Androl's weak, and he can't channel enough to use most of the combat weaves. There's a fair chance that blocked him from advancing much in his OP military training, and even with his strength boost he would still need much practice to advance decently with his weaving.

So basically, Androl's best chance is to rejoin Logain's loyalists and learn the deathgate weave, because that would be his natural weapon. His strength boosted by a mixed gender circle or angreal, some cover by other channelers (as he'd remain easy meat and a logical target for any decently trained Dreadlord), and he'd turn into a real Shadowspawn's bane on a battlefield. With his talent, he stands a good chance of being extremely fast with deathgates, be able to make huge ones, and he'll probably be extremely precise in their positioning - and he makes his gateway with a fraction of saidin the others need for that weave.

Mind you, Androl needs to first survive his current predicament, and there are also other obvious purposes in TG for someone able to make large and very precise gateways, for instance he might be assigned as a "mover" of armies/strike forces, or be assigned to groups rescuing people from locations under attack - not every channeller available will be used as a weapon, for many of them it's other skills that will come into play.

Androl may become very precious if the current "breaking" conditions worsen and it becomes difficult for some to Travel (and based on weird stuff going on in TAR lately, it might be about to start).

Perhaps someone with a strong Talent might be better at fighting this, and Androl's gateways would then become very precious.

It's not unconceivable Androl's Talent might let him figure a way to Travel where others can't (speculatively... it appears to be every location you can't "shift" to in TAR... Rhuidean (once...), Stedding, the Blight and SG). It's possible to Skim there instead and the Shadow appears to know ways to circumvent the SG-Blight limitations. Still, Skimming can take hours, and if your enemy has spies who know when you leave and have figured out where you're going, you can be ambushed at arrival. But if the Light could advance mundanely on SG in force, yet use Travelling to secretely send a strike team ahead, the DO might have sent all his best assets (Forsaken) to strike at the advancing force, and find his Foe where he shouldn't be: right next to the Pit of Doom. Before the Forsaken are recalled to the Pit, Rand might have precious minutes to begin a surprise strike - and the surprise departure of the Forsaken and top Dreadlords to, and of course what Androl could do for Rand's strike force, he could return after "delivery" to accomplish for the armies.

All purely speculative of course. The fact you can't Travel in the Blight or near SG unless you know how - and that it's only known to Forsaken/Dreadlords is in itself speculative. All that's established (through a Q&A answer by RJ) is that you can't shift into the Blight/SG in TAR.

It's all based on observing the facts with a dreamspike in place you can't shift in and one of the area it covers, but you can walk in and out of the area in TAR (meaning the shifting is barely perceptible, or doesn't touch all layers of TAR, only the Spirit one).

And you can't Travel or Skim at all unless you have "the key". The way Moridin spoke to Graendal, as if having the key was enough to ensure his security, as if he didn't need to locate the Dreamspike itself to enter that key to deactivate it suggests strongly knowing the key is enough, and that the key is a weave you incorporate in your Gateway one, the exact mirror of the Shift, therefore realigning yourself with the TAR reflection, allowing the gateway to open. It suggests to me the Travelling weave opens a gateway to TAR and connects you with TAR, then just as it would happen if you let your mind wander on another location when you're in TAR (when you wish to Travel, you focus in your mind on your departure and arrival points), you Shift to the location you're picturing in your mind (actually, it's TAR that shifts around you, not you who travel around in TAR - for women it is anyway. Men probably make a mental "hole" between two points of TAR to shift) - except you're not in TAR but the RW as you do this, and your weave makes a second hole to the real world opens there. The weaves align eveything. Basically, you're Travelling weave keeps the hole to TAR open, your mind forces TAR to shift, and all this process happens as the Gateway opens, making it appear to the eye as if it rotated on itself. It's hardly surprising it's Dreamer who's figured it out, Egwene already makes two points of TAR the same intuitively in order to "Shift" - she already sensed that Rand had described another way (male?) to Shift and that something didn't seem right with that (an instinct lead her not to try it), and as soon as Moghedien confirmed her intuition she figured everything out.

It would mean the dreamspike works by a matrix that draws on Spirit upon activation, and turns this flow into a weave using specific matter aligned just so (there are reasons why ter'angreal are made of specific material, I'll get to that later), and that weaves folds TAR, make it shift slightly around the dreamspike.

All the ter'angreal that works without a channeller powering them actively seem to use Spirit (the TAR ring, Mat's medallion which makes his dreams inaccessible to Dreamers. A side-effect, RJ said. My theory is that the medallion isolates the wearer's soul from TAR), the only flow a channeller can also draw on even inconsciously (in sleep).

It would suggest all the Talents that appear in non-channelers are "a thing of Spirit", and that's because, I believe, Spirit is the flow of sentience, produced by the souls of sentient beings. Everyone produces spirit, in larger amounts for stronger souls, in smaller amounts for weaker ones. Perhaps the best way to describe it would be rather to say that Spirit is the very essence of your soul, that your soul itself determines your basic raw strength in the OP, how much personal Spirit you have access to, then you add the amount of Spirit you can draw and control from other souls and that determines your global strength in Spirit. It's the flow most natural to humans because it's them and animal souls. That's why men and women are said to be "equal in Spirit", it's produced by sentient souls, and that's why all channellers can wield the Spirit flow to an extent, the minimum being the extent of their soul's strength. Beyond that, and it rests on your ability to control "foreign flows", other people's Spirit seems to be the easiest (people especially strong in Spirit are very willful, and easily become leaders... even Perrin (whose strength in Spirit is "passive" and seemingly not wholly his own but something tied to what ta'veren does. Mat is another with another type of charisma), and when they're channellers they're not much the "charismatic" type and far more forceful and don't accept easily to be denied control/lead... from Egwene to Rand to Moiraine to the four WO dreamwalkers to Moridin or Lanfear, it's all a trait of character of those strong in Spirit.)

The rest of your "raw strength" is a function of your ability to draw on and control the other four flows, external to human beings as they're other types of souls (everything has a thread in the Pattern, therefore everything, sentient or not must have a "soul". The sentient souls (minds, physical bodies would be made of all flows but Spirit) in this world are pure Spirit, the non-sentient aspects of the Pattern have souls made of one of the other four flows. It's part of the fundamental laws of the human world, it's own the OP was divided and ordered to make this world, maybe not all words.

That theory offers an avenue to "break" the Ogier Code: neither them nor the Stedding are from "this world" - they've both been "translated" into the human world. In their world, Spirit may not exist, or it serves another non-sentient function. Let's say (arbitrarily) that the Ogier souls are made of something parent or very close to what is Earth in the human world. That's why humans can't channel in the pockets of Ogier world that are the Stedding, and that's also why sentient beings of this world can't enter Stedding from TAR either: the rules separating saidar and saidin into the male and female aspects of each flows in the Ogier world aren't the same. Ogier would be connected to the whole via Earth. You'd need the ability and a Soul made of Earth (or near-Earth) to access the True Source in the Ogier World and thus in the pockets of it the Stedding are (if a physical body whose soul is governed by Earth could develop the ability at all - channeling may be a something unique to Spirit). Ogier rather can do something equivalent to channelling by "Singing", and in this world, unless Singing is "fixed" by a ter'angreal that realigns the flows correctly for the human world, all it does is affect trees, perhaps because the souls of trees (perhaps a pure flow like human souls are Spirit, but I suspect a mix of flows) is the only thing close enough to the souls of something from the Ogier world: the Great Trees.

(I suspect my theory holds in Sindhol as well. It's the Water flow that doesn't work there. I suspect the Sindhol "song" comes from something the AOL Aes Sedai rather knew as Spirit (which got mistranslated as the near-synonym but too focussed word Courage) to Strengthen, Air (which became music, something the AS like Asmodean did with it...Air-based sound sculptures) to Dazzle, Earth (more specifically calling on Iron - in the human blood maybe - with Earth) to Bind and Fire to Blind.)





It may also be impossible for a being of this world to access TAR from a stedding, or to use humans Talents connected to TAR (Dreams and Wolfdreams, and I highly suspect Min's viewings are also a thing of TAR and Spirit: she can see glimpses of people's life threads and occasionally the meaninng of them, when the symbolism is universal (to the human experience) and not more or less unique to the mind of the person she views, she can understand them. She sees tons and tons around channellers (and ta'veren) because their connection to Spirit is different from anyone else's. For warders (incl. Birgitte), the "soul bonding" with their AS does the same. My hunch is that the ability to channel is a part of the "life thread" of the channeller. Severing cuts a part of the life thread, you literally "lose your spirit". It's very difficult to hold on to life, to overcome the loss of the extra Spirit the ability gave you, the loss of this feeling of connection with the whole world when you embrace the Source (which is logical, because you are connected to the whole world when you touch the Source). It's very similar for warders losing their AS. Both can survive either by becoming obsessive, or by connecting yourself to loved ones (the Setalle Anan case) - or a more radical and effective method: by soul bonding (the warder bond). It might mean the most effective way to save a severed channeler prior to the method to "heal" its semi-broken life-thread would have been to bond them, simply enough. For all we know from the other aspects of soul bonding, it might even have restored something of their ability to channel, ie: they can't initiate a link the normal way, but perhaps they might have through their warder bond.

Other observations:

Your own Spirit from you soul will never kill you, a channeler can even use it inconsciously in sleep, but attempting to draw the other flows, or Spirit in an amount larger than your soul, and this "foreign" OP will rip apart the part of your life thread that makes up your conduit to the True Source.

- Only ter'angreal related to Spirit seems to still work for non-channellers, as if it's the only flow a non-channeler can provide. Simply touching Mat's skin connects it to his soul, to Spirit, and activates it. The same simple direct touch while sleeping activates the Ring ter'angreal. A non-channelling dreamer can inconsciouly "align" his/her Spirit properly to enter TAR and remain there (all humans can enter, but for most it's accidental and they can't remain there). A channeler without the Talent can use a ter'angreal which "align" a flow of Spirit properly for you, and it helps your sould develop a natural, intuitive affinity for it, so eventually you can perform this with Spirit inconsciously as you sleep, thereby using this ter'angreal "trains you" (the Ring perhaps actually do the very same, but for anyone). The reason why only ter'angreal with Spirit still works for non-channelers is that they all use their personal Spirit, their soul, and that's activated by physical contact (probably by design. Theorically maybe other ter'angreal using other flows might get adtivated by coming in contact with the proper element within Creation linked to that flow, but perhaps contact activation is most likely a matter of design - you wouldn't want a water-flow activated ter'angreal to activate because it rains). All other ter'angreal, including those using more Spirit than a soul can provide, must now be powered by a channeler, as to make them work otherwise you'd need the "Standing Flows", which made the ten flows accessible to ter'angreal (it's probably well-based technology).

- Ter'angreal use specific material tranformed just so and aligned so so for a reason. I suspect those materials are all connected principally to Earth primarly, with more minor uses of Fire, Air and Water. None of the material used is natural, they're all transformed/transmuted with the OP. I believe the purpose of that is to make matter which specific flows of the One Power can't go through. A channeler can guide/force the OP to make specific patterns, ie: weaves, which creates specific effects. Simple matter can't, but a ter'angreal isn't simple matter. It's full of miscroscopic "tunnels" forming matrixes. Air is forced into several tunnels of just the right diameter and just so, and crosses with Water just so... emulating a weave, in fact more than emulating it but performing it.

It would mean there's basically five types of ter'angreal: those made for repetitive tasks, to spare a channeller from having to use the OP so often to perform this task. A channeller would use a ter'angreal smartphone instead of making a communication weave each time. I'd think there would have been tons of ter'angreal of this type in the industrial field. The second type of ter'angreal would perform weaves related to Talents, the one none too complex. If you don't have it, you could use the ter'angreal instead. The third type would draw on the Standing Flows and be meant both for non-channelers and to spare AS some tasks. The fourth and fifth types would be ter'angreal for tasks requiring a vast amount of OP, enough for most AS to have to use angreal or san'angreal to perform (thus rather drawing on the standing flows for this) and ter'angreal of incredible complexity performing weaves or a collection of interconnected weaves beyond the control of any or most weavers. I suspect the "Glass Columns" in Rhuidean are an example of this. No channeler, not even a full circle of 72, might be able to perform all at once the weaves necessary that would produce those effects, and for unlinked AS to have combined their efforts was not only impractical but perhaps even impossible, if it would have required precision not achievable this way. It would mean the very complex ter'angreal would have been the pinnacle of AOL technology, some of them probably required other ter'angreal capable of performing the complex weaves to make them... It would also suggest the best ter'angreal makers were genius, able of conceiving of weaves beyond a human's skills to perform.

About angreal and san'angreal, I believe they're fairly complex matrixes that "reinforce" your conduit to the Source, allowing you to draw more than your natural conduit lets you. Unlike ter'angreal, many of those seem made of natural matter (often of animal source... ivory, amber etc.) and they may be the most basic ones, and perhaps it's a coincidence but those of natural matter seem the most powerful of angreal. Others seem made of natural matter made of Earth-related materials (I suspect Earth is the flow most opposite to Spirit and it's not a coincidence - it's a principle similar to the saidin/saidar opposition, saidar can Heal a male conduit perfectly, but can heal a female conduit only imperfectly) like stone (precious and not) and gold. With san'angreal we return to "exotic" and unnatural materials, and I suspect it's the difference between the two types: angreal are made by doing something to natural matters to turn them into a buffer, and there's a limit, not very high, to their performances. San'angreal are more advanced tech using much more elaborate "buffering" techniques involving complex matrixes and a variety of materials mixed together and transmuted into something else using the OP. Their matrixes must be complex enough to make that they require various ter'angreal in the process, and the more powerful they get, the more intricate (and big) they become - unique works of art, made by specialists. The CK is so powerful it needed two huge objects to withstand all the OP going through it, and two separate buffers shielding the humans using it, and that doubled as remote controls.

- Rhuidean seemed to "twist" TAR in a way similar but different to a Dreamspike. You could still Skim to that location in the RW, and in TAR you could not even pass the "dome".

- The Blight is unnatural, and I presume you can't Travel or enter it from TAR because the Dark One twists the "real world" there, and based on how the EOTW kept shifting around, I suspect there are continuous spatial distortions in the Blight. The TAR reflection doesn't correspond to the real world location. Theorically, it means the Shadow is able to use Travelling and enter the area in TAR because they know of a few secret locations the Dark One leaves untouched and which the Forsaken use as Travelling Grounds and points of entry in TAR. Moridin's palace is one such location, and there seems to be one near SG itself.

And to return to Androl for the end, I think it's quite conceivable that if Travelling and the Dreamspike work more or less as I described he can, if he keeps trying to open gateways, eventually figure out there's something wrong with the TAR reflection of his departure point. He's so extremely precise and has such spatial skills that by altering his weave little by little (picturing it opening millimeters away from where he'd actually want it to open) he might eventually figure out the key. And if he does, it's more than his escape this would allow... Unless Taim has been explained by Moridin how Dreamspike work and he learns that Androl and co. have escape by Gateway, this could well be Taim's doom: Androl will be able to either show the weave he's done - thereby allowing a surprise attack on Taim, and if (as seems likely) the mental juggling require to open a "shifted gateway" is beyond the skills of anyone but Androl, he's still capable of opening a pretty wide Gateway in the middle of the BT, or to provide several big gateways to various areas on the grounds. I suspect the latter for dramatic reasons: if only Androl can open gateways in and out of there, it would still be incredibly dangerous to attack the BT. Surprise will give an advantage to the Light, but channellers involved won't be able to escape, most would need to fight until victory or defeat as only Androl could provide retreat. If Androl goes and gets killed, it could rapidly turn into a deathtrap for Logain's forces.