Dragaera

Secret Yendi Signals

Gaertk at aol.com Gaertk at aol.com
Sat Apr 12 12:02:59 PDT 2003

Jessica <jetdragon at comcast.net> writes:

> Small tPotD spoilers
>
> Hi, long time lurker, etc.

Welcome.

> I was re-reading tPotD when something caught my eye. On 
> page 310, when Pel arrives at Dzur Mountain, he meets the 
> Sorceress in Green.
>
> "The Sorceress studied him, then abruptly sheathed her 
> sword and made a certain motion with the fingers of her 
> left hand. Upon seeing this, Pel, his eyes widening 
> slightly, made a similar yet different motion with the 
> fingers of his left hand, after which the Sorceress said, 
> 'Follow me, then, my lord Galstan.'"
[...]
> So it seems the Yendi use hand signals to identify 
> themselves to one another.
>
> So what information is contained in the signals? Rank, 
> maybe? If it was just a house identifier, presumably the 
> signals would be the same. 

I meant to comment on this back when the book came out, but
it looks like I forgot.

Its definately a House identifier, but I don't think it gives
rank.  I don't think Yendis have ranks (other than titles),
and if they did, I doubt they would tell them to strangers
(especially strangers from their House; these are Yendi,
after all).

My guess is that the difference is in whether they want to
hide their House from others; SiG does, while Pel doesn't 
care.

I have to really wonder at Paarfi's source for this scene,
since he *claims* not to know SiG's House.


--KG