On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, Ruhlen, Rachel Louise (UMC-Student) wrote: > 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. That's not at issue. We know the rough age of the Empire, which is 200,000 years, and the number of cycles, which is 17. Hence, the average cycle is a shade under 12,000 years give or take. Vlad's "about ten thousand" looks much more reasonable, then. The Dragon- Jhereg War was near the beginning of the Sixteenth Athyra reign, so it's one full cycle plus two reigns, the Interregnum, and another Phoenix reign (Zerika's). So, while 10,000 years does seem a bit short, especially given the "long Athyra and even longer Phoenix" reigns, it probably wasn't more than about 15,000 years. -Dennis