[I would certainly think it a good idea to permit our citizens more advanced knowledge under a geas that denies them to reveal any information about it other than it's purpose to outsiders or willingly let the devices fall into their hands. We could also make it ridiculously complex to operate, or easy to operate if you have a magical key, like an enchanted tattoo on your palm that acts as 100% of the interface with the device. This would also lead them to believe even further that the device is in fact just a hunk of enchanted whatever, that only functions magically and has only limited physical manifestation. They may then assume they'd need to infiltrate our society to learn the "ritual," but anyone that enters the society is completely unable to reveal anything and also spontaneously drops all loyalty to them.
We could also try to make them nearly impossible to dismantle for the purposes of reverse-engineering without damaging it and changing some key information, like crushing an electrical battery and causing a chemical reaction with a something in the container surrounding it that changes the battery fluid (like using lithium batteries and water
) and prevents them from finding out what it is or was until they learn something about chemistry and physics for themselves, and by that means removes the only source of electrical energy, so they would have no idea it was powered by such and would continue to be stumped by the seemingly magical device. We could use rechargable batteries and if Gizogin gets involved modify his cores to accept magical energy and convert it to electrical energy, which lets our mages operate it indefinitely but still doesn't offer potential adversaries the knowledge (or capability, if we go with the enchantment method) of it's actual operation, even if they can power it.
Of course the gods would have every clue what was going on and could do anything with that knowledge. But they could have anyway, yet they don't, so they probably won't unless they decide their favored people need the advantage again.
And ye, I want a refrigerator. We could just teach our chefs a frost spell to cool the air in a room every few hours, I guess, and install a thermometer so they can read it and decide when it is at the proper temperature for storage. Leaving all this meat, eggs, cheese, and prepared meals around was a bad idea to begin with. In the old fort I assume that the large collection of forumites, in their various fields of knowledge, could handle just about everything and it was probably a metropolis filled with modern technology, and GIH's ‼SCIENCE‼, no matter what wierd was doing or asked everyone else to neglect to do. Now with everyone dead and their souls going everywhere but back to us (The forsaken. Jerks abandoned us. Even Hugo neglected to remain dead for any extended period of time!) our small council can handle everything.]