[Dragaera] The New Palace

[Scott Schultz]

At first I was inclined to agree about the Renaissance tech, but then I'm
not sure that we've ever actually had much glimpse of the technological
level of the Empire. We're sort of in the "Magicpunk" scene here, where
sorcery is so ingrained into the culture that you can't necessarily separate
it from simple mechanics and say "This is tech level X".

Other than the resemblance of the Court to a Renaissance court, do we have
any other indication that the Empire has any advanced understanding of
technology? Based purely on what we see in the books, I'm not sure there's
any evidence to support the idea of anything more advanced than medieval
technology, with sorcery taking up the slack where science might have
otherwise done so. It's telling that Mathematics is, if we take Paarfi at
face value, a mysterious craft and not a science.

In fact, I'm not sure that science as we think of it is even practiced.
Leastawise, that energy tends to get sublimated into the study of Sorcery,
Necromancy, Wizardry, etc...

Vallista, as the house of Building/Design, can be presumed to have a higher
understanding of architecture and construction than the other Houses. I'd
guess that the other houses grasp the basics but the finer points are
considered esoteric enough to be out of reach or simply uninteresting to
most non-Vallista.

Is there any reference that can be used to judge the state of architecture?
I can only recall a reference to the design of arches, possibly in relation
to the death of one of the early Emperors. (Falling masonry killed him, and
if the Orb allowed that to happen, a sign of the Turn of the Cycle, so the
Vallista engineer took the Orb and declared himself Emperor, or so I
remember the story.)