"I'd say that's likely, though we don't have anything like your priests; we like to think of ourselves as honest but couldn't credibly enforce that kind of oath on our members. We do try and spread knowledge of the truth, and the tools required for truth-finding and learning when we can, but to be honest, too much of our effort is spent maintain our position and do our own research. We're also just a young institution; less than a century. We have managed to cross the hurdle of being dependant on our founders, though. Barely. So we might last for a while, if all goes well." 

"I'm not a very good person to do this, but at some point I'll write down what I remember of the canon and share it with you guys. That might be helpful."

And of course if she can get powerful enough to make it home again, many things would become possible. Sida under no illusions that is actually going to happen and she won't just die trying, but it's fun to aim high.

"Even if, in the end, it's no more than one more book in the stacks, it will be a worthy addition to our library, and we will pay you accordingly. And I hope it will be more than that. I can get you a blank book and some writing supplies after this interview."  

"... perhaps we should move on from the thorny topics. How do you feel like answering some questions about what the fauna of your world were like?" 

"Sure. What do you want to know?"

"What sort of domesticated animals do you have? What are they used for? What sort of things do you consider pests? Why are they pests? What's the largest or most dangerous living creature? What's the largest or most dangerous extinct one?" 

"People sometimes keep cats, dogs, and ravens as pets, or sometimes less domesticated animals. We also have cows, sheep, goats, pigs, yaks, llamas, and some others I don't remember for meat, milk, or wool. People used to ride horses or camels to get around, or use horses for mechanical labor, but that's not very common anymore. Pests normally are bugs or rodents, because they'll try to live in your house and eat your food. The largest creature is a type of whale, the most dangerous is either a human, a mosquito, or maybe a hippopotamus depending on how you define it. I don't think there are any extinct animals larger than blue whales, although I think there used to be giant man-eating saber toothed cats."

Sendra notes this all down. "Do you mean 10ft long giant man-eating saber-toothed cats, or like, 100ft long giant man-eating saber-toothed cats?"  Like this is a perfectly normal set of possibilities. 

"... I can understand the reasoning for a human being the most dangerous, but a mosquito? Do you mean, like, a stirge?"  

"Uh, ten feet, if that. I actually don't think a hundred foot long cat would be able to support its own weight, much less get enough food to not starve to death. Unless it's magic, I guess."

"Mosquitos, in my world at least, carry a variety of really nasty diseases that used to kill a lot of people. And still do kill people. I don't know what a stirge is but I'm pretty sure we don't have those."

"I'm not certain about sabre-toothed cats specifically but there are definitely records of otherwise-mundane mammals which grow to that scale. Even domestic pigs will get that big if you let them eat enough magic, though a pig's capacity to bioremediate hostile magic and use that to grow is arguably a magical ability? A Stirge is basically a mosquito but about a foot in length, with a few body plan changes that make more sense at that scale. Very unpleasant, but also pretty fragile." 

"You can eat magic?"

Surely that's not a good idea. But she kind of wants to try it.

"Is it a good idea?"

"Well, humans can't, except through the medium of foods which are specifically magical to their eater, or to the products of alchemy or other sorts of intentionally edible magic things. But pigs can? It's very useful, you have a cursed forest that you've cleared all the resentful dead and wyverns and such out of, you let a bunch of pigs loose into it, they'll eat a bunch of the random cursed plants and such that you have lying around, and then use the power that would have cursed the inhabitants of the forest to grow bigger. ... then usually you have a bunch of giant boars hanging around that need to be hunted down. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that they're worth having around without that, though I guess that no magic means they stay a manageable size." 

"That is... very weird. And yes, they do stay at the same size. People keep them around because they can eat nearly anything, so it's a good way to make use of stuff that otherwise wouldn't get eaten. Or you can just feed them grain."

"What other questions did you have?"

"Some questions to try and get a sense for how the world works if you don't seem to have weight? And then after that some questions about the economy, and then I think we're done. What's the most impressive thing you've seen a person or a small group of people doing, or which you've heard of a person doing?"  

"I'm not really sure what you mean by impressive, but some of the things that individual people have done that most impressed me are like, artists who have created sublime works of art, or people who are really excellent parents or spouses, or people who possess a deep understanding of how the world works and are good at predicting the future. But most of the cool stuff I can think of is stuff that a lot of people worked together on. A single person or small group of people couldn't design and build a modern airplane, for instance."

"In general, impressive stuff that individual people do is usually something like, athleticism, having a skill they're really good at because they practiced a lot, good judgement, being good at understanding and persuading people, or art."

Sendra dutifully notes this all down. "What is an airplane, then? I think I've heard the word before but I can't remember where."  

(Translation note: The word is here being translated into one of the few languages which still actively has a word for airplane, which happens to be a dialect of high elven, which Sendra technically speaks, but not well, and not that dialect.) 

"It's a vehicle, usually made of metal, that has wings and engines and flies through the sky. It's a good way to travel between distant cities."

"That sounds like a tremendously useful thing, yes. But also presumably the sort of thing you warned me you didn't know how to create?"  

"I know some things, but most of them wouldn't be very useful. There are a lot of prerequisites, too. It might be achievable in a hundred years with a concerted effort, unless magic makes things easier."

"It might be worth creating a roadmap or something like that anyway. I think that most mundane crafters end up learning to make magic items of some kind when they get good enough, but working on some of the pre-requisites might be an interesting direction for someone who wants to please Metal. Or for that matter Progress, who I think has an interest in artificial flight in particular."

"I'll write down some ideas later. Probably after I get a better idea of what people here are actually capable of, I'm not sure what I should assume."

"That's fair. You should probably assume that whatever you can find in this city, there's somewhere out there doing much better; this world is nothing if not heterogenous. Not that that will be helpful if you can't find them, but still."

"If people know how to do it much better elsewhere... does that mean they aren't able to do it at scale, or that there isn't enough trade to spread stuff around?"

"I think both are a factor. Institutions don't scale well, getting people with the right skillsets is very hard, especially if those skillsets require you to be powerful to acquire them. And lots of technologies are only useful when the economy surrounding them meets certain prerequisites, so knowing that something is possible isn't the same as it being viable to implement. And trade ... happens a lot, but it's expensive and dangerous. If you start to do something on the assumption that a foreign import will stay steady, well. Sometimes it holds; we manage to import onyx just fine. But there are lots of onyx mines. Something with only a few sources is much harder to sustain."  

"This is not important, but is onyx used for magic or something? It's not a major trade good in my world."

"Um, I'm guessing trade is difficult because of the monsters? There are probably giant sea monsters that attack ships, aren't there."

"Onyx is essential to pretty much every permanent form of necromancy, which means most of the north-eastern states, including us, consider it a vital trade good. Obsidian can substitute for many purposes, but it's rarer and harder to work with. The Deep Gardeners maintain a monopoly on imports in the city."  

"Monsters are the main factor, but other people can be nearly as bad. I hear the western sea is pretty clear of the larger sea monsters these days, but the eastern sea ... really isn't. The northern sea, when it's clear of ice, is the safest though, there are some extremely valuable trade routes along there."