Dragaera

How is House Jhereg governed?

Jon_Lincicum at stream.com Jon_Lincicum at stream.com
Thu Jun 22 14:44:47 PDT 2006

"Scott Schultz" <scott at cjhunter.com> 
Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info
06/22/06 01:01 PM

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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


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