On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 05:24:00PM -0700, Jerry Friedman wrote: > Indeed. For all we know, it could use left-over sorcerous energy > to *raise* the energy of the infrared in Furnacelight, thus > shifting it up to orange and supplying more energy for crops. > (It would also scatter the light, but that wouldn't make much > difference to the available energy.) Actually, I think scattered light is better for plants -- they're bathed in light from all directions, vs. having a sharply preferred direction, with a lot of their leaves getting in the way of each other. > to preserve topsoil have been known for a long time. Anyway, > if you can use sorcery to heal people, you can use it to fix > nitrogen, even if you don't know what nitrogen is. Not to > mention phosphorus, potassium, and all those micronutrients > that fertilizer makers want me to pay a lot of money for. Also, if the Orb can control tectonics and major storms for 200,000 years, it may be able to quietly hold or shuffle topsoil around. Hmm. Maybe such things were the primary function, at least in Zerika I's mind, and sorcery was developed as a side effect. -xx- Damien X-)