On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, David Silberstein wrote: > On Sun, 14 Mar 2004, Philip Hart wrote: > >Why throw in a Lyorn, if the council was watching? > > The Lyorn is presumably unbiased and not corruptable. Like, say, Shaltre? The Lyorn is supposed to watch the event, which consists of someone watching a spell being cast and saying Yup or Nope. The only reason a Lyorn would be useful would be to carry the Y or N to the council. > > Why not have an e'Lanya wizard check, too? Hell, probably several > > of the council members could have done it - if say Adron was on the > > council. > Bzzzt! Adron is the one who will be re-Heired if the gene scan finds > mixbreedness. An e'Lanya would presumably also be biased. Bzzzt! Adron wouldn't have put his interests above the truth. An e'Lanya might have done the same - anyway the line would want to confirm the truth. Also, bzzzt! again, because Aliera makes the call that Norathar is a Dragon. She's biased because she doesn't want the throne, _like all Dragons_. > >Why not have Sethra do the scan? She's apolitical and of > >unimpeachable integrity. > > Possibly, possibly. However, she is the one who brought the matter to > the Dragon Council in the first place - I can see procedure being put > in place to have as many disinterested parties as possible. I mean, > if *you* wanted a second opinion on something, you would try and get > it from an expert who had as little as possible to do with the person > who gave you the first opinion, just to be sure that there is no > bias, even if it is perhaps unconcious, right? No, I'd ask disinterested parties as well as advocates of either side of the issue. And if I was the greatest expert in magic in the world, I think I'd do the scan myself just for practice. Note that according to _Yendi_ the question is whether Norathar is a hybrid. It doesn't take a great deal of subtlety to determine house. > The problem was that the Dragon Council did not realize that there was > collusion between Baritt, SiG & Sethra Jr. I think this is an impossible level of conspiracy. Also I find it impossible to imagine that Norathar didn't proceed to challenge the SiG and StY to duels-to-the-death. Well, I can imagine that Sethra told N that she herself had arranged the events for the greater good of the Empire.