Looking through _Athrya_ for evidence about my suspicion that Dragaerans have souped-up senses, I noticed a couple of things. Sara sings a "scandalously bawdy song" which "implied things about her character and pleasures that Savn found unlikely". This (and Savn's early adolescent thoughts about girls) suggests to me that Teckla sexuality is more or less human, hence there ought to be some decadence too. I suspect that Paarfi censors himself and Vlad hangs out with people more interested in violence than indulgence. We get to see Savn's memory work in various places (the excellent surgery scene, for example) and it appears to be human (lifespan appropiate). Vlad owes a debt to Master Wag. Someone on this list (re _Issola_) wrote that 'Savn deserved more'. This reminds me of the treatment of Tara's death on Buffy tVS. The latter does bug me, the former not. Savn reports that there was a tribe of Serioli living nearby until a few hundred years ago - aka the end of the interregnum. This seems like (very scant) evidence for Serioli expansion and withdrawal paralleling the empire's fall and rise. On the other hand the S were around long enough to produce Firdspeak aka the little-green-Jedi-speak, which would likely take generations of exposure if it's at all likely (which I doubt). - Philip