Quote Originally Posted by YianKutku View Post
It does seem like there's this odd message that Industry and Progress cause disasters, with the Fifth Astral Era/Sixth Umbral Calamity being a search-and-replace of "technology" with "magic".
A lot of stories especially sci-fi ones cover themes like this, ever since the atomic bomb people assume technological progress will be humanities downfall. On that idea about the WoL being a prisoner of war, there are two ways i can see this being done, the first would be to have some of our allies held hostage and we have to run various errands for the emperor or someone else within garlemalds political circle where we can wander around freely under the pretense that we won't do anything stupid, the second could go similarly except we have some kind of link pearl implanted into our head that'll fry our brains if we don't comply.