Dragaera

Where's the technology?

Tue Apr 12 12:38:18 PDT 2005

Or rather, where's the development of Easterner society?

The recorded history of mankind on Terra is 7000 - 8000 years. In that time,
we've managed to grow from primitive cave men to industrialized, high-tech
people. (Admittedly, some parts of the world are still basically primitive
cavemen, though those last bastions of the Primitive are dwindling.)

Meanwhile, Easterners have existed in a land of their own for almost 30
times that long, yet they still live a lifestyle that we would probably
think of as mideaval and that your average Dragaeran considers  barbaric.

No Dragaeran Emperor has ever conquered the East. Blackchapel is at the
furthest edge of the Empire's penetration, yet it's only a few days/weeks
>from the Empire itself. Fenario and countless other Eastern lands lie in
places where the Empire is a rumor and a legend. Wars with the Empire can't
really account for the stagnation that the East appears to be subject to.
(In fact, if history is a guide, war tends to drive technological innovation
rather than stifle it.)

So, why has the East remained in this state some 3000 generations of men
after the founding of the Empire? The Empire is only 66 generations old and
sorcery IS their technology so we can see that they are, in fact, developing
at a rapid pace all things considered. The East, by contrast, appears to
almost be frozen in time when they ought to be making the same sorts of
strides in philosphy, science and technology that our own ancestors were
able to make. The moreso because someone, somewhere ought to have preserved
some relics of the original Terran settlers. 

Are the Gods deliberately keeping the Easterners in check in order to
realize their anti-Jenoine agenda? Granted that the Cool Stuff theory is at
work here but even that ought to have an in-character explanation.