[Book Spoilers] Wheel of Time 3: Black Ajahpaloosa

[Arakasi]

Lanfear did despise Semirhage most so maybe she just doesn’t want to even mention her. Regardless I don’t think it matters if number eight is Semirhage or Sammael. Both in the end were fairly irrelevant. 
 

One thing I do wonder is the Mazrim Taim thing. We wondered for books if Demandred was him but then we found out he was just a lackey and really didn’t do much post that revelation. I wonder if Taimandred is back on the table. It’s such a logical merging.

Edited September 24, 2023 by Arakasi

[SpaceChampion]

It's possible there will be new Chosen too, other than Taim.  It always seemed odd that Taim was the only one.  Maybe they'll have all 13 eventually but 5 of them aren't from the AoL.

[fionwe1987]

I suspect we'll get Taimandred. The Sharans don't really work, in the books, and I really don't see why a completely new culture, introduced in the 11th hour, will work in the show, too. 

I'd much rather they focus more on the Black Tower. Logain being given this much prominence already points to that. And Taim has been mentioned, and the timing is right for it to be Demandred.

[Corvinus85]

I didn't pause to look at the statues mainly because my eyes were rolling when I heard it was a temple for the Forsaken. Clearly they knew what that place was so none of the local governments thought to tear that shit down? Not even the Aes Sedai?

We still haven't gotten a stedding yet, but we got a "temple for the Forsaken". It might have been a more compelling scene if Lan led the others to a stedding and then Alanna wouldn't have been able to do anything. Would it have really come to a fight between Lan and her Warders? Anyway, this is one of the few criticisms I have about an otherwise strong episode. 

[karaddin]

But the entire thing was a set up. They were suspecting Lan so they took him to that location, spill the details about where Siuan is, set it up so it looks like they're fooling around in the tent when the warders are actually out waiting already and wait for Lan to try run away - which he then does.

At that point he decides to trust them, if he didn't think they were trustworthy he would have fought and died.

My point here is that it wasn't a random decision to set up camp there, they went on purpose. And I wouldn't call it an intact temple so it had been destroyed.

[IlyaP]

22 minutes ago, karaddin said:

But the entire thing was a set up. They were suspecting Lan so they took him to that location, spill the details about where Siuan is, set it up so it looks like they're fooling around in the tent when the warders are actually out waiting already and wait for Lan to try run away - which he then does.

At that point he decides to trust them, if he didn't think they were trustworthy he would have fought and died.

My point here is that it wasn't a random decision to set up camp there, they went on purpose. And I wouldn't call it an intact temple so it had been destroyed.

That whole scene was SO CONFUSING. Like, were they secret black ajah ready to attack Lan? Or...? I was so utterly fucking confused by what the hell was going on there. This whole subplot with Lan has been non-stop confusion to me. 

[karaddin]

I missed why they were worried he was a dark friend which does undercut it, but reflecting on it with that in mind had it all make much more sense.

1. The "blood calls blood" poem that Ishy recited as he was freeing Lanfear is a known piece of work explicitly associated with Lanfear*

2. The poem was graffitied onto the broken seal that was found by Bayle Domon

3. The graffiti was transcribed by him and sold to Moiraine 

4. Not actually relevant to the suspicion on Lan but I did miss this detail as well - her knowledge of this poem being associated with Lanfear and it being attached to broken cuendillar is why she realises Lanfear is free and beelines to Rand*

5. Lan finds this transcription on her desk when he tries to take her dinner and realises she's left and leaves to chase her (culminating in the Myrdraal fight) and puts the poem in his pack*

6. Alanna and her warders find it in his stuff (which they're going through because both vigilance about him presumably being suicidal, but also having question marks over Moiraine due to how secretive she is, hence the comment about how much she changed when something happened 20 years ago). 

7. Because they're already on alert due to above question marks, and they're ignorant of the above chain of events that explain why he has that poem - they think he's just wandering around keeping a poem praising Lanfear so the question marks get upgraded to suspicions*. This is the scene with them reading it at the well and Alanna says "Lan cannot know".

8. They leave her family and do the set up we saw in this episode to try flush him out. At this point Lan makes a judgement call that Alanna can be trusted and they can't actually win the last battle while keeping everyone else safely in the dark which is obviously entirely correct and loops in Alanna and the warders.

*These are the details in the chain that I missed and it all makes sense imo once you take them into account. I think it's entirely fair to criticise the show for not adequately conveying all this, after all - I missed it as well, but I do think it makes sense as far as the logic behind the writing goes.

[IlyaP]

See, that all makes SO MUCH MORE sense now. The wife and I, as fans of the books, were quite confused by this entire scene. 

[IlyaP]

Thank you for that write-up, @karaddin! 

[karaddin]

12 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

See, that all makes SO MUCH MORE sense now. The wife and I, as fans of the books, were quite confused by this entire scene. 

Yeah my wife explained it yesterday and I had the same reaction lol

[Corvinus85]

7 hours ago, karaddin said:

My point here is that it wasn't a random decision to set up camp there, they went on purpose. And I wouldn't call it an intact temple so it had been destroyed.

The primary stone idols were still there. Unless they were made with the OP, they should have been turned into bricks or buried long ago. 

[SpaceChampion]

3 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

The primary stone idols were still there. Unless they were made with the OP, they should have been turned into bricks or buried long ago. 

Or darkfriends keep digging them back up.

10 hours ago, karaddin said:

 

*These are the details in the chain that I missed and it all makes sense imo once you take them into account. I think it's entirely fair to criticise the show for not adequately conveying all this, after all - I missed it as well, but I do think it makes sense as far as the logic behind the writing goes.

 

I understood it on first watch, so I don't think it's a fair criticism of the show.  All the info is there, but not everyone is going to notice the same things.  I think they're doing a great job writing from character driving the plot, rather than the other way around.

 

Edited September 25, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[Gertrude]

I think all the pieces were there, but not connected very well. I think it's plausible to think Moiraine would have been fleeing the Fades, being afraid Domon would have drawn them to the House. It was easy to miss that Lan pocketed the poem, especially since Moiraine was never given a reaction to it being gone. For all she knows Verin or Adeleas have it. She was quick enough to pull the knife on Verin for mentioning the Dragon, so she should have been as worried aobut leaving that poem laying around.

I think they made it abundantly clear that Lan was on suicide watch, but I still see people whining aobut watching Lan pee and not getting what that scene was trying to convey (not a moment to himself). So Maksim rifling through Lan's stuff goes over their head too. That last scene was set up weird with Alanna and co trying to give off DF vibes. I get it, but even so I do think it was a bit awkward.

Anyway, my point is I do think all the pieces were there, but I don't think they were delivered very effectively. It's a hard job, how much information is enough without boring the viewer. I do think part of the problem is that the Lan storyline didn't go over well and thus people just stopped paying attention to what was happening.

[fionwe1987]

I think it's also that the entire plot is not native to the books. Till they set up Siuan coming to Cairhein, and revealed that the Fal Dara scenes from earlier in the book will come closer to the finale, it wasn't clear where things were going. 

Add the fact that Moiraine and Lan pretty much spend the season doing nothing to get to do the important things they do in tGH (Moiraine meeting Siuan and pitching a new plan, helping to Heal Mat, and telling Rand he's the DR and figuring out Lanfear is after him, and Lan helping Rand with the sword, and with his meeting with Siuan), it's easy to see this as the weakest arc of the season. But, at least now, we know there was a cohesive story there connecting it to events in the books, if not a very good one. 

Btw, it seems to me they've made Moiraine and Siuan a lot less ahead of the curve, in the show. Book Moiraine never got fooled into thinking the Eye of the World stuff was the Last Battle, and both she and Siuan were experts on the Prophesies, and also, of course, deeply aware of the existence of the Black Ajah. They knew the Last Battle was a long slog away, and definitely wasn't going to happen before Rand even touched Callandor.

 

[Corvinus85]

57 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Btw, it seems to me they've made Moiraine and Siuan a lot less ahead of the curve, in the show. Book Moiraine never got fooled into thinking the Eye of the World stuff was the Last Battle, and both she and Siuan were experts on the Prophesies, and also, of course, deeply aware of the existence of the Black Ajah. They knew the Last Battle was a long slog away, and definitely wasn't going to happen before Rand even touched Callandor.

 

Indeed, the whole Eye plot comes late in the book and only because of what the Travelling People learn from a dying Aiel, and the boys' dreams. Otherwise, Rand would have been packed off to the White Tower. Which is why it was so odd to see him in TV in season 1.

[Poobah]

1 hour ago, fionwe1987 said:

Add the fact that Moiraine and Lan pretty much spend the season doing nothing to get to do the important things they do in tGH (Moiraine meeting Siuan and pitching a new plan, helping to Heal Mat, and telling Rand he's the DR and figuring out Lanfear is after him, and Lan helping Rand with the sword, and with his meeting with Siuan), it's easy to see this as the weakest arc of the season. But, at least now, we know there was a cohesive story there connecting it to events in the books, if not a very good one. 

Yeah, as much as I'm enjoying this season a lot it's largely been carried by the villains, and while I was hoping to see Moiraine and Lan gradually taking steps back in order to allow the younger cast chances to shine (and the Wondergirls at least have managed to do just that) I feel like entirely sidelining them and having them do almost nothing plot related this season so far is a huge risk, these last two episodes have to land with some big payoffs for it to have been worth it IMO.

[Maia]

On 9/23/2023 at 7:01 PM, fionwe1987 said:

 As the world expands beyond the Wondergirls, and the Tower, we see plenty of channelers who are weak but have great skill.

 

Did they do anything of particular importance to the plot? Did their skills and personal discoveries contribute in some significant way? No. It would have made sense, for instance, to have weak, but skilled channelers lead circles, since they are used to doing more with less and might have really improved efficency of the OP use with them, but it didn't happen either. And outside of Egwene versus Rand, did we even see any example of weak channelers, who are particularly good at splitting their flows? Learning to do this also seemed to be mostly connected to the strength in  OP, though  IIRC Siuan and Leanne didn't lose whatever facility they had with it after getting downgraded.

 

Quote

Are we to buy that someone was so famous every douchebag strong sister, including the likes of Elaida, let her get away with breaking the rules that favor them? 

 

IRL famous people get to break conventions, taboos and even laws all the time. She might have even got a special dispensation from the Hall/an Amyrlin in the past or something. And it isn't like  douchebag sisters met outside the Tower would have been able to force her to do anything, due to her *angreal set and general competence. But as I have already written, IMHO  rigid strength hierarchy introduced in LoC was a mistake. Before that it has been clear that it was an important factor in an AS's standing among her peers, but not the hard limit, and it fit better with the whole constant manoeuvring for advantage against each other. The attention that RJ lavished on his strength charts could have been better used elsewhere too.

Since the importance  given a sister's opinion is weighted by her strength and weaker sisters usually  aren't even allowed to voice theirs, it is wholly unbelievable that they would have been able to rise politically on the strength of their other competences. Yes, non-interference clause would allow them to work on their personal projects, but the results, if they chose to share them, would also be viewed through the same lense. Not to mention that leadership skills need to be built up through practice, so a weaker channeler , through some implausible quirk of fate suddenly finding themselves in position of authority after a life-time of deference, should be set up for failure for the most part. Etc.

Concerning  Talents - yes, they can be refined through practice, but it is a minor improvement, compared to having one in the first place and it's strength, both of which is in-born.

 

Quote

Sisters would retire into the Kin, and on your first day as a kinswoman, regardless of your strength, you'd be very low in the heirarchy because they focus on seniority.

 

Which again ignores actual competences and ensures that the strongest channelers will end up on-top eventually, barring excessive recklessness, because they also live the longest. The Windfinders are shackled to another person's success, which is also not great, though having to periodically go back to the basics has certain benefits for keeping the overall perspective straight. WOs "strength of personality" often felt like bullying to me, but I guess that they are the most functional? Sucks for weaker channelers who don't vibe with the Aiel way of life post-TG, I guess.

But catching and aprehending channeling miscreants is going to be a nightmare in the  immediate post-TG future, with each organisation having different standards of what is allowed and being protective of it's members and prerogatives. Not to forget the Black Tower and it's very problematic culture...

My memory of the tPoD battle is that the Asha'man still tried to capture sul'dam/damane, while those had no compunction about killing them in return. Also the OP weirdness was more dangerous to the men, since damane can't over-channel due to  collar being a perverted link. And didn't Rand kill a few of the Asha'man when he lost control?

Regarding KoD - if the Shadow had many orders of magnitude more Shadowspawn than the quarter of a Mil destroyed there, then how much use should normal armies have been? IIRC, the channelers were exhausted, but nothing a good sleep wouldn't fix,  and they could have Travelled away at any time.

The Last Battle as written didn't work for me - along with suddenly and drastically reduced numbers of channelers involved, they often arbitrarily didn't use beneficial skills and tactics that they had employed in the previous books. Also, it just wasn't desperate enough and IMHO should have been happening on a number of battlefields concurrently throughout, rather than ultimately in one place.

Forsaken, though, I am happy to say, did lead circles, however, though not to the degree that they should have. Why wouldn't they? In fact, it is a plot-hole that they didn't do so sooner.

I like the OP being wide and varied, but RJ has been hammering on the huge, drastic differences of saidin and saidar usage for books and books - to then make it trivially easy to weave with the opposite half of OP against one's natural instincts, felt very cheap to me. And it was unneccessary and even detrimental in the end, IMHO.

The reason why Sanderson likely felt that he had to jettison 9/10 of previously recruited channelers was that the Light seemed to have such a huge advantage in  numbers of OP-users, that their victory looked like a slum-dunk. IIRC there have even been discussions about it back in the day. Well, the FS having the benefit of mega-circles, while the Light didn't, would have counter-acted this perception. Also, it would have been easier to give normal soldiers something important to do without massive contrivances. Ditto curbing of Travelling by some means, so that holding a position would mean something and be actually believably feasible. YMMV. 

Glad that we are on the same page about the Seanchan - it is not just the damane system either, they enslave normals too and it is hereditary. Slavery in this world was literally introduced by the Shadow during the War of Power. And while we have seen a couple of privileged slaves, who were content with their situation, as well as blindly devoted to their owners, this changes nothing about the horror of the institution. Nothing was done to lift automatic death sentence for the  male sparkers either. I can't understand how Sanderson and McDhougal could have decided that it was an acceptable conclusion to this plot-line, when the climax is all about choices.

But then again, I don't understand why Jordan decided that he needed to pivot from Seanchan in Randland being shaken up and needing to change for the Last Battle to them remaining largely as is, once he intended to write the Mat-Tuon sequel. There would have been more than enough conflict between them and the main culture anyway.

 

Quote

The shield/armor itself will remain undamaged, but cuendillar doesn't block the Power, or the forces the Power can unleash, beyond being undamaged from them.

Obstacles block the weaves in the books, though. Cuendillar wouldn't negate kinetic force of the weave, but it should block the purely elemental effects, not to mention normal weapons. Large shields are considered to be a useful and innovative piece of kit for the Legion of the Dragon and Band of the Red Hand. How much better if they were made of cuendillar? Being able to produce cuendillar should have given the WT army a significant defensive advantage, even if it is only partial protection against OP. Excellent point about balefire, BTW.

Regarding training of women channelers - being a battery in a circle and watching a weave performed repeatedly would indeed have helped them to learn the weave, unless a rare Talent was required for it. But even if not - athletes train their specific skills, but also have overall conditioning training. Well, this would have been an equivalent.

Practicing new weaves safely could have been done by women linking in pairs and trading control. This would have allowed them to train much more intensively _and_ much more safely than the traditional WT method where novices channel alone, supposedly only under supervision, but everyone secretly does it on their own  too, and linking isn't even taught until they make Accepted.

I wished the strength hierarchy to get abolished prior to the Last Battle, because of prior incompetence of the White Tower, particularly in military matters and general fumbling buffonery of the prominent sisters.  Putting previously disregarded, but capable people in charge could have been a plausible way to quickly improve it's effectiveness. Rand's ta'veren influence on the Pattern could have made it easier, like it made discovering and learning new things easier.

Anyway, now that I got it all off my chest:

 

14 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

Btw, it seems to me they've made Moiraine and Siuan a lot less ahead of the curve, in the show.

 

Honestly, the ret-cons of "The New Spring" made them look pretty foolish in the books as well. Before it was published their early plans had seemed quite reasonable from what they knew. 

I also disagree that Moiraine has been "doing nothing" - she unmasked Lanfear (who just outed herself for no reason in the books) and brought Rand and Logain together. I also like the deeper dive into what it costs to be an AS in general and to pursue her mission in particular. Her family drama sets upcoming events in  more meaningful ways than the books did, too. Poor Lan though... yea. 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Maia

[Corvinus85]

Isn't cuendillar really heavy? I'm not sure you can coat a large shield like the ones used by the Legion of the Dragon with it and not make the shield unwieldy. Now mantlets on wheels OTOH... but then there is the process itself, how easy would it be to make a shield with outer cuendillar coating?

Since a shield can also be used as a weapon, an Aes Sedai would likely not be able to do it. Another woman or an Asha'man might if they could discover the weaves. But we only see one Asha'man figure out the weaves from making a power-wrought weapon late in the books when Perrin forges his new hammer. 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Corvinus85

[fionwe1987]

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Did they do anything of particular importance to the plot?

That is a separate question, and one with a complicated answer, since the author setting up those people is not the author writing the finale. What we got was one single character with an outlandishly absurd skill that let him defy his strength level and be superpoweredly useful.

I doubt any single secondary character that RJ set up with Talents, but not much strength, would have been hugely important to the plot the way Androl was. But I'd call that an improvement, because while not the finale, plenty of weaker channelers with great skill play important, if not always central, roles in the plot.

One clear example of this is Verin, who cobbles together Compulsion by studying the weaves of those who have a natural, usually undeveloped Talent for it (which is many folks) then pieces together a version that is near-undetectable, which is what Graendal is very famous for. And it has huge impact on the story, since she uses it to make Elaida's kidnap force swear fealty to Rand, which ends up impacting multiple plot points. 

If you read Verin's description of how she invented these weaves, it is pretty clear that an accident of birth is nowhere in the picture for why she is able to do this. In fact, she specifically says she has difficulty with the parts of the weave that use Earth, given her natural weakness with that flow. 

Another example would be the Windfinders who use the Bowl of the Winds, Caire. She is not the strongest Windfinder, and she makes it clear she's taking the lead because she studied the most. Elayne, significantly stronger than her, and with a natural Talent for Cloud Dancing and who has been Windfinder trained to boot, says it would take her years of study to match what Caire is doing. I hope you'll gree that stopping Dark One induced global warming is important to the plot? Or do you want the author to insert a character with a tattoo reading "Skill is more important than strength"?

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Did their skills and personal discoveries contribute in some significant way? No. It would have made sense, for instance, to have weak, but skilled channelers lead circles, since they are used to doing more with less and might have really improved efficency of the OP use with them, but it didn't happen either. And outside of Egwene versus Rand, did we even see any example of weak channelers, who are particularly good at splitting their flows? Learning to do this also seemed to be mostly connected to the strength in  OP, though  IIRC Siuan and Leanne didn't lose whatever facility they had with it after getting downgraded.

At this point, you are criticizing the author for your failure to remember stuff.

As you point out, splitting flows has nothing to do with strength. Egwene is weaker than Nynaeve and all the Forsaken, after all, and is able to split her flows just as much when using less than the weakest known channeler, Morghase. Does it get more definitive than that?

6 hours ago, Maia said:

IRL famous people get to break conventions, taboos and even laws all the time.

Really? Famous, but explicitly not wealthy, people?

6 hours ago, Maia said:

She might have even got a special dispensation from the Hall/an Amyrlin in the past or something.

To ignore the rules? Look, I get it you don't like how this is in the books. The books don't like it either, but I don't think the solutions you're proposing make for great reading.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

And it isn't like  douchebag sisters met outside the Tower would have been able to force her to do anything, due to her *angreal set and general competence. But as I have already written, IMHO  rigid strength hierarchy introduced in LoC was a mistake. Before that it has been clear that it was an important factor in an AS's standing among her peers, but not the hard limit, and it fit better with the whole constant manoeuvring for advantage against each other. The attention that RJ lavished on his strength charts could have been better used elsewhere too.

The heirarchy wasn't introduced in LoC. Go back all the way to tGH, and it remains consistent in the way Aes Sedai treat each other. It only gets mentioned once the Wondergilrs become sisters, which makes sense, we don't have a lot of PoV Aes Sedai who are around other sisters that often, before this, or if they are, need to worry about strength, because they hold office.

And strenght isn't a hard limit. Only you insist it is so. The books are clear, in statement and action, that it isn't the hard limit you imagine it to be. 

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Since the importance  given a sister's opinion is weighted by her strength and weaker sisters usually  aren't even allowed to voice theirs, it is wholly unbelievable that they would have been able to rise politically on the strength of their other competences. Yes, non-interference clause would allow them to work on their personal projects, but the results, if they chose to share them, would also be viewed through the same lense. Not to mention that leadership skills need to be built up through practice, so a weaker channeler , through some implausible quirk of fate suddenly finding themselves in position of authority after a life-time of deference, should be set up for failure for the most part. Etc.

Ummm... have you worked in an office? Been to a meeting? Not had a chance to make a very logical point because someone else gets paid more and has a more senior title, but doesn't know as much about the specific point being discussed as you?

You seem to assume that in such a scenario, there is absolutely no solution, and you won't ever get to make a point. This isn't true. Most of us realize it isn't those meetings that matter, anyway. And all the strength heirarchy does is control who gets to yell the loudest and longest in the meeting. It isn't a very effective way to make people join your cause, and that's what we see with the books.

You're assuming that hierarchies need to make sense, or be actually meritocratic, for anyone lower in the heirarchy to make a statement or do anything of value. This is demonstrably false.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Concerning  Talents - yes, they can be refined through practice, but it is a minor improvement, compared to having one in the first place and it's strength, both of which is in-born.

Nope. See above.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Which again ignores actual competences and ensures that the strongest channelers will end up on-top eventually, barring excessive recklessness, because they also live the longest.

Yes, that's the flaw in the Kin system. However, one that Egwene couldn't know of, since all the Aes Sedai die off around 300 years. It really isn't a matter of strength who lives longest among them, and Egwene doesn't have any data to contradict that. It'll take a few decades for them to realize this, and make adjustments.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

The Windfinders are shackled to another person's success, which is also not great, though having to periodically go back to the basics has certain benefits for keeping the overall perspective straight. WOs "strength of personality" often felt like bullying to me, but I guess that they are the most functional? Sucks for weaker channelers who don't vibe with the Aiel way of life post-TG, I guess.

Again, its not like weaker channelers have to become Aiel to draw inspiration from their system, and not put up with the absurdities of the strength hierarchy. 

6 hours ago, Maia said:

But catching and aprehending channeling miscreants is going to be a nightmare in the  immediate post-TG future, with each organisation having different standards of what is allowed and being protective of it's members and prerogatives. Not to forget the Black Tower and it's very problematic culture...

Yep, its a mess. A good mess to leave the characters who are alive with, though. I'm fine with this being unresolved. I doubt its ever resolvable, any more than eliminating all crime is.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

My memory of the tPoD battle is that the Asha'man still tried to capture sul'dam/damane, while those had no compunction about killing them in return. Also the OP weirdness was more dangerous to the men, since damane can't over-channel due to  collar being a perverted link. And didn't Rand kill a few of the Asha'man when he lost control?

Rand explicitly tells them the damane probably don't even know how to shield men, so they shouldn't hold back. The sickness caused by the weirdness in Ebou Dar affected everyone equally, and it didn't make them overdraw, it made their weaves behave weirdly, made them feel dizzy/sick. The Seanchan officers whose PoVs we get through the campaign all mention this, and worry about its implication, and it is as much in their side as it is on Rand's. 

And yes, Rand killed a few of his Asha'man. This is why you calling this a cleat victory is bonkers. This is a stalemate, and no kind clear rousing defense of your position that the Asha'man are overwhelmingly better than other channelers. I suggest you read the chapters again before twisting the events again to keep your position, though. I'm done arguing this based on incorrect recollection.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Regarding KoD - if the Shadow had many orders of magnitude more Shadowspawn than the quarter of a Mil destroyed there, then how much use should normal armies have been?

Not very, in head-on engagements. Hence the tactics of the Trolloc Wars, which Bashere discusses during the Alttara campaign. 

6 hours ago, Maia said:

IIRC, the channelers were exhausted, but nothing a good sleep wouldn't fix,  and they could have Travelled away at any time.

Traveling when exhausted is risky. Both because you will make smaller Gateways, and leave a trace of where you went. And we've gotten a very good look at the destruction that can be caused by trying to unweave a gateway when exhausted. 

But in there is the solution to all the "issues" you've been claiming, and my speculation from the battles RJ wrote is that we'd have seen tactics from the Trolloc Wars in the Last Battle based on these facts:

1. An overwhelming number of Shadowspawn make victory for the Light near-impossible in conventional warfare. The number of channelers they have make victory conceivable, but not certain.

2. The regular forces were designed with mobility in mind, and were used to harry the main body of the Trolloc armies, and herd them towards ground where archers and channelers could considerably thin their ranks, allowing heavy infantry and cavalry to charge them and break their cohesion. Or for concentrated groups of channelers to mop them up. 

3. When this wasn't possible, you'd essentially have cannon fodder (Shadowspawn) being ground up by cannons who can only fire for so long, so you better hope the compliment of channelers you have can up the body count against the Shadowspawn fast enough that they break before the channelers are exhausted, but this would depend on the size of the particular army you're facing, the skill of the channelers, whether they had angreal/sa'angreal, and their cooperation. 

4. From the Shadow end, your best bet is a war of attrition (which is what the Trolloc Wars were), with Dreadlords countering or blunting the channelers on the other side, and strategically placing agents (channelers and otherwise) who betray the Light at the right time.

5. The Aiel men who got turned (and this has been happening for millenia, so that means you can have very old male channelers who got captured hundreds of years ago) would be a considerable ace in the hole. Them numbering in the thousands, if less than the Wise Ones, wouldn't have been wholle impossible. 

6. The remnants of the Black Ajah and Taim's cronies, as well as Wise Ones who were darkfriends (a mysteriously absent thing, from the later books, and wholly unbelievable), were certainly a smaller force than the rest of the Light's channelers, but the Sharan's saw to balancing that further.

The large number of Shadowspawn balance out the channeler number difference, and the rest would be about tactics and skills. 

6 hours ago, Maia said:

The Last Battle as written didn't work for me - along with suddenly and drastically reduced numbers of channelers involved, they often arbitrarily didn't use beneficial skills and tactics that they had employed in the previous books. Also, it just wasn't desperate enough and IMHO should have been happening on a number of battlefields concurrently throughout, rather than ultimately in one place.

Agree completely.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Forsaken, though, I am happy to say, did lead circles, however, though not to the degree that they should have. Why wouldn't they? In fact, it is a plot-hole that they didn't do so sooner.

Good point that they did use weaker channelers in the Last Battle in circles. But the ones they could use were previously not openly allied with the Shadow. I think it makes sense for them to not be in circles with the Forsaken earlier.

I exempt the Sharans from this. Not having them woven into the plot just doesn't work for me.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

I like the OP being wide and varied, but RJ has been hammering on the huge, drastic differences of saidin and saidar usage for books and books - to then make it trivially easy to weave with the opposite half of OP against one's natural instincts, felt very cheap to me. And it was unneccessary and even detrimental in the end, IMHO.

It isn't trivially easy. Rand struggles with saidar. Elza struggles with saidin. Nynaeve notes in Knife of Dreams about how the saidar weaves she could see the men weaving, when in a link with Aes Sedai, looked stiff and forced.

I do agree having the Aes Sedai-Asha'man who were bonded and working together figure out the differences and find ways to maximize the power of mixed gender circles would have been nice, though, especially as things got harder in the Last Battle. Rather than one more Trolloc band facing random collection of humans, which is what we got.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

The reason why Sanderson likely felt that he had to jettison 9/10 of previously recruited channelers was that the Light seemed to have such a huge advantage in  numbers of OP-users, that their victory looked like a slum-dunk.

Not if you keep the rules in mind. Channelers cannot channel forever, and this has been clear from the first book. They can do impressive stuff, but there's only so many Trollocs they can face.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

IIRC there have even been discussions about it back in the day. Well, the FS having the benefit of mega-circles, while the Light didn't, would have counter-acted this perception. Also, it would have been easier to give normal soldiers something important to do without massive contrivances. Ditto curbing of Travelling by some means, so that holding a position would mean something and be actually believably feasible. YMMV. 

I think there was plenty for the regular soldiers to do. If you just use the KoD battle as a baseline, any engagement with a million or two trollocs against 50-60 channelers would mean defeat for the Light. So you need the regular troops to cut that number down. And the channelers would also have to face Dreadlords, and that blunts their effectiveness more. And not every channeler is actually good at fighting, and if you take them to the frontlines as a battery, they're sitting ducks, so you need ways to protect them, which is yet another way conventional forces can come into play.

As for Traveling, I think that benefitted the Shadow, too. While they couldn't move the Trollocs that way, the Ways and the Portal Stones meant that Shadowspawn weren't exactly stuck with conventional travel. And the Shadow used Gateways to infiltrate and in the Last Battle, could have used it to raid and strike at places where channelers were concentrated. Which did happen, to be fair.

The reduction in channelers wasn't needed. Not if the Aiel male channelers were of suitable number, which the set up allows for.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Glad that we are on the same page about the Seanchan - it is not just the damane system either, they enslave normals too and it is hereditary. Slavery in this world was literally introduced by the Shadow during the War of Power. And while we have seen a couple of privileged slaves, who were content with their situation, as well as blindly devoted to their owners, this changes nothing about the horror of the institution. Nothing was done to lift automatic death sentence for the  male sparkers either. I can't understand how Sanderson and McDhougal could have decided that it was an acceptable conclusion to this plot-line, when the climax is all about choices.

But then again, I don't understand why Jordan decided that he needed to pivot from Seanchan in Randland being shaken up and needing to change for the Last Battle to them remaining largely as is, once he intended to write the Mat-Tuon sequel. There would have been more than enough conflict between them and the main culture anyway.

Yeah. Here's hoping the show does better.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Obstacles block the weaves in the books, though.

They do? News to me. I remember a Black sister directing balefire at some cuendillar pottery, and while they didn't break, and the balefire didn't harm them, they are fling from their displays on contact. 

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Cuendillar wouldn't negate kinetic force of the weave, but it should block the purely elemental effects, not to mention normal weapons. Large shields are considered to be a useful and innovative piece of kit for the Legion of the Dragon and Band of the Red Hand. How much better if they were made of cuendillar? Being able to produce cuendillar should have given the WT army a significant defensive advantage, even if it is only partial protection against OP. Excellent point about balefire, BTW.

Yes, but as noted, this was never in the cards for the Tower, because of the second Oath. And only Egwene, and to a considerably lesser extent, Leane, can make cuendillar at any kind of mass production speed as of Crossroads of Twilight. For the rest of them, it is slow going even with small things like vases. And the men don't figure it out at all, in the series, though their general greater strength with Earth would have meant a few more of them could be found who could make the thing at similar speed.

I'd also worry about long term effects. You can never unmake a cuendillar weapon. The Tower army equipped with 50,000 cuendillar shields sounds amazing, but those shields are forever. I'd have enjoyed a discussion on this, and I can see arguments on both sides for doing it, given the realities of the Last Battle.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Regarding training of women channelers - being a battery in a circle and watching a weave performed repeatedly would indeed have helped them to learn the weave, unless a rare Talent was required for it. But even if not - athletes train their specific skills, but also have overall conditioning training. Well, this would have been an equivalent.

Once again, you keep minimizing what Forcing is. It is not conditioning. It exhausts you. What about exhaustion that can lead to catastropic large scale accidents screams "acceptable state for training specific skills"?

And no, watching a weave doesn't allow you to pick it up. That takes years of practice with the Power. You need to actually weave to practice channeling. 

This whole discussion needs to end. You are, first, wrongly convinced the Asha'man are meaningfully better than the female channelers. Second, wrongly insisting that their horrific training losses and lack of morale is an acceptable tradeoff for this supposed improvement. Third, inventing ways to minimize these losses that don't make sense at all, given everything else we know of the Power.

If you have something to say that is outside this loop, I will reply. Otherwise, my view is that forcing in particular, and the Black Towers training program in general, is in any way health or useful, and anything else except stupid and evil.

6 hours ago, Maia said:

I wished the strength hierarchy to get abolished prior to the Last Battle, because of prior incompetence of the White Tower, particularly in military matters and general fumbling buffonery of the prominent sisters.  Putting previously disregarded, but capable people in charge could have been a plausible way to quickly improve it's effectiveness. Rand's ta'veren influence on the Pattern could have made it easier, like it made discovering and learning new things easier.

Seems rather too neat and unrealistic. I want that result, but I don't think this is how overthrowing hierarchies plays out. 

6 hours ago, Maia said:

Honestly, the ret-cons of "The New Spring" made them look pretty foolish in the books as well. Before it was published their early plans had seemed quite reasonable from what they knew. 

Huh. To me, New Spring is when their early book plots finally made sense. Before that, you could easily ask why they didn't include at least a few more trusted sister in their plans. What the Black Ajah did in New Spring is what provides the explanation, and a good one. What's the retcon, there?

6 hours ago, Maia said:

I also disagree that Moiraine has been "doing nothing" - she unmasked Lanfear (who just outed herself for no reason in the books) and brought Rand and Logain together. I also like the deeper dive into what it costs to be an AS in general and to pursue her mission in particular. Her family drama sets upcoming events in  more meaningful ways than the books did, too. Poor Lan though... yea. 

Fair enough, she does take a more active role, here. 

[karaddin]

I'm now picturing them starting to use ceundillar shields as construction materials 1000 years down the line as there's no way to get rid of them lol