Yes, but would it typically pay them back?

The Tokugawa banned muskets after they took over[*] largely, I think, because they perceived muskets as an enabler for rebellions. This was because the introduction of muskets during the 16th Century transformed Japanese warfare from an affair of small armies dominated by mounted samurai (expensive, years of training required) to one of large armies dominated by peasant musketeers (cheap, significantly less training required). Widespread availability of muskets made it easy for an ambitious feudal lord to quickly build a large, formidable army (as, I believe, the Tokugawa themselves had done).

There may also have been an element of cultural conservatism at work, in that mass armies of lower-class musketeers seemed to render the samurai less significant and even allowed for peasant upstarts like Hideyoshi… but I think the primary worry was what rebellious daimyo could do with musket-armed armies.

[*] Or, more precisely, they gradually restricted gun manufacture by first requiring licenses and then reducing the number of licenses over time.

But this power to control your own life also includes things like being able to be warm, to have lots of water for washing, being able to banish the dark of night, to surround yourself by beautiful things, to have ample space for your hobbies, etc.

Nowadays I get heat, light and hot water at the flick of a switch, in the past you could achieve similar effects by being able to hire lots of servants. Both solutions cost money. Adding on an extension to your house so you could pursue your hobby of growing exotic flowers costs money.

Also, wealth is good for being able to impress other people, even if that doesn’t directly translate into pwower.

In feudal societies land was the “coin of the realm”. One’s wealth and standing were a function of the amount of property one owned. Titles were useless if not accompanied by land.

Titles may have been worthless if not accompanied by land, but that doesn’t mean that money was useless if not accompanied by land. If you live in an economy where labour can be hired for money, coins are important and they bring you wealth and standing, after all you can always hire soldiers. Consider the Italian bankers, or the City of London merchants in medieval times, or Jews in medieval Europe. The Crown would typically borrow from bankers, despite that the king owned heaps of land in his own right.

Anyone who knows any history would see what happened to the nobility of England with the industrial revolution.

The English nobility got really rich from mines on their land. Oh yes, they also got railways so they could move around the country faster, steamships so they could move around the world faster, telegrams, gas heating, electricity, etc (just to label the infrastructure goods that can’t be imported piecemeal). The experience of the nobility of England strikes me as a strong argument for other nobles to start their own industrial revolution. Also, rich countries appear far less likely to have Communist revolutions or violent peasant revolts than poor rural countries, while correlation is not causation, I find it entirely plausible that a nobility would decide that an industrial revolution was a good way of protecting itself and increasing its power. Having to ennoble a few successful merchants strikes me as a small price to pay.

I thought I remembered a fairly short history for the worldwalkers—didn’t they start up in the late 19thC sometime? I’d have to flip through the books to remember. Which supports your point.

Could be, but that puts them in an awfully vulnerable position in case of holdups; it’s a lot easier cutting back on your usage of ballpoints and lighters than of food. While they could always import food and fuel, etc., from our side in an emergency, their local suppliers could mess with them very easily.

But I suppose it could be made to work. That would put them in an awfully

There’s also evidence that the world-walkers deliberately hide a lot of the levels of technological advancement (for instance, they only dress in ‘modern’ clothing in their own privacy, the microlight couldn’t be used, and they don’t seem to have offered electrical systems to even the King). It’s the proverbial ‘advanced alien technology’.

Actually, that gives me another train of thought – surely someone would have thought of moving out of the courier business into producing drugs? Even if you had to move it along the coast from Southern growing latitudes, it should be worthwhile.

Well, if you want the thing that nags at me, it’s the timeline . . . at what date did the ability to walk between the two worlds actually become something they could turn into power??? The contraband trade has to have been relatively recent – opium not having been that popular in America, I’d say the Prohibition was probably the first point that side of the business would have become lucrative.

The ability to move post faster across America could only have dated back to the railways / telegraph, and if we step back much further, well C18th New England was barely more settled than Niewejn (sp??) itself, and potentially more dangerous – the technological gap far closer (if we presume the culture in Gruinmarkt to be ‘stuck’ at a certain point, rather than being 600 years behind).

I would guess that the ability becomes really useful sometime in the C19th, whereas all the stuff about twining and breeding and outer families and the numbers involved suggests something much older – when did the ability become something worth breeding for? How long before that did it appear? The original ‘tinkers’ would have had some idea about how the ability would be inherited, but how would they have kept the bloodline alive until it started to become useful?

So, even if they weren’t trying to develop the Gruinmarkt economy, or to become rich by marketing products to the rest of their world, where’s the water-powered sawmill for lumber for the worldwalkers’ own use? Where’s the coal mines, and the horsecars to bring coal to the castles? Where’s the Bessemer converters, so they could build with steel, armor stuff, whatever? Where’s the McCormick’s Patent Reaping and Mowing Machine? All of these seem to be in the realm of what you could do with medieval craftsmen led by experts with plans, and they’d all make a huge difference in terms of comfort, lifestyle, and military power for the worldwalkers. And once they were in use, it seems as if they’d spread to the non-worldwalker nobles.

Now, you’re right that introducing higher (18th, 19th C) technology for local use mightn’t be in the worldwalkers’ interests long-term, but I don’t recall it being treated as a temptation they had to resist, or that there was a serious ban on. It was just something that hadn’t come up.

Besides, people like the world travelers trafficed in things and not fashion, markets, industry or anything else. It’s kinda hard to do that other stuff safely and reliably when you’re “witches” who’s got the King’s ear.

Similarly, our dominant cat (who runs the universe) hates strangers; the other one considers them all potential food and affection suppliers.