I've pretty much thought of "into the jungle" as equivalent to "around the bend". Gone a bit daft. Vlad's problems with "going native" are about the same as those of a black man in turn-of-the-previous-century England or America. The racial and class barriers are much more formidable going from Eastern -> Dragaeran than going the other way, if Morrolan's experiences are any indication. Vlad might have "gone native" by joining House Teckla, excepting of course that he despised Teckla in the same way that any Dragaeran aristocrat despises them and the Jhereg are after him. (Despise might be too strong a word nowadays.) Settling down as a peasant would be a sure way to get killed. In any case, in our world we have peoples who live in the jungle which give some context to the idea that "into the jungle" could mean "going native". >From what little we've been told by Vlad and Paarfi on the subject, the Dragaeran jungle is populated by dangerous wildlife exclusively. To my knowledge, we haven't been told of any cultures inhabiting the jungle. Dragaerans live in the cities and coastlines and surrounding areas. Cat-centaurs live in the plains. Serioli live in the mountains. Nobody, to my knowledge, lives in the jungle. From a strictly contextual point of view, there's no reason to believe that a Dragaeran would interpret "into the jungle" as meaning "adopting the way of life of another culture". Now, "Brust the translator" may have taken liberties with some Dragaeran phrase that DOES mean "going native" and painted it with our own cultural context in order to get the meaning across. That's a different ball of wax, though, and unprovable short of Steve saying "Yeah, I meant thus and such". Since he's probably enjoying the speculation, I kinda doubt he'll do that. ;-)