Usually, when lamenting the lack of shared knowledge among the main characters, we are focussed on the heroes and what they could have done with the right knowledge, or chortle at how the villains err due to their lack of knowledge. But what if an in-between character was given knowledge at the right time.

Mysterious Informant: Captain Bornhald, before you get into the Two Rivers, there is something you should know.

Dain Bornhald: What do I need to know? It's a bunch of farmers that includes the people who raised a false dragon and a homocidal maniac who assaulted and murdered several Children for absolutely no just cause and who probably probably betrayed my father to the witches at Falme.

MI: Well, there's worse. That same homocidal nutjob not only committed those murders, but he arbitrarily freed an Aiel savage in a village to the south, and helped him slaughter those Children who tried to stop them! To be fair, though, the situation with your father may not be exactly as you and Byar think...

DB: That's insane. Why would anyone let an Aielman out of a cage? They are a savage and hostile people, who attack non-Aiel on sight, even in an Ogier stedding! ANY Aiel in a village WEST of the Manetherendrelle River is so far away from any place he has any business being, he's lucky to be alive, cage or no! I mean, in the same circumstances, his people would have stripped a wetlander naked and made them walk through a desert and the largest mountain range in the world. Locked in a cage is the least of what any of them should expect.

MI: My goodness, you certainly are well-informed.

DB: Yes, that's one of the things about me that no one takes the trouble to find out. I am one of the most tolerant Children of the Light, am amenable to reasonable discussion about Aes Sedai and their role in the Last Battle, and oppose injustice, even when delivered against an iniquitous alumna of the White Tower. And speaking of justice, did Perrin of the Two Rivers at least have some sort of reason for freeing a savage from his cage and fighting the Children who caught him?

MI: Reasons imply an intellectual thought process and intelligence. Perrin of the Two Rivers mostly just lashes out emotionally. I think he dislikes seeing people in cages.

DB: Even bad ones?

MI: Apparently.

DB: Well, did he have any previous experience of Aiel to suggest that perhaps they were nice and do not belong in cages?

MI: He did encounter one who did not actually attack him, even though he heard his Shienaran friends going on and on about how dangerous they are. He was also in Shienar, which in addition to their desperate efforts to hold the line against the Shadow for all of humankind, have to deal with Aiel raiders attacking them, presumably just to be dicks, since they don't raid Cairhien or Tear as much as they do Shienar. Oh, and he met a trio who veiled themselves and prepared to attack him and his party, without provocation aside from their daring to exist, in an Ogier stedding (where they plainly had to have permission from the Ogier to be there).

DB: So that would be a "no" for good reasons then. What an utter ass! And these people tolerated both Perrin AND the false Dragon among themselves? How much worse could they be?

MI: Well, you remember the Aes Sedai & her trainee entourage who attacked you and your men without provocation outside the White Tower this past spring?

DB: Of course! I would never have thought the witches would so blatantly flaunt their prevarications regarding those supposed Oaths they swear! I was just about ready to re-think by whole "give Aes Sedai a chance" mindset after that incident.

MI: Guess where the ringleader grew up.

DB: No kidding? This place gets worse and worse. The only transgression these people have left undone is singling me out for personal abuse and harassment.

MI: Err...I hate to bring this up, but remember when you were in Baerlon last spring?

DB: When the witch turned into a giant and stepped over the walls? And she had that punk kid who had tried to pick a fight with me in her party?

MI: Yep. She was on her way to Caemlyn from the Two Rivers.

DB: What happened? Did she bring that jerk to the Two Rivers to try some sort of asshole-breeding program?

MI: Actually, she found him there. Along with the guy who dumped those barrells in the mud when you walked by.

DB: What the Blight is WRONG with these people? I haven't felt this put upon since I was a boy on campaign with my parents during the Aiel War, and my mother died because she took sick with camp fever and some Illianer officer who was a blademaster swaggered in and confiscated a bunch of medical supplies for his wife and their adopted baby. And I think he took my favorite teddy bear as well. I've always been sure he was the same jerk who killed all four of my uncles in the Whitecloak War and castrated my dad so I never had any siblings. Illian is the only place I hate more than the Two Rivers, because of that thug. Illian produced him, and the Two Rivers has made all these other jerks.

MI: Umm...about that "Illianer" officer...?

DB: What's with the quotes? I heard quotation marks around "Illianer."

MI: You heard quotes?

DB: Well, sure. People in our world hear capitalizations all the time. Why not quotes? What about this "Illianer"? See what I mean.

MI: I do. As I was saying, you know that the Companions in Illian take in men from anywhere in the world, including, say, backwater districts that don't have armies of their own for their native son blademasters to find employment with?

DB: Oh, for crying out loud! Him TOO?!? This place is a cesspool! The only good thing it ever produced was their tabac. My grandfather loved Two Rivers tabac so much. It gave him his only pleasure as he died of that lung consumption.

MI: About the source of that "consumption"...

DB: This is ridiculous.