Oh no. I’m feeling that things are just rationalized away.
And you know alcohol easily evaporates right? Such a thing in Abyss wouldn’t be staying liquid for long. Not to mention, its flamable nature doesn’t lend it to easy storage in such a hellish world.
As for constant archetectural changes, that is quite natural. Buildings build now has different style from buildings build say twenty years ago, and they look certainly very different from buildings made a century ago. Also, building are constantly brought down and new building build up. The constant changes of architectureisn’t really unusual even even only mundane humans live there.
As for Astlan:
-It is not only the picture, the technology in the writing is also inconsistent.
-That is not how it appears in the book. The ‘magical technology’ might be advanced in a way, but eveything not magical is often very primitive… well, not really, the technology is, as I say, very incoherrent.
The mistake is because the book doesn’t make any consistent structure of the technogy Astlan have. We have some very old tech like castles, wagons, sail powered ships, candles, plated armor, swords, arrows, brazier and what not. There are lot of elements that give the impression of the very very low tech, the plated armors especially scream medieval Europe.
The magic technologies might be what we way advanced, but then it is magic. Very short communication magic for example wouldn’t be very magical, it is just stupid. Other magical communication is also typical fare in magic. A magical carpet still uses a rather old tech carpet, and magic carpets are very ancient technology if arabian nights is to be referenced. And dragons isn’t technology.
You know, magic. You can’t just compare say plastic surgery with shapeshifting, or surgical stitches to magic healing. You just can’t!
As for stealing ideas, why don’t they steal the more useful ones? Why don’t they steal concrete? Guns? Artificial lighting? Canning? Perfect binding (book)? Ballpoint pen? Paint? Plastic? Coca-cola?….. And there is almost no indications of any advanced non magical technology used massively. Only Lenamare, it seems, know about nuclear bombs impressing other wizzards, for example.
As for demons, the problem is demons isn’t very cooperative. Any big idea require a large amount of cooperation for it to bear fruit or materialize. How people and years does it take for us to develop internet technology? How many years does it take for us to develop technology for high rise buildings? If you study the history of such things you wil know.
Now demons are much more like uncontrolled teenagers or entitled oligarchs steeped in hedonism rather than very deciplined people and organizations who devote themselves to study and creation. I don’t really expect a Plato from any of them. Or an Einstien. Or an Edison. I’ll probably never see any Bell’s laboratories there. Or NASA. So even if one of the demons have the idea or knowledge, it probably won’t be developed and shared. It would actually just stagnate.
Bookbinding has been the same for centuries. You might have mean Bookmaking. Very early books, the pages are handwritten. You will probably imagine how long it would take if you write a thousand page book with pen and paper alone? Bookbinding is also done by hand. And so is tanning leather, cutting pages, making paper, cutting paper, mixing ink, preparing the pen,….. a monk would spend his entire lifetime just to make a copy of the Bible. Now we have machines to do many of these. There is a machine that binds the book, makes ink, makes paper, cuts paper, print the pages, creates the cover, … . That is the technology I meant. All of those contributed so that an affordable book is possible. Without them, only the extremely rich could afford a book.
And well, I’m not asking about how Lenamare get his riches. Being a powerful enough wizzard is reason enough.