The Dragaerans stories aren't military sf/fantasy (thank God!), but a fairly important military question hit me this morning. After 200,000 years of war, why have neither the Dragaerans nor the Easterners been able to definitively conquer the other. There are various reasons why one group might have an advantage over the other. The Dragaerans have sorcery and incredibly deep generalship via people like Sethra Lavode -- not to mention the experience from a 3000-year lifespan. The Easterners have much higher fertility rates and reach adulthood much more quickly, and thus can beat down the Dragaerans by sheer repeated weight of numbers. But they've been in a state of relative balance for 200,000 years. Sure, things swing back and forth, but overall Faerie is Faerie and the East is the East. I find this an especially interesting question not for the military aspects, but for what the answer might imply about other things. Does the strength of sorcery depend on proximity to the Orb? Or proximity to one of the Seas of Amorphia? Is the orange sky of Faerie related to it, and if so, is it cause or effect? (It has been said on this list that the orange sky is a kind of sorcerous fog, anybody got a text reference or a Brust reference?) Whatever the reason is, we can probably learn other things from it.