Editing Caverns Without Number (section)

==Contemporary Material Culture==
Industrial manufacturing and supply chains no longer exist. However, books and other repositories of information are still available, and it's not uncommon for people to be educated to a (real-world) modern standard, even if they can't lay hands on so much as a flashlight. 

The vast majority of work is done using human or animal muscle, or relatively simple wind or water mills.  That being said, the situation is not at all comparable to medieval Europe. Many technologies that have an extremely high payoff-to-effort ratio if you are already at a high Roman or Renaissance-era level of technology are still used. Movable-type printing presses are not common, but they have supplanted scriptoriums. They’re just too easy to build in comparison to how much effort they save.

The essential difficulty is that the creation of an industrial economy is a great deal of work, and nobody is really inclined to go to that kind of effort. Anyone with the resources, ambition, and will to build a steam train or an air conditioner factory is probably better off becoming an archmage and obligating their neighbors to appease them. 

Further, Precursor humanity genetically engineered a variety of plants to be unnaturally useful, and those strains are still cultivated. A wide variety of food plants and several types of mushroom are known to be results of the original sequencing project; they can be easily and rapidly farmed, and are tailored to human dietary needs. For this reason, simply supplying the population with food is not the crushing burden it was in real-world medieval societies, and even impoverished areas have sufficient time for leisure and social or intellectual pursuits. There are other examples, as well, such as the Library Trees with leaves uniquely suited to paper-making.

Advanced alloys, both alchemical and mundane, are still manufactured, although not in modern quantities. 

'''Summary:'''
*Individual artificers, magicians, and alchemists do produce items of enchantment or high technology, but these are rare, hand-crafted, and expensive. 
*High technology as it exists in our world is rarely available and typically only in very simple configurations. A hand-held UV light might be obtainable, but a computer is out of the question.
*The advanced technology that does exist often involves large glowing synthetic gemstones, runic circuitry, and alchemical materials. Gears, moving parts, conventional batteries, and other steampunk apparatuses are relatively rare. The dividing line between magic and this sort of science can be somewhat thin at times. Consult the rules for mods in the WWN rulebook for ideas. 
*The "hurlants" described on pg. 36 are available for purchase. In-setting, they're referred to as coilguns. They function via an extremely high-tension, alchemically produced metal spring, housed inside a barrel, which must be carefully wound with an integral handle before a specially made steel dart is loaded and clipped into place. Rather than the barrel being rifled, the dart is designed with a subtly helical fluting. Hand hurlants are often mounted on an arm bracer, but either may be made in a configuration similar to a modern firearm. They are, however, typically ornately carved or filigreed. They are considered a weapon of war or murder, and may not be carried openly in civilized cities. The user is expected to have them unloaded, "broken down" into components, and carried packed away. Note the AP tag on them - they ignore non-magical armor. A hand hurlant can throw its sliver of steel directly through an armored knight's breastplate and out his back. They are, therefore, especially disliked by the sorts of people wealthy enough to invest in heavy armor.