[Dragaera] Seventeen Maybe Different Jhegaala Spoilers

[Scott Schultz]

*spoilers space that won't do you any good if you get the digest...*
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> 2. Ok, dumb question, but how again is it that the Organization finds
> out about Vlad?

Locating someone with sorcery is considered to be fairly simple, as I 
recall. Vlad is paranoid about removing the gold phoenix stone because he 
assumes, especially in the time-frame of Jhegaala, that House Jhereg is so 
pissed-off that they've got someone making the attempt pretty much 30/5. The 
gamble Vlad took was that they would have some difficulty traveling to Burz 
even if they located him there. He lost that gamble, though it was in part 
his own fault for not leaving immediately after the Working.

>
> 3. I'm a bit skeptical that the 200ky empire with clans of obsessive
> librarians (redundant?) would lack a paper-making technique that
> has been kicking around Fenario for a few hundred years.  The idea
> of a factory itself seems more relevant, but ok, the whole general topic 
> is hard for me to understand.

I posted a speculation about that at the Dream Cafe. It struck me as rather 
singular that the Count not only recognized Vlad's Imperial Seal, but he 
knew enough about the Empire to inquire as to the Empress and whether Vlad 
was there an agent of the Court, scouting out a possible trade agreement. 
He's awfully well-informed considering the average knowledge of the Empire 
amongst Easterners.

It suggests a couple of things.

First, if the Count imagines that the Empire might be interested in his 
paper (and the commensurate costs associated with shipping it back to the 
Empire) then he must believe that he has something that even the Empire is 
hard-pressed to duplicate. That implies that the Empire IS backward in their 
paper production or at least they leave that sort of business to Easterners 
just as they leave tanning and other smelly/degrading occupations to 
Easterners. I've lived near a paper mill. You can trust me that Steve's 
descriptions in Jhegaala are no exaggeration.

Secondly, it suggests to me that perhaps the story about the origin of the 
paper recipe is a big lie. There's no good reason for the Count to be 
up-to-date (relatively speaking) with doings at the Imperial Court. It 
appears to be true that Fenario is not far from the Empire if you know how 
to cross the mountains, but it's by no means easy to make that journey, as 
evidenced by Vlad's own complaints about making that crossing. It makes me 
wonder whether the Count's grandfather, like Miklos and Sandor, was an 
ex-patriat who returned home and made good with a stolen or purchased paper 
manufacturing recipe instead of a knowledge of sorcery. It's even possible 
that someone in the Empire, forseeing the need, GAVE him the recipe and said 
"Get some of this ready and someone will come looking for it in, oh, two or 
three hundred years." No big deal to a Dragaeran, but several generations to 
an Easterner.

Then a stranger shows up, and he's even got an Imperial Seal, but he's not 
at all like what the current Count was expecting and he's digging around in 
matters that are better left undug.

>
> 4. Someone who has read more than one book on the relevant historical
> era might chime in on Coven/Guild/Manor as Church/Guild/Manor in the
> Middle Ages or early Industrial Revolution.  Or maybe "Coven" = "Jews"
> is a useful comparison.

Not much to say about this except that I was somewhat surprised by the 
portrayal of Father Noij as very much like a friar or Christian priest. Not 
at all what I would have expected from a priest of Verra. The business with 
Vlad claiming Sanctuary was also a very mideaval churchy thing. Unusual, but 
maybe that just says that Verra has many facets and the one you see depends 
upon which eyes you choose to look at her with.

>
> 5. Kind of interesting that Vlad doesn't make any use of his personal
> relationship with Verra, or even discuss it.

At the end of Phoenix, Vlad pretty much told Verra to, ah, go and fornicate 
with herself. He wasn't really in the mood or position to be dropping her 
name around more than he did.

> 13. Still AFT, but doesn't Vlad conclude that the note Noish-pa retains is 
> intended as a hidden message for him?  I don't understand how that
> could be necessary from her perspective at the time - why if it were
> she never left Vlad a full accounting of herself.

Just guessing here, but I'd imagine that she was well acquainted with his 
father's opinions about Witchcraft. They were Easterners living in a ghetto 
and, by his father's lights, trying to be Dragaerans. Eastern lives are 
short; in the ghetto of South Adrilankha I shouldn't be surprised if many 
are very short. Additionally, it was a time of plague and sometimes famine 
(the Interregnum and shortly thereafter) and everyone probably feared that 
they might be struck down.

Additionally, she was a Witch. If the Art runs in families, she was probably 
a gifted one. She might have forseen the need for such a reminder to Vlad 
without really knowing specifically why. Responding to an omen, essentially. 
Short of time travel or necromancy, we'll probably never know.


>Why we don't learn more from Noish-pa about her character - I can 
>understand Vlad wanting
> privacy, but in the context of the Text it's odd.

Well, Noish-pa intimates that he and his son were estranged at this time, 
though I don't really understand why. I thought it was a bit odd that he 
didn't know her name, despite having had them over to dinner at least once, 
but Vlad's family seems to go in for pet names and, uh, "pretty 
daughter-in-law" or the Hungarian equivalent may have been the only name he 
ever needed for her. Or it may just be that he's specifically saying that he 
didn't know her family name off the top of his head.

>
> 14. I don't follow how the black Phoenix stone protects Vlad from the
> working of witchcraft directed at his body - I thought it blocked 
> communication, not - well, it's hard to even speculate.  I would
> think at least Loiosh would be vulnerable.

Daymar had some theories about that but, alas, Vlad had no patience for 
them. ;-)


>
> 15. I'm not sure about the locals' reactions to or expectations of
> the jhereg - if they are Art-savvy, would they speak of "familiars"
> (or is that stricture non-canonical after the Piroiad)?

Keep in mind that Vlad, the narrator, is speaking Dragaeran or more 
precisely "Northwestern". The translation isn't always precise, as he 
himself points out at times in _Jhegaala_.


>Would they
> not expect Vlad to have unusual information-gathering resources, etc.?
> For that matter, why doesn't the Coven confront Vlad directly at all? 
> Killing all the Mersses seems a bit extreme as a first step.

Ayuh, this is a fault of the novel, I think. Despite the whole milking-stool 
analogy, I never really understood what it was that they were afraid of or 
why the Merss name would provoke the reaction it did. They just seemed like 
one family amongst several that dealt with the problems of that era by 
bending, breaking, or running away. (As Vlad points out, they sort of did 
all three.) It isn't clear to me on the first reading why everyone is so 
upset by it except, I suppose, that they're supposed to be dark witches. 
Killing all of them because some stranger came to town asking about them is 
pretty extreme behaviour. Wouldn't you spy on them, and maybe even find out 
if the stranger really IS their kin before stirring up a mess of trouble? 
They're witches after all, and some of the Merss were members of the Coven. 
Vlad implies at the end of the story that the heads of the Coven understood 
the use of the black phoenix stone, making the leaders of the whole mess 
once again more knowledgable and worldly than it appears that they ought to 
be.

I just never really "got" why they were afraid of Vlad to the point of 
killing everyone who came in contact with him and then torturing him to 
boot. Basically, it feels like there's some kind of subtext to this story 
that somehow never got written up or that is so subtle that it's basically 
invisible.

Maybe I just really didn't buy into the idea that the "milking stool" would 
result in the kind of paranoia displayed by all of the antagonists.