[Dragaera] Verra and the Paths of the Dead

[Jon Lincicum]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Jot Powers <books at bofh.com>
> Adding some spoilerspace
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> Probably spoils:  Orca, Dzur and Jhergh
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> On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 06:21:54PM +0000, Jon Lincicum wrote:
> > 
> >  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> > From: "Scott Schultz" <scott at cjhunter.com>
> > > 
> > > It also seems, given Sethra's narrative about the vial of blood, that Verra 
> > > is not so much prescient as pre-intuitive. She might have had a child with 
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> Is the blood really Verra's?  
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> Here is what we know:
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> Kiera gave a vial of blood to Vlad
> Sethra is Kiera
> Sethra reports to get blood from Verra
> Verra took blood from Vlad and wiped his memory of it
> Time does funny stuff in the PotD
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> So, did Vlad in fact simply put his blood into Morollan?  Is Vlad's blood
> special because he is related to a god, or is it just because he is
> an easterner?  Are these items actually completely unrelated?

Since /Dzur/, I've been wondering exactly the same thing. 

The clue that Verra took blood from Vlad in the Paths leads me to think that the blood in the vial is, in fact, Vlad's own. 

For me, this is a key component in my theory that Verra is actually Vlad's mother. 

The blood belonging to an "easterner" doesn't seem to make sense to me--we've had multiple hints that Easterners and Dragaerans are not actually different from one another at all, and that only racist prejudices prevent Easterners from going to the paths to be judged in the first place. 

And putting Easterner blood in Morrolan doesn't make him any less of a Dragaeran overall. Putting goddess-blood into him, however, seems more likely to matter. 

To the left, assuming Easterners and Dragaerans are the same, why was Vlad able to leave the paths (as Aliera did) without difficulty? Is it likely that this is because he, like Aliera, has goddess blood in his veins? (Which Verra and the other gods do not mention, obviously, but it may be the only real reason he was allowed to leave the paths alive. Not because the gods had any power to *let* him leave, but simply that he has the ability to leave due to his ancestry. )

Back to the right, though, I guess none of this really proves that Vlad's mother is Verra. It could be that his mother was some other goddess, one whom Verra dislikes, thus accounting for her comments about his ancestry in /Issola/.

In any case, it seems likely that Vlad's spell in /Taltos/ to retrieve the vial of blood was a complete waste of effort. He might have been able to accomplish the same effect merely by cutting open a vein on his own arm. Or, for that matter, Aliera's. 

Majikjon