I don't think that makes much difference, I wans't implying Be'lal wasn't aligned - openly or secretly - with the shadow at the time, just that he might have been involved or aware of the operation.



Advocate may have paid better, in terms of cash or social standing. In fact it almost certainly did for him as he was very famous, he might have been a great advocate and a so-so craftsmen, but again I'm not suggesting he was an open member of the project. Assuming the shadow was responsible for tampering with the sword - which admittedly isn't certain - someone had to run the op and they need not have necessarily known much about making power objects. The director of the CIA doesn't need to know how to build a satellite to use the intel. Still he might have done it himself without being an expert at making angreal, Be'lal could have been the equivalent of a patents lawyer for Objects of the power and known just enough to tamper. We don't really know what needed 'advocacy' in the AoL but I'm thinking they didn't have wads of murders and thefts for him to be the Johnny Cochrane of the AoL. 'Advocate' might indicate spokesmen/consultant for those trying to get support to build major projects like san'angreal.



I'm personally of the opinion that the nominal prefix is just an arbitrary or semi-arbitrary designator along the lines of 'big', maybe angreal require a circle of 13 or less and the big ones a 14+ circle? In any event it was obviously a major project but sabotage might have been minor, literally something as small as channeling a trickle of TP into it in the building stage or having an agent dump some liquid TP on the thing akin to the Eye of the World.



I don't really accept the wads of Chosen thing, and yeah I know RJ said it and I certainly accept there were tons of evil channelers but it contradicts the entire concept of the Forsaken being a nasty nickname for those who call themselves the Chosen. The forsaken were the elite, or no one would care that 13 of them were trapped there in the first place and in Rand's tSR rememberings as Tomada the soldier wouldn't say "... Something is disrupting communications, but the report is the Bore has been sealed, with most of the Forsaken on the other side. Maybe all of them.”. The Forsaken were specific people during the AoL and I think it is weird they'd revel in the title of 'chosen' when there's hundreds of thousands with it, nor freak out that Taim got it, if it were literally synonymous to darkfriend channeler from the AoL, it doesn't really fit. But that doesn't really matter too much because the 13 known Forsaken, and maybe a handful of others, told the other hundred thousand 'chosen' and their non-channeler followers what to do, they were the big bads and while it isn't a given one of them would know about a major sabotage, especially if the saboteur was doing it on their own initiative, I think it is quite plausible one of them would.



The value Moghedien says to Moridin is 29, and that's a freakishly accurate number "Only twenty-nine others have ever been granted—" she says, not "I know of" or "Roughly". There may have been others but my impression is that access to it is considered both and honor and a safeguard, the DO equivalent of appointing someone to a very senior officer and giving them a secret service detail for 'your protection, totally not to also keep an eye on you', and I also subscribe to the limited TP option or he'd give it to every channeler or a lot more. Now Moghedien might lie casually but I think she's relaying information to the reader there, and she'd have no reason to lie in that particular fashion when 'very few have been given' would work too. Whichever the case, the number is still small and while the DO might have given someone access in secret and just for that purpose I don't see that as more plausible than Be'lal knowing some or all of Callandor's issues.