On Mon, 10 Feb 2003, Mark A Mandel wrote: > On Mon, 10 Feb 2003, David Silberstein wrote: > > #On Mon, 10 Feb 2003, Philip Hart wrote: > # > #>Kiera has been reported to have claimed to have done that. I never > #>believed the report - thought it was self-aggrandizement. "Self", I > #>should write. > #> > # > #Well, considering that (a) she made the report herself and (b) she has > #been shown to be exceedingly highly skilled, and exceedingly careful, > #I see no reason to doubt her. Also, she doesn't seem to boast at all, > #although she does occasionally show off, just to remind people that > #she really is as good as her reputation and not to be trifled with. I submit that we don't know enough about her to judge how much to believe her. Anyway it seems plausible to me that part of being a good Jhereg is having a good legend. I suspect Sethra is above lying (in her culture, anyway - "We don't know any thieves") but maybe Kiera isn't. > > And she says in _Orca_ that she's never done anything as Kiera the Thief > that Kiera couldn't do. I suspect that with a long enough lifetime one > could learn an awful lot of even non-magical and non-psychic sneakiness. It's an arms race - in a few hundred years one would tend to learn to be observant, esp. in Kiera's circle. Or one gets bored of life and becomes less observant, I don't know. Given that Dragaeran senses (attention spans, pattern recognition, ...?) are superhuman, stealth is anyway challenging. - Philip