it's one of those iceberg things. (Or one of those "I need to install this one little package on my Debian Linux system" things...) I've got a simple exchange between two characters, which looks like:

Simple, right? No big deal, though there's a lot of stuff implied in there. First that there are cities kicking around that are impressive enough to be grouped together (and the group capitalized), second that there have been at least three divisions of history significant enough to be classified together that way, and the third that in a society with significant amounts of magic, a city three miles in diameter that looks like it was yanked out of the bedrock in a single piece would be considered 'primitive'.

That's swell and all. I've no problem with that, and I don't care that there's no extra detail given to the reader. It's not like you get a history of London when a character wanders through Trafalgar Square -- it's the fact that there is history that's important, not that the reader knows the history. That gives a story more weight, makes it seem more real, even if it is a fantasy.

Unfortunately, the problem there is that while the reader doesn't necessarily know these things, I'm not sure that the author (i.e. me) can get away not knowing things. So now, because of a mostly off-hand comment that's very much in character (except maybe being a bit too wordy -- Ben's very terse) that one of the characters made, I've got to sketch out about fifteen thousand years of history.

These guys so owe me at least one publishable novel by the time I'm done...