On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 07:07:51PM -0000, Mark Tiller wrote: > Spoiler Space I'm not going to quote most of Marks post, but will say he did a fine job. Some related items -- Vlads training has been going on since his boyhood. Sethra, in the person of Kiera, has been training him to be subtle, to be stealthy, and to operate with forethought when possible and with his wits when forthought fails. She's taught him to be ruthless with his enemies and honorable with his friends, both to the limits of his life. At one point Sethra speaks of Vlad and says explicitly something like "That's what Vlad was trained for." (Sorry, can't remember the textref). > "Others have skills that might someday be useful, and those are held in the > Paths of the Dead against that use, or reincarnated into circumstances where > their skills can develop." I don't believe it was a co-incidence that Vlad (Dolivar) was not reincarnated until he's needed as an Easterner. I base that both on what Brust has done explicitly with the slam-bang action sequences and what one could divine about him from the politics that came between Vlad and Cawti. > D. If Verra simply was kept in the dark by the other gods about Godslayer, > did they make him an Easterner so he couldn't get back into the Paths of the > Dead carrying a weapon that could destroy them. Keiron had his sword, so > weapons can go with you. This goes to an interesting point, and a conjecture I have about Sethra Lavode. The gods, in spite of being, well, Gods, are pretty damned incompetant about dealing with the Jenoine. They also seem perfectly willing to not do anything significant about it for nearly 100,000 years. Oh, they *worry* about the Jenoine, but they've been reactive, not proactive. This is undoubtably a pain in the ass to their major protector, Sethra Lavode. With Vlad Taltos, she is developing an agent whose specialty is to act, act quickly, and act with deadly accuracy. Who trained Vlad in this? Who put him on the path to obtain Spellbreaker? Who was responsible for him meeting Morrolan? Who was responsible for him meeting Aliera and learning to manifest chaos? Sethra Lavode, Sethra Lavode, Sethra Lavode, and Sethra Lavode. She's created what may become the most dangerous enemy the Jenoine have ever had? She nurtured him, trained him, and put the weapon into his hand. All that remains is to motivate him. Oh, she's not omniscient. She expected Godslayer, but not via the person of Lady Teldra. But I bet many of her other 'mistakes' (how she 'misunderstood' Vlad in her initial dealings with him, which is utterly unbelievable given how long Kiera has known him) have not been mistakes at all. Lately I've been coming to believe that her motivation in this is two-fold. The first is simply that she wants the war over. For this to work, someone who can manipulate chaos must somehow seal the doors that let the Jenoine access Dragaera (and vice-versa). IMHO this may required the deactivation of both the greater and lesser Seas. That becomes the effective end of Dragaeran society as we know it. It likely means the end of the Cycle. No Dragaeran (and possibly none of the Gods) would pay that price. But an Easterner might, and might be glad to see it done. And when the War is over, Sethra Lavode can die. Ultimately, that's what I think she wants -- to lay down this burden and be done of it. But the Gods won't let her. They've even sent her back after her own death. So to finish, Sethra Lavode has to end the war. To end it, she has to develop better tools than what the Gods will give her. Vlad is her tool, but only one of them. Morrolan and Kiera are others. It would not surprise me to find Adrons experiments with pre-Empire sorcery were a result of a subtle push from Sethra. The Lesser Sea might not have been her intent, but it's another tool that she's clearly willing to use. IMHO, when (if) we see what's really going on, Sethra Lavode will be revealed as the prime manipulator. Even the Gods aren't as clever as she is, and by the time Vlad is dead we will all know it.