Alicornutopia

I don’t think so, because there’s no “emper” and because “emperor” is a word, not a sequence of sounds. See also: Glory Girl

If that did work, though, at least it would not work with “Vor”. At least, I’ve been pronouncing that differently in my head; I don’t know how Barrayarans pronounce either word.

I'm going to rule that "Emperor" in a Barrayaran accent will not get you either "Gregor" or "Vor" in same.

Isn't it whole syllables, anyway? So, I mean, even if it were the same sound, it has the "r" sound at the beginning, and in "Gregor" it has the "g", and in "Vor" it has the "v" sound, meaning it wouldn't click?

I mean, I think something came up about it specifically being whole syllables, so even if she got the vowel sound and the end part of a syllable, she needed the start for it to click. I'm seem to recall that when she was brute-forcing the syllables, she tried both with and without the start and end consonants in the syllables.

It is whole syllables as in not vowels or consonants alone. One of each or two vowels, provided they're consecutive, will do the trick. If "Vor" and "Gregor" and "Emperor" all rhymed, she could chain from the one to the others.

I find myself somewhat confused that the “Co” in “Copper” is not enough to vassalize Cordelia, but I guess the first syllable in one or both of those words may technically be longer than that.

If Promise starts guessing syllables she's in trouble, but yeah, 'cop' vs. 'cor'.

It's pronounced completely differently. Cahp vs Cohr.

MaggieoftheOwls wrote:It's pronounced completely differently. Cahp vs Cohr.

At least in British English, it's not that far. "Cop" rhymes with "top", and I think "cor" would rhyme with "tor". We use this pronunciation of cop, and this of "cor" (I think that's the same as in "Cordelia"; it's as in "Cor, blimey!" or something stereotypically British, from like the 1900s or something :P). It might be easier to hear the difference / similarities between top and tor.

The American pronunciation of "cop" sounds kinda closer to "carp", but shorter, and the American pronunciation of "top" and "tor" are really quite different, from each other and from the British ones.

According to that dictionary, at least. I think it's quite accurate.

Once again: In the relevant dialects, it's not a problem. XD

Pedro Carvalho
I didn't quite understand what Promise's parafairy powers did

Alicorn
she was a tinker, we went with an interpretation of tinkers which gives them a low-grade sort of shaker power to make sure things they can't directly perceive are all lined up, and if you combine that shake power with sorcery it kinda feedback loops, helps that she got a good specialty.

Pedro Carvalho
oh
what was the specialty, and how does it feedback loop?

Alicorn
I don't remember exactly how I described her specialty, but like sensory/scanning equipment
the idea is that while you are actively tinkering, *you can make decisions* (mostly tinkering decisions, but also other decisions) based on random trivial crap about the humidity and number of quarks in your screwdriver.
and that is *exactly* the sort of information you need to break the *shit* out of sorcery.
you don't have to be able to *describe* the humidity or *enumerate* the quarks, but you can act contingent on the information.
throw in a thing that not only flattens harmonics but also adds *supportive* patterns (all the weird crap in fairyland is harmonic patterns doing stuff on its own) and you have a god-sorcerer.
this is why Promise kept reconfiguring her device rather than just making it have settings. As long as she's actually tinkering, she gets her boost.

Pedro Carvalho
Oooh
Gotcha
That's really cool

Alicorn
:D