> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 14:44:44 -0700 (PDT), lazarus wrote: > >On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Robert Sallade wrote: > > > >Sorry - I was using "industrial" loosely - in the Dragaeran context > >sorcery is industry. In the snippage I said the updated Orb might be > >"a cleaner technology". > > But we still don't know what it does, exactly, and how it interacts > with the vegetation on Dragaera. What if the only thing it cuts from > the sun's radiation is a specific element of the visible spectrum, and > the plants have evolved (or been engineered with) an alternate form of > photosynthesis? Perhaps something less than detrimental comes from the Overcast. It might "rain fertilizer" in Dragaera, some portion of the Overcast coming down in the rain providing a supplement that offsets the lack of sunlight. Or maybe that just explains the topsoil.