Dragaera

Cawti

FelixEisen at aol.com FelixEisen at aol.com
Sun Jun 16 22:25:58 PDT 2002

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