* * * * SPOILERS * * * * >Subject: >In Which the Plot of "The Viscount of Adrilankha", >Much in the Manner of a Lady Who Has Dared to Sport a >Bold New Style, Is Discussed (which discussion >contains information that may spoil certain surprises >to the reader unfamiliar with the volume "Paths of the >Dead"). This is a magnificent post and I only wish that I could follow it up in the same style. Alas, my time is too constrained (which is, to say, that this is not a constraint of wits, or so I would hope) to reply in kind. As such, I must content our gentle readership with a brief note, indeed, barely a sketch, against that day that I may frame a proper reply on the order of five to six-thousand pages (though any amount of mere text must be understood to be secondary to the quality of the words that they encypher; as such I can only endeavor that this future response shall constain an abundance of quality to match the quantity obtained even as I hope that this very reply that I am composing on this Universal Turing Machine that I pretend to call a Computer shall quality in excess of its brevity). That said, I have a hypothesis, although one that can neither, I believe, be verified nor discounted at this present point. It is my suspicion that Sethra did *not* ascertain the survival of the Orb until shortly before the events depicted. Certainly, given that it resides in the very Halls of Judgement and given that Sethra does not have free access to those self-same Halls, and, certainly, given that ordinary sorcery no longer obtains, even a one as powerful and perceptive as Sethra may have had to spend some small amount of time determining that the Orb survived that grand and terrible Cataclysm that we pretend to call The Interregnum, and then, once that information was secured, calling forth her talents to discern its location. _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 3 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail&xAPID=42&PS=47575&PI=7324&DI=7474&SU= http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsg&HL=1216hotmailtaglines_smartspamprotection_3mf