So they understand half of it by the end of it? Good that's more than what they started with and now they have half a clue on what the rest is as they would have documented all those symbols, analysed everything they could about them, then try everything in the book and outside of it until they can get something new. Even half of a working device that works on unknown principles that you didn't know before is beyond amazing
Imagine if a bronze age society got several smartphones to reverse engineer. They don't understand electronics, they don't understand programing, but if they ways of making materials from which it's made and a vague idea of the materials needed to build such a wonder then, even if they barely get anything out of it and only know how to make the glas and some of the components, they would have advanced by centuries in some fields, started some new fields of research and some other nice things.
The protheans got that with the preterhuman tech. Some of their research fields in biology and non eezo tech got boosted, they now have an idea of what is possible now can apply these new fields of research to the wider hole.
Researching technology and creating new fields of research is not merely adding stuff to the tech base but multiplicatingthe available knowledge of your society as everything is related, and knowledge in some research fields can massively boost others.
That gravity tech you mentioned? Can boost eezo based tech massively as everything related to it (which is most of prothean technology) now has received a new influx of knowledge, that gravity tech can improve the maximum yield or even sensivity of eezo fields which will lead to more improvements, or even better it will result in less reliance on eezo and allow the prothean to expand faster now that their eezo need are easier to meet.
Knowledge leads to more knowledge and the pace of advancement increases the more you have of it.
Now the protheans need to squeeze out as much as they can out of preterhuman tech, and even if they don't get everything, anything new is priceless and can boost them significantly if they have the time to apply it.
Euh Retroengineering didn't work that way . a Bronze age tier civilisation would never be able to understand a electronic and atomic era civilisation because they didn't have the tools to built tools to builts thoses tools . You oversestimate how a civilisation could progress so far by copying and learning the capability of other civilisation , there is a reason about why the europeans could replicate gunpowder invented by chinese and the indians cannot reproduce , it because they already have knowledge about chemistry and physics . The amerindians on the other hand was not able to do it due to the fact they didn't have the knowledge of how it work and how they could reproduce it . So yeah if the protheans even have a decent knowledge on eezo-gravity based technology . Could they try to understood something that came both in higher level of materials physics alongside immaterium ones . I doubt it ! But i'm pretty sure they will be more independant-based into artificial gravity production technology than developp a new FTL device based on that . Of course that didn't mean that the Protheans would not be able to fully integrate graviton-based tech but it would take more than a few years to fully apply graviton-based technology but they didn't have the time after all they are attacked by three other civilisations ALONGSIDE having to deal with their misunderstanding with the Sea of Dreams and the Reapers that would come very soon knocking the doors . Now the same thing could be said between the Preterhumans and DRUCHALA , why do you think they have run away instead of fighting and hoping to reproduce , they simply didn't have the time so it's better to run , take what you have learned , developpp new material and immaterial physics and evolve but it would take a lot of time .
Both your points hold ground and from incomplete knowledge and my lack of foresight I may have made some pitfalls in my arguments. So I have to thank you both for pointing them out both indirectly and directly.
Firstly, Virian, you are correct and I happily admit that I made an oversight in practically forgetting the physical aspect of preterhuman technology. I will strive to rectify this in the next chapter… because I have to scrap it completely in how correct your point was.
Though I will raise a point that there is no military grade tech in the leftover colonies, however there is engineering and colonization equipment left behind, including the highly advanced yet incomplete Dyson Swarm and other more esoteric components in the equipment.
Protheans could reverse engineer many of the physical technologies that mankind wielded, though they would have to fall to the several pitfalls that humanity's reliance on metaphysical components and designs has. Thankfully Eezo helps a lot and they could make some good leaps and bounds in many things. Like the anti-grav manipulation tech. Engineering and metallurgy would be ecstatic, as well as robotics and biology, but slow to progress thanks to fucking Preterhuman magic being such an integral piece of their tech and that tech is, much like the creatures themselves, equal parts machine and part biology. I will address it next chapter which poetically is an excellent way to show of preter-prothean hybrid technology.
Though the one point I have to state heavily is this. Metaphysics. The problem of studying something like the Void of Dreams and its nonsensical laws is something that the protheans would not be able to reverse engineer in any meaningful timescale. Sure, give them a thousand years and they could begin having results. But they don't have much time, nor do they have a way to test it with human tech because of the seal in place.
Let me explain.
Studying metaphysics isn't a like process of Realspace research. Values and factors are changed by everything, the results do not directly follow cause and effect, nor do they remain constant to all observers and requires a person to have a nonlinear methodology of thinking. Thought processes so alien and bizarre that anyone would be considered absolutely insane.
While there is Realspace psionics, they are subtle, logical and precise. What the protheans have and they have made it geared towards biology. It's the duality of Dreams and Law. Realspace psionics are the Dreams in the World of Logic.
Metaphysics is the Logic in the World of Dreams. Here, you have to understand that reality is a lie that changes depending on your will. Time is nonlinear. Space contorts at the best of times to things and forms that permit parallel lines to bisect. And that is the easier, more simple stuff. Deeper and darker knowledge presides this and it's so foreign to the laws of reality that to wrap your head on it demands you to be high on LSD, Crack, and those Magic Mushrooms you got off from Chernobyl after someone doused them on steroids and DMT. Your mind twists, your morality becomes nonlinear and of orange and blue colors. The notion of cause and effect are lost to you as they are to this damned realm you are trying to understand and the powers you want to draw from it. This is the state of mind you need to perceive to begin entering into the soul of the universe.
It's a nightmare for those around you for only you can understand yourself, everyone else is absolutely lost. Your actions are nonsensical and the logic behind them (if it can even be called logic) is absurd and nonsensical. And you do things that to you seem logical and straightforward, but for everyone else, you are both insane and very likely homicidal and dangerous.
-I don't have the tools to open the Drasmantiin Conduit yesterday so I have had to kill Jasmine today and will ask her forgiveness for tomorrow, so that next year the opera of three weeks ago is heard on the morrow of dusk.-
They see things that others cannot, as their minds are more connected to this realm of insanity. They do things that for them is benevolent reasons, but along the way they forget mortality, cause and effect. I really cannot stress this enough and I know I am not even scratching the tip of this levitating inversed iceberg in trying to explain it, and I honestly can't. How can I with these feeble worlds of mortal tongue.
And then adding to the fact that this Sea has life forms. Life that have no notion of cause and effect and when their curiosity brings them into contact with the instruments and technology that pierces the veil, they inevitably go insane when they connect with minds that are as alien to them as they are to us. It's a tragedy and a mess all at once. They become hostile, they inevitably do things that they shouldn't do as they try to integrate logic into their thought processes as they are able to assimilate knowledge even faster than we do, given their nature. But is that nature also that makes the process alien on its own and the knowledge is absorbed…. wrong.
And to top it all off, Preterhuman metaphysics is so advanced thanks to the aid the Obscurus and the Worm have provided mankind that it's more akin to a caveman trying to understand quantum computing processes. The protheans cannot uncover the shit that humans make use off. Not when the components are metaphysical in nature. Even civilian grade stuff is absurd. And the worst part is that thanks to the seals all human tech has, nothing aside form a human can interface with it and corroborate the data behind it.
They would be going in blind and it will lead to the same pitfalls that humanity had to endure. Meta-incursions and rampant insanity among the researchers. Even if Protheans are more resistant than Sapiens to cognitive corruption, thanks to their already innate psionic abilities, it's not enough and it will cause great harm to them before they can survive the nonsense.
That is why they are so preoccupied with trying to create a human clone. To shed light on the absurdities that occur at the metaphysical level with mankind's tech. Because no matter how much they want it, the protheans cannot create a laser made of solid light that can seek out its target independently, nor can they cause uranium to become a solid form of degenerate plasma, nor can they make a square room bigger on the inside than on the outside with five walls. But preterhumans can and have done so many times and this strange stuff is what they want to find out how to replicate or to counter. Because if mankind ever decided to turn its non-Euclidean arsenal against the protheans (now more than ever because humanity has stolen all the Eezo they could from the prothean fleet and now maybe are producing their own take on that tech) the protheans know that their empire will not survive. And they have no clue about memetic agents and the other nastier stuff humans have that they didn't use because they have only fought against metaterrestrials.
And the most complex stuff humans literally call it Magick. It's so out there that they have whole divisions in their armies called sorcerers, mages, cabalists and shit like that because it looks like its fucking magic what they are launching at you.
Anyway that is my rant and I hope you understood.
However, I reiterate again that your point about physical stuff is good and I will incorporate it in future chapters. Thank you again for pointing it out, thank you so much. You just made Chapter 2.4 through 5… maybe 6, so much more entertaining to write.
