Somebody wrote: #>> Vlad spends something like three years making a living by being "robbed" #by #>> bandits, so maybe he has met Piro and Co. and maybe that encounter had #>> something to do with great weights and parrying swords with an empty #hand... (This has probably already been covered -- I'm in "visit-the-list-occasionally" mode.) Timing is everything. I haven't read LOCB, but does it extend as far as Vlad's career, which begins about 250 years after the end of the Interregnum? ( http://world.std.com/~mam/Cracks-and-Shards/how-long.html#Interregnum ) -- Mark A. Mandel http://world.std.com/~mam/Cracks-and-Shards/ a Steven Brust Dragaera fan website