I am on my second read of the series and with the benefit of hindsight, it has struck just what a total baddass Ishamael is. This guy has a resume for Evil Overlord and Scheming Villain to put anyone in fiction to shame.

 

Just off the top of my head:

 

• Causing panic in the Hall of Servants by publically swearing to the shadow as the first one.
  
• Leading the dark forces towards victory in the war of power
  
• Starting the Trolloc Wars that raged for 300 years
  
• Founding the Black Ajah, eventually gathering in very significant numbers
  
• Founding and running the entire network of darkfriends for 3000 years
  
• Convincing Arthur Hawking to hunt down Aes Sedai when they could have saved his life and sending his sons across the ocean to found the seanchan empire.
  
• messing about with the Seanchan, corrupting their prophecies and Bela knows what else.
  
• Lots of other stuff I am sure he is just too humble to have mentioned.
  

 

One thing is for sure. He hasn't been sitting idly by in the past 3000 years and as far as I am concerned, the other forsaken can't hold a candle to this guy.

 

Go Elan!

Good point in starting this thread.  I definitely agree with you about the epic badassness of Ishamael/Moridin.  I just started a re-read myself 2 days ago, and they whole Ishamael speech to the Kinslayer in the EotW Prologue is as quotable and downright awesome scenes in the entire series.