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Back to the original topic:

There's a way that would turn Chisholm into the industrial center of the Empire, or go a long way towards refuting the "inequality issue"

Just picture the following scenario:the Temple siege is about to end, the wall has been breached, fighting in the hallways, the OBS goes active... and a single KEW is thrown at Tellesberg before they manage to shut it down.

Unlikely, but then again, it's RFC we're talking about.

peke wrote:Back to the original topic:

There's a way that would turn Chisholm into the industrial center of the Empire, or go a long way towards refuting the "inequality issue"

Just picture the following scenario:the Temple siege is about to end, the wall has been breached, fighting in the hallways, the OBS goes active... and a single KEW is thrown at Tellesberg before they manage to shut it down.

Unlikely, but then again, it's RFC we're talking about.

Horrific as that is, I think more of Charis' industry is at Delthak nowadays than in Tellesberg itself. But it'd certainly do very bad things to Charis' total economic and infrastructure picture; even Delthak depends ultimately on the commerce and finances going through Tellesberg.

peke wrote:Back to the original topic:

There's a way that would turn Chisholm into the industrial center of the Empire, or go a long way towards refuting the "inequality issue"

Just picture the following scenario:the Temple siege is about to end, the wall has been breached, fighting in the hallways, the OBS goes active... and a single KEW is thrown at Tellesberg before they manage to shut it down.

Unlikely, but then again, it's RFC we're talking about.

Thanks for telling us how Merlin dies.... as he throws his skimmer into the path of that KEW

PeterZ wrote:Bother, you beat me to it.

One of the things that I find intriguing about Irys is her love of knowledge for its own sake. The elements she found most tempting about Charis prior to her epiphany was the Royal College. While her father might have envied the RC for the advantages it could provide, she appreciated the brighter and fuller picture of the world the College makes possible.

That approach/mindset might well be something core to Corsiandian society or might just be intrinsic to Irys. I doubt the latter. It seems that all the out islands had some core divergence from the CoGA orthodoxy. Emerald, Chisholm, Corisande and Zebediah all embraced the Reformists rather quickly compared to the mainland. That speaks to Clyntahn's fear that the out islands are indeed more independent of thought in various ways. I doubt Corisdande is the exception.

Charisian innovation had always struck me as an extension of Cayleb's personality. Perhaps better to say that Cayleb embraced the Charisian mind set that enabled innovation. That of Thomas Eddison, an experimenting engineer using trial and error to find a better way. The value of knowledge to this mindset is what that knowledge can make or do. Corisande might be more comfortable with knowledge as valuable because it allows for understanding. Whether that understanding is as Irys described before her epiphany in pursuit of understanding God's creation better or simply understanding to understand, it is different from the hectic Charisian desire to always use knowledge for something.

There are plenty of ways that each of the Imperial nations to separate from the Charisian dominance. I suspect that Chisholm and Tarot will be the Imperial conservatives. That mindset demanding that any changes be tested prior to will he nil he embracing their adoption. Emerald will be the deal makers and real politicians. Their decades long experience balancing Charis and Corisande will come in handy. Eventually, like in any family, should an outsider pick on one, they will get a unified well thought out, well engineered and politically well placed traditional military fist in their national overly intrusive nose.

JeffEngel wrote:All the other Out Islands knew for years that Charis' Royal College gave them an edge, and that it put them on the Temple's suspect list. Hektor would've loved to have one, but for his need to play the role of the Church's one true orthodox champion out there. I'm sure similar thoughts went through Nahrmahn's and Gorjah's heads. (And Sharleyan's and her father's as well, but they had enough troubles keeping their own nobles in line to gamble with that, whatever Zion thought.)

That attitude is going to take some time to coax out of hiding. That coaxing is certainly going on in Chisholm, Emerald, and Tarot by now. Corisande's had to suffer a bit from the associations among innovation, Charis, and defeat more than the others, but it does have going for it two things: the object, painful lesson of what being behind the times gets you, and Irys' enthusiasm for learning.

I look forward to Royal Colleges elsewhere in the Empire, but that's just the visible face of a whole complex of social changes embracing innovation. Craftsmen and factory owners trying new things and taking advantage of better communications, patents, and standards of weights and measures aren't nearly so dramatic, but they make that progress on a broader, grassroots level. That end of the campaign is coming along nicely, if quietly.

Run for the bomb shelters, the skie's coming down. We're actually in agreement on something

I think we need to remember that the reason we've seen limited screentime thus far of major characters from the Empire's junior member states, is that the entire series started off in Charis, and that the driving forces behind the emergence of the Empire and the conduct of the war against the CoGA's monopolistic hold on scientific research and technological innovation have been Charisian.

Haarahld and his advisors clearly hoped that Charis' maritime dominance offered the kingdom a chance to survive the confrontation with the Church they knew was coming. And then Merlin came along and that chance increased tremendously. None of the other outlying island realms enjoyed Charis' advantages, or had their own version of the Brethren to fertilize the soil, so to speak. I mean, had the Group of Four's ire been directed against Chisholm or Corisande, there'd be no chance of survival at all.

But that certainly doesn't mean that the people of the other island realms weren't of a more independent mindset, both as individuals and culturally, than the Church would really have preferred. That is clear from how quickly the respective Reformist movements of the various realms gained strong support and how widespread that support was, once the immediate threat of the Inquisition was removed.

It would be a serious mistake to regard that independence of thought as relating only to spiritual matters, especially given the way that the Church and religion impacted almost every aspect of Safeholdian life. I believe that the islanders' willingness to accept the Charisian Church's doctrine is only symptomatic of a deeper independent mentality. That mindset, coupled with economic imperatives and the innate human drive to better understand our 'world', would certainly provide plenty of motivation for Chisholmians and the people of the junior territorial units to become more inquisitive, more innovative and more entrepreneurial in their own right, especially after the artificially-enforced constraints of Langhorn's and Bédard's societal matrix were removed from the equation.

My point with all of that is that Caleb's, and Sharleyan's, and Irys's fascination with the new technologies and knowledge seems to reflect a freer and much more widespread cultural mindset, and aren't isolated examples at all.

With regards to the topic, I think that the above is all very relevant as well. Royal Charis isn't the only realm with vast natural resources, after all. Human competitiveness and greed will incline individuals with investable resources to seek to exploit those resources, and given the example and advantages of Charisian techniques and technologies, individuals in the other units of the Empire will rather quickly adopt those techniques and technologies, especially now that the Inquisition's constrictive hold had been removed.

At the same time, official support for such efforts will also be a major contributing factor. We need to remember that Safeholdian monarchs in general do not only reign, they also rule (Emperor Waisu notwithstanding). Since Cayleb and Sharleyan decreed that Charis and Chisholm will be equal senior partners in the Empire, and that imperial economic policies will apply equally to all imperial units, that is in fact the official and actual policy of the imperial government. That is hugely important. Some individuals - specifically among the great nobles and traditional guilds - might resist their policies, but the imperial and 'state' governments' official standing will be the decisive factor in the long run.