Honor's grandparent(s)

Could one of them be a MAlignment rogue/lost alpha
line ?

TangoLima wrote:Could one of them be a MAlignment rogue/lost alpha
line ?

I doubt it. Honors Beowulfan family are the Benton Ramirez y Chou - that's more or less the beowulfan equivalent of a royal family (if Beowulf would have something like that - because the Benton-Ramirez' and the Chou's led the efforts to revive the ruined Earth after the Final war). But because of the status of both beowulfan family trees it is highly unlikely that something like that could happen there.
And the Harringtons? They are one of the families with the highest number of Treecat-adoptations through the centuries. The risk, that something about the MAlign would leak through a freak accident is inacceptable. At least for someone as paranoid as the Detweilers had to be.

Her fathers parents specifically.
There are alpha lines that are NOT under Mesan control.

TangoLima wrote:Her fathers parents specifically.
There are alpha lines that are NOT under Mesan control.

Well, for sure the Harringtons fit the profile. Known to be genies. Legally immigrated centuries ago. Worked diligently and intelligently to become highly regarded members of the community/society. Rose to prominence Just-in-Time for the final whatever of the Detweiller plan with absolute antislavery credentials.

pappilon wrote:

TangoLima wrote:Her fathers parents specifically.
There are alpha lines that are NOT under Mesan control.

Well, for sure the Harringtons fit the profile. Known to be genies. Legally immigrated centuries ago. Worked diligently and intelligently to become highly regarded members of the community/society. Rose to prominence Just-in-Time for the final whatever of the Detweiller plan with absolute antislavery credentials.

There is one small, furry problem with that hypothesis.

It's called 'the treecats would have turned them into lunch meat by now'. Being mentally bonded to furry telempathic lie detectors who can pulp any given human would put a bit of a roadblock on the road to Total Galactic Domination.

The direct answer to the question is no.

To expand a bit, the alpha, beta, and gamma lines are Mesan categories (or Alignment) into which they grouped the results of their own modifications.

Not all modifying has been Mesan. In fact there was gene modifying going on before Leonard Detweiller happened by and got himself in a huff and went off to Mesa.

Both the Meyerdahl and the Winton mods fall into that category, iirc. Honor is the direct descendant of immigrants who immigrated from Meyerdahl to Sphinx.

Usually the best sources for this sort of info is in the books. The YA series tells the story of Stephanie Harrington and Lyonheart. A delightful read.

Also, RFC has recently commented on this in another thread on the forum.

Don

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pappilon wrote:Well, for sure the Harringtons fit the profile. Known to be genies. Legally immigrated centuries ago. Worked diligently and intelligently to become highly regarded members of the community/society. Rose to prominence Just-in-Time for the final whatever of the Detweiller plan with absolute antislavery credentials.

roseandheather wrote:There is one small, furry problem with that hypothesis.

It's called 'the treecats would have turned them into lunch meat by now'. Being mentally bonded to furry telempathic lie detectors who can pulp any given human would put a bit of a roadblock on the road to Total Galactic Domination.

TangoLima wrote:Her fathers parents specifically.
There are alpha lines that are NOT under Mesan control.

But treecats can't really read minds and if they are not under Mesan Control, how does a treecat actually pick that out of the welter of junk that happens in the brains of humans. As was stated by his celeryship in a nother thread: Im just going about mu business, nothing to say here. But probably not exactly not those words.

But what if they didn't know they were an "Alpha"? Something like RAH's "Lost Howards". An accident occurs when they were a small child and they get lost in the shuffle. Maybe a deep posted observer on Meyerdahl, aircar accident ( those do come in so handy, don't they ) both parents die tragically and the kid goes up for adoption. Mesa can't find the kid to bring them back into the fold.

Not saying it would be that plausible, but this is the "Honorverse" we are playing in.
And here long shots are a way of life.

jdtinIA wrote:But what if they didn't know they were an "Alpha"? Something like RAH's "Lost Howards". An accident occurs when they were a small child and they get lost in the shuffle. Maybe a deep posted observer on Meyerdahl, aircar accident ( those do come in so handy, don't they ) both parents die tragically and the kid goes up for adoption. Mesa can't find the kid to bring them back into the fold.

Not saying it would be that plausible, but this is the "Honorverse" we are playing in.
And here long shots are a way of life.

Actually we can pretty much rule it out. The Harringtons have been on planet for a really long time. Back to Stephanie, her parents were basically not the kind of people who would be part of the MAlign plan.

Dad was basically a vet as I recall and mom a science person/mom. They clearly had no interest in taking over anything and they were the first of their lines on the planet. And they came in more or less when the whole Detweiler Plan was just beginning. Unlikely to be part of anything like that. They were already a long way off in terms of travelling time.

ldwechsler wrote:

jdtinIA wrote:But what if they didn't know they were an "Alpha"? Something like RAH's "Lost Howards". An accident occurs when they were a small child and they get lost in the shuffle. Maybe a deep posted observer on Meyerdahl, aircar accident ( those do come in so handy, don't they ) both parents die tragically and the kid goes up for adoption. Mesa can't find the kid to bring them back into the fold.

Not saying it would be that plausible, but this is the "Honorverse" we are playing in.
And here long shots are a way of life.

Actually we can pretty much rule it out. The Harringtons have been on planet for a really long time. Back to Stephanie, her parents were basically not the kind of people who would be part of the MAlign plan.

Dad was basically a vet as I recall and mom a science person/mom. They clearly had no interest in taking over anything and they were the first of their lines on the planet. And they came in more or less when the whole Detweiler Plan was just beginning. Unlikely to be part of anything like that. They were already a long way off in terms of travelling time.

I find the possibility intriguing. I agree that the primary Harrington lineage is probably not directly descended from a lost Mesan lineage... but what about Alfred's mother? Or anyone who married a Harrington over the centuries, I suppose. They don't reproduce by binary fission, you know!

It would be a nice bit of irony if an accidental Meyerdahl-Alignment crossing had created the "telempathy gene," given the Alignment's failure to accomplish anything with the treecat they kidnapped. Also, given what Honor did(and what Raoul will probably do), hoisted by their own petard!