> illuminate33 wrote:
>
> Seriously, though, I thought elves used short bows? And their
> "bowmaking" technology would be completely useless for non-salads,
who
> have to carve and cure bows, instead of growing them...
>
> --AMS
There are many ways to learn something from somebody. For example,
in the US there was a member of one of the native tribes (Navajo
maybe? I don't recall properly) who saw how the settlers used books
and read and wrote. Although he didn't know how to read English, he
saw the usefulness of this, so invented a (apparently very elegant)
90 character syllabary (a syllabary describes the common syllables of
a language, as opposed to an alphabet which describes the common
sounds) for his language, which became fairly widely used by his
people.
In a similar manner, the Rathori had typical hunting bows, designed
for shooting ducks from blinds at twenty paces and not really for
killing large creatures like humans. When the befriended the elves
they saw the potential of more powerful bows. Humans are nothing if
not inventive, primitive humans no less so than any others. Given an
example of the potential of powerful bows, and the ability to study
these effective bows, it is entirely reasonable that Rathori figured
out how to make long bows through a method entirely different from
that used by the elves.
--Bryan