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Jensal has a lot of work to do. Her house is going to collapse; nobody had better be inside when it does. She is briskly bundling adult miracles into groups who have at least one decent job between them, she is writing to agencies that handle adoption for the ultimate disposition of kids who don't get picked up because she's reasonably sure that they will not all get picked up, and when parents do drop by to collect their little ones she is signing papers for every set of them with slightly gritted teeth. Lots to do. Her hand is cramping from paperwork and she doesn't care.
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shrennaki
"Yeah, definitely," Mial agrees. He makes this a list item: Names can gain syllables even if that person has previously given that syllable to someone else.
"What, even from humans or whatever?" asks the blue opal.
shrennaki
"Yes! My mother has already given away all her halfway good ones. It's a pointless arbitrary limitation and I like getting rid of those."
"But people who don't have magic names don't really get it automatically," says Aurin. "Having to ration the syllables makes sure they think about it and are assigning some meaning to it instead of just being like - 'yeah, whatever'. I'd rather be turned down than get a 'yeah whatever'."
shrennaki
"Okay, yes, but like, you can explain that it's important and meaningful," he says. "Whereas mere words will not suffice to fix the problems of someone who happens to have a short name and a lot of close dragonish friends."
Aurin shrugs. The blue opal is tapping her chin thoughtfully.
"I think this runs the risk of - running away with us," says the jade guy. "It is possible to get a syllable from the same person twice, even if this usually only comes up if you marry a longtime friend - we don't actually know if it's possible to do it more times because they're scarce resources and those people either save their syllables or only have two different ones to begin with. If you make it so these project-type people can have fifteen-syllable personal names and everybody can pile on as many syllables as they want I don't think any amount of explaining will prevent inflation."
"I think this runs the risk of - running away with us," says the jade guy. "It is possible to get a syllable from the same person twice, even if this usually only comes up if you marry a longtime friend - we don't actually know if it's possible to do it more times because they're scarce resources and those people either save their syllables or only have two different ones to begin with. If you make it so these project-type people can have fifteen-syllable personal names and everybody can pile on as many syllables as they want I don't think any amount of explaining will prevent inflation."
shrennaki
"Okay, so which is worse, inflation or arbitrary scarcity?" asks Mial. "I think arbitrary scarcity is worse. And I think that since our entire starting population of third-siahrs is going to consist of non-dragonish people, we'd better allow long names or a lot of people are going to have to make hard decisions about which two syllables they are most attached to for no especially good reason."
The jade frowns. "My niece sent me and she's got a three-syllable name, but doing nothing at all to control inflation of the meaning of added syllables seems like a mistake."
"Cap how many times you can get one from the same person at two if it's not already there," says the turquoise. "Next."
"Cap how many times you can get one from the same person at two if it's not already there," says the turquoise. "Next."
shrennaki
Mial flashes a smile at the turquoise. List item: (Names can gain at most two syllables from the same person), parenthesized because it is a fix for the previous item rather than its own desideratum as such.
"Okay, what else... for vicarious vanity reasons I kind of want third-siahrs to be able to choose where their natural colour appears on their assumed forms," he says. "Any principled objections to that one?"
"Okay, what else... for vicarious vanity reasons I kind of want third-siahrs to be able to choose where their natural colour appears on their assumed forms," he says. "Any principled objections to that one?"
"Reduced recognition of humanoid standards," says a white miracle.
"Why should they have to have natural color anywhere at all?" asks Kaylo. "Is there a miraculous reason?"
"Why should they have to have natural color anywhere at all?" asks Kaylo. "Is there a miraculous reason?"
shrennaki
"There's no miraculous reason particularly, I see no reason to make them have natural colour anywhere if they really don't want to, but having natural colour somewhere seems like a pretty reasonable default. For, yeah, recognition reasons."
"It seems like this would make, mm, subterfuge, easier?" says the blue opal. "I mean, plenty of color/species combinations can do this already, but making it even easier to pretend to be just a bird or something seems worth thinking about first or you're looking at a dumb thriller plot."
shrennaki
"I'm not sure dumb thriller plots are a huge concern... but yes, that is a point."
"I know somebody who would have liked to have his patina color available instead of the orange version," says the obsidian, "though whether minor cosmetic vanity is your concern here I don't quite know."
shrennaki
"Sure, why not, that too," says Mial.
List item: Location of natural colour in assumed forms can be intentionally varied (rust/patina/tarnish versions available for relevant metals)
"So you, vaguely familiar-looking jade guy—"
List item: Location of natural colour in assumed forms can be intentionally varied (rust/patina/tarnish versions available for relevant metals)
"So you, vaguely familiar-looking jade guy—"
"Naraxalar," says the jade guy.
shrennaki
"―Naraxalar, sure," he says, grinning. "You said your niece sent you, does she want to be a third-siahr? Might she have opinions, should you go get her so she can express them?"
"She's a thudia, she didn't think she was invited," says Narax. "But yes, she's interested. I can swap her in if she's welcome after all."
shrennaki
"She is welcome. Dragons were invited principally because it's easy to make announcements to them and their knowledge and opinions are likely to be relevant, not because I yearn to host a large gathering of dragons."
Narax gets up and teleports away and comes back with a blonde elf adolescent and pats her on the he head and teleports away again.
"Oh, hi, Kaylo," she says to Kaylo.
"Hi," he says back.
"Oh, hi, Kaylo," she says to Kaylo.
"Hi," he says back.
shrennaki
"Hi, Naraxalar's niece!" Mial gestures to the chalkboard. "Here's the current list of characteristics third-siahrs are going to have."
The list reads, very conveniently in Leraal:
"Thoughts?"
The list reads, very conveniently in Leraal:
- No esu
- No spontaneous death
- No dragon magic
- No name expiration
- Ten forms for everyone
- Black-group dragon senses for everyone
- Same chance for lights, sorcerers, mages as non-siahr Elcenians
- Everyone Is Unusual, red- and white-group onset at age ninety-five
- Names can gain syllables even if that person has previously given that syllable to someone else
- (Names can gain at most two syllables from the same person)
- Personal names can have arbitrary length
- Location of natural colour in assumed forms can be intentionally varied (rust/patina/tarnish versions available for relevant metals)
"Thoughts?"
"Is anybody going to be unique?" wonders Naraxalar's niece. "Dragons have higher channeling capacity than other people and we're not entirely sure why, will that persist? Can it?"
(Kaylo applauds slightly. She smiles at him.)
(Kaylo applauds slightly. She smiles at him.)
shrennaki
"Uniques happen naturally because of variations in levels of dragon magic, what third-siahrs have instead doesn't naturally come in varying levels because I'm inventing it out of thin air, I may yet decide to incorporate uniques but as of now I haven't. Lazarus! Why do dragons have higher channeling capacity than other people?"
"Minding that this is all about the mean and you can find very high and very low CCs in any species," Kaylo puts in, "fairies and pixies have none as larvae but a lot as adults, more so for pixies than fairies, but for almost every other species it appears to correlate with species lifespan, albeit extremely nonlinearly, with vampires only having the same average as humans - I'll spare you the woolgathering that's been wasted on extrapolating from that - and it's higher in developed countries."