On Wed, Aug 21, 2002 at 12:28:17AM -0600, Erik Holmes <ErikHolmes at sfcn.org> wrote: > > 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. > > I always thought this was obvious. They haven't had time or the desire to. > Yet. Adrons disaster left the Empire pretty weak and as Aliera said in > Yendi: > > "We're just getting on our feet, Sethra. We can't afford to go off East with > tens of thousands of troops until we're sure the Empire is stable." > > Unless Vlad can put a stop to it, I won't be surprised at all if the East IS > conquered. Vlad himself says that Easterners have no defense at all against > sorcery. I don't see how they could hold out with that kind of a handicap. > Sethra the Younger has been dying to invade for years it seems, and when > Sethra Lavode hears about it her only comment is: Vlad isn't in a position to know what defenses, if any, Easterners have against sorcery. Sure, he is one (by genetics), but he's lived in the Empire all his life, save one or two visits to the East... where he was probably not exactly privy to state secrets. > "... as far as I'm concerned, let her." > Ouch. If the greatest military leader on the planet thinks that there's no > harm in wandering over and conquering the East, then the Easterners chances > probably aren't that great. Or maybe Sethra knows something she isn't telling, and is taking the long view -- that Sethra the Younger should learn from the experience? > Morrolan states that the only reason Kieron the Conqueror left the > Easterners alone in the first place is so that the Dragaerans would have > someone to fight instead of each other. They get conquered every once in a > while, then throw the Dragaerans out after a few hundred or thousand years. Morrolan, again, is a little bit biased. In fact, all the characters who express an opinion here are a little bit biased. Hell, most of them are Dragons. They go to war for FUN. "But I might lose" isn't an argument against the issue. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt My Booklog: http://matthew.infodancer.org/booklog/index.jsp My Weblog: http://matthew.infodancer.org/weblog/index.jsp