lazarus wrote: > >On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 06:01:03 -0600, you wrote: > >>Mark Englehart wrote: >> >>> And as I recall in Jhereg Vlad informs us that the longest a House >>> can hold the throne at a time is 17 to the 17th power. That puts >>> it way outside the lifetime of a single emperor. I'm certain you've misremembered that. The limits were 17*17=289 or 17^2 and 17*17*17=4,913 or 17^3. >>Depending on what unit of time he was referring to, I don't remember. >> >> > >It's a big freaking number. > >827,240,261,886,336,764,177 Indeed. Not even Sethra (who's been around since the dawn of the empire) has lived that long. Minium reigns 289 years * 17 reigns per cycle * 17 cycles (one great cycle) since the founding of the empire = 83,521 years (17^4) Maximum reigns (note that these would be very long for one Drageran) 4913 * 17 * 17 = 1,419,857 (17^5). All the reporting we've had from Vlad and Paarfi is that Sethra is a couple hundred thousand years old. This would indicate that the average reign is much closer to the minimum than the maximum. >I don't remember, how many days in a year on Dragaera? 289. See Mark Mandel's site http://cracksandshards.com/time.html#calendar for more discussion. >It's got to be either days, hours, or minutes. Or even seconds? Days per reign is 17^4 to 17^5, There 30 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute or a bit more than 17^4 seconds to the year. Thus even seconds per great cycle (less than 17^9) fail to reach anything close to 17 to the 17th power. Casey