Robert Sallade wrote: > > I believe that in Dragon, Vlad relates why armor and the technology of > battle has been held in check. Basically because of the sorcerous arms > race. As technology is mostly driven by the need to improve defensive > capability, and the Dragaerans rely on sorcery, it is only logical > that they would stay much the same. > ? You've lost me, here. Are you saying that *all* technology is mostly defensive driven? That's clearly wrong; cf. Gimpel's =The Medieval Machine= for just one selection of counterexamples. Or are you saying that military technology is mostly defensive driven? Again, I'd have to disagree. Most of the 20th century arms race seems to have been driven by the need for offensive capability, and I think you could make the same case for the 16th-17th century revolution in arms as well. The very most one could claim is that technology is equally driven by both, as one side tries to outdo the other. You can see that phenomenon happening most clearly in the evolution of the capital ship from about 1855 to 1940-ish. But since then, more effort has gone to the offensive side of the scale, I feel. > > > The technological state assumes that the Empire is still agrarian and > therefore cannot sustain an extremely large population so I'd think > that 15 to 20 million would be the best it could do. With that number > of people there is bound to be socio-economic and geographical > differences in the manner of speech. > This seems much too conservative. Agrarian France had 26M+; Britain, 5.6M+. Europe as a whole could not have been less than 60M, and the Empire is *at least* as large as Europe, to judge from travelling times (before teleportation, that is). China must have had at least 100M. . . . ah, I just pulled out my Braudel. In 1650, he cites a population for europe (including European Russia) of 100M; for Asia, of 250-330M; for Africa, of 100M. Your figures would lead to an extremely depopulated Empire, by human--er, Easterner (-: --standards. Not impossible, if the birthrate is extremely low. But to be that low, I'd say that all our expectations of what an Empire is, or does, or functions would be wildly off; the scale simply wouldn't translate to any experiences you care to name. There are hints. We certainly see noble families with few offspring (although one would suspect the Teckla to offset this, and if they make up 90% of the population, they probably do). OTOH, we also see an Empire large enough & complicated enough to have as one of its main functions the balancing of trade of natural resources & food from one part of itself to the other. So it has to be more than a simple agrarian society. Finally, if the Empire *is* as depopulated as you would guess, based largely on the difference in life expectancy, what of the Easterners? *They* should be plentiful, & pushing on the boundaries in their teeming hordes constantly. Yet over time, one gets the impression that both sides have pushed themselves into equilibrium. the Dragaerans have advantages, of course. But one gets the impression that the Empire has just a bit of population pressure within itself helping to turn the attention of various warlords eastwardly. Snarkhunter