Philip Hart wrote: >On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Jon Lincicum wrote: > > > >>Philip Hart wrote: >> >> >> >>> >>> >>> >>> > ^^^^??? > > Sorry, thought I read "with the five most famous people in the empire...", my bad. >She's a Dragon. With golden hair and a winsome upturned nose that no one can forget. Oh, and a GW. > > >You must not have heard any "guy walks into a bar" jokes. > >The suddenness makes it more likely to have been noticed. > > Interview #1 (Male Jhegaala): So, there I was at the "Rusty Janos", having a drink and all of a sudden a bunch of people behind me stood up, blocking my view. Before I knew what was happening, this big glowing mass of, well, *something* starts spreading, and I decide it's a good time to check out what's going on on the other side of the city. Interview #2 (Female teckla): I'm sorry, officer, I must have fainted, and I don't remember a thing. Interview #3 (Male Jhereg): I think it was that Dragonlord with the blonde hair that did it. Interview #4 (Male Teckla): I saw the whole thing. First this gang of Jhereg easterners teleport in, and start throwing knives at everyone, then this group of Left-Hand Jhereg start throwing lightning-bolts randomly into the crowd from the other side of the room. Before I can blink twice, half the sorceresses are dead, the Jhereg all get killed, and one of the sorceresses starts melting away the center of the room in some sort of cloudy mush. That's when I ran out of there. Interview #5 (Female Jhereg, Left-Hand): <<REDACTED>> >Hence him pointing first, before he gets immobilized. That's how I >remember events happening - Vlad pointing, Aliera swashbuckling, Vlad >resting. > > Ah. You're thinking of when *Aliera* pointed out the Female Jhereg to Vlad. Then she left, chasing the one she had pointed at, just after another Sorceress attacks Vlad, immobilizing him. He then pulls out the Elder Sorcery on the /second/ sorceress. > >A free society? > >And for that matter, given how recent 9/11 was, ... > > Still wouldn't convince the Empress to destroy an entire race out of hand. Especially when she's dating one of them. And yes, Dragaeran's have a relatively free society. Stratified, certainly, but even Teckla don't generally get arrested for having run away from their masters; it seems pretty darn liberal for a feudal civilization. >If your historic enemy/recent empire-corpse-vulture/current oppressed >despised underclass suddenly shows signs of having world-destroying power, >anything's possible. > Well, anything's *possible*. I just don't see it as likely. >It's not as if StY's plans for the East don't in >all likelihood involve what we'd conventionally consider war crimes. > > Ah, but that's during a foreign war fought way far away--and, I might add, not one that the then-Empress was willing to fight. And they *still* wouldn't be able to slaughter the entire species without doing some pretty serious explaining. (Would Imperial Dragon soliders consider it honarable to slaughter countless millions of civilian men, women and children?) >There would be a fight. But as was clear in the _T_/_P_ Uprising, >Vlad's friends will slaughter any number of E in defense of the empire, >even a token fly-swatting sort of defense. > > Fighting back against an army of pitch-fork wielding rabble? Yes. Killing an entire species against the possibility of some vague threat posed by a single individual that Sethra Lavode has promised will not be a problem? Not so much. >I wonder about the events of _A_ - how could Loraan/Istvaan not worry >about being ESed to cinders? > Perhaps the information was somehow supressed? Maybe? Majikjon