On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, roger n. tospott wrote: >[SPOILERS?] > > >David Silberstein writes: > /Taltos/, chapter 14, pg 144 in th Ace PB: > "I'm your cousin. My name is Morrolan e'Drien. I am the eldest son > of your father's youngest sister." > I have speculated elsewhere about whether Dragon lineage follows the > father always, or can perhaps sometimes follow the mother. But I am > nearly certain that Rollandar's wife, Adron's sister, was an e'Kieron. > > "And yet," observed Kéurana, "he has not the bloodlines to use > such powers fully." [LoCB, p. 391] > >I am confuséd. Well, just to clarify my own statements, I am not trying to suggest that Morrolan is somehow an e'Kieron (although that might be what the gods are trying to suggest, or at least, that he has enough e'Kieron lineage to manipulate amorphia, or perhaps that the lineage isn't as important as we might think for being able to manipulate amorphia). Rather, we have not seen the name nor lineage of Morrolan's mother, and while it is extremely likely that the sister of an e'Kieron would also be an e'Kieron, there is a very slight chance that she might not have been. Obviously, I have no way of knowing for sure. > Note that "eldest" would appear to be wrong, although it occurs to me > as I type this that Morrolan might not have known of his brother > Molric when he said that. Or Vlad or Steve just got it wrong. > >Hmm. FHYA, page 141: "To-day my cousin is Warlord, and his younger >son is my chainman, [...]" Note 'younger'. > Now *I* am confuséd. I had always assumed that that simply meant that there was a third brother whose name we didn't know, and that he was the real eldest. But given the timing, Molric *must* have been older than Morrolan. Unless... Now I am imagining a scenario where Morrolan is born first, but is, for some strange reason known only to Rollandar e'Drien & his wife (and his cousin Adron e'Kieron) put into some sort of sorcerous stasis as a very young child. His mom (or even his dad) takes him out East and put him in the keeping of that minor noble whose house Morrolan was living in before he went a-wandering. This parent tells the noble family: "This here is the child of Rollandar e'Drien and <whatever> e'<whatever>. Leave him alone, and we shall presently return for him, and de-stasis him." Or perhaps the stasis was put on Morrolan by Rollandar's enemies, and he thinks that Eastern witchcraft can break the stasis - either way, he expects to come back at *some* point and have a normal son. And then, of course, Dragaera City goes kerflooey, along with everyone who knows about this odd situation. The stasis ends along with all other sorcery, and Baby Morrolan wakes up and wonders what is going on. The noble, or rather, the descendant of the noble, since a few hundred years or so have passed, shrugs, and puts the kid in the care of an Easterner nurse, and tells the kid only the few details he knows. And that's why Morrolan is so utterly ignorant of who he is, even though he is the eldest son of Rollandar e'Drien. Alternatively, perhaps something happened with Devera or Verra, and time just went weirdly.