>There had to have been a regression in productivity/acre during >the development of the Overcast (presumably compensated by improvements >in agriculture technique, such as the nitrogen-fixing-by-Orb I suggested >back in the thread Bryan points to), in particular relative to the East. Perhaps there IS a regression, but perhaps it doesn't matter. Relying on Paarfi to be anything other than a novelist is a dangerous proposition, but even his penchant for colorful exaggeration in the name of entertainment has its limits. That is, certain day-to-day sorts of activities have to be presented in what would seem, to a Dragaeran audience, to be a believable fashion. That is, when Paarfi talks about people eating, sleeping, dressing, going about their daily affairs; if these things are overly exaggerated, then his "audience" would find the story unbelievable and Paarfi would not be the "celebrity" that he is. Assuming this to be true, then we can see from Paarfi's writings that Dragerans have something of an iron constitution. They can withstand deprivation that would kill an Easterner and suffer few, if any, ill effects from it. Case in point: Mica, when introduced to Khaavren and company, informs them that he comes to Master Cleff's inn three times a week, where he earns a meal in exchange for performing odd jobs around the place. Judging by his interview with Tazendra, this "meal" consisted chiefly of whatever scraps of food and drink were left on the dishes he cleared away. The interview begins thusly: Tazendra bowed, then, suddenly struck by a thought, said "But, have you not said that you eat only three times a week?" [Mica replied] "Yes, My Lady, but that is twice a week more than I ate before I gained this position." So Mica claims that at some point he was eating once every five days (and that probably not terribly substantial). Khaavren and his friends do not react to this statement with either surprise or horror. Their indifference would seem to indicate that, while pitiable, Mica's situation was not particularly unbelievable. That is, they accept without hesitation or even much interest that a person can eat one time every five days and be healthy, albeit hungry. Likewise, Paarfi makes no great commotion about the idea except to illustrate how much better Mica's situation will be if Tazendra accepts him as her lackey. Looking to the Vladiad, Savn and Polyi eat only two meals a day except during harvest when his parents felt he needed to keep his strength up. In actuality, I'm assuming a morning meal; only an evening meal is specifically mentioned. This assumption seems reasonable given that Tazendra entices Mica with the prospect of four meals a day; she and her friends are aristocrats and tolerably well off, at least in the meal department. In any case, (generalizing from one example) it appears that "middle-class" peasants get by on two meals a day most of the time. The point of all that being that it appears likely that the general population of the Empire probably consumes less food than the equivalent population of Easterners would. Because of this circumstance, the lesser production caused by the Enclouding may not actually be a significant factor to the citizens of the Empire. Overall, they are as healthy and happy as the people of the East are with their larger yields. An interesting side effect of this idea is that helps to explain why South Adrilankha is the way it is. That is, Easterners require more food. They generate more refuse as a result. They have nowhere to put it, so it stacks up higher and quicker than it would in an equivalent Dragaeran neighborhood, resulting in the slum conditions in the Easterner's side of town. All of which just reinforces the general Dragaeran prejudice that Easterners are a bunch of hairy barbarians who wallow in their own filth because they're too stupid and uncivilized to do anything else. This also means that social unrest related to food shortages is likely to appear first in South Adrilankha because the Easterners will feel the effects more rapidly than the Dragaerans living next to them. In fact, they'll feel it at a time when their neighbors are just thinking of things as being a "downturn in the economy", meaning that many of these riots would be considered unjustified in the minds of the people who might otherwise be sympathetic to them. This leads once again to the reinforcement of a stereotype that Easterners are just a bunch of lazy bums who want more than they're actually entitled to but that most aren't willing to actually earn.