PotD spoiler follows: Good points, but 1) Vlad is a specialist in death - how come he never mentions rifles, if they exist? See for example the description of Temek the weapons master in chapter 2 of Yendi. 2) I still feel that the brigands we meet in PotD would be armed with muskets or blunderbusses or whatever if there was ever any firearm tech on Dragaera. And Kana or somebody would have started manufacturing flintlocks as a way to conquer territory. 3) I think my Teckla army with gatling guns vs Easterners point has stood unchallenged. 4) I don't really care about guns - if a Higher Authority decides His books are better this way that's good enough for me. I'm officially out-nitted on this subject. - Philip On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Ruhlen, Rachel Louise (UMC-Student) wrote: > > > > me to add point 4) Guns would have reappeared during the > > interregnum if they had been developed previously. > > I'm not sure that statement is believable. Just because we haven't heard > about guns, doesn't mean they didn't exist. Most of what this thread has > based its arguments on is what Vlad has told us about history as he knew > it and he was not a good history student. He says so himself. > (Paraphrase..."My father didn't like my grandfather teaching me about > Fenario, so he hired a tutor to teach me Dragaeran history, but my tutor > didn't like me and the feeling was mutual..." then somehow he indicated > that he didn't learn as much as he could have, as a result.) > > Rachel >