On Wed, 12 Mar 2003 Gaertk at aol.com wrote: > Philip Hart <philiph at SLAC.Stanford.EDU> writes: > > > On Wed, 12 Mar 2003 Gaertk at aol.com wrote: > > > >> > >> That's likely because they don't have the time/inclination > >> to train Vlad in the use of their own weapons. Remember > >> they also had a rack full of things Vlad recognised as > >> weapons. And I doubt its coincidence that the weapons > >> they plan on giving to allies are more harmful to their > >> enemies than to themselves. > > > > I think using the verb "plan" with "Jenoine" as the subject > > is a bit of a stretch. And it seems to me that they give > > Vlad the only weapon useful against themselves. They > > appear to find MWs useful - though they don't use one > > against Verra (trying to cleanse my mind of the image of > > her jumping on the back of one and clawing him) - and while > > it's by no means solid evidence, I think they ought to have > > given Vlad a non-Morganti dagger designed to be safe to > > Jenoine if they had the technology. > > I know I worded my comments poorly, but I wanted to include > the weapons rack as well as the Morganti dagger, but exclude > the weapons used on Morrolan and Aliera and pointed at Verra. That's how I understood you. > > > The weapons rack you allude to strikes me as decorative to > > first order - the war for Dragaera won't be won with plain > > steel. > > Decorative for whom? The prisoners aren't supposed to see > it. Note that it was harder to find than the doorway leading > out to the river of amorphia. I meant decorative for SKZB or us, being a bit snarky. A few thousand ordinary swords (or even MWs probably) ought to be irrelevant to the thinking (or whatever the Jenoine do) of beings who can single-handedly beard Sethra in her den (she wins with some help from a Special Tasks team, whatever they can do that she can't.) Though perhaps that rack contained seriously heavy-duty weapons and Verra&Co. made a big mistake not snagging them and I'll read a passage in some future Vlad book with chagrin.