> Why bother with an internal combustion engine, when you can teleport? > Y'know, aside from Vlad's trick in the Paths of the Dead, I can't recall an instance where someone teleported an inanimate object to Vlad or vice-versa. Are there any such instances? The internal combustion engine example might as well apply to cart and horse. Why move a heavy load in a cart when you can just teleport it, unless you can't move an inanimate object without it having a "connection" to a living being who is traveling along with it? I have the impression that teleportation is a moderately difficult skill. Anyone with the talent and desire could probably learn it but many who lack one or both of those traits simply get around the old-fashioned way or depend on professional sorcerers to act as taxis. Given that Tekla make up the bulk of the population and that most are only slightly educated and thus unable to teleport themselves, you'd think that you'd have a ready audience waiting for a technological labor-saving solution to the transportation (or any other) problem. Of course, this may simply say that the only people who have the leisure to invent something like an internal combustion engine are the middle-upper class that have no need of it and so don't waste engergy on it. So, in a round about way, the original argument stands. *heh*