It's likely a bacterial thing they haven't seen before. They don't have antibiotics.

This is one of those stories where I have to remind myself every so often "High death rate. No, higher than that." For a story full of fairy tale creatures, there's a lot of realism about how many of them make it to their first birthday. Or past the annoyed bear. Or through the first bad winter.

If nothing else, Nuzzi has definitely provided us with the cure for imposter syndrome.

Or, possibly, they always were.

The Elves and Kobolds are hanging out at bronze, longbows, spinning wheels, and handlooms because there's no big hurry to do anything when you live thousands of years and your rare children grow slowly. The Dwarves have all sorts of fun clockwork and steam tech and are working on batteries.

Well. They really miss a lot of those things now, and aren't too clear on how to live without them. They're hand-spinning what fibers they have, and pulling apart old blankets to knit new socks, and they're rapidly running out of gunpowder. Their neighbors have varying technology.

all sorts of fascinating things under their mountain, some of which glow, spark, etch, or explode.

When I get to these parts of the story, I will probably end up on some sort of watchlist, because I really like chemisty and will want to be accurate.

I bid three.

The actual event he's referring to will probably take ten rewrites, but the tongue-tied quality of the first draft here is probably something I'll keep. The poor guy simply has no words in either of two languages to say what he's really thinking and feeling. (But he does have a sword.)

That's such a hard question! The speaker is using a language he's learned relatively recently, and sometimes it comes out more poetically because he doesn't have the concise word, or the new concept. My writing process feels rather like taking dictation, so the line just... happened.

noisy earth, and a religious schism over whether the dead should be buried in Mother Earth or given over to fire and returned to their Father Silence. The Elf hearing this has the good sense to say, "Hmm. Not so very different from our story, then," instead of "Utter nonsense from start to finish."

And I think the Kobolds may have even written it down. But they haven't told me yet! And the shorter-lived peoples have their own myths and don't especially like being corrected. The People have a whole creation story involving the marriage of the silent sky and its eternal fires and the gossipy

Hmm. Now it's actual-paper-notebook time. I know all my people are from a common source, but whether they were fragmented into different structures, skin colors, and lifespans by a virus, alien intervention, magic returning to the world, or some combination of the above is still WIP. The Elves know.

The Dwarves have nice snug dwellings and good trade relations with their neighbors, so you find more research and technology in their caves than in most places and among most of the other peoples.