On Friday, June 20, 2003, at 10:47 AM, charles_sumner at harvard.edu wrote: > Good observation. I had forgotten about the moment right before the > disaster when the Orb chose Adron. Although there was nothing at all > normal about the events surrounding the disaster, that scene does help > us determine what a normal transition is as we "see" the Orb making > the decision - another indication of it's intelligence. I'm not so sure. My computer frequently pauses before doing something, but I'd hardly call it intelligent. We've never seen the actual heir selection process, just that different heirs can be chosen. It's possible that choosing a heir requires some small magical registration with the orb, a sort of "by the way, o Orb, this is the one you want should the cycle be about to change to us." At which point, on dropping off the old emperor/empress, it consults the great cycle in the sky, checks its current list of heirs, and wings off to the appropriate person. I'd be interested in seeing how the orb transition works on the change to a Teckla Republic. The Republic bit suggests an election process, so the Orb would have to either wait until the next head honcho was elected, or switch in mid-reign to the most recent elected head honcho. > Also, if what Paarfi said was actually true, that throws the whole > cycle out of whack as it means the actual transition of emperors was > Phoenix Decadent --> Dragon (for a few minutes) --> Interregnum --> > Phoenix Ascendant and that just doesn't seem right. Phoenix Decadent > --> Interregnum --> Phoenix Ascendant is much more plausible from the > standpoint of the cycle itself; because if Adron really was the > emperor according to the Orb, then it should still be the Dragon reign > after the Interregnum (or possibly the Lyorn reign). I don't know about that. I'd say that the cycle hasn't switched to the new house until the Orb starts doing its jig around the next emporer's head. Since the Orb never makes it to Adron (Sethra sends it off to tPotD, or, as I prefer: Sethra kills the Orb), the cycle was in a conversion stage when Adron blew it up. I forget, did we see who the great cycle in the sky pointed to during the Interregnum? -Adam