> 6. Had he forgotten about Awtla and Sireng? > > I think Laszlo called them his friends--not his familiars. I > think Awtla > and Sireng are Loiosh and Rocza in a past life. And > whichever was Loiosh's > prior incarnation would not have wanted to be the familiar of > anyone except > a prior incarnation of Vlad. So they are all just friends. Awtla and Sireng are an odd exception to the rules. As for them being familiars, I have little doubt that they are. Paarfi doesn't use the word "familiar" because it's an Eastern word and an Eastern concept. He doesn't really understand what it means. "friends" is the closest he can get to it. Even if Laszlo doesn't mean a "familiar" in exactly the way that Vlad means it, he clearly means something similar to it when he's describing his relationship to Awtla and Sireng. Laszlo is surprised and incredulous when Morollan claims that he has the same relationship to Verra that Laszlo has to Awtla and Sireng. Of course, in the Vladiad we are told that you get only one familiar and that Blackwand is Morollan's familiar. The inconsistency between the two accounts is another one of those mysteries that occur when comparing the Vladiad to the Paarfiad. There are hints that maybe Morollan is Vera's lover, certainly that he is what an Easterner would think of as a "high priest". It seems unlikely that this is the sort of relationship Morollan was referring to,though, when he compared his relationship with Verra to Laszlo's relationship to his "pets". Still, claiming your patron god as your familiar is the sort of audaciousness that typifies Morollan.