Dragaera

Unfamiliar familiars?

Mark A Mandel mam at theworld.com
Sat Feb 22 09:14:07 PST 2003

On Sat, 22 Feb 2003, S Lumley / s piotto wrote:

#Ok, there's Loiosh... and Rocza....
#
#And that's about it.
#
#Why don't we ever see any of the other Easterners in the books with
#familiars? Is witchcraft that uncommon? Or is Vlad a particularly
#skilled witch? Or did the whole thing fall out of practive with
#Easterners in general and Vlad just did it to annoy people?
#
#Or did he simply feel so isolated and lonely in dragaeren culture that
#he honestly felt that this would be his closest shot to finding a true
#friend he could trust with his life?
#
#I don't think that witchcraft is all that common,

I agree with you. I don't think most Easterners are witches. Witchcraft
seems to be Noish-pa's source of income in the Easterner ghetto of
Adrilankha, which strongly suggests that it's not something available in
most households, at least at his level of ability.

# 	 despite what we see in the books.

Eh? What suggestions do we see that it's common?

#I don't think Vlad is considered average, not by any means, but I
#don't think of him as an Uber Witch either. Heck, Noish pa gave him
#the anti vomit charm and Vlad never even thought of it. I believe that
#Morrolan might be a more powerful witch (warlock?), but then again

Definitely "witch". That's the word used of Morrolan.

We don't have a lot of basis of comparison. Do we see any other witches
than Vlad & Noish-pa, except maybe Cawti and apart from POTD?

Noish-pa seems extraordinarily competent: witch, swordsman, surrogate
parent. Vlad had his guidance in becoming a witch.

-- Mark A. Mandel