[Dragaera] An alternative solution to the Mellar problem

[Philip Hart]

On Tue, 2 Mar 2010, Jay Smith wrote:

> On 3/2/10, Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote:
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>> On Tue, 2 Mar 2010, Alexx Kay wrote:
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>> days. Even if he isn't rich enough to float eight million, he seems rich
>>>
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>> This is a nice idea, and...
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> Of course, Morrolan isn't supposed to know that there is a problem.  If the
> Jhereg knew, that Morrolan was in the loop, it might be that Vlad would find
> himself on the run from the organization a few books sooner.

They have to be aware that everyone Vlad knows was in the loop as soon as 
the reports about Mellar's death come in.


> On the other hand, (and bear with me for forgetting the numbers here) but
> Vlad himself makes a few grand (net) a week right?

That's what he makes for an assassination - but he's only done about 50 of 
those in his career, and he finds it easy to burn through that money.  I 
don't think his office does that well, and his operating expenses aren't 
small.

> This is for just a small area of a very large city, which is in turn, 
> part of a large empire.

I don't think the Jhereg have much of a market outside fairly dense urban 
areas.  Anything out in the baronial hinterland will be too poor or too 
locally ruled.

> It seems that the council should be able to eat eight million with no 
> sign of discomfort publicly.

The council uses member funds to keep going for a while, but why would any 
of them have huge cash deposits at home?  They'd have to make a run on 
their banks, assuming they are even in liquid positions, which might well 
raise a stir.


> Granted they would want Mellar dead, but I don't understand the urgency,
> given the scope of operations.

I think the argument runs: it's important that by the time it's widely 
known what Mellar did he has gotten a dull shine.  Compare the Toyota 
situation - if they had announced, "There's a problem, we have a 100% fix, 
it'll be taken care of as soon as owners of this precise set of vehicles 
see a dealer", they would have suffered much less damage.