[Dragaera] Teleport Shipping

[Ken Koester]

Philip Hart wrote:

> _Phoenix_, pg. 117, Verra to Vlad on post-interregnum sorcery: 
> "Teleportation on such a level that some fear it will replace trade by 
> ship and road."
>
> This conversation is about skills learned when there was no orb - I 
> seem to recall another that suggested the improvements were because 
> the orb had changed, but probably that's in the Piroiad and describes 
> an earlier time.

A conversation among the gods, IIRC, on the strengthening of the Orb 
durring the IR.

>
> I think the above means that cargo teleportation is at least slightly 
> cheaper but faces too established a market to take over immediately or 
> even at all.
>
Perhaps.  I think it more likely means that teleportation is faster & 
possibly more convenient, but not that it is cheaper in itself.  It's 
also highly speculative:  "some fear", "will replace,"  not "many fear" 
or "has replaced."

There are other issues.  If you are a principal in a Jhereg turf battle 
& have already decided to burn down the business of a rival, why not 
teleport a chunk of stone atop it instead?  Same if you have a spot of 
"work to do:  difficult to revive someone whose brains are a thin smear 
on the pavement.  For that matter, how about a snatch racket?  Or 
teleportive theft?  What need for a Kiera, if you can just grab an item 
& if necessary replace it without anyone the wiser?  Yet we don't see 
any of those things in common practice.  That suggest they are rare or 
do not happen at all, which further suggests there are good reasons why 
they don't happen:  either a proliferation of defensive spells (which 
Vlad never bothers to mention), or bulk teleportation is either not yet 
feasible, or Dragaerans haven't developed it enough for bulk purposes.

It's been a while since I read =Dragon=, but I don't recall any bulk 
movement of troops or supplies into the staging areas, before they move 
into spell-forbidden territory.  Yet this would be a natural use for the 
method; military logistics are both supreme and troublesome.

Conclusion:  if there's bulk teleportation at all, it's in its infancy, 
about on a par with railroads in 1830.

Snarkhunter