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Well there's more that I was going to tell but I got embarrassed and deleted it
I'll give you a hint though
this NWN server was in the "Social" server category
If you know what that means I, uh. It was a long time ago.
when the indigo children come
I guess I don't see a window in the story so far that would suggest that they do or don't exist. Like, the scope of disputes is comprehensive in the number of families/regimes it affects, but the nature of their individual wealth is largely kept vague. A common dispute within the Riverlands may be regarding the use of rivers. House Tully and nearly every other greater power in Westeros has something of an existential crisis at the moment though and I'm not sure that the court of Riverrun is really considering those disputes at the moment.
I would absolutely be interested in an extended GoT universe that considers issues like that, but as it is I think the narrative's focus is such that it's hard to make reasonable assumptions about things like that.
...but there are no stories that make particular reference to the nature of minework in Westeros, to my recollection.
Yeah no I can't
Some things I don't really feel like putting up publicly on the internet
when the indigo children come
There doesn't need to be steam. No coal and no oil rather cripples an industrial revolution. Wood gets expensive fast; there is little reward to processing wood more rapidly than it can grow.
But mills alone should rather change the nature of politics - instead of an industrial revolution built around steam, you would still get it building up around rivers, and mines that happen to be near rivers should be fantastically valuable.
when the indigo children come
The narrative isn't sufficiently granular in this regard to determine the value of mines on rivers
I remember my first elf...
To summarize:
it should affect what conquest is about and how power is secured, surely
They made use of a network of wooden towers with semaphore flags to bring about the ability to rapidly transfer information across the continent. And the introduction of nearly instant communication has all kinds of side effects.
This sounds like a damn good day.
This kind of thinking about fantasy worlds is interesting. I don't recall reading anything where the concept of industry is explored in any depth, probably because (as mentioned above) any inkling of technological progress starts to beg questions about verisimilitude.
Cue the old trope about fantasy always being stuck in some pseudo-feudal medieval age that has plausibility issues
But more importantly it would be a very specific type of narrative which would be enriched by exploring such things. Otherwise it's just worldbuilding wankery. It could be a compelling story, but it's not the kind of thing most fantasy authors set out to do.
I think this is why I enjoyed The Baroque Cycle so much, it's set in that period of history where the forces of technology and commerce and imperialism and knowledge are starting to move too rapidly for existing power structures to survive. The 17th century is my favorite period to study, Europe underwent some serious upheaval.
when the indigo children come
That may very well be what some aspects of conquest are about. Often times conquest could be about capturing resource wealth. Other times terrorists fly planes into buildings/kill an important person from a powerful family and large, powerful groups flip their shit and start throwing their resource wealth into the woodchipper of war.
The specific maneuvers that the armies make are too opaque to tell exactly what kinds of resources they're capturing or razing.
As I noted earlier, there may be common disputes over water usage that has been overshadowed by greater disputes that threaten the structure that would typically handle those disputes. There also may have been smaller skirmishes and conflicts within the current conflict that involve water resources to an extent that we aren't aware of because of the nature of the narrative. There may also be earlier greater conflicts about water resources that have gone unmentioned.
The narrative isn't comprehensive, and largely depends on the perceptions of the power players involved.
the politics suggests the latter. the described level of technology should be already shifting toward the former.
I think GRRM has glossed over a lot of the agriculture stuff so far because it's about to become relevant: the great lords have been waging war and razing towns and farms and squabbling over who controls what and not worrying about who is going to eat what
Winter is coming
when the indigo children come
You can hook up with her with no worries then.
I'm not into fatties.
There is the problem that very often the realization on the part of the military class that such changes have occurred (and the development of new methods of organizing war) often lags behind the change. By a lot.
it's a fictional setting with supposedly centuries of stasis!
the ruling class that the books / movies focus on have been stagnant yeah. But those dirty peasants could well be "inventing" things and being all "productive" in the background totally unbeknownst to them.
it only took about a millenia for humanity to deforest most of Europe and plant mills and mines all over the place
depends on where you start counting though.
If you start looking at things around the 8th century then it's all up up up the ziggaraught zippity quick.
But that comes after a period of about 600 or 700 years of constant, sometimes rapid, population decline in the same region. It took a little while for the problems of a constantly dropping population to trickle upwards (the Western Roman Empire was still generally considered to be doing ok when it started) but once it began the collapse was inevitable.
There have been extensive periods in human history where progress was just not an option (see also: 12th-6th centuries BCE in the eastern Mediterranean)
Kanon Mori, Yuki Sakura, Hinako Kuroki and Jun Amaki have been following the Nikkei 225 stock average obsessively since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in December. The oldest of the foursome is Mori, but she is still only 23. The youngest is Kuroki, 16 and still in high school.
None of them are studying for a degree in economics, let alone playing the stock market. Instead, the four are members of a new idol group, Machikado Keiki Japan, and stocks play an important part in their performances.
“We base our costumes on the price of the Nikkei average of the day. For example, when the index falls below 10,000 points, we go on stage with really long skirts,” Mori explained.
The higher stocks rise, the shorter their dresses get. With the Nikkei index ending above 13,000, the four went without skirts altogether on the day of their interview with The Japan Times, instead wearing only lacy shorts.
...
“Fix the yen’s appreciation. Quantitative easing. Don’t forget public investment,” a line in the dance-pop tune goes. “Monetary easing. Construction bonds. Let’s just revise the Bank of Japan Law.”
fuck
this is the worst thing
when the indigo children come
Sometimes going away and reading for half an hour helps.
But : (
I honestly think, with what little I know of your situation, that that would be best for you.
Dragons haven't been in the ground for 65 million years ok
Humans and dragons coexisted in the near past! Creationism is real and oil was planted there by the Seven to fuel the greatest Realm ever
DUH
yes - if you take Essos and its grasslands and said that it was stagnant, I would be fine with that. Grasslands that surround the occasional city have been the status quo of human history since civilization became fashionable
but a medieval world is not a terribly stable one. It hurtles toward industry.