Howard Brazee <howard at brazee.net> Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info 07/06/06 09:32 AM To cc Dragaera List <dragaera at dragaera.info> Subject Re: What are the obvious hanging plot hooks? >How common is it? Common enough that people live in one city and work >in another? Doesn't appear so. > >The elite do it. Assassins do it (if they get paid sufficiently). > >City folk don't need it the way rural peasants do - but it doesn't >appear that rural peasants have the means to do so. It's interesting the people who can and can't teleport--it's not always who you'd expect. Boralinoi needs a sorcerer around to do it for him. Ditto Mellar. Meanwhile, Tynn--the low-level enforcer who was Vlad's first target, can do it himself. Temek (one of Vlad's early enforcers) could do it, though apparently not too well (Vlad comments on a bumpy ride). Melestav, Vlad's secretary, could not. Many of Vlad's other enforcers could, however. Paresh claims to be able to do it when talking to Vlad in /Teckla/, but his sequence of events in this regard is suspect, as key points of this tale are directly contradicted by Paarfi's account in /Sethra Lavode/. If he is, in fact, capable of this, it would be the only case of a Teckla being able to teleport. No one in Smallcliff (other than Vlad) could do it. Sandor, could not, apparently, do it--though this conclusion is entirely circumstantial. >People learning sorcery learn this soon because it is very useful, not >only for themselves, but because a living can be made in teleporting >others. Even with professional teleporters available, there aren't >masses of people using them. There must not be sufficient >teleportation ability to move lots of people cheaply. Since 95% of the Dragaeran population is Teckla, and presumably 99.9% of these folks cannot teleport, combined with the fact that even a significant number of the members of "noble Houses" can't do it, we're probably looking at a range of maybe 2-3% of the population that can teleport. Pretty slim figures. But likely to increase as time goes by, I would say. It's only been 250 years or so since it really became possible, after all. Majikjon