I've been thinking for some time now about doing a strategic action to set up a network of heliographs in Cedonia. The motivation is that the ability of any government to control territory is largely limited by the speed of communications. The current Imperial Postal Service dispatch riders average about 10 mph, which means the cycle time for a message & reply between Thalsedon and the southern border forts is a bit more than 4.5 days. A heliograph system like the one used by the Byzantine Empire would cut that cycle time down to 1hr, 50min. As far as I can tell, the basic technology for such a system exists on Qaiyore; it's a question of scaling up, and investment in time, manpower, and money. Indeed, given the scale of the old Cedonian Empire, one might argue that a heliograph system would be a reestablishment of a lost technology. So, I just kind of floating this idea to see what you all think about it, if you have any thoughts or ideas (like how long it might take to build, etc.) Andrew ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.


