It looks like there isn't any master plan (just the way the DO let his Chosen kill one another speaks against it. Forcibly when they do kill a Chosen some of his orders might fall through) as such, beside countering the Wheel with chaos.

As for Rand, it appears it's more a matter of possibilities keeping Rand alive as long as possible offers Shai'tan. It's a if at the same time the danger to Shai'tan increases, Rand also facilitates Shai'tan's increase in power, and so Shai'tan is keeping Rand alive for as long as he doesn't become a greater danger to him than he is an asset.

There was over a century of Collapse, and 10 years of war, and the Shadow didn't manage to free Shai'tan, not even with scientists like Mierin whose area expertise this was on his side, not even with specialists of the cosmology like Ishamael. Nor was Shai'tan able to enlarge the Bore enough to free himself. In a way, the greatest disaster occured when LTT tried to seal the Bore. Posae even believed this could rip the Bore open, that was her motive for having the women refuse to participate, but even if wrong, it made it impossible to seal off the Bore completely, and it removed half the channellers, and destroyed civilization, leaving a much weaker humanity to face Shai'tan once the sealing was gone.

It appears that weakening Creation irreversably is considered a minor victory for Shai'tan, at least a strategic victory, on the way to the final victory. If Moridin is to be believed, Shai'tan is not dead set on getting free in this Age. If he can damage Creation, or perpetuate his touch in it for some more Ages (as tainting the male channelllers had done), he might settle for that, a step toward his final release one day. It sounds like Shai'tan's primary goal is to prevent Rand from removing the Bore from the Pattern altogether, which would mean all influence from the Shadow will be cleansed from Creation before the next turning, and all Shai'tan will have gained (if he sees this as a gain) would have been to taint the souls of all those born/made as Shadowspawn (as RJ said those are tainted and can't be reborn as human or animal again. Does this weakens the Creator and increases Shai'tan's power? We don't know, as we don't know if souls are independant or an integral part of the Creator).

And it appears that Shai'tan is playing a very dangerous game with Rand, in the sense that the Wheel made Rand the greatest agent of chaos currently in the Pattern (beside Shai'tan), and Shai'tan just can't resist using Rand for what he believes to be his own purposes. That may well be the Wheel's strategy to protect Rand: make him nearly irresistible to Shai'tan, to lure Shai'tan into keeping him alive and trying to use him.

I get the feeling that Cleansing saidin of the Taint removed one of the best possibilities Shai'tan had to make Rand's efforts to remove the Bore fail. I think as long as the Taint was there, Shai'tan may have retained a link to Creation, so the removal of the Bore would have failed, so it was more a matter that it failed a lot, rather than failed like the sealing of LTT failed.

So, while Shai'tan didn't want to lose Rand unless he must, he didn't want Rand to Cleanse saidin either. He was willing to risk all his Chosen and get rid of Rand to prevent this.

That possibility is gone now. It may even be that with the Cleansing Rand and Nynaeve have given a chance to the Light to win for real, a chance that wasn't there before.

Others possibilities remained for Shai'tan, like turning Rand to his side and use him to weaken Creation until the Wheel manage to have Rand killed, and having Rand destroy Creation himself. I suspect there remains the slim chance Rand fails at SG, and in his failure he frees Shai'tan. It looks like the biggest issue for the Shadow, beside the risk Rand removes the Bore and Shai'tan forced back to square one, is how to rip the Bore totally open.

It looks like actions that would bring it about are out of the Shadow's servants' hands (the far more knowledgeable, more powerful and better equiped Chosen in the AOL couldn't achieve it in over 110 years... and those who remain don't seem to have a solution.. it's as if it's up to Shai'tan to do this, and they can't help him). It may be that there's no solution to that but time. Time for Shai'tan to enlarge the Bore enough to enter Creation completely (and maybe the longer the Bore isn't patched, the faster/stronger Shai'tan can do this, that is if he could enlarge the Bore at all under LTT's sealing... if he didn't rather lost 3000 years with this). The question would then be: has Shai'tan gotten enough time, is he getting close to entering Creation, or does he still need a few more Ages to enlarge the Bore? If he still needs a few more Ages, then his chosen strategy may be to keep using Rand to weaken Creation for as long as possible, and only in the end kill him. It would result in the Wheel being unable to remove the Bore, and the battle would go on and on (it could result in the situation as shown in the TGH If worlds: Shai'tan wipes or taints all life from Creation - only Shadowspawn remain, but he isn't able to enter it and finish it off...). It could be that Shai'tan best chance, perhaps nearly his only remaining chance to get free in this Age, is if Rand, or Moridin (the other Chosen would not do it) destroyed Creation with the Choedan Kal.

If Shai'tan killed Rand too early, Creation wouldn't be in nearly as much chaos as it could reach, and Shai'tan would not have have as strong an opportunity to keep enlarging the Bore before the Wheel spins out a plan B. Most likely, the Dragon Soul would re appear shortly after, through a mean like what happened to Birgitte, or by being born again in another child, without prophecies to forewarn (yet also fool) the Shadow of what he will do.

As I said in the previous post, I think there it's a matter of predictability. The Shadow has the KC and people tied to Rand identified. Moridin seems to be observing the game, trying to puzzle as much of what the Wheel is planning before deciding how to ruin those plans. Moridin may fear that if they precipitated conficts, either they would die trying (as happened to many Forsaken) and the top servants would be all gone before the end, or else they'd succeed but leaving plenty of time for the Wheel to come up with alternative plans. Is Perrin vital to the Light, or if he dies can another wolfbrother simply become the Wolf-King in his place, if there is still enough time left for that. Can Logain take Rand's place as ta'veren and champion if there's enough time for the Wheel to set it up? Etc.


In TGS, Shai'tan has tried to get Rand addicted to the TP - and the only way Rand was able to resist it later was to start using massive amounts of the OP, through the CK, which has backfired very badly in the end. We know now there is a certain state of nihilism and cold inhumanity one has to put himself into to be able to access the TP, and bringing Rand to that state was extremely arduous, as Rand's hatred of the Shadow, his strenght of will, is very strong. On DM after he hit the bottom of the barrel, Rand has rejected all the weaknesses that made him susceptible to turn to the Shadow (his despair, his inability to grieve, his rejects of his emotions, his belief that death was the worse thing that can happen while at the same time thinking it was the most welcome solution to all problems etc.), and to give in to the temptation of the TP and he has also destroyed the mean by which he could make the choice of putting an end to Creation himself. What happened on DM is very likely the greatest blow to Moridin and the Shadow so far. As of now, it's possible the odds that Shai'tan gets free in this Age are now almost gone (I'm guessing there may be one last chance, that whatever Rand does at the Bore backfires again and this time rip the Bore open... but this may not be a chance Shai'tan is willing to take, as Jordan said the interaction of the TP and OP are totally unpredictable).

We'll see what happens in TOM and beyond, but IMO the time when Shai'tan wanted Rand alive may very well be over, his usefulness past. Now, he may be just the greatest danger to Shai'tan in Creation, no more "the greatest danger but also a massive asset if kept under control". The only reason the Shadow may delay in killing Rand is if they still have no idea of how the Wheel intends him to strike at SG, and this frightens Shai'tan more than Rand does at the moment. It appears Moridin knows enough about what Perrin and Mat are meant to do to get rid of them now (in Perrin's case, it seems to me the Shadow has long been at work eliminating the wolves too. And, just an idea like that, perhaps we'll find out the Finn realms are also under attacks from the Shadow when Mat gets there. Nothing says the Finns won't have a role in the LB, or that they are really enemies of humans, not potential if dangerous allies. So are the wolves when you think of it. Not enemies of humans, though humans are their enemies, yet both must unite against the Shadow. It may well be the very same thing with the Finns).