Reading and discussing recent posts has made more convinced than ever that the key to understanding the Last Battle lies in understanding the macro-historical Pattern of the last three Ages and not just of how the Age of Legends ended. I have posted here a "brief" outline of the history of the Great Pattern starting with the so-called First Age. Following this outline I try to gather my thoughts and see if we can point to any clues.

First Age:
- Natural history of our world
- Humans evolve, run with wolves at some point
- Human history
- Finns and Ogier evolve in their parallel worlds

End of the First Age: Our age, the Age of Science

-END FOR HUMANS:
-- Mosk and Merk --> Ends (?) in Atomic war (between Moscow and America)
-- First channelers appear, introduce new degree of variability to the Pattern (based on Min's observation that channeling blurs auras, therefore makes future less predictable).

-END FOR FINNS: "Those who knew the numbers of chaos"
-- Finish Portal Stone system to allow travel between dimensions and if-worlds.
-- Construct Tower(s) of Ghenjei to gain access to life threads in multiple worlds (or possibly to translate a part of their world into ours like that of the stedding for the Ogier).
-- Construct the Horn of Valere to allow access to and control of dead hero souls/Tel'aran'rhiod conditions from real world.
-- only able to appear in our world for very brief periods (maybe this only a problem later).
-- something goes wrong and Finns abandon most of these experiments.

-END FOR OGIER:
- at least some translated into our world along with the stedding (pieces of their home dimension).
- able to survive indefinitely in our world.
- book of translation apparently built/made to allow the reversal of this process

Second Age: The Age of Legends, the Age of Magic
- Human channelers dominate the age
- Ter'angreal doorways to Finn realms built, compact made
- Ogier and Humans live and work together in harmony
- New One Power science begins to explore the architecture of the Wheel: if-worlds, Portal Stones, Tel'aran'rhiod, vacuoles
- Thinness discovered (possibly caused by or its detection made possible by the inter-dimensional Finn infrastructure or the stedding in our world).
- Bore drilled, True Power leakage, Dark One can influence all worlds.
- War of Power, balefire widely used, blight appears (dark stedding).
- Bore "sealed" with saidin, results in partial mixture of True Power and True Source (the Taint)
- The breaking of the world, the Blight expands

Third Age:
- In mainland, Ogier ties to this world strained, leads to the longing and retreat from human affairs
- The Ways are built
- Rule of Saidar
- Finns have regular contact with human heroes, then long period of little to no contact
- The Shadow is particularly dangerous in Finn realms
- Trolloc Wars and Shadar Logoth evil
- War of a Hundred Years and Machin Shin
- The Dragon is reborn, saidin cleansed
- The Last Battle (???)

Each of the previous ages ended/began with an event of interdimensional contact. It appears likely that the First Age ended with the Finns building a network of connections between the worlds of the Great Pattern and the perhaps related translation of the Ogier/Stedding into the human world. From the human perspective this likely coincided with an atomic breaking of the world. The Second Age arose in this new arrangement of relations between the worlds and the appearance of humans able to channel the One Power. Perhaps this was made possible by the paradoxes or tensions produced by linking separate worlds and possible iterations through the portal stones. Perhaps this access to the True Source was dangerous to the stability of the Great Pattern. Perhaps the Ogier world was one of the few (or the only) not reached by the Portal Stone system and so not affected by the instability introduced by channeling. I believe that the reason the Ogier and the stedding were brought to our world was to stabilize the strains in the Pattern produced by the One Power. It would seem likely to me that they were also translated into other worlds, like that of the Finns, and probably still others. The Ogier may have sacrificed their world to save the Great Pattern, and the Book of Translation was to be activated when the problems presented by access to the One Power had been resolved. In other words, the Ogier and the Stedding were like the Seals on the Dark One's prison; they plugged interdimensional leaking of some kind. I am betting that the Finns (the experts on the Great Pattern) worked together to with the Ogier to make this happen and presented them with the Book of Translation for their sacrifice (or as a necessary part of the plan). Perhaps the stedding seals weakened over time or caused new weaknesses in the Pattern, and thus produced the Thinness.

The Second Age ended with the Bore, the introduction of the True Power into our world, the seals on the bore, and the taint (a mixture of the Creator and the Dark One). The Breaking of the World and the Longing arose in this catastrophic ending of an Age, and the Third Age has been defined by a partially blocked set of connections between the Dark One/Blight, the Stedding, the Finn realms, and the human world. The Ways may also have had some important effects on the strains in the Pattern, especially once they became tainted.

Based on all this, I believe we can make some guesses about the major problems that will need to be resolved in the Last Battle. Rand has already cleansed saidin, but the Portal Stone system and the stedding remain unresolved. When the seals are finally destroyed, how will humans, Finns, and Ogier face the Shadow? If the possibility of channelling the OP is contingent on the interconnecting structures built by the Finns and the Ogier, and this is what lead to the thinness, then will these all have to be destroyed? Will channelling need to disappear? Will Rand clear only some of "the rubble," leaving the Portal Stones/Stedding for the future? What roles will Mat and Perrin play in executing this rubble clearing? Perrin seems to have a fairly strong connection with Loial (and maybe the Ogier), and Mat certainly is tied to the Finns, but I am not sure how any of this will play out. I do feel confident, however, that something important will have to happen with the Finns besides the Moiraine rescue, and with the Ogier besides them fighting alongside human armies. Tel'aran'rhiod, the Pit of Doom, the Portal Stones, and the Ways, likewise seem to be more important to the outcome of the Last Battle than the clash of armies and fighting with the One Power (or True Power).

I think the real battle will have to be fought in and between dimensions to produce a new arrangement for the fourth age. It is unlikely that everything will be resolved if the endings of the previous two ages are any indication. The question is which inter-dimensional arrangements will remain intact, which new ones created, and which destroyed?

Sorry for the long post, but I am really interested in any thoughts on the subject.

LoialT