Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info 06/16/06 11:28 AM To Dragaera List <dragaera at dragaera.info> cc Subject Re: Multi-jointed fingers (and houses) >Perhpas I'll reconsider. But I can well imagine the Demon going to the >council and saying, "Hey, we can milk the barbarians for a few orbs by >selling them titles, wanna let me do the distasteful work?" and the >council responding, "Sure, just don't let it pass down to their future >norska-warrens of descendents or else we'll have the Empire down on us, >esp. those damned Lyorn." And the Demon saying, "Oh of course, I'll >get the next generation with a re-up fee. Maybe we can make our >Easterner wholesalers join the business if they want to keep us happy." Not unreasonable. Yet the concept of the Demon needing to go ask the council for permission to do something doesn't really jive very well with Kragar's account of how the Demon rose to power (killing two of the three surviving council members, then "getting somewhere and declaring the top to be where he was"). >(Relatedly, do we know anything about Easterners working on the edges >of the Jhereg?) I think the only example we have of anyone working for the Jhereg on a straight free-lance basis is Mellar in the early days, before he tried to join the house of Dzur. This is not an especially helpful example, however. >Related - I seem to recall that Savn (or his family) do small spells >as part of their daily life - casting light for evening harvesting, >for example. Do we see him (them) make use of psionic contact? >I'm wondering how much of a selection advantage having a link gives. At one point in /Athyra/, Vlad takes Savn out into the woods and teaches him to make psionic contact--and it's something he seems unfamiliar with (but, is obviously capable of, since Vlad teaches it to him). My guess, then, is that while the ability is there, (confirming what Aliera relates to Vlad in chapter 9 of /Jhereg/) Teckla don't generally get the training needed to use it. Majikjon