"Going to Crystal Lake City, it's like, it's like going to a great city a thousand years ago," the Thistle Witch finally said. "The Ancient Clan is… content. They don't need to become better at anything to feed their people or clothe their people. Their buildings are simple and they don't have engineers to make things better. They do things the way they always have because they've already found an answer to everything that's good enough for them."
The words Talauia's father had once used to describe the Ancient Clan were 'arrogantly primitive and deliberately so.' When she'd last visited Crystal Lake City, she'd seen a good many bronze-smiths and a few whitesmiths but the Ancient Clan still hadn't seen the point of learning to smelt iron, much less to produce steel of any quality.
