I realize it's been days since I last posted to the list (or managed to empty my inbox -- 550+ messages!! -- but I simply had three things to point out in regards to Cawti's personality, actions, etc. during 'Teckla' and 'Phoenix': 1) Cawti was no longer an 'active' assassin -- she suddenly retired, becoming a stay-at-home wife who practiced knife-throwing because she was bored out of her skull. The boredom of an intelligent individual is amazingly fertile ground for large ideas. Consequently ... 2) When exposed to a -very- coherent argument -- which has been noted online as effectively being communistic in flavor, but which I'll make a guess and say is Marxism -- one grasps the thing and runs with it. Nobody, but -nobody- on this list can say that Marxism/communism as a philosophy didn't have its share of friggin' geniuses; Marx is one, Trotsky another. Simply put, when a 'large idea' fell into her lap, and one which coincided with her own despite for the Empire and (sort of) Dragaerans, Cawti of course took up with it with a fervor that would have done any of the revolutionaries of 1917 proud. This, naturally, leads to ... 3) There's no fanatic like an intelligent fanatic. An intelligent fanatic does not 'fail to recognize' problems; they simply begin to work to see how to use the enemy's strengths against them. The group in South Adrilankha is, at the very least, a test-bed for Kelly and the rest; the Russian Empire was incredibly entrenched, the communists were outnumbered, outgunned, and generally outmaneuvered, but they had one thing -- the repressed peasantry. Kelly as well has a vast (what, 95%?) base of Teckla, people who do all the work -- and, like the revolutionaries in 1917, a potentially vast store of resentment for the nobility. Cawti knows exactly how to kill a man, so she knows the approaches an assassin would use. She has given her passion to a cause, and though there are other, erm, spoiler details for her these days, she still holds the potential to be one of the most influential people in Empire politics in the future. Or, rather, revolutionary politics. As a side note, and having read my Paarfi, I seem to recall 'social injustice' as being one of the 'Top 3' reasons Dragons have used to overthrow the House of Phoenix and turn the Cycle. I would not be shocked to read in the future that a continuing unrest in South Adrilankha (and other parts of the Empire, all using the same 'rallying cry') was the reason either for Zerika's resignation or Norathaar's seizure of the throne... Who knows, Norathaar might actually 'do some good' for the Easterners. She obviously has (or had) a soft spot for them ... Knightmarshall Felix Surnamed Eisen, or "Iron Felix" Hand of Morr, The Order of Bones