Rubber Band Man wrote:
Interesting how Sarine is starting to cut in Jon to what she's planning, but is neglecting Sara, whos in just as deep as them.
More so since Sara seems to be able to kill people and get away from it very fast.
But only in Veracia. The distinction is important. In Veracia and Farrel, the odd bit of death via magical violence just sort of goes unnoticed. The concept of "wrongful death" doesn't seem to exist there, or if it does, it doesn't evoke much of a reaction unless perpetrated against somebody important (and not always even then). In Tsuiraku, by contrast, we have known since
very early in the story that the citizenry is intolerant of wrongful death, to the point of siccing lawyers on the perps. If a culture is sufficiently advanced (or decayed, depending on your perspective...) to have lawyers involved in the aftermath of deaths, it'll almost certainly be advanced enough to investigate those deaths very carefully. Maybe Sara and the other Ensigerum time ninjas can "get away from it very fast," but a dogged, magically-assisted investigation will eventually track them down. Similar questions exist with the elves: wading into Veracia with a military death squad may not attract much attention until the city starts to burn down, but it ain't gonna be that way in Tsuiraku.
This, by the way, is teeing up an interesting plot question related to an earlier Forum thread. The elves have a pretty extensive intelligence-gathering network in Veracia and Farrel, between the rangers and oddballs like the late Melrin. It's not clear that they have anything comparable in Tsuiraku -- rangers and others who conceal themselves via illusion are likely to be detected (Bani's fashion statement notwithstanding), and the ambassador and his pals are only around every 20 years or so. So do they
know that there are big cultural differences between Tsuiraku and the non-magical barbarians in the cultures where they do have spies? One of the surest paths to catastrophe in war is failure to understand one's enemy.