It has been my experience that most problems in life are caused by a lack of information. Many people just don’t know the things they need to know. Some ignore the truth; others never understand it.

When two friends get mad at each other, they usually do it because they lack information about each other’s feelings. Americans lack information about Librarian control of their government. The people who pass this book on the shelf and don’t buy it lack information about how wonderful, exciting, and useful it is.

Take, for instance, the word that started this chapter. You lacked information when you read it. You likely assumed that I was calling you an insulting name. You assumed wrong. Moron is actually a village in Switzerland located near the Jura mountain range. It’s a nice place to live if you hate Librarians, for there is a well-hidden underground rebellion there.

Information. Perhaps you Hushlanders have read about Bastille and the others referring to guns as “primitive,” and have been offended. Or perhaps you simply thought the text was being silly. In either case, maybe you should reevaluate.

The Free Kingdoms moved beyond the use of guns many centuries ago. The weapons became impractical for several reasons—some of which should be growing apparent from this narrative. Smedry Talents and Oculator abilities are not the only strange powers in the Free Kingdoms—and most of these abilities work better on items with large numbers of moving parts or breakable circuits. Using a gun against a Smedry, or one similarly talented, is usually a bad idea.

(This comes down to simple probability. The more that can go wrong with an item, the more that will. My computer—when I used to use one—was always about one click away from serious meltdown. My pencil, however, remains to this day remarkably virus-free.)

And so, many of the world’s soldiers and warriors have moved on from guns, instead choosing weapons and armor created from Oculatory sands or silimatic technology. They don’t often associate these items with their ancient counterparts—the people of the Free Kingdoms never got much beyond muskets before they moved on to using sand-based weapons—and so they think that guns are the primitive weapons. It makes sense, if you look at it from their perspective.

And anyone who’s not willing to do that … well, they might just be a moron. Whether or not they live there.