Dragaera

Speculative Planetary Statistics for Dragaera (Math help?)

Davdi Silverrock davdisil at gmail.com
Thu Apr 13 14:41:37 PDT 2006

On 4/12/06, Tom Lumbis <tlumbis at sover.net> wrote:
> > I re-read that passage, and I noted that Teldra was *trying* to convey
> > a difficult-to-understand concept.  She sort of trails off, though,
> > and it is Sethra, specifically, who says that to the Jenoine, there
> > was "only one room".  And Vlad replies "Rubbish" to Sethra's
> > statements, rather than to Teldra's (which fits more with how I
> > perceive his relationship with both Teldra and Sethra).
> >
> > But still I don't think that Teldra or Sethra were correctly
> > describing how the Jenoine think.
> >
> > The essence of my problem with that "only one room" idea is what Vlad
> > points out:  No matter what else extra the Jenoine are or can do, they
> > are also three-dimensional entities who can move about in three
> > dimensions.  They may be able to perceive and move in additional
> > dimensions/planes of existence/other realities as well, but they
> > should have a perfectly fine grasp of what a "place" is, and what an
> > additional place is.
>
> Of the three persons you mentioned Vlad is the least knowledgable about the
> Jenoine.

Perhaps.

Then again, I note that Teldra mentioned that when she and Vlad left
the room, it was sort of as if they went spirit walking (from the
Jenoine prespective)(although she qualifies that statement).

Vlad has actually done a bit of spirit walking (or rather, involuntary
dreamwalking, which I believe is the same thing, in /Dragon/), so he
does at least have a sense of how weird that is.

> I believe Teldra makes a comment about the word "place" and how the Jenoine
> only use the word in relation to mathematics - which would indicate that
> they do not entirely grasp the term as we do(and vice versa).

And I still don't quite buy this.

I was wondering what the course material is that the Jenoine language
is taught from.  If the corpus of Jenoine works is mostly some
genetics texts and some really high-flown and esoteric philosophy
texts, then of course students of the Jenoine language are going to
get a very skewed idea of how Jenoine think.

If the only text that some aliens had of ours was that all-time best
seller, the King James translation of the bible, and maybe also some
textbooks on general relativity and quantum mechanics, they might get
a very very strange idea indeed of how 20th-century Americans actually
think.

> Because the Jenoine can exist in our heroes' world does not mean they grasp
> the world as our heroes do.
>
> It's fairly pointless speculation because, like Vlad and company, we do not
> understand the Jenoine.
>

They seemed to think that the Necromancer could understand at least
the Jenoine concept of "place". I would like to see exactly how the
Necromancer would explain how the Jenoine "really" think in a way that
satisfies my (and Vlad's) pragmatic objections.