[Dragaera] Subject: Re: "Work" and money

[Scott Crain]

Issola/Dzur spoiler space.

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I doubt -- highly -- that Blackwand or, in fact, any other Great Weapon up to and including the Orb itself, could destroy/absorb the weapon known as Godslayer, aka Lady Teldra.  It is -designed- to take apart attacks and defenses.  'Those weapons, powerful as they were, weren't made for this.'  Blackwand is made to destroy, certainly, but to destroy legions.  Pathfinder, to locate whatever the wielder desires.  Iceflame, possibly to preserve Sethra and provide her with a powerbase; failing that, to serve -as- a powerbase.  Godslayer?  To take care of extraordinary defenses and to kill, precisely and thoroughly.

However, I highly doubt that a Great Weapon could -- or would -- destroy another Great Weapon.  A lesser Morganti blade?  Certes.  A Great Weapon, though, no, and to understand why, you have to return to their forging and the reasons thereof.

When one approaches the Seventeen, one cannot avoid the Serioli smiths who made them.  Why did they make them?  To locate, assault, and destroy the Gods.  All of them, therefore, are built towards this purpose, but not only built individually towards this purpose, but built to complement each other in the SERVICE of this purpose.

Dzur Mountain and Iceflame protect the wielders of the Great Weapons as they plan their assault.  Pathfinder seeks out the way to the location of the gods -- or to a specific god, perhaps.  Nightslayer (ugh) assists in acting as a channel to acquire that information, as well as in providing a more direct means of shifting from one plane to another*.  Upon the wielders travelling to the desired point, the rest, but especially Blackwand, provide cover against the possible hordes; after all, Blackwand kicks some SERIOUS a$$ in the Paths of the Dead, and even the ones who faced Morrolan were clearly afraid of her.  Then, once the path is clear, the wielder of Godslayer moves in, slices through the deity's defenses, and puts him/her/it down.

One down, twenty-odd to go, right?

Considering that the Great Weapons are build for specific purposes, I think the Serioli would have been in grave error if they failed to immerse the weapons with the reasons behind those purposes; I cannot, in fact, comprehend a Serioli making that simple of an error.  They -did- have wars, after all...


Was Robert E. Lee a sociopath? Is Morrolan a sociopath?
Neither of them are, nor is someone who takes pleasure in setting up a situation and seeing it through to the well-timed end a sociopath -- even if the end happens to be the death of another human being.  A sociopath is someone who kills specifically for the pleasure it gives them, and is willing to kill for no reason other than that.  Vlad is borderline sociopathic, inasmuch as one can consider Dragaerans 'humans' of the same sort as he is; sentients, certainly, but that's another discussion entirely.  Vlad has long since gotten past the point of 'hey, let's push this guy over the cliff because it gives us a rush' -- and one could argue that he did that because he was pushed into it -- kill or be killed, essentially.

Morrolan?  Morrolan kills for honor, and in battle, but neither are sociopathic pursuits; were two people today to duel and kill over honor, they could not reasonably be termed sociopathic.  A little weird, and guilty of Murder 2, sure, but not sociopathic.

Robert E. Lee was in no way a sociopath, no more than, say, Colin Powell -- both of them were highly successful generals.  If any of the Civil War generals were sociopaths, my two votes would be either William T. Sherman, of the infamous campaign against Atlanta and the 'March to the Sea' -- total war requires giving free rein to some of the most reprehensible actions known to man -- or Ulysses Grant, who hammered at Lee with hundreds of thousands of men and pressed onwards despite truly horrific casualty lists.

On the other hand, true sociopaths rarely get far in the military; they don't usually have the self-discipline necessary.



S. Thomas Crain
Author-in-Training
 		
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