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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RealAlHazred" data-source="post: 6748865" data-attributes="member: 25818">Originally posted by Hellcow:In my opinion, there's no such thing. Dragonshards are the fundamental component required for any sort of arcane magical item. As a side note, in 4E terms, residuum is simply the highest grade of dragonshard. Coming up with arcane magic that doesn't require dragonshards would be like, today, deciding out of the blue to come up with a light bulb that doesn't use electricity. Undoubtedly it could be done, but it would be as difficult as creating an entirely new system of technology.We are entirely in agreement. This has always been one of the core ideas OF Eberron. If you check my HDWT blogs, one of my frustrations is that the setting as it stands doesn't go into enough detail about the advances that have occured over the past century and the forms of war magic that have been developed. What we're debating is the sorts of resources that are available. You're saying that Cyre can acheive this with gold alone - and Cyre had more GOLD than Aundair, to be sure. I'm saying that when you take that gold and convert it into its equivalent in net worth of the infrastructure and components used for magical research and production, Aundair is wealthier than Cyre... and that beyond that, you're dealing with a culture where magical education is considered a virtue, a nation that has spent generations locating and evaluating the potential of its manifest zones, where magic is part of daily life in a way it's not in Cyre. This is a nation that knows its strength is its knowledge, not its physical power or its gold. When it comes to war, it knows that it must out-think its enemies: that arcane knowledge is the only edge it has. Cyre had the gold and had far more people. It COULD buy mercenaries and Cannith tools. Aundair had knowledge, and it wasn't going to let that advantage go. Cyre could advance a great distance in 30 years - and in the meantime, Aundair would advance just as far. Magic is their one edge, and the one thing they COULD maintain, because again, it's the resource their nation possessed. They didn't have to spend as much gold to do so because they already had the resources they needed to work with. They couldn't buy mercenaries to match Cannith or suddenly produce an army with the discipline of Karrnath. But they had magic, and they could keep that edge. Weapons? Absolutely. So did Breland and Karrnath. Because Aundair made those weapons for Galifar. But knowledge? Never. Those weapons were made in Aundair and shipped to anyone who needed them. Cyre paid for those factories. It didn't need the knowledge of how to build them itself... and if it needed a magic item factory next door, Cannith is right there in Eston. Which may place us at arguing semantics. Again, looking specifically to Cannith, Cyre had the greatest amount of Cannith weaponry. No question. But in terms of unique tools and techniques, I just can't see gold alone being enough to get Cyre on par with Aundair, especially when they are also spending that gold on mercenaries, Cannith equipment and other dragonmarked services, and mundane fortifications, troops, and spies. Gold can only go so far, and when the general hears "There's Karrnathi troops massing to the north!" is her first response going to be "Hire everything Deneith and Cannith can spare" or "Take that same money and start investing it in wild alchemical programs that may pan out in thirty years!" Again, over time? Sure. But Cyre had a lot of things to spend its money on that had clear and immediate practical value. Yes, Cannith tools are available to everyone. But if you can buy five times as many as anyone else, do you go ahead and do that, or do you take those funds and hope that somewhere down the road you might be able to come up with something better? In Aundair, their culture is based around the idea that you do - that superior magic is the single key to victory. Cyran culture wasn't based around that concept, and they had other options available. Again, if we're simply talking about quantity of high-quality arms, Cannith can do that - and the presence of Cannith IS a strength Cyre had. Which frankly, is yet another reason I'm inclined to think that as a Cyran ruler, I'd push it down the priority list. Cannith IS my research and development division. Again, I won't have a weapon you don't, but I'll likely have Cannith's breakthroughs first and I'll have more of them... and I'd sooner spend my money buying Cannith's successful projects than burn it on ideas that simply don't end up working and leave me with nothing.Absolutely. So do Karrnathi and Brelish arcanists. Thrane clerics have techniques none of them can match. It's not a question of whether Aundair can do everything everyone else can; it's whether, overall, it had the most sophisticated techniques. But from day one, I've been seeing Aundair as Japan in this analogy. They're certainly not the US. They don't have the manpower to match any other nation, even before you count Cyre's use of mercenaries - and they don't have the money to hire mercenaries. Their soldiers simply don't have the martial discipline to match Karrnath. The only edge they have is magic, and they know it. Thus they focus all their military efforts on making sure that they are bringing the most advanced magic to the field - and the fact that they are not only around today, but actually considering initiating a new war again speaks to just how significant that edge is. Again, the leader of the smallest nation actually thinks she could start the war again and win it... stop and think about that. Obviously you have the fact that they didn't win before, which shows that their edge wasn't unbeatable. One of the points I'd put here is that I see them having a very tough rival in Thrane, because rather than having their arcane edge match up against a nation with an inferior version of their own techniques, their most aggressive rival was a nation using, essentially, an entirely different form of technology (IE divine magic). One question is whether Aurala thinks she's come up with an answer to that over the last four years. If Aundair's figured out a way to extinguish the Silver Flame, they could devastate Thrane... though in the process they'd unleash all the Overlords of the first age and devastate everything. Oops. At the end of the day, this is something of a semantic point. We agree that Cannith's elite forces would have excellent equipment due to their wealth as a nation. We agree that they can lure experts from other nations, and that they can buy more hardware than others can afford. But I don't see them being close to Aundair when it comes to the cutting edge of research. Aundair has the infrastructure and a culture that has always considered arcane magic to be the single most powerful tool in the world... whereas for Cyre, it's a case of "Oh, we need to get some of that."</blockquote>

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