Such as?

Writing, being information, is more prone to the small random changes monster auras seem to cause. Writing is the most pure expression of civilization, which is what monsters actually target. Monsters preferentially attack things that humans care about being destroyed, and important historical records are high on that list.

Now that they have computers are they having better luck with redundant copies? Did the printing press help? Or did the damage scale with the robustness of the record?

Well, the Great Depression was apparently caused by a monster nuking the New York Stock Exchange's records of the previous ten years. Backups are now considered an art and a science, and when robustly applied, seem to work pretty well. Hard to say if the printing press helped. Clay tablets suffered just as much as papyrus and so on.

Weird.

Okay, magic stuff besides data decay, what's to be known.

Genies: Don't piss one off. Very random. Tend not to do anything nonconsensual to humans only because Spirit Bearers by and large have sworn to hunt down and kill any who do. A lot of the random magic stuff you'll find (eternal waterspout, wooden bird that flies and sings anyway) probably originally came from a genie, as payment for whatever strange thing they wanted from humans.

Nature Spirits: Are a myth, claim a fringe group that sound a lot like Flat Earthers. Have attention spans measured in weeks or months and can squish most monsters that aren't Named Beasts, and most lone Spirit Bearers, say everyone else. Their powers tend to be nature-themed, but they sometimes do things outside of theme, so they might be as unlimited as genies and just really unimaginative.

Monsters: Are evil. Look at this long list of the different kinds of evil! Goblins will straightforwardly try to stab you. Gremlins will try to sabotage things in such a way that kills you. Gunkers will try to poison food and water supplies. Trolls like to collapse bridges and power lines. Lurkers seem to cause distrust and discontent around them. Rumples preferentially attack small children. And so on.

Are the monster categories natural categories or more like human criminal classifications?

Seems to be the former, at least for the weaker kinds. There are regional differences.

Regional differences?

For example, North American goblins have green skin, pointy ears, and boils. South American goblins have grey, stony skin, and are slower but stronger, but seem to have the same archetypal role.

Any guesses about that? They don't, like, conventionally evolve, right?

They don't seem to evolve. This is widely considered evidence for the 'gestalt of human fears and violent urges' theory.

Do largish expat communities have nonlocal monsters?

It's happened before, but not consistently. The mongols' monsters started plaguing everybody after their various invasions. German monsters showed up sometimes in the UK from 1942 to 1950 or so, what with all the refugees. Though consistent records are hard to come by even with Bar having access to destroyed ones - seems fewer people tried to thoroughly document history since it was such a fruitless exercise.

Huh.

"So while you're here you should get lots of lost books and take them home," she says to Selene.

"Hm? Oh, right, that's a great idea! I don't know what the most important lost books are but I'm sure Bar does."

Bella nods and goes back to quizzing Bar. So, all the refugees? What were the World Wars like here.

"Before I forget, if you somehow get in the mind to fight the Evertree, don't expect time pausing to work. It nullifies stuff."

The World Wars look the same overall, but had frequent ceasefires for battles against Named Beasts, and were overall less vicious and bloody. Spirit bearers, genies, and spirits mostly stayed out of direct combat. Submarine warfare: Not a thing. The second world war ended quicker, none of the Axis nations able to secure any decent number of resources. There's a famous story of German and British pilots working together to bomb the monster Red Rider into oblivion.

"...'Stuff'?" With airquotes. (Nukes y/n?)

"Most complicated magic. Most complicated tech. I can still fly, but I can't do flame constructs that act on their own like usual near it."

Nukes: No.

Nuclear anything never or nukes merely not on Japan in bomb form? "What does 'complicated' mean, here? Time stopping is conceptually simple."

"I mean, most 'advanced' stuff. Not necessarily complicated. It's hard to explain, but I could do examples? And time stopping feels like it would be blocked. But maybe only very close. It blocks more things the closer you get to it."

America's nuclear program did not reach completion before the war ended. The prototype bomb was never detonated, and the Manhattan Project abandoned. Nuclear power happened in the 70s, though.

"Your world is pretty similar in general arc to mine for all the differences."

"I asked Bar about that, actually, because the novels I was reading seemed awfully familiar in some ways. Apparently it happens a lot."

"Yeah, she mentioned. It's weird. I'd really expect systematic text decay and monsters all over the place to wrench things out of place."