On Fri, 20 Feb 2004, Steve Simmons wrote: > You don't have to be bright to be a God. I claim this as a corrolary of my thesis that heroism (here expressed as intelligence) is a conserved quantity in fiction. Vlad can't be the smartest if the gods are; in fact he can't be much of an interesting free agent if the gods have everything planned out. This it seems to me is one of the reasons the J are portrayed as essentially random - Vlad couldn't interact with them on any self-respecting basis if they were as smart as they really ought to be as evolved, ancient, scientific beings.