> More seriously, I think I was arguing for Serioli tech here, and asserting > that the know-how to build Spellbreaker, Blackwand, Pathfinder, etc. etc. > would make the Serioli serious adversaries of the pre-interregnum Empire, > esp. given the arms-race condition of the confrontation, and likely to > undergo an industrial-revolution-type information explosion. I don't see > the (user-controlled?) soul-destroying nature of the weapons being > relevant to my argument given the military value of their other features. > OTOH perhaps trellanstone is needed for Great Weapon production, or > there's a Tolkienesque only-so-and-so could build the Silmarils. I think that one has to posit a limit on Great Weapon manufacturing capability, if only because the Empire *did* beat the Serioli. Plus the allegation that there are only 17 of the things. What form that limit takes, I couldn't say. I agree that possessing large quantities of them would have given the Serioli a hard-to-beat edge. I brought up the point of "unwilling to use soul-destroying weapons" because there's no particular evidence that basic Morganti weaponry can't be mass-produced. But such weaponry is clearly not "user-controlled" in regards to destroying souls. [At least in non-Serioli hands -- it just now occurs to me that they might be able to control them better...] > But if one wants to argue within Brust's framework here for why the > Serioli got wiped out, I think one would have to suspect the gods > (or the Cycle) played a leading role in the "cleansing". Well, according to Sethra, the Serioli themselves blame the gods. Given the lack of any denial, I'd rank that higher than a suspicion. Alexx Alexx Kay Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employers alexx at world.std.com http://world.std.com/~alexx "At some point during all this, the rational everyday self that is frantically trying to weave all this alien sensory input into something that at least nods to conventional reality, very sensibly takes the coward's way out. It gives up, shouts "Danger, Will Robinson" a couple of times, then shoots out blue sparks and falls on its side. It dies." -- Alan Moore in correspondence with Dave Sim about _From Hell_