On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, Dennis Higbee wrote: > Consider this against going to the Empire. People go to the Empire all > the time. The Jhereg likes to discourage this behavior and, to paraphase > on of the Vlad books, "make a 'zample outta dose sonsabitches." Hence > Morganti weapons, asssassins, and all sorts of unpleasantness. But, if > the Jhereg has a success rate for punishing stool pigeons of, say, > 90 percent (and it's likely much higher), what are the consequences? Are > people really going to use the threat of going to the Empire as a lever > for blackmail, when they have a one in ten chance of not having their soul > eaten? This seems like a good point to me - so good that it's rather surprising to me that Vlad has had an opportunity to take a squealer out. More generally, I think Vlad wasn't at the time aware how much the Organization is part of the Empire. There may officially be a Chinese wall, but I suspect that the right hand, I should say, the right wing doesn't need to be ratted to in order to know what the left wing is doing. Extremely vague Piroiad minor spoiler: Hope this discussion isn't bumping SKZB's keyboard. I may always wonder if the Orb-indexing problem described in the later Piroiad was written with the express purpose of stomping on my cherished insistence post _PotD_ that the Orb gives the Empress unlimited brain-burning assassination ability (hence the major conflict would be moot).