Well, I can't type nearly as fast as you. Some brief rejoinders follow. On Wed, 8 Jan 2003, Andrew Lias wrote: > >There are plenty of sharp Easterners around in Dragaera (Khaavren's > >librarian, the Marxist in Teckla/Phoenix) but relatively speaking > >I don't recall many Dragaerans acting intelligently - Khaavren, > >perhaps Pel, certainly Sethra in Orca. > > Surly the Dragon, all of the Yendi we've met, to say nothing of Mario, whom > even Vlad is in absolute awe of. Mario, Mr. "Here's a bauble that will allow you to slay the emperor, trust us" Happens-to-be-present-when-Sethra-describes-how-to-kill-the-Emperor-out-loud? Well-trained, skillful, not smart. Morrolan is a killing machine but a dolt. The Jhereg, Orca, etc. who constantly underestimate Vlad? Anyway, my "near-human intelligence" was in jest - what I was trying to get at was that Brust (mostly subtly) makes Vlad more interesting by making the surrounding characters a bit dim. That's why Sethra has to be told by Vlad to ask the Necromancer to help (somewhere early in Issola) or why Stony (a non-fighter/non-sorcerer) shows up with 2 bodyguards to take on Vlad, having forgotten that the Jhereg's best assassin and an undead Athyra wizard in his keep weren't enough to nudge him over death's door. > > >so Vlad has to remind Aliera that Pathfinder is good for looking for > >things, or teach Morrolan basic witchcraft (use your own blood) - > > On the other hand, Vlad has a very difficult time with Sorcery (even the > basics). He can teleport ok, having had about the equivalent of a Dragaeran's day to learn how, whereas plenty of Jhereg can't... Re generation time vs real time, I think we're both handwaving at this point. But anyway... > > To suggest another reason, it's a well known fact that most physicists and > mathematicians do their best work before they hit thirty. I've worked for a couple of old Nobel prize winners in physics, and man is it frightening how smart they are. Say a Dragaeran Fermi or Faraday only has 100 years of peak function - yikes. > I still think that it's implausible that they East would remain this > undeveloped for 200 THOUSAND years. We know that Dragaerans haven't been > continually invading them each and every generation. Regular invasions, on > a Dragaeran timescale, can easily leave gaps of anywhere from two to five > hundred years. For that matter, I would opine that not all reigns are prone > to staging invasions. Can you imagine the Empire in the cycle of the Tekla > doing so? I can't. If so, that's several thousand years, right there. > More than enough time for entire human civilizations to rise and fall! > Here's a negative feedback loop - Teckla reign, Easterners develop gunpowder/good steel, start incursions, Teckla reign ends so the next house can deal, Sethra the Younger's great-grandmother stomps the Easterners back to hunter-gatherers or Pel's great-grandaunt sows discord between the Hungarians and the Czechs etc. Or the local Eastern powers-that-be keep the tech level down to prevent the above... Re the physics stuff, see the other branch of the thread, plus I think you're overlooking the fact that for 200 millennia pre-interregnum, 20th century technology would be pretty nifty. > I don't see any indication that Dragaeran engineering, physics and chemistry > isn't advanced... In a spell-based world, a little tech can be a great thing - see Kiera's reaction to an air-plunger on a thread. Combinations of tech and magic could be devastating in battle, but don't seem to be in use so... - Philip