Re: Coyns

I like it that someone is trying to come up with symbols for coyns.
I wonder how much artistic unity they have -- and why some Droyne are
crazy enough to make some sets out of uranium!  Good luck, Hans!

The concept for an Ancient-era coyn for Eskayloyt is interesting, but
it should probably be expressed as "Homeworld", since presumably at
that point it had not yet been lost.  Also, the Ancient period lasted
long enough that it's possible that the "Human" and "Vargr" coyns were
added before the Final War; humans, at least, were fairly well
integrated into quite a number of Ancient societies -- about half, if
the figures for the 3rd Imperium discovering evidence for some 90+ human
minor races and charting some 200+ Ancient sites are accurate.  The old
symbolic implications of those coyns were probably fairly interesting....

I'm not quite sure about the "native beast" replacements, but I don't have
a better suggestion.  "Innocent bystander" races from the Ancient period
that got wiped out by collateral fire in the Final War?  No, that's not
it either.

Hans Ranke [email removed] writes:

>3) Grandfather modified the coyns on later visits and introduced the Aslan,
>   Hiver and K'kree coyns (at least). [_Secret of The Ancients_ p 32].

Note that all six species represented on the coyns are important powers.
Yaskoydray didn't accidentally pick a "minor" race that didn't make it.
And of those six, five developed hyperdrive independently.  It makes one
wonder if he didn't use something like the Zhodani core artifact to peer
into the future.  Or tamper with _TRS Pathfinder_ so that the Aslan got
jump drive just before they could blow themselves into oblivion.  Either
way, it suggests that all this "Six Races" nonsense is literally a self-
fulfilling prophecy.

>Voyages         A sailing ship.

Or a STL starship -- the pre-Ancient Droyne did have tech-10 without jump
drive for thousands of years before the Ancient period; they even had a
couple of interstellar colonies.


Also, note some interesting coyn relationships from the table:

Genesis | Aspiration | Sacrifice | Defeat | Death | Achievement
  The life cycle.  Observe the droyne lesson; one is born, dreams,
  makes sacrifices (for the common good?), meets eventual defeat,
  then death, but *then* attains true achievement.  Defeat and death
  are not the victor.  Is this droyne philosophy peeking out?  Or
  even a droyne concept of the after-life?  Interesting.

Darkness | Cold | Noise | Signal | Heat | Light
  A progressively more positive line of "energy" or "positive entropy".
  Note how the pairs work.  The "Void--Fire" series also may work like
  this.

Beast | Mercenary | Voyages | Justice | Chance | Phoenix
  Think of this like the "energy" sextet.  It would then pair from
  closest to most extreme as:  Voyages/Justice, Merc/Chance, Beast/Phoenix.

  Steve Bonneville
  [email removed]