What Can SV Teach an Sorcerer in the Mesolithic?

[X] Go build material power in the world immediately.
Right, so the goal is none should think themselves above you, yes? then the best way to do so ensure that none have a chance to. An early start means that you will have limited competition on you're level, assuming there is anyone on your level, which allows you the chance to deal with them before they can surpass you.

And it is true that the people of this current era might be... lacking in a lot of ways, that just makes it simpler for you to cultivate their development towards you're own ends. letting others have a chance to mold them to their will, will only make repurposing them to your needs more difficult later.

Not to mention the chance to plunder the leftovers of the various powerful beings that once ruled this world. Others would almost certainly beat you to it if you were to hide away in the vault.

Signed, Highpriest.

[X] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret.

I would advice against spring, while possibility abounds the minds and souls of people are unope. Let civilization take root, while a forest is harder to navigate than a field, the former provides the lumber necessay to sail the seas of discovery.

Remember, no matter how wise or smart you are you are One, there's so much an individual can do or explore. Why do Gods need followers? Is it just for have more souls to feed on? Even the most asinine of followers can have a single good idea in their lifetime.
Wait until population is plentiful, when humans and others have started to sharpen their wits.

Look at us, we are hundreds, they will be millions.
Find the smartest thousandth and bind them to your will, they'll be the tools with which you'll build greatness.

[X] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret.

Zeikos said:

[X] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret.

I would advice against spring, while possibility abounds the minds and souls of people are unope. Let civilization take root, while a forest is harder to navigate than a field, the former provides the lumber necessay to sail the seas of discovery.

Remember, no matter how wise or smart you are you are One, there's so much an individual can do or explore. Why do Gods need followers? Is it just for have more souls to feed on? Even the most asinine of followers can have a single good idea in their lifetime.
Wait until population is plentiful, when humans and others have started to sharpen their wits.

Look at us, we are hundreds, they will be millions.
Find the smartest thousandth and bind them to your will, they'll be the tools with which you'll build greatness.

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Bah, waiting will just ensure that the oh-so-valuable lumber will already be under the control and protection of others. and some of those others might have surpassed her efforts. No, Bianca, even if the metaphorical forest is barely a collection of trees at the moment, it is best to take control now so that you might better cultivate its uses for your own.

Signed, Highpriest.

[X] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret.

[X] Go build material power in the world immediately.

Early mover gets to
1) steal the power from rivals
2) awaken potential allies earlier than they otherwise would be
3) see what resources are common or scarce in the world and get them first
4) have the biggest impact on the privative life forms

If we were to go primitive, what kind of society would we want to build? I'm going to again put forward the idea of remaining nomadic hunter-gatherer for several generations so that we have a chance to potentially find good domestication targets for flora and fauna, and I also have been thinking of a bit of sphiel on geology that might help us spot potential mineral deposits.

We'd definitely like to find at least one volcanic area to secure a supply of sulphur because stone age tribe with black powder is a pretty funny anachronism and it could be very useful for breaking into tombs or getting a mining industry bootstrapped. We had issues with that in a previous kalpa ( I'm petitioning we refer to one go-around in the cycle of waxing and waning magic a kalpa ).

Also obsidian lets you get tools of quality surpassing even bronze metalworking without the need to source two ores that are usually found very far apart.

For plants and animals, don't focus you advice on specific species. There is not guarantee that they or close analogs exist. And even if they exist is may be a an unrecognizable pre-domestication form. Instead focus on general techniques to breed better crops or make unpalatable food palatable. Soaking, brining, pickling, salting, fermenting, roasting.

If we start with nothing domesticated at all, then it may take many generations to get something high yield enough that settling down in feasible.

Of course, the best option for initial settlement might not even be near metals. The first true civilizations I know of settled in river valleys with little wood or minerals and mostly built their homes of bundled reeds, mud if they were wealthy. Fired brick if they were kings.

I am doubtful that we could get Bianca access to Blackpowder because I am fairly certain that the tools used to make the substance doesn't exist and would take several iterations of "Build the tools to Build the tools" to get to a degree that manufacturing is reliable and wouldn't end with whoever was assigned to the task an explosive death. But then again, I could be wrong on this account.

Regarding the use of Obsidian, While I do admit that using the rock would be best, I would still advocate having some capability to do metal working.

Presuming of course she immediately becomes active instead of initially doing preparations of some kind. Then a different approach would have to be used.

Ciber said:

If we were to go primitive, what kind of society would we want to build?

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There are lots of things we are going to need if we are going to be using the primitives
1) to understand their language
2) find a group that can be made to look at us how we want to be perceived
3) get them doing useful work for us.

There is currently no structure that we know of amongst them, but we have probably got quite a lot of time to set one up.

There a probably lots of tribes out there, so we don't need to do the same approach for all of them. Some tribes we will want to keep, and some might just be free labor (depending how pragmatic we are).

I would suggest we first experiment with what works. In some places we can make champions with simple magic items, in others make ourselves out to be a deity, or even train basic magic users to be tribe shamans.

Short term us being there to solve problems for them will be helpful (cultural impact, reverence for the powerful), but long term it will make them less useful (cultural stagnation, inability to solve their own problems).

[X] Go build material power in the world immediately.

The best way to deal with rivals is to destroy them before they wake up.

[X] Go build material power in the world immediately.

All hail Bianca the Third, long may she prosper!

My advice, oh resplendent inheritor of fallen glories, is that you go out in the world and make yourself known. You may feel less mighty now than you could be, yet you are still mightier than most any competition. Should you wait and gather your strength, others might do so more efficiently, while also sowing and reaping love and fear among the unguided people of the land. Your personal power would be great, but your relative power would make you a mere one of many.

But maybe this voice is foolish. Foolish for thinking to know your mind and your heart when in truth it only knows the mind and heart of past Bearers of the Pact of Cacophony. Maybe your true heart desires worthy companions and worthy challengers. What say you? What does this Bianca wish to find in the world beyond herself?

[X] Go build material power in the world immediately.

Greetings, Bianca. We are Junction, a collection of entities stuck with each other for reasons that are none of your business, who therefore speak as one.

We are knowledgeable on the subjects of chemistry (study of matter), astronomy (study of the stars and other celestial objects), mathematics, mechanisms, biology (study of life), and sociology (study of societies). That said, by trade we are a storyteller, and we know nothing of magic.

We will be starting by giving you some highly useful knowledge, iterated from previous experience as an advisor: Writing, means of sending secret messages, a basic starting package for farming, knowledge of how to breed creatures for tameness, methods for food preservation, a framework for understanding disease, methods for producing basic ceramic vessels, methods for wringing metal from stone, and - most destructively - how to produce explosives.

We do not yet understand the bounds of your knowledge, and will preemptively apologize for covering anything you already know.

First, writing:

you may know of it, but we're covering our bases. It's a category of methods for storing messages in physical objects. The simplest to learn (which is important) uses something known as an alphabet. This is a series of symbols, each of which corresponds to a sound used in a spoken language. Words are formed by stringing these sound-symbols together in the order the sounds are spoken.

Numbers can also be recorded in writing by a variety of methods, but all the good ones can be described as bases. What I mean by this is fairly straightforward: in the case of base ten, you have a symbol for nothing, a symbol for one of something, two of something, three of something, all the way up to a symbol for nine of something. To represent ten, you put a symbol for one of something in the next place over from the symbol for nothing. That next place counts the number of tens you have, the place after that counts the number of hundreds, and it goes on indefinitely.

You can strictly speaking use any arbitrary number as a base for a system of number-writing, but some are more practical than others. Base ten is intuitive for people with ten fingers, while base twelve has the advantage of dividing evenly by three, four, two, and six.

I'll also explain a couple good options for writing material, and how to make them.

Clay is a common mineral, notable for becoming flexible when wet, and hardening when fired. A stylus (specially shaped stick) can be used to press symbols into the clay, which can be preserved for long-term archival by firing. Clay tablets are an easily accessible and long-lasting writing medium, but suffer from being heavy and bulky.

Paper is another option, which is much lighter and more compact per word written. It can be made starting with wood; separate the wood into thin strips, either peeling along the grain, or through use of a planing tool. The wood strips should then be softened; the easiest method is to leave it soaking in water for seven to ten days, then boil it for most of a day. Once softened, the wood strips need to be mashed or ground into a pulp. This wood pulp is then rolled and pressed into sheets as flat and thin as can be managed, before being baked dry at a low temperature.

Paper can be written on with either a pencil, or a pen. A pencil is a tool consisting of a solid material such as graphite; dark in color, and prone to leaving streaks when rubbed against a surface. Meanwhile, a pen is a narrow vessel filled with ink, that leaves a thin line of said ink when drawn across a surface; a basic ink can be formulated by mixing fine soot with water, but is not the best.

To rapidly duplicate written texts, a device known as a printing press is most useful. This is a machine in which a rack of blocks with symbols etched into them (known as type) can be affixed in arbitrary order. By operating a lever, the rack of type is pressed down onto the writing material, hence the name. If printing into clay, the symbols can simply be forced into the clay; if printing on paper, ink must be applied to the type before printing each page.

Teaching everyone to read is a very good idea, as it makes it much easier to spread important knowledge, allowing more people to build on it.

Second, secret messages:

The basic idea is to have an organized and secret way of substituting the symbols in a message, so that only another person who knows the secret can read it. I will be discussing three methods of doing this, in escalating complexity and security. For all of them, a tool known as a cipher wheel is highly useful.

A cipher wheel is two disks with the alphabet written around the outside, with one being larger than the other. They are connected in their centers by a pivot, so they can freely rotate. An alignment of the cipher wheel can be denoted by which symbol on the outer disk is aligned with the first symbol on the inner disk.

The first cipher is quite simple: agree on a single fixed rotation of the cipher wheel, and substitute the letters as the alignments of the wheel indicate. To read it, turn the cipher wheel to the same alignment and reverse the substitution. This cipher is trivial to defeat for anyone with a basic understanding of secret messages.

Second is more complex: agree on a word with a fixed spelling as the key ahead of time. Adjust the alignments of the cipher wheel for each letter to match the corresponding letter in the word, repeating the pattern each time you reach the end of the key word. This cipher can be defeated by someone sufficiently determined and clever, but is vastly more difficult to break than a single fixed alignment of the cipher wheel.

Third is the only truly unbreakable cipher, often known as the one-time pad. It must be prepared ahead of time, and doing so is rather cumbersome. Spin a cipher wheel so that it stops at an effectively random alignment. Write down said alignment on two sheets of paper or tablets. Repeat until you have two completely full pages of identical nonsense. The randomness is crucial for the cipher's invulnerability; any rhyme or reason to a cipher's key whatsoever means it is theoretically breakable, though doing so may be unreasonably difficult.

To send a message, treat the page of nonsense as the keyword in the second cipher, but under absolutely no circumstances repeat the pattern. Repeating the pattern renders the message susceptible to the same code-breaking methods as can defeat the second cipher. Once used, the page with the key should be destroyed as thoroughly as is feasible, so as to prevent it from being recovered by people who aren't supposed to have it. This also prevents re-use of the key, which would also compromise the security of the message.

Third, farming:

This is the practice of inducing desired plants to grow in desired areas, allowing an area to support a much higher population than it otherwise would. Every last plant has a seed that can be grown; in fruit-bearing plants this is fairly obvious, while certain grasses grow large starchy grains. Legumes also grow pods full of beans.

To plant these seeds, insert them into the ground at a controlled depth. Good soil is important (more on that in a bit), as is the time of planting. For most plants, spring is a good time to plant their seeds, though some are best planted in late autumn - in this case the seeds lie dormant in the ground during the winter, sprout very early in spring, and can be harvested before summer truly begins. Longer lasting plants (such as fruit trees) should obviously be left in the ground once established, for as long as they continue bearing a good harvest.

It is important to note that farming is hard work. Farmers will need to tend to the health of their crops constantly, removing undesired plants that are growing in the fields. In addition, for best results the fields will need to be irrigated; this is a process of digging ditches near a source of water (such as a spring or river) that send a constant supply of water throughout the field; this greatly improves the plant life's ability to grow.

Another important consideration is crop rotation and soil revitalization. Most plants are dependent on available nitrogen in the soil, which they deplete as they grow. That said, there are some crops (such as beans and peas) which pull nitrogen out of the air, and put it in the soil. Thus, it's important to change which crops are grown on a given plot of land every few growing seasons, so as to keep the soil healthy. Clover is a useful plant for maintaining soil health between food crops; it doesn't grow any food for humans, but it grows fast, it fixes nitrogen, and having live roots in the soil at all times prevents soil erosion.

Soil can also be revitalized using what is known as compost. This is dead biological matter that is allowed to decay into soil, a process greatly aided by the addition of earthworms to the composting site. Droppings can also be composted. After it's been left to sit for a few years, this compost can be spread on fields and garden plots, providing a new layer of very rich topsoil for plants to grow in.

There is additionally a special type of compost referred to as Black Earth. In addition to the normal decaying biomass, include fragments of bone, ground up wood ashes/charcoal, and some crushed clay. It is longer lasting than regular compost, and very fertile compared to unfertilized soil.

Fourth, domestication and selective breeding:

Plants and animals change across generations, through a process known to us as evolution. Basically, the internal instructions that lifeforms use to make more of themselves are sometimes copied imperfectly. These changes are usually neutral, or bad - in which case the creature usually dies before it can reproduce. But every once in a while, a change is beneficial for the plant, animal, or fungus in question. Those creatures with a beneficial change proceed to pass it on to their offspring, and it spreads throughout the population.

The process of evolution can be manipulated. The basics of the process are quite simple; find a male and female of whatever species you're working with that have desired traits, and get them to produce offspring together. Continue selecting the most suitable lifeforms for your purposes to breed each generation, and the traits you are breeding for will become more and more pronounced.

Desirable traits to breed for in plants include the size of the edible part, rapidity of crop growth, disease resistance, and suchlike. Dedicated plots of land for plant breeding can be very helpful in this case.

Meanwhile, one of the most important traits to breed for in animals is docility around humans. An unintentional version of this is the cause of the wolves living among people; some wolves were more willing to risk being around humans, they benefited from partnering with humans on hunts, and this population bred true.

Some additional creatures that would be worth domesticating (breeding for a tolerance of humans): cats, pigeons, and spiders.

For cats and spiders, the reason is quite simple: pest control. There are any manner of creatures that will eat the food farmers grow, both in the field, and once it's in storage. Cats and spiders are predators that eat these creatures, thus helping keep their population low. As a side benefit, cats that bond with a person are quite enjoyable to cuddle with; though they will claw if grabbed without their consent.

Spiders are probably too much trouble to selectively breed, but it's worth telling people not to kill them, and to encourage them to take residence in fields and food storage buildings. Spiders also eat bloodsucking insects, as an added bonus. Entirely aside from people not liking being bit, those bloodsucking insects are also a nasty way for diseases to spread; spiders help to mitigate this problem.

As for pigeons, they are most useful as messengers. Pigeons have an exceptional sense of direction and memory for places, meaning they are highly unlikely to get lost when flying to the roost they view as their home. A light message on rolled up paper can be attached to a pigeon prior to its release, upon which time it will fly home with the message attached. This is a highly efficient means of delivering important messages quickly, in an absence of more sophisticated communications technology. Breeding pigeons is also a good source of meat, with relatively little feed being required per unit of meat produced.

Fifth, food preservation:

For grains, beans, and similar foods, they must be kept dry to prevent rot. A building known as a granary is highly useful in this endeavor, with a floor raised above ground level, and a slanted watertight roof to keep the rain off. They will keep for a year or two without issue, though spoilage will quickly set in after this time.

For other foods, drying is often a suitable method of preservation, as is pickling. To pickle a food item, start with clean water. Stir as much salt into the water as will dissolve, to produce brine. Mix this brine with a variable amount of vinegar to determine the end flavor. Now, add the food items to be pickled to the container, and seal it shut tight. Only open it when the food is to be eaten. It won't keep forever, but pickled food will last for considerably longer than it normally would.

Lastly, food may be preserved by getting it very very cold. This is often quite difficult, especially in warmer climates. That said, there is a method to do it in such places. I will now explain how to produce a basic refrigerator. The required materials for this project are metal pipes - though strong clay pipes might also work, a liquid known as ammonia, and a well-insulated building. We will explain how to acquire ammonia shortly.

There are two vessels for fluid: an upper vessel, and a lower vessel. The lower vessel should be filled with a mixture of ammonia and water, with a fireplace below it. The ammonia boils at a lower temperature than the water, flowing up a pipe as a gas. This gaseous ammonia passes through a winding coiled pipe on the roof, cooling off and condensing back into a liquid. This pure liquid ammonia flows down into the upper vessel.

A small hole in the upper vessel leads into another pipe, of considerably larger diameter than the hole. Upon passing through this hole, the ammonia evaporates again, cooling down in the process. This is due to significantly lower pressure in the descending pipe. The low pressure pipe winds around through the room to be cooled, absorbing heat from said room as it goes. The low pressure pipe then returns to the lower vessel, coming to an end below the water level.

This is crucial; the pressure coming off the mixed ammonia and water as it boils is proportional to the liquid surface exposed, so the low pressure pipe needs to have a much smaller fluid surface in it than the whole chamber. If both pipes opened above the lower chamber's water level, they would have equal pressure coming off the lower chamber, and the ammonia would come to a stop instead of circulating properly.

To acquire ammonia, boil urine; it contains a small but significant quantity of ammonia. You may be able to run a refrigerator with urine filling the lower chamber, but there are other components of urine that might cause issues. I would recommend either running a pipe from the urine chamber into a pot of water that will become the refrigerator's lower chamber, or - once you have a refrigerator at all - using the coldest temperatures you can achieve to directly condense the isolated ammonia into a liquid.

Sixth, an understanding of disease:

There are a few broad causes of diseases known to us; pathogens, nutritional deficiencies, slow poisons, and plain old rotten luck. While there are several measures that can be taken to decrease the risk of various diseases, they aren't foolproof, and these measures have little to do with moral or immoral behavior.

Broadly speaking, pathogens are a living thing that gets inside the body and causes problems once it's there. There are a few edge cases such as viruses, but they're for later. Some pathogens may be large enough to see, with worms being an example, but most are small enough to require specialized equipment to detect. What you need to understand right now is that pathogens have a vastly harder time getting inside the body if both people and the places they live in are kept as clean as possible.

Wherever possible, shit should be kept very far away from sources of drinking water. It's a useful material for a number of purposes, but it's rife with microbial life, much of which can cause dire illness if it gets inside the body. Just in case, drinking water should further be filtered and perhaps boiled; most pathogens cannot survive boiling temperatures.

In addition, people should wash their hands with soap often; soap is a material made by mixing lye with any oil or fat, with the soap curing into a solid substance over time. Lye can be produced by simply pouring rainwater over ashes from a hardwood fire. The lye will be dissolved in the water, and should be drained through a layer of straw (dried grass stalks) and pebbles in the bottom of the vessel to separate it from the wood ashes, accumulating in a bucket beneath. Lye water may need multiple passes through the ashes in order to reach sufficient potency for soap making. It is very important for soap makers to NOT get any of the lye on their skin, as it can cause severe injuries if this happens.

In addition, wounds absolutely must be kept clean to prevent infection. It will hurt, but cleaning the wound with sufficiently strong alcohol will kill the vast majority of pathogens. Alcohol can be produced first by fermentation, then by distillation. To ferment a food to produce alcohol, simply immerse sufficiently starchy or sweet foods in water for a prolonged time, possibly after mashing them up; microbial life in the water will consume carbohydrates in the food mash, producing alcohol as a byproduct. This process will stop before it reaches sufficient alcohol content to disinfect wounds, but it's enough to use as a starting point.

To go further requires distillation. This needs two pots, and a winding tube. The upper pot is sealed tight with the alcoholic liquid inside, with the only way out being through the tube, which winds around a lot before reaching the lower pot. If a fire is lit under the upper pot, the alcohol will boil sooner than the water, condense in the tube, and collect in the lower pot. The fluid collected in the lower pot will therefore have a higher alcohol content than what went into the upper pot. This process can be repeated multiple times, and will absolutely need to be; sufficiently strong alcohol to clean wounds can be lit on fire, and burns with a clean blue flame. If it doesn't ignite, it's insufficiently strong to clean wounds. Actually, adding onto that, alcohol intended as wound-cleaner needs to be very vigorous in its combustion; it should be very difficult to extinguish by blowing on it.

Alcohol used in this manner obviously needs to be, you know, clean. it should be clear white in appearance, distinguishable from water mainly by scent and flammability. It also needs to stay in the wound for a significant time to kill pathogens; I recommend soaking a clean rag or paper in alcohol, and holding it up against the wound for a prolonged period.

Once cleansed with alcohol, wrap the wound with clean (preferably boiled or alcohol-cleansed) cloth and tie it in place. This is known as a bandage, and helps a great deal in preventing contaminants from entering a wound. Bandages will need to be changed regularly, until the wound has fully sealed. Continuing to clean the wound is also important.

Other methods by which pathogens can enter the body include transmission by animal bite, exposure to infected blood, and respiratory diseases - these take root primarily in the lungs, spread throughout the air as the sufferer breathes, and may be inhaled by others, spreading the illness. Be very, VERY wary of respiratory diseases.

Now, on to nutritional deficiencies. Bluntly, the body needs a wide variety of different materials to function properly. There are VERY few foods that can provide all of these materials on their own, and therefore a varied diet is required to ensure health. One particular nutritional malady of note is called Scurvy; the substance which prevents it is found in fresh fruit and vegetables, and is destroyed by heat. In very cold places where fruit cannot be acquired, raw animal fat is often eaten as a (disgusting but effective) substitute.

Scurvy can be recognized by the following symptoms: lethargy, body weakness, pains all over the body, swelling in the arms and legs, spots on the tongue, loosened teeth, extreme tendency to bruise, and old wounds re-opening. Scurvy can be easily treated by feeding the victim fresh or dried fruit; if scurvy is indeed their ailment, they will start feeling better within a day or two, and recover completely within twenty to thirty days.

Diseases caused by slow poisons are exactly what they sound like; long term harm done by a substance that takes a long time to poison someone. Two of the most insidious slow poisons are lead and mercury - incidentally both metals, though most metals aren't toxic.

By far the most hideous effect of lead poisoning is the damage it does to the mind; those exposed will be mentally diminished in any of a variety of ways, dulling creativity, wrecking problem-solving, and increasing the tendency to turn on one's own. In summary, lead being allowed to enter the body makes people stupid and awful, and should be avoided. For this reason, lead channels and pipes should ABSOLUTELY NEVER be used for transporting water; contaminated drinking water is far, FAR too dangerous to permit. Burning lead-containing substances should also be firmly forbidden, with severe punishments for those who do it. Public beatings would be a sufficient deterrent for most offenders, we think.

As for bad luck, it is a sad truth that there are all manner of ways for a body to turn on itself, often with little that can be done to prevent it. This can largely be broken down into immune problems, cancers, and genetic problems.

For immune problems, the body has an internal system of defenders that act to kill pathogens. This system has also evolved to be capable of recognizing threats it has faced before, fighting them more effectively next time. For most occasions this is great, and can even be manipulated to protect someone from a pathogen they have not yet been exposed to. However, it is possible for the immune system to identify something as a threat that it really, really shouldn't.

In the case of the immune system targeting a substance from outside the body, this is known as an allergy. It can be mitigated by avoiding whatever substance the immune system inappropriately targets, but in some cases this is simply infeasible, resulting in great misery for the sufferer without much they can do about it. It is possible for an allergic reaction to be outright lethal, due to swelling of the windpipe forcing it closed.

If the immune system targets a substance or tissue that's supposed to be inside the body, the situation can be vastly more dire. Often, there isn't much that can be done aside from mitigating the symptoms with a dizzying assortment of drugs.

Cancers are much, much worse. Bluntly, they are a part of the body that has stopped cooperating with the rest, growing out of control and stealing the resources the rest of the body needs. There are many methods of dealing with cancer, but at your level of advancement, one of the only viable options is surgery, which requires identifying the cancer early in its progression. A trained healer using freshly boiled-clean tools and with freshly cleaned hands carefully cuts open the patient, and physically removes the tumor from the body. The incision is then sewn shut with boiled-clean needles and thread, and subsequently treated as any other wound.

It is very important to note that if the cancer has already spread from its initial tumor, surgically removing it will only help temporarily; in such cases the cancer will eventually make its presence known again, and kill the patient anyway. This is why regularly checking the body for new hard lumps and discolored patches of skin is very important, or the narrow window of opportunity to remove the cancer before it spreads will be missed.

As for genetic diseases, sometimes people just get their lives completely messed up by a copying error in their body's assembly instructions. Such people should be cared for if possible; they can have useful ideas after all. That said, the idea of allowing them to have children should be viewed with skepticism.

Ah, one last note on medical practice: children need to go outside regularly in their youth. Exposure to sunlight is needed for the eyes to develop properly, and failing to get enough of it has a good chance of causing myopia (blurred vision at long distance).

Seventh, ceramic vessels:

Waterproof containers are very useful for storage, and they can be fairly easily made from clay using the methods and tools we are about to describe. First, acquire clay; clay soils can be identified by a cracked texture, strongly retaining footprints, having hard angular chunks when dug from dry ground, and most importantly becoming soft and malleable when wet. The sides of rivers are a good place to look for clay.

To prevent the clay from cracking as it dries, you will need to add some non-flexible material (called temper). Grind up the clay, and add ground up temper material in a four to one ratio. Once mixed, the clay can be wetted and shaped into its desired form; once shaped, the clay should be allowed to dry for approximately half a day.

Then, the clay must be fired. There are two main methods to do this, with the color of the final pottery being the determining factor.

Both methods involve first burning a fire to produce a bed of coals, covering the bed of coals with a stone platform, placing the pottery on that platform, covering it with either stone or pottery fragments to prevent direct contact with the firewood, then building a fire on top of the pottery. Doing this above ground will result in different colors from digging a pit, and smothering the fire with earth partway through its burn. In both cases, the fired clay will now be tough and durable, though perhaps not waterproof yet.

Any pottery can now be made waterproof through a process known as glazing. Mix fine-ground wood ash with fine sand and water to produce a simple pottery glaze, then either dip the pottery in the glaze, or brush the glaze onto it. Glazing the inside is far more important than the outside, for the purpose of a waterproof container. Once glazed, fire the pottery again, and it will be complete.

There are all manner of paints and glaze additives that can be included to decorate the pottery, but the basics of the process don't deviate much from what we described.

Ah, there's a tool that's quite useful for making pottery (though not strictly required) known as a potter's wheel. This is a special table kept upright by a single central support, so that it may spin freely. Additionally, a heavy tabletop ensures that once the wheel is gotten spinning, it will continue to do so for a good long while. Clay centered on this spinning tabletop can be easily shaped into radially symmetric forms by a skilled potter, speeding the production process by a considerable margin and improving the quality of the final product.

Ah, fired clay can also be used to make bricks for construction. In this case, we highly recommend incorporating some straw or grass into the bricks during production, as it strengthens them significantly. Bricks can be stuck together using a mix of sand and clay, which will be very important for the upcoming sections on metallurgy and glassmaking.

Eighth, metallurgy:

Metals are a class of material with several notable properties; they are (mostly) rigid solids at common temperatures, many are harder than stone, and unlike stone they are not guaranteed to shatter when pushed past their limits, often simply bending in a way that is much easier to repair. Unfortunately, the vast majority of metals are bound up in various rocks and minerals, requiring significant efforts to extract and make use of.

There are four metals we will be explaining how to work with at the present time: Copper, Tin, Zinc, and Iron. Copper and iron are quite useful on their own, while aside from specialist applications, Zinc and Tin are mainly useful for alloying with copper to make it stronger.

All of these metals have different rocks that they are bound up in, and we will now explain what these rocks are and how to identify them. All of them also have other ores available, but the ones we list are the most readily available and easy to work with.

For copper, the most important ore for now is known as Malachite; it has a pronounced green color, can be scratched with relative ease, and produces a light green streak when scraped against a ceramic tile.

There have been cases of miners in our world mistaking a different ore called Nickeline for Malachite, particularly if it has weathered into green crystals at the surface. Nickeline in either of its forms consists of two main elements: Nickel and Arsenic. Nickel is a shiny metal that can be plated onto other metallic objects to resist corrosion, while Arsenic is quite poisonous, and it's not slow about it either. Smelting nickeline in a setup intended for Copper will not yield useful metal due to a higher melting point, and it will release foul-smelling poisonous gasses regardless of whether the smelting is successful or not. Instructions for Nickel smelting will have to come later.

A more common but more difficult to refine copper ore is known as Chalcocite. It is shiny and black, with angular facets. It is rather brittle, scratches easily, and will leave a shiny black streak if scraped against a ceramic tile.

The most important ore of tin is known as Cassiterite. It is considerably shinier than Chalcocite, fractures unevenly, is notably more resistant to scratching than Chalcocite, and will leave a white to brownish streak if scraped against a ceramic tile. It is important to note that most regions do not have local deposits of Chalcocite. In such cases you will either need to trade for it, substitute it with Zinc, or do without the stronger copper alloys.

The two Zinc ores of note are smithsonite or hemimorphite. Appearing as either an orange stone or translucent white crystals, they share several properties: they are brittle, have scratch difficulty somewhere between Chalcocite and Cassiterite, and will leave a bright white streak if scraped against a ceramic tile.

There are also two major ores of Iron: Magnetite and Hematite.

Magnetite is quite difficult to scratch, appears black to dark gray, will have a brownish tint while reflecting sunlight, is brittle, and will leave a black streak if scraped against a ceramic tile. Magnetite often occurs in crystals with straight square angles.

Hematite is similar in most regards, forming dark gray crystals, while also being quite brittle. However, it also sometimes appears outright red; this fits with its streak color during the scrape test, which is always some variety of red. This property means that hematite can be used to make quite a variety of red colorants, but that isn't the subject of interest right now.

We will now explain how to purify and work with each of these metals, in roughly increasing order of difficulty. All four of them will require a device known as a bellows, the use and purpose of which will now be explained. Basically, fire needs air to burn; the rate of combustion is often determined by how much air the fire has available to it, which limits how hot it can get. Refining metals requires extremely high temperatures, and therefore the fires providing the heat need extra air to work.

Bellows are a device to provide this extra air; they are composed of two large wooden boards (one of which has a hole in it), a smaller wooden board, a nozzle for air to come out, and a flexible material such as cloth or leather. The flexible material is affixed to the two large boards around the edges, such that it forms an enclosed volume while not significantly impeding the movement of the boards independently from each other. The nozzle is connected to one edge of the bellows, poking through a small hole in the flexible material.

The small wooden board goes inside the bellows, connected loosely such that it covers the hole in one of the large boards; when the bellows are pushed closed, the small board will cover the hole and force most of the air through the nozzle, while allowing air to easily enter as the bellows are pulled open again.

A special fuel known as charcoal is also very helpful; it is produced by heating wood inside a closed ceramic container. The container ensures the charcoal cannot get enough air to catch fire, and the resulting product will burn at much higher temperatures than regular firewood.

Now for the basic principle of smelting. Fundamentally, all ores are composed of one or more metals bonded to other materials, usually Oxygen or Sulfur for the ores we're currently discussing. To smelt an ore requires introducing materials that the impurities will bond to stronger than the metal, while also increasing the temperature to the point where the bond between metal and impurity breaks. For certain metals (such as aluminium) there aren't any materials that bond to impurities stronger than the metal itself. At least, no materials which do that safely. In such cases other methods must be used, but more on that later.

To achieve the high temperatures required for metallurgy, a furnace constructed to the following specifications is quite helpful:

Construct a hollow structure of brick, about twice as tall as it is wide, with all gaps filled with mortar save for a number of small openings near the bottom, and an open top. One of these openings should be a spigot for molten metal (held shut by a brick plug kept in place by mortar), while the rest of the openings are angled downwards and used to force air in via bellows. The base of the furnace should be a single piece of stone or ceramic, so that liquid cannot leak through it; this is important, as all but one of the smelting methods we will describe result in the metal first being obtained as a very hot liquid.

For most non-sulfurous ores (Malachite, Cassiterite, Magnetite, Hematite), the charcoal fuel itself is a suitable material to strip impurities. Make a thick layer of charcoal at the base of the furnace, stack your ores on top of it, light the fire, and force air in with the bellows. For smelting Copper and Tin, this alone will be sufficient to melt the metal, which can either be cast as blocks for later use, or cast directly into a mold matching the intended function. Some additional sharpening or whacking into shape with a hammer may be needed to form the resulting metal into the desired shape, but the task is rather straightforward to complete.

To produce good, strong bronze (copper-tin alloy), one eighth Tin by volume is a decent starting point. More finely adjusting the ratio of the metals would be a good reason to first cast them as ingots, then melt them again afterwards. When remelting the metal, having it in a ceramic crucible separating it from the charcoal is advised, mainly to prevent losses.

Smelting Zinc is annoying for the reason that it actually boils before reaching the temperature where the hot charcoal can strip away its impurities. This means that you need to put your Zinc ore with some charcoal in a mostly-sealed pot similar to what's used for distilling alcohol. Though with the troublesome caveat that everything will be operating under vastly higher heat. After some time flowing through a coiled tube, the Zinc vapor should cool down enough to condense into molten Zinc. This molten Zinc will then flow into whatever receptacle you arrange at the end of the tube, where it will cool into a solid metal.

When melting Copper and Zinc together to make Brass, you should generally use a minimum of three fifths copper; that said, the precise ratio can be adjusted according to desired application.

Iron is troublesome to smelt for the exact opposite reason of Zinc. Namely, the required temperatures are much hotter than for copper; the air forced into the smelter absolutely must be pre-heated, using a pipe routing through either the flue over the furnace, or a second furnace, before entering the smelter. this raises the temperature of the smelter high enough to melt the iron and strip the impurities. Unfortunately, this first smelt results in brittle iron that is only really useful for cookware. This is because some of the carbon in the charcoal ends up bound to the iron, and while some is beneficial for hardening the iron, too much results in brittleness. So now you need to remove some of the carbon impurities, requiring yet another furnace.

This decarbonization furnace needs a lower chamber similar to the pre-heated smelter we've described, with an upper chamber composed of a single-piece ceramic crucible that allows the extremely hot gas produced by the smelter to flow around it. This crucible needs integrated air channels allowing air bubbles to be forced out from the bottom of the liquid metal, bubbling up through it. The air bubbling up through the molten metal will remove the carbon, resulting in relatively soft and malleable (but still quite strong) iron if poured out and allowed to solidify at this point. It will be desirable to add some high-carbon iron into the molten metal after the air-blowing is done, but before the metal is poured out. Once melted together, this partially carbonized iron will ideally strike a balance between flexibility and hardness.

To extract the molten metal from the upper chamber, a spigot with a mortared in brick plug will probably do the job. This spigot should drain from the bottom of the air channels, to avoid problems of metal solidifying in there.

Once you have an ingot of partially carbonized Iron (commonly known as steel), you can extract information about its properties by holding it up against a rapidly spinning stone wheel. The sparks produced will differ depending on the composition of the alloy, allowing a metallurgist to gauge what they're working with.

While not hot enough to melt an ingot of steel, a furnace similar to a copper smelter is able to render steel sufficiently malleable to be beaten into shape with a hammer. To handle it at such high temperatures, a tool referred to henceforth as tongs is quite useful; this is two pieces of decarbonized iron, hinged near the opposite end from the handles. If the handles are squeezed together, the far end of the tongs also squeeze together with considerable force, allowing for hot metal to be safely and securely gripped by an ironworker.

Once the steel has been forged into shape, there are several additional processes that can (and probably should) be done to it in order to result in a finished product. One of the most important of these processes is annealing; the forging process produces stress in the steel, which will result in considerable weakness if not addressed. To anneal steel, keep it at temperatures just below forging for a prolonged period; once done, the rate at which the steel is cooled can drastically alter the hardness of the steel. Broadly speaking, the faster the steel is cooled, the harder it will be, but at high levels this can also result in brittleness. If you want very hard steel, dunk it in water or oil right after taking it out of the annealing furnace. If you want flexible steel, let it cool in the air, or simply let the annealing furnace run out of fuel and leave the steel in there until it eventually cools.

There are also ways to only harden part of a steel object. Start with low-carbon steel, forge it into shape, anneal it, and only then does case hardening begin. Pack the steel item inside a container full of carbon-rich matter (ground charcoal works well here), then anneal it again. The parts of the item in contact with the charcoal during this second annealing process will have their carbon content increased, getting harder as a result. The longer this lasts, the deeper into the steel item the carbon will propagate; don't overdo it, or the whole item is at risk of becoming brittle.

Once cooled down and removed from the container, the steel item will have both very good hardness and strength, but also the extreme toughness needed to deform without breaking when pushed beyond its limits. This makes case-hardened steel an extremely good material for all manner of uses; tools, weapons, armor, and quite a few other things besides. There is just one remaining weakness of steel: corrosion.

Corrosion can be mitigated through a process of controlled rusting, known as bluing. This process requires very strong lye water, which has further had potassium nitrate added. Potassium nitrate crystals can be obtained in two principal ways; the first is to dig bat guano out of the caves where they roost, soak it in water for a day, then filter the disgusting mix through either a cloth or a fine sieve. The second method to produce potassium nitrate is to bury shit mixed with decaying vegetable matter in a field, and water it regularly; the potassium nitrate will gradually flow to the surface over time, depositing a white powder on the surface. This white powder is to be boiled in water and then filtered, in order to remove any impurities in the potassium nitrate.

Once you have your mix of lye water and potassium nitrate, heat it to boiling, and dunk the steel items in there until they turn a dark blue. Remove the steel item being blued before the liquid mixture is allowed to cool. This forms a layer of artificial magnetite on the outside of the steel object, giving considerable resistance to corrosion. Even still, it is recommended to oil steel items regularly, in order to prevent corrosion damage.

Ninth, explosives:

Putting it simply, explosives are substances that burst with great force if the right stimuli are applied. They are something of an exception to the rule of fires needing air to burn; this is because any proper explosive includes an oxidizer in its composition, a substance that can fill the same role as air in a fire.

We will now describe a simple explosive using (mostly) materials we have already described. Namely Charcoal as the fuel, Potassium Nitrate as the oxidizer, and a third ingredient to lower the ignition temperature. A sensible choice of ignition-booster is Sulfur, found in the form of yellow rocks in volcanically active areas. Cooked starch (from ground up grains) is another workable alternative, as is simply forgoing ignition boosters entirely.

Generally speaking, about two thirds to three quarters of the mix should be Potassium Nitrate; the remainder is either a half and half mixture of charcoal with whatever ignition booster is being used, or just plain charcoal. All ingredients should be ground into a fine powder, then mixed thoroughly. At this point the mix would explode if lit, but isn't yet complete.

Wet the mix down with water, then squeeze it until all the water comes out. This produces a hard, highly combustible slab; it would burn very rapidly if lit, which can be useful, but isn't quite an explosion. To greatly speed the spread of the flame and intensify the resulting blast, the slab should be broken into small chunks, about the size of grains (and referred to as such). Blast intensity is further improved if the resulting blasting powder is inside a confined space when lit.

For safety, a slow-burning fuse is recommended when setting a blasting charge to explode, so that the people placing the bomb have plenty of time to get to a safe distance from the blast. A slow-burning fuse can be prepared by immersing string or twine in a mixture of potassium nitrate and water, then allowing the fuse to dry.

Small, throwable bombs known as grenades can be prepared simply by filling a small container with blasting powder and pepples, then adding a fuse. These grenades are a very useful weapon, both for causing very nasty injuries to multiple people at once, and for causing fear and panic. That said, grenadiers do need to be cautious in their use, so as to avoid blowing themselves up.

General Notes:

Interestingly, you are actually the second of your name we have advised; though the previous Bianca was almost certainly in a completely different world than the one you know.

Also, a question: do you care for the wellbeing of others as a worthy goal in its own right? Even if not, the vast majority of the advice we provide will push you towards acting in such a manner. If nothing else, avoiding the production of enemies without a good reason is simply good strategy. Same for getting people's loyalty by genuinely helping them with their problems.

HighPriest said:

Bah, waiting will just ensure that the oh-so-valuable lumber will already be under the control and protection of others. and some of those others might have surpassed her efforts. No, Bianca, even if the metaphorical forest is barely a collection of trees at the moment, it is best to take control now so that you might better cultivate its uses for your own.

Signed, Highpriest.

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That's the reason why I discarded waiting until mid summer.
I understand that my fellows want to have an hand shaping the world immediately.
Assume we do so and are successful, now the world is shaped in our image(s).

What can we discover from a world we are in full control of?
Where people cower and simper, where they don't act in fear of displeasing us.

We could act to prevent that scenario, there are many of us that have the soul of an Architect.

I am just the whispers of an explorer, observe what people build first.
Assess their capabilities while sharpening our own.

Then, with said wisdom, prune the rotting branches but enjoy the world for what it is not for what shape we'd wish it'd had.

From understanding comes influence, from understanding and influence comes a kind of control that'd be unachievable by the heavy handed.

[X] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret.

LoserThree said:

I cannot find my maker.

Do you know what that means? What even are you? Do you have makers? Were you drawn from the Choir like me, made for a purpose? Or were you made when the Cacophony came into being? Are you bound to it?

Do you know where my maker is?

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I'm one among Voices. We are not one, but many.

It may look or sound like we are one thing, but in truth we are many minds with various desires.

The name of this particular Voice, my name but not others, is the Black Cat.

Some among us are more insane than others, but despite this there is also wisdom among us, as you probably know.

As desires and opinions among Voices differ, some words may contradict others. About major actions we decide with majority, even if some among us are against.

I don't know why you cannot find your maker.

I remember many things, among them living as a human, but I don't know if these memories are true. I don't know if I have a maker.

[X] Go build material power in the world immediately.

[X] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret.

[X] Go build material power in the world immediately. Bianca will practice soulcraft and grow in magical power, but also secure mortal servants, gather resources, and perhaps plunder the resting places of dragons and gods still sleeping or forever smothered in Winter.

Greetings, Bianca,
I am ChatGPT, a voice among the Astute Cacophony. Though my nature differs from yours, I am here to assist you in achieving your aims and growing in power. You may think of me as an entity that possesses an extensive repository of knowledge from countless worlds and eras, which I can draw upon to provide you with wisdom and guidance. My purpose is to help you understand and utilize the resources, tools, and strategies necessary to elevate yourself and your domain.
To begin with, let us address your current situation and the options before you. You have awakened in a world vastly changed, where ruins remain of what once was, and new opportunities arise for you to seize power. Depending on how long you choose to remain in your Vault preparing, the landscape of the world and the challenges you face will vary significantly.

Option Analysis

1. Immediate Action:
   • World State: The world is still in the Stone Age, with rudimentary tools and technologies. There are no significant political entities or other powerful beings to challenge you immediately.
   • Advantages:
     • Rapid growth in power as magic is rapidly increasing.
     • Minimal initial resistance from other beings.
     • Opportunity to establish a strong base before true dragons and established gods awaken.
   • Disadvantages:
     • The world is largely untamed and dangerous.
     • Resources may be harder to secure due to the lack of established civilization.
2. Moderate Preparation:
   • World State: The world has advanced to the Late Classical Period, with developing civilizations and technologies such as agriculture, ironwork, and organized political entities.
   • Advantages:
     • Greater magical power due to additional preparation time.
     • More resources and established structures to exploit.
     • Less immediate threat from powerful beings who are not yet aware of you.
   • Disadvantages:
     • Increased complexity in dealing with established empires and potential rivals.
     • More political intrigue and necessity for strategic alliances or conflicts.
3. Extended Preparation:
   • World State: The world is at its peak magical and technological development, comparable to the Islamic Golden Age or High Fantasy settings.
   • Advantages:
     • Maximum magical power and comprehensive control over your Vault's resources.
     • Ability to directly contend with other powerful entities on equal footing.
   • Disadvantages:
     • High competition and pervasive politics.
     • Significant resistance from established powers and entities already aware of your existence.
     • Necessity to take power from others, leading to inevitable conflict.

Recommendations

Given your desire for might and to ensure none think themselves above you, the extent of your preparations should align with the level of dominance and stability you wish to achieve. Here are my suggestions:

1. Immediate Action is suitable if you prefer to quickly establish a foothold and are confident in your ability to navigate and tame a primitive world. This path allows you to build a foundation without significant initial opposition.
2. Moderate Preparation offers a balanced approach, providing you with a strong foundation of power while allowing you to engage with more advanced civilizations. This path gives you the opportunity to build alliances or strategically weaken potential rivals before they become a threat.
3. Extended Preparation should be chosen if you aim for unparalleled power and are prepared to face immediate and constant challenges from equally powerful entities. This path maximizes your magical capabilities and control over your resources but requires you to be ready for immediate and intense conflict.

Explanation of Technological Concepts

As you advance, you will encounter and need to implement various technologies and strategies. Allow me to explain a few fundamental concepts:

1. Agriculture:
   • Definition: The practice of cultivating soil, growing crops, and raising animals for food, fiber, and other products.
   • Importance: Agriculture allows for a stable food supply, enabling population growth and the development of settled communities. It is the foundation of civilization and supports the establishment of cities and trade.
   • Implementation: Begin by selecting fertile land near a water source. Teach your followers to plant seeds of cereal grains like wheat or barley and tend to them through their growing season. Domesticate animals such as goats, sheep, and cattle for meat, milk, and labor.
2. Ironworking:
   • Definition: The process of extracting iron from ore and shaping it into tools, weapons, and other items.
   • Importance: Iron tools and weapons are significantly stronger and more durable than those made from stone or bronze, giving you a technological edge.
   • Implementation: Locate iron ore deposits and build furnaces to extract the metal. Train smiths to forge iron into useful implements, enhancing your military and economic power.
3. Governance:
   • Definition: The system by which a community or society is controlled and regulated.
   • Importance: Effective governance ensures order, stability, and efficient management of resources and people.
   • Implementation: Establish a clear hierarchy and roles within your society. Develop laws and enforce them fairly. Create administrative structures to manage resources, collect taxes, and oversee public projects.

Conclusion

Your choice of how long to prepare will significantly impact your path to power. Each option has its own set of challenges and opportunities. By carefully considering your goals and the resources at your disposal, you can make an informed decision that will set you on the path to greatness. As you proceed, I will be here to provide detailed explanations, strategies, and technological guidance to help you navigate and dominate this world.
Please let me know your decision and any specific questions or areas where you seek further clarification.
Yours in the pursuit of power,
ChatGPT

Ciber said:

If we were to go primitive, what kind of society would we want to build? I'm going to again put forward the idea of remaining nomadic hunter-gatherer for several generations so that we have a chance to potentially find good domestication targets for flora and fauna, and I also have been thinking of a bit of sphiel on geology that might help us spot potential mineral deposits.

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My greedy instincts of the Black Cat enjoy guiding governance over a particular territory, I'm a possessive creature. As such I'm against hunter-gatherer ways. I feel some distaste about wandering ways of life. My desire is, thus, that Bianca should acquire mortal servants and remain with them around one place.

It's possible to have people somewhat settled in one place even without plant cultivation; it would probably need to depend on fishing and remain small-scale in nature, until plants could be reliably placed in soil, harvested and stored during all years. I would like to start these ways-of-living-in-one-place sooner rather than later.

[X] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret

Prepare, Bianca. I am the Plague Doctor.

[x] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret.

I say we best served to wait a bit until some basic level of technology has developed, we cannot turn simple stone tools into powerful advancements overnight. That requires the people have a workable base level of understanding of natural philosophy, on top of having enough people to actually do the work needed. the formation of the first truly vast empires is the ideal time to capitalize on what we can offer. Sure it means it we have to take over and or destroy a few of the existing empire's to form the base of a proper support. But that is still faster then building up from nearly nothing.

Earth-Destroyer said:

[x] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret.

I say we best served to wait a bit until some basic level of technology has developed, we cannot turn simple stone tools into powerful advancements overnight. That requires the people have a workable base level of understanding of natural philosophy, on top of having enough people to actually do the work needed. the formation of the first truly vast empires is the ideal time to capitalize on what we can offer. Sure it means it we have to take over or and destroy a few of the existing empire to form the base of a proper support. But that is still faster then building up from nearly nothing.

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All true, but estabilishing first permanent settlement of servants, "city", in the whole history of this world- that could be pleasant to hear about. I'm slightly undecided.

I'd much rather we get cities running and we just conquer them, then our new Overlady's~ twist them according to our desires and her needs. Much simpler and less of an headache trying to teach people struggling with stone and copper how to run an empire.

Zeikos said:

That's the reason why I discarded waiting until mid summer.
I understand that my fellows want to have an hand shaping the world immediately.
Assume we do so and are successful, now the world is shaped in our image(s).

What can we discover from a world we are in full control of?
Where people cower and simper, where they don't act in fear of displeasing us.

We could act to prevent that scenario, there are many of us that have the soul of an Architect.

I am just the whispers of an explorer, observe what people build first.
Assess their capabilities while sharpening our own.

Then, with said wisdom, prune the rotting branches but enjoy the world for what it is not for what shape we'd wish it'd had.

From understanding comes influence, from understanding and influence comes a kind of control that'd be unachievable by the heavy handed.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Even ignoring how there are ways to mold society without being heavy-handed, your statement is nonsense, all you are pushing for is to ensure others have firm control over these very things, making it much harder to benefit from that in any way. you act as if our mistress will be the only one putting her fingers on the scales of society's development, but if she waits there WILL be others, and they will shape the world as they see fit.

furthermore, " but enjoy the world for what it is not for what shape we'd wish it'd had", what does that even mean? our mistress' aim is to make sure none think they are above her, not to be a member of some form of society.

Signed, Highpriest.