Aaand are there books about the wars themselves?

It seems like encyclopedias and long blatantly political rants about how this or that ideology causes peace are the best source of information on wars.

But are they good sources of information?

Not particularly, no.

The encyclopedias are dryly informative on when wars happened and how devastating the fallout was. Numbers like 'estimated 650 tiles, 2 million people lost.' The political rants are by and large sufficiently transparent to be obvious attempts to vilify one's political opponents.

Open wars are really uncommon here, compared to pre-industrial Earth.

Uh... huh. Interesting. He'll ask Terel about it later. He can just keep soaking stuff up.

(That's not to say there aren't plenty of wars mentioned - more people, more time, more wars even at a lower rate of war-per-capita).

A librarian notices him running through hundreds of books and reminds him to treat them carefully.

He promises he is not going to ruin any of them and is very very careful.

He can keep reading then. Any books or particular information he'd like to find? Inter-library loan: is a thing.

Well he's most interested in science and magic stuff, but also economics—anything that might be different here, relevant laws, anything nontrivial about the political structures around, and so on.

That's quite a varied plate.

Science is not an ideal to be striven at like back on Earth. It's something for frizzy-haired introverts with piles of books in their office. The economics of the place varies a lot by continent, but overall they're not really progressing toward globalization. The area known as the Reaches is interesting in that it mostly doesn't have politics of any kind yet, it's an 'emerging country' being steadily settled and built up by immigrants, and it looks like it'll turn into a democracy.

There are a few multi-continent empires. Kava is one of them, propped up by its extremely powerful and steady imperial currency. Apparently naval combat is not as universally reviled as land combat - naval wars almost always over the voids between continents are more common and have more detail in the relevant history books than any of the land battles once he starts finding mentions of them.

Huh, that's interesting. Why is science not an ideal to be striven at? And why are naval wars more common and more detailed, what's different?

Why science is not an ideal is not immediately obvious.

Naval wars don't fuck with the tiles, is the most plausible candidate for the difference.

Aha. That makes sense.

He keeps reading.

Terel comes and finds him at the library eventually.

Though he probably finds Terel as soon as he's walking towards the entrance.

Yup, Sadde can recognise Terel's steps.

"Hello, gorgeous."

"Hello, Sadde. Figured since you're spending so much time at the library learning about things maybe I ought to, too."

"Learning about things is fun, and I have nothing better to do while you're not around."

"Well isn't that flattering. Figured I would try to chase down a potion or crystal production line manager later. Contacts like that could be helpful when it comes time to manufacture. Sound like a good idea?"

"Very. I looked up some painkillers and had some interesting results." Which he proceeds to list.

"Yikes. Well if anything was going to give you a very bad reaction that would have been Elucidum potion. That stuff is crazy strong."

"Out of these the amulet seems to be the most effective, I think."

"We haven't tried any of the fair folk yet. I really don't think we should discount the predator out of hand, after all you're a human predator too. If they act hostile... Definitely. But automatically no."

"And from what I've seen of your fair folk I'm not entirely sure there are a very many who would win against me."

"Do not try to fight a dragon. Or a kraken. Or a Fate. Please."

"I won't, love—not before I become a Fate myself, anyway, and not without good reason."