[Dragaera] Some speculation on Spellbreaker

[Philip Hart]

On Mon, 29 Sep 2008, Kenneth Gorelick wrote:

>
> On Sep 29, 2008, at 5:28 PM, Jon Lincicum wrote:
>
>> 
>>> Yes. I think this makes a good narrative basis for everything we know
>>> about the Jenoine. My guess is that it went something like this:
>>> 
>>> - Long ago, the Jenoine discover amorphia on Dragaera, and decide to
>>> study it.
>> 
>> I am utterly unconvinced that the Jenoine came to Dragaera to study 
>> amorphia.


This is a non sequitur for one thing.

>> 
>> If they had, then I think they would have a better understanding of it now, 
>> and would have had a better strategy for dealing with the Lords of Judgment 
>> than tapping the lesser sea.

We know that amorphia is not amenable to standard scientific study - the 
researcher needs allele x to communicate with it?  One has to become
personally familiar with it?

And note its tendency to eat everything in sight.

Also note our lack of evidence that the Jenoine are particulary smart - 
except maybe at jhereg brain programming.  Or maybe they are smart and
sophisticated in science, and therefore lack the right attitudes for studying
magic.


>> I think it's far more likely that the very first amorphia on Dragaera was 
>> created by Vera

This seems rather unlikely to me - maybe the first free amorphia.  I'm 
pretty sure we've heard that the J knew about amorphia (else the story 
from their perspective is that Verra et al. managed to kill their 
colony, and their success with the river is astonishing), and are 
interested in Dragaera for its sake.


>> The Jenoine, from available evidence, came to Dragaera to study humans, and 
>> their psychic abilities, and in the process created the Dragaerans.

What available evidence?  About all we know is that the J came.  Probably 
they were just looking for interesting stuff to play with, and found a 
lot - a lot more than they were ready for.


> Per Issola, you are exactly correct. From p. 37 of my hardcover edition, 
> "...Verra and a few others, who sabotaged [the Jenoines'] work, who created 
> the Great Sea of Amorphia, who unleashed upon the world that which we call 
> sorcery..."

This works rather against the claim than for it - "sabotage" suggests that
Verra killed the containment system in the J amorphia lab more than "Verra
put an amorphia bomb in the J biologists' mess tent".