Alexander always said that openness is the key to progress. He saw that it is knowledge which drives progress and went to great effort to sponsor the arts of learning.
The Library of Alexandria was one of the first major projects he assigned priority to and soon philosophers, scholars, sages of all kinds, and the curious were travelling from all corners of the Empyraeum to partake of, and also add to, the wisdom collected there. Before the invention of moveable type in EA1150, first the combined temples of Thoth and Hermes, then the Kollegia of the Mimitigrama translated and transcribed existing texts and took dictations on new ones from the visiting wise.
His plan grew in scope as scholeíon and kollegia began to appear from Brytton to Manchuria, drawing in more thinkers, idea-makers, and innovators. Long before Lupernikes had his great idea, unofficial symposean sprouted all over and fantastic new technologies began to pour into common use. Alexander did his best to stay up to date of all of these changes and coordinate them through the Senate, setting up the Special Committee For Innovation which he chaired.
When Alexander vanished, the Stewards all continued to patronize and support the Committee but it was Lupernikes who truly raised it up into an undeniable force for change.
He took the unprecedented decision to bring the dwarves up from underground and directly into the remit of Empyrean innovation, establishing an embassy in Alexandria from which a small group of particularly brilliant dwarves could take seats on the Committee. This is how he came into direct contact with Leonidas Touvinctas (who had spent a number of years studying with the dwarves under The Mountain in his youth) and helped bring about the most important discovery in human history; the Pansabian Database. It was discovered almost by accident, due to a bet some philosophers had about the nature of the kosmos beyond Gaia.
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It placed the first goblin adventurer, Iouri DaGoblin, inside of the very first ship of the kosmos and onto the surface of Sèlene herself in EA1744. Had Iouri not been the adventuring type, the Pansabian and other selenar wonders may not have remained undiscovered.
Thanks to the level of cooperation and coordination the Special Committee For Innovation had already established (as well as the very healthy rivalry and well-established love of wagering among members), a task which may have taken decades at least – the discovery of the key which unlocked the Pansabian – took five years. The already advanced field of dwarven matématika was mixed with Touvinctas’ unique ideas, as well as those from Old Persia, Taxila, and Manchuria together to make a startling discovery.
The language of what were now being called The Ancients – the mysterious race of exos that had built the selenar facilities millions of years ago – was based in matématika. In fact, the emerging theory that matématika was, in fact, a language in its own right appeared to have a basis. In fact, it was the already ancient field of visangi, of turning letters and words into numbers, that finally gave the answer. It took two years of solid work to discover the syntaxi, as it were, another year to break down and learn the dialektos, and another two years to begin the work of translating hexadedakian code into a form we could understand and actually communicate with the Pansabian.
The result was almost too incredible to believe; you could take a plan for anything, from a shovel to a ship of the kosmos like the Skylàk and the Pansabian would tell you not only how to build it, but how to build whatever tools you lacked. It would fabricate parts and refine materials on the selenar rings itself or using machinery built into the docks on the surface of Sèlene. Within a year of this discovery, a small flotilla of ships which made the Skylàk appear to be laughably primitive ferried dwarves, goblins, and the cream of Empyrean genius to Sèlene and back.
It has been said later that, in that single year, human knowledge advanced by two hundred years at least. It would be many decades more before the true scale of what had been discovered on Sèlene was fully understood but already the scale of change was phenomenal.
In what may well be his greatest stroke of genius, Lupernikes opened up the newly discovered knowledge to all nations with the very first Global Symposium in EA1573. Soon the great minds of all Gaia were learning, sharing, and creating within Alexandria, the various scholeíon, and beyond. He held the military secrets and the source of this new technology back, though, because if Lupernikes is anything, he is not stupid.
Though the Pansabian has accelerated technological advancement at a prodigious rate, for the whole human race, not just the Empyraeum, Lupernikes himself will state that while the knowledge provides the means, it is the brilliance of men, women, goblin, and dwarf which made the greatest difference. Without humans and dwarves being prepared to think differently, the Pansabian would have remained simply a remarkable pile of metal, glass, and exotic materials arranged in an interesting way. It was simply a means but they invented how to use it for the betterment of all Gaia.
Knowledge without innovation is knowledge wasted.
