Casey Rousseau <casey at the-bat.net> Sent by: dragaera-bounces at dragaera.info 01/30/06 08:09 PM To Dragaera list <dragaera at dragaera.info> cc Subject Re: the honing of Vlad >Mark A. Mandel wrote: >> As I recall, when Vlad asks Aliera how she got the ability, she STARTS >> with the bloodline/genes, and then adds something about spending 50 or 100 years or so working on the talent. It's not automatic. The >bloodline, according to Aliera, is necessary but not sufficient. >> >On the other hand, for a Dragaeran, spending 50-100 years learning >something is hardly time to scratch the surface. My feeling is that this depends a great deal on the topic being studied. I've given this particular topic a lot of consideration. (Mostly in developing the Terics Academy) How long do Dragaerans study a subject? What is their equivilent to a 4-year university course? Given that a Dragaeran's lifespan (3000 years plus or minus) is on the order of 38 times longer than ours, a simple proportional adjustment would work out to around 150 years or so. However, there's only so much information to learn on any given subject. Does it really take three decades to finish the equivilent of "College Writing 101"? My answer (for matters of military theory and tactics, anyway) was that seventeen years of intensive study would be sufficient time to grasp the subject. Of course, one might well ask (and I have) why it takes Dragaerans so long to study things? I can only conclude that the same factors that give Dragaerans a long lifespan also result in them being very slow learners, at least by our standards. (How old was Savn? 80? 90? And he still needed his hand held to perform basic medicine, after studying it for decades?) Majikjon