Dragaera

Jhereg-Dragon War #1

Ruhlen, Rachel Louise (UMC-Student) RuhlenR at missouri.edu
Tue Oct 8 13:50:12 PDT 2002

In _Jhereg_, Vlad tells the story about the first Jhereg-Dragon war.  Is
this covered on the Cracks & Shards page? or another page?  I was
curious how many inconsistencies have been noted in this one story
alone.

Here's what I've found:
He says it occurred nearly a full cycle before the Interregnum, about
10,000 years, during the Athyran reign which was followed by a long
Phoenix reign which was fortunately long enough to give the Dragon house
time to rebuild and come up with a strong heir for the Dragon reign.
This was definitely not immediately before the Interregnum, when the
Phoenix reign was never followed by a Dragon reign.  Therefore, it had
to be a bit more than a full cycle before the Interregnum, not "nearly"
a full cycle.
 
10,000 years is an awfully short time for a full cycle.  The shortest
reign is 17*17, or 289 years (that's from his discourse in some later
book, don't recall which off the top of my head, where he's talking
about how he likes to rub their noses in it that they think the number
17 is so mystical).  The longest is 17*17*17, 4913, for an average of
2601.  The shortest possible *cycle* is 4913 (17 Houses, 289 years
each).  An average cycle is 44,217.  Plus a long Athyra reign followed
by a long Phoenix reign, in addition to the entire cycle, in that 10,000
years.  I wonder if a "0" got left out.
 
Cracks & Shards has a good discussion about the bit about the head in a
bucket being revivifiable.
 
Anyone want to offer an "explanation" for the 1st two?  Vlad prefaces
this story with something about Jhereg records not being reliable
because anyone with enough money can have information pulled...or
inserted.  Perhaps history gets so re-written that it's contradictory.
I also wonder if Vlad wasn't paying attention to what he was saying and
just spouting numbers without thinking.  I've never done anything like
that myself...