[Dragaera] Jenoine, Humans, Gods-To-Be, Amorphia, Great Weapons, Barrett, and Various Combinations Thereof

[Scott Crain]

Well, I'm not replying to the bunch of other stuff, so I won't be able to respond point-by-point, but ... really, this is all information we already have.

Humans:
Humans came to Dragaera at some time in the distant past.  These are most likely post-our-real-time humans, because they bury/dump/archive old data, including marxist/communist/trotskyist political information.  They seem to have a decent relationship with the native species, the Serioli; at least, we don't have any real reference to the humans/Easterners having major clashes with the native Serioli.

Jenoine:
The Jenoine came to Dragaera with a number of their servant-slaves, including Verra.  They performed a number of genetic experiments on at least one native animal species, and one non-native intelligent species -- humans.  We know that they 'put human-level intelligence into a brain the size of a rednut' with jhereg.  They also seemed to have taken most or all of the human colonists, split the numbers in half and, building psychic ability into one set, they did major genetic work on the others, extending their lifespans and writing native-species genetic codes into theirs.

The Jenoine are advanced enough to view space and dimensions -- and consequently, probably time as well -- in a completely different manner than both humans and gods. We know they've assaulted Dzur Mountain and completely circumvented Sethra's defenses by 'redefining them'.  They also have tools that obey Clarke's Law.

Gods-To-Be:
At some point, of course, Verra and some others get torqued off, revolt (or whatever), and basically trip a switch somewhere -- basically doing the suicide-bomber thing, maybe to a different science experiment, perhaps a dimensional experiment.  Only thing is that something weird happens, and instead of a few people dying, there's a tear in the universe, and amorphia comes in.  Some of the revolters manage to survive, plenty of the Jenoine are killed, and somehow the amorphia is contained.  Poof, we have a few new gods.

I personally suspect that with the Jenoine knowledge of dimensional folding/compression, the project/tech that the slaves messed with was of that sort.  It's just that when they sabotaged it, it had a major and unexpected effect.

Notably, the gods all agree that they do NOT want the Jenoine back, so they form a plan to keep the Jenoine away.  Their foot soldiers become the new Dragaerans, and to a lesser extent the baseline human 'Easterners'.  In developing this base of soldiers, they influence the creation of an Empire -- which shoves the Serioli out of the better farmland.

Great Weapons:
The pissed-off Serioli want their land back, of course.  These mystic sorts seem to have as developed temporal/dimensional perception as the Jenoine, especially when it comes to time.  Generalizing from the one individual we've encountered (doesn't everyone?), the perception the more advanced/mystic Serioli have appears to be time-as-whole, instead of the more broken-down step-by-step sequence the rest of us experience.  With the Serioli seeing the Gods as their enemies, they do the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend thing with the Jenoine, and start putting together tools to find, fight, and destroy the Gods.  Possibly influenced by the militaristic Jenoine, most of these tools are in the form of weapons -- the Great Weapons, natch.

Some of those weapons are just for mass destruction; Blackwand and Nightslayer or whatever are two good examples.  Others have specific talents -- finding things (Pathfinder), or penetrating defenses (Godslayer).  All of the Great Weapons are likewise equipped with a semi-sentient tool the Serioli invented/discovered -- the Morganti essence -- in order to feed off of and destroy aspects of or the entirety of the powerful spirits the Gods represent.

Barrett
Barrett is, as we know, a kickass Dragonlord.  He does, very simply, everything that we know (or at least have been told) Morrolan has done -- face off armies on his own, defy the Empire and make it stick, and basically do whatever the hell he wants.  However, without some major influence or power behind him, the Emperor or latest Empress would've kicked his ass; Morrolan theorizes Barrett had a Great Weapon.

In point of fact, Barrett DID; and very probably was using it.  However, I suspect that he probably did not have fullest access to its might; it wasn't meant for him.  However, as we know from Spellbreaker, even a fragment of a Great Weapon can be incredibly powerful, and probably was.  So Barrett uses the Great Weapon he's got, possibly found, or even was shown how to assemble -- but he doesn't have the whole thing.  More importantly, nobody knows that Barrett, wonderful arrogant Barrett, has a Great Weapon.

Here's a good question; why??  Morrolan and Aliera are both incredibly offensively arrogant and prideful, but they make sure everyone bloody knows that they've got Great Weapons on their hips.  Sethra ... well, hell, everyone knows Sethra Lavode Has A Great Weapon.  I mean, if you had a Great Weapon and you were in the public eye, it'd be like super-paparazzi -- everyone would know it.  (Zungaron's not yet in the public eye.)  I think Barrett may have been proud enough to a) want people to think that all this power is him and him alone, and b) NOT want people to know he can't access Pathfinder's full power.  In fact, this (or these) desire(s) is/are so powerful that once he suspects that maybe he's going to take a fall, he deliberately acts to conceal and dampen the Weapon's power.

"So what about Pathfinder and Godslayer and that whole thing?"  They were, or are to be -- remember, Serioli don't really seem to care a lot about how 'we' look at time, so they might look at the whole thing a little weirdly -- created together.  Or, more notably, the Serioli in the mountain says that when one turns up, the other is likely to surface as well -- a karmic connection.  Pathfinder turns up; a 'little' later (something like 6 years?), Godslayer 'reappears'.  Remember, the Gods didn't manage to destroy the weapon, but they DID manage to break it apart.  As well, if I were the Gods, I would have hidden the ONE THING that, in the right hands, would DEFINITELY have led to the finding of the weapon that could get through all my defenses.

I think the Gods took Pathfinder and hid it -- or just as possibly, turned Pathfinder over to Verra, who'd said something like, "I'll mess with this thing so that the only way it can be used at full power is if someone with our blood is using it."  And, because Verra knows/suspects that Godslayer is going to be needed some thousand years down the road, decides to give a powerful Dragonlord a daughter of her blood: Aliera.

Later on, Aliera acquires Pathfinder, and the use of the weapon enables Vlad to recreate Godslayer, putting the kibosh on a major Jenoine incursion.  Everyone wins -- except maybe for Verra in the future, if Vlad actually gets so pissed off he'll knife her...

So -- did I miss anything?


S. Thomas Crain

Author-in-Training