[Dragaera] Vlad's Destiny (Was: Re: Lavode - possible spoilers (Dzur))

[Scott Schultz]

I don't really see how discussion of Lavodes is a spoiler, so I've dispensed with the spoiler space...

Regarding Vlad's future:

I feel safe in saying that most of us feel that Vlad is being "groomed for something". The nature of the Something is unknown and, therefore, debatable. Speculating on him becoming a Lavode is sort of the simplest answer, IMO, and therefore most likely incorrect.

The Lavodes are strictly Sethra's personal agency, who do whatever they think is in the best interests of the Empire as she/they define "best interests". They're trouble-shooters. It isn't really clear that they ever answered to the Emperor, and their existence as part of the Imperial beauracracy was something of an artifact of Sethra being Warlord, as I understand things. I have to wonder if one reason they were killed/disbanded was to eliminate Sethra's influence at Court entirely. (Remember, she was sent persona-non-grata for some indeterminate time when her undead status was revealed. In fact, is she still "officially" unwelcome at Court or was all forgiven in light of the instatement of Zerika as Empress?)

I digress...

The point of the ramble above is that Vlad is not being "groomed" by Sethra or at least not at her behest. He is not Sethra's tool. He's Verra's tool.

It's my belief that he's being groomed by Verra, for purposes that she may not even fully understand. Recall that Verra explained the business with the vial of her blood as being a kind of intuition that she should give the vial to Sethra but that she had no clear idea WHY should should give it to her. The legend of Godslayer is well known, the more so given that the legend seems to have weirdly preceded the actual existence of Godslayer. (There's that Serioli timeframe wierdness again.) Verra would know of the prophecy that Godslayer will be her undoing, yet she's putting events in motion that produced both the weapon and someone appropriate to wield it.

Here again, it's useful to note that Verra did not know about Spellbreaker or what it was until it was brought into her presence and she was forced to defend herself against it. Even then, she didn't kill Vlad or attempt to take it from him, despite the fact that she must have realized what it meant that he was carrying it. To the left, she had not realized that her machinations were leading directly to the recreation of Godslayer. On the gripping hand, she chose to continue with her plans despite that realization, though after taking some additional precautions on the chance that her tools turn against her. Given the way Vlad used the altar stone to "invade" her sanctum, she has to realize that no protection will ever be completely adequate, if the prophecy is a true one. To quote Vlad, "anyone can be assassinated". Even a Lord of Judgement.

Given that Vlad isn't dead or shunted to an alternate universe, it seems that she considers her larger plans to be more important than the threat that Godslayer represents. She may even realize that the success of her larger plan may require the sacrifice of her own life. She'd have to at least suspect it at this point, though what "death" really means for a God is open to debate. Perhaps the unraveling of Verra's "aspects of deity" (shades of Lord of Light) is the event which unravels Godslayer itself and reduces it to its component parts and allows the Gods to attempt to dispose of it in a way that insures that they'll eventually be found by an Eastern assassin and put together to form a weapon capable of destroying a God...

This whole business of the Serioli seeing Time as one big four-dimensional "is/was/will be" sort of suggests the possibility that the Lords of Judgement might have used knowledge liberated from the Serioli to build the Halls of Judgement and the Paths of the Dead in the first place.

Now, all of the above is highly hypothetical. While I think it's fair to say that Verra has been shown to be highly manipulative, there's no direct textev for any of this speculation. It's more a distillation of the series into something that appears to make sense given what we've vicariously experienced along with Vlad, and it's highly colored by Vlad's own (possibly mistaken) knowledge and opinions.

What is Verra's ultimate goal? The obvious answer is the destruction of the Jenoine or at least the prevention of their invasion of the Empire. It would be interesting, though, if her ultimate goal was something totally unexpected, such as insuring the birth of Devera or some similar event. 

A final thing to ideate on pararectally -- Given the nature of Verra's intuition as touched on earlier, it's possible that she herself does not know what her long-range "goal" is. She may be risking everything; her own soul, and possibly even the existence of the world/universe, on a feeling that she "ought" to be doing whatever she's doing, just as she did with the vial of blood. She is the embodiment of Chaos, after all, and doing things because they "feel right" is her modus operandi. She's a loose cannon, so it's hardly a surprise that one of her most powerful tools is something of a loose cannon himself. She may even be counting on the fact that Vlad IS a loose cannon in a way that Morollan, Aliera and even Sethra are not, because that means that he'll do whatever needs to be done, even if it means opposing her or all of them, in order to do it.

Ha. That's way too much speculation for a Monday...