The world is 25,000 miles by 25,000 miles in size... - Edit 1
Before modification by Shannow at 23/09/2012 10:20:24 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.
The world is a big place. And there is no such thing as a "Disturbance in the Force" that a Yoda like Forsaken could sense from the other side of the planet to tell them that Demandred is massing a few hundred channelers on some distant little tropical island in the Aryth Ocean.
And there are hundreds of millions of people on the planet.
Demandred's loyal dreadlords stealing one Sharan a day (out of a population of tens of millions), and one man from the Isle of Madmen a day (out of a jungly, plague-infested wilderness), and one Seanchan commoner a day( from an Asia sized continent), and whisking them away to this island to be forcibly turned to the Shadow by 13 Black Ajah and 13 Myrdraal is not going to be raising alarm bells anywhere.