Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info 03/14/06 12:18 PM To dragaera at dragaera.info cc Subject Re: Multiple emporers in a reign, revisited >On Tue, 14 Mar 2006, Ken Koester wrote: > >> No, it simply protects the current Emperor. What it does to/for anyone >> else who tries to wield it is anyone's guess. It certainly didn't >> protect Adron. > >I think you're positing a third sort of emperor - Cycle-e, Orb-e (i.e., >who the Orb thinks is e), and controls-the-Orb-e (i.e., someone who >has hacked the Orb and taken control of all its functions except, >presumably, its Heir-detector). This strikes me as unnecessarily >complex and fine-splitting. > >For all we know it may have been trying to protect Adron - >e.g. from the spell trying to wrest the Orb away from him. I think we're all overlooking the fact that the Cycle is tied to fate. If the Orb finds its way to an individual, it's because fate (and thus, the cycle) has decreed that this is how things are to be. It is therefore not possible to have an Emperor who is not "fated" to have the Orb, by definition. It was not possible for Kana to obtain the Orb, because he was not destined to have it. (Fate acting by a pen striking a wall? Hmmm...) This is just one of the ways in which we know we're dealing with a work of fiction, as I don't really believe in fate, myself. Sorry, I didn't mean to get all existential or anything. Majikjon