rereading gtn in preparation for nona and like. there was NO rule saying the whole canaan house shindig had to be competitive. the invitation specifically said that jod would be happy to have EIGHT new lyctors. theoretically everyone could have treated the lyctoral trials as a group project (other than you know who, who obviously would have intervened if this had happened), figured it out together, and all become lyctors if they so chose. but half the houses have chronic Shady Bitch Disease so they jumped right to treating it as a race and keeping secrets from each other. this perhaps should have been jod’s first sign that this wasn’t the best group to pick new lyctors from if he wanted to avoid another 10000 years of weird infighting.