The Tower Shakes & A Fount of Power - The Gathering Storm chapters 40 & 41 - EP536 - WoT Spoilers

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast. Do you
want to start preambling on what are double header is
going to be today?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, we're doing a double header today because it is
the Battle of the White Tower, And do you just
going through the whole thing today? We're gonna try and
knock it all out in one go through because again,
just like the last two chapters, it's one scene broken
over two chapters because it is quite long, but I
think it works really well as one episode.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah, I mean, neither one is titled the Battle of
the White Tower. If you talk to anyone in the
fandom and you say the Battle of the White Tower,
they know you mean these two chapters, because how could
you not, right, Yeah, it's one episode. It's one episode,
and it's such an action scene that I'm confident we're
going to get through this in a reasonable amount of time.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Right, Right, And like The Dress is Green sort of
had a similar thing, but that was mostly it ended
in one chapter, or it sort of started at the
end of one chapter but was mostly in the chapter
after that. This is actually just both chapters.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah. Yeah, there's a slight time jump in the middle
to just allow for the fuzziness of the battle continued here, right.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
They shows the beginning of the battle and the ending
of the battle, but not really the middle of it.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
You get like a good idea of what everyone does
going into the battle, and then you catch up with
them at the end, like and then you can you
can fill in the details in the middle. They don't die,
but they have a lot of harrowing escapes. That's how
the middle of the battle went, tadah, and.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
We get some summary of how many died and all
that kind of you know, totals and stuff. At the end.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
I think there's plenty to talk about, totally, totally, totally
lots of page time is spent on just like really
cool visuals.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah yeah, so there's definitely gonna be some reading in here,
I think, Oh yes, yeah, great action scene. This is
the stuff where I think Sanderson really shines when he's
writing these kinds of you know, you really want to
be able to see it and visualize it and cool
battle scenes and cool moments for the characters and iconic

(02:17):
visuals written down on the page.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah. I mean, this is one of the ebook covers
I think, right, is that one with Agwayne just sort
of flung back using Vora's songre All to just blast
rocking out of the sky. It's one of those pieces
of art. This is just such an iconic moment, and yes, Sanderson,
Sanderson does it justice. Like I mean Agwaine says, I
want this to rival the Last Battle for its ferocity,

(02:43):
and like for a one woman army, she definitely gave
as good as she possibly could for a that like
this is so epic and Sanderson makes it so epic
and yeah, one episode.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Well, and I love the way he cranks down on
the mechanism of circles and on all to bypass the
fork route, right, Like that's definitely him cranking down on
the mechanics of how channeling works in a way that's
very Sanderson of him.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
And we do love a hard Magic system moment.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yes, definitely definitely taking advantage of the hard Magic system
beautifully in a way that makes you go, oh, that
is a really cool way that she could have gained
power in a moment, gone from nothing to very powerful
in a very short period of time, Like I think
you really really mastered that.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's delicious, so we should probably get
into it.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, grit usin. I think it's what this is yours?

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Okay, Chapter forty, The tower shakes and our symbol is
the shan Chan helmet. Swan awoke with a start. Something
was wrong, something was very, very wrong. She scrambled off
of her palette. As she did, a dark figure moved
suddenly on the other side of the tent, metal rasping

(03:55):
against metal. Swan froze, embracing the source reflexively and summoning
a globe of la Gareth Brands stood alert heron Mark Steele,
drawn and ready. He wore only his small clothes, and
she had to keep herself from staring at his muscled body,
which was in far better shape than that of most
men half his age. What is it, he asked tensely.

(04:15):
Light Swan said, you sleep with your sword always. Agwain
is in danger? What kind of danger? I don't know.
She admitted, we were meeting, and she vanished suddenly. I
think Alida may have decided to execute her, or at
least pull her from her cell and do something to her.

(04:37):
And that's basically what this entire plot arc does for
this chapter is the push pull between them as they
work their way towards doing the.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Thing, doing the thing, and what drives me nuts, and
we'll get to this in the second chapter, but at
some point she has to admit the point is no
longer saving again from Elida from the shawn Chan, because
at one point they're withdrawing. The battle's over, right and like,
and her goalposts change multiple times. First it's saving her

(05:10):
for Elida, then it's saving her from shawn Chan, then
it's like, uh, and then the shawn Chan are gone,
but she has to pull her out anyway, which doesn't
make any sense unless you're going back to your original
Alida problem. But that's not why you charged in there,
because your justification for going in there was the Shawn Chan,
not Alida's. Uh uh. Yeah. The least favorite part of

(05:31):
this chapter is Suan's weak ass excuses for going in
there and pulling her out and her inconsistency right.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, her and go and teaming up makes a lot
of sense, But I.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Just feel like Suan's smarter than that, you know. I
just feel like, it's.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
No, it's weird, it is weird how her goalposts change,
and it's yeah, she just never admits that her real
goal is to kidnap Agwayne back because she's more worried
about the rebel camp right than about resolving the conflict
and trusting Agwayne. She's like, no, the rebel camp's going
to fall apart. It's my right to decide for you

(06:12):
how to handle that, which again is why she pairs
great with Gowin for this part.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
The two of them are doing exactly what Agwayne has
told them not to do by not trusting her, not
treating her like an adult, not treating her like the ambulin,
and listening to her commands.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, and Gareth Brynn, you know, goes along with it
and enables it to keep them alive. And she forgives
him for that. She's like, you made bad calls because
the option was to let people you care about go
on a suicide mission. I get it. You didn't come
for me. You came for them because they couldn't be stopped.
Like that's I like that. She forgives him for it,

(06:48):
while also making the knife twist even harder for the
other two.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, and so Sue one's like, well, she should have,
you know, if it was something that was unexpected, she
should have come back to sleep and let me know
that there was no problem, which basically means Suan's going
in there and ruining her plants because Gwaine couldn't be
bothered to text back, right like, yeah, she left me,
Like I'm going in there after her because she left
me on red. It's like the most it's like a

(07:16):
mother texting her daughter are you okay? At a party,
not giving a response, and then like calling the police
and crashing the party.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Right, Yeah, totally, especially once you see what's happening, Like
I could totally see being like we have to go
in and protect Agwayne. But like if it was the
Shawn Scherner withdrawing and were so deep into enemy territory,
we still need to find her. What if you had
just stayed with her, slapped her awake, channeled at her
to give her some energy something to be like a GWayne,

(07:43):
what do you want us to do? We're here now,
tell us what to do. Like, yeah, she was exhausted,
but you don't think you couldn't.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Have like wiped away the exhaustion.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, given her a little power juice to like she
only needed five minutes to tell you what to do
and then she could have gone back to sleep. But yeah,
the goalposts move in a way that feels inconsistent to
Swan's overall intelligence, and I wonder, yeah, if that's bad
writing or if that's Swan's own trauma clouding her judgment.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
I mean, I'll go with Swan's clouding her judgment because
she's always been this stubborn I know what's best Amerln
and like we've seen her move beyond that a little bit,
but I'm willing to without Agwainne de Geider, I can
see her reverting back to that a little bit.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Well, I think, especially with respect to Alida. Right, Like,
Swan has some very specific trauma around Elida and making
rapid decisions, So I wonder if that helps excuse it,
because she's like, well, normally I would trust you, but
it's Alida, so I can't let go in the same way. Yeah,
I don't know. It feels like it was necessary for

(08:50):
plot rather than to stay true to Swan's character. And
I don't like the plot developments that happen, So I
just don't like it.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, I don't. Yeah, Swan, I would have liked to
see her not lose some of the growth that she
gained following GWayne.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, but also, like you said, a GWayne hasn't been around,
so it could be easier for old habits to reassert themselves.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
And she's had like make decisions on her own without
guidance and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I feel
like the next conversation happens three or four times between
several different characters, but between Brinn and suon where he
goes they're flying on channeling shadows spawn and they go, oh,
that must be Sean chan because it's actually rock and
until rock and and channelers on their backs instead of

(09:37):
And I feel like that happens like in a bunch
of different places.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
Well, right, because we move from something is happening at
the tower to something involving channeling and fire is happening
at the tower to oh shit, that's Christ. Like we
get those those little bits of information dripping out of
servertime because we're far away from the tower, right, like
they are across the river.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
But happens in tower as well, in like both places,
like in two different places.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, so it's hard for them to, you know, figure
it out quickly, but over time they figure it out. Yeah,
we know, it's just this is what noticing that the
tower is under assault by the Shan Chan from the
air looks like this is how that information propagates through
the population.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
I just wish more people were like, oh, Shawn Chan, Yeah,
that's what those flying things are, right, But I guess
they're so far away.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
That's the thing. Is the only reason that these people
know is because Igwayne had her foretelling dreams and made
sure everyone knew this is what's gonna happen. But yeah,
they're hundreds of miles away from the front lines. The
regular run of the mill person has not accumulated this knowledge.
This is only people who listened to Agwayne and remembered
what she was talking about, who were gonna put that together, which,

(10:47):
like she did her best making sure people would know,
but a lot of people were like, yeah, yeah, whatever,
that's not gonna happen or gonna happen for months. Only
Swan and a few other people like really committed those
details to memory. I think.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
So I have to draw parallels to nine to eleven
with this, right, a city far away from the front lines,
thinking they were safe being attacked by a flying creature
in a raid that was designed to do something that
we really weren't considering. That left people feeling unsafe and uncertain.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah, the only difference is the leaving with hostages part right,
right right, and like leaving with important information that really
changes the war, Like that's the only difference. But yeah,
the Inviolate tower burning and falling down on the city around.
I mean, the tower itself doesn't fall, but pieces of
it definitely come hurtling downward. Yeah, there's there's definitely some

(11:44):
parallels to we thought we were safe, what the hell
is happening?

Speaker 2 (11:48):
But then it kind of makes a way in and
not like this conspiracy theorist is like, they're gonna attack
the towers, and I was like, good, yeah, sure, He's like, no,
they bombed the basement, Like it's gonna get worse, right like,
and everyone's again, nah, that'll never happen.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, it's less the conspiracy theory side of it and
more just the sense of like, our stronghold is on fire, right,
we didn't think that was possible, and it came from
the air with none of the ground assault that you
would expect. And Yeah, in the Tomorrow Pierce series, it's

(12:23):
not the Alana books, but the Kel books that come
after Alana. There's a scene in the fourth Kel book
where the fort gets attacked, and I read an author's
note or essay a couple of years later or ago,
a couple years ago, I guess where she talked about
how she wrote that immediate aftermath of the attack scene

(12:44):
as sort of a response to nine to eleven, Like
that was part of how she processed her feelings about it,
was writing this scene of like a place that was
supposed to be safe, that had been all trashed and
destroyed by the enemy, and that was like part of
how she worked through her feelings. And it was like
when I then went back and read the book, I
was like, oh my god, Yeah, I can see it.

(13:06):
I can see how she grafted nine to eleven trauma
into this fantasy world to like work through it. And yeah,
this does not have any of the same visuals, but
there are some certain emotional undertones that feel the same.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
And this came out in what two thousand and six,
I think, right, So yeah, yeah, you know, with a
significant lag time after you know, nine to eleven to
sort of you know, be in the psyche of the author,
right and still be fairly fresh right as we de
live with the aftermath of.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
It, right, Yeah. Yeah, So but also you know, anytime
that your stronghold has attacked, it makes you feel unsafe.
I mean that's not unique to nine to eleven.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Well no, but I mean you have a tower which
has a hole punched in it, you know, two thirds
of the way up right, with a smoking hole coming
out of it. Right, The visual is.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
There, It's that's true, that's true.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, this one is two thousand and nine, thank you,
pants I it was early, yeah, late, sometime in that range,
but certainly after yeah, well after well after yeah, And
you know, it's just it's not necessarily a hard comparison,
but there's it's hard for me not to see the
parallels there.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
That this one's even more visually weird.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
And the self sacrifice we talked about, like the blood Knives, right,
who are sacrificing themselves to do as much damage as possible.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean they're working on bringing
the tower down in a more symbolic way than a
little way, you know, also quite literal. If you can
bring down the power structure, then the building doesn't matter
so much. Yeah, but also remember this entire scene is
happening at night. Everything that's happening here, people are figuring

(14:51):
out through the veil of darkness.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
So yeah, there's this this part argument then between Brennan's
Suan about how he's like, you gave your word not
to go in a rest and she's like, well, loophole, loophole, loophole.
And he's like, oh god, I'm getting really sick of this,
like breaking your word with loophole's shit, and she's like, well,
I'm doing it anyway.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
She's like, well, guess who else you're sick of, and
then heads towards Colvin, our favorite character, and then POV
break and we switched to inside the Tower where the
good stuff is.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Why are the worst POV's always Gowen involved. It's just
it's not so much that I hate Golwin as I
hate reading about Golin.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Anyway, about a GWayne. We join a GWayne in the tower.
The tower shakes in the very first sentence of this

(15:57):
paragraph where the tower shakes repeat, and then when the
tower stops shaking in the second chapter. It's a noticeable.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Event, right because it's Agwayne fighting back.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Yeah, exactly, It's very much worth tracking. But yeah, we
join Agwaine and Nicola more or less where we left them.
They're working their way down the hallway, and Nicola is
still not completely convinced that it's not the last battle yet,
and Igwin's like, it's freaking the shan Chan and I'm
going to freak out. Gwin definitely has a moment where she,

(16:28):
you know, is a small, terrified, traumatized girl who dealt
with being in prison by the Sean Shan and then
all her work in the dream and the real world
thinking about herself as Omoline pays off right.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
I was gonna say her.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Backbone like armors up and she decides to go beast
mode instead.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
No, she pushed yourself upright. No, she would not flee.
She was Amberlyn.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah. And then she has this moment that reminds me
of sore Leia, a woman who has notably stuck up
for her as being in awesome eyes to die let
them come a GWayne Rard opening herself to the source. Blessedly,
enough time had passed to dull the forecruits slightly and
she was able to grab a faint trickle of the power.
It was tiny, perhaps the least amount of power she'd

(17:11):
ever channeled, but she's like, it's enough if I can
open myself up to a little bit I think I
can do more like I don't care if I'm weak.
I'm gonna make it work for me. And it's just
like Sorilya is correct to put her pride in you totally.
Sorilia is very proud of you right now. She just
got a surge of pride wherever she is and she
doesn't even know why.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
And in a lot of ways, you know, I feel
like the what she's able to do is take inspiration
from someone who can't channel very much right and figure
out a way to turn that into not necessarily advantage,
but how to overcome that weakness. Is like, as long
as I can channel, I can make a circle, which
is something that Sean Chan cannot do it. I think

(17:51):
it's a really effective tool against the Shawn Chan, right,
is the idea of a circle of channelers because the adom,
like she says, prevents that.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
I love that their own wickedness prevents them from being
effective against her. I love that they have the seeds
of their own destruction just built in. Oh, you can't
consent to being in these circles, Well, guess what other
circles you can't consent to being in any any power
amplification not for you.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Makes me wonder if the shan chan could even use onngre.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
All right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Because that was sort of like they would have to
pull that power in through the onngre all and that's
not something they're doing. They're pulling it, I like the
soul doom. Would we have to be the one who
would have to because they're in control of the circle, right,
so they would have to connect to the adom.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
But the Demani is the one that's actually channeling exactly.
H Yeah, that's an interesting question. Can they bring a turangrill? Well,
they've already got a turangriill in the ADM picture, but yeah,
could they bring it on onre all?

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah? Into the circle? Sure, in the bowl of the
wind circle. If you're in a circle, you can a
circle that you each joined willingly. You can embrace an
on griol we'reat But because the a dom prevents them
from joining the circle outside of the a dom, would
it prevent them from using it on grell? Right? So

(19:13):
the circle created by the adam is something very different
than a normal circle or is it?

Speaker 1 (19:18):
That's kind of yeah?

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Or is it right? Like? And so that's where well,
because it does it has this restriction on it and
that you cannot form a circle among channelers.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
And we do know that opening yourself to another channel
or and opening yourself to an ongreall are very very
similar processes. We know that that's the same. So if
you can't open up to another person, does that mean
you also can't open up to an object that would
give you amplification?

Speaker 2 (19:43):
And I believe that's the case. I don't think we
ever see a demane using on griol.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
No, we never see that, not.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
In a not in a caller, right former demani?

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Sure, but like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, Yeah,
we don't ever see it. And it makes sense, right
because Demani don't get possessions, So like, why would you
ever consider giving an object of power to a demani,
even for the duration of a channeling event, Like that
seems very antithetical to their entire concept of being.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Right, So socially you wouldn't give them one. But also
I have to wonder if like part of that reason
they don't have any possessions is like they you know,
on GREA all aren't something they can really use.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
And if they can't have possessions and they can't hide
in angriall. Maybe there's some really old reasons that have
been sort of lost in the midst of time, or
they just can't use them, and so the whole concept
of Onngrioll has just fallen out of lore for them.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Right, because we don't really see any shan Chan be like,
oh we want they have tearo on Grioll. Sure they're
able to use those, yeah, but those are usually used
by channeling into them, not by having them join you
in the circle of power.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
And even once the shan Chan join our side that
none of our guys on the side of the ocean
ever suggest giving on gre all to the shan Chan channelers.
There's few enough for the Westland channelers. They're definitely not
trying experimentally to see how the sean Chan would do
with them.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
So, yeah, I think the fact that she can use
Vora's songgreal and that she can join the circle are
both things that the sean Chan cannot do.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, i'd agree with that. I don't know if we
have canonical evidence for it, but close enough.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
The lack of evidence is not evidence, but in this
case it's it's compelling enough that I think that logically
the lack of being able to join a circle means
you should also not be able to channel using it onriel.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Yeah, I would agree.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
So Agwayne goes out and basically she has She's like, Okay,
I know what I'm gonna do. I'm going to form
these circles and finds the novices. And these are all
single serving novices, right as far as I can tell,
every year serving.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
It was like yogurt cups, single serving novices.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
It's actually a reference to Fight Club.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
She talks about single serving friends on airplanes, people you
make friends with on the airplanes never see again.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah, I've only seen that movie one, so I don't
have all the dialogue memorized. But yeah, I forgot about
that line. That's like one of the opening lines of
the entire movie.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, well it's because, yeah, they're on the airplane. So
this would be a single serving. I said, I, right,
this is one we only ever. They're only ever in
this chapter. We meet them once, we get to know them,
and we'll never see them again. All these novices.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yeah, there's Nikola and then all the other novices, right,
and some of them get names, some of them don't.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
But Yasmin Ytari and Nala.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yeah, I don't think any of them if they got
mentioned in any other things, it was as classmates of
Agwayne during her Tower arc.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
With the wiki says they were not mentioned.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Okay, so yet Literally it's Nicola is the face of
all the other novices. She's the one that we have
to remember. Yeah, and Gwaine says, here, I will protect you,
I promise. And when Nicola dies later in the battle
with Massana in the Dream Tower, she thinks back to
this moment, being like, well, I can only protect you

(22:57):
if you stay where I fucking told you to day
because Nicola is, you know, in the battle against Agwayne's wishes,
and it's like it's so sad because Agwayne promised to
protect her. But she also thinks like, well, I did
tell her to not come into this battle, Like that's
what happens. You had to listen to me in order
from my promise to hold I was protecting you.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
But yeah, I feel like Nicola and Aaron have some parallels, right,
this person who's like loyal to one of the main
characters but doesn't really listen to them that well and
kind of goes in their own direction and then ends
up dead and the character's like, I told you something
else and you didn't do it. I don't know how
to stop you from dying in that situation, right, Like

(23:39):
I can't be there.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Right. It's a better case scenario than with Aaron, because
Nicola died trying to protect Agwayne rather than trying to
kill her. But they're both dead. So you know, it's
unfortunate for our main character that they lost a follower
due to said follower not really listening to the person
they idolize. But she lived through this battle, which is cool.

(24:02):
So yeah. Agwain's idea is basically, find the novices get
enough power to travel to the basement where the ingreol
are so she can get an ongriel that allows her
to use those novices to become a one woman army.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Mm hm. And you know this scene always brings up
the question of what the fuck are the Chosen doing?

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Truly, truly, you're telling me that Chosen couldn't figure out
where this room is and gateway into it really clearly.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
You know, I get that it's got all the protections
you know, from walking in although Fane got in there right,
no problem, but it has no protections from the gateway none. Right,
we are beyond that point in history where they thought
they had to protect from gateways because gateways didn't exist,
and the fact that the forsaken frequently Bemoan they can't find.
You've got Masana there in the tower, who could have

(24:54):
compelled anyone at any time to go down into the
to open up the store. Tell her where it is,
open it up and ransack it and distribute that to
the forsaken, you know, extract a price from the other forsaken, right, Like, yeah,
this is just one of those things where the tower.
Why the tower Store of Onrel wasn't rated by the

(25:14):
forsaken was one of those things that I think I've
always wondered, like did Jordan just overlook that? Did you
just not think about it? Like I get that all
the other ones, like the hold in the Heart of
the Stone wasn't well advertised, no one really knew what
it was. No one knew about the store in Rudi,
and those were always secret. But like the old Malloye
Tower should have been fucking rated by the forsaken.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
I mean, especially given a bunch of black Aja did
take a bunch of turungriel from the tower and fled.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
And didn't bother with the rill or the song reel.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Yeah, a lot of loose ends hanging around there. And yeah,
if Agayne had triggered a trap on her way in
and gotten you know, completely killed, like just walking in
the room, then we would know. But she doesn't. She
just waltz is in there, grabs what she needs because
no one's ever thought to raid the place before, and
then goes and kicks ass. It's a very weird loophole

(26:09):
plot hole.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, I would, I would put this solidly in the
plot hole category, right, like, I just I don't see
an explanation for it.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yeah, the information exists, the availability exists, the means, the
motive the characters, Like, there's no reason why this room
isn't a bare empty room. It should be cleaned out,
Vora song Greal should be in Masana's possession already, really.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
And certainly that you know, these characters don't need to
learn the tower to teleport around like they've lived there
for years, right so they you know, So the gateway
stuff is all on the up and up as far
as I can tell, and they're doing short distance gateways,
which should also be easier.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, she knows exactly where in the tower she's going.
The tower feels like home.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
Mm hmm. I love that she has the power of
like four people and she's like almost as much as
I can do on my own.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
I know, right, because like these women are, you know,
not notably weak. It's not like they've been selected for
their weakness. They're just random novices. They're probably reasonably strong.
And she's like, ah, four, I'm back to eighty percent.
That's good enough.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
You know.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Swan thinks about how she can't use a gateway, like
she used to be able to make a gateway, but
she can't use a gateway. She can't make a gateway
anymore because of how weak she is. Agwayne at eighty
percent or whatever is able to make a gateway, Like
that's how strong she is. That even not fully back
to capacity, she's like, well, a gateway as well within
reach now excellent.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
And it also kind of shows you the overlap between
the male and female haves, because there's lots of men
who can't make gateways.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Right right, Yeah, I think it's harder for them. I
think it's a higher threshold, okay. And also I just
want to point out these novices Agwainne thinks of them
as being all flighty and screaming and being very you know, childish.
But like, in five minutes they managed to learn this
new trick. I'm like, that's honestly pretty impressive. Like these
are people who are like in an active war zone,

(28:03):
woken up out of a sound sleep and thrust into
their home being an active war zone, and they are
learning a new power maneuver, calming their minds, doing the meditation,
getting the thing, practicing the move. Like, that's impressive.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
It is impressive. It is impressive. They only have to
join once and then they're in, right, they don't have
to like do it multiple times. But yeah, it's like
they don't have to master the skill. They just have
to get there once.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
But it's nice, right, But they're like watching each other
and like trying and managing, you know, Like it's it's
very impressive. She leaves her a couple of minutes and
comes back and they are ready to go. They have
organized themselves into little batteries that she can use.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Well, she's a good leader.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Supposedly they all look up to her a lot. Like
the novices of the White Tower in particular, have really
been taking a lot of their lead from her and
getting ready for this moment. Of all the different groups
of women, the White Tower Novice isn't accept it are
the ones that are most set up to help her.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
And in a lot of ways, it's like she has
created this new generation of novices and accepted both by
recruiting from outside the set age group and recruiting in
the rebels, and then also winning over all the novices
in the Tower, and that combined with having like you know,
the battle ends up having an uneven effect where a

(29:23):
lot of the isid I are taken and killed and
a lot of the Novices survive. And then you combind
that with the purging with the Black Aja, right like
where she takes out another group of isid I, it's
obvious that what's left, you know, is this group of
even after Gwayn dies, there's going to be this massive
imbalance of women who admire and find her example to

(29:45):
be the right way to do things, and then this
tiny minority of relatively weak, small group of isid I
who were going to claim the tradition. She's changing the
Tower in immense ways.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, yeah, and she.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Should have been alive to continue that you don't like
the choice to killer anyway, Nope. Do you want to
go through the things that are in the Room of.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Power, Yeah, let's do that.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
They're unreal and the unreal Yeah, crystal globes.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
I'm assuming like the far seeing and talking.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Devices, sort of the traditional like.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah, palentteer, it's a palateer.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Just be careful looking through the eyes of Saurron may
come out on the other side, like, be very careful.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yeah, you do want to be careful with those. They
might have a virus.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
No, they're connected to the network, right exactly. Small exotic statues,
I'm guessing.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Like the animals that have never been seen before. I
feel like that's often what they describe these as, like
birds and beasts that people have never seen before. The
metals to be like animal human hybrid type things. They
don't have to be like exotic dancer style exotic. They
could just be you know, fanciful human animal hybrid type exotic.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
And these could be mixed of tearanngreoll. I don't really
see any hint to their purpose right, like going through.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Them, I'm assuming it's a mix of things. Probably a
lot of terranngri all with different purposes. Probably some are
very mundane, some are very frivolous, some are quite serious,
probably with no sorting whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
A glass pendant which reflected blue in the light. I
mean that to me feels like an ongreoll.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yeah. That yeah, just something like a beautiful focused stone
that seems like it's going to be an ungre all
rather than any kind of terranngrill.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
A large set of metal gauntlets lined at the cuffs
with fire drops.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
That's gotta be something cool.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
I imagine these are control cuffs for something bigger, right,
that you have some sort of like digging machine or something,
and these are like the control cuffs because I feel
like we've had helmets that control things before, right, and
so these are like I feel like metal gauntlets that
you would put on to like control gloves.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, totally exactly right, Yeah, like heavy equipment. Yeah, that
metal gauntlets with fire drops. It's some kind of like
a big heavy like mining equipment or something maybe like
works with rockets, because.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Like we've seen like the helmet to control showings, I
think is what that was, you know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's just so many, so many things
it could be from so many different ips, it's like, yeah,
gauntlets with fire drops on them, that's something cool. It's
something cool either that or it is like a big
power up thing. But I given the show wings helmet,
I really like the equipment control idea.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Or I mean it would be also cool to be like, oh,
you put those both on and you're covered in a
whole set of armor. You just put on the gauntlets
and everything else is like power controlled sort of a. Uh,
those create the force field or whatever, and you activate
them by touching the gemstones together. So I mean there's
all sorts of things you can come up with, right, because,
like we certainly know the paralis net has all sorts
of cool physical effects and armor like effects and things

(32:50):
like that. So I mean, form doesn't necessarily follow function.
With Taran Greol, that's what makes them so interesting.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, the channeling built the top of them has very
little to do with the function and the form that
they're in.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
And then you have things in the world that aren't
really built, that aren't tyranungrial that are still seem to
be objects of power. I'm thinking the Portal Stones and
the Horn of Valier specifically. Yeah, and I have to
wonder if those weren't somehow created. I always think that
the horn has to be created by the dragon somehow
in his moment of being able to control the world.
But anyway, we can talk about that later.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Then she finds the one that matters.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah, she gets for a song real right.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
Which is literally a wand she literally finds a wand
she finds a magic freaking wand so yeah, she now
is completely powered up to superhuman levels. She's ready to go.
And she goes back to the novices, and I noticed
one of the novices asks like, are you escaping? She
has not the first person to think that. In those

(33:52):
two chapters, multiple people are like, wait a second, are
you leaving? Can I go with you? Why haven't you left?
You could have left this whole time? Take with you?
Like this is a theme that repeats, and every time
she's like, no, my job is to be the White
Tower in every sense of the word. And now she
is all kitted out. All she needed was one magic
wand and now she is ready to defend the White

(34:13):
Tower so aggressively that she is why the battle turns.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Which I mean that is it's like giving Ran the
Chodren call, right, like maybe not quite that level of
powerful maybe like collandor, but still, that is a battleship
in the middle of a bunch of tanks.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, it's an incredible advantage.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Well, and she has like chandlers backing her up too, right,
she does have you know, a circle.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Five other groups of circles. Right, so there's the they're
holding off the soldiers. So she has the novices fighting
the soldiers. And I do really like the way she
links them up. She puts the person with the most
skill in charge, not necessarily the one with the most power. Now,
in the wheel of time, there's been a certain level
of like the more powerful you are are, the quicker
you can learn things. There is that level like nineve

(35:04):
can learn anything just by seeing it once. And that
seems to hold for the channelers who are at her
level of power.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yeah, but still she knows all of their relative strengths,
and she's like intelligence matters the most when it comes
to leading a circle because people are going to die
if you're a dumbass, So you.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Have to know when to strike, how to strike, how
to defend yourself.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Like yeah, and you get the strength of everyone in
the circle behind you. So there's no wasting of strength.
There's only wasting of a slight edge in learning. You
don't need to learn. You need to keep your people
alive and kill the enemy. Like that's all you need
to do today, realistic.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
I think we've talked about this, but teaching a group
of novices how to form a circle should really be
one of the first things they learn, because seriously, that's
how you teach, right, isn't that one of the things
that land Fear the Asmodian says to Rand, He's like,
if you really wanted to learn from me, land Fear
would hang around and put us in a circle, because

(36:01):
that is the quickest way to learn and guide somebody.
Is basically we're both in the circle. I do the
channeling and you're gonna feel it.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah, that should be like week two, we learned how
to link. That should be like after you learn how
to seize the source, the next thing is how to
be in a circle with someone, and then the rest
is downhill.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Maybe we want any evidence the eyes that I do
it backwards and probably make it much harder to learn.
Is instead of like, okay, bring you into circle and
teach you stuff, so that you are skilled as you
gain power, They're like, no, no, no, no no, we don't want
you to teach you anything. You have to like be
really careful. And I feel like they're backwards in all
their ways of teaching. It's the BLA gotcha.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
And POV switch to Swan. We get some literal igwayin
will be mad about it now, but she'll be thankful
about it later. Rationale from Swan, which is just like, no,
that's not how you show respect to someone is say well,
you'll thank me later. That is never the sign of
actual respect. Don't do that to someone. You'll thank me

(37:20):
later means that you're convincing yourself to do something that's
really really messed up when it comes to someone's free
will and autonomy, unless you're like literally a doctor and
you're dealing with triaging people, because at that point you
are qualified to make those choices. Lots of people have
decided you're allowed to do that now, and yeah, Gowan
just is super down to do literally anything. Swan says,

(37:43):
will you take my help in getting you into Tarvallan
as repayment for my life and Godwin before she even
finishes the damn sentence is saying, yeah, yeah, totally, totally
all you want to It's fine, let's go. Like he
just just is so single minded. Even when we get
into his POV later, he's just so happy to be
doing something, and it's like, you do realize it. Sometimes
not doing something is the most helpful thing you can do. Right, No,

(38:05):
you don't realize that at all. Never mind.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Hmmm you know what would make someone single minded? Being
compelled thinking what the small head? Well, okay, that does
feel like compulsion sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I don't
want to do this? Why am I doing this? Oh right,
yeah I don't.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah yeah. Evolution unfortunately, really gave us a real on
that one.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Oh god, why yeah no you fuck hormones, man, you
don't control your own brain.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
As I was saying earlier, getting on hormone assistance helped
with my entire life. Hormones more than your gut. Even
hormones are the true brains behind the operation.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Like, fuck damn it, glands controlling my.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Hormones literally literally.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Ask me again, why I don't believe in for you will?

Speaker 1 (39:00):
No? I don't. I don't. I don't need that perspective,
got enough issues.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
But yeah, I like the argument that Brin makes that like,
you've made oath breaking far too convenient, Suan, and I'll
be a habit from you. He's like, I will not
be a party to do you breaking your oath again.
He has, you know. But then like he just gives in.
He's like, sure, fine, you're going in anyway, I'll make
sure you're not dying, Like this is this moment of resistance.
Then he's like, yeah, I give up.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
With the small head, it's a theme in this chapter.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
It is it is Swan is literally using two men's
inability to think past their fifees to completely screw up
Agwayn's plans.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
So Brinn makes her promise to do two things. The
first is that he bonds or as warder. The second
turns out to be that he marries her. She marries him.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah, yeah. His demands are let's be completely bounced together
for the rest of our natural lives, to the point
of having like a magical problem with the other one dying.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Which is like, okay, maybe communicate about this a little
bit more. But like it's been coming for a while.
They've been on this path of they've been dating for
a long time. She's been sleeping in extent. Like, yeah,
I mean, in whatever world this is dating, and this
is Robert Jordan's version of people dating. Whatever the two

(40:19):
of them have been going through. It's very antagonistic, it's
very argumentative, and it's a very typical love story that
Jordan creates.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, it's it's inevitable with what he's done. But yeah,
everyone who preferred Swan to not be with Gareth Brine
is upset by this development and wishes that it would
not happen. But yeah, it's like, clearly they've both been
getting interested in each other for a while. It's not
truly out of the blue. We all saw it coming.
This is not a Moraine and Tom.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
Situation, which I don't think was out of the blue either.
They were She was a mighty fine woman for quite
some time, and that gap when they didn't see each
other was actually the shortest period of time in this series.
M that's fair, even though it felt like forever. If
you'll dial it out in real time from her disappearance,
the last battle is in only about six months, I think,

(41:12):
whereas the rest of the books are like a year
and a half.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
So yeah, no, I mean the part where Tom was
willing to like completely go on a suicide mission to
save her. Clearly he had feelings for her. It wasn't
like totally out of the blue. But it also surprised
me when it first happened in the books in a
way that this did not. This felt like it was
telegraphed way more obviously than.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
That, for sure, for sure, Yes, yeah, no, this was
her blue eyes and her being in the tent and
her constant anger at him. Right, Like, Moraine and Tom
just didn't necessarily think about each other that much, which
I think is why it came out as a surprise.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Right, exactly exactly Brennan's one have clearly been thinking about
each other. We have spent so many pages of them
thinking about it.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
That's a good point. Yeah, we never really get Morin's
we do. Moraine's take about who she knows who she
will marry is I think the most we get out
of her, right, and then you're like, oh girl, wait,
you know who you're gonna marry? Who? And then the
sort of you look around and be like who have
you been fond of or who's been fond of you? Right?
Like it's not going to be land.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Right, Yeah, I just always assumed that she was being sarcastic.
I never thought that it actually was a reference to
anything real. I thought she was away girls to let
go have a you know, relationship with a dog if
they needed to. Like, I thought it was one of
those comments, you know. I didn't think there was anything
more to read into it. I never gave it a
second thought.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
It's one of the many reasons why Maureene was never
gonna die, right is she knew who she was going
to marry, and she hadn't married anybody yet, so she
can't have died yet.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Yeah. I always figured it was her commenting and how
she wasn't going to marry anyone and then just moving
on with her life.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
That's a fair That's that's totally fair.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
I clearly I was wrong about that one. Yes, yeah,
like that's just all right.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
And who knows now that I know the truth, I
don't remember what I thought back then.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
Sure, yeah, but anyway, Brind's reaction to getting bonded is
to go more or less what Godwin thinks later on,
which is, you need to get every man who can
be bonded right the fuck Now, This would make such
a big difference in every martial conflict that we have
to deal with between here and you know, the little

(43:25):
al last battle and all that that entails. Like every
soldier who can be bonded should be bonded, Like why
are you not doing this in droves to the armies?
What the hell? Like they both have the same thought,
and Swan is very dismissive of it, but like I
see where they're coming from.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
I do too, Yeah, because it's a small advantage, but
every contest becomes you know, comes right down to the edge,
and so a small advantage over all these soldiers would
make a big advantage.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Yeah, exactly, especially for an elite force, especially for people
who are trying to be on the front lines of
like doing really important stuff. Like it makes sense that
isidized personal bodyguards have this, but like surely there are
other special forces that could benefit from it and make
a really really big difference. And yeah, there's a big
hazard when they die, that is an issue. But like

(44:17):
I can see where Gareth Brynn is, Like, my soldiers
could do amazing things if they just had this extra
five percent speed advantage.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
And That's where I'd come down on. Is any isidie
who took on multiple many many many warders who were
going into battle would inevitably lose some of them and
be incapacitated by the grief and the loss of a warder,
and often many times over and so all of a sudden,
for to give up slight boost to some of your warriors,
you're taking a bunch of your isidi off the field.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Yeah, it's a problem, but like, maybe you should figure
out how to engineer something that could help instead of
just sequestering it behind it. We don't think about that
sort of wall of.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Silence, some sort of energy boost bond that didn't have
the same sort of permanence of a word bond.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Right like the eyesid I. We even talking about that.
When it came to dealing with the men who could channel,
the Red Sisters were like, yeah, we think we could
modify the warder bond to allow us to keep men
who could channel on a leash and at arm's length.
We think we could do both. So it's like that there,
if you right, I'm just saying, like the option to
tweak with it is there, Like the concept of playing

(45:25):
with that bond is not off the table, and yet
no one's ever thought of how to make that apply
to like the entire tower Guard, Like, I don't know,
seems like a missed opportunity, but alas, we just have this. Really,
this is, honestly, in my opinion, one of the best
Like men are from Mars, Women Are from Venus comedic
moments Swan's thoughts here she rolled her eyes men, she

(45:49):
had given him a deeply personal and emotional connection to
another person, the likes of which even husbands and wives
would never know, and all he could think about was
how much better he might have been at sword play.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
I mean, he later does think about it, how much
of a bond it is and stuff like that, but like, yeah,
his first instinct is like, oh, I feel good.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
And just the way that she thinks about it, the
way that she rolls her eyes with these words, is
just so like this is actually a funny moment of
meta from Mars and women are from Venus. I actually
find it amusing, just the way that he the way
that Brandon Sanderson like frames their two thoughts about this moment.
It's just I'm like, okay, I'll allow that one. That

(46:27):
men are so silly and women are also silly. This
one hits for me. This one's funny. Most of the time,
I just roll my eyes and wish that it wasn't there.
This one actually like tickles me.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Man flexes. Women are like, can you just feel your
emotions for a second?

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Exactly exactly, like this is a deeply complicated and emotional thing,
and you're just like, girl, I can jump tall, I
can jump tall, I can words.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Well yeah, and he says, I'll tell you the second
little later time. We find out in chapter forty three,
so three chapters from now.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
He can't hold that idea in too long. He's really
really wants to marry her. He's not going to hold
onto that secret for a while.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
And there's this moment that I really love where he's like,
I can sense your emotions. I can sense ooh, and
he can tell that I half want him to demand
something indecent of me. Susan realized aghast bloody ashes, and
he's like, ooh, you dirty little song.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Yeah you thought she was such a prude, but I
feel her emotions. It turns out.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
I'm busted for horny, busted for horny. Smack enough going
horny time out so on.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
He had no idea she was that into.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
He's like, well, I wish she hadn't been sleeping on
the palette all this time.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Right, He's like, damn, I should have popped this question
a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
So immediately after feeling that, he's like, I'll get my
best one hundred guys. Yeah, anyway, you need to survive
this absolutely.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Yeah, He's like, I'm gonna bring it like the very
best body I can, because this is not dying before
I have a chance to take you to, like not
the pallet in the corner.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
I'm gonna get laid.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah. And then Gowen rides up with this comedic timing
and is like, what is going on between you two?
I was gone for five minutes and the vibes have
totally changed.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
And of course Suan's like, you know, we're not going in.
It's just not the two of us. It's us and
a hundred soldiers, which certainly ups our chance of surviving.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
This means our chance of surviving long enough to take
a GWayne just improved, which is fortunate since after we're
about to do she and debtely want the privilege of
killing us personally. That is Sanderson dry humor. That just
makes me laugh because like it's that feels accurate to
spanse character and to the dynamic. She knows she's in
the wrong. She knows she's in the wrong, and this

(49:08):
is why she's moving the goalpost so much. It's because
she's already committed to doing something she knows is wrong.
So the goalposts are absolutely fluid. She's not even internally
consistent to herself already. They haven't even taken off yet.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
She's getting Iguana, She's getting a Gollin, She's getting a
Gwain out. Whether she wants to come out or not.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Yeah, she knows best because she's the true Romarlin Bad
Swan Bad's one go to horny jail and then after
that go to not listening to Aguain Jail.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
Another POV switch. There's going to be an awful lot
of these in these two chapters, because we are in
battle mode.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
And we now switched to an ade Lorna POV. I
think we have two of these, Ever, she's not a common.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
Po No, yeah, don't see how many.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
I'm pretty sure that she's in the decision making chapter
later as kind of a follow up to this.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Not, as far as I can tell.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
No, is this the only time she has a POV.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
As far as I can tell. Yeah, but she is.
I mean, you know, sometimes it's incomplete.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
We'll find out later. Either way. It's very very rare.
And this, yeah, because we're in battle mode. We need
eyes on the ground everywhere, and we don't have the
plot maneuverability to have a main character on every part
of ground. So we're going to bring in adel Lorna,
and she has existed before and since she's a real character,
not just sprinkled in for spice.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
No, because we get Saren's POV twice but only Ada Lorna.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Wants Adam Laurna has a lot to say in that POV,
but she is not the PV itself.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Yes, yeah, and adel Lorna was. She was punished by
Elida for not returning on grill.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
That was like planted in her room.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
I think it was just like it was yeah, yea, yeah,
it was just like, oh, everyone just like hangs on
to one or to right, and like they kind of
they would never keep them permanently, but they have them
for like fifty years, so it kind of becomes their
Taron Greol or whatever.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Yeah, she was one of the ones singled out for
that really intense punishment that was essentially meant to divide
the tower and make mistrust between the Aujas.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
And I think that was at the Black Aja's direction.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
Yes, alvr and very specifically told Aglaida to do that,
and Alida said that's ridiculous. Why would I do that?
And alvr and did Black Auja things at her to
make it happen.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Because again, at the time, Red and the Green had
a bit of an alliance, and this broke that alliance
up right.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Right, yeah, because there was two women who got punished
in that, and it was very specifically calculated to fracture
those Adjas apart.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
Josane was also punished of the Green.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
Oh, Josane just died. In this pov at Alona thinks
about how she had seen Joseane die as a weave
of air had destroyed the wall beside her.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Right, yeah, so she just died. So Jordan clearly looked
back at that chapter and went, Okay, I've got these two, Iida,
I'm gonna kill one and have the other.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
One like good ty in, good tye in.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Yeah, good, well, well done, well done. There is a
certain amount of checking these isid I off right, as
he goes through and like gives them each a scene.
He's going back, and like I've noticed he touches on
most of the isid I who were given significant roles. Yeah,
I think get a list of Isidi he wanted to
like give some resolution to in these books.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Yeah, it was a bit of a hit and a
miss on the whole list, but yeah, sometimes he really
does a good job of that, and I think Adelrna
is a good one. Yeah, she's she's currently in a
situation much like a Gwaine and that she's running down
the hallways, but she's doing much more poorly than Agwayne
because she's just been banding together with people and then
getting shattered apart and seeing people die and seeing people

(52:53):
get captured, and she doesn't have anyone to fight with,
and she's, you know, having the inverse experience of Agwayne
all the way to the point of getting captured by
the Color and then a Glance saves her and she
becomes part of a Gwan's team and it's great. But
she starts out in a very similar to a Grain situation,
which makes sense, especially because she's the Captain General of

(53:14):
the Green and that's you know, Agwayne would have been
green if she had her choice.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
Right, right, So this would have been and it makes
sense this was the leader in a battle situation you
would expect to take command, rise up, unite people, bring
them together, and have them fighting back against the Shawn Chin. Right.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
She's the battle Yeah, the battle lagis should be leading
the charge against these invaders.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Right, And so I think in a lot of ways,
having her be completely defeated and having a GWayne rescue
her shows you the level is trying to show you
just the level of incompetence the defenders of the White
Tower are at and the way Againe's able to step
up and like take charge even over this person.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
Right, yeah, because Adilrna even thinks, like you know about
how's like she's the captain general. She has to grit
her teeth and not run and highe. She has to
stand for the tower, right, like what Agwayin is doing,
but like at a slightly lower level, because you know,
not Operlin, just battle leader. And then and then she
very allegorically runs away from the Shawn Chin so hard
she almost runs off the edge of a cliff, like

(54:19):
she runs out the side of the building because she's
not looking where she's.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
Going she almos Wiley coyotes herself.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
Yeah, exactly, which is just so allegorical for everything that's happening.
The White Tower is falling apart and on fire, and
the Isidi, who should be responding effectively are running around
and almost falling out of holes in the walls, right Like,
It's just so visually striking and allegorically correct for the
whole situation.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
And I get why it's like they're not going down
to the storeroom because it would take probably like an
hour to get down there and get the angreol and
come back up if you don't have a gateway, right, So,
maybe it doesn't make a lot of sense to send
someone down there, or maybe they did send someone down there,
but I can see why they don't have a lot
of ungreoll to back themselves up with.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
I feel like the Green Eye just should have had
a break glass in case of emergency, case of battle,
tried tarangriol specifically that we're exactly meant to help them
defend the tower in the last extreme.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
It also feels like there should be wards built into
the tower that could be activated as defensive.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
Yeah, where's the laser eyes coming out? Of the rains
about gargoyles.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
And the only thing I'm thinking of is like not
using the power to as a weapon, right, like that's
and not building weapons that makes it very hard to
build things that can actually defend the tower.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
Igwayne has no problem defending the tower.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Well, she hasn't sworn the Three Oaths, and she even
thinks about how the fact that she's violating the shit
out of them and that doesn't bother her because it's
important to make the sean Chan pay. She is absolutely
not following the Three Oaths in this moment.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
You think the three o's would have kept her from
blasting so hard during this battle.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
I think she would have had trouble killing abducted sisters.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
Yes, specifically that part. She could have attacked the people
who were flying at her throwing weaves at her, but
she couldn't have attacked the fleeing Oh that's an interesting point. Yeah,
I know. I feel like the tower should be able
to just like have a weave comes up that makes
the whole like outside just get electrified, so that way
anything crawling up the side, like you know, gets paralyzed

(56:23):
and falls off.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
In the defense of yourself or a sister or a warder, right, Like,
that's you can basically defend any of those three and
defend the towers, defending an all of them at all times.
So like, I don't think there's any problem with us
attacking the sean Chan. When they're attacking the tower, you
are defending yourself, your sisters, and your warders, right and so,

(56:44):
And that's totally loud in the oaths to attack. But
I think like once they have taken an I sid
eye and are fleeing, then you're killing an incant I
sid eye with the power. You're using it as a
weapon against someone who's not attacking you, who's not a
dark friend. That's that's pretty rough.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Is saving them from a fate worse than death a
sufficient loophole for the s right, that's a good point line,
blinded full. If they could electrify the tower, that would
have been used to punishing offices and take out the competition. Look,
maybe they could have just programmed it to be intelligent
enough to only know when people were the enemy. That's

(57:25):
a thing that they'd done for sure.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Right, how exactly you the determined friend from foe from enemy?
Is it a code? Is it a smell.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
Yeah, Okay, that's complicated. Yeah, but a little bit of like,
you know, the Wall from Game of Thrones could have
been cool, little bit of oh yeah, the walls have
laser beams that come out of the gargoyle eyes when
someone you know hits the red panic button under their desk.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Like you just want some defenses in place, I get you.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
And so yeah, then we get this really lovely triumphant
moment where Adelorna is at the absolute need year of
what can happen to an is to die, being told
she's gonna be a demani forever.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
Good demane, you'll be sivy.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
Yeah, and then the collar nclips and that bitch turns
into a torch and it's it's great. And then she
turns around and Awainne's just standing on a pile of
rubble in her torn, dirty dress, just hair blowing in
the wind likerecting novices. Oh yeah, it's so good, it's
so good, it's so good.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
Adlona turned hesitantly. A woman in white stood atop the
rubble a short distance away, a massive halo of power
surrounding her, her arm outstretched towards the fleeing soldiers, her
eyes intense. The woman stood like vengeance itself, the power
of Sidar like a storm around her. The very air

(58:47):
seemed a light, and her brown hair blue from the
wind of the open gap in the wall beside them.
Agwayne Alvier, It's just so good, it's so visual, it's
so powerful.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
Sanderson, you magnificent man.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
That's just like her standing there, glowing with power, open
hole in the wall, twenty two stories up, hair blowing
in the wind, throwing blasts of fire and lightning out
the window, right, and her sort of being in the
tower and then surrounded by the tower and embodying the tower,
throwing out the power. She is the defenses we want it, right,

(59:24):
She is the source of power for those defenses.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Yeah, all it takes is one woman with a magic
wand and the righteous fury of a three thousand year
old institution behind her. And like, yeah, the tower gets
punched in its heart so hard that it unleashes its
full to gwayin on the shan.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
Chan mm hmmmmm. And like in the way that she
as the ambuln is the white tower, and how she
defeats Masana by like being the tower, right, and this
sort of is that physical happening physically, right.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Yeah, I mean I really feel like the fact that
she does this battle and succeeds so tremendously and uses
so much power in doing it helps her take Masana
down because it's like, after you beat back your fear
of the Shawn Chin and their raid with Vora saw
On Greel, is Masana trying to insult you, really gonna
prick your bubble? You know now, You're it's almost easy.

(01:00:20):
It's as a boss fight, it's almost a letdown, you know,
because she just owns so hard here.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
No, and then when Fatlearna takes over and Gwenn's like, no, no, no, no,
you will call me Amberlyn. I am in charge. I
have all of this power behind me. You just got captured.
I had to save your ass. Until this is over,
call me mother if you want to beat me afterwards, fine,
but we are in the middle of a battle. You
do not change command.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Yeah, Like, oh, I'm in command, you we aren't. There
is no room to debate that until the attack is over.
We can go back to the power struggles. But I
am in command, and like you can get out of
my way or get flattened.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Yeah, right, now, well, just give you back to the
shawn Chin right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Like, yeah, Like what the fuck ever Ada Lorna. And
then Ada Lorna is like, oh I am the battle Aja,
and the Ombrelin has just shown up. I guess I will,
you know, fall into place at her right hand the
way that the battle leader should, you know, because that's
where the green ada head should be is with the
Ombrelin organizing the defenses. That is absolutely where she should be.

(01:01:23):
And then she asks about Ada Lorna's warders and she'd
you know reports, Oh yeah, one's dead, one's wounded, ones alive.
And Agwayne is immediately like, wow, you're really strong and
amazing for not being in a puddle, and Ada Lorna's like,
why does that make me feel good? It's like, because
you just gave her respect as the Armrelind and the
Ombrelind thinks you're strong, of course you feel good about it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Also a little foreshadowing that a GWayne doesn't handle losing
a order nearly as well.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Oh yeah, she can't do that. She thinks she can,
She even says, Agwayne. The Ombrelin mourns for Agwayne the girl,
but it doesn't matter. And then later she says that
was a dumb decision. I couldn't do that, And I think, yeah,
it's because Ada Lorna shows her that if you're you know,
experienced at having a warder and losing them, it is
possible to power through as the head of your AJA.

(01:02:10):
But yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot. Not any
not just every woman can do that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
So Gwaine says, how familiar are with the towers on
Reell storerooms? And very outa Lorna says, which again I
think is a funny reference to the fact that she
was punished for keeping her on greal and she's like, oh, yeah, no,
I know those rooms.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought that nice.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Nice nice. That's why I think she was picked for
this role, because it's like, oh, yeah, this is someone
who definitely knows the storerooms because she's got a grubby
little hands in there and stolen a bunch of them,
I mean stolen whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Oh yeah, I know exactly which ones people won't notice
if I hang on too.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
So Agwayne shows her the gateway because apparently she's found
out because in the beginning of the chapter she was like,
don't show anybody this, but now she's like, well, elight
has been showing everybody this, so screw it. Like, the
knowledge is out. I'm not hiding it from anybody by
not showing them.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Yeah, yeah, that report gets to her offscreen, But yeah,
I just had a report that Alida has been spreading
knowledge of the weaves, so fuck ye. I didn't quite
notice that her level of secrecy changes within the chapter.
I didn't quite pick up on that, but yeah, it's
out now, and she accurately says, if one woman who
knows that gets taken by the shawn Chin, then the

(01:03:24):
shawn Chan have it. So we just might as well
spread it as widely as we can, because the shawn
Chann are about to have it, right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
And it's not even someone who Alida taught, it's Alida.
They get Alida the irony.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Of it being Alida herself rather than someone she spread
it to, so we.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
Know for sure, for sure they have that knowledge.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
Yeah, and then yeah, we get this great moment where
Adelaura was like, wait, you could have left the entire time,
and Agwainn says, no, I couldn't. My duty is to
stay here. I didn't stay here because I had to.
I stayed here because I had to. Like you, understand,
and a lot alone was like, Oh, this really is
the Homborlin. It's a good moment. It's a good ringing
moment to end the chapter on.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
But you know, we go right into the next chapter,
which is just the same scene flashing back to another
POV switch, back to Gareth Brynn.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Yeah, it literally could have just been a POV switch
with no chapter break at all. Lepoof. Technically there's a
different chapter title in chapter logo A fount of Power
the bowl, respectively, but it's the same story. It's just
a POV switch.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
Well recent a fond of power. Well, ty kerchief on
my face and call me i yeel, said one of
Brent's soldiers, kneeling besides the General at the prow of
their narrow boat. It really is there, Nolin squatted at
the prow of his own boat, the dark waters rippling
and lapping at the sides of the vessel. They needed
thirteen boats to carry them, and had set into the
river quietly and easily, at least they had once su

(01:05:04):
On Sanche had finally finished her inspection of the boats
and decided they were riverworthy. Barely. Each vessel carried a
single shielded lantern. Gowain could barely make out the other
boats sliding over the ebony water, the soldiers rowing them
in near silence as they pulled up beside the stonework
embankment on tarvall In's southwestern side. The flashes of light

(01:05:24):
in the sky were distracting, and Gowain kept finding himself
glancing out to see serpentine beasts illuminated briefly by cold
white lightning or blazing crimson fire. The White Tower itself
seemed to burn that kind of that guy in the beginning, Well,
tie a kerchief on my face and call me a
heel all right, Yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Such a funny phrase, and yet it feels so right,
and call me Ael.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
But yeah, the tower's on fire, right, you got fire
coming in, fire going out, like you know, there's there's
I said, I actually putting out there. But there's a
lot of energy being thrown around.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
And there's like rock falling from down down, from up above.
Like this is again one of those scenes where I
would not normally feel like I was visualizing it very well,
but under Sanderson's writing, like I can hear it, I
can smell it, I can see it. It's really chaotic
and noisy, and they just it's a small party of
one hundred, and they totally managed to just slip through

(01:06:24):
the chaos because there's that much going on.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
And this is one he does a much better blow
by blow visualization, I think, and which is one of
the reasons why I was very happy when this came
out that we actually that he was writing these books,
because I was like, I was so excited to see
the action and see the battles and see all the
implications of the power being used, and I always thought
Sanderson did a really good job with that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
Yeah, So they boat up to the island. There's o
gear carved bulwarks that come down into the water to
you know, prevent erosion. It's fortunate that the river level
is low enough they can get in. Apparently the river
level changes enough that on some years this whole passage
would be underwater, so lucky for them.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
I assume there's been a drought because it's been dry,
right the dark ones touch in the hotness and all
that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
But then the winter came with all the snow, so
I guess, I guess because the snow is still frozen.
But anyway, it's not a very full river at the moment,
so they're able to get in to this passage that's
just hidden in the rocks, in the bulwarks. It's built in.
It's not like a natural passage.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
It's built it's like a service passage.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
And there's this great discussion between Brinn and Swan where
she's like, how could this exist? I thought that I
knew that there were six ways on and off the
island and that was it. And Brin's like, no, no, no, no.
For an invading army, the city is impenetrable. But a
place like this, tighter than a tick, can still have
a dozen holes big enough for fleas to slip through.

(01:07:53):
And I just think that's you know, a fun little
bit of important information is that, like every defense has holes.
It's just a matter of what you're trying to get
through those holes depends how impenetrable the places. It's worth remembering.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
It's like the frequency affects the hole size at which
something can penetrate, So if you want to block higher
frequency things, you make smaller holes. Anyway. Yeah, scale scale's crazy, man.
I think so much of our universe is based around
the scale of things, isn't it funny?

Speaker 1 (01:08:27):
How we're right in the middle of the scale in
both directions.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
It's depending on how you define your scale. Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
Yeah, I read a really trippy book several years ago
called The View from the Center of the Universe, and
that was kind of the whole thing, was going through
every different way of looking at that question, being like,
we're at the middle of the scale every direction you look.
What the fuck does that say about the world? Is
that just because we're perfectly positioned in the middle, or
is it like in the universe and it's just everything

(01:08:56):
looks equally far away because there actually isn't an edge.
It was a very trippy way of looking at things.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Well, I mean, obviously the observable universe, we're always going
to be in the center of that because like.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
It has a speed, right, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
We're in the we are in the center of our
own universes because.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
Right exactly, it's does that ever have a real world corollary?
Or is it always a figment of our own like
you know, way of looking at the world and those biases,
and you know, it's an interesting question to ask. To
take take it science branch of science by branch of
science and really ask it because uh, you end up
kind of mind fucked by the end. It's pretty trippy.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
I got a little too deep into the philosophy there
where were we?

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
Uh we're currently tying up beggars who hang out in
the tunnel as the party disembarks because they might, you know,
sell the information in the middle of a war. I don't.
It seems like now is not the time.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
It does seem a little like a detail that didn't
need to be included.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
But whatever. I also feel like Tarvalin is not the
kind of city that should have beggars in it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
The point is, the light is really fucked up Tarvalin,
so it didn't used to but now it does. They
deliver this trash and there's beggars and people not being
taken out.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
It's been like three months. What in the no social
safety net is happening?

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
Bad shit, bad shit, And don't forget that, like all
around the countryside, food's failing, people are flocking through the
cities for help. People are gathering to be recruited into
armies for the last battle. So you have a lot
of people on the streets.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Yeah, I guess the whole siege of Tarvalin has also
changed the dynamic in a more immediate way. But yeah,
that's what's happening. And then they pull out some tower
Guard uniforms so that they can disguise themselves as the enemy,
which I'm pretty sure is like not allowed by the
correct rules of war. Pretty sure do that, but they

(01:10:57):
do it because it's helpful.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
But they're being spies, not soldiers.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
Right, Yeah, that's true. They're not on a killing mission,
so that's different. Yeah, they have some rapidly made uniform
so that they can disguise themselves as just another unit
of the tower Guard, which allows them to not bother
having to sneak through the city, which spares us a
lot of tedious pages of sneaking.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
I like the description of the rockin swooping and spinning
about the tower like goals circling a dead whale in
the ocean. That is pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
I also underlined that like that is ooh like, because
we live in Oregon, we have the exploding whale story
as proud state history. Exploding whale day was not that
long ago actually.

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
And as truly as a white whale.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
It truly is a white whale, yes, a wide whale. Yeah,
So they get to the tower, and they immediately say, well,
we need to go down into the tower. We need
to go the opposite direction from where Aguayin is because
we don't have good information, so we're going to be
silly about it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
Right, Their information is outdated because the last they heard
she was in the dungeon, and.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
They don't get all the way down to the dungeon
before they learn otherwise. But that's where they start going.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
And they noticed that there's two points of battle. There's
one you know, around the twenty second floor, which we
know is Agwayin, So they see her, right, they just
don't know it's her, and then they see the other
bit of resistance at the.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Base the way they all underrestmeate her. See if I
was Gareth Brynn and I saw a woman at the
top of the tower absolutely kicking ass and taking names,
I would be like, well, that's a gwayn obviously right
right right, Like the Ombrelind is clearly doing what the
Omerlind does because the tower is under assault, like obviously,
Like I don't know why. Everyone just is like I
don't know who there could be, Like who the fuck

(01:12:38):
else do you think it would be?

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
Because they underestimate her. Even her allies underestimator.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Stop underestimating her. She's about to freaking die in like
five minutes. Like God, don't underestimate her. For the precious
book and a half, we get her left.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
For and another POV switch. So this is the battle
at the base of the tower, right, because that sort
of the transition is they noticed the two battles. We've
seen the one with a GWayne and now we're transitioning
to the one at the base of the tower. We're
kind of seeing how that's going and how it formed.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
So explain to me why there's a battle happening at
the base of the tower.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
It's just where the resistance got together.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
Okay, But why are soldiers attacking the base of the
tower because.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
I assume that's where there's a bunch of doors.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
Okay, I just it's like it's an air raid. So like,
why are they attacking on the ground?

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
I assume that there was a certain amount of soldiers
that were dropped off on the ground in like the courtyard, right,
because it was an easy place for the rock and
to drop them off. And so then they're trying to
get in at the base of the tower. So there's
a bunch of Basically they're trying to get in from
the outside of the tower. They just bypass the rest
of the city.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
Oh and also to distract the ice to dive from
the air raid and help the blood Knives infiltrate. Yeah. Okay,
so there's a lot of reasons to get your your
air raid troops on the ground.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
You attacked from the top to the bottom, right like
you you know, like, and they blew a couple holes
in the side, try and get in that way, but
you either have to make a hole or you go
in through the existing holes, which are the doors at
the base.

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
Sure, yeah, no, that makes sense, That makes sense. And
then yeah, the forces are divided, trying to decide which
side of the battle they're gonna go deal with. So yeah,
we go to the bottom battle and it turns.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Out A Gwayne's being so effective that she actually pulls
most of the battle up there because they're like, god, damn,
we got to stop this one person who's just massacring us.

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
Yeah, if everyone else is less of a pain. And
they asked of this one woman. Yeah, and we are
with Sayer and now she is the one organizing on
the ground.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
Floor and she's a Brown who's somehow taking charge because
she's a sitter, so she's guessed just happens to be
the highest ranking slash most powerful person there.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
Yeah, she's one of the more present and aggressive Browns.
She's also the one who took over the hunt for
the Black Aja. Right, right, she's really really okay with
taking power in a way that is uncharacteristic of a Brown.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
And there aren't really any greens.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Yeah, and the Greens are not showing.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Up because they were with the leader, the head of
the Aja, what's her title, al.

Speaker 1 (01:15:13):
Lona, the battle leader.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
Yeah, they were with that Lorna and they all got captured. Right.
She was the only one who made it out, So
like all of the Greens were like together as a force,
and she's got their ass kicked.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Right are they're scattered? Yeah, like there's it's it's bad.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
So there's one Green here, Maradannie, who again single serving
I sid ie.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
Yeah yeah, and she has only just arrived and she's
very eager to get back out into the fight again,
but Sayer and holds her long enough to get some
information on the map, because you know, she is a
Brown and she knows that like the first way, the
first rule of war is to get information about things. Right.
Information is so so so critical to any sort of

(01:15:53):
battle situation. So she's like, put information on the map,
show me where the other eyes thatd ie are, so
that I can start to make a plan.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
And so at the most, I think we've estimated as
like two hundred and fifty I said eye in the
tower at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
Something like that. Yeah, yeah, because it was three hundred
at the beginning, right, and now we've lost so many.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
People, so right, she sent them way to attack the
Black Tower. She sent them away to be with Rand.
She's some have died, you know, Somewhere around two fifty
I think, is how many sisters we have left in
the tower. So this ground floor has around forty seven,
so it's like a fifth of the sisters. So you've
got probably a small but and you don't really have

(01:16:36):
that many sisters up with aguayin either, so we have
to assume the vast majority are just scattered.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
Yeah, yeah, hiding fighting in little pockets here and there. Yeah,
there's not organized centers of them because they've been fractured
into eighty bitty tiny pieces by their leaders. Captain Chewbain
shows up being like, 'tis mus a scratch with his
injuries that she insists he gets healed. And then he's like, seriously,
like under all the bravado, the tower guard are freaking useless,

(01:17:03):
Like we need we need something more effective than us
to fix this.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
And she's like tribo and arrow, Like.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
Yeah's like, maybe don't hit the magic women with swords.
Maybe use ranged weapons.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
If they're going to tear you apart at a distance,
hit them from a distance before they can tear you apart.
Seems pretty obvious. But you know, I mean, that's just
it's obvious. They really haven't thought it out, right.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
Yeah, everyone's running around with their heads cut off because again,
this is not a thing anyone would expect it. This
is supposed to be the central safe place. This is
the last place that would be attacked, right, no one
was prepared to defend here.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
And meanwhile, in the back of her head is everyone
is everyone In the back of everyone's head, they're thinking
man Agwaine basically said this was gonna happen. We all
heard the rumors that she's she because it was a rumor, right,
It was one of those things that people were like,
oh my god. Agwayine has this feeling she's ridiculous. She
just wants attention, but.

Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
Like she was warning about, but there's also this whole
paragraph she thinks. What she didn't mention was how embarrassed
she was. The Isidi had spent centuries guiding kings and
influencing wars, but now with their sanctuary assaulted, they had
proven woefully inadequate in defending it. Agwen was right, she thought,
not just in predicting this attack, but in berating us

(01:18:19):
for being divided. Sarah didn't need reports from Moradria to
scouts to note that the Ajas were each fighting this
battle independently. Like it's just, yeah, this this was eminently
predictable even without Agwain's dreams.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
A lot of this was predictable, right, which explains like
most of the Ice and I are in their Adja
fighting in probably little Odja pockets, the Greens fighting with
the Greens, the El's with the Yellows, the Reds with
the Reds. Right, there's not a lot of crossover. And
because again two hundred and fifty divide that by seven oddjaws, right,
I mean, you're very quickly getting to the point where

(01:18:55):
you've got less than twenty ice and eye per aja.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
Yeah, and then you've got individual personality clashes like yeah,
it's it's absolutely terrible. And even in this time of strife,
she's sending runners to ajas to the different ADJA groups,
being like, we're going to send some browns and yellows,
like we're going to talk to the browns and yellows.
We're going to send the browns and yellows too, Like
she still has to operate with the ADJA loyalties in mind,

(01:19:20):
even in this moment of extreme crisis.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
Well, I think it's also important to have like the skills, right,
you need a yellow to go to each group so
they can heal, because the yellows are the ones who
are good at healing.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
And then some reds walk in being just caricaturishally bad
at helping make the situation better.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Well being led by a black, don't forget.

Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
Yes, yes, it is very obvious they walk in there
like we must scour them from the tower, and sarens
like we can barely keep them from killing us. Can
we be realistic in our goals right now? And yeah,
Katerine is absolutely pushing the hardest to be the worst
which like, yeah, that makes sense. There she goes being
a black.

Speaker 2 (01:19:58):
Red so yeah, I mean Hoaine tries to pull rank,
but Sarah says, nope, I'm a sitter in the hall
mistress's and nofics doesn't get to tell me what to do.
I'm the leader here, shut up.

Speaker 1 (01:20:08):
Yeah, And she even points out the battle has stretched
long for a raid, perhaps because we've done such a
poor job of resisting, like, yeah, they thought they were
going to get in and get out, and it turns
out that you are just sitting ducks fish in a barrel,
except for on the twenty second floor.

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
And during this time, the booms start coming not shaking, right,
we get the first booms that don't shake the tower
all the ones before have.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
Yeah, and that makes them go, wait a second, how
it sounds like the tower is fighting back. That doesn't
make sense. We're all here fighting and squabbling and being ridiculous, right.

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
The effective and we're not effective? How is this happening? Question?
They said the battle is stretched long for a raid? Why?
And they're giving like maybe because we're doing such a
poor job, Like what do you think is going on there?

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
I think she's completely right. I think that they went
in planning for a hard battle, and the battle is
proving much easier than they thought, and so they're just like,
I guess we keep going. Either that or the Shawan
chamerre willing to waste way more lives on getting the
number of people they were getting and it was going
to be a long raid because it did take them
so long to get there. But I just have always

(01:21:17):
figured Salmon was right, because they are embarrassing. It's embarrassing
they're showing like, yeah, I think the Shawn Channer just
shocked at how bad you are at defending yourselves. I
can't look like them, but light minded fool, said Shawn
chan Divided conquer Oh step one's already accomplished.

Speaker 2 (01:21:34):
Themselves. Yeah, no, you know, divided house falls, right, that's
kind of what's been predicted.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
It's almost like you need teamwork to make the dream work.
Insert well known idiom here.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):
So then we get the report that the Sean Channer
basically heading up to the twenty second tower to attack
them and aren't really bothering with the ground floor anymore.
And she's like, what, how's the Novice's quarters?

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
And then no, oh, go ahead at the novice quarters.
That used to be the breath that Agwain. Sarin respects Agwaine.
As soon as she is told that the twenty second floor,
the upper tower is where the fight is, she immediately
leaps to Aquain. Sarin respects Agwain.

Speaker 2 (01:22:15):
One hundred percent, and there is that. There is a
group of ice that I who respect her, and a
lot of them are eating Crow right now and going, oh, man, yeah,
I really should have listened to Agwaine, which I think
really contributes to the vote later of making her Amelin,
because it's like, oh, yeah, I should have been listening
to her, So maybe I should listen to her more
that she's Amberlin and just vote her in as Amrelin.

Speaker 1 (01:22:36):
It's really hard for the women who were starting to
respect her to look at that void of power and
look at her defense and not just fall in line
in perfect lockstep, Like how do you not say she
is the Ombrelin. She defended us, she believed in us,
and defended us obviously.

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
And could have left at any time, and yeah all
those sorts of things.

Speaker 1 (01:22:59):
Yeah, yes, so much. Crow is being eaten so much
so POV switched back to Aguaine in her just most

(01:23:19):
glorious battle sequence just absolutely raging.

Speaker 2 (01:23:24):
And I love the lead in for it. It's like,
who could possibly be doing this? Agwayne flash to a Gwaine,
right like, that's that's a good transition right there. I
thought that was really well done. And then yeah, it's
just each faceless Sean Chan that Agwayne struck down seemed
to be Rina in her mind's eye, and she's just
one after the other, just slinging death with the power

(01:23:46):
of this incredible song real and the backing of all
the novices and their untrained power. It's just a it's
a really cool moment. And then and using them with
their own weeds against them, right like, why is she
so good at fighting? Not because of her training in
the tower, not because of her training with the Wise Ones,
but because of her training with the Shawn Chant. They

(01:24:07):
specifically taught her how to turn weaves deadly.

Speaker 1 (01:24:11):
Yeah, I just want to read the fount of power
paragraph because it, ugh, it's so good. But she was
a fount of power drawn from deep within the fluted
rod in her hands, channeled through a group of novices
and accepted hiding in the room behind bound to her
in a circle. A guin was part of the fires
that burned in the tower, bloodying the sky with their flames,

(01:24:33):
painting the air with their smoke. She almost seemed not
a being of flesh, but one of pure power, sending
judgment to those who dared bring war to the tower itself.
Blasts of lightning stormed from the sky, the clouds churning above,
Fire sprouted from her hands. Just ah, she's so glorious.

(01:24:54):
She's so glorious.

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):
Truly, seeing someone use an angrias sangreal is cool, right,
that's also a moment of power, Like someone besides Rand
using a song greal and really showing off the power
that they can gain from it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
Yeah, and Rand is usually like half mad or you know,
cleansing the source. Like this is a more normal use
of incredible martial power to just just be a one
woman army fighting off hundreds of people. She feels thirty
of the rockin Like, that's so many. She kills so

(01:25:29):
many people with.

Speaker 2 (01:25:31):
This, Yeah, her murder score goes up for sure, Like she.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
Just like if you think about the number of people
she kills, her kill count like quintuples at least in
this one night.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
And then she makes it pretty big again when she
turns into that crystal.

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
Well, yeah, then there's that yeah, yeah, well yeah, a
bunch of high school students fighting dragons lifelighted fool does
kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
Feel like that. Yeah, there is that, like, yeah, that
sort of young adult miss.

Speaker 1 (01:26:02):
Of it of like, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):
Me and my at my school will gather all my
classmates and I've learned so much more than them, so
they respect me, and they'll give all their power to me,
and I'll use the combined power of the entire school
against the bad guys. Like there's a little bit of
that like young adult wish fulfillment to this.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
I mean, this is that era of books, like young
adult wish fulfillment is kind of like what we were
reading more than just this book that was giving us
a teenager who could kill dragons because.

Speaker 2 (01:26:32):
She was just pissed, you know, right, totally totally.

Speaker 1 (01:26:36):
Or ride dragons or become a dragon or whatever the
given dragon franchise was. Yeah, and she's she's just she's
gonna make the Shawn chain withdraw and she thinks about
how with this much power she could not be stopped
saved by a full circle, and the shon Chin didn't
use circles. The Adon prevented it. It's just that like, yeah,

(01:26:57):
you literally can't fight me because you take away people's
free will. It doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
And she realizes that some have escaped, right, she can't
stop them all, so she just has to make them
pay right anything that's left. Just just make it a
really painful lose more demany than they gain. Essentially it's
her goal.

Speaker 1 (01:27:15):
Yeah, she had to make certain they never attacked the
tower again. The raid had to cost them, And that's
a bitter if you are a spoilers person, because we
know that the shan Chin consider this a success despite
as much damage as she does, despite how well she
despite everything, They're like they do the numbers and they're like, yeah, yeah,

(01:27:38):
that was worth it. Should we should do that again sometime?

Speaker 2 (01:27:41):
Because they didn't. They don't value the lives of the
people that were lost.

Speaker 1 (01:27:46):
And they got a lot of Marath Demani in exchange
for soldiers that they were willing to sacrifice. They got
nukes in exchange for foot soldiers. Like, yeah, that's how
the Imperium does this. It's just like, I love Agwayne,
she does such a great job, and the shan shann
are like that worked out well for us. Like no, no,

(01:28:09):
all right, pov switch back to Brinn.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
In the courtyard with just all the mango bodies that
have fallen from above.

Speaker 1 (01:28:19):
The hazard of falling bodies is a very real part
of this battlefield.

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):
It's like shit up because yeah, there's basically flaming rock
and kind of like flaming planes come crashing down on
like a battlefield. Right. You see the World War film
where it's like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:34):
Yeah, the little fighter jets crashing down.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
Yeah, where Indiana Jones is jumping out of the way
on the part of the plane and very much.

Speaker 1 (01:28:41):
So, very much so. Yeah, a GWayne is not only
threatening the captives and the enemy, she's also threatening her
allies when she fills them too close to the grounds.

Speaker 2 (01:28:50):
So this little pov kind of tells the story of
Gareth Brynn's sword, right, Like I kind of followed his
sword throughout the whole activity he because it starts with
him like popping it as he rolls to avoid an attack.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
Which like no swordsman should do that. I feel like
that's emphasized repeatedly that that's not a thing swordsman do
You always hold onto the sword? But whatever, who am I?

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
And then Gowin gets it and hands it back to
a home. It's this whole like kind of it's his
internal thoughts. While he gets his sword back from Golwin.

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
Right, he also admires how badass Gwain is with the sword.
It's very much like Arum. It's just that, like, you
can't go into that situation, you'll die. Oh you just
killed them with a plum. Okay, then Gowain and Aram
should have gotten together.

Speaker 2 (01:29:35):
Yeah no, please, I mean maybe then one would have
killed the other and we could have spared ourselves with
the stupidity of both of them.

Speaker 1 (01:29:43):
Light blinded full. Gareth sleeps with that sword every night,
and he's submitten. So Brynn looks up there sees a
woman in white kicking ass doesn't immediately assume as a
GWayne like an asshole. He also notices that there's activity
on the flat circular roof, which which we know is
more or less this is the moment when Alida is

(01:30:04):
being taken give her take.

Speaker 2 (01:30:05):
One would assume, yeah, yeah, he's.

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
Seeing the process that Alida is part of. I choose
to believe that he looks up right around when she's
literally getting picked up and taken off.

Speaker 2 (01:30:14):
I feel like there's a bunch of parallel stuff going
on at the same time, right, I feel like this
isn't necessarily quitchal Right, they're jumping between different places where
at the same time.

Speaker 1 (01:30:24):
Yeah, exactly, which is why you know, when we join
Alida later, it's after this moment. So I assume that
at this moment he's witnessing the bag that her getting
taken off. But that's entirely my head can because I
like that sort of plot. But yeah, it's very much
like playing like Dungeons and Dragons combat, Like, yes, it's
a six second round, but it's going to take us
an hour to cover everything that is happening in said

(01:30:47):
six second round.

Speaker 2 (01:30:49):
So the fights between thirty sean Chan soldiers who are
coming out and Gareth Brand's hundred men and also some
rockin are like interfering, right, dropping boulders, doing stuff like that.
So it's kind of not great.

Speaker 1 (01:31:03):
It's a mess. Yeah, they're not quite ideal levels of deadly,
but they are very effective soldiers. So Brinn's soldiers, he
loses a few and some are going to get left behind,
some of them are going to die, like they do,
take some casualties, but they win the fight easily because yeah,
it's nearly it's over two to one odds, like, it's
just you don't win. And then in the meantime, Swan

(01:31:27):
slips off and goes to get a novice who clues
them into the fact that searching the dungeons will not work.

Speaker 2 (01:31:32):
In complete violation of Men's prophecy, right, just totally abandoning
Gareth Brann in the middle of a battle, despite the
prophecy saying if they separate, they'll both die. I guess
she makes it back in time. It's I don't know,
it's such a weird prophecy.

Speaker 1 (01:31:46):
Yeah, I feel like Sanderson did not quite understand what
Jordan was going for with that, And I suspect Jordan
didn't quite know what he was going for with that
because he clearly didn't leave good notes on it, and
none of us have figured out a satisfying explanation. It's
just prophecy be like that sometimes we.

Speaker 2 (01:32:03):
And it's just like, though, oh, if you ever separate
at any point in your future, you could die. It's
such a weird like not the way the prophecy was
worded at all, and not the way I thought of it,
and not the way men made it seem right. It
was like, it made it seem like there'd be one
point in your future where you will save each other
and then you're good, and that's what we kind of
all assumed. And I feel like Sanderson pulled to gotcha, No,

(01:32:23):
that's not what it meant, And it was like, Oh,
that's dumb.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
I always thought that, Like she said something like you
have to be there for him twice.

Speaker 2 (01:32:31):
Oh of course, No, I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (01:32:33):
No, I'm thinking of her. I don't know what the
fuck I'm thinking of I it Initially it was a
great inciting incident for at Taming of the Shrew style
romance to say you have to stay with him because
otherwise you'll both die, Like it was a great reason
to force them to be together.

Speaker 2 (01:32:51):
Kind of like cod Swain's she'll teach you something, so
you have to you.

Speaker 1 (01:32:55):
Know, right, But as with all things, wu you shouldn't
live your life precisely by the prediction. You should just
live your life with the general knowledge that that's true.
You shouldn't be making minute to minute decisions based on
that information.

Speaker 2 (01:33:09):
And so that's why I hate that that min is like,
oh my god, you've a he's abandoned you, and then
they die and I'm like, it was just that they
separated for a few minutes like they do a million
other times, just because min was there and happened to
see it. That's when they die, right Like, I don't know,
I didn't like it. I don't like their deaths. I
don't like the way that that's handled in the last book.

(01:33:31):
It feels uh.

Speaker 1 (01:33:32):
I mean, there's something to be said for like you
can misread when a prophecy is fulfilled. There's something to
be said for that as an example, But having Swan
die the way she does, it's very upsetting and frustrating
and unnecessary and bad. There there were better ways to
prove the issues with taking prophecies too literally and believing

(01:33:55):
that they'd been fulfilled when they weren't, Like there were
other ways to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:33:59):
How did she die? Again? I forget exactly what the
circumstances were.

Speaker 1 (01:34:02):
She gets bombed in the tent at some point. It's
the really weirdly off screen. It gets technically on screen,
but it feels like just to buy the bye, and
for someone as important as Swan, it feels downright insulting.
It's not the Sharran attack, but I think it's still
in the camp or something after the Sharran attack. I

(01:34:23):
forget exactly. But it's really dumb and bad and not
what she deserved.

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):
Yeah, she like dies in a random explosion while trying
to save Matt.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
Yeah, it's dumb and bad and unnecessary and unsatisfying, and
I will be very angry about it every time it
gets brought up, especially when we.

Speaker 2 (01:34:40):
Get there Demandrand bombs Matt's command post. That's right, Okay,
So yeah, she gets taken out kind of in the
same way that Grendall's two friends.

Speaker 1 (01:34:51):
Do Helena and Agnar and Aaron.

Speaker 2 (01:34:54):
Gar Well arghar and oh and Dolana Dolana yep yep,
pip yep, yipp those two get taken out kind of
just oh yeah, they were trying to bomb somebody else
and they were just in the wrong place at the
wrong time.

Speaker 1 (01:35:05):
Yeah yeah, yeah, which Swan didn't deserve that for her.
Swan deserves to fucking live and Mary Morain and live
in a fucking hut on the side of the.

Speaker 2 (01:35:14):
River, both in the show and in the books.

Speaker 1 (01:35:18):
Yeah, like that's how it's supposed to go, Like the
department and then they each get a man is no.

Speaker 2 (01:35:26):
So right now, I think I've got a coming back
with information that Agwaine is back in the Novice tower
and has been dosed with a bunch of fourk group.

Speaker 1 (01:35:35):
Right, she's not in the dungeon, but she is upstairs
and definitely drugged. And not the woman who is kicking
ass and taking names and all lot of bubble gum
and all that jazz.

Speaker 2 (01:35:44):
No way it could be her. So they're trying to
you know, they're like, oh my god, what are we
going to do with this novice? She's going to betray us?
And she's like, oh no, I support the Ambulin like
all the novices do.

Speaker 1 (01:35:55):
Agwayne, Yeah, which you know, makes that a simple choice
for them, which is good.

Speaker 2 (01:36:00):
We get the death count. Twelve men died in the battle,
fifteen are wounded, and then another it was fifteen wounded
but can walk, and then another six are wounded too
badly to walk. Three are not three of the I
guess three of those six are dying, is what my
assumption was.

Speaker 1 (01:36:14):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's my assumption as well. Three of
them are going to make it, three of them aren't
going to make it. And Swan says Mmmm, that doesn't
make me happy on your behalf. So I'm going to
go heal three men real quick. And I find a
little unbelievable that Swan and her reduced power is able
to heal three men in rapid succession to the point

(01:36:34):
that they won't die. That feels a little out of scale,
but for plot reasons it's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:36:40):
Yeah. I don't really know what kind of healing she
can or can't do.

Speaker 1 (01:36:45):
I guess maybe just sealing someone up so that they're
not literally dying is easier than fixing them so that
they can walk or function at all. And as she
goes to heal them, brins thinking we're running out of time.
If the Shawn Channer retreating like the window to rescue
Agwayne before the tower reasserts its own control of itself

(01:37:08):
is running out, Yes, I'm gonna say I feel like
Swan's healing talent was expressed as being mediocre because she's
a Blue and Blues are mediocre at healing.

Speaker 2 (01:37:19):
I think she does know how to use the healing
weaves to kill directly. She knows how to use side
artists off the heart. She does seem to have a
small healing talent.

Speaker 1 (01:37:28):
Swan does when the hell did want to talk about
being able to stop?

Speaker 2 (01:37:32):
Hearts a Memory of Light chapter thirty seven.

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
Oh well, that expends why I forget because the last
three books and I don't know anything that happened to
the last three books.

Speaker 2 (01:37:42):
Let me see if I can get there in a way.
That's sorry. I'm doing a lot of reading, so I
trying to get there quickly. I'm like, oh, I wonder
what chapter that in? That is? That's the last battle,
so I'm like, oh, I wonder if I can search
through that chapter really quick.

Speaker 1 (01:37:59):
Real quick through a book, then a chapter the length
of a book.

Speaker 2 (01:38:03):
Here we go. She's she's too on to abandon her
costume for trousers and shirt and run to Matt. Min
steps through the hole and runs around the building and
countermaile Iyod, who catches a knife she throws at him
before being killed by sue On, stopping his heart. She
sells sue On that sue On was supposed to stay
near Gareth, so this is right before she dies and

(01:38:24):
is separated from Gareth. In that moment, she stops an
AOD's heart with the One Power, and.

Speaker 1 (01:38:29):
Then she stops Brind's heart with her stupid senseless death.

Speaker 2 (01:38:34):
So she in that moment is able to stop somebody's heart,
so she apparently knows how to do that and healing
well enough.

Speaker 1 (01:38:41):
So okay, right, all that to say she should be
semi competent healing.

Speaker 2 (01:38:46):
Yeah, but that's all Sanderson's stuff. There's no evidence of
it beforehand. And also with a reduced power, she should
be really bad at it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:52):
So but also, like, you know, if these guys are
like rapidly bleeding out from their artery, she should be
able to like stock up the life blood from pumping
out in the next three minutes, right right.

Speaker 2 (01:39:03):
Right, heal up a couple arteries And that's basically as.

Speaker 1 (01:39:07):
It's only a couple of artery walls should be within
range for her and like make the difference on helping
those soldiers not.

Speaker 2 (01:39:13):
Die within the next hour, right exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
Because the idea is that they're leaving their wounded in
enemy hands, trusting to the rules of war to have
them be you know, taking care of and imprisoned like
with humane care.

Speaker 2 (01:39:25):
Yeah, and healing is a ton to be more like
a talent based on like your change in power level
doesn't affect your ability to heal as much.

Speaker 1 (01:39:33):
But she's still so much weaker. I don't know, I
just wanted to nitpick because this recording isn't long enough yet.

Speaker 2 (01:39:40):
We're not that far over two hours.

Speaker 1 (01:39:43):
All right. So Brinn's looking at the tower being like, wow,
this is We're never going to forget this. You know,
this is a profound impact on the tower to have
all of these holes and fires ripped into it. And
you know, this is this moment of like pride and
grief and all this stuff. And then a blood knife

(01:40:06):
comes leaping out and Brynn gets to experience how cool
it is to be a warder with a level up
and be able to you know, protect his iside in
this wonderful moment. And then the blood knife is very
blood knife and almost manages to poison him with like
his last little puts a pin in his wrist that
like is going to poison him. Like I admired the

(01:40:27):
blood knives for being like, oh, I died so much
faster than I thought I would. But I'm still taking
someone out with me, even as they're stabbed by a
man they didn't see, you know, you know, like the
quick thinking there is impressive, and.

Speaker 2 (01:40:39):
I have to wonder if maybe The reason we don't
see the Blood Knives tear through the Isidi right away
is because the first one who tried to do anything
got killed immediately mm hmm. And so they're like, oh man,
we lost one of our number right away, and this guy,
like this warder did it, and so maybe we need
to be way more careful about who we attack. So

(01:41:01):
we're only going to attack isolated isidie And that explains
the weird pattern that we are seeing in the Blood
Knives attacks later on with a gwayin and why we're like,
why aren't they killing a bunch more? It feels like
if they have a limited amount of time, they'd just
be like murdering anyone they could get their hands on.
And maybe this like one guy who tries to attack,

(01:41:22):
I mean, the other ones are probably around there somewhere
are witnessing this, right They're probably not that far away,
and this dude just executed the guy. So maybe they're like,
oh fuck, maybe we need to, you know, be much
more careful.

Speaker 1 (01:41:32):
You know, that's a really interesting point that I the
other Blood Knives were like, this is going to be easy,
pas lemons, squat one of us is dead, okay, uh
okay with threat recalibration.

Speaker 2 (01:41:43):
Exactly exactly, Yeah, but this is the moment where, yeah,
so the assassin reaches out and has like a little
poisoned dart that he presses in the Gareth Bryn's arm.
Gareth Brinn doesn't notice. A Swan is like, thank you
for saving my life. Wait a minute. The prophecy wasn't
that I say, you just saved my life. It's that
we save each other. And she realizes, oh, you're probably

(01:42:04):
something's wrong with you, delves him, realize he's poisoned, and.

Speaker 1 (01:42:07):
Heals him and it's a super fast acting poison, like
this is poison that was going to drop him in
like ninety seconds. Like she had no time to make
that leap, and she did it. So to her credit,
she is very very smart.

Speaker 2 (01:42:19):
So that's one of those weird conditional Men prophecies that like,
if she hadn't heard the prophecy, she wouldn't have thought
to save Gareth Brynn's life. And so the prophecy saved
his life in that moment.

Speaker 1 (01:42:28):
Except this wasn't the moment because Men says later, I
still see the prophecy around you. It hasn't been fulfilled.
This just this was a trick of your This is
a placebo prophecy is what this was. This is a
placebo moment where they're saving each other because they believe
in a prophecy, not because it's necessary.

Speaker 2 (01:42:46):
See, I had a different interpretation. My interpretation is that
it's not just one moment. There are multiple moments where
they have to be near each other or else they
will die. And like this is one of them. And
then they think and then there's like a more coming, right,
and they're like, okay, we're good, and it's like, no,
there's a bunch more coming. What are you doing?

Speaker 1 (01:43:03):
Yeah? Yeah, I think it's because Swan's are a really
powerful person and the pattern was going to take her out,
so you know, like you're gonna have to have a
lot of people working to keep you alive otherwise.

Speaker 2 (01:43:28):
And then we're back to Agwain's POV as she lies
exhausted on the floor, basically too exhausted to move or
speak or you know, she's hanging on to consciousness, barely
aware of what's going on around her because of the channeling.

Speaker 1 (01:43:41):
I mean, she's lucky she didn't burn herself out with
how over extended she is.

Speaker 2 (01:43:47):
It kind of reminds me of the way that Rand
and I Need were after the cleansing. Right, It's not
so much that they couldn't handle the amount of power,
but channeling that much power takes physical effort. And she's
an hour is standing up there channeling battle power, and
now she's just physically exhausted, like running a marathon exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:44:06):
The sheer physical strain of doing that is its own burden.
And she told all of the women that she was
channeling through or channeling from all the women she was
linked with. She's like, you all go straight to bed.
Everyone who was in circles doing the battle, you need
to stay up and help with battle mop up and
dealing with the wounded and all that. But the people

(01:44:27):
who were just battery conduits, you all need to go
straight to bed.

Speaker 2 (01:44:31):
But she stays there because she wants to help what clean,
care for the wounded, or work on the fires. She's like,
I can still help, I can still help, and it's like, no,
you can't. Passes out.

Speaker 1 (01:44:42):
I think she's out there because she literally ran out
of juice in the middle of the hallway, nowhere near
a bed. I think that's what that is. She's like
I'm just gonna go until I literally stop. And she
just stopped in the middle of a hallway, just like
she wound down. Her batteries are completely discharged. Spring has
completely relaxed, like she's just she's done. She has no

(01:45:05):
capacity to think about going to bed. She's used the
energy she would have used to go to bed to
continue on thinking. She's got the energy to do stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:45:12):
Right right, and she's she's protected pretty much everybody who
was with her, but still kind of failed the Tower
right as her thoughts, like enough of them got away,
there was enough of a raid, Like the raid was successful.
She made them pay for it, but not as much
as she wanted to, and she only was able to
really protect the people around her.

Speaker 1 (01:45:28):
Yeah, I mean she has the correct read here that
the White Tower did not come out ahead in the
battle in terms of the numbers of people they lost
versus the number of casualties they inflicted. Yeah, she did
not exact the cost she wanted to exact, but I
mean they did win with the whole losing of Alida thing,
I mean, yeah, it does put the Tower ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:45:48):
And because she brings in this massive influx of novices,
and let's be realistic a huge number of Isidai who
were outside of the tower. Yes, it's a huge loss
for the isidai who were in the tower, but overall,
it's not that big of a loss of numbers. Forty
or fifty I sid eye. I mean they lost more
to the Black Tower when the Light has sent them off.

Speaker 1 (01:46:07):
For the raid, right, I mean she lost a lot
of novices and accepted though. Right, she didn't just lose
eyes to die in this raid like to the shan Chan.
The shan Chan got a lot of channelers who were
not ice to die.

Speaker 2 (01:46:20):
I thought she was able to keep most of the
novices safe. I mean the only three novices and one
isid I.

Speaker 1 (01:46:28):
Dead from her group. But she didn't get to everyone
in the tower.

Speaker 2 (01:46:33):
I thought that like all. Yeah, I thought she had
all of the novices together because she went to the
Novice quarters. They were all in the Novice quarters. They
formed all the various five different circles.

Speaker 1 (01:46:44):
Is that all of them?

Speaker 2 (01:46:46):
I think? So there aren't that many. Remember, there's not
that many novices in the tower. They're not accepting all
the new novices and everything.

Speaker 1 (01:46:55):
So you're saying that forty or fifty isidie is all
the channelers that the shan Chen got, and they're patting
themselves on the back about it.

Speaker 2 (01:47:06):
Okay, that's yeah, that's accepted. Yeah, okay, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:47:11):
Yeah, that's always the thing is. It's like Agwayne isn't accepted,
but she's why is she with the novices if she'sn't accepted?

Speaker 2 (01:47:19):
No, Ala made her a novice again.

Speaker 1 (01:47:22):
I thought she got elevated back to being unaccepted again.

Speaker 2 (01:47:27):
I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (01:47:28):
Yeah, I thought that she they were allowed to put
her back into accepted. I thought so that she could have.
I don't know. I'm confused, but the shaan chenk got
more than forty fresh channelers to pat themselves on the
back about.

Speaker 2 (01:47:47):
Right. Let me see if I can find no.

Speaker 1 (01:47:51):
Light minded fools saying she was never an accepted again.
Maybe that was just teased, but yeah, clearly she's in
the novice's quarters. Oh yeah, no, I mean I suc
alone saying novice. So okay, I was wrong about the
whole accepted thing that, like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:48:08):
I don't know if I'm trying to read the chapter
with Fortuna to find out if we know how many
they got towers have been Night chapter forty seven. Let
me pull that up really quick or whatever. I don't
know if we ever get the numbers of how many
marath Demani they captured, right if if she ever says

(01:48:30):
exactly how many, I hope.

Speaker 1 (01:48:32):
She does, because that would be I'm curious what they
consider to be worth it, given how heavy of losses
they suffered, Like they lose Demani to the tower, they
lose Suldom to death, like they lose a lot of channelers.

Speaker 2 (01:48:52):
But I don't think they got them, man, I like,
I mean, I think they got a number.

Speaker 1 (01:48:55):
But they consider it a success, Like if they consider
the rate of success then like.

Speaker 2 (01:49:00):
Eh, sorry, this is a long silence, lots of research.

Speaker 1 (01:49:07):
Voujie suggesting it's just a pyrrhic when they're saying it's success,
saying it's a success to avoid making an apology. Maybe,
I mean, yeah, I guess they could say we were,
you know, a dozen channelers ahead, so it counts. I
don't know. I'm much always surprised at how small of
numbers we're talking when it comes to is to dye stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:49:27):
That's kind of why I reiterate it because I know
it's yes, it's not intuitive. You're like these are just
not that many people like they think they're the shit,
but they're just tiny. Yeah. I mean she sort of
talks about how like, now that they have gateways, what
they did before was a pinprick. Now they're really going
to attack. But I don't see her talking about how

(01:49:48):
many they captured, because we see her with you know,
Elida and Alida's trying to bargain. They demonstrate gateways. I mean,
nothing else that makes the rate of success right is
the fact that they got gateways from the raid r
It doesn't really matter how many they lost or how
many they gained. That alone is a strategic advantage.

Speaker 1 (01:50:08):
That is huge. That is huge. Yeah, and then Saren
thinks later in this chapter that Igwain had a group
of over sixty novices, and that does sound like about
all the novices that the tower has. That's that's gotta
be the entire population of novices that she protected. So

(01:50:29):
the inciting incident of this long tangent is that I'm
wrong again.

Speaker 2 (01:50:35):
Hey, we're in that part. We're in those books where
the radiomedia is not up to date.

Speaker 1 (01:50:41):
It's definitely media.

Speaker 2 (01:50:43):
No, you're not pedaing at all. Well, and what's so
funny is Encyclopedia Watt also doesn't have memory of light
in it. So in a lot of.

Speaker 1 (01:50:50):
Ways, my ship Encyclopedia and the Radiopedia.

Speaker 2 (01:50:55):
Yeah, it's like how does how's the Radiopedia and it's
like Encyclopedia Watt both all my encyclopedias just don't include
the last couple of books that.

Speaker 1 (01:51:05):
Well, eh, that's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:51:08):
It's the Sanderson of it though, Like it's just it's
not as complicated to write and talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:51:14):
Yeah, except when it gets into the hard numbers of
how many eyes to die are involved in a given thing, right.

Speaker 2 (01:51:20):
Right right where we Oh, I close my book. That's
why I'm like, I was looking at other books.

Speaker 1 (01:51:27):
So we're at Agwayne thinking about how she fought and
how she was glorious, and how the tower is going
to need a strong leader in order to rebuild, and
the next few days are going to be really important
and this, you know, like gott to focus on the future,
but just going to take a few moments to rest.
And then she gets picked up and she's like, oh,
it's such a nice dream that I think that Gawain's

(01:51:49):
holding me. What a lovely way to get a few
moments of rest and turns out it's a real Gwain
living nightmare, and Swan and Brand are there and she's like, no,
don't take me, I'm winning, But she's too tired to
like make her mouth make the words. She's just thinking
it really hard, which is insufficient to convince them to
let her stay there.

Speaker 2 (01:52:10):
Mm hmm. I destroyed them. I was a burning warrior,
a hero called by the Horn.

Speaker 1 (01:52:17):
Yes, girl, yes, you are a hero from the Horn.
Fucking yes, and there.

Speaker 2 (01:52:21):
Face me again. Like that puts herself on that level
of accomplishment to be like I was just this burning
force in the wall that like held back a tide
of Sean chan by myself.

Speaker 1 (01:52:32):
Yeah, she is a hero too, that's how. That's why
she gets to deliver that line to Rand, like she's
a literal capital H hero.

Speaker 2 (01:52:39):
And this is like this impresses everybody, right, everyone saw
her realize who it was, well except the people pulling
her out of the freaking tower.

Speaker 1 (01:52:47):
Literally, her closest friends don't get it, but everyone else does.

Speaker 2 (01:52:51):
I feel like that's a fantasy trope where it's like
like everyone the hero does something amazing, or like his
closest allies thinking betrayed them, but the enemies know it
wasn't real, so they're like, your friends think you're a trader,
you know, like, but I know you're not, so I'm
gonna kill.

Speaker 1 (01:53:09):
You anyway, right, or even just the classic thing of
like in your hometown, you're never as cool as you
are out in the world where you made your mark,
your hometown, people are always going to be like, yeah,
whatever exactly, little kid like it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (01:53:23):
So Suan finds Vora song real and goes, oh, I
can make a gateway with this. Let's get the fuck
out of here. They head out of the White Tower,
which also it's like a GWayne leaving. I know, it's
it's really frustrating. She could just make go another gateway
and walk right back in.

Speaker 1 (01:53:39):
Well, she thinks about it later and is like, no,
the penachh is wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:53:43):
Because now it's like, oh, well you can come and
go as you please. There's you're not under any authority.

Speaker 1 (01:53:47):
Yeah yeah, and po V switch back to Saren. Saren
is in the hospital slash command center, still in charge.
Because that's how badly to care Appetita. The Towers leadership
is that Sayeran is still the highest ranked Isidai and
there's over twenty aid I dead known about so far.

(01:54:09):
That's you know, a hint of the casualties to come.
Sarah's wondering where Alida is while she continues to get
more and more reports of the dead and injured. No
one knows where Alida is. Hopefully the armor in the
hall could be gathered soon to present strong leadership.

Speaker 2 (01:54:26):
This is where we get the information about away and
only three of sixty novices and one of forty isid I.
So yeah, that is you're right, And that's the.

Speaker 1 (01:54:35):
Ten shan Chan channelers captured. Like, that's ten taken from
sean Chan and potentially delivered to the Isidi to replace
the numbers that they lost.

Speaker 2 (01:54:44):
Not to mention how many did she blow out of
the sky that were on Rockin right, like.

Speaker 1 (01:54:49):
So yeah, yeah, over thirty Rockin blown from the air again.
Agwain's kill count is easily in the triple digits if
not edging towards four. And then in the middle of
all that, capt and chew Baine brings her an accepted
who had the fortune slash misfortune to be hit by

(01:55:10):
rocks and a wall collapsing when Alida's rooms were attacked
by the Shawan Chan and got left for dead and
can come down with the news that Alida is gone,
not dead, gone, And that's the same thing that happened
to Matt.

Speaker 2 (01:55:25):
He got left under her, left under a wall full
of rubble by the Seawan Chan.

Speaker 1 (01:55:30):
Yeah, this poor little Accepted has something in common with Matt.
Came out from under a wall.

Speaker 2 (01:55:36):
This Accepted has been mentioned before. She tried to bully
Agwayne when she first came on, she was the one
who was like and then a Grain was like, oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:55:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you remember that mayor yeah, and then
from that Stayer and going there's no way that she's
implying what I think she's implying. And then we pov
switched to Alida, who is very much no longer in
the tower.

Speaker 2 (01:55:59):
Right. She does that thing where she's like, I don't
want to wake up. It's cold out here, and it's
like you're not in your bed anymore. Elida, wakey, wakey.
Things have gotten bad.

Speaker 1 (01:56:12):
And somehow she hasn't really gained full consciousness until now.
I'm not totally sure how you can have your wall
blown in and get yoinked onto the roof and not
wake up until after the flight has started.

Speaker 2 (01:56:25):
You know, I'm thinking maybe she got like hit in
the head a little bit by one of the bricks
that blew in, Like sure, so there's a little concussion
going on, like that's.

Speaker 1 (01:56:33):
Yeah, she was stunned for long enough that Okay, yeah, sure,
that's fine. I'll accept that.

Speaker 2 (01:56:39):
I mean, we don't mention anything, but yeah, and she, you.

Speaker 1 (01:56:42):
Know, does the whole trying to channel, trying to struggle,
and then gets introduced to her soul dumb and it's nasty,
and uh, I really just have the readout to accompany
that horror.

Speaker 2 (01:56:58):
Just that the soufa to see Soufa later on with
in front of Tuan making gateways.

Speaker 1 (01:57:04):
Yeah, unfortunate lawyer, all right, you're ready for the readout
on this long ass episode.

Speaker 2 (01:57:10):
Yep, go for it.

Speaker 1 (01:57:12):
A voice whispered from the night. I shall forgive that
little mistake. You have been marath Demani for very long
and bad habits are to be expected, but you will
not reach for the source again without permission. Do you understand?
Release me? Alida bellowed. The pain returned tenfold, and Alida
wretched at the intensity of it. Her bile and sick

(01:57:33):
up fell over the side of the beast and dropped
far to the ground below. Now, now, the voice said, patient,
like a woman speaking to a very young child. You
must learn Your name is Suffa, and Supfa will be
a good demani. Yes, she will a very very good damani.

(01:57:53):
Alida screamed again, and this time she didn't stop when
the pain came. She just kept screaming out into the
uncaring night.

Speaker 2 (01:58:04):
Pretty brutal there.

Speaker 1 (01:58:05):
It's the moment when a villain goes from yeah, anything
to get you out of the plata. Oh no, not
like that, Like, oh oh, I don't want to feel
good about that. That doesn't make me feel okay at all.

Speaker 2 (01:58:19):
Yeah. One of the things though, is like it's something
Agwaine has gone through, and you're like, oh, Agwayne went
through it and came out the other side better. What's
going to happen to Alida? Not that likeable? But yeah,
well yeah, sure, yeah, she came out stronger, strong, sure, sure, sure.

Speaker 1 (01:58:38):
But yeah, Alida will not maintain who she is the
way that Agwain did. Alida will not be rescued. I
mean that's the thing too. Is Awayin thinks in this
section about how she could feel her will eroding and
she knew that at some point she wasn't going to
be able to fight anymore. She gets rescued before that happens,
like I had, no one ever rescues her, No one's

(01:59:02):
ever gonna come for her. She has no hope of
being rescued, and no one ever comes for her, So like, yeah,
it's it's rough to know that someone less likable and
less strong than a GWayne is going in. But nonetheless,
someone that we've known for a long time in the
book is going into that with no hope of coming out.

Speaker 2 (01:59:20):
I mean, someone who started off like we met her
in the garden when rand fell in long time ago
with that prophecy.

Speaker 1 (01:59:27):
Yeah, like he's been around longer than Varren, who just
died right like she's been around. And you know what
happens to people in that imprisonment and we know, as
spoiler people the Tower very happily chooses to not pursue
rescuing her because she was so awful and it's such
a difficult situation. But like if Agwayne had been captured,

(01:59:49):
I don't know that they would have given up so easily, you.

Speaker 2 (01:59:51):
Know, right right it is, I don't know that is
one of the most unrealistic things. But I guess in war,
but usually there's prisoner exchanges in war, you know, but
the sean Chan aren't interested in that, not with the
marath the money.

Speaker 1 (02:00:04):
But I feel like an attempt would have been made
with a GWayne in a way that it never will
be for allied. Elia did not earn the loyalty of
people asking for the impossible.

Speaker 2 (02:00:13):
Well, good riddance.

Speaker 1 (02:00:15):
I feel so bad saying good riddance. You know, it's
like not magic slavery. No, couldn't you just have killed her?
Wouldn't that I'd feel okay with it. But yeah, but
then she tries to throw other eyes to die under
the bus, like you know, I'll trade you twenty for me,
Like it's yeah, she sucks, and if if anyone were
to deserve this, it would be her. No one deserves this,

(02:00:38):
but if anyone did, it would be her.

Speaker 2 (02:00:41):
And I don't want to draw any parallels with our
current president, but if anyone deserved it, yeah, No, the
parallels are there, but you could argue they're there every
like this is just you write history, and it feels
like writing prophecy right now.

Speaker 1 (02:00:58):
We talked about it last time. It's a it's a
it's a whole thing. It's I keep going on tangents
and then being like I'm going to edit that out,
and then I get to it like, well, but when
do I cut myself off? Because like the blend from
talking about the books of talking about modern things, it's
just so seamless. It's like, where do I cut myself
off in a way that like it's a challenge. Editing

(02:01:20):
is a challenge. Speaking of editing being a challenge, let's
turn this episode off.

Speaker 2 (02:01:24):
Well, you don't want to edit more now it's drivel bullshit.

Speaker 1 (02:01:28):
We already have witty banter from the beginning for the end.

Speaker 2 (02:01:35):
H thank god none of that was recorded.

Speaker 1 (02:02:18):
Yeah that nope, I don't need to hear.

Speaker 2 (02:02:21):
That a formal thank you to.

Speaker 1 (02:02:26):
This is just open therapy time, not anymore because now
the mics are on.

Speaker 2 (02:02:31):
Well come on, you don't want to hear about my
trauma on live.

Speaker 1 (02:02:34):
Hey, if you want to come share therapeutic cathartic space
with people that isn't legally speaking, not therapy, you can
come to my support group.

Speaker 2 (02:02:42):
On Thursdays legally speaking, not therapy.

Speaker 1 (02:02:47):
It's very important that I emphasize that I am not
doing therapy. It's like actually legally important.

Speaker 2 (02:02:53):
Gosh, is there anything that we just talked about or
anything we should get on record for the lifestyle changes
that are going on.

Speaker 1 (02:03:00):
You were telling me that Harvey is very nearly a
good very nearly a good boy time. I mean, he's
always a good boy fundamentally. Yes, you were saying he's improving,
continuing to improve.

Speaker 2 (02:03:09):
He's continuing to improve, right, pretty much. He's he's calming down,
quicker with strangers, listening more. He's very snugly more of
most of the time. He's not barking at us, he's
not biting at us, he's not nipping as much. You know,
it's still the behavior still all occur, but only in
like very small bursts, only when he's very tired. Yeah,

(02:03:30):
he's just he's turning into a very good dog because
he is highly motivated to listen to what we want.
He very much, you know, cares about what we want
from him. He's a very smart dog. He's not super
food motivated, especially when he's at the park. He's much
more attention motivated. So yeah, it's uh, And he's about
to turn a year probably by the time this recording

(02:03:52):
comes out. He will have turned a year old. He'll
turn a year on the twenty ninth of this month.
Happy birthda have happy BIRTHDAYA Harvey.

Speaker 1 (02:03:59):
Yeah, actually will come out on his birthday because yeah,
we record nine days before the episode's released. So yeah,
that's perfect. Everyone wish a happy birthday.

Speaker 2 (02:04:11):
He is a year old, and yeah we are. We
are learning to live with each other. Although he will
eat anything I leave out on the counter if I
leave him alone for three seconds, he is tall enough
to get up on there and just go to town.

Speaker 1 (02:04:24):
Well that's what lucky boys get to do.

Speaker 2 (02:04:27):
And it's like create challenge. Remember put the food away.
Put the food away. That's what I have to do.
I can't leave the food out because Timber, I mean,
was never much for eating off the counters. He was
always good about doing it. He wouldn't eat anything without permission.
And he couldn't get up there anyway because he had
bad hips. So there's there's a learning curve, certainly with

(02:04:48):
a new dog, because he's an individual and yet still
a dog and still a pity right, So he's got
some of that same stubborn personality while at the same
time feeling being highly intentive but sometimes choosing not to listen.

Speaker 1 (02:05:02):
Intelligent intelligence, Yes, intelligent in a very specific, talkyway, in.

Speaker 2 (02:05:08):
A very parent of the two rivers, stubborn asshole kind
of way.

Speaker 1 (02:05:12):
Anyway, Yeah, my life, I don't. I guess I can
report that my strawberry rock decoys appear to be working.

Speaker 2 (02:05:22):
Oh nice, Well, if.

Speaker 1 (02:05:23):
I talked about those podcasts a bit, and yeah, so far,
I have had my first harvest of strawberries, just a
few of them, and none of them had bird bites
on them. M so, and I've got a lot of
ripening berries out there. Like I was watching this one
ripening right next to a rock, and I was checking
it every day, and I think it worked. I think

(02:05:44):
the rocks works like. I'll continue to report throughout the
strawberry harvesting season. But it seems at first glance that
if you paint rocks red and lay them out in
your strawberry plants before there's any fruit, like while the
flowers are bloom, you got to put the rocks out
before there's any hint of fruit. Apparently then the birds

(02:06:05):
don't want to eat them. So that's my update.

Speaker 2 (02:06:09):
Oh, we we found out a house on our street
went up for sale and the guy who lived there
was apparently the crow whisperer of the street and fed
and trained all the crows and he's gone now, so
Never is extremely excited to be taking over as the
crow whisperer of the neighborhood. And so we're setting out fun.
We got peanuts. We've got a balcony and we're setting
out peanuts for them to come to, and we bring

(02:06:31):
unsalted peanuts on the dogwalks to feed the birds. And so, yeah,
I'm not sure it's a good thing because they dive
bomb us for food. And I've been smacked in the
back of the head multiple times by crows who are
demanding treats, So I'm not entirely happy about that.

Speaker 1 (02:06:47):
Yeah, start carrying like a tennis racket with.

Speaker 2 (02:06:52):
Well, because they recognize Harvey, right and they know that
like the person walking, Harvey gives them treats.

Speaker 1 (02:06:57):
So well, maybe you just have to learn to feed
the crow.

Speaker 2 (02:07:00):
I've been doing well. I have been, I have been lately,
So now they know me too, because they're smart. Yeah,
I'm developing. I'm developing my own Ravens eyes is basically
what I'm saying. It's it's pretty great.

Speaker 1 (02:07:12):
You're gonna know this is good. This is good. The
couple who have the murder of crows of the neighborhood
on their side, Like, you don't want to fuck with
them because they.

Speaker 2 (02:07:20):
Have the cross exactly exactly, they will they will attack
you if you bring shit down. Crows. Remember, they're smart.

Speaker 1 (02:07:26):
They are so smart, like comparable only to you know, ravens,
like I mean in general, Yeah, are incredibly smart, and yeah,
don't do not underestimate them. Even blue jays are very
very smart. Even though they are you know, rebelliously blue
instead of black, they are still very very smart.

Speaker 2 (02:07:45):
Well, and I grew up with macaws in my house, right,
so I am very familiar with how smart a bird
can be. To the point where the bird would say
my name when I walked into the room, and would
you know, call out for me. They could ask for
things that they wanted, right, because they it's like giving
the dog the buttons, right, Like, they can say words
that represent what they They can be trained to say

(02:08:07):
words to get what they want. And it's a very
kind of creepy, especially because they can mimic sounds. Yeah,
to a very high degree.

Speaker 1 (02:08:16):
Bird mimicry sounds is the number of times.

Speaker 2 (02:08:19):
I think my mom was laughing in the other room
when she wasn't home because the bird would mimic that
sound exactly, terrifying, terrifying.

Speaker 1 (02:08:27):
Yeah, birds are creepy and awesome. They're dinosaurs. They're creepy.
They're creepy, awesome, awesome and creepy.

Speaker 2 (02:08:36):
The phone will ring, they'd say hello before you pick
up the phone. I mean, yeah, there's all sorts of
stuff like that. Examples are endless, and I'm sure people
who have had birds know all about it. But like, yeah,
I you can't see the intelligence and birds and the
intelligence and dogs and not realize that we just have
a slightly different kind of intelligence. We're not really that special.

(02:08:56):
We're just different.

Speaker 1 (02:08:57):
Yeah, any creature who does a certain level of like
social interaction with its fellows has a kind of intelligence
that is easily recognized across species. No, they're smart. They
we just have different things that we need to do
with our brains. That's it. That's all.

Speaker 2 (02:09:14):
They understand that I want something. They understand that I
want something, and that that is a terrified Like you
know the fact that you can point dogs follow where
you point, right, they don't just look at your finger
they understand that you're pointing at something.

Speaker 1 (02:09:29):
Yeah, dogs, horses, birds like, yeah, they can all follow
a couple of steps. I mean freaking I was just
watching the True Facts. If anyone hasn't watched True Facts
on YouTube, you are missing out. True Facts is so amazing.
It's very very silly but also true. It's all science.
And I was just rewatching the one about New Caledonian

(02:09:51):
crows and all of their tool use. They're very very
tool usy crows and yeah, so smart, so smart. They
can do multi step tool manufacturing problem solving. It's very cool.
I'll put a link in the show notes. It just yeah, was.

Speaker 2 (02:10:07):
That by Zay Frank?

Speaker 1 (02:10:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:10:08):
Oh, Zay Frank. That is an internet classic. Oh man,
he has been around for a long time and he's
done some really great things on the Internet. Are you
familiar with his early work? Uh?

Speaker 1 (02:10:18):
Nope, No, I know him as True Facts.

Speaker 2 (02:10:20):
Okay, hmmm, we shall have a discussion.

Speaker 1 (02:10:24):
Okay, I guess I've been fucking up all right?

Speaker 2 (02:10:28):
He did? Oh gosh, I want to get this right,
so I'm going to look up the details because I
don't want to.

Speaker 1 (02:10:36):
I did see him do an intro to a TED
talk which was really surreal and weird and strange.

Speaker 2 (02:10:41):
So he did something called The Show with Zay Frank
in two thousand and six, Oh oh wow, And this
was he would release a video every single day three
to five minutes of just absurd, surrealistic humor and it
was some of the og internet stuff that is just

(02:11:04):
so good and I highly recommend it, and it was
just he ended it on a high note. He did
it for a year and stopped it and it was
really sad. But then you know, he went on to
do a bunch about this stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:11:15):
Okay, I always figured he had a prior body of
work because True Facts feels like it's, you know, standing
on the on its own shoulders of giants kind of thing.
But yeah, the channel, I had never seen anything but
True Facts videos on it.

Speaker 2 (02:11:30):
And honestly, the True Facts video is very much in
the style of like it was like a one off
of one of his videos that he did in the show,
with that sort of mocking documentary style. But then he
started doing actual documentaries and that's how like I think honestly,
True Facts was a spin off eventually of the show,
simply because the style is very similar. It's just back

(02:11:53):
then he was doing comedy and now he's doing much
more science based stuff, but in a funny way.

Speaker 1 (02:11:58):
It's so funny. Yeah, it's so funny. Like he takes
the most like niche freaking PhD thesies and somehow makes
like really silly comedy out of it. It's the most
amazing thing. Yeah, if anyone out there listening, if you
are not watching these videos, you are missing out. But no,
that's interesting. I'm gonna have to look up that original

(02:12:18):
stuff because that feels like a rather glaring hole in
my understanding of the law of this character of this person.
He's not a character, he's a real person.

Speaker 2 (02:12:27):
Yep. Yeah. And it looks like it's all available, or
at least most of it's available on YouTube. I will
go ahead and throw a link there for at least
for radio.

Speaker 1 (02:12:37):
Clearly, I just don't care. I'm just a bad fan.
I'm just a fake fan.

Speaker 2 (02:12:44):
And this was there's you know, three hundred and sixty
five ish videos because you did it for one year.
Well I think you might have not done weekends. So
two hundred and forty five videos.

Speaker 1 (02:12:54):
Yeah, every weekday. Wow, that's so early in internet history.

Speaker 2 (02:13:00):
Oh yeah, it is an establishing moment like the absurdness
of the Internet and YouTube. He was absolutely like the
founding member of why YouTube is the way it is.

Speaker 1 (02:13:12):
I'm gonna have to like submit this to Jamie Loftus
for sixteenth minute and be like, why are you not
talking about Zee Frank? I need you, I need you
to do this. Wow.

Speaker 2 (02:13:24):
Amazing kind of like the The Green Brothers right, sort
of someone who was like, really.

Speaker 1 (02:13:29):
Yeah, I have completely heard of.

Speaker 2 (02:13:31):
Yeah, the early founding of the internet, and I feel
like have guided it since then in certain ways, at
least by being inspiration for a lot of other people.

Speaker 1 (02:13:39):
So this guy is like the Sparks of the YouTube.
You're not familiar with Sparks the band, are you? Sparks
is the weird band that all your favorite bands are
listening to, gotcha and have been since like the eighties.
My dad is one of the most hardcore fan boys
that that band has. Like, you've never heard of them,
but everyone everyone that you like to listen to has

(02:14:02):
heard of them. Is kind of who they are. So
this sounds like kind of the Sack No one's heard
of him, but also everyone who makes the stuff you
have heard of has heard of him.

Speaker 2 (02:14:13):
I think so yeah, at least in my areas of
the Internet when I was growing up fascinating. There was
a brief time after college where I had some connections
to people who were building the Internet, like you know,
friend of a friend type situation, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
so I did get some early invites to some of
those you know, all those social media apps, and I

(02:14:36):
don't know anyway, let's move on from this.

Speaker 1 (02:14:38):
Do you want to start preambling on what are double
Header is going to be today? Thank you for listening
to the Wheel of Time Spoilers podcast. Please rate and
review us on your podcast app and consider supporting us
on Patreon for ad free episodes. Watt Spoilers is a
production of Fox and Raven Media. For more podcas casts

(02:15:00):
from Fox and Ravenmedia, visit our website at Foxendravenmedia dot com.

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The Tower Shakes & A Fount of Power - The Gathering Storm chapters 40 & 41 - EP536

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Tower Shakes & A Fount of Power - The Gathering Storm chapters 40 & 41 - EP536