[Dragaera] Verra and the Paths of the Dead

[Scott Schultz]

I prefer Occam's Razor when dealing with this kind of speculation.

Does the stuff in the vial resemble human blood?

It would appear not. If it did, Vlad wouldn't have asked Kiera what it was, 
he would have asked WHY it was.

Does Vlad have reason to believe that Kiera would lie to him?

None that I'm aware of. Kiera is a mentor and a kind of a big sister. Vlad 
hasn't told of any outright lies, and Kiera's dealings with Cawti vis-a-vis 
the whereabouts and condition of Vlad in _Orca_ show her clearly drawing a 
line regarding certain kinds of information rather than lieing outright. 
Vlad certainly trusts Kiera implicitly, much to the consternation of 
everyone around him except Cawti.

Has Verra been shown to be untruthful?

I am unaware of any circumstance where Verra is shown to have lied to either 
Vlad and Co. or to the Lords of Judgement. Her general stance of doing 
whatever she thinks is best and to hell with what anyone thinks about it 
would seem to preclude most (not all) motivations for lying. That isn't to 
say that she is never deceptive. Her deceptions take the form of untold 
truths and things you didn't need to know rather than outright falsehoods.

Vlad was told that he was a one-time exception to the rules, just as he was 
told obliquely that Aliera was NOT an exception to the rules. ("It's in the 
bood.")

While I can see a basis for wishful thinking, I can't see any basis for 
concluding that anybody lied to Vlad about his status vis-a-vis the Halls of 
Judgement or the Paths of the Dead. After all, Sethra sent him in the first 
place with the hope that he would, in fact, be an exception to the rules and 
be allowed passage back to the mortal plane.

I'd have to mark the whole episode of Verra taking Vlad's blood as 
"unknown", barring some evidence that Vlad really does have divine blood 
flowing in him. Besides, there's basically no good reason put forward to 
explain WHY Verra would use Vlad's blood when her own would work just as 
well and probably better, given that she's a real god and Vlad isn't (yet).

Basically, there's no evidence anywhere that invalidates the original story, 
and the alternative requires that one or more normally truthful characters 
tell an unneccesary untruth to one or more of the other characters. Why 
bother with all the deception?