Wintrow (Liveship/Farseer spoilers)

[Provost]

Geographically, the Bingtown traders descend from Jamaillia, which may never have been part of the Realm of the Elderlings. That in turn would suggest that the effects of the cursed shores produced any skill ability rather than descent. Hmmm...

The edits are nothing but improvement, Farseer.

['thul]

true. the "stuff of dragons" in the bingtowners quite likely came from more recent additions, in particular the settling of the cursed shores and the rain wild river.

[Farseer]

Geographically, the Bingtown traders descend from Jamaillia, which may never have been part of the Realm of the Elderlings. That in turn would suggest that the effects of the cursed shores produced any skill ability rather than descent. Hmmm...

I actually believe that Jamaillia *was* and *is* part of the Realm of the Elderlings or, rather, as it has been named, part of the Old Empire. The fact that Fool and Pilkrop were (I believe but could be making it up...and, if it's the latter, am sure that the 'thul beings will pull me up! ) able to travel quite a way south using only Skill Pillars is significant, and the existence of the stones in the monastery where Wintrow was trained also. Not to mention the Barrens where Althea saw the simulacra dragon with the wizardwood arrow in its chest. More soon though, sorry , but I believe that the priests etc all practice the Skill which, as we know, actually has different forms and abilities within its scope eg Nettle's ability to Skill-dream is not shared by Dutiful etc

The edits are nothing but improvement, Farseer.

Aw!

Chat soon!

['thul]

yes, the pillars were said to go far south. not as far south as the fool's homeland, but quite some distance. these beings can't recall exactly how far south, though.

It might easily be that the region of Jamaillia was once part of the realm of the elderlings, but that does not necessarily mean that the people were. Their (recent?) culture certainly wasn't.

[Farseer]

Am quite a few hundred kms away from home, resting in a motel room in between tennis sessions, and can't believe the post I thought I posted here the other day did not post here...

'Tis ture that the recent-ish culture may not show evidence of such but this is likely due to 'loss of culture' rather than a culture that has 'never been'. I think pretty much what I think on this is kind of already in the Voyages of discivery thread, some of which I will reproduce here:

...but the RotE has had a HUGE set-back in its history due to natural catastrophes and other disasters. Who is to say that the Elderlings etc were not a ‘technological’ race prior to the cataclysm? Much is still being discovered and there is much still to be understood.

They were certainly advanced in industry and this is evidenced by their very large cities, a number of which were built to accommodate immense dragons. The Elderlings also designed elaborate bridges and constructed the Skill Road, as well as a variety of other structures (including those now under water near The Pirate Isles, such as the arch that was seen by the serpents on their way north).

While we know that much of the Elderlings was destroyed or buried within the realm, we still don’t know the extent of exactly what was destroyed, or at what stage that part of the world truly was 'at' prior to the event. The Rain Wilders etc have still much to learn about the Elderlings despite having plundered Trehaug etc for many years and, yet, in many ways, a lot of what is known is already beyond a mere human’s imagining.

In AQ, Fitz noted machines in the quarry:

“...On the floor of the quarry a number of immense blocks had been abandoned amidst piles of rubble and dust. The huge blocks were bigger than buildings. I could not imagine how they had been cut, let alone how they would have been hauled away. Beside them were the remains of great machines, reminding me somewhat of siege engines. Their wood had rotted, their metal rusted. Their remains hunched together like mouldering bones...”

These machines alone, even with no other evidence such as the cities etc, makes me think that the Elderlings had quite a bit of know-how in the area of technology, industry and design.

While trebuchets etc may seem like a long way off from cannons and guns etc used in SS, it would seem to me that if Fitz knew the use of a siege engine, it would not be long before siege engines became somewhat obsolete and be replaced by cannons as field artillery, and then guns following soon after (after all, ‘cannon' and ‘gun’ seem to pretty much mean the same thing historically for us?).

That Chade has not long discovered gunpowder (as Nuytsia pointed out, and has been discussed somewhere else on thePlenty...if I could find the discussion, I’d probably place this post there instead of here!) also shows us that things are progressing in this area?

Maybe if the cataclysm had not happened, wiping out entire generations of dragons, people etc and progress, technology in the RotE may have surpassed even that in SS. As it is, such weaponry as is seen in SS is still unknown to many inhabitants of thatworld. In this example is proof that one does not even have to be separated by a great sea to be at a different stage of technological development...even simple differences such as politics, finances, culture and beliefs etc can create as great a divide as time, water or land.

This latter point could easily include development in travel and trade etc. Liveships seem to have been around for many years but even ones such as Fitz etc are still shocked to discover that they are real...and he lives relatively close to Bingtown, in the Six Duchies. With the opening up of relationships on the political front, via marriage alliances etc, trade is increasing and also the desire to travel. In this, the world of the RotE seems to be quite new really (with not a lot of voyages of discovery etc) but we know that it isn’t...it has a history that reaches way back into legend...it is just that its current history is quite new and the post-Elderling inhabitants all seem to have simply 'started over' to a certain degree. Only now are they really just learning about their true history and all that it means.

While this ^ was all part of a very different discussion, as I have noted in the final couple of sentences, much has happened between 'the past' and 'the present' within the RotE and so it is to be expected that there appears to be no connection between the various peoples and various regions of the realm but I believe that this is not the case. They have been connected in the past. All that was unified has been separated and it is up to the White Prophet and his Catalyst (of all the world) to bring all back into unity again. History has been lost and, as a consequence, so too has culture etc. Once the past is uncovered, a common culture will be discovered, I think.

[Provost]

In our world, we've only really had progress once: in mediaeval Europe. The Roman Empire, for example, had the problem that horses could only pull so heavy of a load before their collars suffocated them. They responded with a law limiting the weight of a horse's burden. The mediaeval Europeans instead invented a better collar. In the same way, the fourteenth (or one of those centuries) Chinese sailed out with a rather splendid fleet, far surpassing Columbus, all the way to Africa. When they were finished, they went home and never did it again.

In the same way, attempts by European converts to Islam to set up printing presses in the Ottoman Empire met with hostility and indifference. The point is that most cultures show extreme unfriendliness to ideas of progress but I fear this may be getting off topic.

In the ROTE, the elderlings used magic which has a lot of short term benefits over technology. It's much more readily applicable to private life. Think of the self heating scarves or the dream boxes.

Also, the dragons would likely react to the development of cannons with unprecedented violence. That would pose a severe threat to them.

['thul]

cannons would not pose that great a threat. repeating firearms, on the other hand, that would be risky. Early generation cannons were slow to load, hard to aim and many of them were almost more hazardous to operators than opponents. It wasn't unusual for them to blow up.

[Provost]

Tintaglia reacted poorly to the use of gunpowder because of the way she thought it was being used.

['thul]

these beings must have forgotten that part. but then, she was very protective of the last (so far as she knew at the time) healthy male dragon.

RotE dragons aren't immortal. They can die of all sorts of natural and unnatural things.