I believe I have solved the question of how many rulers any given reign can have, and that answer is: multiple. It may be the case that only one ruler reigns before the cycle turns, but it's possible that that is a rarity, judging from this excerpt, which I will paraphrase. It comes from _Yendi_ on page 64. Basically, Vlad makes a comment that indicates that the only way to tell if a Phoenix is a reborn Phoenix is if they turn decadent at their reign or not. Now this doesn't immediately answer the question at hand, but it *implies* something that is almost irrefutable--the comment implies there is confusion as to the nature of the Phoenix Emperor, but that simply cannot be, if there is only one Emperor per reign. Otherwise, the second consecutive Phoenix to rule would inevitably be the "reborn" one. As it is, this indicates that there are successive "decadent" Phoenixes, and from there, we may extrapolate that there are consequently successive rulers in other houses too. Jon <html><DIV> </DIV></html> _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail