of course the obvious reply to this is that mario killed them all. that, or, perhaps in a society (even pre-orb-reconfiguration) where magic is so pervasive, technology isn't really necessary--why do all that exhaustiv research when one can just wave a hand? House Vallista's middle-class economic status may be in part due to some sort of deal with House Athyra--basically along the lines of, you spend your creativity along magical lines (how can magic accomplish x, for instance) and not develop alternative methods of doing it, and we will pay you handsomely for your efforts. And I imagine that alternative methods are quashed quite rapidly. I kinda see, when postulating along these lines, that House Athyra becomes rather like the oil companies of today...Hydrogen power? Solar Power? Electric Power? Garbage Power (that's a really cool successful experiment that has been hushed up--they used GARBAGE to run a car) These things are silly little things! Use Gas Power! And Oil! *mutters* Anyway... Jon PS and can we PLEASE modify the mailer so that emails originate from dragaera at dragaera.info instead of the individual? I hate mistaking the reply message as sending to the list, and then finding that I'll have to double the message in some person's inbox....again... _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/bcomm&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.msn.com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca