Dragaera

basic question about sorcery and the caste system

Howard Brazee howard at brazee.net
Thu May 20 12:36:11 PDT 2004

There have been instances where Vlad was not sure what house a Dragaeran  
was from.   Is that because he's a human?   Are Dragaerans also unsure?

There are also mixed race Dragaerans.

I'm curious.   Morrolan has accepted Vlad as someone who can teach him  
magic.   But it appears that The Lord of Castle Black has spent much more  
time studying Western style magic than one human lifetime.   It's not that  
he's dumb nor unwilling to learn - it just is not that easy to swich how  
he thinks.


Dragaerans seem to be pretty conservative.  How else could you explain  
their extremely slow rate of progress over their centuries of existence?   
This is obvious in how slowly they accept different magical  
technologies.   It took the Interregnum to make sorcery a part of upper  
class Dragaeran life  (and after it is accepted, Paarfi seems to think it  
always was there - similar to renasaince painters putting star of David's  
on the clothing of Mary and Joseph).

Also there are at least two alternative "magical" sciences that are only  
practiced by a handful of Dragaerans.    It's not that they don't like  
studying - one can be persuaded to betray his liege by a promise of a  
trapped soul to experiment with.   But they seem to have a hard time  
switching to something different.


(So why haven't humans developed in the thousands of years?   I expect we  
will find out before Steve is done.)