On Tue, 22 Mar 2005, Philip Hart wrote: >Can't he just take them out and install his own Council? I don't think >he'd be willing to pretend to rejoin House Jhereg or even cooperate with >it unless it accepts a Cawti-style regime. This is something I'd been thinking about also. Kragar describes the history of The Demon by saying he didn't so much make it to the top as make it someplace and declare that to be the top. Vlad could conceivably do the same thing by wiping out the Council and building a new Organization in place of the old one. The big problem I see is loyalty. Destroying the Council wouldn't automatically cause everyone below it to start following Vlad's instructions. Deals would have to be negotiated, examples made of reluctant holdouts, networks of enforcers and button men built and deployed. Barring a magical extension of his life, Vlad won't live long enough to see the new Organization rebuilt. There's also the problem that Vlad doesn't really want to be an Organization man at this point. I can see him making a truce and going through the motions in order to preserve that truce but I can't see him taking over and running things willingly.