cthia wrote:ThinksMarkedly wrote:I'm not saying they would be bad. I'm saying we have no evidence for their being good and I see no upside in risking a memory singer for this either.
You can't keep saying things like "risk a Memory Singer." If a Memory Singer decides this is what she wants to do, let her do it. She just might have been impacted by the aftermath of Oyster Bay in a way that forces her true hands to want to ensure that that disaster never happens again.
Well we can to a certain point, because isn't Samantha one of perhaps a dozen treecats in over 2 centuries that had the mind-voice to be a memory singer
and chose the adoption bond over staying with The People? Compared to the overall treecat population, Memory Singers are pretty rare due to their mind-voice strength. An adopted treecat, memory singer or not, you can't really stop them from going into danger, again see Samantha as an example even when she was with Harold Tschu.
But
unadopted Memory Singers would be practically clubbed over the head and tied up to prevent them going into potential danger. Out of all the volunteer guard cats, I don't think even one are memory singers. They seem to understand their best place is only going so far as Mount Royal to experience mind-glows directly of the Humans who need to be guarded or having other treecats get them first, and singing those same mind-glows to the volunteer scouts who then choose who they'd be compatible with. Interestingly it sounds close to the same process that was described for how the cats were conspiring to get the various Royal Heirs catted.
iirc aren't all memory songs basically first-person? If true, then a Memory Singer accompanying a spy and acquiring some kind of technical data would have exactly the same first-person (first-cat?) POV as a former scout (like Nimitz or Clean Killer). To any cat who sees that memory thereafter, it has no differences so why would you risk an unadopted Memory Singer to get
exactly the same memory?
From the Human agent perspective, in most cases you're generally going to want a former scout with you. They're going to be far more experienced and practiced at staying out of sight, moving silently, moving around for good vantage points, better at detecting as-yet undetected presences, better at spotting things that don't quite belong, better at attacking if necessary, and so on and so forth.
Yes a memory singer can experience & learn much of that in one manner or another, but that doesn't mean they can instantly become their clan's top scout just from a few mnemonic experiences. First they'd need to gain the knowledge and then they'd need to practice and practice so it becomes habitual & second-nature. Adopted Memory Singer you can't stop them, but they'd also have that much more personal reason to practice until they are among the best of the best of the best scouts.
tldr: adopted memory singers can and will go out no matter the dangers their place is with their two-leg. Unadopted ones are rightfully held back or prevented from going out because their risk-taking is unnecessary and not worth what little benefits they might provide due to their rarity.
