On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 10:01:14 -0700 (PDT), you wrote: > > >On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Chris Turkel wrote: > >> >> On Jul 23, 2004, at 11:42 AM, Jose Marquez wrote: >> >> > Philip Hart wrote: > >> >> I've long wondered how the agrarian Dragaerans (say that 3x fast) >> >> managed to cope with the overcast. Perhaps they've been experiencing >> >> diminishing crop yields for many cycles now... Also maintaining good >> >> topsoil for 200k years is probably difficult. >> > >> > Magic? >> >> Thats the big thing that changes the standard equation; magic. > > >Anybody know anything about agriculture? I can vaguely imagine that >it's possible to fix nitrogen in the soil by sorcery, but I can't see >how the (pre-Interregnum) Empire could do that on many millions of >acres multiple times per generation. And I think that doesn't help with >erosion (do we know that the Teckla till? [3x fast again]). > >And I certainly don't see how the calories the plants miss because of the >overcast can be replaced. > >So perhaps that's one damper on the development of Dragaeran society. Or perhaps the plants were as manipulated by the Jenoine as the humans/Dragaerans were, to enable them to thrive under the overcast. Heck, we still don't know what the Overcast actually /is/, do we? What parts of sunlight does it block? How much?