More in character would be for them to nod and smile in an annoyingly smug and patronising way, mind you. Most Kralori fliers that I can bring to mind are PoIMers, who're far from common. And you need to be quite an Advanced Pathist to actually fly. Besides, hard to draw maps when your claws keep making holes in the paper and your breath incinerates the pencils...
The Brithini I doubt, I must say. I bet you wouldn't get them to fly even if you provided them with their own Airbus 340 for the purpose.
> Dragon pass is debateably the size of the "midwest" - if I had my book
> nearby, I'd give you a more specific area. How much of that can you map
> from standing on a mountain?
It's about 100,000km^2, give or take. (More like the size of a midling US state, ballparkwise.) How much were you _planning_ to map in one go? If you fly high enough to get a 'panaramic' view of the whole region, you'd be comfortably into the Hero Plane, and I betcha things would look kinda different up there...
> 5000' is clearly not high enough.
> Now, if you say that Orlanth has a problem with people going above what one
> might call "utilitarian" altitudes, that I'd be willing to buy.
I don't know I'd put in in those terms, but yes, I think there are going to be magical 'limitations' in how high one can go, how readily. It seems silly to infer otherwise just from a brief spell description.
> >inappropriate, I feel, the method 'seems wrong': one could hardly
> >conceive of a more 'materialistic' application for _divine_ magic.
> >Bordering on profanity, really.
> Only if your viewpoint is that of (to coin a phrase) a smelly,
> sheep-stealing barbarian yokel. Hee hee hee. Now, if you are an
> enlightened Western Wizard, you may clutter it up a little less with dogma
> and see it for the utility it offers. :)
> [fightin' words cheerfully cast about]
I agree, in the West it'd be a much more Appropriate thing. I was arguing (at least, arguing most vehemently) against the Orlanthi instance, which seems to be to be about the most egregious of those cited. So far as Malkioni sorcery goes, it's merely a matter of quibbling as to how effective their methods are -- I'm sure they have at least reasonably good, if not the satellite pictures some give the impression of being content with no less than.
> ["cheesy magical effect saturated"]
> You're right, and this is the most convincing point yet. Of course, one
> might say the same thing about, lessee: cannons, musket-armed dwarves,
> machines that produce magic swords, a grav car, submarines, a lead zepplin,
> or for that a race that looks like Donald Ducks. I suppose the idea of
> someone actually using fly to get a good look for a map IS beyond
> reasonable belief in such a setting...
A grav car? I missed that one, enlighten me, do...
OK, you could argue those are Cheesy, in a sense, but they have the decency to be the Outright Wacky Cheese, and not just ulilitarian faux-modern Cheese! I know which _I_ prefer! (Mostali instances are also a little different, given what
Slan,
Alex.
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