[Dragaera] Verra speculation-Dzur spoilers

[Scott Schultz]

>Teldra was not Morrolan's high priestess, that I remember.  
>I forget her name, but she was an Easterner.

In _Issola_, Teldra, attempting to explain her position to Vlad in terms
that an Easterner would understand, described herself as Morollan's high
priestess. 

If this seems like a contradiction with Paarfi, then you can consider a
couple of things:

1) Morollan's coven has never been mentioned in the Vladiad. We only have
Paarfi's word that they exist. As far as we know from Vlad's story, it's
sorcery that keeps Castle Black afloat. That's not to say that Paarfi's
wrong, just that there's no independent corroboration as there has been with
some other bits of the Paarfiad.

2) In describing her function to Vlad as "priestess", Teldra is attempting
to make a lingustic and cultural translation not unlike that between the
Serioli name "Remover of aspects of Deity" and the more common name
"Godslayer". While you can certainly see how one might derive from the
other, you can also see that the former suggests a wealth of possible
attributes that the latter does not. Vlad is an Easterner, and in the East
it's the priests who intercede with the Gods, make them welcome, perform
their desired rituals and interpret their wills. In the Empire, it's the job
of a skilled seneschal to perform similar preparations in the name of
courtesy and comfort rather than in the name of religion. While the concept
of "priest" is the closest that an Easterner can easily come to describing
someone who does what Teldra does in relation to Verra, her actual position
and duties might seem completely unlike the concept "priest" from a
Dragaeran point of view.

Umm, whats-her-name, the Eastern priestess who uses Morollan to found a
coven of witches, IS a priestess fully in the sense that Vlad understands
the word, but she is strictly involved with the coven itself and its needs.
As a Dragaeran noble, Morollan has a rather different relationship to Verra
than he had when he was an "exceptionally tall Easterner), so it's
conceivable that he would actually need two "priestesses"; one for each of
Verra's Dragaera/Eastern aspects. Certainly, Verra doesn't seem to evince
any opinions about how many priestesses Morollan cares to keep.