As the start of the first book, there was a forsaken more or less loose on the world, he was close enough to the edges that he could effect te world and several of the characters thought that he was the dark lord. Remember that big-ol' fight in the sky? Perhaps all of those dreams before the gang even crossed the river? The guy with the fire in the eyes and mouth? He had been out for quite a long time and was just subtle enough that no one knew.<br/><br/>I see the Black's as being the ame way. Subtle works best because your enemies don't know that you're there. Darkfriends didn't make it easy to realize that you had a dark-friend in town and the tower is so full of plots, back-room scemes and back-biting that you can get away with a lot without resorting to the obvious overt stuff. Why kidnap or assassinate (creating an investigation into how a sister or warder was killed inside the tower) when you could just pull them off into a corner with a "Could you help me for a moment?" and lay a compulsion on hem... they go on about their business and no one knows anything's happen.<br/><br/>I've always seen the blacks, and dark-friends sewing subtle threads of choas and deception from the shadows rather than acting outright when they didn't have to. For that, you use grey-men and foot pads.<br/><br/>The idea should be to<em>not</em>give out clues that something big is on the horizon.