Sure would've been nice to find this out in-character! On the other hand I reckon Liusna probably explained all this to Anna during her remedial Deep Magic lessons.

Interesting cosmology. I am definitely more fearful of Deep Magic in this game then in Talons lol.

In reply to The Empress (msg # 623):

At a quick glance, it looks like Dust gods start with one major and three minor. Myriad gods started with two major and three minor.

So they don't quite map 1:1.

But I see some other stuff that probably needs to be translated over too, so I figure that will all get sorted out in time. :P

We're also like a lot more cuddly and carebear than you so we need it. :P

Tools, armor, and even buildings crafted from iron and steel are an advantage many normal-sized mortals take for granted. Many industrial processes required to produce usable quantities and qualities of metals have a certain minimum size requirement; even a simple bloomery (which can be made quite small) requires significant strength and labor to extract usable metal product. Because of these engineering and labor challenges, the tiny and physically weak viese are incredibly ill-suited to metalworking of any significant scale. What metalworking capacity they have tends to be reserved for ceremonial jewelry and decorative structural inlays, and most if not all of their metal tools rely heavily on so-called thunderbolt iron.

Despite their incredible intellects, viese physical limitations conspired to see them using neolithic tools and materials even as their other scientific advances far outstripped their apparent industrial development. A variety of strong hardwoods grew in Arthos' jungles but with heavy labor so difficult extracting it often proved a bridge too far for the tiny viese.

Such seemed an inevitability... until one day, the goddess the viese had been waiting for would arrive and change things forever by blessing them with the bioglass plant. While sprung into existence by Anathema's divine intent the bioglass plant itself is wholly mundane and responds well to skillful cultivation. It is a slow-growing vine with a natural tendency to coat the ground in thick, tangled sheets. With only a minimum of work it can be woven into sheets of a super-strong wicker-like material for construction purposes, but most bioglass focuses on prolonged artful sculpting of the plant into the desired final form in a process remarkably similar to bonsai. The hardiness of the bioglass plant is such that tools crafted in this way can be repaired with nothing other than soil, water, and sunlight.

The bioglass plant has two distinct products that, while occasionally separated, are often worked in tandem. The leaves grow with a glassy, finely-grained, nearly diamond-hard structure and a bright green coloration. When damaged the outermost layer flakes away to reveal microscopically thin feather-edges between ten and fifty times sharper than even the highest quality steel can ever be. This is the "bioglass" for which the plant is named and is ideally suited for sharp tools, with multiple leaves laminated together to achieve the desired strength and thickness. Most of the plant consists of the stem material; woody and dark green in color, its strength compares favorably to the strongest of hardwoods. It is often used as a backing material to provide flexibility and impact resistance to sharp tools, but on its own also forms an excellent material for blunt implements.

Despite its astonishing qualities, bioglass is very much a material ideally suited to the viese. Its outstanding hardness is ironically its downfall, rendering bioglass too shatter-prone and thus unfit as a material for the stresses required by more conventionally sized mortals. Nonetheless, the viese occasionally trade bioglass tool knives to other mortals which then migrate throughout the realms and are often well-regarded for being self-maintaining and impervious to rust.