AirTech wrote:Dilandu wrote:Please. The light and relatively powerfull steam engines were avaliable even in 1850th. And the Charisians currently at the 1890th at least technological level (...after all, they are able to just condense all the industry from the thin air...
)
Charis also has the ability to whistle up drawings from OWL, something Mr Whitworth would have given his eye teeth for. (OWL is already doing a little back room analysis and quality control based on the textev).
One point nobody seems to have brought up yet is the absolute requirement to show the process by which a new innovation came into being. Paityr Wylsynn isn't handing out patents without that paper trail, even if a lot of the design was cribbed from OWL. For example, bullets for revolvers and the M96 weren't invented (although Howsmyn knew all about them) until one of his shop stewards had a bright idea of how the pistol could be improved.
I'm sure the Inquisition always required this sort of documentation, (remember the guy who made a slight improvement to water wheels in OAR) but Merlin wants the people of Safehold to learn how to think and innovate on their own. So although he's dropped a lot of hints and the inner circle is using OWL to skip generations of development, there's dozens or hundreds of inventive Safeholdians and at least two mainland "wizards" who are improving existing technology or coming up with entirely new inventions - although on the mainland they have to be protected from the Inquisition!
Merlin has often wished he could assassinate Thirsk's and Magwair's tame wizards, but since they're doing exactly what he wants in the long run - innovating and inventing, he has to bite his tongue and accept that even though they're making the ultimate butcher's bill higher by creating a better repeating rifle than the ICA's Mahndrayns for example, he
has to let them do it. Snuffing out every pocket of enemy innovation would cause people on the mainland to stop innovating at all. Getting them to start innovating again might be just a
wee bit difficult with tales of the horrible murders of previous innovators being whispered all about, no doubt encouraged by the Inquisition.
There's no doubt that Merlin feels a burden of guilt for the allied soldiers who are killed by the improved weapons those innovators produce, but his agenda is not the EoC's agenda, and as much as it may torture his soul, he
has to allow it for the future of the human race.