> > But all Jhereg are hybrids, as I keep having to emphasize. > > I seem to remember Alieria (?) telling Vald that the > Jhereg began as castoffs from other tribes, a mishmash of > genetics, but over time "even a mishmash becomes > recognizable". That would be Jhereg Chapter 9, which is chock full of relevant text: "Vlad," [Aliera] said slowly, "he has Dragon genes." I digested that. "You're sure? No possible doubt?" "None. If I'd wanted to take more time, I could have told you which line of the Dragons. But that isn't all--he's a cross-breed." "Indeed?" was all I said. Cross-breeds were rare, and almost never accepted by any House except the Jhereg. ... She nodded. "He's clearly got three Houses in his genes. Dragon and Dzur on one side, and Jhereg on the other." "Hmmmm. I see. I wasn't aware that you could identify Jhereg genes as such. I 'd thought that they were just a mish-mash of all the other Houses." She smiled. "If you get a mish-mash, as you put it, together for enough generations, it becomes identifiable as something in and of itself." ... "I'm surprised that the Jenoine wasted their time breeding an animal like the Jhereg into some Dragaerans," I said. ... "Oh," said Aliera, "but they didn't ... "they never put any jhereg genes into Dragaerans ... "there were a lot of outcasts, mostly living in small groups ... "they got together, and, I guess more sarcastically than anything else, began calling themselves 'the tribe of the Jhereg.'" > This, to me, seems to indicate that while the Jhereg > once consisted solely of crossbreeds, this is no longer > true. The only part of this I would disagree with is the "solely". I would guess that they started out as a mixture of some cross-breeds but probably mostly pure-blood outcasts of other Houses, and certain families might even have retained their original genetic purity through the generations, but presumably since the House first "formed", there has been enough cross-breeding over the subsequent thousands of years that an identifiable gene has emerged that probably applies to most Dragaerans born into the House of Jhereg (ie, not Kragar or Vlad). See Also: speciation, Theseus' Ship, seat of consciousness Bryan