“Hey Mrsha! I’m back! Whoops, don’t make me spill this on your fur. Let me just write this down…bicycle…there!”

I don’t quite know why, but introducing the modern gear-shift bicycle to a low-tech civilization is a fantasy I had long before isekai became such a mainstream genre. I always appreciate seeing authors do it, because of that :)

I see what you did there aba. Damn. 1st time rereading this and all the little clues are so cool to read when you know whats going on next

The things that jump out even more on re-read: Wistram has that text exchange; half the people who sent it ARE Wistram. And it casually dumps a LOT of data, like, not just the Periodic Table, but different VALENCES of phosphorous. That is… so much literal firepower, because if anyone ever arranges them in an actual table with nitrogen above and sulfur beside phosphorous they end up with gunpowder and penicillin, but also phosphorescence, high potency fertilizer, TV, liquid nitrogen and a ton of other things.

This is a good place to note that many organic phosphorous compounds are highly toxic (Wikipedia says several are popular HUMAN NERVE AGENTS.) My mother always insists phosphorous contamination prevents cuts from broken fluorescent lights EVER fully healing, but I have never had occasion to test that claim; I do know she is absolutely right that Roman candles should always be placed in the GROUND in case they backfire, because a bucket of water cannot extinguish a flaming ball of phosphorous in the stomach: Water just feeds it, and is 70% of a humans volume.

Honestly, “we think a lot, but don’t talk much about” the memetic infrastructure of data-processing algorithms that spawned our Information Age, but that alone represents a technological quantum leap beyond previous terrestrial civilization. Teriarch and those like him appreciate it for the same reasons as we, and all the more so because it remains a novelty they could never take for granted: It scratches the same itch for them that it did for us, and they have been itching more longer. Most people just mumble something about computers and move on, but the fact is that every computer that exists or ever has is just performing information analyses designed by one or more human beings years or decades ago, and if we took away all the automated machines tomorrow we could rebuild rapidly as long as we retained the materials, manpower and the ENGINEERING AND MACHINING PROCESSES THEMSELVES. Not Robinson Crusoe or Gilligans Island; no one can build a Maserati out of coconut trees — but if time, money, materials and manpower are no object and you know HOW to do it, from start to finish, you can be mass-producing reasonable facsimiles within a single year.

My point is, the Periodic Table did not just happen: Metallurgy, alchemy and coinage had proven Atomism better than any experiment Thompson ever conducted could, but people had had time to notice that many undeniably distinct elements yet shared many properties of varying similarity. It is a short step from there to arranging them all by weight then hunting whatever remains hidden in the gaps. That is a scientific and even technological process but not a MECHANICALLY AUTOMATED one: Cavemen could do it with their bare hands — IF they knew how… .

That is the true paradigm shift Earth brings Innworld; you can imagine how people like Wistram or Belavierr would react, and it should be fun watching you do so… . :)

Well, we’ve already seen from Octavia’s musing about Erin’s Wondrous Fare skill that skills can sometimes skip ingredients or steps in creating the final product. It’s possible that some of the requirements can be sidestepped unbeknownst to the alchemist

In answer to Lyon’s question: Yes, chickens do run around after they’ve been beheaded. The first and only time I’ve seen this was when I was in elementary school. I was staying with our housekeeper/childminder, “Aunt Helen”, a farmer’s wife. Perhaps had I been told ahead of time about what happens…but I hadn’t been. I think she was a bit disappointed when I ran back into the house screaming.

also, for
“Possibly there had never been such a confusing conversation for any [Clerk] to record.”
Shouldn’t possibly and there be interchanged (or taken out all-together) to sound better?
“There possibly had never been such a confusing conversation for any [Clerk] to record.”
or
“there had never been such a confusing conversation for any [Clerk] to record.”