On Sat, 8 Mar 2003, Teddywolf wrote: > David Silberstein wrote: > > > > On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, James Griffin wrote: > > >Spoiler Warning: these questions assume fairly complete knowlege of > > >most of the Vlad books. > > > > > > > > > > > > Or in other words: Vlad may live for a normal Easterner lifespan, for > > another ~700 years, or indefinitely. We don't know. I wonder if > > Steve knows? > > There are hints that if he doesn't die in a fight then his lifespan will be > pretty long. Quite aside from now being one of seventeen he's also a > witch and a fairly skilled one. In TPoTD the witch who initiated > Morrolan into Verra's service lived quite a long life. Barring her death > in sequels she may easily still be the head of his circle of witches. I believe we're told who the current head of the circle is in _Issola_, and she's not the priestess from _PotD_. > > Now admittedly Noish-pa probably isn't that powerful and shows > definite signs of age, and he's likely a better witch than his grandson, > yet he seems to still be quite active for someone his age and could still > hold his own in a duel. Vlad is able to heal himself with trivial effort using LT (wonder how long he'll be nine-fingered [by the way, is this a LotR reference? - if so note that the ring conferred long life]) - something Aliera (a noted medic) and Sethra (and Verra for that matter) couldn't do. I would guess he can fix up his telomeres or whatever is involved in aging with a little effort. > Verra seemed to have an idea about Spellbreaker's true nature only > when it coiled itself up in Issola, and at no time prior to that did she > know in spite of being Goddess of Knowledge. And yet the Serioli > smith in Dragon recognized it instantly. I have wondered why Spellbreaker hadn't previously snaked at tDG. I think in _I_ Vlad notes it has been acting freaky lately - presumably it has some idea its time is come. The Serioli from _D_ seems to have a similar unphysical relation with time. I wonder if constructing a GW involves a Serioli soul as an essential ingredient. Maybe that's why there are so few - something I argued made little sense in my technosnark of a few months ago - not enough volunteers...