It took Taim nearly a year to train a dozen men to a place where they could teach - Edit 1
Before modification by darius_sedai at 23/09/2012 10:08:58 PM
I just don't think he could realistically build an army of Channelers in secrecy or in the given amount of time. I think we will see him unleash mixed circle weaves on unsuspecting foes etc... Odds are most of these will be BA women and Dark Asha'man rather than hundreds of individuals Demandred personally trained.
Will he have a handful of his own people ... Almost certainly, how many of these will there be? Who knows!
Will he have a handful of his own people ... Almost certainly, how many of these will there be? Who knows!
These 10 could then each have trained 20 more, and he'd have his 200 Dreadlords.
Given that his moves have been unknown since the start of the series, and given that the Ashaman number around 500 or more and only started recruiting halfway through LoC, I see no reason why Demandred couldn't have set up something similar.
Especially if he recruited intensively from Shara, the Isle of Madmen, and Seanchan in addition to Randland.
There are around a total of 500 men at the Tower. Only a fraction of those are Full Asha'man ... I think someone says only a few dozen (with Taim promoting rapidly in the last few months to avoid the AS bond). And who would train and recruit the women, he'd want many women to form circles as we know how much more potent mixed circles are. Finding the numbers isn't the hard part. Training and keeping it secret from everyone is the hard part. Graendal, Moghedien and Aran'gar (the 3 masters of espionage)all comment that they couldn't find out what he was up to. Had he been doing something as overt as mass recruiting of Channelers they would have gotten wind of it.