Dragaera

Two words about two letters etc. (PotD Spoilers)

Tue Dec 31 06:09:38 PST 2002

Philip Hart wrote:
>
>
> P
>  a
>   t
>    h
>     s
>    o
>     f
>    t
>     h
>      e
>     D
>      e
>       a
>        d
>
> S
>  p
>   o
>    i
>     l
>      e
>       r
>        s
>
> A
>  h
>   e
>    a
>     d
>
>
>
>
>
[snip]
> 4.  Oaths - touching that Piro has adopted "Cha!".  Rather chilling that
> the Musketeers (except Aerich?) use "Star me", hearkening back to the
> nearly-abrupt conclusion of PG. I found "The Trey", presumably appearing
> to complement Verra's sisters, rather jarring.

Somehow, I saw no connection to the three goddesses in that interjection.  I
read it as similar to "The Deuce!" an oath exclaiming bad luck (perhaps
related to dice throwing? - snake eyes?) perhaps with some similar
connection to a game of chance.  There was one instance in the text that
Deuce was used perhaps inadvertently instead of Trey.  I think Mark Mandel
noted it and thought that this might explain the apparent copy editing error
that there are one or two instances where Trey is not capitalized.

> 6. Horse racing.  Is Paarfi being nonsensical in the chapter 27 digression
> about a runner chasing a rider?  There's a book (well worth reading)
> called Chasing After Antelopes which has interesting things to say about
> bipedalism and strategies for a band of weaponless hunters to run down an
> antelope.  Dragaerans are very tall, but also very slender - are they
> heavier than Easterners?  I had assumed they're heavier and would burden a
> horse, but then they would also make relatively worse runners.  I recall
> Khaavren being impressed by Crionofenarr riding a stallion.  Do we have
> reason to believe gravity on Dragaera is 9.8 m/s/s?  Any ideas?

A rider on a single horse has to stay within the stamina limits of the
horse.  Also, there are sorts of terrain that a biped is much better suited
to than a horse is.