1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 >The only indication that she's any less skilled at it than Vlad is, in >fact, is that she doesn't have her own familiar. It's certainly true that we have very little information about Cawti's skills as a witch. The lack of a familiar, though, can be seen as one indication that she's not as advanced (or perhaps just not as committed) as Vlad is. Every major witch character in the stories has a familiar (Laszlo somehow managed to have two!) except for Cawti. Judging by Loiosh's role in Vlad's spellcrafting, a familiar isn't just a convenience. It's a requirement for any kind of advanced witchcraft; especially for the "flying by the seat of your pants" stuff that Vlad generally engages in. Without a familiar, I'd imagine Cawti to be the equivalent of Mother. That is, a "hedge wizard" with spotty training but with a talent in a particular area that makes up for it. I see her as a dabbler where Vlad is a "professional". The counterpoint is that we've only ever seen men have familiars. The only examples we've seen of women practicing witchcraft is Morollan's Circle and Cawti assisting Vlad once or twice. In both cases, the female witches acted as support to the male, who acted as the driving force and figurehead of the ritual. Cawti may, in fact, BE an accomplished witch but it may be that her background in witchcraft comes from a rather different school of training than Vlad's. He has the active knowledge. She has the passive. Together, they add up to more than the sum of their parts. Food for thought vis-a-vis any potential reconciliation. >Hmmm... Makes me wonder if Loiosh and Rocza will ever have little jhereg >of their own? Maybe Loiosh's son will become VNs familiar? Interesting thought. On its face, it seems like a no-brainer. I've noticed a couple of things that might indicate otherwise. One is that no two witches appear to have identical familiars. This may just be Steve showing variety in his writing or it might indicate that the choice of a familiar is somehow "hard-wired" into the personality of the witch, making one kind of familiar a better fit than another. (Granted that Noish-pa and Laszlo both had cats, Laszlo's "friends" were suitably unusual that I think we can categorize them as being something other than the ordinary house-cat that Ambrose appears to be.) The other is that, in Vlad's case at least, the ritual was as much a "coming of age" ritual as it was a way to acquire a partner. It marked the place in his life where he became an adult (shortly after his father's death and the sale of the restaurant and his resulting entry into The Organization) and it also marked the place in his life where he "graduated" from apprentice to Witch. If finding a familiar tends to involve a spiritual journey of some sort, then it wouldn't be as simple as asking Rocsza for one of her eggs. This may be sugar-coating things, as I seem to recall that Vlad's reason for visiting the jungle had as much to do with getting a healthy wild Jhereg instead of a garbage-fed city Jhereg as it did with any ostensibly "spiritual" experiences. (There's also the summoning of Rocsza, but that wasn't a "proper" summoning.) That aside, I'd imagine that the ritual still requires one to be in a proper frame of mind and that some kind of spiritual setting would traditionally help to achieve that proper frame of mind, even if it wasn't strictly neccesary to the functioning of the spell. >I'm not so sure the council really has any fear of Vlad striking back at >them I wouldn't expect someone like The Demon or Number One to be afraid of dying. I DO see them as being afraid of the disruption to "business" that Vlad caused and taking steps in the aftermath to try and avoid anything like it in the future.