The joint alliance of Heaven and Hell
As for the current scientific and military prowess in which the Great Powers so ostentatiously luxuriated, why, that owed nothing to any kind of cultural superiority. True, Chalakanesia could not match the Great Powers muscle for muscle. The scattered islands of the Chalakanesian archipelago were lightly populated, starved of metals, poorly supplied with fresh water and short of arable land. Furthermore, the metapsychic faultline disrupted commerce, impeded communications and made it difficult to either develop or to use the more delicate kinds of high technology.
Even so, the ideas and methodologies which had initially set Heaven and Hell on the road to greatness had for the most part been sourced in Chalakanesia. This was historical fact. The greatest scholars of the Great Powers unanimously acknowledged as much. It was Chalakanesia which had invented mathematics, logic, paper, gunpowder, the alphabet, the printing press, movable type, systematic medicine, constitutional law and the first rudiments of experimental science.
It was further claimed that the first cookery book in history was a Chalakanesian product; and that Chalakanesia had invented the oar, the sail, the rowlock, the wheel, the windmill, the pressurized rice cooker and the ouija board. The scholars of the Great Powers, even if they privately thought some of these additional claims to be extravagant (particularly the one about the rice cooker) nevertheless did not see fit to oppose them. [NoP Ch2]