[Felkesste]

Humor me for a moment; Let's say you were transported back to ancient Rome or somewhere just as far from your world, your norm, your societal expectations- and for whatever reason, you decided that you wanted to educate these people about some of the things you know from your society. Like germs. You try to explain to them that there are these creatures that are so small, they appear invisible to the naked eye, that breed in filth and cause illness when they enter your body. They can only be killed with these specific materials or substances. They can only be seen with special tools. The myriad of ways they reproduce and spread could fill several books.

But I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that you don't know the first thing about building a microscope- especially with ancient tools and materials. I would also presume that, while you might have a vague idea on how to make homemade soaps, it'd be a lot of trial and error, and it'd be very hard for you to prove that this pleasant smelling block of slippery "fat?" is in any way good for people's health, enough to dissuade them from prioritizing the production of more immediately recognizably practical things like food or tools. I'd also bet that you wouldn't know the first thing about how to kill germs that have already entered the body, or how to treat most illnesses once people have succumb to them. If a plague hit the town, about all you could do is explain some of what you know about how germs spread- and even back then, they already had a murky understanding of how that worked, so you'd really just be spewing their own common-sense back at them from their perspective and getting haughty and smug about it.

I don't see any of that information making an impact on day to day life on the island, not only because none of it could be taken -to- the island and proven to anyone in any capacity, but because the island would, in theory, have it's own culture, it's own history, it's own beliefs and heritage, outsiders trying to preach about these gods from the outside and promising that faith in these gods would make you more powerful would be -IMMEDIATELY- upsetting to the powers-that-be on the island. That's the sort of thing that would get you and your faction hunted down and exterminated. Rocking the boat like that would be very foolish of the guild, and what would they gain from doing so? All they'd be doing is muddying their own studies into the culture and history of the region, and upsetting the people in charge to boot by "starting cults". Some of that is a little silly to worry about, too. "Did you know that the Asago Corporation exists somewhere in the world?", "Oh my gosh, this changes everything-"

What I was proposing was the equivalent of a very weakened, isolated branch of the mage's guild essentially, that has far more player interaction. As a player-filled neutral faction, they could spark a lot of developments and serve a lot of functions for the island, while giving the members something non-violent to do with their time. Roles that would prioritize writing reports, gathering samples, seeking out information no matter how obscure or secretive. Maybe they evolve into a cabal of sages that serve as scribes during the day, and study "mysterious secret magics" in their sanctuary at night. Maybe they evolve into a bunch of ink-stained, half-mad scribes that can read, write, and speak a variety of languages, so they're just useful enough to put up with their mad rambling about the life-cycles of the local crows.

As an NPC neutral faction, they could fulfill the role of giving players daily quests to hunt specific monsters, gather specific materials from specific locations, locate local flora- mushrooms, moss, flowers, leaves, herbs, locate local fauna- birds, fish, insects, unicorns- and maybe buy some of the growing pile of captured monsters from players as the arena does, "for research purposes". They can't make portals. They can't teleport anyone anywhere. They might know that those things exist, but they can't replicate it with the resources and knowledge they have available- (being a professor of history does not mean you know how to forge an axe because axes exist in history, the crew likely had specific jobs, and they might be pretty good at their jobs, but those jobs didn't involve crafting anything particularly society-changing singlehandedly out of twigs and stones)- and they can't prove any of it to anyone, nor would they want to try when it would likely cost them their lives. The empire could conquer Oniga pretty easily. But that rocks the boat, and they have the good sense not to take such a pointless risk. This group of surviving scholars would, I hope, have enough good sense to come to a similar conclusion about sharing any of those things. There is no benefit; Only danger.