[Dragaera] (no spoilers) The 17 [Great Weapons]

[Peter H. Granzeau]

At 07:45 PM 8/11/2006, Jon Lincicum wrote:
>tom sausman wrote:
> >> Saying that 17 means nothing to the Serioli, just because they're not
> >> "Dragaerans" is ludicrous. They're the only true natives on the planet
> >>
> >>
> >       I thought that the Jenoine tested on the natives ( Easterners ) as
> > a control, and thus created the Dragaerans and the Serioli .
> >
>Read this section of /Issola/ again. (Page 36, paperback)  Easterners
>are *not* natives to Dragaera. They came along before the Dragaerans
>(and the Jenoine, as well) but the Serioli were there waiting when the
>humans first arrived.
> >> 17 is not only the mystical number of Dragaerans, it's the 
> mystical number
> >> of the cycle itself, which has (apparently) existed since long before the
> >> creation of Dragaera (the planet itself)
> >>
> >>
> >                 But weren't there only 16 houses/ tribes before the
> > Empire, so the Cycle has to be new, in a fashion.
> >
>Yes, but then the Jhereg were founded--thereby making 17 Houses.
>
>But the cycle was there all the time, influencing events. It was *fate*,
>the fate of the Cycle itself, that influenced the events to cause there
>to be 17 houses instead of 16 (or 31, or 35, or whatever other number
>you might find Paarfi waxing on about). This is *my* theory, anyway.

The Cycle seems to be an artifact of the Empire, not of the world 
Dragaera, in the first place, just like the Orb.  The House of the 
Jhereg apparently was founded at about the same time as the Empire, 
or possibly before (and I figure that whoever told us the story of 
the foundation of the House and of the Empire may have been an 
unreliable narrator, in the first place).


-- 
Regards, Pete
pgranzeau at cox.net