"And does that," said Boldness slowly, "sound [i]sustainable [/i]to you?"

She waved a hand, "I mean, I'm an assassin, not a space historian, but the Shardan seem like overwhelmingly strong evidence for the position of the Skies - in fact, I'm pretty sure the Skies had contact with them before the Sequestering. They subsequently rededicated their society towards sustainability. The only difference is that while they went tall, retreating to a single planet... the Endless Azure Skies went [i]wide[/i]. And the - the 'Laser blasters'? Do you really think they'll still be around in another twenty years? From what I'm seeing here the goal is just to avoid getting caught in the blast radius when they inevitably collapse or ascend."

"After all, consider what that power and technological level [i]means[/i]. What if you had the power to make every member of your civilization the equal in power to Lord - Death Despoil, am I pronouncing that right? - to Lord Death Despoil? Old systems of control break down. Loyalty based on shared interest ceases to mean anything. A disgruntled provincial administrator can alter the laws of reality. The only thing that can keep society at that point from collapsing is absolute consensus. The Shardan opted to form that consensus democratically, the Skies do so through a ceiling on individual power. Would your civilization survive if it feared nothing and wanted for nothing?"