Telling laken how to make trebuchets doesn’t go against her general stance of lay low and don’t draw attention because it didn’t add a NEW weapon to this world. Trebuchets and other siege weapons already exist so for her that’s nothing at all like introducing guns or electricity or what have you (or fucking bombs like the UN, now that is going to be disastrous in every way).

I’m not sure how much detail she knows about what went down in Liscor, her news source remember was primarily town criers reciting propaganda. So it was heavy on sensationalism and light on facts. I seem to recall it was specifically mentioned that these town criers are happy to make up the news if they don’t know it. So she probably doesn’t actually know that her trebuchet idea ended up in Liscor firing on her friends. She’ll probably have some big feelings about that though. When she left Liscor she still wasn’t really on board with Goblins are people, no killing goblins, still too much in her feelings around the destruction of Mrsha’s tribe. Her feelings about goblins haven’t come up for us since then, so she may still view them as all being monsters and happy for them all to die, therefore she might not have a problem with the trebuchets being used against the goblins. She might not know enough about the politics to understand the ramifications of giving siege weapons to humans when they’ve been entirely controlled by drakes until now, even though she tries to learn as much as she can about politics, history, etc. also when she told Laken how to build them they were only ever going to be for defending Riverfarm, from goblins, who she thinks should all die. There was no intention on Laken’s part at that point to ever sell them, or join an army.
it wasn’t as smart or as cautious as Ryoka usually is, but not by a lot really, it was a small deviation easily explained by her feelings about goblins, her desire to not have another friend die(even a brand new friend she’d just met, but who comes from her world) over something she could have changed. She has so much guilt over not saving the Horns and not saving Mrsha’s tribe, and feeling like everyone dies or is hurt because she didn’t save them. Feeling those feelings and knowing these weapons exist and their intended purpose it would have felt more like telling Laken how to build a better well.

Now penicillin? That’s an absolute world changing thing no matter which way you slice it but she still put a lot of effort in to getting Octavia to try and figure that out

Ryoka knows that giving away stuff is a bad idea.
She gave seige weapons to laken, who promptly used them in Liscor to aid an army attacking it. An army Erin, her friend, personality fought against.

Ryoka KNOWS Erin is friends with the Antitnum and blurts out pesticides to a group THAT HAS ALREADY USED CHEMICAL WEAPONS.

What happened to the smart Ryoka? Did she die?

And we’ve having enough troubles keeping birds and rodents away as it is. Not to mention the damned bugs! Durene, we’ve got grasshoppers now. Northeastern fields. Can you believe it?”

It’s not sad at all. They are essentially pushing their way into a dictatorship (after having already scorned said dictator previously) and then trying to passive-aggressively overthrow that dictator while he isn’t around to stop them. They are trying to take his territory during the only time they’d have a chance, when he isn’t there, because they are greedy.

The fact they are even doing as “well” as they have been so far, and how they are still trying to excuse one of their leaders after being shown all the horrid stuff he did, just shows how vile they really are. They don’t deserve any say in the decision making.

The [Witch] swept her head off and bowed once. (is Hedag a Dullahan or did you mean hat?)

“Yes. She has a husband there. A home. And a child.” -> had

demagogue => a demagogue
the crowd * cleared-” => *has
jealously* and anger. => *jealousy

I also got heavy Pratchett vibes from the witches.

There’s even a Monstrous Regiment reference, can that be a coincidence?

I would make few connections with Diskworld witches, but roughly it would be:

Califor – granny Weatherwax

Eloise – Nanny Ogg

Nannete – Agnes… Or Magrat earlier on

The rest of them are too different, although they still have some common elements.

Where’s a good barrister when one needs it?