Comic 119

[VirBot]

[Digital Vulpine]

Hmm, this and number 118 make me wonder why such things would be a concern for them.  Why would it be in their interest to keep the, since I forget their names I'll call them cats, from developing film projectors or electricity?  Are they worried that the ability to make machinery or electricity would lead to industrial development, and for some reason want to prevent that?  Do they have a monopoly on "productive" junctions (ie high output, and tend to pull in high-quality stuff) and want to prevent domestically produced tech from breaking their hold on the market?  Is there some magical property of that world that would be disrupted by such development, with negative consequences (ie a bad "effect on the people there")? Or is it a secret that we will just have to wait until it's revealed?  

Very interesting, good work Tod.  

Edit: thanks to Tvorsk for pointing out that the cats are called Jaunx. 

[Tod]

Sorry, I didn't get to this question sooner.

This will made clearer in the comic, hopefully, but it partially has to do with the fact that electricity in Ekwara attracts those little dragon-imp thing aka gremlins, who are themselves responsible for bringing stuff over to Ekwara from Earth.

It also has to do with the way that the dragons restrict what items are and aren't legal for the citizens of Ekwara to own.  The dragons are interested in enforcing these restrictions because it's easier for them to manage a low-tech population when the dragons themselves are so few in number, and the birds are interested in enforcing this because they get to keep what they buy/confiscate off folks.  The birds are also working on stuff that has a high potential benefit to the dragons, so the laws have remained pretty restrictive in regards to books, etc.

Here, Formidonis is implying that it would be dangerous for the jaunx and pandril here to let their interest in earth technology lead to them messing around with electricity and presumably getting eaten by gremlins.

[Digital Vulpine]

Ah I see, yeah getting eaten by gremlins is probably something that should be avoided. 

[V4Voracious]

They just need to make a Gremlin Grinder^TM using electricity and some choppy, mashy things