Elemental magic gets broken down into actual atomic science (albeit with mithryl and latinum and so on), and despite having all their mysterious koans reduced to chemistry equations, the elves are happy for the humans’ contribution to their understanding.

But then the hairy little bastards pull out some bullshit like quantum chromodynamics, and they’re not even sure what matter is anymore. They just found out light has a speed, and now those fuckers are playing with round-trip direction to make their arcane blasts land first. The elves lost the plot when one human tried lining up peasants with intent to launch a scrying orb out of the sky (as if the sky just ends) and their obvious failure accidentally proved that aethyr is a fluid. Now he’s asking for animated quills to do math, but he wants a whole bird’s worth, and honestly, how complicated could viscosity be?

My guess would be it’s a play on how every time humans develop some new method for generating electricity, it always comes back to boiling water and turning a turbine with steam.

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