Sidenote! - Edit 1
Before modification by RugbyPlayingAshaman at 22/04/2010 07:30:44 PM
That's true, though considering Semirhage is the master of physical torture and Graendal the master of mental torture, there's not much left for everyone else. I do think her punishment for Liandrin was among the worst in the series.
I have to chime in and say that I think this was the most masterful use of Compulsion in the series. No heavy handed-ness, no complicated webs reinforcing each other - just a basic web of it, a command that is so close enough to any living beings' self-interest and a complicated Shield with inverted flows. Using much less strength and power than any of the other Forsaken, she destroyed an opponent while sending the same opponent elsewhere to cause even more harm for the Lightsiders. Lanfear and Graendal leave devastation - Moghedien leaves webs that make it hard to attack her directly because you are so busy concentrating on creatures stuck within the strands. I think that is the whole point of her character, though - she is incredibly skilled with her abilities, so that only a fool would dismiss her as a threat. She may be the least powerful but she had located the male a'dam and come closest to defeating Rand, who was very weak at the time, and was only foiled because Rand had female defenders already on her trail.
She handles her grudge against Lanfear cowardly - she bitches and bitches in her corner but won't stand up as her enemy openly, the way Lanfear and Semirhage do.
She imagines that she has a great aura of authority and inspire fear, but even a Black sister was so unimpressed that she tried to attack her, even knowing who she was. In comparison, even the Head of the Black Ajah was weak in the knees just thinking back on the visits of Ishamael, Be'lal, Lanfear or Graendal. Moghedien? Half her pawns disobeyed her and joined in Caemlyn, and one of them even attacked her. Cadsuane could probably have gotten more obedience from Liandrin's group just by staring them down...
The Black Sister may have been unimpressed but it's still important to note that Moghedien didn't want them to know her strength in relation to the other Forsaken. When it came time to defeating them, I think their expressions made it somewhat obvious that even the least Forsaken could wipe the floor with all of the Black Sisters in the house to the extent that no one else tried to attack her or undo her work.
To be honest, I think that Lanfear or Graendal would have easily overpowered most of the Black Ajah Sisters in a Heart because they are much more skillful with managing their connections and defeating a Shield that is held on them. Moghedien did this in a few moments and even though Nynaeve's Shield was less skillfully woven, it was still held with her full strength at the time.
She considers herself the real Queen of the Night and master of tel'aran'rhiod, but Egwene escaped her traps, her grandiloquent threats to sever Birgitte forever from the Wheel and Gaidal obviously didn't work (we know from Min's vision she has plenty of lives with Gaidal as Heroes ahead of her) and can even be said to have backfired on her. She got herself captured by a girl barely trained at all in tel'aran'rhiod - who couldn't even enter it at will, and got caught by a basic trick with Will. Moghedien totally gave in to panic and lost all her means. She didn't even fight and deny the reality of the a'dam made and held real only by Nynaeve's will. I would like very much to see how things would have turned out had Nynaeve tried to pull the TAR a'dam trick on Egwene or Amys... or Lanfear. Of course, she doesn't hold a candle to Lanfear's self-created persona as "Queen of Dreams" - awe inspiring and exuding queenly authority if nothing else. She likely would have died if not for the sheer luck of having a Healer in the same mansion she slept in... died at the hand of a a) non-channeler and b) who didn't even use any TAR trick to wound her....
But, then again, Ishamael was killed by a farmboy with no training, Lanfear was tackled, and Rahvin was too proud to run when he could have. The strongest of the Forsaken seem to fumble when confronting Wonderboy and his Superfriends pretty easily, so the main source of amazement to me is that the weaker and mid-tier Forsaken such as Mesaana, Moghedien and Aran'Gar/Balthamel haven't had a fatal mishap, yet.