Re: If you were Egwene what changes would you make to the Tower? - Edit 1
Before modification by DomA at 04/06/2010 09:03:00 PM
In addition these 7 senior Sisters would have several junior Sisters, Accepted and Novices at hand should something more significant arise. Perhaps as many as 100 women at various levels in any given city would be a force of Channelers very few would think of attacking!
18 capitals x 100 AS = 1800 AS.
Right now, the Tower has about 700 sisters after the BA purge and before the LB reduces these numbers again. And there's over 1000 women to train and it's a massive job....
For the moment, your ideas are completely irrealistic and unless the Tower gets much bigger, would remain unrealistic. Egwene might gain the Windfinders and Wise Ones, but those women are already needed in their communities.
Local training for novices would be most inefficient and would drain precious resources by duplicating roles and positions needlessly. It's much more efficient to centralize training at Tar Valon, with some sisters involved in teaching big classes, and others in one-on-one advanced training as needed.
There's no good reasons for Browns to open local colleges for non-channelers either. It's up to the rulers to open schools - and all it takes to launch the ball is that one nation founds an academy/university, and all the others will follow suit not to lose their scholars... If the Browns want to share their knowledge with students, they'd be much better advised to open an university in Tar Valon that welcomes non-channellers as well as giving their education to the Novices and Accepted. That's realistic. Founding 18 AS-supported schools isn't. We haven't heard of schools (for children, I mean) in the big cities and in the TR people were home-educated, but it doesn't mean they don't exist. As for universities, they've been gone since Hawkwing's days, but nothing prevents rulers from opening some... they don't need the Browns for that, but the Tower needs its scholars, however!
Your notion that these embassies would help people trust AS more is debatable anyway. Interferring in so many new domains, especially education and military matters, would also multiply the possibilities of conflict between Tower and nations. For every new person finding the AS useful, you'll end up with several others who complain they meddle and extend their tentacles even more than before...
The idea of using the Greens as military attachés is a really bad one. That would get them involved in national conflicts - exactly what the Tower musn't do. Why would the nations need Greens as military advisors anyway, once the Shadow is gone? The Tower aims to maintain peace, not to help people fight!
The Tower just doesn't have the resources for local hospitals either, and they'd be fairly useless. If the Yellows want to spread their services while continuing to train Accepted in Healing (and the human body and other medical matters), all the Tower needs to do is set up a Travelling service in each decent sized city - not large groups of AS, but small teams of 2, 3 sisters who can put people in contact with TV fast. People in need would go there to either be transported to an hospital in Tar Valon, or a Yellow would be called in. And traders, and envoys from the rulers, and messengers, and women who want to be tested etc.
I frankly don't see your point of using the Blues to head these local chapters (and what's wrong with devoting themselves to helping people's causes anyway?). The Greys are far more suited for that job, one per nation as ambassador is all that's needed.
The most important reform Egwene needs to implement, and it needs to be in this generation, is to encourage strongly sisters to marry and have children. Preferably to marry Asha'man, at that, because the situation is getting critical.
It's vital if Egwene opens the doors of the Tower to every woman who can learn to channel, otherwise she will make the channelling genes vanish in a few generations at most. There's a very good reason why there's more Windfinders and Wise Ones - these women marry and have children. The Tower has done a fair job eliminating the sparkers (they are nearing exctinction, both genders - there's barely a few scores of them left each generation), if it opens its door wide to those who can learn as Egwene has done, they need to start soon having normal lives and raise families. Your big embassies aren't needed, what's needed is for more and more sisters to decide to live their life among non-channellers, and that would do wonder to better their image. Within a few generations, having at least one AS in your town, or the next town, would be as commonplace as having at least a WO im your sept. If she can't provide some services like healing herself, she can send you to TV fast. And she can help with the crops, and to make that new bridge more solid, and ward your barn against pests - humble, simple stuff. The stuff people really need. Of course, these women might have to take on apprentices from the Tower on occasions, to teach Accepted in their special skills, if they have any. Another initiative Egwene must encourage is the study and development of ter'angreal. Communication devices notably are badly needed, and not just for TG. They'd be very important, if a portion of the AS start scattering to live in the communities.
The other major reform Egwene need to implement is to make male and female AS work together again. Everything that encourages that must be welcome, and your embassies would hinder this development (Egwene need the AS and Asha'man centralized in TV, for many years yet) Ideally, the merging of the two organizations into one must happen as soon as possible. They need to work together on a very regular basis, study together, experiment together, and they need to start having children together, and they need to get rid of 3000 years of prejudices between the two genders as soon as possible. The channellers can't afford to start competing with one another ad two organizations, they have much more important things to do.