you are missing the point that this would create several major problems - Edit 1
Before modification by darius_sedai at 07/06/2010 07:13:23 PM
Not all that useful if you can't transport food and spare weapons and big war machines etc... sure you can send tons of men from one spot to another. But, as DREWRULESWOT said, it more useful for a raid than practical army needs that they will be unable to meet easily.
Enough 6 by 8 gateways could transport all the food, equipment, and weapons an army would need on a campaign. Big war machines and siege weapons would generally be broken down for transport however they were moved(gateway or traditional), or an army would make them after they reached their destination.
Also consider how many times have we seen 100 damane/sul'dam paires in one place, even Ituralde only encountered a few pairs at a time. And how many women have the strength to open Gateways 6 feet by 10 feet tall to allow for horse/grolm/torm riders through? Seems to me that there are only a handful of channelers who possess enough strength/Talent to generate these gateways. More likely by far that there would only be 5-10 women with any given group of Seanchan with maybe a couple strong enough to make a gateway big enough for more than a single man to pass through at once. Even if they had women strong enough to open gateways large enough for carts and mounted soldiers they would exhaust themselves to the point of uselessness quickly.
The Seanchan recently captured between 400 and 500 trained Shaido channelers, even if only 1 in 4 can create a gateway, there is your 100 Damane. Cavalry can be led through. With a bit of practice they could become quite proficient in moving large numbers of mounted soldiers in an efficient manner.
Take Perrin and his Asha'man for example. They where moving his forces, but after only a few weeks of moving a relatively tiny force (some 5000-odd people) they were so exhausted they could hardly Channel. Grady and Neald are fairly strong, but neither of them could do much after a day of holding the Gateways open for the whole force to Travel through.
This is a good example of why linking would not be necessary for moving a large army. 2 individual channels could move a group of 5000 people. This group would include mounted cavalry and carts. They did not merely do this once but multiple times over several weeks time. Now consider how much a group of 100 channels who can make gateways transport.
With plenty of carts and narrow wagons and a whole lot of military and Seanchan discipline and organization, the Seanchan could move a well supplied and large army anywhere they wish.
1. Those Shaido women are months, if not years from being trained well enough to be used on a battle field.
2. Channeling for hours at a time exhausts people to the point of being useless so the Seanchan would need to have dedicated gateway holders who would take no part in the battles and the army would subsequently be trapped in the new location. In effect creating potential suicide missions.
3. It's sort of like crossing a river on a battle field too... open a Gateway too close and the enemy can feel it ... a crafty general let's about half your force come through then slaughters them.
4. Will require the Seanchan to completely reorganize their military operations completely since they'll have to build specialized wagons/carts, dedicate far more damane resources to opening gateways than they typically would have to a single army group. Look at it from this angle ... there are at least 4 Major Seanchan camps/armies, Almoth Plain, Ebu Dar, Illian border, Murandy border. Each of these would need at least 100 damane to do nothing but open gateways for Traveling. What is that 1/3 of all damane resources dedicated to one task? And odds are this will be the strongest group of damane too.
Sure you could move a pretty significant force with enough preparation, but it raises significant problems. Not to mention if you are facing an AS army on the other side they will have massive linked circles creating 1 big gate way that will take their army about 1/10th the time to move through, without tireing themselves out. Yes you are better off than you were before, but you are still at a significant disadvantage to those who can in fact link.
In the end unlinked Traveling is far more effective for either very small groups of scouts etc