Rand al'Thor

Rand al'Thor lives with his father Tam on a farm in the Westwood, tending sheep in a corner of the Two Rivers that the wider world has largely forgotten. The land around them is hemmed in by the Mountains of Mist to the west and the Sand Hills, with only a handful of villages nearby: Watch Hill, Deven Ride, and distant Taren Ferry. News of everywhere and anywhere else arrives rarely and the world outside the Two Rivers hardly registers a mention. Tam raised him on the work of the seasons, and the two of them keep the farm together, carting cider and brandy down the Quarry Road to the village.

Emond's Field is the center of Rand's world, a village of a Green and a Winespring and an inn kept by the al'Vere family, where Bran al'Vere presides as innkeeper and the Village Council meets over the concerns of farmers and craftsmen. Rand's chosen "tribe" is found there: Mat Cauthon and Perrin Aybara, his best friends, and the innkeeper's daughter Egwene al'Vere, toward whom he is awkwardly, carefully attentive. The Wisdom, Nynaeve al'Meara, watches over the village's health and tempers, and is not a woman anyone crosses lightly.

Rand himself is cautious and a little watchful, curious about strangers without quite trusting them, more comfortable behind a barrel of cider than in front of a crowd. The year the story opens, winter has refused to break: frost still grips the fields with Bel Tine days away, and the whole village is uneasy about what it means. Rand holds to what he knows: the farm, his father, and the familiar faces of home.