Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info 06/15/06 11:58 AM To dragaera at dragaera.info cc Subject Re: Multi-jointed fingers On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 Jon_Lincicum at stream.com wrote: >> *want* to be heir. So wouldn't she have just revealed her full parentage >> in order to disqualify herself, if this would have made any difference? > >She might at the time not want the information public, lest the J found >out. She might not be able to prove it - she is likely genetically >Dragon. You think the Dragon Council would let her be the heir without knowing who both her parents were? This certainly wasn't true for Norathar. Even the suggestion of doubt was enough to prompt an investigation. >> It certainly seems to know who is of what House. Take the (possibly >> apocryphal) > >I certainly consider it apocryphal. So did Paarfi, which is why I qualified it. >> example of Jamiss I and Faarith I during the first cycle--where the Orb >> failed to save the Tsalmoth Jamiss' life from falling masonry, since the >> cycle had turned to Vallista. >> >> It is also implied elsewhere that the Orb failing to protect an emperor is >> a fairly common way of determining when a cycle has, in fact, changed. > >This I rather doubt - the discussion in _FHYA_ would have ended abruptly >if someone could just throw a rock at Tortaalik to see if the Orb would >catch it. Who "throws the rock"? Who risks the executioner's star to find out if the cycle has changed? How does this person overcome the more mundane defenses (such as the Imperial Guards) to get at the emperor in the first place? What if they're wrong, and the cycle hasn't changed? While a Dragonlord like Adron or a Lyorn like Aerich may not care about their own deaths, they would certainly care about their honor; being branded a traitor would not appeal to either of them. The practicality of the test you suggest is highly questionable. Hence, we have discussion. >> How could it do this if it were unable to tell what persons were of which >> houses? > >It can obviously tell who's emperor, which is all that's needed for the >action described. My point was that it may consult a db maintained by >the Houses to see who's next, or it may consult that and check for true >Houseness. Presumably no House would want to get shown up by the Orb >refusing their Heir and would take measures to prevent embarassment. A subtle distinction here. Is it more important to the Orb that you are the heir of a specific House, or that your individual name is at the top of the list? Is the selection of the emperor the work of the Orb itself, or of the cycle? Or is it the cycle at work *through* the Orb? Majikjon