"Scott Schultz" <scott at cjhunter.com> Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info 06/22/06 01:01 PM To "'Dragaera List'" <dragaera at dragaera.info> cc Subject How is House Jhereg governed? >Do we have much of an inkling about how House Jhereg (as opposed to The >Organization) is governed? > >It seems as if the House is divided into three branches. The Organization, >the Left Hand, and for lack of anything better to call them, The Nobles. >These last I imagine as the "respectable" face of the House, being those >who aren't directly associated with the other two branches and/or those who >function as the House representatives at Court and, presumably, in other >positions of political responsibility. The only real example we've seen of the "respectable" Jhereg nobles, is Softa, the Imperial Representative that Vlad threatens in /Phoenix/. It is implied in the story that he's (more or less) in the Jhereg Council's pocket, so I don't know if it's really possible to separate the council from the overall house leadership. >Given that the Organization members like to refer to the Left Hand as "The >Bitch Patrol", there's clearly no love lost between The Left Hand and The >Organization. Vlad certainly shows no compunction about dealing with Left >Hand sorcerors as harshly as the situation requires. At the lower levels, this is certainly true, however, note the events in /Jhereg/, where the Demon was basically dictating the actions of the entire Left Hand in the search for Mellar. (Well, maybe he was just paying them to work free-lance, rather than due to any particular alliegance to the Council? Possible, but remember that at that particular moment, the Council was in a severe cash crisis.) >today, based on this, is who actually runs the affairs of the House? I'm >pretty sure we've seen references to a Council at the top, but not much info >about who's on it or if said Council is just the heads of the Organization. >Have we seen any references to the people who run the House as a whole? > >If there's one guy at the top, whether by force of will or political >maneuvering, he must be a truly frightening individual. Someone with the >amorality of the Left Hand, the deviousness of the Organization, and the >political acumen to keep those two branches played off against each other >and still monitor and control as much of the Court as possible with his >"courtier network". The mysterious "number one" of the Jhereg mentions only a vague and fleeting reference at the beginning of /Jhereg/ when Vlad is trying to figure out who the Demon is hiring him to kill. I got the impression from this that all the money in the world wouldn't have been enough money to make Vlad go for this mysterious figure--which cannot be said even for the Empress. I wonder how much the events of /Issola/ may have affected this worldview? ;-) >Tangentially, it raises the question of whether there is, in fact, some >branch of House Jhereg whose job it is to act like the other nobles as far >as managing estates and tithing to the Throne and otherwise providing the >façade of respectability required for political dealings with the other >Houses. We don't see any direct evidence of such, it's true, but I wonder if >that's because it doesn’t exist or if it's simply that Vlad never has >occasion to mingle with that side of the House, being a member of the >Organization himself? Again, I suspect the Council members of the business end of the Jhereg are ultimately in control of these operations, even if there is a respectable "front" group of nobles that carry out the actual formalities and bookkeeping. >I'm reminded of Legend of the Five Rings. For those unfamiliar with it, L5R >is an ostensibly Asian game setting in a mythical land called Rokugan. The >people are divided into clans with signature traits, much like the Houses of >Dragaera are people with genetic traits unique to the House. The analog to >House Jhereg is The Scorpion Clan which, interestingly enough, is even >divided into three branches which break down roughly to the mafia, the >sorcerors, and the politicians. (I'm not suggesting that Steve copied >anything from L5R. It's more likely he's never heard of it.) Almost any large criminal organization could be broken down this way, (Muscle, Mystics, Politicos) so it's not that surprising. >So, getting back to Dragaera, who does the Empress turn to if she needs >someone dead and a war is the wrong way to go about it? If someone needs >assassinating for the good of the Empire, how does the job get parceled out? The Jhereg are (or were when the house was founded) the intelligence corps of the Empire. Scouts, and such. This is the natural area for spies and assassins to grow out of, of course, so it's likely that the Jhereg as a House once filled the role now occupied by the Imperial Surveillance Corps, Special Tasks Group, Third Floor Relic, etc. Does House Jhereg still serve this function? Perhaps. But I doubt it. The Warlord likely wants more direct (and reliable) control over his agents. Possibly a politically sponsored assassin would be recruited from amongst the Jhereg (since a Dragonlord or Dzurlord would find such work distastefull) but the leadership is almost certainly made up of Dragonlords. >I just wonder if this hypothetical Noble Branch of House Jhereg exists to >take care of this problem? Perhaps this "Noble Branch" is a front for what >amounts to the most extensive spy network in the Empire. It would certainly >help explain where Vlad and Kragar get some of their more esoteric >information when they need it, and how the leader of the Jhereg Council >manages to keep control of the other representatives on the Council and, by >extension, the organizations underneath them. It's made pretty clear that Vlad and Kragar set up their own spy network, as evidenced by the fact that Vlad doesn't have one yet during /Yendi/ at the time of his war with Laris, and it's one of the reasons the Demon looks up Vlad specifically in /Jhereg/. It's also mentioned that Kragar is especially good at working his romantic charms on cute, meek Lyorn librarians in order to get what Vlad needs. >As a side benefit, the other Houses have someone marginally respectible to >go to as an intermediary when they need something unsavory done. How many of the other Houses would really condone assassination? Athyra, Chreotha, Orca, maybe? I can't really see the Lyorn, Phoenix, Dragons, Hawks, Iorich, Issola, Tiassa et al having much use for such services. Majikjon -------------- next part --------------