On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, Mark A Mandel wrote: >On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, David Silberstein wrote: > >#[1] Although what was up with that Dark Water business, anyway? Why >#should it *matter* if plain, ordinary ground water has been exposed to >#light or not? > >It doesn't *matter* in our universe, where there are AFAWK no such >things as magic, psychic traces, undead, and so on. IMHO it's perfectly >believeable in the Dragaeran universe. If you accept those as part of >the story, you have to be willing to accept this at least as a >possibility. Well.... Let me expand on my objection a bit: Every other instance of magical activity appears to be tied to either the actual practitioner, or to some artifact that some practitioner has imbued with some sort of magical energy, or to something that is magical because it derives >from something else magical. Vlad even admits that most of the paraphernalia for witchcraft is symbolic and can be dispensed with. Morganti & Great weapons were deliberately crafted to be magical. The blood of a goddess has magical properties that derive from the original goddess. And so on But the water wasn't modified deliberately, as far as we are told. It's just water, from the ground, that hasn't been exposed to light, and yet has some inherent nature that causes it to affect the undead. That's very unusual, I think, in this milieu. The only other thing(s) that is specifically magical from its inherent nature is trellanstone (& necrophia), and trellanstone is incredibly rare (I don't remember if the same applies to necrophia, which is why I suggested that it might be in the water). Although I wonder now if perhaps there *is* something odd going on with the water in the Dragaeran Empire. I suddenly recall the River out of Faerie in Fenario, which was magical for no explained reason. ># Although it occurs to me that this may have been yet >#another thing misunderstood (or miscommunicated) by Vlad > >He is certainly misinformed about plenty of other things. Yup. :-)