Jag wrote: > On Sat, 2003-03-08 at 18:16, Philip Hart wrote: > >>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. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> > >>>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. > > > I'm AFB and its been a while since I read _I_, but wasn't the ailment in > Vlad's arm caused by magic? I look at it as the making of Godslayer is > similar to the moment earlier in _I_ when he broke the glammer on him.. > that he was mentally linked with Spellbreaker and thus able to use its > abilities on himself. In case that wasn't clear, I think the only > reason Vlad was able to cure his arm is because it was caused by magic > and Spellbreaker/Godslayer tends to disrupt magic. I think Spellbreaker's healing properties are separate from its spellbreaking properties. In Phoenix, it healed the ordinary cut Vlad had made on his hand to get to Verra's Place, mostly by acting semi-sentient in the presence of a god. I would speculate that when spellbreaker is near enough to a god, it starts to "wake up" to the point that it can then protect its owner (by healing him, etc.). Of course, this doesn't explain why it didn't go ahead and heal his arm while again in proximity to Verra. Perhaps that damage was too complex; as I recall, Vlad fixes the rather trivial damage (his words, I think) himself. Jose -- Jose Marquez jhereg69 at earthlink.net