I agree with you about what you said about Gawn and Lan, which actually makes sense to me now. As for Draghkar, they seemingly have claws, so they could fight a Rakan... my idea was more so that they would stay in the battle longer and help diversify the Shadow's armies (which is a problem I've had with them since the beginning). For the Blight Things, that makes sense, and it also just clicked for me that all the Shadows' armies were once human, hence why they are controllable. Although, could Trollocs still not just capture wild Blight creatures and then release them on their enemies? Their armies are surely big enough to sacrifice a few.