Dragaera

SPOILER for _Dragon_...what's up with Vlad, again?

David Silberstein davids at kithrup.com
Mon Feb 10 15:16:30 PST 2003

On Mon, 10 Feb 2003, Gomi no Sensei wrote:

>
>On Mon, 10 Feb 2003, Philip Hart wrote:
>> On Mon, 10 Feb 2003, David Silberstein wrote:
>> > Vlad has received a course in Stealth 101 from *THE* absolute
>> > top-level Jhereg expert in stealth.
>> You are talking about Kiera here, right?  Not Kragar or Mario?

I don't think we have any data on whether Mario is particularly super-
stealthy or not.  Paarfi doesn't portray him as such (note that
Khaavren detected him), but of course, what does Paarfi really know? 

>
>Hm. Different applications for different situations. If you need someone
>to walk undetected through a crowd, Kragar wins hands down -- but Kiera
>is the person to call when you need to circumvent antitheft systems.

And there's also direction of movement and such.  Could Kragar scale a
wall at all?  If he could, he probably would not be detected - but
Kiera has in fact done just that and not been detected. 

>Both kinds of 'stealth', but distinct, if you follow. As for Kragar
>teaching Vlad his dimness, it seems fairly clear from the text that
>it's an innate (and undesired) quality, not a skill he picked up or
>developed consciously.
>

Yes.  Kiera *knows how* to be stealthy, and can teach that knowledge; 
Kragar just *is* difficult to detect (and I consider the probability
that his ability is psionic to be rather high).

I vaguely remember Vlad mentioning some of what Kiera taught him;
something about going with the flow of a crowd.