Jose Marquez <jhereg69 at earthlink.net> Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info 01/11/06 09:01 PM To Dragaera <dragaera at dragaera.info> cc Subject Re: Not a witch? >There is more than one type of psychic communication. Vlad and Loiosh >can communicate clearly despite the Phoenix Stones' disruption of >psychic/sorcerous energy, due to the familiar/witch bond. Nobody can Yeah, well, I've always seen this as a case of plot convenience, more than anything else, since Brust never explains how a witch/familiar bond is different from normal psychic contact. There was an internal decision-making process that said, "I need a way to shield Vlad from Psychic energy to hide him from the Jhereg, but I need to keep up the ongoing conversations between him and Loiosh while I do so." And rather than explaining a contrived difference between Vlad/Loiosh's conversations and normal psychic ones, Brust simply notes that there *is* a difference of some kind, and moves along. This is not a criticism. In fact, it's a rather elegant way of preventing a piece of fairly meaningless minutae from getting in the way of a good story. However, this is one example of where the books cross out of Science Fiction (which generally offers explanations for things) into true Fantasy (which does not). >contact Vlad or even trace him using psionics/psychics because of the >disruptive field. It also causes him to be unable to contact others. I >don't remember what the results of Sethra's experiments showed regarding >the properties of Phoenix Stones. No results of this were ever offered to the reader, so it's not surprising that you don't remember them. ;-) Majikjon