{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2351",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2351,
    "subject": "Palaemon",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-08-16T01:42:26+00:00",
    "last": "2000-08-16T01:42:26+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0029-0163@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-08-16T01:42:26+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Palaemon",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "        Judging from comments Gurloes made to Sev shortly after the trip to\nthe library, Gurloes must then be about fifty years old. He refers to his\nown \"...hard boyhood. For it was harder, much harder, forty years ago, I'll\ntell you.\" He is talking, of course, about his own time as an apprentice.\nPalaemon is older, but I don't know how much older--ten to twenty years\nwould be my guess. Sev, it would seem, is about seventeen years old at this\npoint, a year before he became journeyman. We know, from Roche's comment to\nSev the night they went to the House Azure, \"Eata's your second, isn't he?\nHe won't make a journeyman for four years, so he'll be captain for three\nafter you.\", that apprenticeship in the guild ends at a fixed age. That age,\nI judge, to be about eighteen, if not younger, because Thecla, early on in\nthe year she was imprisoned, can wound his young male ego with comments\nabout his beard shooting up like the spring lilies and that he \"...should be\nbluer of cheek than the run of common men,...\"--the implication being that\nhe was not yet a man. Also Sev noted that \"...one was not firmly and finally\na member of the guild until one consented as an adult to the connection.\" If\nthe apprentice does not choose to leave the guild at that age, he\nautomatically becomes a journeyman, that is, that rank is unearned--unless\nyou count survival to that age as earned.\n\n        In chapter XIV, just before giving Sev _Terminus Est_, Palaemon\nremarks to him: \"Since Master Gurloes rose to journeyman, I have had no\nbetter scholar.\"\n\n        In chapter XXXIII, when Sev is about to relate his visit by the\naquastors Triskele and Malrubius, he writes: \"I am not sure how old I was\nwhen Master Malrubius died. It was a number of years before I became\ncaptain, so I must have been quite a small boy. I remember very well,\nhowever, how it was when Master Palaemon succeeded him as master of\napprentices; Master Malrubius had held that position ever since I had been\naware that such a thing existed,...\".\n\n        You see the problem, of course. If Palaemon became master of\napprentices only during Sev's lifetime, how could he have ever been Gurloes'\nteacher? He couldn't, obviously, unless he had held the position twice. The\nguild is stagnant, tradition bound, resistant to change. I take the phrase\n\"master of apprentices\" to mean just what it says--that only someone of the\nguild rank of \"Master\" can hold the position. For both of the above quotes\nto be true, Palaemon would have to have relinquished his teaching position,\nvoluntarily or not, and done so _after_ he had achieved the rank of master.\nHow and why did he lose that position? He regained it, presumably, because\nthere was no one else to take the job when Malrubius became ill. Though\nsenior (in age) to Gurloes, Palaemon does not have charge of the guild. What\ndid he do to lose his guild status and, just as relevant, when and why did\nhe return to the Matachin Tower?\n\n        The mystery is deepened by the fact that the Pelerine slave Winnoc,\nwho was whipped by Palaemon thirty years before Sev became a journeyman,\nsaid that Palaemon called himself \"Journeyman Palaemon\". If Palaemon, like\nSev, was exiled while a journeyman, when and how did he achieve the rank of\nmaster? We are told that elevations to master are \"rarer than the decades\",\nand requires the consent of \"all the living masters\". Whatever Palaemon's\noffence against the guild that got him exiled may have been, did the same\nmasters who exiled him as a journeyman then welcome him back into the fold\nand then vote him to the rank of master? I find that prospect hard to\naccept, considering that they wanted to kill Sev for _his_ offence. If\nPalaemon became a master _after_ his exile, his return to grace and\nelevation to master would have to have happened very soon after his whipping\nof Winnoc, in order for him to have been master of apprentices when Gurloes\nwas an apprentice.\n\n        Did Palaemon's return from exile come about because of something he\ndid while an exile, something so wonderful that it got him reinstated and\npromoted quickly to master? Did his replacement by Malrubius come about\nbecause he fell from grace a second time? There is no indication that the\ninstruction of the young was taken by turns--certainly Gurloes never had the\njob. What would the guild do with a disgraced master?\n\nRoy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}