[Dragaera] Dragaeran WMD

[Jerry Friedman]

--- On Sun, 10/5/08, Maximilian Wilson <wilson.max at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Maximilian Wilson <wilson.max at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Dragaera] Dragaeran WMD
> To: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com
> Cc: dragaera at lists.dragaera.info
> Date: Sunday, October 5, 2008, 4:32 PM
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Jerry Friedman
> <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > --- On Sun, 10/5/08, Maximilian Wilson
> <wilson.max at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> * There must have been hundreds of thousands of
> descendants
> >> of the
> >> e'Kieron/e'Lanya line by now.
> >
> > The noble houses seem to have low birth rates (but in
> > general there are very few siblings on Dragaera,
> > especially for major characters).  And Dragons pop
> > off all the time (or did before revivification) in
> > duels and battles.  It's a wonder there are any
> left--
> > still more that there are any Dzur.
> 
> FHYA makes a point of noting that Aliera, at 500 years of
> age, still
> looks like a Dragon of a single century's age. My sense
> of it is that
> this is roughly analogous to a 30-year-old still looking
> like she's
> 18. 30 is still "young" in the sense of
> experience (Teldra calls
> Aliera a "young Dragon") but old enough that
> it's somewhat remarkable
> to still be looking totally fresh. Anyway, if Dragaeran
> generations
> can be assumed to be about 500 years, the Empire is
> approximately 400
> generations old. If no inbreeding exists and birth rate is
> at
> replacement levels (which it obviously is or there would be
> no Dragons
> at all), each e'Kieron descendant produces 2
> e'Kieron descendants in
> the next generation. 400 generations means 2^400
> descendants, or 2.58
> x 10^120. That's 30 orders of magnitude more than the
> number of
> particles in the universe. Obviously, therefore, there _is_
> in
> breeding because there aren't that many Dragons, but
> even if the
> inbreeding is total (400 generations of sibling marriage)
> you still
> accumulate 800 e'Kieron descended souls. "Hundreds
> of thousands" is a conservative estimate, IMHO.

I'd say it's a liberal estimate of the total number of
Dragons, but of course I don't know.

> Of course, it's possible that either 1.) soul-recycling
> means that
> most e'Kieron descendants were _already_ e'Kierons
> in a previous life,
> and thus don't increase the total pool, or else 2.) the
> e'Kieron
> "genes" died out, mostly or entirely, early on.
> Aliera, and presumably
> Adron, had the ability because of who they were in past
> lives.
> 
> Or else, I suppose, 3.) the "gene"/soul
> interactions are just totally weird, as Aliera hints to Vlad.

I think it's more like 2.  "it is only the e'Kieron
line of the House of the Dragon that holds the ability"
(/Jhereg/, Chapter 9).  I read "line" as meaning "people
with the surnames e'Kieron" and apparently e'Lanya.
Even if lots of Dragons are descended from Kieron (and his
sister?), it seems much fewer are in those two lines.

Aliera tells Vlad that Morrolan e'Drien can't make
amorphia, but his mother was a sister of Adron's, hence
presumably an e'Kieron and certainly a descendant of
Kieron.  So not all descendents of Kieron can make
amorphia.

One of the things we know nothing about is how a
Dragon's line is determined.  Kytraan, Norathar,
and Morrolan all have the same line as their fathers,
so maybe it's that simple (though the sexism would
be unusual for the Empire).  Aliera in her father's
line, too, but there's no alternative.

Jerry Friedman