Liveship Traders

[CLAWS]

Hi folks,

I am sure it is in the 2nd book but if anyone knows better, feel free to correct me.

In one of the books Ronica Vestrit is remembering one of Keffrias births. The child born was supposed to be something grotesque and was growling and screaming or something. Effron Vestrit had to take the child away.

Hobb never says where the child was taken and what the child was/was a result of.

Any ideas on this or am I just reading into this too much?

 

[The Curious Orange]

Hi folks,

I am sure it is in the 2nd book but if anyone knows better, feel free to correct me.

In one of the books Ronica Vestrit is remembering one of Keffrias births. The child born was supposed to be something grotesque and was growling and screaming or something. Effron Vestrit had to take the child away.

Hobb never says where the child was taken and what the child was/was a result of.

Any ideas on this or am I just reading into this too much?

I assume this was because the Bingtown traders were related to the Rain River traders, and had occasionally interbred, and every so often you'd get these genetic throwbacks. The child would have been taken and raised by the Rain River traders.

 

[Overread]

Been a while, but I never got the impression that the Rainwald Traders ever took the children on, or that they were the result of interbreeding. Possibly an extended influence of the dragon causing mutation, but were not Rainwald children born without the changes? (correct me if I am wrong on this front).
Infact I always thought they became the seadragons, early on in the books - though later on this becomes an unlikly evntuality.
The children could also be the result of the Rainwald River and its acids affecting local water supplies; however I also recall that the slaves and I think the newsettlers in Bingtown did not have mutated children - either that points to a more genetic link or it was an area that was not touched upon by the book - remember that the slaves only became established very recently.

 

[BranBlue]

I've just finished re-reading the first of the Liveship Traders books and, as always, I'm loving them.

To confirm, whilst it doesn't explicitly say why some children are born different, it is clear that these children are killed at birth. Ronica thinks of this as one of the taints of the 'pact' between the Rain Wild Traders and the Bingtown Traders and speaks of it as the fathers duty to strangle and dispose of the children. This is used to highlight Kyle's lack of understanding of what it means to be a Trader when he ignores the fact that Keffria has given birth to one of these mutated children during one of his voyages.

 

[Overread]

Killed?
Its never that clear - and for a long while into the books I thought that the strange babies were dumped into the sea and became the sea serpents. Later I reviesed this to the strange -- name escapes me -- slug things (the ones that captured the lead sea serpent)

 

[Alexa]

My impression was that the taint babies were sent to Rain Wild Traders, as an old agreement between the Bingtown Traders and the Rain Wild Traders.

Ther Rain Traders were really proud when the first scales appeared on the faces of their children. It was like a noble think that made them to be more appreciated in thier close society. Both societies knew they made a mistake when they used the cocoons for tehir own purposes.

Sea serpents were the future dragons and we could see dragons were really high above humans, in their mind anyway. The Food loved them especially because of their arrogance and the lesson of humility humans had to learn.