On Wed, 4 Sep 2002, Penney, Sean wrote: > >Greg Rapawy said: > >>Mellar, a crossbreed (therefore a member of no House >>by birth) succeeds in joining the Dzur by defeating >>seventeen Dzur champions in successive duels. > >>Vlad comments in _Yendi_ that as Zerika is the last >>surviving Phoenix there is now no way to produce a >>Phoenix heir except through crossbreeding. >I'm surprised Dragaereans can crossbreed. Since they have the actual >genes from Orca and Dragons and such, you'd think they would be >incompatible. My notion - which I admit might be wrong, but isn't contradicted by anything we've seen so far - is that the animal genes that Dragaerans have are not active DNA, but are rather markers that the Jenoine used for tracking purposes. So for all practical purposes, all Dragaerans are the same species, and can produce fertile offspring.