"Scott Schultz" <scott at cjhunter.com> Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info 11/13/05 08:26 AM To "'Dragaera List'" <dragaera at dragaera.info> cc Subject RE: How will House Phoenix arise from the ashes? >> How many pure-bred Phoenix are there in the Jhereg right now >> that only >> need to be re-admitted to the House in order to count? > >Possible but if it was that easy then you'd think Zerika would already have >tracked down such people and begun rebuilding the House. Do you pretend that the Empress would be seen consorting with lowly Jhereg? (Her little chats with Vlad not withstanding). >> Used to do it when? So far as we know, Zerika the First was the last >> reborn Phoenix (before Zerika IV), so if the House did indeed >> die off and >> get reborn, then that all happened before the Orb came along, so it >> wouldn't remember what they did before. > >"Our" Zerika is the first Reborn Phoenix. Ummm... Text evidence? >There seems to be a common conception of Zerika I as a Reborn Phoenix. >Zerika I was not "reborn". She was simply "first". Before her there was no >House and the Cycle itself might even have been in flux. Remember that there >were 34(?) tribes when the great migration started and Kieron and Zerika >began building the Empire. There was no rebirth because there had yet to be >a death. There may have not been a "House" but (as you yourself point out) there were tribes. (According to SL in Issola, the correct number was 31.) We have no way of knowing, so far as I can determine, whether Zerika is considered "reborn" Phoenix or not, or whether she was the only Phoenix alive at the time the Empire was founded, or if her entire house had died previously, or any of it. I would postulate, however, that the Empire being founded (while important) was not really a major event to the *cycle* itself, and quite likely, the cycle had been affecting the fortunes of the tribes since long before the Empire came about. (In fact, it seems likely that the cycle itself is the very reason that 31 tribes dwindled to 17, and that the Jhereg had their place in Empire... It wasn't the Empire that created the cycle to be this way, it was the cycle that caused the Empire to "naturally" be set up this way; regardless of what various Shaman and Lyorn Warriors (who killed Kieron over the Jhereg thing) may have wanted.) As a result of the cycle's influence, I'd say it's quite likely that the whole Phoenix death-rebirth thing has been going on for a lot longer than the Empire itself, and that every 17 cycles the entire bunch dies out, and we have a reborn one. (Of which we know of only the most recent two, Zerika I and Zerika IV.) But in any event, this all happened before the Orb, so consulting it wouldn't tell us the answer (which was my original point, I think. I'm having trouble remembering at this point. ;-) ) Majikjon