I'm not sure the nations could have stopped the Aiel in a full war, but it worked. Rodel Ituralde had a conversation with Rhuarc about all of this. I think they were discussing siege tactics. Although the Aiel conducted many raids against each other on offense and defense, I never got the idea that they knew how to handle being under siege. The one time we see an Aiel clan under siege is when Perrin fought the Shaido in Malden. Perrin locked the Shaido in and then took them out VERY easily. Once the Shaido couldn't move and Perrin had taken care of their Wise Ones with forkroot, they didn't have the advantages given from mobility and speed. They were abysmal. Similarly, the Aiel clans could take Shayol Ghul and the pass to it--but Ituralde didn't think they were the best at holding it. I think after the battle became in effect a siege--holding the pass to Shayol Ghul and then just Shayol Ghul--the Aiel just became a regular army among many. Darlin had raised a considerable army on Rand's orders and I don't think we're ever told how large that army is. And there were plenty of others. There were hundreds of thousands of Aiel, but there were many others.

One friend a few years ago knew every card game there was. Unfortunately, he left us quite suddenly. Quite a few of his friends--including me--were left trying to remember all the games he had got us playing and couldn't remember them.

Here ya go for my July-September story. Asia.docx

@solarzWell, the Power can kill you if you don't learn how to use it. So if twenty girls were in danger, it would be irresponsible for Verin and Alanna to leave them behind. That and the twenty were willing, after Moraine had saved them. The two AS were quite effective manipulators--but, although I did consider Alanna somewhat irresponsibly, I did not think Verin was that. On the Aiel--I always saw them as like many warrior cultures--eg in Afghanistan right now or our war with Japan. It's very difficult to fight an extremely mobile and fast army, especially if they employ guerrilla tactics. I think even Alexander the Great failed to get Afghanistan. Guerrilla tactics involve infiltrating places and being extremely fast--and so guerrilla forces are extremely hard to isolate and to be "forced" into a battle. They can come and go on a whim. The Aiel can infiltrate everywhere and go anywhere to surprise enemies kind of like that. That's also one of the reasons the Aiel can only attack, though, not defend (as Rodel Ituralde points out to Rhuarc at some point)--just as the Taliban is extremely mobile and fast and so it can run circles around regular American forces, but whenever we pin them down, we win. Imagine fighting the Taliban if they had the same tools we did--that's what we're talking about with the Aiel. (I hate making a comparison with terrorists, but the point still stands). I think RJ was probably thinking of Japan when he described the Seanchan, but again, Japan was extremely fast and relied on surprise--just with a traditionally organised army, unlike what America's facing now. They conquered much of the British Empire in Asia before the Brits could respond. And one of the main reasons America could fight back and win is simply distance. It was too far away from Japan for Japan to make an effective attack. They tried to when attacking Pearl Harbor, but by luck all of America's Pacific navy wasn't in the harbor and America had the resources to come back from the attack. But this, again, is part of the Aiel. They can hide in the middle of everywhere, are extremely fast, but also (like Japan) have an organised army. So, yup. I just wrote quite a lot, didn't I?

Well, remember the "Trump Tower" meeting between Trump Jr and the Russians--Trump's assertion that he had not known about the meeting and the media's contradictory claim that he did. The "anonymous source" for the contradictory story, Lanny Davis, has just admitted that he lied. Davis (and Cohen) did not know whether Trump knew about the Tower meeting beforehand and had no evidence to back up that story. The fact that the "anonymous source" lied in the matter makes the whole story very fishy.

@ChaelcaThe challenge on Asia--well, I've been working on a story since early July. And the story has become MUCH longer than my last and the short story covers a LOT more ground than "The Dream and the Bargain"--it's not just part of a novel like my last--my last was an element of the climax of one--I'd have to write a story around "The Dream and the Bargain" for it to become a novel. in the next week or so the short story I'm writing--when I finish--will become a summary of a novel. And so I won't have written it as well.

I'm reading a Memory of Light right now. I find it somewhat tragic, now I'm so close to the end.