Tag Archives: Autonomous Semi-sentient Policing Units

Dragon in Exile – Chapter 33

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Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which the Tree reaches out to a visitor, and Quin decides to go for a walk.

kin’Joyt professes to be offended that Korval is (supposedly) charging money for viewing the house, instead of having a free open day like properly civilised people, but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her to protest by, say, refusing to buy a ticket. Then again, I get the impression kin’Joyt is willing to embrace an opportunity to be offended by Korval’s behaviour.

The mode of captain-to-passenger is an interesting choice; technically, that’s no longer an option that lies within Korval’s melant’i, since the Contract that made Korval the Liadens’ captain was concluded. It efficiently announces the delm’s identity, though; everybody still remembers, and if it’s no longer within Korval’s melant’i, there is yet nobody else who can lay claim to it.

“Lefty” pen’Erit’s new name follows the existing Surebleak pattern of This Is What Your Name Sounds Like To Me, though I had to go and look his personal name up to be sure because it’s been mentioned less often than the other examples we’ve seen.

I Dare – Chapter 56

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Day 56
Standard Year 1393

Solcintra
Liad

In which Pat Rin faces the judgment of his delm.

I’m not sure what to make of the bit about Val Con looking enough like Pat Rin to be “a younger edition of himself”. That seems too specific to be just family resemblance, particularly since Cheever’s met enough of Pat Rin’s relatives to have some range on the family resemblance already, although those were second cousins, and Val Con is a first cousin. A side effect of Line yos’Phelium gene-selecting for delm traits, maybe? Val Con was bred to be delm, and Pat Rin is descended from those bred to be delms even if he wasn’t himself (and he might have been, despite his mother, if the old delm had hope of getting the bloodline back on track). Or maybe the resemblance is not only genetic but also increased by a similarity of expression or attitude arising from a similarity of melant’i: Val Con, the delm of Korval, and Pat Rin, who might have been delm of Korval and has certainly been the something-very-like-a-delm of Surebleak. Anyway, it explains why people are going to mistake them for brothers when they start being seen in the same places.

After all the worry Pat Rin spent on showing up in front of the delm wearing a pilot jacket he doesn’t feel entitled to, Val Con doesn’t give it a second look until Pat Rin draws attention to it. Apparently, he doesn’t find anything implausible in the idea of Pat Rin having qualified as a pilot since they last met.

I Dare – Chapter 55

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Solcintra
Liad

In which the Captain acts for the safety of the passengers.

The mode of Ultimate Authority, which is referred to twice in this chapter, has, perhaps unsurprisingly, not come up much before: three times in the series up to this point. Priscilla adopts it briefly when putting Sav Rid Olanek in his place at the end of Conflict of Honors; Commander of Agents is said in Carpe Diem to use it when dealing with his underlings; and Val Con, greeting the Tree in Plan B, places the Tree in the position of ultimate authority.

The fact that it’s used twice in this chapter, and by whom, is the central conflict in a nutshell: the first is Commander of Agents again, and the second is Miri when she takes on the melant’i of Liad’s Captain. And I think it says something that, whereas Miri adopts the mode temporarily and in a situation where she is in fact the duly-appointed ultimate authority until the emergency is resolved, the Commander is not only self-appointed but apparently expects to be regarded as the ultimate authority all the time.

There’s a leap near the end of the chapter that I’ve never been able to follow. After the doomsday weapons are activated, ter’Fendil says he can deactivate them if Val Con gives him the control device, and Val Con does. Then it cuts to another scene, and when it cuts back everybody’s running for their lives and talking about the urgent need to do something before the weapons break out and start killing everybody. Is there something missing, or is it just me missing something?