The Printing Press

In the year 1440, knowledge was imprisoned. In the shadowy scriptoriums of monasteries across Europe, hunched monks labored by flickering candlelight, their quills scratching across parchment with painstaking precision. Brother Thomas had spent three years copying a single Bible, his fingers cramped and stained with ink, his eyes straining in the dim light. Each page was a masterpiece of human dedication, but also a prison of inefficiency. Books were treasures more valuable than gold, locked away in monastery libraries or the private chambers of nobility. A single volume could cost more than a peasant's lifetime earnings. The common people lived in darkness, unable to read the very scriptures that governed their souls, dependent entirely on priests to interpret God's word. Knowledge belonged to the few, and the few wielded it like a weapon to control the many. In this world of scarcity, information moved as slowly as a ox-drawn cart, and new ideas took generations to spread across kingdoms.