The name had to change. The shame of being “Porphyr” was too much to handle. But as for being Porphyr, following that path for which you were made: perhaps, at last, you have a chance. Puridion, to use your new name. You start a new business—Puridion’s Amblings—and decide to build a life around your inventions. Not that the old ones make much sense, of course. But Puridion is a creative man. You get into clockwork. Pneumatics. Corkscrews. To the untrained eye your shop seems like a place where magic never died.

This name is one that will go down in history books and textbooks. Historians and craftsmen will make endless comments on the mysterious inventor's creations, their merits and flaws, and the enigmatic disappearance of the man. But that's for the future. For now, there is still much to do. More experiments, more improvements. You need to make sense of the diagrams and designs in your notes, that you are certain were correct, yet seem physically impossible to make real.

This new city is gorgeous, but still lacking in so many aspects. Farming equipments. Water system. A winch system for transporting items over distance - for some reasons you've all just arrived at the city and there are already two very adament hermits requiring delivery service. Actually, can this be extended for wider use? A city-wide postage system?

So many ideas! Puridion gets to work.

The Week of Freedom came as a shock. All your work, the past three years, before, seemingly made null by this week of “miracles”. You look down at your notes and prototypes and see how trivial they all are. You look out from the window of your shop, dismayed at the realisation that nothing has changed; these people just have not learned. Shaking your head sadly, you realise that this place is not for you.

You indulge in their carnival for just a moment, and poof, you are in a different city, far away, where no one knows you and you know no one. You unfurl your coat and let a thousand paper birds fly out into the clear blue sky and feel tears brimming in your eyes.

Many miles away, and years later, in the shining city of Califell, an old man named Episplagnizomon sells enchanted paper birds and benigh mechanical trinkets. No-one here can understand the sadness in his eyes. Perhaps he was hurt. It is only you who knows that you are hurt by your own sins: and neither retribution nor redemption has not been forthcoming. You ran for so many years, fearing the invisible pursuers that you now know were never really there.

As you wander down a cobblestone street, reciting your well-worn litany of misery, a young man with shining eyes stops you in the street.

“I’m sorry, are you Episplagnizomon?”

You grunt.

“Your birds and inventions… helped me in a dark place.” The man smiles beautifully, but is reluctant to say more. “Thank you.”

While there are still some who may scoff at mundane inventions and their values, those are obviously and without a shadow of a doubt, wrong.

In the past, to deliver something over even a short distance required a Reality Bend, a skill reserved to the few, or a frankly unacceptable amount of time and effort given how trivial the task appears. But the Puridion System changed all of that. Now short distance postage is so easily available in all major settlements people can hardly imagine the fuss previously involved. When I grew up, we had to use pigeons. It may sound pretty and romantic, but wait until you get pigeon poop all over your desk.

Those that claim magic is the solution to everything often ignore how much convenience technological advancement has afforded us. Sure, Shaping can clear a flooded mine, but improved pumps have made sure such flooding do not happen in the first place. Yes, with magic caravans are much more capable of defending themselves when travelling between cities, but the now common-place light weight camouflage canvas developed by Episplagnizomon of Califell helps them avoid getting into danger. And who doesn't love Iamblich's Instant Coffee?

Magic demands sacrifices, no matter how trivial the task. Technology is the future, and this is not Custodian propaganda.

- Extract from an overly aggressive paper submitted to the Sorentian University.