[Dragaera] _Iorich_ random brief comments (spoilers!)

[Alexx Kay]

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> Hmm, do we know how many letters there are in the Dragaeran alphabet?

Nope.  We do know that some of the House languages use different symbols
than the primary language.

> Some random brief comments:

> Water transport - why bother, when teleportation is so easy?  Maybe it's
> still practical to move heavy loads by river somehow?

Teleportation is 'easy' to highly-trained sorcerers.  Vlad finds it
difficult, and a lot of Dragaerans can't do it at all.

Also, most of the teleportation we've seen has been of sentient beings
(and their personal effects).  It's conceivable that teleporting
non-living matter is more difficult.

Lastly, transport by water is *astoundingly* cheap.  If you haven't done
the research, you'd be amazed at how much cheaper than ground transport it
is.  Even in the modern world, with airports, freeways, and railroads,
shipping by water is very often the cheapest option.

> Pg. 26 - "Given what the ugly thing is famous for" - what's this?

Steven Brust being a tease, that's what :-)

> Pg. 28 - "white yarn" - interesting low tech here.  Record-keeping must be
> such a nightmare on Dragaeran time scales.

IIRC, it was established in _Dzur_ that there is a spell that lets one do
the equivalent of 'grep' on a collection of paper texts.  (Want!)

> Pg. 29 - "House?" "Imperial."  - This is the sort of thing that led me to
> keep emphasizing that Vlad has an imperial title and as such a good claim
> on independence from the Jhereg, which is anyway something of a fiction on
> several counts.

Note that he is still a Baronet of House Jhereg; the "Imperial House"
applies to his Count-ship.  And he still self-identifies as a Jhereg.

> Pg. 39 - how is Vlad positioned to harass Lady Ardema?

A) Imperial title gives him a certain base amount of weight to throw around.

B) He probably knows about some unethical behavior in her past that he
could potentially reveal.  (Presumably implicating himself in the process,
but he's been well-established as someone who won't let a little thing
like that stop him if he cares enough.)

> Pg. 45 - Capital punishment - we've been told before that Zerika, as a
> reborn Phoenix, doesn't go for this.

Not that I disagree, but do you happen to remember where we learn this?  I
know she's willing to do it under sufficient provocation (e.g Kana).

> Pg. 49 - Here Vlad says "Jhereg" and not "Imperial", interestingly.

As I said above, the "Imperial-House-ness" attaches to one specific title,
not to the person as a whole.

> Pg. 68 - "they have taken Pathfinder from me" - this is a weird
> formulation - no one else can touch Pathfinder, for one thing.

Really?  I mean, under most circumstances, it would be suicidally dumb,
but I don't recall anyone saying it's impossible.

>And Aliera is able to make amorphia, it's silly to disarm her.

Symbolism matters.

Also, a person might be willing to fight their way out of prison, where
they wouldn't be willing to use Elder Sorcery to destroy the prison. 
Especially when what they're charged with in the first place is Elder
Sorcery...

(Hm.  Given Pathfinder's special abilities, I expect that having it might
let Aliera find the secret passage that (I presume) the Vallista architect
must have put in :-)

(Hm further.  Maybe that's where Zerika's plan went wrong; she hadn't
intended for Pathfinder to be taken away in the first place, but a zealous
and/or finicky Iorich did so.)

> Pg. 113/4 In Dragaeran "Hawk" is something like "raptor", of which there
> are various sorts named in Fenarian.  It's odd to have a house named
> after something vague.

Perhaps in the language of House Hawk, there are finer distinctions.

Alexx

A ship is safe in a harbor, but that's not what a ship is for.