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In The Great Hunt, it's mentioned, such as in here, that in many (implied to be all?) villages visited by the Seanchan that they left a burned/scorched patch of ground that village residents were afraid/unwilling to remove. It's further mentioned that Hurin scented violence at the first patch he encountered, and it was extreme enough to cause him to vomit and refuse to discuss what actually happened on that spot.

So what did they actually do? The book includes a number of concrete examples of Seanchan cruelty, but as far as I can tell nothing specifically relatable to what they did in these villages. Does a subsequent book reveal what sort of atrocities they actually commit?

And mildly related, do the burned patches have anything to do with the similarly-described swaths of burned countryside that Rand encountered periodically while in the portal-stone world? I assume not, since Hurin was there for those as well, and did not react strongly to the burned patches in that other world?

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  • Do you have a quote / chapter number?
    – NikolaiDante
    Feb 27, 2013 at 8:46
  • @NikolaiDante - The portal-stone world is chapter 15, I think. The first burnt patch in a village is encountered in chapter 41.
    – aroth
    Feb 27, 2013 at 9:03
  • In-around page 582, from said chapter. I edited the question to include a link to an excerpt.
    – Solemnity
    Feb 28, 2013 at 2:46

2 Answers 2

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From my recent re-read, there is a direct mention of them executing mayors and other similar people, probably using the damanes' "One Power as a weapon" methods.

There are also hints that when the locals are asked to swear the Seanchan oaths about the Return, it is a "swear or else" situation, so the executions are examples of what happen if people struggle instead of swearing.

The Bayle Domon POVs provide most of the information regarding the villages.

I don't think there is any relation to the Portal Stone alternative reality, in which the Shadow won the Trolloc Wars and ravaged the land to the point of sterility. The damage in that world is also Power-related, but the scale and the causes are very different.

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  • The hesitation regarding removal of the spots is due to the fact that the One Power is: 1) Feared 2) Not normally used against as a weapon (people are aware of the Three Oaths) 3) Not normally controlled through the use of a literal leash. There's enough superstition in the land that people would avoid anything so blatantly offensive to their sensibilities.
    – user31178
    Jan 31, 2015 at 5:36
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Remember that the hand let loose to search for darkfriends in that area to, and they put whole villages to the sword. I don't think they went far down toman head road, but in almoth plains for sure.

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  • That's right, but it's not really relevant to this question. The scorched earth is a Seanchan thing.
    – jv42
    Aug 5, 2015 at 12:57

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