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WoTS rewind - New Tangents · WoT Spoilers

• 0:08
  I mean, the other thing we could talk about is just like how you
• 0:10
  came to the series. Oh, man, I definitely remember my cousin and
• 0:20
  I, who's a girl that's like two years older than me. We're really
• 0:24
  close growing up, and we were just trade novel fantasy novels like Old Pierre's
• 0:29
  Anthony and whatever else we could find. I remember trying to read the first
• 0:32
  tune and not really understanding what was happening. And I think the first that
• 0:37
  that's what happened to me. When I first got my hands on Eye of
• 0:40
  the World. I read maybe half of the first book and I just sort
• 0:44
  of put it down. I think it was a little above me when I
• 0:46
  was like probably single digits, right, Yeah, it's a little young.
• 0:50
  I feel like it you almost have to go through puberty. Yeah yeah,
• 0:55
  I mean the the vocabulary and writing style that Robert Jordan has is not for
• 1:00
  children, right, at least not for dumb children like me. The size
• 1:08
  of it, man, I mean, it's just like the kids can't hold
• 1:11
  it in their hands. It's a big how long? So when did you
• 1:18
  pick it up again and really start seriously reading it. I'm trying to place
• 1:25
  it. I remember walking through a Barnes and Noble, just looking for something
• 1:29
  to read. And I remember that I was in like my I remember the
• 1:38
  apartment I was in, and I remember I was under twenty one. I
• 1:41
  think we moved in when I was still eighteen. I assume as sometime around
• 1:45
  that time, because it took me. I mean all the books were out
• 1:53
  at the time except for the Sanderson ones, and I think it took me
• 1:59
  about a year to get through all of them. But yeah, that's that's
• 2:02
  about the right moment. A book every month of three weeks, and I
• 2:07
  read obsessively too. I would like, if I had a spare moment at
• 2:12
  work, I would like keep a copy in my bag and just pull it
• 2:14
  out and like thumb through really quick and read a page, put it back
• 2:19
  down. Oh god, the number of times like I would like run into
• 2:22
  walls because I was reading and walking at the same time. I don't even
• 2:24
  want to think about it. It's just I'd get some into them. I'd
• 2:28
  just try and like between classes, i'd be reading. Yeah, it's about
• 2:30
  eighteen I think the second time I picked it up and just did you just
• 2:36
  plower it through it? Yeah? I didn't NonStop and then waited like six
• 2:43
  years for the last couple to come out. How long was it? I
• 2:46
  don't know, Like, well, they do start to blend together a little
• 2:50
  bit after a while, and they all sort of it becomes one big story
• 2:53
  and it's hard to pick what I remember. I was living in the same
• 2:54
  apartment. I think I was only there for like a year, year and
• 2:59
  a half, but I was living in the same place when I found out
• 3:00
  Robert Jordan died, and I was like, oh, fuck, are we
• 3:06
  ever going to find out? That hit me like a ton of bricks,
• 3:09
  Like it was probably like the second most devastating death in my life. Me
• 3:21
  too. Yeah, it's like it's up there one person that died that I
• 3:23
  cared about. Everyone else was like, oh, well, but Jordan died,
• 3:27
  Like I wasn't going to know what happened to the end of the wheel
• 3:30
  of time. I mean, I I think, you know, certainly,
• 3:34
  Oh Sanderson a huge death of that one. He coming into to do what
• 3:39
  he did and just to accept the criticism, you know, like of because
• 3:46
  there's no way you're not getting get criticized for taking on, no matter how
• 3:50
  good of a job you do, something of that size, you know,
• 3:53
  you know, and also I can't complain because it turned me on doing an
• 3:57
  author like I love Brandon Sanderson. You know, his stuff was great.
• 4:00
  Yeah, I was really lucky. I was saying that right before we got
• 4:02
  on microphone or a couple hours ago, when we were just talking about this.
• 4:06
  I was like, I went into it expecting to be disappointed, like
• 4:11
  here's this author i'n't written, never read any of his stuff before, whatever,
• 4:15
  Like I'm just going to like, I'm going for it. I don't
• 4:18
  know. Maybe by that time I had read some of his other stuff,
• 4:20
  but I was still expecting to be disappointed, like nobody's going to do it
• 4:24
  the same, Like it's not going to be as good. But you know,
• 4:26
  I kind of want to say it's as good. It's not the same,
• 4:30
  like nobody can write exactly the same. But he did such a great
• 4:32
  job. And yeah, I really remember being very impressed with just the first
• 4:40
  couple of paragraphs. I mean, I'm sure he worked his ass off on
• 4:43
  those first couple of paragraphs because he knew that guys like me are like,
• 4:46
  oh, well, this is gonna suck, but I have to know what
• 4:48
  the ending is this the lightning and the clouds and the farmer and just that
• 4:53
  whole scene anyway, the dark cloud like skipping through the sky. We'll get
• 4:58
  to that something. How soon did you do your first reread? Geez,
• 5:04
  I'm not sure. A couple of years. I think when I when I
• 5:11
  first moved to Portland was the first time I like really attempted of reread.
• 5:15
  Well, I did a read listen, I did the books on tape.
• 5:18
  I counted twelve, and I guess I've probably read them in like seven or
• 5:28
  six, I don't know, well, yeah, around uh six, Yeah,
• 5:34
  I came to them. Gosh, I don't even know how old I
• 5:39
  was. I must have been seventh grade, eighth grade something like that.
• 5:43
  How old does that put you? Thirteen ish? Yeah? Yeaheen pretty I
• 5:47
  think it's pretty much as young as you could possibly be. And really,
• 5:50
  yeah, get into them. I don't think there's really anyway to. I
• 5:55
  almost wish I had gotten might have kept me out of some trouble. Well,
• 6:00
  trust me, there was nothing else. I mean, if I wanted
• 6:02
  to read these books in my books in my teenage years, I wasn't getting
• 6:06
  a lot else done, you know. That was it was me with my
• 6:10
  nose in my book. Pretty much the entire time. But yeah, so
• 6:13
  I got to know when I was about thirteen or fourteen. You know,
• 6:15
  that was probably right when right after Lord of Chaos came up. Man the
• 6:20
  anticipation, because I feel like I really only had to experience that once,
• 6:25
  Like I found the first book and then I was able to go all the
• 6:28
  way through. So I basically read the first seven in a row, you
• 6:31
  know, because the first six were out when I started reading them, and
• 6:35
  then the seventh came out right as I finished, So I got to read
• 6:40
  the first seven and then I waited and I waited for Winter's Heart per year,
• 6:45
  and of course, I you know, I loved the books. They
• 6:47
  were pretty incredible. Apparent my far was my favorite character when I was a
• 6:53
  kid. I wanted to talk to wolves, I wanted to have golden eyes.
• 6:57
  I wanted to have his beard like hiss, which I do. So
• 7:00
  you know, that's definitely part of why I started growing a beard on eighteen.
• 7:04
  Yeah you could be a good parent. Yeah, like, definitely was
• 7:10
  my favorite character at that time. Not so much anymore, but you know,
• 7:15
  he still Oh gosh, I think Matt's always been my favorite, just
• 7:19
  like how wild he is and sometimes unpredictable or predictably unpredictable. You'd make a
• 7:25
  good Matt. I think, yeah, we have a costplay. We just
• 7:29
  need to find like a Rand, which I don't know. I thought you
• 7:30
  could make a good Rand tea because you got the red hair. Yeah,
• 7:34
  well it's always he can never be perfect, and so totally into the books,
• 7:42
  and yeah, parent didn't suck quite as much because at the time he'd
• 7:44
  like barely even met Eel. And then every time another book came out,
• 7:49
  I'd reread the series, you know, and at six, you know,
• 7:54
  seven, I was expecting a nine book series, right like I thought he
• 7:59
  was a couple of books. And then he started bringing the damn Forsaken back.
• 8:03
  Right the first time I realized that he was reincarnating Forsaken, I was
• 8:07
  like, this series is never gonna end. He's gonna die before he finishes
• 8:11
  it. I was right the notes, thank God, and thank the creator,
• 8:22
  I guess. And then the Internet happened, and I got really into
• 8:30
  the Wheel of Time faq, and every time the book came out, I
• 8:33
  mean I got I was deep into you know, or who killed Asmodian and
• 8:37
  you know, just all the other ridiculous theories that were going on at the
• 8:43
  time, and like that, I think is really where you know, my
• 8:46
  theories came out because I was trying to predict all this stuff and once you
• 8:52
  can start to look at stuff online. When I did the listen through,
• 8:56
  when I first moved out here, I spent a lot of time actually playing
• 9:03
  Diablo Too, like, oh yeah, one of my favorite games. I
• 9:07
  read of that because I didn't have any friends or really want to go out.
• 9:11
  I was in a weird place story for another time, but I didn't
• 9:16
  really want to leave my apartment, so I would just like go to work
• 9:18
  and go home like kick on Diablo Too and Wheel of Time audiobook. And
• 9:22
  if I had a question, like you know, I'd be listening and sitting
• 9:26
  and playing passively and listening. And if I had a question like wait a
• 9:30
  minute, who's this character? I could just flip to Firefox and like Google,
• 9:35
  like who's this person? And then I started to It gives you a
• 9:39
  much broader view because you know, when I first read it, there wasn't
• 9:41
  really I mean, we had the Internet, but it wasn't. Don't.
• 9:46
  I don't feel like I could there were the same resources were there, or
• 9:50
  at least I never thought to use them. I guess yeah. I mean
• 9:54
  the real of time fact, I think was a very small niche website,
• 9:58
  and I mean, if you found it, that was amazing. But I
• 10:03
  don't think it was easy to find in the beginning, you know. Yeah,
• 10:07
  I honestly don't remember looking. I probably would have just assumed that there
• 10:11
  was no such thing. It was such a unique thing at the time.
• 10:16
  I don't think fan sites and theory sites weren't really a thing at the time.
• 10:20
  You didn't have these like epic TV series that you could theorize about,
• 10:26
  you know, No, there weren't really things like that. Yeah, it
• 10:28
  was especially not a lot. I mean, there were definitely some. That
• 10:31
  was probably the beginning. Yeah, two thousand and five, it's when I
• 10:37
  feel like the Internet was really going. Laptops were starting to become like,
• 10:41
  okay, a lot of people have these things now. Wi Fi I think
• 10:43
  really made it a popular thing, all that kind of stuff. When I
• 10:50
  took college classes, they're like there was like a couple of rich kids would
• 10:54
  have a laptop, but not everyone. You're not most people even oh yeah
• 11:00
  I had a desktop. Everyone had a desktop. You had a computer in
• 11:03
  your room, and that's you know that was it. No one got a
• 11:05
  laptops. They were these big bricks. Yeah. When and I guess,
• 11:09
  uh, you know, I really got into the audio books. I just
• 11:13
  listened to them like repeatedly, you know, I basically looped them over and
• 11:18
  over again. Same thing when when I came out to Portland, I got
• 11:20
  into the audio books. And during my move and didn't have a lot of
• 11:24
  friends, and I just have the books on repeat and my dog is helping
• 11:28
  you, okay, And then you know, it's just it's become this thing
• 11:37
  that whenever I tear through podcasts or whenever I don't have something else to listen
• 11:43
  to, I just throw on the wheels on wherever I'm at it, you
• 11:45
  know, and I just I go around and around. I should start doing
• 11:48
  that. This this, this is the wheel of time, the wheel of
• 12:13
  time. The wheel of time is the wheel of time. Spoilers podcast,
• 12:18
  This is the podcast you're looking for. This is not the moncast you're looking
• 12:22
  for. Let's get that. That's better. Turn away now. So,
• 12:28
  yeah, we were talking about this a little last time, and so it
• 12:31
  really stuck out because I read the pro re read the prologue like a bunch
• 12:35
  of times. This week to just kind of get ideas about what we're going
• 12:39
  to talk about. And of course, like I was saying, we were
• 12:41
  talking about the very first sentence the last time because of its mention of the
• 12:46
  word memory, and the quote is the palace still shook occasionally as the earth
• 12:50
  rumbled in memory groaned as if it would deny what had happened. Underneath I
• 12:54
  wrote memories, I'd become legends. But then, like two pages of notes
• 12:58
  later, I noticed a mirror quote at the end, which is interesting for
• 13:03
  a lot of different reasons that I'm sure we'll get into. But the quote
• 13:07
  it goes, the land around him was flat and empty. A river flowed
• 13:11
  nearby, straight and broad, but he could sense that there were no people
• 13:16
  within a hundred leagues. He was alone, as alone as a man could
• 13:18
  be while still alive. Yet he could not escape memory. And I love
• 13:24
  that because, you know, if we're talking about Wheel of Time spoilers,
• 13:28
  we're going into the last book right away. You know, a memory of
• 13:31
  light immediately the first sentence, the end of that prologue, and then of
• 13:37
  course the end of the whole series. Like it, that idea that rand
• 13:41
  is this memory that Lewis thearren is this memory that travels through time just happens
• 13:48
  over and over and over again. And I just I love that that we
• 13:52
  you know, it sort of starts right in the beginning. It's mirrored at
• 13:54
  the end of the chapter, and then it's mirrored again at the end of
• 13:58
  the series. I love that, know, you know. And what is
• 14:01
  sort of the light? You know that always if we've got this memory,
• 14:05
  memory of light, what is that? You know? Yeah, the idea
• 14:09
  of memories like in memories of the past and of the future. Almost and
• 14:13
  least two quotes at the beginning of the end of the prologue, which kind
• 14:18
  of it was what the entire book is about the prologue is it was really
• 14:24
  it was. It was really fun to read the prologue so many times after
• 14:28
  having read the series so many times, because it's you, there's just so
• 14:33
  much there already, these like the two most important characters in the whole series
• 14:39
  are standing right there interacting. And then yeah, this the quote at the
• 14:43
  beginning and the end of the prologue, and how the prologue is sort of
• 14:48
  the beginning and end of the series. And Jesus, I mean, which
• 14:54
  which gets into the beginning and the end. Right, I mean, let's
• 14:56
  talk about the wheel a little bit. You know, this is the wheel
• 14:58
  of time, you know, or we've got the wheel, you know.
• 15:03
  Let's let's throw something out there really quick. Because you mentioned the beginning of
• 15:07
  the end. I in the notes I started taking, I note what symbol
• 15:13
  is in the chapter heading because it always reflects what's in the rest of the
• 15:16
  chapter. And the prologue is the snake and the wheel, right, yeah,
• 15:22
  it's all about just like this happens over and over and over again,
• 15:28
  you know. I just I really love that symbolism, right, like and
• 15:35
  and and the legends that become myth, you know. I mean, we'll
• 15:39
  talk about the the intro in the next chapter, but I think the intro
• 15:41
  says an awful lot about the story and what it is that that that Robert
• 15:46
  Jordan is trying to do with the series. Yeah, that's really nicely laid
• 15:54
  out. I do like in that first sentence it talks about how the earth
• 15:58
  rumbledon memory because we get it's such a link between Rand and the land.
• 16:03
  The Another thing I notice in this last read through is that when LTT destroys
• 16:12
  himself and the earth is well, the like all this bedrock is vaporized,
• 16:18
  and it's this crazy like jet of lava. But with the all this lava
• 16:23
  shoots out of the earth and this wind from the four corners, he mentions,
• 16:30
  from north and south, from east and west. The wind howled in,
• 16:33
  snapping trees like twigs, shrieking and blowing as if to aid the growing
• 16:37
  of the mountain. Ever skyward, ever skyword. Yeah, And I always
• 16:41
  thought that was sort of a not only good metaphor for like the winds coming
• 16:47
  together, but also I mean, how does that mountain get so tall?
• 16:49
  Right? It's got this incredible jet of lava, and he's created this vortex
• 16:55
  of winds that are actually pushing the lava upwards into a spire. And we
• 16:59
  can we can also kind of presume that because LTT is linked to or the
• 17:03
  dragon is linked to the land, that there's maybe an extra extra magical forces
• 17:07
  working there. Possibly. Yeah, yeah, I mean, certainly he affects
• 17:11
  the land and destroying himself, right, right, He's wounding himself, He's
• 17:15
  wounding the land. Right, that's a gigantic light that connects him to the
• 17:21
  sky. You know, he's the fisher king thing right right? Sure,
• 17:26
  the wound in the side in a way, you know. Yeah, he's
• 17:29
  not injured in any way, well except like his mind, right right,
• 17:33
  not physically injured. Right. So we sort of skipped to the end of
• 17:37
  the prologue. There's a lot that happens in between the beginning and the end,
• 17:41
  but they were sort of linked together with that memory. Yeah, I
• 17:42
  wonder how much that could do with the breaking and not just a hundred or
• 17:49
  thousands of insane male eyesaid I tearing the world apart, but i'll just the
• 17:55
  dragon destroying himself. Oh yeah, I don't think there's any doubt that the
• 17:56
  breaking is linked. The destruction of the land the destruction of the dragon are
• 18:02
  linked, you know, And and they both occur as a result of the
• 18:04
  ceiling. That backlash taints Rand, it destroys, it taints the dragon,
• 18:11
  and it causes the breaking. You know, I think those two are definitely
• 18:14
  linked together. There's there's no doubt, you know, time and time again,
• 18:18
  the land is so much linked Rand in his mood and ltt lewis there,
• 18:23
  and you know, I mean, it's it's incredible how much those two
• 18:27
  are tied together. And you know, in a lot of ways, I
• 18:32
  think, and I'll they want to talk about this later, but how the
• 18:37
  seasons and how they change with the bowl of the winds, and how that's
• 18:40
  tied to how Rand's doing in his battle against the Dark One, and how
• 18:45
  you know, uh, turning to ice versus turning. You know, he's
• 18:48
  he's got this hot heat in the beginning and this passion, and then when
• 18:52
  it breaks and we end up at Winter's Heart, he's this cold, hard
• 18:56
  you know, you know, it's incredibly closely linked to see him and that's
• 19:03
  yeah, the Fisher King definitely did a little reading on that, not too
• 19:08
  much. I like the mythology stuff, but it's always kind of loosely tied
• 19:14
  in, like not like it doesn't tell you too much. It just gives
• 19:19
  you a little bit of insight. You know, a lot of our legends
• 19:23
  are based on a turning of the wheel that happened where and the legends passed
• 19:32
  down from that turning of the wheel are basically Rand, Matt and parent and
• 19:37
  the adventures become our legends. And so in a way, Robert Jordan here
• 19:42
  is saying, hey, you know, this happens every time, and this
• 19:45
  is sort of the source of our legends and the source of our prophecies.
• 19:48
  I like that a lot because I was reading about the Fisher king theories,
• 19:55
  which like there's not really clear ties there in a lot of different ways.
• 20:00
  But one thing I never had really looked into was the dragon title and what
• 20:06
  is even sure that like other than the tattoos, and I didn't find too
• 20:15
  much information on it, but like, the little bit that I did find
• 20:18
  was that in Chinese tradition, dragons are their scales are made like alternatively and
• 20:25
  out of yin and then went out of yang okay, and it's supposed to
• 20:29
  represent a force of destruction and preservation at the same time. Sure, And
• 20:34
  so as soon as I saw that, I was like, oh, well,
• 20:37
  right, and I think the dragon, I think of that force of
• 20:41
  preservation as being the one power of destroying the world and saving the world.
• 20:45
  We're destroying the world to save the world, I guess. So we've hit
• 20:49
  this on some pretty deep levels already. I sort of want to go back
• 20:53
  to the basics. I want to sort of talk about the actual events that
• 20:59
  are taking place in the prologue, because for someone who may be coming back
• 21:03
  to the series for the first time, you know, you read through it
• 21:06
  once, you kind of remember the scene, but you're not really sure,
• 21:10
  Wait, who are these people again? And and so and and what's going
• 21:14
  on? And what kind of powers are being used? You know? I
• 21:17
  sort of really want to go into just not not just the metaphorical level,
• 21:21
  but also the sort of what's physically happening here, you know, you know
• 21:25
  as as we enter, Yeah, these two people in this broken palace,
• 21:30
  Uh, there's a lot happening between them that we don't understand yet and that
• 21:37
  we will really shortly after him and the Hundred tried to seal the bore.
• 21:44
  Don't want to get like, how how did that happen? How? How
• 21:47
  is he wandering around this broken palace absolutely mad? Get to see too much
• 21:51
  of it really ever, compared to lots of other storylines, but we we
• 21:56
  know some pretty key things. Then. One is that throughout most of the
• 22:03
  series, at least during my first read, it really seems like a sort
• 22:07
  of paradise where not just the one power is driving force and creating opportunities for
• 22:18
  people doing things like growing food and eliminating hunger and disease and pollution. But
• 22:26
  there's also, I guess, a different sort of culture where people seem really
• 22:33
  concerned with serving mankind rather than themselves. There's this just total paradise. They've
• 22:38
  got flying planes basically, you know, they've got a police force, you
• 22:45
  know, I mean there is a darker side, you know that people certainly
• 22:48
  still commit crimes. They have binding chairs where they can put someone in there
• 22:55
  who's committed a crime. So basically they have the oath rods. So if
• 22:59
  you're channeler and you commit a crime, that you are forced to use the
• 23:03
  power to bind yourself and that basically forces you to obey whatever promise you swear
• 23:11
  while channeling into it and forces you to die at a young age. Right,
• 23:15
  so it's a pretty pretty hefty punishment. And then they have these binding
• 23:21
  chairs where they can bind someone who doesn't channel, you know, and force
• 23:23
  them to relive their worst memories or possibly recall a crime to a committee.
• 23:30
  And the people who can channel are called the isid Eye. They're led by
• 23:36
  the Tamberlin. They're served by a people called the Iel, who are passivist
• 23:40
  folk. They don't fight. They're well known for being the best servants and
• 23:47
  it's an offense to bump into one even and cause him pain. So paradise,
• 23:52
  but there certainly is a bit of a darker side to it. I
• 23:53
  think, you know, it's not perfect for everybody, right, Like it's
• 23:57
  it's almost two squeaky clean and one of lose. Therein's memories, we see
• 24:04
  later in the book he I don't have this on hand, but he mentions
• 24:08
  that there may have been some or kind of alludes to the fact that there
• 24:12
  may have been some class tension also during the Age of Legends. Sure,
• 24:19
  yeah, I can't remember all of it, but I definitely remember getting the
• 24:22
  sense that he's kind of saying that, like that, they're like, the
• 24:26
  world may have broken apart anyway at some point. Well, I think you
• 24:29
  all have a very large population of channelers and then a larger population of non
• 24:34
  channelers, and you're always going to have someone who can channel as being privilege.
• 24:40
  They have servants, they're well regarded, but you know it's not that
• 24:44
  hard to abuse power, right, I mean they can also fly and no,
• 24:52
  definitely privileged, definitely, right, So the population was much higher,
• 24:56
  essentially, imagine a modern day societ with less crime and more magic. So
• 25:03
  and it looks like some kind of one world government, sure, at least
• 25:07
  on this continent, right, Yeah, it's a I don't think they go
• 25:11
  really beyond the continent, although you know, we don't know what the continent
• 25:15
  looks like at this point, right true, because this is this is pre
• 25:18
  breaking and apparently everything changes. And so as part of this you know,
• 25:25
  wonderful society, you have research, you have people looking for new sources of
• 25:30
  power. Right. The one power is a wonderful source of power, but
• 25:34
  it is split, right yeah, and it's only available to people who are
• 25:40
  privileged with the correct genetics. Right, So, like I forget, like
• 25:45
  two or three percent of a population gets this special gift, right, and
• 25:48
  it's even a smaller percentage that that is going to channel whether they want to
• 25:53
  or not, right yeah, And then everyone else can be trained. But
• 25:59
  that that means, you know, when you don't really have people seeking you
• 26:02
  out and training you, and a much smaller population of channelers because the potential
• 26:06
  channelers don't. A group of gifted academics and researchers somehow find out about this
• 26:15
  or this other source of power that's behind this thin veil. They find this
• 26:21
  spot is a bit of a thinness, and they create a floating globe and
• 26:26
  it's led by you know, our favorite gal essentially in charge of the death
• 26:33
  Star, right, yeah, no, I don't know if that's true,
• 26:37
  that actually is supposed to be, but it's a big floating globe. It's
• 26:41
  an awful lot like a death star. I don't I wouldn't knock it,
• 26:45
  certainly. And of course that's land fear right. And at this point she's
• 26:52
  just a researcher and she punctures through and what she punctures through is the prison
• 27:00
  of the dark one like main co researcher's name is I forget exactly, but
• 27:04
  it's something like bite them on or Betleman. And there's like there's a lot
• 27:08
  of debate basically in the fan community about who that might be, or if
• 27:17
  that person is anyone, or if he's just like some poor first year grad
• 27:22
  student. Oh this exploded my face, you know. I imagine an exchange
• 27:30
  went down something like turn or die, and he was the first one to
• 27:34
  get the choice and he said hell no, and that was the end of
• 27:38
  him. And then it came to land Fair and it was turner die.
• 27:41
  He's like, well, I don't want to go his fate. Does she
• 27:45
  go right away? Yep? I thought, Oh, I don't know.
• 27:48
  I'm fairly certain that a lot of them took time to transition, but she
• 27:52
  was just caught in the backlash. I know. Ishmael was supposed to be
• 27:56
  one of the very first yes well, because he immediately saw the futility in
• 28:02
  fighting the dark One, his dark philosopher's mind, his dark philosopher's mind,
• 28:07
  which is also one of my favorite quotes from this beginning, where he talks
• 28:12
  to a man and says, this war has not lasted ten years, but
• 28:15
  since the beginning of time, you and I have fought a thousand battles with
• 28:19
  the turning of the wheel a thousand times a thousand, and we will fight
• 28:23
  until time dies and the Shadow is triumphant. And this is Ishmael's thanks seriously,
• 28:32
  you know. And I love this quote because it shows his philosophy right
• 28:37
  from the beginning, that every battle is a new battle and the dark One
• 28:42
  only has to win once, and then that he's really sort of obsessed with
• 28:49
  the futility or sort of kind of sunk into this dark circle of thoughts.
• 28:56
  I think because he doesn't seem to be a crazy person, he doesn't seem
• 28:59
  to be evil even really, he just seems convinced that this is the only
• 29:04
  possible outcome. Yeah, and in some ways he's given up, right,
• 29:07
  he believes everything is futile. There's nothing that we can do. It's not
• 29:15
  that's going to advance the human race. We might as well give up,
• 29:18
  let ourselves go, and you know, get this over with, you know.
• 29:22
  He in some ways he's the ultimate suicidal character. Yeah. He all
• 29:26
  he wants is to die forever, forever, forever and ever, and like
• 29:33
  he can't do that without the Dark One destroying everything. Right, and in
• 29:38
  this universe, you're reborn at some point exactly, no matter what you do.
• 29:44
  Yeah, it's even even bailfire does not prevent you from being reborn.
• 29:49
  I have a good quote that I wrote down that applies that I can't remember
• 29:55
  if it's LTT in Ram's head or LTT at some other point speaking to Ishmael
• 30:02
  LTT or around says, you're always still full of thoughts, elon your own
• 30:07
  logic destroydi, didn't it? And I just thought that applied really nicely.
• 30:11
  That's perfect. Yeah, that's that's exactly the problem with him, with Ishmael
• 30:18
  Elon Betrayer of Hope, whatever you want to call him. In the prologue,
• 30:22
  they just call him the betrayer of Hope. Yeah, do they not
• 30:26
  even say bills a man yet, No, they don't. Well he's not.
• 30:30
  He's not bails yet he doesn't. I don't believe he takes on that
• 30:33
  name until the Trolock Wars. Yeah, because he's not trapped. Right,
• 30:41
  this is the whole thing that a lot of people that goes I certainly missed
• 30:45
  on my first read through. This is after the backlash, right, and
• 30:51
  he's not trapped. Oh yeah, I didn't really. I had never really
• 30:56
  thought about it until we talked about it during the last time we sat down
• 30:59
  together. He's not trapped. Not only is he not trapped, but there's
• 31:06
  some stuff later that shows maybe for as many as forty years after the Breaking,
• 31:12
  Ishmael is still around. It's one of those kind of faux history entries
• 31:19
  that's sort of throughout the book. And there's this guy called, presumably a
• 31:25
  o Gear called Aaron, son of Milan, son of Seynar, who documents
• 31:30
  sightings of Ishmael as late as forty years after Oh wow, the breaking,
• 31:36
  and he also says that not this particular person, but we know that Ishmael
• 31:42
  seems to be released every thousand years after that, right for the Trolic Wars,
• 31:48
  the War of one hundred years and then the last battle, and each
• 31:51
  time he seems to be out for about forty years. Interesting, I didn't
• 31:55
  know the forty year range. Yeah, I never put that together either,
• 32:00
  but it makes sense that, like that's I knew he came out every thousand
• 32:04
  years or so. Yeah. Yeah, And it's definitely creates, you know,
• 32:07
  some of the major events in rand Land that occur after the breaking.
• 32:14
  It made me wonder how much of his later insanity has to do with like
• 32:19
  possibly actually being alive that long, or of being aware. Oh, I
• 32:22
  think lot to do with it that, I mean that, and I think
• 32:27
  the True Power has totally consumed him because you know, the True Power is
• 32:31
  what they were looking for when they found the Dark One, right, you
• 32:36
  know, because the Dark One is the True Power, you know. And
• 32:38
  that's a key distinction to make in the series between the True Power and the
• 32:42
  One Power, because they do work a little bit differently, you know.
• 32:49
  And and he says that right in the beginning when he says, as he
• 32:54
  heals Rand, he says, my, the Dark One's healing is not is
• 33:00
  kind. It's a different kind of healing, and it works differently in the
• 33:04
  causes. Just incredible amounts of pain, whereas the One Power doesn't. And
• 33:07
  it's sort of and we hear about it with traveling, you know, with
• 33:13
  the One Power, you're sort of making the two places the same with the
• 33:16
  female half. With the male half, you're sort of poking a hole.
• 33:20
  With the one. With the True Power, you're ripping a hole in the
• 33:23
  universe, and then it sort of heals up behind you kind of eventually maybe
• 33:30
  you know, it's it's pretty pretty bad stuff because you're channeling the force of
• 33:35
  the Dark One into the universe. So yeah, it's important difference as to
• 33:42
  which one is being used in the series. Also, had never seen this
• 33:58
  before. That came up in my reading that not just the saw that go
• 34:04
  across your eyes, but also the fire in place of eyes and mouth,
• 34:08
  could some people think is also a symptom of using the True Power. I
• 34:14
  think it's I think the saw of the first symptom, and then that that
• 34:17
  basically as the centuries were on, they became more and more pronounced until the
• 34:23
  eyes and mouth just burned, right, you know, I mean they say
• 34:27
  over again, there's a cost, no man, definitely, but they say
• 34:37
  there's a cost to using the One Power, you know, and and a
• 34:40
  lot of the foresaken aren't willing to pay that it's addicting, it's incredibly addicting.
• 34:45
  Or the truth the true power. Yes, oh gosh, it's so
• 34:47
  hard to keep those two straight, I know. And and what we see
• 34:53
  with Ishmael is that cost because we see him as a relatively normal man in
• 34:57
  the prologue and then when he comes back three thousand year later. Yeah,
• 35:00
  in the prologue he seems sane, perfectly sane, really totally sane, I
• 35:04
  mean evil, but yeah, yeah, you know, and that's where we
• 35:07
  see, you know, he extended his hands and the light dimmed, as
• 35:10
  if a shadow had been laid across the sun. You know, that's him
• 35:14
  using that true power to heal. Yeah. Also when he travels in the
• 35:17
  beginning, or when he travels to where Loose Thearin is, you know.
• 35:21
  And I also wonder about that healing because I do think, you know,
• 35:24
  it may be something that only really happens in the eye of the world.
• 35:28
  But Moraine talks about once you've healed someone, that forms a link between you,
• 35:32
  you know, and at this point, Ishmael heals ltt oh man,
• 35:37
  it might be interesting to talk about that with nieves later. Oh, absolutely,
• 35:42
  I think how many people she heals? Yeah, But there is that
• 35:45
  scene in the beginning when she comes right to there in and Marine says,
• 35:49
  you knew where she was because you healed her? Which one was it?
• 35:52
  Did you heal paren or did you heal mcwayne? And she's like, oh,
• 35:54
  I heal the GWayne with the breakback fever. Yeah, yeah, no,
• 36:00
  I forgot all about that. That's not really ever mentioned again, So
• 36:02
  that might be just something that that was in the eye of the world and
• 36:06
  then sort of faded to the background. There are a few of those things.
• 36:09
  Yeah, it's not not really used as a plot device that I can
• 36:15
  think of. When we were talking about this a little last time, you
• 36:20
  were talking about where Ishmael heals LTT in the scene, yes, and wondering
• 36:28
  if that's the beginning of the link. Yeah, that's exactly what I was
• 36:30
  talking about. Is this this healing is you know, the beginning of the
• 36:34
  link between the two. It may also be one of the ways that he's
• 36:38
  able to find him, yeah, if he can sense his soul, you
• 36:44
  know, and certainly how he's able to come to him in his dreams in
• 36:49
  the rest of the book. Yeah, he's one of the few talented male
• 36:53
  dream walkers ever. Apparently right Ishmael is absolutely and so that combined with possibly
• 37:00
  a link from healing his soul, could explain partially how he's able to find
• 37:05
  him in his dreams. That's cool. I haven't thought about it before.
• 37:09
  Yeah, I want to talk about this kind of stuff. So now we're
• 37:16
  about two pages in Landfear and her assistant who we're not sure exactly who that
• 37:27
  is or if they're if they appear in this later series Drill, this poor
• 37:34
  doo comes out and he's like, the world's world is mine now and those
• 37:40
  crazy war breaks out? How many more? How many details do we know
• 37:44
  in there? The first few eyes said I to swear to the dark one
• 37:49
  or land fear Ish male. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of
• 37:52
  details about exactly what happens, just in terms of the order and and some
• 37:58
  of that's reconstructed. I don't don't think we really need to go into too
• 38:00
  many details that we actually see any conversation. No, that we definitely don't.
• 38:06
  But I do want to talk about sort of the timeline because here he
• 38:07
  mentions ten years, because he says ten you defeated me at the gates of
• 38:15
  Paradis, Son says Dishmail, right, and then was there and responds,
• 38:22
  ten years, your foul master has racked this world. And so we get
• 38:27
  that ten years figure. And that's certainly a period of time where the war
• 38:32
  has been going on. But the dark One had broken out quite a bit
• 38:36
  before the war started, right, I'm not sure exactly how long, but
• 38:39
  I think it was actually a couple of years before battle started happening. Absolutely,
• 38:46
  yeah, there was a slow transition, right, So there was this
• 38:50
  disaster, but no one really realized anything bad was happening right away. But
• 38:57
  evil sort of crept into men's hearts. People started fighting more. They learned
• 39:02
  to use swords, and you know, it took this game that they called
• 39:06
  swords, which was just like fighting with two sticks, you know, and
• 39:09
  scoring points more like fencing is today, and they turned it into a deadly
• 39:13
  game, you know. And and really that was Loos Thearren and uh uh
• 39:20
  uh Ishmael like he says, remember when we took that? And so was
• 39:24
  it him or was it bellall hmmm, No, No, I'm pretty I
• 39:30
  want to say it was because Ishmael also always kind of thought of as ltts
• 39:36
  equal right essentially and in many way like academically and as far as roth talent
• 39:42
  and power in the power, Yeah, they certainly seem like mirror images.
• 39:50
  And I think we can also confirm that they get spat into the pattern at
• 39:52
  the same time every time. Oh well, no, not necessarily for these
• 39:59
  for the for the battles, I guess there's certainly there's certainly a dark champion
• 40:02
  and a light Champion. We're not absolutely sure that they are they always show
• 40:07
  up in the same they show at the same time, or that they're Lewis
• 40:08
  there and you know, and Elon right as possible that it actually gets the
• 40:14
  crowns bestowed on different people and different Oh interesting. Yeah, I always thought
• 40:19
  of it as it's always loose there, and you know, I think there's
• 40:22
  some mythology around the fact that there's a female dragon and every other turning it's
• 40:28
  a female dragon rather than a male dragon. I like that. Yeah,
• 40:30
  so it would make more sense as far as like the themes of balance and
• 40:36
  mirror images of things right throughout the whole series, which by the way,
• 40:40
  is the theory for uh, the woman at the end, like that that's
• 40:45
  a female the female dragon. I'm just kind of thinking as we're saying this
• 40:50
  that in this in this age, women are definitely the sort of powerful force
• 40:58
  on the planet. They kind of basically run the show. Not in the
• 41:01
  Age of Legends. No no, no, no, I mean runs the
• 41:07
  Third Age, Third Age. Sorry, there's a there's a male dragon,
• 41:12
  and like the the female run White Tower, for instance, many nations have
• 41:17
  female rulers. So we're talking about this sort of slow, uh return of
• 41:27
  evil to the world as the Boar basically began to expand and get bigger and
• 41:30
  bigger, because it started out as just a tiny little hole, and as
• 41:35
  it grew, so too to the power of the Dark One and his influence
• 41:37
  grew, gotcha, And so at some point there clearly became sides, you
• 41:45
  know, a dark side and a light side, especially as powerful people start
• 41:51
  to sure turnswear fealty. But there was plenty of opportunity to be traders,
• 41:59
  and you know, a lot of the Forsaken did some pretty awful things while
• 42:02
  they still pretended to be on the side of the good before turning to the
• 42:06
  side of evil. And so eventually war broke out and frankly, the light
• 42:10
  side was not doing too hot, you know, they're getting at quite a
• 42:15
  while, I think, yeah, oh yeah, and really pretty much the
• 42:21
  whole time Light Side was not doing so hot, you know, they were
• 42:25
  pretty overwhelmed with the power of the Dark One. And so what forms is
• 42:30
  this desperate plan, you know, And there's there's two plans that form.
• 42:36
  To either create the Children Call, which are these incredibly powerful Terran Grey All
• 42:42
  saungre All pairs, and use that to fight the Dark One. But there's
• 42:45
  some belief that they're so powerful they would destroy the world simply by using them.
• 42:51
  And then there is another plan, which is Lewis Therens, which is
• 42:55
  to go to the Boar itself in show Ghoul and seal it up, and
• 43:04
  he wants women and men to work together to do so, and basically the
• 43:08
  women say no, it's too dangerous. There's too much of a risk of
• 43:10
  tearing it all the way open and releasing the Dark One. Right, We're
• 43:15
  not going to do that, And so they opposed him. And what you're
• 43:20
  left with is Ran and his most most faithful companions saying, you know,
• 43:23
  fuck it, we're going doing it live. You know. Yeah, apparently
• 43:28
  one hundred of them, right, He's called the one hundred. They are
• 43:30
  called the one hundred companions. Yeah, and I think that's actually supposed to
• 43:34
  be one hundred companions. I don't think the number was different. Well,
• 43:37
  you know sometimes in history, one hundred two years warres like one hundred and
• 43:40
  sixteen years or something whatever. Those sixteen years they were just you know,
• 43:45
  that's okay, round it ran down to the closest. Yeah. So they
• 43:52
  go up there and they catch all the forsaken thirteen for sake, and you
• 43:57
  know, hanging out in or you know, in a in a big secret
• 44:00
  meeting. Now, there are way more than thirteen for sakend. These are
• 44:05
  just the thirteen most powerful Forsagan. Interesting. I didn't I never really thought
• 44:10
  of it. I mean, there certainly would have been tons of dreadlords.
• 44:14
  And are there always thirteen? I guess throughout the series there are, but
• 44:22
  I think there's almost never thirteen throughout the series. We start telling them off
• 44:25
  pretty quick. Oh that's a good point too. You know, they talk
• 44:30
  about the most powerful Forsagan, and I think that there were more. These
• 44:35
  are just the thirteen most powerful ones, and they see them a way,
• 44:39
  and in that process they use the male half of the one power siting and
• 44:45
  they form a shield to seal the Dark One away. But to do so,
• 44:50
  they have to touch the Dark One, and he kicks back this just
• 44:54
  you know, stinky foul odor. You know, he lets one writ pace
• 45:00
  right into the power and it forms oil slick on top, and all hundred
• 45:07
  companions, including those there and who were there, were caught in an immediate
• 45:10
  kickback and immediately went insane. Right. I feel like it's important to point
• 45:15
  out so that like all these men are making contact with the Dark One with
• 45:20
  side in side in, which is why throughout the third age, side end
• 45:28
  is tainted because it touches the Dark One and Dark One, well, it's
• 45:30
  the scribe that's a counter stroke. Sure, yeah, he basically he I
• 45:34
  mean, he's not doing it, you know, accidentally, gotcha. No,
• 45:37
  he's he's putting a little bit of his foulness into it. Yeah,
• 45:44
  because he's still trapped, right, he can't a little bore his power can
• 45:47
  get out, but the Dark One himself is still trapped, and so when
• 45:51
  they reach in to seal the boar, he actually does get touched with the
• 45:53
  power. And you know, think about it, it's one hundred people touching
• 45:58
  him at once. That's a lot of power. Yeah, not linked though,
• 46:04
  right you need a woman. Yeah, men, men can't link together,
• 46:08
  so it was one hundred individuals. I think of it as something like
• 46:13
  when the Ashman formed the Dome, do my as well? As they link
• 46:17
  to power and so I think it's something like that, where they're basically linking
• 46:22
  together the result rather than the power. But it's it's a bunch of different
• 46:24
  weaves woven together. I was just thinking, we also get to see at
• 46:29
  the very end of the series, Rand uses side our site In and the
• 46:37
  True Power all at once. And I saw an explanation somewhere where essentially he's
• 46:44
  using the True Power as a shield so that nothing only the True Power.
• 46:47
  He's using the True Power against the dark One as a shield, right while
• 46:52
  simultaneously creating this, and of course he's linked with powerful channelers and holding calendars
• 46:58
  somewhere in there. I have to reread the scene again, but well,
• 47:01
  and I think the key to that to understand is that even if the women
• 47:05
  went with him, he still would have failed. But then women and both
• 47:09
  Sidin and Sadar would have been tainted. You know, his lewis Theren's plan
• 47:14
  would have failed. No matter what he did. He could not have won.
• 47:16
  We would just have been totally fucked if the women helped, right,
• 47:20
  So you know you got to have some respect for the stubborn women not doing
• 47:23
  what do you know? He really messed up. You know, that's you
• 47:28
  know, it's a foundation for the whole series. Is pretty much. What
• 47:30
  saves Louis Tharon in the end is Yeah, he never thought of that that
• 47:34
  broadly before. But what saves him is that the women wouldn't help him three
• 47:38
  thousand years ago. Totally. Yeah. No, he uh needs to fail
• 47:45
  in order to succeed. Partially, Yeah, he needs to. He needs
• 47:51
  to get like a cus on this job in order for everything to work out.
• 47:55
  He needs to be a bit of a funk up before. Yeah.
• 47:59
  Well, and what we're talking about, of course, is the taint and
• 48:01
  how that affects his memory. Right, So we started this episode talking about
• 48:07
  the memory and the way that memory carries forward is through the corruption. Right.
• 48:14
  Rand himself talks about this in the last book, how there's no way
• 48:17
  he needed the memories of Lewis Theron to win, right, but without the
• 48:22
  taint, he would have never had access to him. He needed the taint
• 48:25
  to give him the memory of the failure so that he could see how to
• 48:29
  fix it exactly. So basically RJ wrote all this before or he at least
• 48:36
  must have written the ending before he even wrote the freaking prologue. Oh,
• 48:39
  I'm sure. I'm sure the last scene was probably the first thing he wrote,
• 48:44
  or you know, I'm sure he revised it a few times. Yeah,
• 48:47
  but I'm almost sure that he knew how it was going to end right
• 48:51
  in the beginning. He didn't know how he was going to get there,
• 48:52
  but he knew that last scene. So all of a sudden, you have
• 48:57
  one hundred channelers who are mad and thousands, hundreds of thousands of other channelers
• 49:02
  we're going to go mad. Yeah, you know. And one thing that
• 49:08
  was always interesting to me is this destruction that creates the Dragon Mount has to
• 49:15
  be one of the first events of the breaking. Yeah. Presumably we don't
• 49:22
  know the exact timeline between the last last or maybe I should say last act
• 49:29
  of the hundred Companions, but the last sane act of the one hundred Companions
• 49:34
  and loose there and arriving at home is presumably his home, this palace and
• 49:39
  own it, right, Well, it's his home, is family and the
• 49:43
  servants and is Yeah, but I assume the the they go insane immediately.
• 49:52
  I also assume that yeah, so loose there and travels home. We don't
• 49:58
  know what happens, but he murders his entire family. My assumption is that
• 50:01
  this to all takes place later on in the same day after the ceiling.
• 50:07
  I'm nodding yeah, because yeah, I think he goes insane, he travels
• 50:15
  home, he destroys his family. Ishmael's broken out. Ishmael doesn't seem to
• 50:21
  realize that the Dark One has been sealed away, that the Forsaken had been
• 50:25
  sealed away. You know, he's not bemoaning that, he's not saying,
• 50:30
  you know, so he may have. He may just be chasing was there.
• 50:32
  And at this point, that's what I think, is that he actually
• 50:36
  chased him. That, I mean, that makes sense. I just it
• 50:38
  doesn't mention it. I never really thought about it, but that it must
• 50:42
  be or you know, Lewis Thearn disappears and he follows him. Yeah,
• 50:45
  but he doesn't even know he's insane at this point. And since that happened
• 50:49
  immediately, you know, it really has to be one of the first events
• 50:52
  hallowing the breaking possibly or the ceiling possibly even the same day. He does
• 50:58
  say, you know already your companions are tearing the world apart. He does
• 51:04
  say that, So here's the thing. Remember your feudal attack on the Great
• 51:09
  Lord of the Dark. Remember his counterstroke. Remember even now, the hundred
• 51:14
  companions are tearing the world apart, and every day one hundred more join them.
• 51:17
  It's a short period of time. It's a very short period of time.
• 51:21
  It may be a couple of days. But I don't think much more
• 51:23
  than that. The black clad man's eyes wide and started to the body of
• 51:28
  the golden haired woman, then back to loose there and Shatan take you?
• 51:30
  Does this tane already have you so far in its grip? So he's surprised.
• 51:37
  He's very surprised that he's that insane already. But I would assume if
• 51:43
  you're that close to the dark One and he's trying to do something terrible to
• 51:49
  you, it wouldn't it wouldn't take time. No, And well, I
• 51:52
  imagine Rand's well, he must have been the first maybe to touch I.
• 51:55
  Certainly he was leading, I'd assume. So. Yeah. And one thing
• 52:00
  to know is that he is saying when he dies, but he is basically
• 52:06
  shown this image of his wife and his children and his family and everything around
• 52:09
  him is dead, and not only dead and destroyed, because he could seek
• 52:14
  revenge if someone had killed his family, but he did it himself, right,
• 52:20
  and so the pain and the anguish, you know, he wanted it
• 52:24
  to end. He wanted it to stop. And so he draws on the
• 52:30
  true source, and he draws way more than anyone can hold, because he's
• 52:35
  already the most powerful channeler, and he draws way more than he can hold
• 52:38
  and basically pulls this bar of pure energy down into himself. I was wondering
• 52:45
  if he is wearing this ring of Tamberlin. Some people think it's an item
• 52:51
  of power. It's not just a regular it's not just like a symbol of
• 52:54
  authority or anything that might be angry all of some kind would make sense in
• 53:00
  angry all or a songreall, even because just to explain the crazy level of
• 53:05
  destruction, Well, it's hard to really know if it's just him really really
• 53:09
  overdrawing his own power. Yeah, we don't know what that would look like
• 53:14
  really, right, But it would make sense if he had just gone to
• 53:16
  battle, that he would have any on grill or sore on him that he
• 53:20
  may possess. Yeah, you know he would be. And we see later
• 53:25
  that many angry angri all are just worn like Kat Swayne's hair pieces. Sure,
• 53:31
  yeah the net yeah right, and and and lewis there, and Rand
• 53:37
  does say as lewis there, and he wore one of the first the nets,
• 53:44
  Oh I didn't realize that. Yeah, After he gets his memory back
• 53:47
  later on, he says to God Swayne's like, do you think I wouldn't
• 53:51
  recognize it? I wore one of the first, like I had one.
• 53:54
  I invented them, right, Like he totally remembers making them and wearing them.
• 54:00
  So cool. Yeah, there's definitely that like a little comment there.
• 54:04
  So the fact that he would be wearing a ring of the Tamerlin and that
• 54:07
  would be an Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I had that
• 54:13
  before. Yeah, with just what the context and stuff, it almost definitely
• 54:16
  is sure, that's really cool. No, And then I just I love
• 54:22
  the description here of the destruction of the earth. You know, stone turned
• 54:29
  to vapor and it's touched the earth thrashed and quivered like a living thing in
• 54:31
  agony. Only a heartbeat did the shining bar exists, connecting the ground in
• 54:37
  the sky. But even after advantaged the earth yet heaved like a sea in
• 54:40
  the storm, you know, and just this incredible strike of power that bores
• 54:46
  deep into the earth and wounds it and it heaves, and the imagery is
• 54:53
  wonderful. Yeah. But what we noticed then is of course the dragon mount
• 54:59
  and the creation of tarvolon right the island, the island. Yeah, that
• 55:04
  that straight river gets moved and forms around an island, and that is the
• 55:07
  island of Tarbalan, where the seat and the heart of isid eye power,
• 55:14
  which I think is kind of cool. Yeah. Also it's a vagina and
• 55:16
  a penis, that's probably true. I mean, has anyone else looked at
• 55:24
  the map of Tarballan and Yang not? Have you not looked at the map
• 55:30
  of Tarbalan. I mean I've looked at it, but I'm going to look
• 55:35
  at it together. Yeah. Yeah, you need to bring up the map
• 55:37
  with Tarbalan and look at it as a vagina. Yah. I mean I
• 55:44
  can see it in my head. It's definitely Jesus. Yeah. And if
• 55:49
  you look at the northernmost tip, there's a little like roundish. Yeah.
• 55:55
  It definitely looks like a great drawing of the vagina. That's not accidental.
• 56:04
  It's not. No, I mean, it's too convenient for it to be.
• 56:07
  I just never even thought about it. I was just like, it's
• 56:08
  a one narrow island in the middle of a river, or never look looked
• 56:15
  at it closely enough to really think doing much thinking about it. You know.
• 56:21
  The story, of course, concentrates on the difference between males and females.
• 56:25
  And right here in the beginning, we have a mountain in an island
• 56:30
  and an island you have that contrast in the island and the river. It
• 56:35
  looks like a giant and it's a volcano, right, spewing things, spurting
• 56:39
  out the tip. Yeah it's is it not. It's still it's an active
• 56:46
  volcano through the whole series, right, it's smoke sometimes, yeah, yeah,
• 56:51
  definitely, it's not dormant totally. We begin the series with our hero
• 56:59
  committing suits side welcome, good bye, and in some ways, Lewis we're
• 57:07
  not really sure Lewis Thearren is our hero, just in terms of for most
• 57:12
  of the series, you don't know, we don't actually know that yet.
• 57:14
  Yeah, and you sort of think of him as the evil voice in Rand's
• 57:17
  head, you know, Yeah, that's just the insanity talking yeah, there
• 57:23
  are no beginnings or endings. There are none, but should end this podcast.
• 57:51
  Oh. I was thinking about that recently because my local barth this place
• 57:58
  is the Hideaway. Let's right next to Jam Cafe, so that's like four
• 58:01
  blocks from where I lived, so I end up in there quite a bit.
• 58:06
  I think they have like whiskey Wednesday or something, and they sell right
• 58:13
  just the local whiskies. So I guess, like Oregon Washington, whiskeys are
• 58:17
  all discounted. I forget exactly how much. So I went through trying them
• 58:21
  all because Bullet isn't one of those discounted whiskey. So it's like, well,
• 58:23
  let me get the four dollar whiskey and not the seven you know,
• 58:28
  and they were all crap. A long story short. I thought the Burnside
• 58:34
  Bourbon was the best out of all of them, but not as good as
• 58:37
  Bullet. And this is better than Bullet. Yeah, I mean it has
• 58:42
  to do with how they make it right, because they make it off the
• 58:44
  potstill and then they dilute that down with just rod ga. I feel like
• 58:49
  you can taste that rubbing alcohol taste and most of them. Have you ever
• 58:53
  see single origin whiskey? Yeah, I've seen it. I know I've had
• 59:00
  some like what do they call it? Single barrel? Yeah? Do you
• 59:02
  know what that means? That means it's not blended. So uh so each
• 59:08
  barrel is unique basically, right, but they still dilute it diluted with the
• 59:15
  garbage alcohol. A single origin you just got one still, which means you
• 59:21
  get better sort of unique flavor when they blended it all sort of evens out
• 59:24
  into sort of a boring. That's how you get like bullet, right,
• 59:28
  you blend whisky together until it tastes like bullet. So it's yeah, so
• 59:30
  it's the same whiskey exactly, but it's still diluted versus a single origin you're
• 59:35
  gonna have. I don't know why I say single origin. It's because,
• 59:37
  Jessica, the coffee is single origin, so single I don't know what is
• 59:43
  it? What is it on the barrels because there's blended, and then what's
• 59:45
  the opposite of blended on the whiskey. They call him single barrel, single
• 59:49
  barrel, okay, or a single malt, single malt, that's what it's
• 59:52
  called, single malt versus blended single malt. Yeah, that is what are
• 59:55
  we done with the whiskey? Yeah? Uh yeah, take one more.
• 1:00:01
  Yeah, if that's okay, let's do one more than start talking about the
• 1:00:07
  books. Okay. This is the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast. Your hosts
• 1:00:24
  are Seth Jacobson and Patrick Hyler. This is us again doing that podcast thing
• 1:00:31
  again. We're sorry, and it dances. It just keeps going around.
• 1:00:37
  We really do apologize. It's not getting any better. I think it is.
• 1:00:44
  Actually it sounds it sounds good. We've only got one data point.
• 1:00:46
  How could it get better? Okay, nothing to compare it to see.
• 1:00:52
  So after our last recording session, we kind of decided that rather than go
• 1:01:00
  straight into the books because we well, for a lot of different reasons,
• 1:01:06
  but one of which is we don't really know what we're doing it, and
• 1:01:07
  I thought it would be a good idea to at least do like one more
• 1:01:10
  kind of fluff episode that's not just breaking right into the eye of the world.
• 1:01:15
  Absolutely, I mean, this isn't fluff. But there's a there's a
• 1:01:20
  ton of time in between the prologue, which was what we talked about last
• 1:01:25
  time, and the time that Rand is born, roughly three thousand years.
• 1:01:31
  I'm nodding calendar changes three times. The first one is maybe not a real
• 1:01:37
  calendar. They just call it after breaking or AB, so you get like
• 1:01:42
  zero to one hundred AB. When you're looking at timelines. Basically when you
• 1:01:45
  talk about events, you're like, yeah, how long has it been since
• 1:01:47
  the world ended? Right? You know, it's sort of a pretty big
• 1:01:52
  marking point. So yeah, I imagine that that was the calendar for a
• 1:01:57
  while of just being like, hey, yeah, have you how long have
• 1:02:00
  you survived since the world was destroyed? But so it counts like up to
• 1:02:05
  a thousand basically three times up to Ishmael showing up and that, and people
• 1:02:08
  get so confused in the chaos that they continuously forget what year it is.
• 1:02:14
  I think things wonderful that we can tell Ishmael's appearances by the fact that the
• 1:02:19
  calendar resets. Yeah, he stopped knowing what he destroys civilization enough that oh,
• 1:02:23
  yeah, we need a new calendar because that was the end of that
• 1:02:25
  civilization. He does a pretty good job each time he shows up, which,
• 1:02:29
  like we said, last time is every thousand years give or take.
• 1:02:32
  Based on the calendar. I was looking over some of those numbers. It
• 1:02:36
  looks like he shows up around twelve hundred in one of the calendars. Is
• 1:02:38
  that just because of the weird way the math works between the calendars. I
• 1:02:45
  think you're right. I'm not really sure what's going on with the timeline or
• 1:02:50
  if it's specifically a thousand, but it seems to be around that, give
• 1:02:53
  or take. It's you know, these timelines are constructed out of side comments
• 1:02:58
  and you know stories that are told throughout the entire history. So there's there's
• 1:03:04
  a little bit of certainly gaps in, missing bits some of it. You
• 1:03:08
  know, I wonder if does any of it come from the Companion? I
• 1:03:13
  think most of it comes from the Companion. I saw that reference a lot
• 1:03:16
  of times. This episode takes place between the prologue and the first page of
• 1:03:22
  the first chapter, which is roughly three thousand years of human history, and
• 1:03:29
  the last thing we heard was basically Ishmael saying, you know, your your
• 1:03:32
  hundred companions are tearing this world apart as even as we speak, and so
• 1:03:37
  what are the immediate after effects that happen just in the in the years following
• 1:03:45
  the ceiling of the war. The details from this particular time weren't the best,
• 1:03:51
  but there are some really interesting points. I started with one hundred companions
• 1:03:54
  ripping the world apart, which apparently last quite a while, some of these
• 1:04:00
  insane male I said, I Well, the dates I found were that the
• 1:04:05
  breaking last somewhere between two hundred and three hundred and fifty years. So there's
• 1:04:12
  a period of time where basically mankind is thrown into the dark ages. And
• 1:04:17
  there's presumably a few, well at first thousands likely of male chandlers that would
• 1:04:25
  have been in the world. Sure, and if you think about it,
• 1:04:28
  even though they're insane, channelers at the time, live hundreds of years,
• 1:04:31
  right, you know, up to six hundreds for some of the most powerful
• 1:04:35
  Lewis Thearren himself was several hundred years old at the time of his death.
• 1:04:41
  If you have an insane channel or his effect can last hundreds of years.
• 1:04:44
  And you compound that with the fact that they were hiding out in the settings.
• 1:04:47
  Oh right, I've forgot that point. Some of the hundred Companions tried
• 1:04:54
  to isolate themselves in settings for a long period of time. I don't think
• 1:05:00
  the hundred companions, it was just other male champions. Yeah, because the
• 1:05:02
  hundred Companions were insane pretty much right away, but the other ones were trying
• 1:05:06
  not to channel by hiding out in the steading where they couldn't access the one
• 1:05:11
  power, but eventually presumably they would leave, eventually go mad. Yeah.
• 1:05:16
  Yeah, And there's definitely conflicting theories on that as to whether that helped or
• 1:05:20
  hindered, or drew it out or drew it out. I remember reading that
• 1:05:25
  somewhere. Yeah. Marine Marine's talking to Loyal about the breaking, and she
• 1:05:32
  reassures him that she is one of the few who believes that, or not
• 1:05:35
  one of the few, but one of the ones who believes that the breaking
• 1:05:40
  would have been much worse if the men had all gone insane at the same
• 1:05:44
  time, and they would have basically destroyed the world to the point where nothing
• 1:05:46
  could live on it. And so she thinks that even though it was prolonged,
• 1:05:50
  you know, you're stretching that effect out over a longer period of time
• 1:05:53
  and preventing just the absolute destruction of everything. Yeah, and there was a
• 1:06:00
  period of time. I don't know if I took note of this, but
• 1:06:02
  now that we're talking about this, there was a period of time where the
• 1:06:04
  o gear were lost and they didn't know that. It took them time to
• 1:06:09
  find the setting. Again, that's a good point. That was definitely a
• 1:06:14
  thing. Yeah, that was definitely a thing because they didn't used to be
• 1:06:16
  bound to it and something happened there. Well now, but if you think
• 1:06:20
  about it, before the breaking fully took form, they knew where the settings
• 1:06:23
  were. They lived in the stettings, right, so it wasn't you know,
• 1:06:27
  think about it this way. They let a bunch of men stay in
• 1:06:30
  their steadings. The men leave, eventually go insane, come back, destroy
• 1:06:34
  them, misplace them, break the world. The Ogre can no longer find
• 1:06:38
  the settings and have to wander around finding them again. Because I think there
• 1:06:42
  was a period of time where they do find the stettings again. I think
• 1:06:46
  you had that note, Yeah, I have it here or one of the
• 1:06:50
  very second note that I thought was interesting is that basically the breaking begins and
• 1:06:56
  the Ideel and o Gear begin their exile described as and there's a couple of
• 1:07:01
  different reasons for for that shit. Now I want to read more about the
• 1:07:04
  O Gear, But oh, the Ogre is such a fascinating story that we
• 1:07:09
  just don't get any details on because the settings are not part of this universe.
• 1:07:15
  That would make sense, right, because that you have no access to
• 1:07:17
  the One Power? Why would it work that way? Or the O Gear
• 1:07:23
  from one of the Mirror Worlds or not, or I should probably shouldn't call
• 1:07:27
  it that one of the their Portal worlds. Portal Worlds possibly. I think
• 1:07:31
  Mirror Worlds is another series. Well, and don't forget about the Book of
• 1:07:34
  Translation. Yeah, to go home, to go home? Where's home?
• 1:07:41
  Right? We don't know? And so that's that's one of the many unanswered
• 1:07:45
  questions, is where do the O gear actually come from? What world?
• 1:07:50
  What is it like? Why are they here? You know, we never
• 1:07:53
  really get anything other than you know, they they know they have to leave
• 1:07:58
  because they have to come back when the wheel turns again. So at some
• 1:08:01
  point in one of the ages, the O gear leaf and then at some
• 1:08:05
  point they come back, and we don't know why. Yeah. I'll get
• 1:08:10
  more intoto this part later. But that makes me wonder if hawk Wing sent
• 1:08:15
  the armies across the Erath Ocean, if he sent O gear with them,
• 1:08:20
  or if they were already there. Oh, I have no idea. No,
• 1:08:24
  I don't think there's that. I don't think I don't remember any mentions
• 1:08:27
  of that, but there were people there. Certainly we can get more into
• 1:08:30
  that later, because I said an actual part that will happen in like an
• 1:08:33
  hour when we work our with somewhere past the third point. I love the
• 1:08:41
  fact that we have a whole episode. No, no, this is all
• 1:08:46
  going on. This is great is I love the I love the fact that
• 1:08:51
  there is a we're doing a whole episode on the blank page between two chapters.
• 1:08:58
  Yeah, this is the spoilers podcast, and we know all the spoilers,
• 1:09:04
  well most of them, most of them. Yeah, so's it's definitely
• 1:09:08
  a front heavy situation at this point where we have a lot of information to
• 1:09:12
  get out of the way. And you know, I think that that's a
• 1:09:15
  bit of the beauty of the series is someone starts reading these books, they
• 1:09:18
  start reading Out of the World, and they're looking at it and going,
• 1:09:21
  oh, it's a it's a farmer, it's you know, this is a
• 1:09:26
  stereotype. And someone who has finished the series, like like you and I
• 1:09:29
  are looking at it and going, Okay, I turned the page and there's
• 1:09:32
  three thousand years of history that I know about at this point, and it's
• 1:09:35
  it's very hard for someone new to the series to really sort of understand just
• 1:09:42
  how much history there is in every single page, which is so good.
• 1:09:45
  Partially why I want to do this podcast because I think the appreciation for the
• 1:09:49
  blank page between you know, the prologue and the first Emmons Field was named
• 1:09:56
  that because it was named after the Battle of Amon's Field, for the Last
• 1:10:00
  Stand of Menetharne, where the king of King Amen Yeah fell and his wife
• 1:10:05
  was driven insane by the breaking of the water bond or inconsolably upset or I
• 1:10:12
  don't know what you call it. I think insane who was probably might be
• 1:10:14
  the right word. When the water bond breaks, even isidized seem to or
• 1:10:19
  sometimes lose it. Grief can definitely drive you insane, and I think the
• 1:10:25
  breaking of the water bond is grief turned up to eleven. Yeah, so
• 1:10:28
  what an epic place to be born, really, even though when you first
• 1:10:31
  visited in the very first chapter of the first book it looks like backasswords of
• 1:10:35
  nowhere. Yeah, Virginia in fifteen forty real boring, essentially just wool and
• 1:10:45
  tobacco. So basically my hometown in fifteen forty is what you're saying. Is
• 1:10:51
  he a Virginian He's a Southerner, right, Yeah. He went to one
• 1:10:58
  of the military college is uh. I can't remember which ones. I think
• 1:11:02
  it was a prestigious one. Yeah, one of one of the big ones
• 1:11:05
  that I can't remember right now. Sorry, everyone who went there. I'm
• 1:11:09
  sure you're very angry right now, some million fans yelling it at us,
• 1:11:14
  right. You know, there's definitely mythology about like a bunch of the streets
• 1:11:17
  in this neighborhood or became like there's O Gear Street in his neighborhood, and
• 1:11:21
  that's where he got the name for O. Gear. Yeah, totally.
• 1:11:24
  That's great. And so you can like walk around the streets and see like
• 1:11:27
  character names and stuff or vaguely related to them anyway. Why not He probably
• 1:11:31
  thought no one would ever notice, you know who know? I mean who
• 1:11:35
  you don't care? Yeah, I mean you look, when when you're coming
• 1:11:40
  up with three million names, you need to draw them from somewhere. Yeah,
• 1:11:44
  there's enough unique words in this book that well, he draws from a
• 1:11:46
  lot of languages. The fact that he draws from the street signs when he's
• 1:11:49
  walking around is not a huge surprise. I've noticed a couple of different methods
• 1:11:54
  that he clearly used to name things in places and people. I love that
• 1:11:58
  he sticks with people names on a theme. So you know, the folks
• 1:12:01
  from Camlin tend to be named very Arthurian names. Yeah, but then you
• 1:12:06
  come up with a totally different name for the naming scheme for the Borderlins,
• 1:12:10
  and then a different name for Kyrie naming scheme for the Kyrieen, and so
• 1:12:14
  very much like in our current world, like you can pretty much identify where
• 1:12:17
  someone is based on their name. Yeah, you know Mourane Domindred, well,
• 1:12:25
  okay, she's clearly related to the royal family, but her name is
• 1:12:29
  very Kyrie, land Almon, Dragrian, very borderline name, you know.
• 1:12:32
  And and the fact that that is a stereotype is great that you know,
• 1:12:36
  like they seem like pretty normal names, you know, land Ran, Matt,
• 1:12:41
  Tame, single civil names, but when you get the full name,
• 1:12:44
  it really fits into the whole structure of that culture. Yeah, listening to
• 1:12:49
  say that made me think I saw someone speculate that Bombwin, who's like the
• 1:12:55
  first is said I or the first ambulance sea to be stilled. Somebody was
• 1:13:00
  speculating that she was from born in the fire matting area. And you see
• 1:13:03
  that later with shit Cats and kat'swayn surnames like the same suffix, Oh sure,
• 1:13:14
  the I N and you see it with other characters from right right.
• 1:13:16
  You know, he's he's really a great linguist as well. I think we've
• 1:13:24
  had a breaking, We've had o gear and ideel scent wandering. So during
• 1:13:28
  this crazy first approximately three hundred and fifty years, nobody actually knows it's nobody
• 1:13:33
  actually knows how long this went on for. Well, there's not a lot
• 1:13:35
  of surviving records. Yeah, because the human and or Ogi eraces were brought
• 1:13:43
  nearly to extinction, and the end of the breaking is measured as technically ending
• 1:13:49
  when the last male is said, I is gentled. You got to kind
• 1:13:53
  of wonder about that last male's male, Ey said, I like, well,
• 1:13:57
  you know, wasn't it pretty much over when there was only like three
• 1:13:59
  left? So I guess, I guess one could do a lot of damage.
• 1:14:01
  But still, and there's a difference between officially and technically. You know,
• 1:14:09
  it may have officially been done when the last one was destroyed, but
• 1:14:13
  you know, we see how much damage even a single false dragon can do
• 1:14:15
  in modern society. True, just one male channeler wandering the countryside creating chaos
• 1:14:19
  is not insignificant. If you've got a world that's still cooling from the damage
• 1:14:26
  of a bunch of other ones finding safe haven anywhere, you know, growing
• 1:14:30
  some crops. Just one guy can come along and do a lot of damage
• 1:14:33
  because there's no buffer. So this was likely a brutal time, ruled totally
• 1:14:41
  by conflict and mad men, extremely powerful mad men. Because at the end
• 1:14:45
  here, right before the end of what's considered the time of the breaking calendar
• 1:14:50
  is stored inside the Stone, which is created at the very end essentially of
• 1:14:57
  that approximately three hundred and fifty year period. He needs security somewhere. It
• 1:15:00
  seems like it would make sense to create a big fortress to protect yourself.
• 1:15:04
  Yeah. Did I say the Stone of Tier. I meant the Stone up
• 1:15:06
  Tier. I think you said the Stone of Tier, which, by the
• 1:15:11
  way, can we just comment on the fact that the sword in the stone
• 1:15:15
  is an Arthurian reference literally inside the stone literally? Yeah? Why, I
• 1:15:19
  never thought of that either. You never thought about the swords inside of the
• 1:15:23
  stone? Yeah. And when Rand goes and gets it, and in the
• 1:15:27
  third book he pulls the sword from the stone and becomes the king. Oh
• 1:15:30
  yeah, it's literally well, he sinks it back into the floor tiles.
• 1:15:34
  Where is it? It's just floating, floating, Yeah, but here it's
• 1:15:39
  a metaphorical you know, the stone is the fortress, and he pulls the
• 1:15:41
  sword from the stone, yeah, being the fortress, and then he sticks
• 1:15:45
  it back into the stone being the actual stone floor. And then you have
• 1:15:49
  the whole narishma thing that he who pulls the sword will follow after, And
• 1:15:56
  that is such a weird prophecy that never amounts to anything will follow after.
• 1:16:02
  Yeah, it's it's part of the Corinthian cycle. It's just it's a line
• 1:16:06
  that we get at some point and it says, you know, basically,
• 1:16:11
  I honestly don't have it in front of me, but it's a really simple
• 1:16:15
  quote that for a long time. It's it's pretty early on in the books,
• 1:16:17
  and a lot of for a long time people were waiting to see,
• 1:16:20
  like who's gonna follow after? What does that mean? Who's gonna pull the
• 1:16:24
  sword out of the stone and follow after? Like is that a big deal?
• 1:16:28
  No, it's not a big deal. I mean some guy went and
• 1:16:30
  got the sword and followed brand and gave it to him, Like it was
• 1:16:34
  a ridiculously minor prophecy. And Robert Jordan definitely comments that, you know,
• 1:16:41
  he wrote prophecies about major and minor events. He thought that was really important
• 1:16:45
  to include really stupid minor event events in the prophecies. Oh I like that.
• 1:16:48
  I didn't I didn't know that, And that's one of those like this
• 1:16:51
  is one of those minor events that like, yeah, but I got it
• 1:16:54
  and give it to Round. He played a messenger boy and that was prophesied.
• 1:16:57
  Yeah, the stuff from the future just pops onto your head. You're
• 1:16:59
  probably write it all down right totally. So I really liked that take on
• 1:17:02
  it. And you know, for a while it bothered me because I was
• 1:17:05
  like, who's gonna fall after? You know, like like that was something
• 1:17:10
  important, you know, and it's it's not so yeah, I mean other
• 1:17:14
  than the fact that Rand can now trust in Rishma. You know, this
• 1:17:16
  man had the most powerful song real available to him and he just tainted it
• 1:17:21
  over to Rand. So it's always good to have someone you can trust.
• 1:17:25
  So he knew that the person who followed after would be someone he could trust.
• 1:17:29
  And he doesn't have many of those sends made. Did men help him
• 1:17:33
  with that? Probably because she was all his research. Oh dude, she
• 1:17:39
  is all up in that prophecy. She is so smart. Again, if
• 1:17:45
  you trust her and listen to her. She says, Oh, I'm dumb.
• 1:17:46
  I'm dumb. I'm dumb. I don't get it. And then she,
• 1:17:49
  you know, decodes Herod Fell's notes, who's like this great scholar,
• 1:17:53
  and she does it without any real formal training. Yeah, and figures out
• 1:17:57
  things that no one else could figure out, and is basically of the three
• 1:18:01
  I'd picked. Men, she's a babe, absolutely men best personality for surely
• 1:18:08
  by far. She's playful, she's fun. How long are you gonna hang
• 1:18:12
  out with Aviandafo or a Lane for that fat for that matter. Yeah,
• 1:18:15
  but you know, if I was going camping or hunting, I don't want
• 1:18:17
  to into combat. Yeah, totally in the combat, yeah, either the
• 1:18:23
  other two. Yeah. And you know that Ice Cave was just a good
• 1:18:29
  time. Oh yeah, the Ice Cave virginity. Yeah, uh, unlike
• 1:18:40
  Matt, who we don't really get to know when he loses virginity because he's
• 1:18:44
  just throwing it around left and right. Yeah, we have to assume that
• 1:18:47
  happens pretty quickly. Yeah, with some tavern made or another Yeah, or
• 1:18:53
  possibly in Lemon's field. That's possible. I don't reference it, really,
• 1:18:58
  but no nobody mentioned it. It certainly doesn't happen. Well, he still
• 1:19:01
  has the dagger. I'm curious, it's got to be pretty clearly like around
• 1:19:06
  a lot of women at that point. Yeah, but maybe being tarballing after
• 1:19:11
  he like wins all that money the night that he can't lose. Yeah,
• 1:19:15
  well, he like never loses there is. Oh, okay, we need
• 1:19:19
  to get a chapter one soon a round them later, because I've been reading
• 1:19:21
  that and I've had things to say, so let's let's keep going, right.
• 1:19:26
  So the first the first couple of things to happen after this wild three
• 1:19:33
  hundred and fifty year period that they call the Breaking is groups of survivors start
• 1:19:41
  to settle. I couldn't find very much timeline for this either to keep it
• 1:19:47
  super concise, but one of the very first things to happen as a group
• 1:19:51
  of survivors that fled the coast on ships and had survived fishing at sea presumably
• 1:19:58
  and landing on small island to collect resources and go back into the ocean,
• 1:20:02
  arrives back in the Westlands or in the island south of the Westlands, and
• 1:20:09
  they make their home there. They're later known as the sea folk. Yeah,
• 1:20:13
  the sea folk. That's that's why they they're born on the ships because
• 1:20:15
  they don't trust the land not to shift, right, because they're used to.
• 1:20:19
  You know, the legends were formed during the Breaking when they couldn't trust
• 1:20:23
  the land, and so they live their entire lives on their ships if they
• 1:20:26
  can. We see the sea folk as a homogeneous people later in the book,
• 1:20:30
  like they're all homogenous ethnic group. Only a small minority appear to be
• 1:20:34
  like, yeah, Indian or something. But we can assume that this the
• 1:20:41
  this was groups of random survivors at first who just ended up being a roughly
• 1:20:46
  brown, coppery skinned people three thousand years later. So I think of them
• 1:20:53
  as a much darker folk. I think of them as black skinned. Yeah,
• 1:20:57
  yeah, I mean I don't know, I just I remember descriptions of
• 1:21:00
  dark skin, right, right, I guess I think of them as,
• 1:21:05
  you know, going into the various skin color, like the sean Chan is
• 1:21:11
  a mix of all sorts of different skin colors. They have white, dark.
• 1:21:15
  Yeah, but not that they don't seem to be a like a homogenous
• 1:21:18
  ethnic group, No, not at all. There's the continent is way too
• 1:21:21
  big, right. I remember at some point Rand described seeing a soldier with
• 1:21:26
  a skin as black as Coal, I think, he says, and he's
• 1:21:28
  just like a and Tuan is obviously very black. Yeah, how do I
• 1:21:32
  always forget? Yeah, but there's tons of not you know that that they're
• 1:21:36
  not the only ethnicity there, you know, and despite the fact that they
• 1:21:42
  have an incredibly homogeneous culture, they have a very diverse ethnicity. Yeah.
• 1:21:48
  But you know, the c folk I've always thought of as being they talk
• 1:21:51
  about him having like curly tight hair and being black as coal, and I
• 1:21:57
  think of them as very much a much darker, much much darker. But
• 1:22:01
  but I think that the sort of brown culture comes from we think of like
• 1:22:05
  a Persian sailor's is sort of the culture that folk have. Yeah, that
• 1:22:11
  seems to be, And so I would think of them as like the nose
• 1:22:14
  piercings, and it made me think more of like Southeast Asia, right,
• 1:22:17
  and that seems to be their culture. But I think physically they appear closer
• 1:22:20
  to Black Africans, Yeah, which Jordan loves to do. He mixes people
• 1:22:27
  up, you know, makes the shawan Chan sound like Texans, Yeah,
• 1:22:34
  which I don't think they sound like Texans. They just have a slower way
• 1:22:38
  of speaking. It would makes sense that they'd have even like a thicker dialect.
• 1:22:45
  I mean, in a thousand years, it is a long time to
• 1:22:49
  remain isolated. Three thousand years and everyone still speaks the same language. That
• 1:22:53
  seems highly unlikely. They just have like that sounds more like a regional dialect,
• 1:22:58
  like they understand each other perfectly. Yeah, totally, just not culturally.
• 1:23:01
  It would be really lame if you couldn't have conversations without translators. So
• 1:23:17
  after the sea folk arrive, the Ayeel, who had apparently stayed together up
• 1:23:25
  until this point, were still the servant type Aeel. Well, there were
• 1:23:31
  still isid ie at this point, so they were still serving the I sid
• 1:23:33
  Ie. Makes sense. The Ayel splinter into three distinct groups that we get
• 1:23:40
  to see later, one of course being the twa on, one being the
• 1:23:45
  Geni Eel and the other being everybody else. I want to say the spear
• 1:23:49
  of the dragon of them was the Ael of the wastes okay, which of
• 1:23:55
  course they've been up further splintering into the shadow and the nonshido the Iel.
• 1:24:01
  As they split, you have the tinkers who stay keep the way of the
• 1:24:06
  leaf, keep the way of the leaf. They stay peaceful, and they
• 1:24:10
  tend to pick up local folk, so they tend to genetically be pretty much
• 1:24:16
  not related to the Aeel because they do have so much of just wherever they
• 1:24:21
  travel, they adopt people, and they have children that come into their philosophy
• 1:24:26
  and come into their troops. Yeah, then you have the Aeel who travel
• 1:24:30
  with the Genieel into the waste. But the Genil just don't last very long,
• 1:24:36
  right. You don't hear very much about these people. After the construction
• 1:24:43
  of Rudean, which happens with the help of several described as ancient is said
• 1:24:47
  I the construction of Rudean, shortly after the Iell cross the spine of the
• 1:24:53
  world, I say Ruhideum. I think I had an extra syllable. I'm
• 1:24:58
  not. I think rue idion. I think that is. I think that's
• 1:25:01
  the way they say in the book on tape. That's what you same.
• 1:25:03
  I've always said rude An in my head. Totally fine, but it's probably
• 1:25:08
  rue Idian. Use whatever words pronunciation you want in your own head. I
• 1:25:13
  am down with that. I am merely using the audiobook for convenience at this
• 1:25:16
  point. Also, shortly after the break in breaking, the people who live
• 1:25:21
  in sean Chan, so these aren't the post art ar hawk Wang invasion,
• 1:25:26
  sean Chan are embroilled and wear with the shadow spawn and begin using the Portalstone
• 1:25:33
  animals. So pretty early on this is happening. The groll right, the
• 1:25:39
  three eyed toad looking things, and the flying ones, the rocking right,
• 1:25:43
  and the toll rocking. I'd just like to point out we are through page
• 1:25:46
  one of your notes and thirty five minutes into recording. Some of this later
• 1:25:53
  might just be me reading that we've been talking a lot about stuff so far.
• 1:25:56
  We have been. I don't know. I'm gonna let you maybe go
• 1:26:00
  through a few of these points, Okay, Yeah, So it looks like
• 1:26:03
  you've got some dates coming up, and I'm gonna let you run through them,
• 1:26:06
  just as a quick the quick years after the breaking and what happens for
• 1:26:12
  the next thousand years. I have at ninety eight after breaking, Elisan Tai
• 1:26:17
  shar is elected the first post breaking Amberland seat, have a group of female
• 1:26:25
  isid I that survive right and erect an elect in Armoline after after uniting a
• 1:26:32
  few competing factions in two two after breaking, the construction of Turvallan is completed.
• 1:26:42
  In two o nine, the Compact of ten Nations. This part is
• 1:26:45
  pretty important for mutual defense and trade is created. This compact, like I
• 1:26:51
  said, of the ten nations are some of the older nations that you would
• 1:26:56
  be familiar with. If you've already read the series, you probably should have.
• 1:26:59
  If you're listening to this, I think we can pretty much make any
• 1:27:02
  sense what we're saying. If you're listening to this and you're not related to
• 1:27:09
  me and you haven't read the series, then you probably related to Patrick.
• 1:27:14
  I'm that's the only person that's ever gonna listen to this seriously. If you
• 1:27:20
  haven't, if you're not one of those people, put the podcast down and
• 1:27:24
  go read this thing. I'll see you for a year. The Compact of
• 1:27:30
  ten Nations is created. That compact is held for eight hundred years before any
• 1:27:34
  of these nations break that trust. So it's pretty impressive run. And after
• 1:27:41
  that came a time of peace. During this time, many of the great
• 1:27:45
  cities were constructed by Ogier stone Masons who had just learned how to be stone
• 1:27:48
  Masons. We also see the translation of the first few Koreathon cycle. So
• 1:27:58
  these where do they come from? Where they trained? You know? They
• 1:28:00
  say they translated, but translated from what into What is it? From the
• 1:28:04
  old tongue? Is it? You know? I saw these points and I
• 1:28:08
  wondered the same thing. It must be from the old tongue to not old
• 1:28:13
  tongue common. They call it common that I don't know what they call it.
• 1:28:19
  That's a good point. What the hell language do we speak? I
• 1:28:23
  don't have any points in here that talk about the change from old tongue to
• 1:28:30
  common. I'm just using that. But yeah, there's a good point.
• 1:28:33
  I don't when does that change occur, because in the Age of Legends,
• 1:28:38
  they are speaking the old tongue, right presumably, Yeah, I mean unless
• 1:28:44
  unless they are a society with two languages, which is entirely possible. Well,
• 1:28:47
  the series seems to have it that even during the Trollic Wars, they
• 1:28:50
  were speaking the old tongue. Yeah, listeners, if you know when,
• 1:28:59
  that's a good question, let's spoil that for me. Tell me when they
• 1:29:04
  figured out or when they transition from the old tongue to the new tongue common,
• 1:29:12
  whatever we want to call it. So sometime shortly after many of these
• 1:29:17
  many of the first great cities are created, like Tarvallen, Rowland, Dark
• 1:29:21
  Spain becomes known as the first ever fallse dragon sometime around four hundred years after
• 1:29:27
  the breaking, manipulated by the I sid I maybe maybe not. Yeah,
• 1:29:34
  I just have that he's defeated and gentle by the White Tower. The White
• 1:29:38
  Tower was also fresh at this time, and it seems like the wars between
• 1:29:44
  or conflicts between the different factions were pretty brutal, So I wouldn't be too
• 1:29:49
  surprised if they were kind of trying to pull a move to raise a false
• 1:29:55
  dragon and then strike him down, to be like, look where the fucking
• 1:29:58
  ice did I for real prize me? I mean, certainly the I think
• 1:30:00
  the Ajahs weren't necessarily settled at this point either. Yeah, I think they
• 1:30:05
  weren't permanent yet. No, at this point they were still just basically committees,
• 1:30:10
  and they'd form and break up and form and break up and wouldn't necessarily
• 1:30:15
  persist through the years. We got this roughly seven hundred year period of peace.
• 1:30:25
  That's kind of excluding the time that Roland Dark Spain could have affected,
• 1:30:30
  and I don't have a ton of history between that time and these same ten
• 1:30:35
  nations exist all the way until the trialot Corps, which begin sometime around one
• 1:30:44
  thousand years after Breaking. These ten nations exist for at least that long eight
• 1:30:47
  hundred years. Yeah, and that's a good amount of time, and they
• 1:30:50
  create a lot of history and statues and a lot of artifacts that we see
• 1:30:57
  later in the series. That's also probably important to make a the point that
• 1:31:00
  the people at this time, even though the Breaking has really just ended,
• 1:31:06
  were probably unaware of a time where there would have been such a thing as
• 1:31:13
  like dozens and dozens of boring nations. They were obviously accustomed to warfare at
• 1:31:19
  this point. To have a relatively singular human government, I mean, there's
• 1:31:27
  ten different I suppose you could say eleven if you include the White Tower as
• 1:31:32
  a governing force in the Westlands. But that was all and they cooperated relatively
• 1:31:40
  well with only a few sort of trade conflicts and things until until this thing
• 1:31:49
  called the Blight started to fill up. One thousand years after the Breaking,
• 1:31:55
  an enormous army of Trollicks led by dread Lords invades the Westlands from the Blight.
• 1:32:01
  The Trolley Corps began with heavy raids, and the then border land nations,
• 1:32:05
  of which I think there were five of, fairly quickly afterwards. The
• 1:32:10
  sacking of a city called bar Scene in the nation of Jerremide, the White
• 1:32:14
  Tower and the Ten Nations rally to fight the shadow Spawn, but not quickly
• 1:32:18
  enough to save Aramel, which was a more northern nation, although they acted
• 1:32:29
  quickly enough to save Jeremide not Ramel, which left Ara Doll, which we
• 1:32:35
  know later as shadow Logoth to be the front line of the war on Trollis.
• 1:32:43
  It's interesting, I would think it would be a little too far south
• 1:32:45
  to be the front line. Well, that's because one of these border Latin
• 1:32:50
  nations fell pretty quickly. So it looks like while just during the war it
• 1:32:56
  was became the new frontier, right, okay, and then after the war
• 1:32:59
  they were push back. The whole nation was totally overrun. But yeah,
• 1:33:05
  I mean I think I think these Trolloic wars were pretty intense for a while.
• 1:33:12
  It was a lot of Trollics flooding down, you know, through Tarwin's
• 1:33:15
  Gap, down into those northern nations and creating just total chaos in the southern
• 1:33:21
  lands. For they last a serious amount of time. How long do they
• 1:33:25
  last? A couple hundred years? Yeah, I think two hundred or so,
• 1:33:30
  three hundred years from one thousand years after the breaking to thirteen hundred,
• 1:33:35
  and it seems to me that that in the beginning, the Light side seems
• 1:33:39
  to be doing pretty well until our favorite Ishmael is reborn. Certainly, in
• 1:33:45
  the beginning, it appears that the Light is pushing the Dark back, right,
• 1:33:49
  they're winning, and then there's a sudden resurgence. Looks like although they're
• 1:33:56
  taken by surprise, they developed some new tactics pretty quickly start to work.
• 1:34:00
  Well. We see uh big offensive by the Shadow against Aradol after the development
• 1:34:05
  after the development of these new tactics by the humans, presumably in response because
• 1:34:11
  the Shadow, although they had the element of surprise right off the bat,
• 1:34:15
  and manage to take a couple of large cities, it looks like humanity pushed
• 1:34:19
  back really quickly. Well, when you have a bunch of trollocks flooding in
• 1:34:26
  your land, you're gonna push back. That's That's pretty much. You don't
• 1:34:30
  really have a choice, No, it's it's EAT's either fight or fight or
• 1:34:32
  starve? Is your only choice? Be eaten? Be eaten? Well,
• 1:34:36
  yeah's no one wants to end up in a cookpot, Let's be honest,
• 1:34:40
  Like, there's something horrifying about dying, But there's something horrifying, more horrifying
• 1:34:45
  about being eaten. Yeah, I mean that's just but that's that's where the
• 1:34:51
  talks. They don't need spply lines. They just eat their enemies and they
• 1:34:55
  eat their dead. It's it's a huge advantage if you don't need supply line.
• 1:35:00
  Yeah, and it makes for a tough fight, you know. A
• 1:35:04
  trollic is kind of a perfect fighting machine. It's big, it's fast,
• 1:35:09
  it's mean, it wants to kill, it'll eat anything you throw at it,
• 1:35:15
  and it's stupid enough to do all those things. It looks like by
• 1:35:17
  the time the shadows renewed offensive against Aridol begins, the then king, who
• 1:35:25
  is named Belwin Mayle, was by then already the under the influence of Mordeth,
• 1:35:31
  who seemingly was a random person who sort of wandered into the court and
• 1:35:36
  somehow gained influence over the king. We don't know anything about his origins.
• 1:35:42
  We know very little about Mortieth. I'd tried, and we know that he's
• 1:35:47
  under the influence eaten now or possibly a little later, or maybe already.
• 1:35:53
  I'm not sure of an entity called Mashatar. I think that's later. I
• 1:36:00
  know almost know nothing about either, and I have looked into. It is
• 1:36:03
  a mysterious force that nobody seems to know if it's intelligent or not, or
• 1:36:10
  if it's or what it is if it isn't magic. So I have theories.
• 1:36:14
  Yeah, yeah, I'm go for it. So mash Atar is essentially
• 1:36:18
  the it's the evil in men's hearts, But how does it manage to manifest
• 1:36:23
  itself in like a physical That's basically what happens to Air at Hall. Is
• 1:36:30
  this this corruption, this evil that he's spreading is just so intense and so
• 1:36:42
  awful in the same way that the dark One is, you know, manifests.
• 1:36:45
  I believe that this evil in men's hearts manifests as a misty being and
• 1:36:53
  it inherits and sinks into the very stones of the city. I think.
• 1:37:00
  Isn't that similar to the theory that Moraine puts forward on what happened to Shadow
• 1:37:08
  logo? Doesn't she say something song? Absolutely yeah, and I think she's
• 1:37:11
  essentially correct. But we definitely know that more Death or Mashadar are not the
• 1:37:18
  Shadow. They are by far enemies, right they are they were on the
• 1:37:24
  side of good, right, they were fighting the Shadow. A warning tale
• 1:37:28
  of saying you know the ends don't justify the means right. Fighting the shadow
• 1:37:32
  does not justify becoming evil in its own right. And that's I think where
• 1:37:36
  this evil comes from, and that's all of our at all. Is this
• 1:37:41
  basically internal evil as opposed to an external evil. This this jealousy and envy
• 1:37:48
  and all the emotions that we see Matt displaying in when he is in possession
• 1:37:54
  of the dagger. Oh, that's a good demonstration of the kind of general
• 1:37:59
  attributes of masha are absolutely, you know, I don't think more Death is
• 1:38:02
  that evil. I think that evil arises from the fact that everyone basically buys
• 1:38:08
  into his philosophy in the city, and you have an entire city of people
• 1:38:12
  who feel evil in their hearts, and it's so powerful that it manifests physically
• 1:38:16
  in the pattern and and creates Mashadar. And I think there's separate entities in
• 1:38:23
  the beginning, but they merge into one in Feine's body. Yeah, he's
• 1:38:31
  more Death is an interesting character. Oh yeah, we definitely have to get
• 1:38:33
  into him. Oh man, chapter I've been reading ahead and I've gotten this
• 1:38:38
  chapter three episode on Pattern Fane. Absolutely, I mean chapter three is called
• 1:38:42
  the Peddler. Yeah, yeah, so I think that's a good time to
• 1:38:45
  get into him. Yeah, so well, uh, we'll get there definitely
• 1:38:49
  and talk about how he becomes what he becomes, because it's one of I
• 1:38:57
  think the most interesting part so the book that gets not nearly enough time.
• 1:39:02
  Jeez, Patent Fane is a really interesting character. But also this kind of
• 1:39:05
  idea that there's a sort of a chaotic element thrown in later. Sure that's
• 1:39:15
  not for the Light or the Shadow. So I should probably throw out there
• 1:39:19
  that Aradoll's new battle cry becomes the victory of Light is all. And you
• 1:39:26
  can see the really basic philosophical flaws in there, Like you were saying,
• 1:39:30
  they're basically yelling out the ends justify the means, right, that's essentially like
• 1:39:34
  the Light is all, the light being the ends and more Death's whole philosophy
• 1:39:39
  is that the only way to defeat the Shadow, and by now they've been
• 1:39:43
  struggling for some time, is to be more brutal and cold than the Shadow,
• 1:39:48
  even more unrelenting. And so somehow Mashadar is created and presumably begins to
• 1:39:54
  in fact not only more death, but at least more death. Has this
• 1:39:58
  great influence over the king with this evil entity manipulating them both. In light
• 1:40:04
  of these events, and some of the nations are becoming aware of the increasing
• 1:40:11
  panic and insanity that's going on in inside Ariodol, car al Thorin attempted to
• 1:40:17
  win the people of arid Al back to the forces of the light. It
• 1:40:20
  was his name, really, al Thorin, right, Alorin? Yeah,
• 1:40:24
  really, car ce A A. R Althorin. That's crazy. There's there's
• 1:40:30
  there's al cars I'm sure in the Two Rivers somewhere, right. But but
• 1:40:35
  but he's aerin Hall. He's not in any way related to the Menetherine and
• 1:40:39
  the Two Rivers, right, Oh no, no, the Prince of Menethren.
• 1:40:44
  Oh, I'm sorry you guys said that. His name's well we already
• 1:40:47
  got that part, did we really did? We travel travels to arid Al
• 1:40:53
  to when the When the When, It's people back to the Light. But
• 1:40:58
  instead he was quickly in prison and tortured and eventually, legend has it lost
• 1:41:03
  a hand, either during the torture sessions or while he was harry during his
• 1:41:10
  escape. Now, Manethren actually becomes the front line of the Trollic Wars because
• 1:41:15
  aramel I think the nation falls and then shadow Logoth is the front line.
• 1:41:20
  Then shadow Logoth falls and benethroens the front line. Okay, and this the
• 1:41:25
  line keeps coming down, so we can if that makes it totally yeah,
• 1:41:31
  yeah, because you've got you've got the Trollocks sweeping down from the north,
• 1:41:35
  conquering nation after nation, and they started with airfl and then took out air
• 1:41:42
  at all. Yeah. Well aerd All corrupted itself basically, and then you're
• 1:41:45
  left with the next most other nation, which is Menethren. So you have
• 1:41:48
  this long line of Trolucs to the east and west, their nations still holding
• 1:41:54
  right, Yeah, but really their car basically cutting the continent in half,
• 1:41:58
  unless they've carved it into Tuesday efforts parts, that seems like what they're trying
• 1:42:01
  to do. We don't have good histories from back then. Apparently the Trollec
• 1:42:05
  Wars really destroyed a lot of good history. There's a huge fire about six
• 1:42:12
  hundred and fifty years after the Trollic Wars, called the Great Fire of Tarvalan,
• 1:42:15
  and it destroys like a lot of the library at the time. But
• 1:42:19
  whatever records were around, we don't know. Yeah, and almost none of
• 1:42:26
  the nations that were around during the Trolleic Wars survive after right or very long
• 1:42:31
  anyway? Right? I think only five are left at the end of the
• 1:42:35
  war out of ten. Do any of those five survive to modern times?
• 1:42:43
  No? Not to modern times, so not even like a Canale's not around
• 1:42:48
  back then, there's no no, there's no camel Year, there's no Kyrian
• 1:42:56
  Nope. All those nations are formed after the war. One hundred years after
• 1:43:01
  the trollec Wars, the nations that do access fall apart. Yeah. The
• 1:43:05
  five remaining nations weaken from the three hundred years of war break into twenty nine
• 1:43:11
  separate monarchies after a generation of factional infighting. Oh wow, okay, so
• 1:43:16
  there's basically nothing left. You basically have a completely collapsed society after the Trollic
• 1:43:20
  Wars. Right, Oh, Hma strikes again. What's the what's the next
• 1:43:27
  calendar? They're called the Free Years? Three years now we're measuring in fe
• 1:43:33
  or fy f y sorry f yes? So what are the three eras again?
• 1:43:40
  Go over it again? Remind me after breaking maybe and then the three
• 1:43:45
  years f y and then New Era and then any witch ends at the end
• 1:43:54
  of hawk Wing's rule when he eventually dies mysteriously. So what's the modern day
• 1:44:00
  calendar? New era? New era? So we're still a new era,
• 1:44:03
  I got it. Yeah, Clan chief Chanduin convinces just four clans of the
• 1:44:09
  Iel to execute King Laman in nine seventy six. That's when he was when
• 1:44:15
  the clans make the agreement. Yes, but the battle goes on or the
• 1:44:19
  the war goes on for at least two years. It may take them a
• 1:44:24
  while to get over the spine of the world. Yeah, they have to
• 1:44:27
  run like two thousand miles. It takes a while. Not for the Aeel
• 1:44:33
  that before breakfast, Are you kidding me? Yeah, Well, you know
• 1:44:40
  what it's like to walk a couple thousand miles? I do. It takes
• 1:44:45
  a long time. Yeah, persistence. Between the eighteen and the PCT,
• 1:44:48
  how many miles have you walked? Oh? Just but well between those two
• 1:44:53
  it was a little over five thousand. Yeah, so you know, just
• 1:44:58
  across the country. That's Oh god, man, I wonder how many miles
• 1:45:01
  rand and Folk walk in these books. I mean it's mostly in the first
• 1:45:08
  couple because once they get traveling, they definitely don't rack the miles up.
• 1:45:12
  Oh tons. Basically, rand Land is the size of the US about three
• 1:45:15
  thousand miles across, give her take, So to walk from one side do
• 1:45:18
  the others, like walking from California to New York. Yeah, if you
• 1:45:24
  were real fast about it. I feel like I know some people who could
• 1:45:28
  do it in two or three months. The pros, like the people who
• 1:45:33
  were the record holders. There was a lady I think she might still be
• 1:45:39
  the record holder that completed the Appalachian Trail in like fifty days or something like
• 1:45:43
  that. But you have to run like forty miles a day. Basically,
• 1:45:47
  yeah, I can do that anyway. I No, there's no way I
• 1:45:53
  could do that. I got into all my running and distance, got into
• 1:46:00
  endurance sports after reading The Wheel of Time, and just gaus sort of got
• 1:46:05
  super into the AEEL. I mean I got to have an Iel inspired tattoo
• 1:46:10
  for all the people who are not looking at me. No, I mean
• 1:46:13
  that's how I originally knew that you liked the series. I think the first
• 1:46:16
  day we met, I looked at you and said, yeah, I think
• 1:46:18
  you pointed it out. Hey, I see you like The Wheel of Time.
• 1:46:23
  We're going to be best friend. So I think we still need to
• 1:46:29
  say that since we just finished talking about the fall of their at all,
• 1:46:33
  and we worked our way through the first thirteen hundred years after the breaking,
• 1:46:40
  we're going to take a short break. I think we're gonna take a long
• 1:46:44
  break. Yeah, I think. Actually we're getting together next next week,
• 1:46:46
  right, you know, we want to finish this one up and put this
• 1:46:49
  out, and then we're going to do one more podcast before the beginning of
• 1:46:55
  chapter one, just to cover the rest of the thousand years two thousand years
• 1:47:00
  that we have left. Do you have about a thousand about Yeah, so
• 1:47:04
  we've got we've got a good amount of a good amount of time left,
• 1:47:08
  and we'll do that in the second podcast. We still got to put a
• 1:47:12
  cap on the end of the trolley cords too, but we'll do it.
• 1:47:14
  We can get that done. We'll get that done, all right, Uh,
• 1:47:16
  see you next week, See you next week. Bye. I used
• 1:47:47
  it just a couple of different fan sites, mainly I think it's just called
• 1:47:51
  the Wheel of Time week. Super handy, super wonderful. Yeah, you
• 1:47:58
  know, I can't take it off. I want a lot of the fan
• 1:48:00
  websites out there. They've really provided a lot of knowledge to me over the
• 1:48:06
  years at this so thank you. I did try hard not to please your
• 1:48:11
  eyes, but not yet. Advertisers. My email contact is on the website
• 1:48:25
  wtspoilers dot com. If you'd like to advertise, please send me an email.
• 1:48:30
  I think my mother would love to buy whatever product to your selling because
• 1:48:34
  drinking Hot Valley, Oh Valley Brewing Company, Delicious, Pale Ale, wonderful.
• 1:48:42
  Send us an email. Bruden Eugene, Oregon. We do love local
• 1:48:46
  organ companies. Wonderful. Thank you for listening to the Wheel of Time Spoilers
• 1:48:54
  podcast. Rate us in the Apple Podcast app or support us on Patreon.
• 1:49:11
  This is the Wheel of Times Spoilers podcast. Your hosts are Seth Jacobson and
• 1:49:16
  Patrick Hyler. And with the fall of Aerodoll, which is now called shadow
• 1:49:28
  Logoth because it's filled with a special sort of evil, Menethren now becomes the
• 1:49:34
  front line. Oh you know, I did a little bit of research into
• 1:49:39
  Erdoll and the mist and where that comes from. Yeah. Remember how in
• 1:49:45
  the last book pattern Fane is using the souls of the Trollocks and the people
• 1:49:51
  he corrupts to feed Mashadar. That's right. I think that the misty white
• 1:49:59
  substance that comprises Mashdar is actually the souls of the people in the city of
• 1:50:03
  shad Our logos. Oh interesting that. I mean that sounds a ton like
• 1:50:10
  the black Wind too, or Mussian shin Mussian chin. Well, I think
• 1:50:14
  it's called the black wind. Also, yes, yeah, well, but
• 1:50:15
  that's a different thing. That's a different thing, and that that arises from
• 1:50:19
  the Dark One, because it's a result of option, the corruption and the
• 1:50:24
  taint of the dark One. So that's more of a bleeding from the structure.
• 1:50:30
  They seem to be similar, but not really. I can't find any
• 1:50:35
  link between the two of them other than maybe like the creepy whispering and right,
• 1:50:42
  well, I was thinking more like parallel evolution, that you have this
• 1:50:45
  sort of two evil beings who kind of want occupy a space, and they
• 1:50:49
  do that through creating a misty windy, and I think myst is very different
• 1:50:55
  than wind. Right, you have this black wind that sort of bubbles and
• 1:50:59
  blows, versus a mist that sort of floats and drifts, sort of a
• 1:51:02
  jellyfish versus a shark is how I tend to think of them. But they
• 1:51:05
  both seem to get their power and whatever intelligence they have from an amalgam of
• 1:51:11
  the souls that they eat or consume. Or whatever you call that. They
• 1:51:15
  consume enough souls that they eventually gain some sort of partially Yeah, they gained
• 1:51:21
  something. There's a lot of dead souls in those things, you know,
• 1:51:26
  and so certainly learn the ability to save really weird stuff to people. Mashadar
• 1:51:31
  is in and of itself pretty mindless until it links up with a pattern vain.
• 1:51:38
  Gotcha, I don't think it has any intelligence. As for the Black
• 1:51:43
  Wind, you know, Fame seems to be able to command it a little
• 1:51:45
  bit. He has it, seeks rand. You know, it's it's hard
• 1:51:48
  to really know what's going on with those. We can we can get into
• 1:51:51
  those more when we talk about traveling through the ways. Oh yeah, that'll
• 1:51:56
  be a good one. That will be a good one. So now Manethin
• 1:51:59
  becomes the front line. If you read through the series, even if you
• 1:52:01
  haven't done all this research, you know at least that are at all or
• 1:52:05
  modern day shadow Logoth is like kind of central, uh, northwest? So
• 1:52:14
  what do we call that? Sure, east northeast? Is it towards the
• 1:52:17
  ocean or towards the spine the ocean? Then it is west? Gotcha?
• 1:52:25
  Okay, so sort of central northwest of the like below the borderlands, but
• 1:52:30
  pretty high up there, and Menethrin is where modern day Emonsfield is and parts
• 1:52:33
  of and Or so that is now the front line of the trollock oars.
• 1:52:39
  So what was above shadow logo? It was it's called Aramel Amel, and
• 1:52:44
  that is where the current day borderlands are basically right, So that was probably
• 1:52:48
  Candori. Yeah, I think I think Arithel. This might be the closest,
• 1:52:55
  which would make a lot of sense, would make a lot of sense.
• 1:52:57
  Have to look at a map, really, let's book, look at
• 1:53:00
  the map. I found a map. I don't know if this is right,
• 1:53:03
  but of the ten nations, Aramel is directly north of Tarvalan Jeremiah,
• 1:53:10
  the nation that almost fell is where modern day arid Domon and Saldea are.
• 1:53:19
  It looks like that pretty large block there where Aradl is now there is no
• 1:53:25
  nation. Well clearly yeah, well yeah, I guess that's obvious. This
• 1:53:32
  is basically north of Van Door, sort of between uh Saldea and the two
• 1:53:38
  rivers. Yeah, right in there. Surely. Afterward, Menethrine gets their
• 1:53:44
  name as the Thorn in the dark One's Foot, and elite band of soldiers
• 1:53:48
  is created and it's names the Band of the Red Hands. This is the
• 1:53:51
  first time this happens. Nothing's ever the first time something happens in the Wheel.
• 1:54:00
  Shortly after that, there are a few major battles where Menethrin does quite
• 1:54:06
  well, and a new dread Lord appears named Bilshman, and he leads a
• 1:54:15
  host of Shadows, Spahn and other dread lords against Menethrin personally here now at
• 1:54:21
  this point, you know, bails him on is Ishmael, and he's taken
• 1:54:26
  on a different name to lead the Trolus. At this point he is the
• 1:54:30
  Heart of the Dark, which is what the Trauluks call the Dark One.
• 1:54:33
  But he's sort of taken on that persona and I would assume at this point
• 1:54:38
  he's kind of nuts enough to think he might actually be the Dark One.
• 1:54:41
  I did wonder what the change in name meant, if it's just kind of
• 1:54:45
  something he fancies but that doesn't seem like his style at all, or if
• 1:54:49
  he's going insane from using the True Power. I think that has a lot
• 1:54:54
  to do with it. I think it might also be the name he adopted
• 1:54:57
  simply to lead the Troluks and the Trolloc war, or maybe the Trilicks gave
• 1:55:00
  it to him. I mean his eyes burn with literal fire or magical fire,
• 1:55:05
  so it's pretty intimidating. Yeah, a little. He scares people,
• 1:55:11
  let's put it that way. He's a professional creepy. Yeah, dude,
• 1:55:15
  he scares shadow men. So he's a little more effective than some of the
• 1:55:18
  other dark folk have ben it looks like tremendously effective. He even seems to
• 1:55:25
  know, and we can assume he has the use of aerial spies and ravens
• 1:55:30
  and things like that, but he even seems to know that King Amen is
• 1:55:33
  distracted on another front, which I'm not sure exactly where that is. We
• 1:55:40
  do know, and we see this story a couple of times throughout the series
• 1:55:43
  that King Amen rushes to meet Bells him On immediately after a very tough battle,
• 1:55:47
  which is what makes us pretty famous, and he rushes to meet Bells
• 1:55:51
  him On, and that culminates in the Battle of the Terran Drell, which
• 1:55:57
  is where the two forces meet on opposite sides of a river named the Arrandrel.
• 1:56:02
  We get that from one of Matt's memories, right, I think so.
• 1:56:05
  Yeah, Matt's first I don't know what you call it, flashback or
• 1:56:12
  whatever, where he's where they have to charge through the group of Trollicks,
• 1:56:16
  and Matt starts screaming in the old tongue. I'm pretty sure forward the herd
• 1:56:21
  Guard for the heart Guard, and King Amon yells that at the Battle of
• 1:56:26
  Amonsfield, which takes place directly after he retreats from the Terran Trail, which
• 1:56:30
  he holds for nine days, and then one final day at amons Field.
• 1:56:34
  You left out the march, the march to the Arran Trail. Yeah,
• 1:56:40
  that's yeah, it's a really cool part, but I did kind of leave
• 1:56:42
  it out. After being driven back from the Terran drel to the Battle of
• 1:56:47
  amons Field, we see a huge number of civilians join the army to hold
• 1:56:57
  back the shadow Spawn for as long as they can. I see numbers somewhere
• 1:57:01
  around like forty to one hundred thousand, just civilians, just regular people joining
• 1:57:08
  the military, which rivals a lot of what happens in the Two Rivers later
• 1:57:13
  with Paren when they're about to be overrun and the women step forward. It's
• 1:57:16
  like almost the same sit It's just on a smaller scale, right, exactly
• 1:57:20
  pretty cool. Yeah, So, while Amon's waiting there for the White Tower,
• 1:57:26
  the o Gear and the ten or the ten nations, any of whom
• 1:57:29
  to send some kind of help. We find that his messages were either tampered
• 1:57:33
  with or stopped completely by some rivals in the White Tower who wanted his wife,
• 1:57:40
  Queen Aldrine, to be killed. I suppose I'm not phrasing that very
• 1:57:45
  well. Do you think they were black? Black? Maybe? Maybe black
• 1:57:50
  Aja? So we know, we know that Ishmael's around. Obviously he's the
• 1:57:55
  one creating this whole offensive, and we know he was one of the you
• 1:57:59
  know, founding and guiding members of the Black Ajaw. Yeah, so my
• 1:58:03
  assumption is that at this point he is founding and creating the Black Ajaw and
• 1:58:08
  they are the force behind this plot against I mean, that would make a
• 1:58:13
  ton of sense, because it was some kind of like jealousy from when they
• 1:58:17
  were novices together or something between Eldrene and the Ambulin seat at the time,
• 1:58:25
  whose name I should have, but I don't have it in front of me
• 1:58:27
  right now. Eventually we know that at least the O Gear do get the
• 1:58:31
  message that Amon is waiting desperately for help, and he's going to hold the
• 1:58:36
  troalks for as long as he can, and he manages I think the last
• 1:58:40
  ten or eleven days and nobody comes and the ogears do get the message,
• 1:58:45
  but I assume they arrive too late. We hear Loyal talk about it later.
• 1:58:49
  I think it's Loyal Loyal he like directly apologizes, I think to loose
• 1:58:54
  theren. Well, I think he apologizes Duran and saying you know, right,
• 1:58:58
  he doesn't understand that Ran at the time doesn't really think about himself,
• 1:59:03
  like he thinks that Manette. You know, Loyal has this sense of time
• 1:59:10
  that everyone is is ident. You know, Rand saying Menethin, who the
• 1:59:13
  hell's Benetherne And meanwhile Oil is saying like, I'm sorry I have failed your
• 1:59:17
  ancestors. Sorry we arrived too slowly. Yeah, he said something like that
• 1:59:20
  exactly. And Rand's like he's like feeling real sadness about it. Right,
• 1:59:26
  it was a long time ago, that was Rand's basically like that wasn't me
• 1:59:30
  or year. That's like a generation and a half or two generations to how
• 1:59:38
  long do they live? A long time? A long time, like longer
• 1:59:42
  than an I said, I right, I feel like it was all Well,
• 1:59:45
  he was ninety and he was just coming out of adolescence at ninety,
• 1:59:50
  and so if you think that's the equivalent of like eighteen, which is what
• 1:59:55
  rand is figure lives five times that long. You know, you're four hundred,
• 2:00:00
  five hundred years old is an old, very old. Ogier six hundred
• 2:00:02
  would be ancient. Yeah, so we'd be talking like only like three generations.
• 2:00:06
  That would be like me apologizing for my grandfather failing somebody, and which
• 2:00:12
  sort of makes a little bit of sense. There's at least a kind of
• 2:00:15
  generational memory. You know, Loyal may have known someone who who was there,
• 2:00:20
  who was there, yeah and failed Yeah wow, Yeah, because you
• 2:00:26
  know your grandfather right, and his grandparents may have been of the age Aimen,
• 2:00:31
  possibly betrayed by the Red Aja, who tampers with his messages and doesn't
• 2:00:36
  get help on time, and is eventually killed at the Battle of Amon's Field,
• 2:00:42
  which is his last stand, which is why the field was named after
• 2:00:45
  him. Queen Eldrene, who was bonded with a warder bond two King Amen,
• 2:00:51
  senses his death and immediately pulls a loose there and tell him on and
• 2:00:57
  destroys herself the city she's in and the majority of the shadow spawn that have
• 2:01:01
  invaded her land by drawing in so much of the one power that she oopsie,
• 2:01:08
  And like I said, that it includes the city. That's why it's
• 2:01:10
  not there anymore. So it's just blown off the mountain. Aimon is killed
• 2:01:15
  at Amon's Field, but she is in the city of Menethrine, right,
• 2:01:17
  and so when she wipes Menethron off the face of the earth, that is
• 2:01:21
  not where Aimon It's field is. Yeah. Ramparent and Matt talk about this,
• 2:01:28
  but I think it took them two days to walk there. For three
• 2:01:30
  days healthy farm boys. Yeah, they're fifty miles something like that. Yeah,
• 2:01:38
  yeah, or two days. I think they get to the feet of
• 2:01:42
  the mountains, they don't actually climb them, right. Well, anyway,
• 2:01:45
  so Queen Aldreane pulls an LTT, blows the city off the mountain and kills
• 2:01:53
  lots of the shadow spawn who were there, all the shadow spawn that were
• 2:01:58
  there, right, I think all almost all of them, but we do
• 2:02:02
  see that shortly afterward, a new ambuln is raised named Rashima, and she
• 2:02:13
  spends the next fifty years essentially hunting down any large groups of shadows spad that
• 2:02:17
  are still roaming around. This is pretty much the end of the war here
• 2:02:21
  well, and we have to assume Ishmael got sucked back into the boar.
• 2:02:27
  Possibly he may have been destroyed. I don't think we know, Ishmael.
• 2:02:30
  Well, I mean he may have been destroyed right there. I don't see
• 2:02:34
  him after that, right, I mean, well, but he wasn't destroyed,
• 2:02:39
  was he? He? And I I don't have any mention of him
• 2:02:42
  after the Battle of Amensfield until he returns in that seems like he should be
• 2:02:47
  able to protect himself, right, But I would like to think that Eldrene
• 2:02:54
  just you do want to think she killed him and he got reincarnated, But
• 2:02:59
  I don't know thinks the truth. Yeah, he's still I think he's suffering
• 2:03:02
  from thousands of years of like true power abuse in the eye of the world.
• 2:03:10
  I don't think he's put in a new body. Oh no, I
• 2:03:12
  don't think he is. Yeah, and the dark ones sealed away at that
• 2:03:15
  point, so he can't. He must survive, oh right, like as
• 2:03:21
  opposed to having been reborn, which is we know doesn't happen, right,
• 2:03:27
  So he has to have survived. He has to have survived, Okay,
• 2:03:29
  yeah, yeah, but yeah, no, I mean she definitely just you
• 2:03:32
  know, stops his plans, and since he appears to only really have these
• 2:03:36
  forty year windows, to get anything done in between. Every thousand years he
• 2:03:42
  sucked back in until his next emergence. After the end of these really large
• 2:03:48
  battles, we see Reshima hunting down over the next fifty years any small bands
• 2:03:55
  of shadow spawn that are still roaming around the Westlands, and we see five
• 2:04:00
  remaining, five of the ten nations remaining where weakened from three hundred years of
• 2:04:08
  war break into twenty nine separate monarchies after a generation of factional infighting. And
• 2:04:15
  that's when the calendar switches and begins what's called the Free years, which I
• 2:04:18
  assume are called the free years because it's just like a kind of Wild West
• 2:04:23
  cowboy style, all these little duchies and monarchies fighting each other because they weren't
• 2:04:29
  free or fun. It doesn't seem I mean, you're free from a single
• 2:04:34
  overarching ruler. You don't have an arder hawk wing, you don't have an
• 2:04:38
  armorine dictating things to everybody. You just have Well, my queen says this,
• 2:04:44
  and your queen says that since we all live on about five acres of
• 2:04:46
  land, freedom from laws, right, freedom to take your neighbor's land.
• 2:04:53
  I mean, think about it. Twenty nine nations in a place the size
• 2:04:56
  of the US. They're basically states. Yeah, you essentially have a bunch
• 2:05:01
  of fighting states nation states during this time as a very unstable time where there's
• 2:05:09
  very little information. I know, we keep repeating that, but there's really
• 2:05:13
  almost none here I have in three year two hundred and ninety one is the
• 2:05:17
  first point I have. Blake continues to expand swallows an important stetting called Sharon
• 2:05:24
  Do. But for the first five hundred years, basically we see lots of
• 2:05:29
  infighting between the human nations and very little cooperation trading. Yeah, and like
• 2:05:38
  I suggested last time, perhaps memory like a sort of a basic memory of
• 2:05:45
  a time when nothing like that would have existed. So I think combat is
• 2:05:50
  sort of becoming normalized, like combat against humans against humans that's just happening all
• 2:05:57
  the time. Now. Well, I mean we're a thousand years, two
• 2:06:01
  thousand years past the breaking now, but yes, yeah, a little more
• 2:06:05
  of that figure at this point, that's been very long. It's been a
• 2:06:10
  long time, you know, figure the Romans rediscovered how to fight. I
• 2:06:13
  think we we have a pretty good idea of how to do it by now,
• 2:06:16
  you're right, so and so by three year five hundred it's been at
• 2:06:23
  least five hundred years since any of the ten nation ten original nations formed after
• 2:06:29
  the breaking were even existed, right, that would have just that people just
• 2:06:33
  looked at that ancient times stories about when things were peaceful that probably aren't even
• 2:06:39
  true. Right, And then this is a good thing to throw in there
• 2:06:44
  as well. In three years six hundred and forty two, there's an event
• 2:06:48
  called the Great Fire of tar Valin which apparently damaged much of the White Tower
• 2:06:54
  Library and many of the records that existed at the time were destroyed there.
• 2:06:59
  That may be another reason we have almost nothing here. I think that's Robert
• 2:07:02
  Jordan's excuse for why we have nothing here. Got lazy, I'm just not
• 2:07:08
  gonna write this history the records. Moving on, Maybe it was the great
• 2:07:13
  fire of his kitchen table, Like, ah, fuck, there goes a
• 2:07:17
  month of work. I know Robert Jordan made all those notes and then and
• 2:07:20
  then he like spilled hot soup on them or something, you know, set
• 2:07:25
  him down on a hot stove. Great fire. Six. Moving on,
• 2:07:44
  and the next important point I found is in three year nine hundred and twelve,
• 2:07:47
  archer pen drag ten Rial is born near where modern day Kyrie Anne is
• 2:07:54
  who's that archer oh Arter hawk Wing, But he hasn't earned that name yet,
• 2:08:01
  which I didn't know until I did this research that it was a nickname
• 2:08:05
  that he earned in combat. Hawk Wing. Why it's not his real name
• 2:08:11
  because of the speed with which he can move his armies. He seems to
• 2:08:16
  be uncanny at predicting where his enemies will be, and he's usually there before,
• 2:08:22
  so he moves like a hawk on the wing. Right, that's it
• 2:08:26
  says, if he flew there, Oh wow, he's born, which you
• 2:08:33
  know, he becomes a fairly significant figure in history, very Alexander the Great,
• 2:08:39
  sort of if I had an equivalent in our modern day society, sort
• 2:08:43
  of the most recent person to conquer everything, yeah or yeah, maybe one
• 2:08:48
  of the Persian emperors. But he seems to run his show in a similar
• 2:08:52
  style. He's later called a high king because he'll leave the monarchies in place
• 2:09:01
  and let them run their empire for him. Isn't that just an emperor versus
• 2:09:09
  No? Not necessarily. Different conquerors do it differently. Some of them will
• 2:09:13
  destroy and like make sure that you're following their system of government. But these,
• 2:09:18
  like some of these early conquerors like Alexander and if I could think of
• 2:09:24
  some of the Persian Persian names, but it doesn't matter. They would literally
• 2:09:28
  just make someone submit and you could just go home. You could just go
• 2:09:31
  home and pay taxes. And if we want men to show up for a
• 2:09:37
  military maneuvers, send them. That's it. So it's basically protection money,
• 2:09:41
  right, It's like a gangster. Yeah, you pay us to not kill
• 2:09:46
  you and you can do your thing. Why why does it not surprise me
• 2:09:50
  that essentially the earliest form of government was being a gangster. It's such a
• 2:09:58
  natural thing. It just pops up. And let's be honest, does politics
• 2:10:01
  really change, No, it just becomes more sophisticated. It's really the same
• 2:10:07
  thing. You know, don't I don't find much difference between gangsters and politicians.
• 2:10:11
  You don't pay taxes, We come take your house exactly exactly protection money.
• 2:10:18
  The irs be a shame if someone were to set fire to it.
• 2:10:22
  In three year, nine hundred and thirty nine, the Black fever kills roughly
• 2:10:28
  ten percent of all humans in the Westland, including Arter's parents, who were
• 2:10:33
  at the time the monarchs of a small nation called Chandel, which I think
• 2:10:37
  I already mentioned is in modern day western Kyrieen what's maybe about half the size
• 2:10:45
  of Kyrien. So Artur becomes king of the small nation at twenty seven.
• 2:10:52
  At around the same time, and this is very important as well, the
• 2:10:56
  War of the Second Dragon breaks out, where a false dragon named Gawai yar
• 2:11:00
  Amalissan that works this war breaks out, and the White Tower begins to try
• 2:11:09
  to organize some of these small nations to help defend each other. Shandel joins
• 2:11:15
  and Artur quickly earns the nickname the hawk Wing for the speed with which he
• 2:11:20
  can move his armies during that war and in some of the opening conflicts,
• 2:11:24
  which culminates with at the end, with the aid of several Isidai, hawk
• 2:11:30
  Wing captures Amalisan at the Battle of jolvaane Pass. Then shortly afterward we see
• 2:11:35
  the Battle of Tarvallen, where Amalison's followers and his generals bring one hundred thousand
• 2:11:43
  soldiers right up to the Shining Walls and attempt to free in an attempt to
• 2:11:48
  free the captured false dragon who they think is the real Dragon, which,
• 2:11:54
  of course hawk Wing, being hawk Wing, finds a way and defeats them.
• 2:12:00
  Of course he does. He you know, he seems to be the
• 2:12:05
  Matt Coffin of the age. He can pretty much, he really is.
• 2:12:09
  How I wonder how many of hawk Wings memories mattrim has. I don't know.
• 2:12:16
  He definitely has some, though, well, no he doesn't, because
• 2:12:20
  he says he doesn't like the man very much. He remembers not liking I
• 2:12:22
  think he has a lot of memories for one of hawk Wings generals, right,
• 2:12:26
  but I don't think he has any of hawk Wings. Was just reading
• 2:12:28
  Twan's wiki page, and part of a foretelling she gets from a domain is
• 2:12:33
  that you will marry a man who remembers Archer hawk Wing's face. It was
• 2:12:41
  like a three part four telling, and I remember all of it, but
• 2:12:43
  that was one of the lines. And he remembers he remembers talking to hawk
• 2:12:46
  Wing and working with him totally and really not liking him. He was kind
• 2:12:52
  of a dick. But you know, in fairness, Matt doesn't like a
• 2:12:56
  lot of people. True is anyone who follows rules or has order, and
• 2:13:01
  Hawkwing was definitely about rules and order. That was his whole empire. So
• 2:13:05
  I don't think this anyway Matt could like arter Hawkwing. It's just these two
• 2:13:09
  sort of opposing personalities, and that being said, they do sort of have
• 2:13:15
  a little moment at the end when he's like, hey, can you go
• 2:13:18
  say how to my wife? She might she might think that's pretty cool and
• 2:13:24
  all things like yeah, I'll go siety your wife, you know, and
• 2:13:28
  it's a little bit of star power, right, you know, go dazzle
• 2:13:31
  her. Also, you know, maybe maybe don't torture I said, I
• 2:13:35
  right, yeah, that's probably not a good thing. And Kawan is his
• 2:13:41
  great great great so on granddaughter. That's true. Yeah, she has related
• 2:13:48
  which is why she's empress, you know. But I think it's important to
• 2:13:52
  mention that, like hawk Wang, I think he regrets some of the things
• 2:13:56
  he did in his life because he was definitely corrupted by a Ishmael and sort
• 2:14:03
  of the person he was when he died, who was very anti Isidi,
• 2:14:07
  is not the person I think he is in death and when he's called by
• 2:14:11
  the horn. Yeah, I think the person he was when he died was
• 2:14:16
  definitely corrupted, and so if you look at him when he comes back,
• 2:14:20
  he's a much greater respect for the Isidy and hopefully that comes across when he
• 2:14:24
  does actually talk to too long In Freeer nine, forty three. Sources have
• 2:14:30
  it that after some disagreements, the White Tower either pressures or convinces or sort
• 2:14:43
  of stokes the fire of some tensions between Archer's home nation, Chandel, and
• 2:14:50
  some of his neighbors, which eventually accuse those neighbors to attack Chandel, which
• 2:14:56
  begins the period of consolidation. And how nicely and gently that period is named,
• 2:15:05
  I'm going to consolidate these donations into one, the period of consolidation.
• 2:15:11
  We just put it together. Well, oh, I'm sure that was one
• 2:15:16
  hundred percent peaceful, right, So, these I believe it was three separate
• 2:15:22
  nations attacked Chandel and were quickly rebuffed by hawk Wing, which began a long
• 2:15:28
  conflict where Archer hawk Wing took over the entire continent. Or perhaps use the
• 2:15:37
  White Tower's involvement with the these three nations attacking it as justification essentially to destroy
• 2:15:46
  any nation that attacked it, including the White Tower. And it largely worked
• 2:15:52
  in three year nine sixty three, and by I don't know why, I'm
• 2:15:56
  saying largely, and Arterer hawk Wing was completely successful or almost entirely successfully,
• 2:16:03
  never took the White Tower itself. Do we know if he lost any battles.
• 2:16:07
  I mean, I think he sieged the White Tower, but I don't
• 2:16:09
  think he necessarily lose lose died right, Yeah, of an illness like a
• 2:16:16
  not on the battlefield. There are some other interesting failures I have. In
• 2:16:20
  free year nine to sixty three, arter Hawk Wing has declared the high King
• 2:16:22
  of the West. In three year nine to sixty four, he begins an
• 2:16:28
  invasion of the Ideal Waste, which there isn't a terrible lot of information about.
• 2:16:33
  But the little bit of information that I could find on it was that
• 2:16:35
  essentially the Ideal clans refused to engage arter Hawk Wing at all through small skirmishes
• 2:16:45
  and other sort of baiting. They just got him to March's army deeper and
• 2:16:48
  deeper into the Wist. Eventually, for a reason that I could not find.
• 2:16:54
  I assume he eventually saw what the rouse was, what the iel were
• 2:17:00
  pulling, and he just turned around and left. Well that's that's smarter than
• 2:17:05
  Germany invading Russia, because it was very smart. Yeah, I see what
• 2:17:09
  they were doing, and it was a clever maneuver. Good try, I
• 2:17:13
  yellman, whereas a dumber general may just continue to throw troops and I'm surprised
• 2:17:20
  he didn't lose a lot of troops. I'm sure he must have lost a
• 2:17:22
  ton in the waist with the heat and the marching and the sand and the
• 2:17:28
  water. See how you could transport enough water? Yeah, there's just no
• 2:17:31
  way. So I imagine that if nothing else, just the lack of water
• 2:17:35
  is what and killed, was killing his troops and forcing him to turn back.
• 2:17:39
  Yeah, whereas I think Jordan may have been drawing a parallel to invading
• 2:17:50
  Russia and instead of Napoleon, just any any general invading Russia. We can
• 2:17:54
  cite multiple examples throughout history has pretty much failed because of the the weather and
• 2:18:00
  the cold and the environment. You know, you walk in with a lot
• 2:18:05
  of droops and you walk out with very few, and red and Russia they
• 2:18:07
  have a sort of saying, or not really a saying, but that sometimes
• 2:18:13
  Russian historians call it general Winter because of what an important role this general air
• 2:18:20
  quoting play has played in so many major Russian conflicts. Just the winter itself.
• 2:18:26
  And I think you can, you know, call the heat a very
• 2:18:30
  equivalent to it's pretty much the same. Yeah, yeah, the polar opposite.
• 2:18:33
  Yeah, I think that's that's where he drew from to sort of create
• 2:18:35
  that situation. But Ardur Hawking was smarter and you know, turned and rantail
• 2:18:41
  before he lost too many of his troops. Yeah, I wonder if they're
• 2:18:45
  trying to cut him off. I think just draw him far enough into the
• 2:18:50
  waist and eventually they just all die and come around and don't let them leave.
• 2:18:54
  Yeah, I don't. I don't think that I'll have to engage at
• 2:18:56
  all. I think that they just have to cut off his escape escape route,
• 2:19:01
  get the loss in the desert, and let the threefold land test them.
• 2:19:07
  So that's what the ideal Ieel do when you invade nothing, which is
• 2:19:13
  sort of funny when we know about their nature. There are nomadic people.
• 2:19:18
  They're not protecting land, they don't have fortresses. They just and they can
• 2:19:22
  out run your horses. So and also just at this point, their general
• 2:19:28
  or clan chiefs would have been highly skilled in their combat tactics. And these
• 2:19:35
  are clever warriors. There's no reason to engage. No, there's no no.
• 2:19:39
  And these iel have been fighting each other in skirmishes for generations at this
• 2:19:45
  point. They are exceptionally good with the spear. You know, we talked
• 2:19:50
  about how they'd split into three. The Tinkers at this point are pretty independent.
• 2:19:54
  The Jeniyel are long gone, and what you're left with is the twelve
• 2:20:00
  clans of a Eel who are in constant combat, and they're good at it.
• 2:20:05
  They're really good at it. Nine eighty six. Ishmiel appears during this
• 2:20:09
  time under the name Jelwyn mouryad no reed m O R e A D.
• 2:20:20
  I feel like that's a sort of related to his original name of Moren is
• 2:20:24
  his middle name original name? Oh yeah, so there's there's definitely a vague
• 2:20:31
  resemblance to his original name, but it's it's not the same, and he's
• 2:20:37
  what is he doing? Is he? He appears as a what in the
• 2:20:43
  court of Archer hawk Wing, And jeez, I don't have this, but
• 2:20:50
  we know that he quickly becomes like an advisor to archer Hawkwing, a close
• 2:20:54
  personal advisor. I wonder if there's a little compulsion involved there, why not?
• 2:21:01
  Yeah, sort of in the way that more Gaze gets Gabriel as her
• 2:21:07
  close personal lover almost immediately on meeting him. After this, we can see
• 2:21:13
  his touch pretty much everywhere. I also have that, so I have him.
• 2:21:18
  Three year nine eighty six A bunch of shadows spawns start pouring out of
• 2:21:22
  the plight. Three year nine eighty seven defeated decisively. So maybe that invasion
• 2:21:28
  was triggered by Ishmael, but he doesn't seem to have any effect over hawk
• 2:21:33
  Wing just yet. I can see it, perhaps as this is a guest,
• 2:21:39
  but my guess is Ishmael is trying to boost hawk Wing's power because he
• 2:21:43
  finds himself as the power behind the throne, so he wants hawk Wing to
• 2:21:48
  conquer more and more, and by having Trollocks invade and then having hawk Wing
• 2:21:54
  stop them, that gives him even more credible, even more credibility, and
• 2:21:58
  the ability to you know, take over more of the land. After this,
• 2:22:05
  hawk Wing decides to overrun the forces of Tarvaalan and lay siege to the
• 2:22:09
  city which he has been at war with this entire time, but has left
• 2:22:13
  presumably and has never conquered tar the city of Tarvaalin itself. So how does
• 2:22:20
  that work out for him? As far as not losing any troops, there
• 2:22:24
  doesn't seem to be very much combat at all. How long is the siege
• 2:22:30
  a long time? The next point I have is during the siege, the
• 2:22:35
  Ambulyn at the time is deposed. She's the one that they depose, instill
• 2:22:43
  her, and make her work work as a scullery made for the next couple
• 2:22:46
  of years until she dies, I assume, and it seems like other fan
• 2:22:52
  theory seems to favor this is that this was done to placate hawk Wing,
• 2:23:00
  largely because the Ambulna had had this made this huge mistake in getting involved and
• 2:23:05
  fighting this guy, and because they were completely surrounded and slowly starving. This
• 2:23:11
  was done seven years or six years after Hawkquen begins the siege, so they
• 2:23:20
  may have been getting desperate at this point. I really hope I'm getting all
• 2:23:24
  these dates and everything right. But we're doing the best we can. Maybe
• 2:23:28
  someone will send us corrections at some point. I'd like to hear them.
• 2:23:31
  Seriously, we're alone out here, right. There is so much going on
• 2:23:37
  in this series that between the two of us we know maybe you know eighty
• 2:23:43
  percent of it if I'm being really generous. I've also had some of my
• 2:23:46
  sources conflict. I tried to make note of that when I could, but
• 2:23:50
  it's usually by a couple of years, but I don't really I figure out
• 2:23:52
  I'm getting it close. It's fine, and if you think in the world
• 2:23:58
  of the Wheel of Time has been a lot of records destroyed. There may
• 2:24:01
  be some conflicting dates just in the historical records, absolutely, yeah, Or
• 2:24:09
  maybe the companion isn't the best source of information. No, I mean,
• 2:24:16
  I've seen that conflict with information in the books, and it's impossible to get
• 2:24:20
  all this right realistically. Even for the authors. There are times that they
• 2:24:26
  make mistakes. So you know, forgive us. But yeah, like I
• 2:24:31
  said, please let us know. So the then Emmerlyn is deposed and Hawkwing
• 2:24:37
  gives literally no shits. He does not back off the siege. He's not
• 2:24:41
  placated by that at all. However, in for year nine ninety four,
• 2:24:50
  nine ninety five, Archer's son disappears and his daughter dies under mysterious circumstances.
• 2:24:58
  Archer falls ill and die suddenly. This kicks off the War of one hundred
• 2:25:03
  Years, which is essentially the end of the era. So do we just
• 2:25:05
  assume Ishmael offed him and his two children. Yeah, yeah, there's just
• 2:25:11
  he was like, now that the Empires formed, I'm going to absolutely destroy
• 2:25:15
  it by causing complete chaos. The Woor of one hundred Years is kicked off
• 2:25:18
  when Tyr and Kyrie and declare independence from the Empire. And Or was next,
• 2:25:24
  and then the Borderlands left the Empire as a five nation block. So
• 2:25:31
  they always seem sort of united at least with each other, the Borderlands right
• 2:25:35
  against the Blade. You know, when you've got a common enemy, it's
• 2:25:39
  pretty easy to stay together. Well easier to stay together at least. And
• 2:25:43
  they're they're less worried about the Game of Thrones, were sorry at the Game
• 2:25:46
  of Houses, and more worried about staying alive. Yeah, even in modern
• 2:25:54
  times. Take a break. Yeah cool, Sure, so instead of taking
• 2:25:58
  a short break, we went to the bar, got something to eat and
• 2:26:05
  you know, a drink or two. So we're gonna give this a shot
• 2:26:11
  and see how this sounds. If not, you know, yeah, the
• 2:26:16
  goal here is to to finish up right up until chapter one, so we
• 2:26:22
  can actually talk about the events of our main characters. So that's something I've
• 2:26:26
  been anticipating for five whole pages. Oh but I'm enjoying this. I am
• 2:26:31
  enjoying all this stuff. This is this I love. I think you're a
• 2:26:35
  little more into the history than I am. Yeah, yeah, maybe,
• 2:26:39
  yeah, I think I am. I think you are because just like the
• 2:26:41
  backstories just the podcast you listen to too, should I. I was especially
• 2:26:48
  excited to get to this section because after the word of one hundred years,
• 2:26:54
  like I said, the new era begins, and there's basically a really long
• 2:27:01
  like a five hundred year period of conflicts and secession wars like zero long lived
• 2:27:07
  Amberlins. I went through the list a couple of times and like, none
• 2:27:11
  survives more than like fifty years or something absurd. They maybe find one or
• 2:27:15
  two examples, but it's like almost none. And this is after Ishmael founded
• 2:27:20
  the Black Aja. So you know, my always my opinion of this era
• 2:27:26
  was always that Ishmael was well, certainly no longer around, but at least
• 2:27:31
  his influence was attempting to destabilize the White Tower, and by destabilizing the White
• 2:27:37
  Tower, he destabilized society. Yeah, and you can definitely see that in
• 2:27:43
  that five hundred year period. But to kick off the ending of that shitty
• 2:28:00
  five hundred year period, yeah, it wasn't didn't seem like a good time
• 2:28:07
  the Ayeel after I didn't find too much information on their exact reasoning, but
• 2:28:15
  at this point the Adel clans decided to deliver a cutting of a Vendosura,
• 2:28:20
  which I think is called Avendola Dora. Well, the reason was they had
• 2:28:26
  been in the wandering after the breaking. When they wandered and hadn't hadn't split
• 2:28:31
  into the three groups. They basically needed water and the only folks that took
• 2:28:39
  them in well water and food and shelter, and and the folks who took
• 2:28:45
  them in were the Kyrine. After they split from the Kyrieenne and continued onto
• 2:28:50
  the waste, they didn't know who the people were who helped them, right,
• 2:28:54
  And so what happened was at this point in history they discovered that the
• 2:28:58
  Kyrine, the ancient Kyrienne, were folks who would helped them during the breaking,
• 2:29:01
  and so the Iel felt they had tow towards the Kyrienne, and in
• 2:29:07
  order to discharge the toe, they granted them a cutting of the Aviendsura.
• 2:29:13
  Do we talk much about the Chora trees and what they were and where they
• 2:29:18
  came from in the Age of Legends? I feel like that's something we haven't
• 2:29:20
  really gotten into a little bit. No, I don't think we have.
• 2:29:24
  We might have been the Age of legends. So in the Age of legends,
• 2:29:28
  the Chora trees were planted along most of the streets and you know,
• 2:29:35
  essentially induced a a feeling of contentment among the populace. You know, there's
• 2:29:41
  a little bit of an artificial just sort of beneath these trees. You feel
• 2:29:48
  content and they were planted on every street. They have like an artificial drug
• 2:29:52
  like radius, right, essentially right, So it's pretty much And if you've
• 2:29:58
  got into Brandon Sanderson for those of you who finished this series and then read
• 2:30:05
  some of his stuff, to me, it seems a lot like soothing.
• 2:30:09
  Is that sort of feeling of contentment is one of the emotions you can push
• 2:30:13
  or pull on, sort of like the chora trees are sort of an artificial
• 2:30:20
  push a hush or sense of joy or content. Yeah, and maybe a
• 2:30:26
  bit of a pole on your you know, anxiety and your discontentment. As
• 2:30:33
  the Iel War traveling with the Isida, they traveled with items of power,
• 2:30:37
  and every caravan carried a chora tree with them for good luck. And those
• 2:30:43
  chara trees came with them to the waist and the only one that ended up
• 2:30:46
  surviving was Aviendo Sora, which became the tree of life. As a reward,
• 2:30:52
  they did take a cutting and gave it to Layman, or well to
• 2:30:56
  the Kyrine. Right, we can assume as accepted by Laman, the who
• 2:31:01
  they would have seen as the chief of the Kyrieene or Kyrieen in Well,
• 2:31:05
  wouldn't he have come along like a couple hundred years later? Oh right,
• 2:31:11
  so he would have inherited this, yes, right, So they gave it
• 2:31:13
  to the Kyrine, and then it matured as a tree and was something that
• 2:31:18
  was around for several hundred years. And my notes really quick about like four
• 2:31:22
  hundred fifty years later, about four and fift years later. Right. I
• 2:31:24
  also want to note that in New Year seven hundred and five, Katsawayne or
• 2:31:30
  Malidrin Maladrin is born, which means that when we get to the chapter one,
• 2:31:35
  she's been alive for about three hundred years. I just wanted to throw
• 2:31:39
  that out there, like a little while after the Aeled a couple of generations
• 2:31:43
  after the Aell deliver the cutting to the Kyrieene in Katsawayne is born. Well,
• 2:31:48
  she's as bout as old as I said I can get. Why can't
• 2:31:52
  I said, I get any older? The O thread, Yeah, the
• 2:31:54
  most powerful channelers can live six to eight hundred years. However, by swearing
• 2:32:00
  on the oath rod, their lifespan is cut in half, and so the
• 2:32:01
  oldest I se that I live to just over three hundred years. Some of
• 2:32:07
  the more powerful ones may be able to live to four hundred years, but
• 2:32:11
  there we don't really have any examples of those, because no one's really in
• 2:32:13
  nine Eve's power range, and Katsawayine is seen as the most powerful eyes that
• 2:32:18
  I in many centuries until an Eve, I thought it was until maybe uh
• 2:32:26
  Elaida in Lorain. Oh no, no, you're right now. I think
• 2:32:30
  they come close. Yeah, no, they're they're they're a step below her.
• 2:32:33
  Yeah, yeah. And I looked at the power ratings and stuff,
• 2:32:37
  which I don't really have a good understanding of, but it there's some contention
• 2:32:43
  there when you're reading different sources as to whether Iguin is as powerful as Katsawayine
• 2:32:50
  or just under And how powerful is kats Wwayne without all her secret tricks,
• 2:32:56
  right, nobody really knows, well, you know, I always saw kat
• 2:33:00
  Swain as the sort of Moraine replacement. Once Moraine disappeared, we needed an
• 2:33:05
  advisor to Rand who was, Yeah, and she's right there, and she's
• 2:33:09
  right there, and she sort of steps into that role. Not that I
• 2:33:11
  find her the same as Moraine. I find them both very different characters,
• 2:33:18
  but at the same time in very compelling in a similar manner as sort of
• 2:33:24
  powerful women, characters who were able to step up and really excellent examples of
• 2:33:28
  what an I said, I should probably exactly exactly. Yeah, I'd say
• 2:33:33
  if there were two characters who exemplify I said I, it is Moraine and
• 2:33:37
  Codswain. Oh and Kat Swayine does have a way of showing up at the
• 2:33:46
  moment important events are really kicking off. I was reading and one of the
• 2:33:52
  Wicki articles on her life and she was retired twice, and she like the
• 2:34:00
  second time she retires, she's like, I'm going to Geldon and I'm gonna
• 2:34:03
  trim Roses for the rest of my life. And then the I Eel War
• 2:34:05
  breaks out and she's just there and she she can't keep herself away, and
• 2:34:11
  yet she ends up as the armorlane seat eventually. Yeah, like, dude,
• 2:34:16
  cut Swayne, just just just kilt chill, like you can, You've
• 2:34:20
  done enough. Maybe she did all this teaching to Rand about accepting his fate
• 2:34:24
  to and being okay with it, and she maybe taught herself I don't think
• 2:34:30
  I've ever seen an ey said I take their own advice in my life.
• 2:34:35
  I don't think she's gonna start. She's gonna fight that as hard as she
• 2:34:39
  can. She's great. Maybe to do one on her one. Oh definitely,
• 2:34:43
  Well that'll that's gonna be much later when she shows up. Yeah,
• 2:34:46
  yeah, all right, So now that she's been born, we're not going
• 2:34:50
  to talk about her again for three hundred years and two hundred and fifty years
• 2:34:56
  after the birth of Katswaine. That's not a calendar, but it probably could
• 2:35:01
  be ac in nine hundred and fifty five of the New Era multi air falls,
• 2:35:09
  which I'm pointedly not talking about because that should probably be a part of
• 2:35:15
  an episode and all by itself. Lynn is born just two or three years
• 2:35:20
  before the Blight begins to expand, and for various political reasons and other influences,
• 2:35:31
  the empire falls apart at just the right time. The military is unavailable,
• 2:35:35
  and that's it. It goes to the trollish, Can I tell you
• 2:35:43
  so? I was recently on Reddit, the r Wheel of Time, the
• 2:35:48
  WoT so reddit, and it was a pun thread, a wet thread,
• 2:35:54
  a pun thread, okay, and it started it was it was, uh,
• 2:36:01
  what do you call a fade wearing lipstick? What? Quite fetching?
• 2:36:09
  And so I had to I had to contribute. They contribute, and so
• 2:36:15
  my pun was, what do you call a group of orders playing video games?
• 2:36:20
  What a land party? Oh? Terrible, but I felt pretty clever
• 2:36:26
  coming up with that party. A land party anyway, Sorry, you were
• 2:36:35
  talking about land So I had to bring that one up. I like it,
• 2:36:39
  keep it. Uh So in New Era seven, pedro Neal leads the
• 2:36:50
  children to invade Altara, beginning the White Cloak War, which I really wanted
• 2:36:56
  to mention largely because Murrindi and Ilian send a fairly quickly, and a young
• 2:37:05
  Tamlin al Thor arrives on the scene and he becomes a pretty important player.
• 2:37:09
  Because this is just the last forty years before the events of the main book,
• 2:37:18
  Right, We're really seeing the characters in our main story start to develop
• 2:37:24
  as people and starting to take their place in society, and sort of some
• 2:37:30
  of their backstory is taking place in the next forty years. So Rand's father
• 2:37:35
  is a young man now, and he's still an untested infantryman. And you
• 2:37:39
  know, Jordan's original concept was to have his main protagonist be a man returning
• 2:37:46
  for war. So in a lot of ways, TAM's backstory it's not RAN's
• 2:37:52
  backstory, but it was sort of meant to be in a lot of ways.
• 2:37:56
  So I sort of think of Tam as if Rand hadn't been the hero,
• 2:38:01
  there could have been a book about Tam. Oh my god, I
• 2:38:03
  would have loved to hear about TAM's adventures during the war. I think that
• 2:38:07
  would be an amazing book. And at that point he would have been a
• 2:38:11
  second Captain of the Alien Companions, which was one of these. Each of
• 2:38:18
  the monarchy seems to have one, and they're like a bodyguard unit of the
• 2:38:24
  monarch essentially, like these are the crack special op units, an elite fighting
• 2:38:30
  force anyway. And so he was, you know, obviously good enough to
• 2:38:37
  be gifted with a blade master's blade, which I think was given to him
• 2:38:43
  by the King of Ilion. And where else would you get a blade like
• 2:38:48
  that? I believe Robert Jorden said that it was given to him, Yes,
• 2:38:52
  But doesn't Tam say at some point he did have to he did duel
• 2:38:58
  a blade master, I think, and he said he bought it, it's
• 2:39:01
  some one point. And then he talks about how it wasn't worth the cost,
• 2:39:05
  right, But that's a I said, I truth, right, he
• 2:39:09
  bought it with the death of a man. Well, did he actually find
• 2:39:13
  a blade master and kill him or did he prove himself in combat and was
• 2:39:16
  granted the blade by five blade masters? So there are two ways to get
• 2:39:22
  a hair and Mark blade. You can kill somebody who's a blade master,
• 2:39:26
  or you can be granted the blade by five other blade masters. No,
• 2:39:30
  I don't think tam ever said anything quite so detailed. I think he said
• 2:39:33
  things like he bought it and the price was too high, like you said,
• 2:39:37
  and something like he earned it because it had to be done, something
• 2:39:43
  along those lines, like he did what had to be done and earned this
• 2:39:46
  blade. It wasn't he wasn't clear. So I always interpreted that as he
• 2:39:52
  killed a man. But now that you're saying that, that could totally apply
• 2:39:56
  to like he did as do in the military and was awarded this blade.
• 2:40:03
  He killed a bunch of people, likely, which is what the price he's
• 2:40:07
  talking about. I once saw some speculation that he killed Layman himself. Yeah,
• 2:40:13
  but it was speculation. I do think the Iell killed Layman, but
• 2:40:18
  I thought it was fun speculation that like the idea that Like he saw what
• 2:40:22
  the Iell were after and decided to end the war by dueling Layman and giving
• 2:40:28
  them to the Ieal, and that's how he earned his like Blade Master.
• 2:40:31
  I think it's it doesn't fit the canon at all, but I thought it
• 2:40:35
  was in the timeline like it just it doesn't work as a theory, But
• 2:40:39
  I thought it was a really interesting theory, and like I, for a
• 2:40:41
  second, I wanted it to be true. New era nine seventy Ilien and
• 2:40:45
  tear du get out on the first of many border wars that we hear about
• 2:40:46
  later. That's where Tam is promoted to second captain of the Alien companions.
• 2:40:52
  New era nine seventy two, Gallat is born to Tygraine. She receives the
• 2:40:56
  maiden foretelling that we'll hear a lot more about later, heads off to the
• 2:41:01
  Aeel Waste to follow through with that, and and or descends into a bunch
• 2:41:07
  of chaotic succession wars. Morgaz finally takes the throne New era nine seventy five
• 2:41:13
  Loman Sin. This is where he cuts the tree. The very next year,
• 2:41:18
  nine seventy six, Genuine Convinces four clans to execute Laman for this terrible
• 2:41:26
  sin of murdering this sacred tree. So why did he cut the tree down?
• 2:41:31
  I believe it had something to do with his throne feeling unstable. He
• 2:41:37
  wanted to make a big show of how what a powerful ruler he was,
• 2:41:41
  and he would have the most beautiful, elaborate throne ever made. I thought
• 2:41:48
  there was something else to it, but it could be a lot more.
• 2:41:50
  Yeah, let us know if there was more to it. Sent them there.
• 2:41:56
  It was something or something equally foolish, right. Laman's an idiot.
• 2:42:05
  He never seemed like a very good ruler. He's a lame ma'am Liman.
• 2:42:13
  Only a year and possibly some months, but probably about one year after the
• 2:42:18
  cutting of I believe, which it was now named a Vanda Ladora because it
• 2:42:22
  was its own tree. Ninety thousand ill warriors pour across the dragon Wall,
• 2:42:28
  descend upon kyrie En and Sacket in short order, and they said, it's
• 2:42:31
  two towers a light like two giant candles and glowing in the night. So
• 2:42:35
  we're breaking into the Iel war here. Well, did Tam fought some other
• 2:42:39
  battles before the Iol War, didn't he? Uh? Yeah, the White
• 2:42:43
  Cloak war the White Cloak Warrior, the border conflicts between Ilian and Tyr,
• 2:42:50
  and then the Iel Warm But we can assume that, especially with these border
• 2:42:54
  conflicts, he was probably pretty active throughout this. I think it's about a
• 2:42:58
  fifteen year period that he served, right, It may may even be a
• 2:43:03
  little longer than that. Yeah, pretty much constant conflicts, sort of sort
• 2:43:07
  of in a similar style to the Aeel and their their clan tribe wars.
• 2:43:13
  So it's just sort of constant pack and forth. Not really a lot of
• 2:43:16
  deaths, but a lot of fighting going on. Yeah, he had a
• 2:43:18
  real lifelong military career. Yeah. And then before he came home, where
• 2:43:26
  did he meet carry author? I didn't see too terribly much on that,
• 2:43:31
  but I know that she's in Dorian. I know that she had red hair,
• 2:43:35
  but many and Doran's do. So that was one reason why nobody ever
• 2:43:39
  really questioned where rand came from. But he definitely met her while he was
• 2:43:46
  serving in the Alien Army. For him, it's mentioned that he found the
• 2:43:50
  baby laying in the bloodied snow, found this newborn baby, and he knew
• 2:43:58
  that his wife very much wanted a child. I always interpreted that as she
• 2:44:03
  couldn't conceive. I agree, and he saw this child that needed his help
• 2:44:09
  and he just thought, well, I'll take him home, right. No,
• 2:44:15
  I feel like it's going to die out here. Rand would have had
• 2:44:16
  brothers and sisters if carry Althora could have conceived. Yeah, we also know
• 2:44:24
  she died shortly after coming to the Two Rivers. I don't know that that
• 2:44:28
  doesn't There's nothing in there really implies trouble with conception, but maybe that was
• 2:44:33
  the issue. That makes sense that they were trying to have more shill tie
• 2:44:37
  together a few strings there. So that's my speculation on that. Sure,
• 2:44:43
  I liked a couple of things in here. Kyrie In is largely sacked.
• 2:44:50
  Loman narrowly escapes to Tyr, which lends him soldiers on the condition that he
• 2:44:56
  flee to the north to draw the Iel away from Tyr and hopefully thin out
• 2:45:01
  their supply line, which we know is ridiculous now because the Iel don't use
• 2:45:05
  the supply line. Laman is pursued by the impossibly fast moving Iel clans all
• 2:45:09
  the way to Tarvalen, where they find and summarily execute Lamen. The Iel
• 2:45:16
  immediately cease fighting and return to the Threefold Land because their mission is completed.
• 2:45:20
  Yeah, I mean it wasn't a war for them. It was an execution.
• 2:45:24
  Yeah. If he hadn't run away, very few people would have died.
• 2:45:28
  He had to. I know that he was a clan chief. Was
• 2:45:30
  it his clan and four other clans that crossed the dragon Wall? Or was
• 2:45:35
  it his clan and three others? I thought it was just four clans in
• 2:45:41
  total. I think that's right. Yeah, it wasn't time, so would
• 2:45:43
  be his clan, his clan and three others? Yeah, you remember which
• 2:45:48
  had a curiosity, no, no idea. And during that battle in front
• 2:45:50
  of Tarvalen, which was later named the Battle of the Shining Walls, and
• 2:45:54
  attachment of elite soldiers are sent by Ilian to remove a group of spear maidens
• 2:45:58
  from which had planted itself on Dragon Mount. The second captain, Tamlin Elthor,
• 2:46:05
  finds an infant laying in the bloodied snow in the aftermath of the battle,
• 2:46:09
  and takes the child back to camp with him. The war's now over,
• 2:46:13
  of course, and he returns with his red haired and Doran wife to
• 2:46:16
  the two rivers. The woman who gave birth to Rand in the blood snow
• 2:46:22
  was a maiden of the Spear, and she became a Maiden of the Spear,
• 2:46:26
  not because she was an ay Eel, right, but because she had
• 2:46:31
  crossed the spine of the world because she started out life as Tygraine. Her
• 2:46:39
  name is now scha Elle or Shayeel. Yeah, sha Yiel is what I
• 2:46:45
  would say. And so she her life is kind of crazy. She was
• 2:46:50
  a mother and a princess and was told by an I said eye through before
• 2:46:54
  telling that she had to give it all up and flee to the waste or
• 2:47:01
  the world would end. So she is the mother of the dragon reborn.
• 2:47:05
  And what is Galad's title? The first protector event of and Or or he
• 2:47:13
  has a special title, that's that's a Gollwin's title. O. What's Galad?
• 2:47:18
  Gallad isn't anything. He's at a very important andor and noble right and
• 2:47:24
  later the white cloth head of the White Cloaks. Right. One of my
• 2:47:30
  favorite bait and switches in the series is that you really set up to like
• 2:47:35
  Gowen in the beginning and hate Galad, but by the end of the series,
• 2:47:39
  Man, I fucking hate Gowen and love Gallad. I always imagine is
• 2:47:45
  like hair is always like over one eye. Seriously, that's the way.
• 2:47:50
  He actually just fits that Gollin or Gallad Gowin Gowin. Yeah, totally,
• 2:47:54
  with like kind of curly like yeah, yeah, totally. It's like never
• 2:47:58
  really looking at you. Ye is that kind of fuck? But one of
• 2:48:05
  those people, one of those people. Uh. New era nine eighty three,
• 2:48:11
  we see evidence that Ishmael has begun work with the Black Aja again.
• 2:48:18
  New era nine eighty four, Terran gel Demadrat is assassinated by Tom Marlyn was
• 2:48:26
  more Gase's lover. Go back a little bit. I want to know about
• 2:48:28
  this evidence. Hold on, well I want to we'll get Oh, i'd
• 2:48:31
  have to look. Okay, Well, I just see that he reappears on
• 2:48:35
  the scene. I just thought I throw it out there because we're close this
• 2:48:39
  early. I thought you didn't appear until significantly later. Nine eighty three.
• 2:48:46
  Yeah, that's what I had. Yeah three years. Wow, that's after
• 2:48:50
  Rand's born, right slightly before. Oh wait, oh no, no,
• 2:48:56
  no, no, no no, so that Aaron son of Milan sent of
• 2:49:00
  An r. By the way, this is straight out of the Wheel of
• 2:49:01
  Time Wiki. I'm just gonna read this out loud to you and see what
• 2:49:07
  you think. Had a theory based on Ishmiel being thrown out and touching the
• 2:49:09
  world for specific periods of time. Aaron had heard claims that people had encountered
• 2:49:13
  him as long as forty years after the ceiling of the Boar. Using lost
• 2:49:18
  manuscripts, Aaron concluded it might have taken some time for Ishmail to be brought
• 2:49:22
  into the prison with the remainder of the Forsaken, and it might possibly have
• 2:49:26
  been thrown and might possibly have been thrown out in a regular cycle. There's
• 2:49:31
  ample evidence now to show support for this hypothesis, such as interviews from Dark
• 2:49:37
  Friends saying that as early as nine eighty three New Era they were receiving instructions
• 2:49:41
  from someone calling himself Bail. Saman Here on the fan wiki had saying Ishmiel's
• 2:49:48
  final cycle of freedom occurred as the seals on the Dark One's prison were weakening,
• 2:49:50
  resulting in him being permanently released from the Dark Ones prison in nine ninety
• 2:49:56
  seven. At some point before the other for and We're released, he was
• 2:50:01
  informed that by the Black Aja that the dragon had been reborn. That's a
• 2:50:05
  little annoying. It doesn't seem like there's any evidence that he has released that
• 2:50:07
  early. It sounds like speculation. Yeah, it sounds like he was released
• 2:50:13
  around nine ninety seven, shortly before the Eye of the World, because I'm
• 2:50:18
  a big fan of the character. New Era ninet eighty four, Terreangill demondraated
• 2:50:22
  Demdrate is assassinated by Tom Marilyn, who's Mark Gase's lover. Yeah, he's
• 2:50:28
  a little bit of a tricky bastard, isn't he. Well. I looked
• 2:50:33
  into it a little and it sounds like Tom believe that Terren Gale was going
• 2:50:37
  to assassinate Mark Gase and killed him first. Good for him, and we've
• 2:50:43
  got to believe him because he's pretty much always right. Yeah, he understands
• 2:50:48
  what's going on behind the scenes all the time. The Gray Fox. I'll
• 2:50:50
  go over this quickly, but around that time, in nine eighty four,
• 2:50:56
  there's this incident with the Red Aja and Tom's nephew. No. I want
• 2:51:01
  to mention that people who have read this will know what I'm talking about.
• 2:51:05
  And this is the reason Tom mistrusts, I said, I is because Owen
• 2:51:11
  is gentle outside of Tower law. Tom in Morges's court confronts Alita publicly,
• 2:51:22
  and this triggers a meeting at the Hall of the Sitters where the Red Sitters
• 2:51:31
  are exiled from the Tower. This event becomes known as the Vileness. It
• 2:51:35
  looks like that happens by nine eighty eight, and at this point, Swan
• 2:51:41
  is raised Amerlind after the death of three Amberlands in a short period of time.
• 2:51:46
  We don't know exactly what happens there, but there's clearly a lot of
• 2:51:52
  bad tension in the Tower with these Red Sitters being exiled, and the reason
• 2:51:56
  likely Swan is raised, who's very young and very power. They're sick of
• 2:52:01
  them dying. I think they all died because they were old. Really,
• 2:52:05
  that was actually like, that's why they went with someone who was so young.
• 2:52:11
  Yeah, because the last three he had died because they were just ancient.
• 2:52:13
  I think she's only fifty or sixty years old at this point. Well,
• 2:52:16
  I think she's only fifty or sixty at the beginning of the series and
• 2:52:20
  I the world. Yeah, so she may be even younger at this point.
• 2:52:22
  Yeah. Between New Era nine ninety three and ninetety seven, three false
• 2:52:28
  Dragons and Candor, Eradiman, and Ilian declare themselves and are eventually caught and
• 2:52:33
  gentled. The pattern is crying out for a dragon in New Era nine ninety
• 2:52:37
  six, Patent Thane is summoned to shale Ghoul and remade by the Dark One
• 2:52:45
  to be his hound, and in nine ninety eight Logan, another false dragon,
• 2:52:50
  is captured. So we're getting right up to the beginning of the Eye
• 2:52:54
  of the World here. These are sort of the last events leading up to
• 2:52:58
  the rumors that we hear in chapter one, right, the very last rumor
• 2:53:03
  that does happen before the book begins. Pad and Fain brings the rumor of
• 2:53:07
  war. That's war and gild On. So yeah, so as we get
• 2:53:13
  to chapter three, the folks in the two rivers are essentially hearing very old
• 2:53:18
  news, right, right, and that's that's what's going on at this point.
• 2:53:24
  They're all worried about it. That's Tom laughs at them. Basically,
• 2:53:31
  it's like that's old news, even even in Braylan, which is the last
• 2:53:33
  place, well maybe not the last that's something just like that. Yeah,
• 2:53:39
  well I guess the last place. I guess there's people underneath rocks that haven't
• 2:53:46
  heard this, right, But it's so that's old history. But that pretty
• 2:53:54
  much catches us up to the beginning of chapter one. Yeah, you know,
• 2:53:56
  we've got a lot of characters scattered all over the world doing their things,
• 2:54:03
  going to their history and more depths, and I just wanted to say
• 2:54:48
  thank you to the response we've gotten. I do want to say something about
• 2:54:54
  the number of downloads that we've gotten online for less than an hour of I've
• 2:55:00
  been I've surprised, sort of overwhelmed, but it's not like a huge amount
• 2:55:07
  of activity. But I can have any of this kind of surprising. Yeah,
• 2:55:11
  I just you know, we posted one episode and we were expecting like
• 2:55:16
  five downloads. Like over three days, the amount download doubled right each day.
• 2:55:20
  It was just just encresed. By the third day, I was like,
• 2:55:24
  how long is this going to keep going? You know? And then
• 2:55:26
  be interested? I think I think that shows just how much interest there is
• 2:55:30
  in the series that the two guys sitting at their kitchen table can and and
• 2:55:33
  talking for an hour can get a bunch of attention almost immediately. Yeah that's
• 2:55:39
  awesome. Yeah, so, uh, you know, let's let's keep this
• 2:55:45
  thing going. I I am really excited to see what they're going to do
• 2:55:50
  with the TV show me too, you know, and simultaneously excited and sort
• 2:55:58
  of dreading when something terrible comes out. Now, this is what everybody thinks
• 2:56:03
  of this, of this wonderful fantasy series that I know. But I'm going
• 2:56:13
  to maintain a positive attitude about this because the rest of the world sucks.
• 2:56:16
  So I'm basically going to assume that this is going that my favorite thing is
• 2:56:20
  going to be given the treatment it deserves, if only. All right,
• 2:56:26
  So here's here's my philosophy. Harriet picked Brandon Sanderson. Harriet picked the guy
• 2:56:35
  who's running the show. She was right once. Yeah, I trust Harriet.
• 2:56:41
  And I was thinking, while you were saying not just now, this
• 2:56:46
  is the same thing that I said about the Sanderson books. I was like,
• 2:56:48
  I'm prepared to be disappointed, but I have to see it anyway,
• 2:56:54
  right, So of course I'm going to watch the series. I'm just I
• 2:56:56
  guess withholding judgment because I'm afraid to get my hopes up. I'm still WWHD,
• 2:57:05
  what would Harriet do? Thank you for listening to The Wheel of Time
• 2:57:09
  Spoilers podcast. Rate us in the Apple Podcast app, or support us on
• 2:57:13
  Patreon. That good enough