[Dragaera] _Iorich_ random brief comments (spoilers!)

[Philip Hart]

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Alexx Kay wrote:

>> On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Alexx Kay wrote:
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>> A good programmer trains for years and years of a human life to earn,
>> what, $100/hr, or x10 what a bargeman makes, or x1 what a longshoreman
>> makes?
>
> In a feudal society, income disparities can be a lot higher than that.

Ok, but see below for a lower-bound estimate.  And note that this is a 
sudden development.

>> Vlad and Cawti picked up teleporting on the side I think -
>
> Vlad studies sorcery for years, at significant expense to his father, as a
> youth.  IIRC (and I may not), he doesn't actually learn to teleport on his
> own until sometime after _Dragon_.

The years in question are nothing to a Dragaeran.  Vlad was also studying 
fencing, witchcraft, and various liberal arts (iirc), while working for 
his father.  He never becomes proficient at sorcery, but he's able to 
teleport (already as of _Taltos_).  Old button-man Quion can teleport.
(Incidentally, Vlad apparently begins informal at least training with 
Noish-pa when he's 5 or 6.)

> I maintain that teleportation among Dragaerans is like programming skill
> among us.  If you travel in certain circles (such as SF fandom), it may
> seem like something that practically everyone can do, at least at a
> hobbyist level.  But measured against the population as a whole, it's an
> uncommon skill, and commands high prices.

It seems to me that performing one single spell is more like learning 
calculus than learning to write clean code on a new platform that 
interacts with a new environment all the time.

>
>> Morrolan learned it in a few days starting from functional illiteracy
>> iirc.
>
> M, at least as portrayed by Paarfi, is a savant (possibly an idiot savant
> :-)  Outside Paarfi's portrayal, he's good enough to become Imperial
> Wizard, which marks him as a pretty significant outlier.

Far as I can tell he's not Vlad's equal in witchcraft, despite hundreds of 
years more work, but yeah, he's an outlier - but he's still able to go 
from 0 to zip in no time, just after teleportation was shown to be 
possible.


>> And programming is an evolving and challenging job -
>
> So's post-Interregnum Sorcery.

We're talking about one spell, maybe with simple aids in place, not a 
panoply of techniques.


>> I'm talking
>> about replacing maybe 30*5*10 Dragaeran hours of labor with << 1 hr of
>> trivial work for anyone able to do it.
>
> I dispute your claim that it is trivial.  I can carry a five-pound bag of
> flour from the car to the kitchen 'trivially'; it does not follow that I
> can move five tons of flour any distance at all.  Granted, the Orb
> provides effectively infinite energy.  But being able to manipulate large
> quantities of that energy at once has been established to require
> highly-skilled sorcerers.

The work is trivial for anyone able to do it - if one can perform the 
spell, it's just performing the (as far as I can tell) same spell again. 
We know that there were such just after the Interregnum.

And I thought that the skill and difficulty was mostly related to the 
complexity of the spell in sorcery.  This is something Vlad can do while 
wounded and actively fighting for his life.

Vlad does say (_Teckla_?) that he's really impressed to meet a sorcerer 
who can casually teleport O(8) people (plus Kragar, as it turns out), so 
that counts in your favor.


> How many people are both able to develop their skill to such a degree --
> and simultaneously willing to exercise that skill on shipping staple
> goods?

Maybe the point is that society frowns on this line of work for noble 
houses, the merchant houses are bad at sorcery somehow, and the Teckla 
are violently discouraged from learning more than the simplest spells, 
while the Jhereg earn too much illicitly to do straight work.  After the 
interregnum there was some upheaval and highly-talented Athyra were 
willing to transport freight, but when things settled down they got 
taunted by the Lyorn and had better things to do anyway.

If we believe some of Paresh's story he can teleport, having taught 
himself how in perhaps a year.  Maybe he's exceptional too, and works 
under the table as it were - maybe there are plenty of Jhegaala who find 
it useful to learn cargo teleportation.

>> Maybe this is standard industrial or computer revolution stuff,
>> maybe we already know this and I'm just catching up, anyway it's
>> important for the society.
>
> Not sure what you're getting at here...

I was just surprised at the 1.5k multiplier I got above.  It's like a work 
year per hour.