>You know, flying Orlanthi must see the place like this
>all the time. We say they don't have accurate maps,
>because people in the ancient and medieval worlds
>didn't, but RW people didn't fly, either. Get a sage
>up there with a "copy perfectly" feat, you'll get
>Google Maps as line drawings.
It's less a matter of ability than justification for spending resources on producing accurate maps. The earliest accurate maps are of coastlines and shipping routes. Because the cost of being wrong could be a lost ship. There was an archaelogical find recently which indicated that the Romans had and used the instruments to map accurately though no charts have survived.
I can imagine the Lunars have a military mapping unit doing this from moonboats. Or maybe from the Moon herself.
The problems the Orlanthi have include:
Lack of a fixed scale so you may have an accurate
drawing of an area but you don't know how it relates
to the drawing of somewhere else.
Lack of time - your accurate scholar will insist on
drawing every bush and puddle while the Vangarthi
gets bored holding him up.
Perspective - at normal flying heights that which is
directly beneath you is nearer than that a few miles
away making it look relatively bigger.
Height - I don't think Orlanthi have an accurate
measure of how high they are flying so they won't
remain the same distance from the ground all the
time.
Eyesight - there won't be many scholars who can see
details sufficently well to draw them from that
distance.
So while I'm sure some drawings made from the air hidden away in various knowledge temples you can bet that the bit you want to see is in the gap between two drawings which are to a different scale and drawn several years apart.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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