[Dragaera] Is Kelly foolish?

[Damien Sullivan]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 03:12:59PM -0700, Scott Schultz wrote:

> Sorcery isn't simple. Vlad knows a few handy spells, but his study has
> never gone beyond that and it may be that his skill is just that
> limited. If it was so dead simple that anyone could learn it and be
> proficient, then everyone would already be proficient.

After Athyra I consider Vlad a particularly unreliable narrator
regarding his own magical prowess.  Nothing in other books would have
led me to suspect his casual use of mind-control witchcraft there.

Vlad knows how to teleport.  He doesn't like doing it, but it doesn't
seem trivial.

> As an example of an Easterner who learned sorcery, Vlad doesn't really lend
> a lot of weight to an argument that sorcery, in and of itself, improves
> one's quality of life.

Did Morrolan teleport in food in Taltos, or did he synthesize it?

Anyway, labor-saving *is* improvement in quality of life.  More time to
grow or earn food, less stress on the body.  Also if someone gets good
enough, you can save money from the stuff you'd otherwise pay a gentry
sorcerer to do, like cure diseases.

> and that link requires you to be a member of one of the Houses. The
> only House that's generally available is House Teckla. You can
> apparently walk up to the local rep, say "I want to join" and they'll
> sign you up, link you up, and put you to work toiling for the nearest
> noble. Of course, that probably means you'll be too busy to learn much
> sorcery. If joining House Teckla was

Going by Brokedown Palace, a few years as a Teckla was enough for Miklos
to learn a fair bit of sorcery.

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 08:48:41AM -0700, Maximilian Wilson wrote:

> hence covens. Morrolan's castle blows everyone's mind because they
> can't imagine how to do it with sorcery and don't think about
> witchcraft.

No, levitating big objects is relatively easy with sorcery.  Everyone
else is afraid to do it again, after the castle fell with the Orb.

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 05:14:28PM -0400, Louis Eastman wrote:

> My point would be that A) why isn't their link severable if he has one, and
> B) that aside, if whomever holds the Orb can fry the mind of whomever is
> linked to the Orb, Tortie would've cooked his brain like Valabar's fish. So

I go with the Emperor not being able to find people easily.  Frying
someone who contacted you is one thing, frying random person is another.
If the Orb doesn't have an index...

As for the Orb being used as a weapon, I always assumed that was more
physical in nature.  The Orb seems to tame the weather and tectonics,
it's got a lower to spare -- either controlling those, or just blasting
stuff.

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 09:05:34PM -0400, Louis Eastman wrote:

> Chain Bridge- but frankly if any of the Orb's hype is true it doesn't really
> matter how many Teckla/Easterners there are, if they directly fight the Orb
> and they're not next in line in the Cycle, they lose.

Probably true of Dragaerans as well, yet rebellions do succeed
somehow...

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 08:45:42AM -0700, Scott Schultz wrote:
> There's another factor here, in regards to lifting up Easterners -
> spending 100 years to train to be a competent sorcerer is nothing at
> all to a Dragaeran, but it's more than a lifetime for most Easterners.
> It may be that Easterners simply don't have the lifespan required to
> train in anything more than the simplest schools of sorcery. Hence,
> you'll never see an Eastern Wizard. (Though Laszlo appears to have
> figured out a way around that problem.)

As have, for Dragaerans, the Sorceress in Green (20 ka old?) and Sethra
(seems to have become undead relatively recently, on her scale.)

> This raises the point I was making, though. Sorcery offers him a few
> comforts and conveniences, but it didn't alter his circumstances
> appreciably. He was still a kid working in a restaurant and, later,
> running a restaurant in South Adrilankha. If every Easterner could
> sorcerously make his life more comfortable, it would not change the
> fact that they were Easterners in South Adrilankha. Their lives would
> be pretty much the same as they are now. Vlad's circumstances improved
> as a result of his joining the Organization and achieving a certain
> amount of respect and notoriety thereby. Sorcery had little to no
> influence on his lot in life.

It didn't change his status directly, but there's a lot to be said for
comfort and convenience.  A peasant with running water and electric
lights is still a peasant, but still has a rather nicer life.

> The Kelly's of the world would not be made any happier if every one of
> their constituents were taught the basics of sorcery. Never mind that
> Vlad is pretty sharp as far as these things go but he still has only
> the most basic understanding of the science of sorcery. There's no way

He also dropped his lessons and went in for being an assassin and mob
boss.  And has a bias toward witchcraft.  And isn't very theoretical.

> basic skillset at all. Vlad also likes to pretend that sorcery is a
> matter of arithmetic: A + B = C. Maybe that's how his teacher

Sorcery sometimes sounds a lot like programming, which would make it
very powerful for some people and very hard for others.

-xx- Damien X-)