[Dragaera] Centuries and Centuries of Dragaeran history and no one has invented a steam engine?

[Philip Hart via Dragaera]

On Mon, 30 May 2016, Jonathan Carey, CHRL via Dragaera wrote:

> 4) Sethra Lavode and the Gods.  She exists to protect the Empire.  The
> Empire is a direct manifestation of the Cycle.  The Cycle is...what,
> exactly?  Unknown, except we know that it's incredibly important to not
> only Dragaerans, but also their Gods as well.  It is very
> conceivable--indeed, I would go so far as to say that it is
> *probable*--that the Gods themselves are maintaining an otherwise unnatural
> status quo; choosing to corral the tides of change with a dam that they use
> to power their Halls.  They were clever enough to recognize that water too
> strictly controlled tends to erode the container, so they built into the
> Cycle a natural progression of social evolution; while limiting the
> technological evolution by a variety of means.


I doubt Sethra cares about steam engines, or killing steam engineers. 
The Cycle, which I think we've seen is above the gods, may.  I believe 
that's what I've argued on this list when we've discussed this topic in 
the past.  Certainly one might appeal to an extraTextual source of texts, 
the works of Roger Zelazny, in particular _Lord of Light_, to find an 
example of a pantheon suppressing technology - flush toilets being a 
particularly pungent example.