> I would assume some necromany was involved with all they deal with > souls. Also, from Vlad's sensitivity to the blades, I figure some type > of psionics/witchcraft[1] was also involved. Most likely the necromancy > is involved in destroying the souls (as well as binding souls for the > GWs), and the psionics to give it the sentience that the blades are > sometimes said to possess. D'oh! In my long essay about the nature of the soul, I forgot one of my prime supporting examples -- the appearance of the Necromancer in tPotD. While normal (modern) english usage has necromancy being "the branch of magic concerned with death" (or, sometimes in a more friendly vein, "magic concerned with the life-force"), that doesn't at all seem to be what Sethra talks to the Necromancer about while establishing her bona-fides. What they are talking about, and the Necromancer's specialty, seems to be a "magic concerned with location", or possibly "magic concerned with dimensional travel". This seems like a case where the english word is simply a poor approximation of a hard-to-translate Dragaeran concept. I believe that, to Dragaeran "necromancers" (and to the Jenoine), "aliveness" is in some way translatable into "location" -- perhaps in a similar way to how Einsteinian physics sees space and time as inextricably bound-up aspects of each other. Alexx Alexx Kay Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employers alexx at world.std.com http://world.std.com/~alexx Relaxed Agnostic -- I don't know any answers -- I'm not looking very hard, either. [Seen on a Nancy Button, http://www.nancybuttons.com/]