Obasei Tower
Landomist
There’s another thing that I hadn’t been taking into account in considering why Tor An might seem like a good risk: the famous aelantaza pheremones. In the last scene, Scholar tay’Nordif is maintaining close proximity in the way Cantra habitually avoids, and it’s definitely having an effect.
I’ve been trying to figure out what the point of antagonising tel’Elyd and escalating with tay’Welford was, bearing in mind that mission control couldn’t have known it would be helpful with getting Tor An settled in. My best hypothesis is that the duel was intended as a general distraction that would get everybody, including Scholar tay’Nordif, out of the way and give Jela some space to snoop around on his own. Though if that’s what she had in mind, apparently she hadn’t counted on Jela needing to watch the duel himself and see that she was all right.
On the other hand, maybe it was just that she wanted to stop tel’Elyd before Jela was seriously hurt, and judged a stick duel to be an affordable cost to achieve that end. In which judgement she may have been underestimating Prime Chair tay’Welford. tay’Welford is clearly a rat bastard but I wonder if his conduct of the duel wasn’t at least partly tactical. Things would have been considerably simplified for him if tel’Elyd’s enthusiasm had unfortunately resulted in a fatal wound for Scholar tay’Nordif. If so, the luck was in it (again) that Tor An was on hand to raise a protest.
Jela’s remark that there’s no use trying to figure out whether the luck sent Tor An to the Tower or alerted Scholar tay’Nordif to his approach is a wise one, and I shall heed it henceforth.
The home garden in Tor An’s dream is very similar in purpose and philosophy to the home garden Korval is going to establish. I rather doubt, though, that the piata tree’s resemblance to Jela’s tree is drawn from memory; I suspect that’s a message of support coming in through the back channels.
Scholar ven’Anbrek is appearing quite helpful, but I’m not sure what his stake is. I can construct a reasonable motivation from the things he’s said, but by this point I’ve given up on expecting the inhabitants of the Tower to have reasonable motivations.
(Incidentally, I find myself softening toward Maelyn tay’Nordif somewhat. She’s still not a nice person, but it pales in comparison when she’s so much outclassed by the people around her.)
Yes, I concur with this: “The home garden in Tor An’s dream is very similar in purpose and philosophy to the home garden Korval is going to establish. I rather doubt, though, that the piata tree’s resemblance to Jela’s tree is drawn from memory; I suspect that’s a message of support coming in through the back channels.”
Tree is busy again!
I began to soften to the Scholar here, too.
I felt the duel was not planned by anyone. It just happened. The Scholar’s protection of Jela might have been the real Cantra leaking through.
The Scholar’s protection of Jela might have been the real Cantra leaking, but it need not have been; the Scholar was designed with a strong imperative to keep him from getting, as she’d think of it, badly damaged, which would be reinforced as necessary by whatever’s sitting in her head keeping the mission on track, because quite apart from Cantra’s personal feelings the success of the mission absolutely depends on Jela staying in one piece.
I don’t think the duel was planned in the sense of anybody setting it up whole and entire – I do think the confrontation over Jela probably just happened – but I’m certain that once the confrontation had occurred there was at least one person deliberately steering the situation duel-wards. I agree with Jela that tay’Welford’s conversation with the Scholar was a trap, and she stepped into the trap when she let him characterize the confrontation in terms that justified the duel.
(What I’m not sure of, still, is why she stepped into the trap; this is what I meant when I listed “escalating with tay’Welford” separately from “antagonising tel’Elyd”. There probably wasn’t any way to rescue Jela without ticking off tel’Elyd, but I bet Cantra could have smoothed things over without letting it come to a duel. So was it just that Maelyn tay’Nordif couldn’t, without breaking character, or did mission control let the duel happen in pursuit of a longer game?)
Okay. I now see what you are asking. Cannot recall this duel well enough. Dunno.
Tor An’s reaction when Cantra asks for his help makes it quite apparent that those aelantaza pheromones are at work. Don’t know how I missed it the first time through.
In retrospect, I am surprised that this culture allows someone other than the owner to “discipline” a kobold…except to protect oneself in an instance of a kobold being out of control. If they see these constructs as mere property, then surely there ought to be some kind of legal rights for an owner to have balance for someone mistreating their property.
And how strange…except in how it played so well into tay’Welford’s agenda…that anyone would accept as justification for tel’Elyd’s behavior that he required a certain amount of titillation in order to do his best work. So if he’d tortured the cat, would that behavior also been acceptable? Interesting that there are no animal rights groups on Landomist.
And if there were no kobolds or cats available, would tel’Elyd have been able to get away with torturing grad students?
@Dr. Dredd: I have no doubt he did that anyway, just maybe not physically.