Amounts of Dragon Discussion

[Rayketh]

I didn't see a thread for this sort of thing specifically. I'm confused about a post in the Amounts of Dragon sandbox and wasn't sure where to ask it.

Of the two of them, Avar is angrier. Piro... Piro is a little afraid, especially as Avar continues to stand firm.



Eventually Avar resumes a normal speaking volume. "If you are determined to destroy yourself this way, old man, then so be it. Take your name back and keep it with my blessing."

Piro gives a slow nod. "What shall we...?"

"No teleportation," Avar suggests, with an icy smile. "You won't have to worry about it for much longer than a tick, anyway. Might as well be something I was going to do already."

"Very well," says Piro.

"Consider it done," says Avar, and he teleports away.

Piro is not all that angry anymore. He is sad, and tired. Grieving.

I've read all of Elcenia so I understand what repudiating the line name is but I'm not sure what the reference to teleportation means, could someone explain?

[Kappa]

To repudiate one's line name, one must break a line edict. A line edict is a rule agreed upon by all members of a line. All existing members of the Piro line are Avar and Piro himself. So to simplify things, they agreed on a line edict of "no teleportation", and Avar lost his line name when he left by teleportation.

[Alicorn]

Family tree for reference (mostly our own):

Pirodeynan (silver) has had two dragon children, Pardametril (parunia, silver, line name from his maternal grandfather who didn't expect to live long enough to give the kid a conventional syllable but loved him very much and wanted to do something) and Avar(piro) (a parunia for facecasting reasons; silver, line name new from Piro's first name due to a falling-out between Piro and his own father). (Exactly how much of a headache this is for dragon genealogists is left unspecified; it depends on how big a deal the Deynan line is.)

Pardam had no parunias with his nondragon spouses, and eventually married Alyslaikal (gold, full-blooded dragon). They tried several times for surviving children and eventually succeeded with Aurinpardam (gold, full-blooded dragon) - Aurin could not receive "Piro" as a line name because it was in use as a silver line, could not receive Deynan both because Piro wouldn't pass on the name and because it too is in use as a silver line, could not receive a line name from a maternal ancestor because Alys's father is dead, and therefore received his father's first name as a line name. Shortly after Aurin was named, his father died in a spellcasting accident.

Avar married his first nondragon, she killed herself, and he then married Koridaar (elf). They have one child, Mialavar (silver, parunia-turned-shren), who could not join the Piro line because Avar repudiated it and Piro would hardly have been willing to supply it, hence his line name being his father's personal name.

[DanielH]

Is fire, or firecreatureness, an Ivan template attractor? That might be obvious if I’d read the Vorkosigan books, but I have not. Now I’m noticing the firebird, and then the gold dragon (Aurin is an Ivan, right? I’m not just inventing that because of the family relation?).

[Endovior]

Speaking of Amounts of Dragon...

It seems like the Shren/Dragon situation is really unstable. Given that Dragons tend to be in their natural forms when on Dragon Island, it seems like it'd only take one angry teleporting Shren to cause a massive chain reaction which would decimate the Dragon Council. Given that Dragons are allowed to teleport to Dragon Island, and the difficulty in distinguishing between Dragons and Shrens, it seems like that's not the kind of thing they could ward against. So... how is that particular event prevented from happening?

[Alicorn]

Aurin is an Ivan, yes, and he's a gold because it's one of the Vorpatril house colors and it seemed like a better choice than blue, but yes, there is a loose thread of firecreatureness going on there (it's not strong, but if there are several options and "fire" is available it can tiebreak).

Dragon Island is really big, dragons on it are often pretty far apart, and you can only teleport to places you've been, so no shrens can teleport there; that doesn't mean they couldn't get there if they really, really wanted, but they couldn't teleport in without a dragon confederate.

The members of the dragon council all have successors ready, anyway; you have to be over 2,000 to be on the council, and "over 2,000" means "may drop dead at any moment". No one involved would have a very hard time treating infected as politically equivalent to dead.

[Endovior]

Ah, that makes sense. Dragon Island looks small on the map, but I suppose England looks small on a world map, too, and there's a largish difference between things measured in thousands of kilometres and a radius measured in hundreds of meters. It seems like a determined Shren could probably manage the feat, but it's a less trivial operation than it might seem at first glance, so it'd be more like an assassination than anything else... and be treated more or less as such too, albeit with the unusual condition of 'the victim is still alive, and can see to wrapping up their own affairs'.

[Rayketh]

Changed name to be more specific and since there is already a general sandbox discussion thread. Hope it' s not an issue that I made this separate in the first place.

[Endovior]

This thread is in Spoilerland, so presumably it can contain more spoilery discussion than a thread might otherwise.

[Nemo]

All existing members of the Piro line are Avar and Piro himself. So to simplify things, they agreed on a line edict of "no teleportation", and Avar lost his line name when he left by teleportation.

Does this mean that any future members of the Piro line are also banned from teleporting? Or for that matter, that Piro himself isn't allowed to?