Davdi Silverrock <davdisil at gmail.com> 01/11/06 01:41 PM To "Jon_Lincicum at stream.com" <Jon_Lincicum at stream.com> cc Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu>, dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info, SKZB List <dragaera at dragaera.info> Subject Re: Not a witch? >On 1/11/06, Jon_Lincicum at stream.com <Jon_Lincicum at stream.com> > >> Isn't a Wizard a person who wraps up all the magical disciplines >> (including witchcraft) into an object--along with his/her soul? >> >> Loraan was a Wizard, and also an undead. Does this mean he was an undead >> witch? > > >I would tend to strongly doubt it. > >Citing /Issola/ again: > >"Witchcraft," [Morrolan] explained, "is something else again." > >I could be wrong in my interpretation, but I think that witchcraft is >most closely akin to psionics. This because all of the Dragaeran >magical systems (sorcery, elder sorcery, necromancy and wizardry) >appear to involve amorphia. Witchcraft, while it does heavily involve >the use of things that are symbols in order to make things easier for >the witch, does not actually *require* anything besides the witch's >mind and will. Or so Vlad appears to imply. Note also that it was >Daymar's purely psychic boost that helped Vlad in /Jhereg/. So, obviously the important parts of witchcraft (the energy to make it work, anyway) comes from Psychics/Psionics (is there a Brustian difference here? Or are these just two terms Brust uses for the same thing?) This being said, I believe the original question was, "Can the undead perform witchcraft?" putting that aside for the moment, how about this one: "Can the undead use Psychics/Psionics?" Judging by Sethra's ability to communicate this way with Vlad, Morrolan, etc, I'd say the simple answer is yes. Therefore it would stand to reason that witchcraft may be attainable for the undead, unless there is some further requirement, beyond needing the ability to use Psychic energy., that would limit an undead personage. Myself, I keep thinking about Jack Agyar, and *his* abilities, which seem to be more Psychic than anything else. (But being that /Agyar/ is not set in Dragaera, this is not directly applicable.) Majikjon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://dragaera.info/pipermail/dragaera/attachments/20060111/53fc592b/attachment-0001.htm