Somewhat disagree, but mostly only in the time it would take.

Your example of Russia engineering their own atomic bombs once they knew the theory was helped considerably by them already having the infrastructure available, or at the very least, the ability to build such infrastructure almost immediately.

For Innworld, they don’t just need the concepts and theories. They need to build the tools that will allow them to build the tools that will let them start making that infrastructure. Then they have to actually build the infrastructure itself. Then they can actually start working on engineering the advanced stuff.

In other words, they aren’t just around the same step as they need to be, but multiple steps behind.

So they’d have a leg up, sure, but it wouldn’t be a quick thing to develop much of our more advanced weapons.

In addition, while some Earthers would know of some concepts for that stuff, so far I believe Geneva is the oldest character introduced at 24 years old. Most people that young or younger aren’t going to have a ton of advanced knowledge, nor would it often be diverse enough to really help out. You’d have to get pretty lucky to find an actual rocket scientist at those ages with the knowledge to build the more advanced weapons, or even the the knowledge to build the tools to do so.

There are probably a number of smaller villages and such in between the two. Generally, most small villages would only be a couple miles away from each other and from larger settlements – a short enough distance that you could travel from your village to a larger town and back in a day, if you had something to sell.

Skills and such might allow the villages to spread out slightly farther than was normal on Earth, but not massively so. You’d also want to be close enough to other places in case of monster attacks, so villages could support one another if necessary.

A large settlement like Invrisil would be few and far between, though. Unless the author wanted to introduce yet another big city, it makes sense to.use one of the ones already mentioned.

This does, however, put a bit of a wrinkle on the whole Emperor aspect. Being that close to Invrisil means Riverfarm should be under the control of the Reinhart family. I highly doubt Magnolia would take kindly to an empire springing up and taking away chunks of her land.

Edit: * No wonder I’m so bored with the secondary characters. Has Erin had any personal chapters since started book 3? and I’m not referring to the Ryoka chapters where Erin appears in the background

How much is that 230 thousand words? No wonder he’s so fed up with secondary characters at this rate, he doesn’t even appear in book 3.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. If Emperor Laken say he’ll do it—he’ll do it!”

–says?

Knowledge will out, unless Magnolia and/or someone(s) else relentlessly hunt down and ruthlessly slaughter every single one of us, along with anyone and everyone we told or may have told anything about our world. Otherwise, Innworlders aware of it must inevitably start reverse-engineering it sooner than later and/or duplicating it with magic; once a few have, the arms race must just as surely commence. It is Darwinian. As Ryoka notes (and Magnolia knows whether she dare admit it to anyone, even herself) it cannot be stopped, so survivals sole hope is getting ahead of the stampede and staying there long enough it may follow if you turn in a new direction. As opposed to y’know… trampling you into hamburger without missing a beat… .

If nothing else, Rhir will not be denied ITS superweapon, and Magnolia or anyone else who forces the issue will draw back a bloody nub unless the whole rest of the world rides with them. After a while, any approaching attack force will begin facing magical hypersonic cruise missiles with equally magical payloads thousands of miles before actually reaching their opponents. How many Walled Cities are there to go with the Five Families, exactly? Because a single Trident II missile does not simply put a 40-km-wide fireball within half a mile of its target: It puts a five-kilometer fireball within half a mile of EIGHT targets, from up to a third of the PLANET away at a speed so fast it can ORBIT in a SINGLE HOUR and oh, by the way, it is submarine-based, so good luck FINDING, let alone killing it, because it can murder half your country and all you will ever see are the missiles leaving the water at Mach 24. In the North Atlantic, that means everything from Houston and Chicago to Moscow and Jerusalem dies in a quarter of an hour.

I doubt any of them are ready for that even without magic, but, realistically, they better get that way, because there is no way to put that genie back in its bottle, and it has a wide range of talents truly terrifying, transcendent and titillating. Worst of all, if none of our cultures has yet fully grasped our capabilities, their consequenced and our limitations, Innworlds far less sociopolitically mature. Its different fundamental dynamics grant feudalism and even worse political systems far greater inertia, which again makes technology an even greater threat to existing hierarchies, and Luddism more likely to escalate into savage war, though almost certainly a brief one, whether the Establishment triumphs early or falls when that brief narrow window closes.

No Exit though.

Hmm He’s got a dagger in his hand as he lunges as Magnolia’s chest.
At

Urban sprawl doesn’t exist yet. Izril seems to have large main cities in strategic or economic areas of importance. Everything in between is full of the occasional small town such as Riverfarm