[Dragaera] Sethra Speculation

[Jasmit Dosanjh]

I didn't understand a word of it, but it made a lot of sense and I really
enjoyed the speculation. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks,

"Sonu" Jasmit Dosanjh
9803300333 Cell



On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 1:32 AM, <dragaera-request at lists.dragaera.info>wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Sethra Suppositional Speculation and Suspicions Symposium
>      (Jonathan Carey)
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jonathan Carey <carey.jonathan at gmail.com>
> To: dragaera at dragaera.info
> Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 10:02:52 -0400
> Subject: [Dragaera] Sethra Suppositional Speculation and Suspicions
> Symposium
> Alright.  Over the years (hence the synopsis) I have come to what I
> believe to be a good guess as to what makes Sethra tic:
>
> Sethra is particularly annoyed by people trying to explain what makes her
> tick.
>
> So, here we go--time to annoy a vampire:
>
> This was brought on by reading Tiassa and The Desecrator back to back,
> mixed with an increasing suspicion throughout the books that Sethra is
> not at all what she seems. Heh.
>
> The remark that Vlad makes set me off, as I'm sure it did many of you:
>
> "Now, about that mystical significance."
> "Vlad, I was kidding about that."
> "No you weren't.  You had that look that you have when you're telling
> the truth in a way you hope won't be believed."
>
> Sethra has said many things in that tone; Vlad has to have seen it
> frequently in order to become familiar with it enough to identify it
> readily.  It helps that he likely has the same strategy when using the
> truth as an apparent red herring.
>
> Juxtapose that with her remarks in the Desecrator, when Telnan asks
> what she's up to or something -- and Sethra replies with something to
> the effect of "I'm trying to bring about the downfall of the Gods".
>
> I think she was doing the exact same thing there; but Telnan has just
> met Sethra, and so is too new to her to know when she's (not) lying.
>
> I think Sethra exists, at least to herself, as a means of
> over-throwing the Gods.  However, the Jenoine are a bigger threat; so
> there is a wary truce until all the doors to Dragaera are closed. That
> doesn't mean, however, that Sethra can't put the pieces in place in
> the meantime for when she wants to make her move. Still, Sethra has
> made no bones about mistrusting the Gods, and Gods certainly don't
> trust her.  Neither party has a particularly high opinion of the
> other; though they do recognize the other's usefulness in certain
> situations despite the fact that they are contemptuous of each other's
> skills and abilities.
>
> There are more GW's connected to Sethra than any other person; it
> can't be an accident that she knows a so much about them; and it
> starts to look more than simple academic interest when she literally
> is playing matchmaker with one after the other.
>
> Sethra has Iceflame which is probably the strongest of the GW's (if
> you were a collector, wouldn't you save the best for yourself? --being
> aware that the matches have already been made of course).  Moreover, I
> would not be at ALL surprised to find that it is her OWN soul that is
> the soul of Iceflame.
>
> Morrolan got Blackwand from Sethra.
> Telnan got Nightslayer due to a mission from Sethra.
> I cannot currently recall the specifics, but I know that Sethra was
> very involved in the revelation of Pathfinder.
> Vlad was an extremely unusual recruit for the mission which he
> performed; it cannot have been by chance that he was linked with
> Spellbreaker, and finally with the Morganti weapon.
>
> I think Sethra is able in one way or another, to see the resonances
> between the GWs and the souls of those who are destined to become
> their wielders.  Furthermore, I believe that she realizes that, if
> those two components are put in close proximity to the other, even if
> someone is well aware of the resonance between the two, and is also
> immensely powerful and wishes to prevent their being joined, it would
> still be next to impossible to keep the wielder from finding the
> weapon, and/or the weapon from finding the wielder.  Is this a form of
> destiny? Be he Jenoine or no, I don't think it would be very easy to
> stop apparently innocuous circumstances from occurring with the effect
> that the two linked souls become bonded physically as well.
>
> Next, it can't be random happenstance that Sethra seems to be creating
> a whole bloody army of GWs and their wielders.  And it can't be a
> coincidence that she is playing a key part in the lives of each
> wielder (and who knows, maybe the souls that inhabit the GWs as well)
> and specifically a key part in the actions that bring those two souls
> together; in such a way that the GWs and their wielders would think
> twice, thrice, before acting against Sethra's interests.  They are
> indebted to her; frightened of her somewhat, but always in awe of her.
>
> I think that Sethra regards the Gods as a lesser order of oppressors;
> the Jenoine are the masters, the Gods their ex-servants, but all are
> interlopers and trespassers on Dragaera, and she wishes to be rid of
> all of their interfering influences.  I think Sethra is connected
> intimately with the Seas of Chaos, the presence of Flux (oops, I meant
> to say Amorphia) on the planet itself.  It could be that Dragaera is
> the last place that Jehovah "made".  The "walls" of Heaven and Earth
> being advanced further and further until only a small pocket of Flux
> existed and the shell of the planet is not so much to keep the magma
> of the planet's core IN as much as it is an oddly-inverted wall to
> keep the amorphia OUT of the rest of the created universe.  So
> originally, Jehovah in _TRIH_ was an individual--a fortress in person
> form against the randomizing assault of the Flux.  He built outwards,
> and created Heaven.  He built outwards and created Earth.  He built
> outwards and created the universe.  Until eventually the chaos outside
> was in a smaller "area" than the fortress inside.  And he just kept
> building, like he was playing a cosmic game of "Go" against Chaos.
> And eventually he had captured all the territory possible except for a
> small pocket which could not be captured.  This localization of chaos
> was then manifested as a planet.  But like a light from behind a
> closed door leaks through into another room, so does the raw chaos
> that is contained by the walls of Dragaera, there is a small leakage
> of Flux onto Dragaera--the only known source of naturally occurring
> raw amorphia.  It's kind of like the opposite of that crazy person who
> lived in a shack in California in the H2G2.  His home, he said, was
> the only sane place left on the planet, which he referred to as "The
> Asylum".
>
> But back to Sethra and Dzur Mountain.  I think that Dzur Mountain was
> made out of Chaos.  Cf. _Issola_ when Vlad and Teldra finally make it
> out of the room and "I turned my attention to the landscape, and
> eventually thought of Dzur Mountain.  There was nothing there that
> actually looked like Dzur Mountain, mind you, but--"
>
> Furthermore, I think that Sethra herself might be formed of Amorphia
> in some way or another.  It explains Kiera and a number of other
> things.  But I think the description of the landscape as being
> "created" out of natural elements, like we were playing in a very
> sophisticated dungeon generator reminds Vlad of DM for a reason.
> Because Dzur Mountain is fabricated.  The "known" ear might be the
> least chaotic thing about the whole place, since presumably someone
> had to fabricate it in order for it to be known to be fabricated.
>
> Sethra is undead; moreover, she is a vampire.  Loraan was also undead;
> but I believe he would be called a Lich.  Since we don't know how a
> vampire is formed, we can't speculate.  We don't know if being a
> vampire is a necessary part of being undead; or vice versa; so we
> don't know how she died and was "resurrected".
>
> But if Dzur Mountain is created out of Amorphia, perhaps being a giant
> piece of solidified, contained chaos like Vlad had in Issola? then
> that means that Sethra becoming, at some point, one with the rock of
> Dzur Mountain, means that she is able to exist within Chaos without
> disintegrating.  Which is interesting indeed.  In fact, I wouldn't be
> surprised to find out that that is one of the conditions for being a
> God.  A God, after all, is a symbol; an idea.  And ideas cannot be
> killed.  Which makes me wonder: what is Sethra a symbol for?  I think
> the soul of Dragaera, just like Earth has Gaia.  Dragaera, like the
> GWs that wander its surface, eventually "woke up".
>
> (An aside: "Heh. I'm a jhereg, Boss.  The being hasn't been spawned
> that could put a glamour on me."  Jhereg as a creature is immensely
> practical; they see things as they really are.  The good, the bad, and
> ugly.)
>
> The alternative to Dzur Mountain being made out of Amorphia is that it
> is made somewhat innocuously out of Necrophia.  If the river in
> _Issola_ required a five foot high piece of trellanstone to control,
> then the Greater and Lesser Seas would require significantly more; and
> if my theory of Dragaera being the last exit out of Eden is correct,
> it would make sense that something as large as a mountain would be
> required to control a whole sea or two.  It makes even more sense when
> you consider "Necrophia", as in "Necromancy", the study of planar
> magic and the control of pathways in and out of those planes.  It
> would make sense that Dragaera is impregnated with natural deposits of
> Trellanstone.  What else other than a substance that controls chaos
> would be appropriate for the walls of a jail where the sole inmate is
> the plane of chaos?  And of course the indigenous species of Dragaera
> are able to create things like GW's, ie, things that work
> necromantically.
>
> I think the Jenoine were experimenting with genetic splicing augmented
> by controlled applications of Flux. The same way Leviathan was turned
> from a beautiful woman to a monster; only trying to create a
> controlled process out of it.  And according to Awesome's Razor, were
> trying to come up with the coolest hybrid.   ie, Centaurs are NOTHING.
>  Imagine a Dragonman.
>
> I started to wonder if Jenoine aren't a remnant of humanity--a
> particular faction with one goal in mind:  the curing of the
> corrupting influence of the Flux on their bodies.  Them being the
> "hell's angels" from TRIH doesn't make sense; they're too...limited in
> my opinion.  If they werent uniform in appearance as a species, then
> I'd be much more willing to entertain that notion.  Perhaps the
> experiments they were attempting were to undo the effects of Chaos
> that they released from some Great Superweapon that tore the fabric of
> creation during one of their wars and allowed Flux to leak through
> (Again, assuming that "humans" are much more techno-magically advanced
> at this point in time, which is borne out by Sethra's artifact
> collection); just enough to turn their genes into something that
> created some sort of fish-beast?  That would explain why there were
> experimenting with Flux-augmented genetic mutations; if I were trying
> to get back to normal, I'd probably be intrigued by the notion of
> giving myself a bit of an edge when I returned; or if I was stuck with
> the fact that I could never be human again (but was able to change
> form suing), I'd certainly investigate what the most kickass form
> would be, and see if I could create a process to establish it.
>
> To explain, here's my proposed timeline:
>
> TRIH
> (Universe creates "jail" where Chaos is the inmate)
> Agyar
> Cowboy Feng's
> (many years pass)
> (Humanity becomes super advanced technologically, and FINALLY
> discovers how to utilize magic in a reliable manner, hence
> "technomagically advanced")
> (Superweapon punctures space-time, allows Flux to enter reality.
> Either before or after this, humanoids colonize (or are seeded by the
> Jenoine onto) Dragaera)
> (begin dragaera timeline as found on cracks and shards etc)
>
> This might be the most rambling of my emails yet for which I apologize.
>
> Jon
>
>
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