Road to Tar Valon : The Wheel of Time Podcast

Our topic today was inspired by my dear friend Tim who has just started reading through the series for the first time.  He’s been sending me a flurry of text messages as he races through the books with his ideas and theories and I have just loved it, but there was one in particular where I just was like “yes! That needs to be a topic for us!” and the message was this, “Boy.  Them White Cloaks, eh?” Today, our 101 is dedicated to the Children of Light - converting to combat.

Tim joins us for our spoiler free first half and takes his leave when Amber and I jump into full spoiler territory.  There’s history, torture, favorite moments, and, as always, lots of laughs.

Tim is also working to get off the ground as a content creator in the fantasy and gaming realm.  He has a YouTube channel called “Really High Fantasy” and if you want to get in touch with him to ask any questions about what he’s working on, you can reach him at [email protected]

Verin Mathwin, Aes Sedai of the Brown Ajah is the next subject of our Westlands 101 series.  Come join us, whether you're new or a long time reader of the series.  We love sharing our love with you!

As always, thanks for joining us!  If you want to get in touch with us you can reach us in several different ways:

Email: [email protected]

Amber Twitter: @RoadtoTarValon

Traci Twitter: @MistressLaras

Instagram: roadtotarvalon

We also have a Discord channel we would love to have you join!  Send Amber a message and she’ll be sure to send you an invite.  You can also leave us a voice message from the Anchor and Spotify app.  Mostly, we just want to grow this wonderful conversation with the WoT community.  Take care!

Note from the editor:

Hey friends!  Just in case you’re interested in learning a little more about some of the historical topics we touched on today, here are the documentaries on the Templars and The Spanish Inquisition. 

Beware bouts of loud laughter, boisterous commentary, and a genuine good time.  Oh, and spoilers the whole way through.  Consider yourself warned :)

We are joined by the delightfully raucous crew of The Black Tower Podcast in our discussion over something that makes The Wheel of Time stand out when it comes to the world of Fantasy; battles. Whether it's a siege, skirmish, or all out war, Robert Jordan flexes his real world military knowledge and gives us so many epic battles within the series.  We were also joined by our favorite Malkieri chef, Rob from Malkier Talks.  This was a great time and we hope you enjoy our battle moments as much as we did.

Next week, how do you feel about the Children of the Light?  We are going to dig in on this notoriously unpopular group of religious militants.

As always, thanks for joining us!  If you want to get in touch with us you can reach us in several different ways:

Email: [email protected]

Amber Twitter: @RoadtoTarValon

Traci Twitter: @MistressLaras

Instagram: roadtotarvalon

We also have a Discord channel we would love to have you join!  Send Amber a message and she’ll be sure to send you an invite.  You can also leave us a voice message from the Anchor and Spotify app.  Mostly, we just want to grow this wonderful conversation with the WoT community.  Take care!

Ah yes… Elaida “I am Tower law!” do Avriny a'Roihan. She is a very special character just because we can’t think of someone we love to hate any more than Elaida. This will be another Westlands 101 episode, so we will be keeping the first half of the episode as spoiler free as possible. There will be a few moments from Eye of the World, and New Spring included, but no major spoilers until after the break.

Some of the best moments to come out of the WoT series are the battle scenes.  We were incredibly lucky to be joined by the guys from the Black Tower Podcast to talk about our favorite battle scenes and we had a blast (pun intended?) discussing the epic showdowns as well as the plotlines that led us there.  We were also pleasantly surprised to have Rob from Malkier Talks skype bomb us for the conversation.

As always, thanks for joining us!  If you want to get in touch with us you can reach us in several different ways:

Email: [email protected]

Amber Twitter: @RoadtoTarValon

Traci Twitter: @MistressLaras

Instagram: roadtotarvalon

We also have a Discord channel we would love to have you join!  Send Amber a message and she’ll be sure to send you an invite.  You can also leave us a voice message from the Anchor and Spotify app.  Mostly, we just want to grow this wonderful conversation with the WoT community.  Take care!

Note from the Editor:

To all of my history geeks who may be interested in a modern inspection of the body of King Henry VIII, from youth to death, you can follow this link to the documentary: Henry VIII Documentary 

Much love!

Traci

With this episode we prove our love and dedication to fully understanding this series by taking on a topic that, approached any other way, would make us glaze over like a batch of donuts, but our approach to the 101 series really felt like it would benefit from a deeper dive into the Prophecies of the Dragon.  Everything up to the break is spoiler free and then we dive into spoilers, theories for the tv show and all the other bits of WoT things that float through our conversation.

Next week, we continue our Westlands 101 series with a look at the role of saidin in the Wheel of Time.  We’ve spoken quite a bit in past episodes about the use of saidar as well as the women who channel it, and now we feel like it’s time to give some of our focus to the male half of the true source along with the consequences and condemnation that followed the men who had the ability to wield its awesome power.

As always, thanks for joining us!  If you want to get in touch with us you can reach us in several different ways:

Email: [email protected]

Amber Twitter: @RoadtoTarValon

Traci Twitter: @MistressLaras

Instagram: roadtotarvalon

We also have a Discord channel we would love to have you join!  Send Amber a message and she’ll be sure to send you an invite.  You can also leave us a voice message from the Anchor and Spotify app.  Mostly, we just want to grow this wonderful conversation with the WoT community.  Take care!

WoT-A-Good-Time! Couldn’t resist.  We also couldn’t resist a chance to promote a good cause...for the second time! We were able to grab the audio from our video segment during the WoT-A-Holiday fundraiser for The Lightweaver Foundation, the charity promoting literacy, filling up libraries and providing video games for those who benefit greatly from these services, that was started by Brandon Sanderson and his wife, Emily.  Yep, that Brandon Sanderson. We were also given permission to use his audio giving more details into what the foundation is and how it does what it does.  There were many spectacular people who put this together and participated in the content created for the fundraiser and we feel truly fortunate to belong to a group that cares so much about giving back.  Thank you, everyone!

Next week we are going to tackle our next topic in the Westlands 101 Series; The Prophecies of the Dragon.  We would love to hear your opinion on the Prophecies.  Do you love them? Hate them? Confused by them? All of the above? It’s safe to say we sit in all of the above categories and thought this would be a great opportunity to actually pay closer attention to the quagmire of prophecies in the series.  We will begin with the Karaethon Cycle, as that is the most prevalent in the series, but we will focus a future episode on the rest of them at a later date. Feel free to drop your opinions to us on any of our social media sites.  We love hearing from everyone!

As always, thanks for joining us!  If you want to get in touch with us you can reach us in several different ways:

Email: [email protected]

Amber Twitter: @RoadtoTarValon

Traci Twitter: @MistressLaras

Instagram: roadtotarvalon

We also have a Discord channel we would love to have you join!  Send Amber a message and she’ll be sure to send you an invite.  You can also leave us a voice message from the Anchor and Spotify app.  Mostly, we just want to grow this wonderful conversation with the WoT community.  Take care!

We are thrilled to have Cheyenne Sedai, our Discord Angel, from the Weaves of the Wheel community join us to discuss the Fourth Age!  Cheyenne was kind enough to share her enthusiasm and information about the histories that have been developed within the community for their role playing game set in the Fourth Age, after The Last Battle.  Amber and Traci have their own ideas on what might have happened at the end of the Third Age making this a fun, and occasionally ridiculous, blend of ideas. It’s fun imagination and conversation time!

For anyone interested in learning more about The Weaves of the Wheel community, or how you can join the game, they can be found on Instagram and Twitter.

The holiday season brings with it thoughts of...food!  Next week we dig into one of our very favorite characters, Laras, Mistress of the Kitchens.  There are some seriously fascinating theories about her on the internet, not to mention her unexpected daring-do.  

As always, thanks for joining us!  If you want to get in touch with us you can reach us in several different ways:

Email: [email protected]

Amber Twitter: @RoadtoTarValon

Traci Twitter: @MistressLaras

Instagram: roadtotarvalon

We also have a Discord channel we would love to have you join!  Send Amber a message and she’ll be sure to send you an invite.  You can also leave us a voice message from the Anchor and Spotify app.  Mostly, we just want to grow this wonderful conversation with the WoT community.  Take care!