[Dragaera] Iorich ***SPOILERS****

[Jon%20Lincicum]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Philip Hart" <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> 
To: "SKZB List" <dragaera at dragaera.info> 
Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 2:33:11 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific 
Subject: Re: [Dragaera] Iorich ***SPOILERS**** 


>> 
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>> On Mon, 11 Jan 2010, Alexx Kay wrote: 
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[snip] 

>> All of which makes it a *more effective* object lesson. If someone with 
>> all those advantages can still get shined for crossing the Jhereg, why 
>> would anyone else ever dare to? 
> 
>He's survived for eight years while getting much more powerful. He's 
>providing a bad object lesson right now. 

It's only been 8 years. To a Dragaeran, that's hardly any time at all. You could sneeze and miss it. 


>They're making matters worse by 
>not cutting their losses and making an example of the next guy. 

What makes you think they haven't continued making example of the "next guys" in the iterim? 

>Heck, 
>they should just find someone who needs eliminating, frame him (maybe even 
>for Vlad's offenses - e.g., the Imperial rep really asked Vlad for a 
>bribe [like killing a council member] to get standard service then 
>pretended to have gotten roughed up to cover it - to the extent 
>possible), and kill him. 

Might work, but in order to pull that off, too many people would have to know the truth, and the more people who know, the more chance there is that one of them will be the next guy to try to screw the House. 

Besides, I'm pretty sure the current Council members are taking this pretty personally. Vlad has pissed off pretty much every one of them individually at this point. 


>If Vlad dies a natural death, they're really 
>screwed. 

On that much we can agree. 

>If they call off the fatwa they'll take a hit for a while 
>perhaps, but they're tough enough to defend their position - one 
>incredibly exceptional guy gets away with a breach of custom, ten 
>thought-they-were-exceptional guys don't and then there's no eleventh. 

As soon as there is any precedent for *anyone* getting away with it, then there'll be 17 more wise-guys looking to test the limits of just exactly how powerful you have to be to get away with it. And then it will become clear that with a bunch of people trying at once, that you really don't have to be that powerful at all. (This is the logic that the Demon uses in /Jhereg/.) 

The Jhereg have spent 250,000 years building a reputation as the House you don't dare cross. They can't afford to just let Vlad go. Or at least, the leaders of the House believe this is the case, which amounts to the same thing. 

The alternative is that they'd have to spend far more money and resources instilling a new sense of terror in order to maintain their control than they are spending chasing after Vlad. 

Majikjon