"All right."

"That's probably it; let me see if Raafi has any suggestions. - the idea of it being so easy to publish things is new, we mostly hand-write everything one copy at a time."

"Wow, we haven't done that in centuries."

She relays this to Raafi and ends up passing him the translation necklace. "We're pretty far behind you technologically, yes, and I don't think Pelor's clerics have seen one of your libraries yet - free libraries of any size are rare in Oerth, books are too expensive for that. There are probably all sorts of implications that I haven't noticed yet, but at very least they could use some encouragement to try looking things up instead of asking people."

"Honestly, libraries are really old fashioned at this point. They've held on, people like them, but..."

"It's going to be really interesting watching Oerth adapt to all the new things."

"I bet! Do you think you'll have anybody refusing to, like our Luddite sects?"

"I'm sure there'll be some - dwarves, most obviously, they're already insular. And it'll be slower than you'd expect in the rest of the world; humans are a relatively short-lived species, elves won't have adults who grew up with this technology for a hundred years."

"That'd change things, yeah."

"Mmhmm. We'll have some advantages, too - the gnomes are going to be ecstatic about it, they're our inventors, they're going to love the internet and how easy it is to get things here."

"I'm going to try to make a coursebook for people who do future Internet classes for folks from Oerth on the expectation these won't be the last, yep."

"Oh, definitely not. I'm already working on a batch of wizards for you."

"Oh - well, I suppose that's exciting -"

"Oh?"

"Uh, I've got family still in my original church and I think wizards running around'll make the outside world scarier to them."

"Ah. That's not entirely wrong, really. Is there anything I could do to help - maybe introducing it more slowly?"

"I don't think so."

"All right. Let me know if you think of anything; this is the kind of thing clerics of Fharlanghn help with, when we can."

"...it is?"

"People not feeling able to safely explore the world around them? Absolutely. It's a core part of the calling."

"...I have the impression you have only experience with unrelated kinds of not feeling able to safely explore the world around them. When I'm seeing people from one of these churches I have to make it a really smooth transition unless I've got one who's so fed up they'd rather live at the bottom of the ocean than sing one more His Heavenly Sword - usually one who just turned eighteen and it's been building up a while. I mostly dress like them, I talk their talk, I don't make an issue of how much I'm not a believer any more, and I definitely don't explain how it's part of my calling as a service to a deity from another universe that I make them more comfortable with more things faster."

"Oh, I'm not saying I'd be any good at it. But if it would help things to, I don't know, find a celestial dog somewhere for them to play with for an afternoon, or get a video of an apprentice trying to figure out their first light spell, or something, there's nothing stopping me from working at a remove."

"They won't watch videos and they'd probably be pretty freaked out by a celestial dog, whatever that is."

"Celestial animals come from some of our afterlives; they're usually golden or silver and a little smarter than regular animals, and otherwise about the same - that'd be about the least intimidating obviously magical creature, for most people, is why I gave that example."

"That's not really the angle of intimidation. I don't think there's anything to be gained here."