Raoden failed in finding ways to defeat Shaor’s gang on two separate occasions. First, there was the original infiltration with Galladon (in which Raoden hoped to convince Shaor to stop attacking.) This excursion was informative, but not successful. The second failure was in dealing with the wild men who were trying to get to the carts. Raoden’s decision to simply cut them off from the courtyard was eventually a failure. I’m not sure what else he could have done, but he still failed. Saolin’s death, among other things, was the cost.
I knew that Raoden had to have more difficulty dealing with Shaor’s band than he did with the other two. ‘Defeating’ Karata and Taan happened quickly, and with relative ease. If Shaor’s band hadn’t presented a problem, then I felt that the entire ‘three gangs’ plot would have been unfulfilling.
So, in these chapters, I stepped up the danger from Shaor and the crew. In the early drafts of the book, this danger wasn’t present enough. (In fact, this was one of the main comments that Tom Doherty, CEO of Tor, gave me when he read ELANTRIS.) So, I increased Shaor’s numbers—by giving them a larger percentage of Taan’s men, not to mention a larger number of men to begin with—and made them more dangerous in the way they attacked.
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