On Sat, 11 Oct 2003, Toubib wrote:
>
>Ok, just finished Yendi and at now point does Sethra
>says she's a Dzur. The only people who House come into
>question are Sethra the Younger and Sorceress in Green.
>
The only place I can think of that might match such a notion is in
/Taltos/, when Vlad and Morrolan are following the Blood River on
their way to Deathsgate Falls, where they pass the statue of a dzur,
and Morrolan comments that that was where Sethra was given to
Deathsgate when she died.
Vlad says something like "I thought she was a Dragon", and Morrolan
declines to comment furthur.
When describing her, Paarfi mentions that she has features of both
Dragon and Dzur.
Listing the possibilties, I thought of the following:
1) She might be a Dragon (skilled general, seems to take an interest
in House Dragon)
2) She might also be a Dzur (House Dzur allows those who defeat 17
Heros to join the House, and her home *is* Dzur Mountain)
3) She might be a Dragon-Dzur crossbreed, but nobody says that because
it would be gauche, and as noted, she predates the founding of the
Empire, and probably predates the creation of the crossbreed
taboos.
4) She might be a Jhereg, which is very nearly the same as number 3
above (Jhereg are the House of crossbreeds, after all, and it
doesn't get mentioned because she's not really part of the
Organization [1], and Jhereg are generally looked down on).
5) She might be of a House that did not survive to join the Empire.
6) She might be a Yendi (can't tell from looking at them what House
they are).
7) She might be a designed mix of *all* of the Houses in nearly
equal proportions (after all, her primary goal is to defend
the Cycle, so being of all Houses allows her to understand all
of them innately and intuitively, and won't cause her to favor
any one in particular). This might be sort-of like (3) above.
8) She might belong to *none* of the Houses (again, no House
partisanship, although we lose being able to grok them).
I don't know if we'll ever find out which one is exactly true.
Would anyone have the nerve to genescan Sethra Lavode [2] ?
Would anyone be *able* to genescan Sethra Lavode [2]?
Would anyone who did so, presuming survival, tell anyone else [2]?
[1] ORCA SPOILER notwithstanding; and it was only 2000 years
before Vlad's time anyway.
[2] Cue song:
You don't spit in a Dragon's face
You don't challenge a Dzur for the road
You don't turn informer on the Organization
And whatever you do, whatever you do,
If you value your life & if you value your soul,
You don't mess with Sethra Lavode.
-- Mark A. Mandel, The Filker With No Nickname