It's fucking cold here.

There's a thin line of glow, on the horizon.

The terrain under her feet is Somehow Fucked Up.

(Yes, it's fucking cold, that's not really new, though usually one only has to endure it for minutes at a time, going from workplace to home and back. The heavy waxed boiler suit is not nothing in the face of such temperatures, but is also not really sufficient.)

...Teleportation?? To outside the City??

Maybe the creature was... An assassination attempt, like in the novels?

What do you do in this situation.

She takes a few deep breaths and has a careful look around, clutching the power saw and trying to look for... Anything significant on the horizon. Or high ground, even.

There's the glow!

There is also some blobbish sort of creature, hustling not very fast across the blighted landscape, off ahead and to her left. It hasn't obviously noticed her yet.

Monsters.

She will... Try to stay low? She drops prone and considers what part of her is most visible - her hair?  Tied up in a neat bun for saw-related reasons, right now, but she lacks a hat. Since she was being stupid and protective headgear is uncomfortable.

She watches it for a bit... And looks at the glow on the horizon. Does it seem like twilight sun, is it otherwise dark here?

The sun is actually behind her if she faces the horizon glow, quite low but a sun and not a line.

Oh, that makes a big difference, that suggests it's the lights of civilization! She should definitely head that way, before she freezes.

She tries to recall tidbits about tracking, hiking, and stealth from a few adventure novels... But they're novels. There's not really much of use. Maybe it'll help if she stays in the low ground, so she's less easily visible?? And keeps checking around every minute or two. And try to stay distinctly in the blind spot of the ?monster?.

The ?monster? notices her when she's made about five minutes' worth of progress toward the glow. It snarls and displays claws. It's really gross looking.

Welp.

"Stay the fuck back if you know what's good for you!"

She raises the power saw and revs it.

The monster considers this, though it does not obviously understand, and then shrugs to itself and charges.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Running would not help. Monsters frequently have inhuman speed, stamina, and strength. This creature likely has some sort of strong ability, and her intuition as the Spark starts to grind into motion says it may be related to toxins- But this is just a hunch, a vague guess.

The spark makes her faster. The Spark makes her stronger. They have tested this, there is empirical evidence of it! She wants to be home, to be safe, in the workshop, making something clever and cool and - And she will DIE-PERISH-CEASE if she does nothing, without the spark there will be no more. So pull on that well of fury and audacity and RAISE YOUR WEAPON.

"Taste the power of a TUNGSTEN CARBIDE BLADE at eight thousand revolutions per minute!"

And she also charges, somewhere between panic and rage, letting instinct guide the revving tool to tear into the monster in bloody chunks compromise the greatest structural weakness of the construct-

It's not that tough of a monster, it turns out. It does smell stupidly awful though.

She spends a while crying. And throwing up. And screaming about monsters. It attacked first, she would have been fine to just... Keep walking... She had to. It was too easy, when the Spark was up, when she was fire and fury.

...

It's still really fucking cold, though. She can't wallow here forever.

...Are monster parts useful in any way? If they can- If she just has a body this collection of parts to work with- Need any advantage you can take- A claw or something, at least, they're sharp-

Just keep walking. Towards the light.

The light gets closer, grudgingly, over a rather long hike. At least no other monsters notice her.

The light is a shimmering dome, it turns out, prominent next to the horizon but present across the sky when she's looking for it.

She's too fuzzy-brained to make any real conclusions about it.

Keep walking. Keep walking. She doesn't have any food, fuel, or drinkable water. Well. The residual steam in the power saw has probably condensed into an antifreeze-laced liquid, but that's still not safe to drink.

Here she is at the line. There's maybe a building, maybe a mile or two off that way. The air is thin and frigid and there is no wall, unless the glowing line counts.

......Poke? With the saw first, then a finger. And then she steps past it, out and in, a few times, trying to identify... Anything about it.

(The Spark is silent on the subject, interested but confused.)

The line doesn't do a bit of harm to her saw or her finger. It tingles faintly, when she steps through, but it admits her otherwise like empty air.

...The dome shape, plus a fort, plus monsters inside, suggests a containment field, going by story tropes. Not meant to keep her in, apparently. Or else some sort of enormous anomaly being studied or exploited in some way?

Well. Towards the building.

The last twenty minutes of the hike are still cold but the ground is less mysteriously fucked up under the layer of frost. Still not a lot of plants or anything but looks like a fundamentally reasonable wasteland.

She's getting rather too cold to appreciate its relative level of reason. The lack of a head covering is painful; She undid her hair and wrapped it around her ears a while ago but this is woefully insufficient and barely helped. She walks, rubbing her gloves together and trying to move fast to generate warmth.

There's archers, up on the walls, and one calls out in a language she's never heard in her life.

Yay! People!! Soldiers. Primitive ones, at that.

She fights the urge to wobble or sit.

She halts, and carefully sets down her saw, and displays the seized fleshy claw unfinished blade, and then sets that down too, and raises both hands high.

"I speak germanian as spoken in city Frostbound! Uh... Parlez-vous francois? God Save the Queen?"

They talk amongst themselves; a different one tries another language.

Nope.

She's going to... Sit down now. And hold the saw again, alternating looking at it and the walls. Stone walls, low-tech. She's considering... Reconfigurations to make it still spin... Without an active steam source...

Some people are now coming out of the fortress toward her.

Literally nothing she can do about that, thanks! If this is the part where they throw her in prison and sell her as a slave, or maybe try to sacrifice her to something, as novels suggest, well She Tried. She is out of Try.

Here they are. Another language is attempted. When that doesn't work a guy gets out a scroll and then very loudly and clearly, like she might understand this sentence, reads from the scroll.

Then the scroll shrivels up into nothing which might be interesting.

"-How by all fucks does it do that. Autoignitive pigment...? No, you- Obviously meant to do something. I'm sorry, I'm too cold to think clearly, I was in my workshop and a monster teleported me out into the snow." Point at the claw. "Not the one this came from, which was encountered and dispatched estimated - three, maybe four kilometers at one o'clock from perpendicular to the thing that's maybe a containment field- It was self defense, I assure you- I'm rambling."

"Dretch," about the claw. Affirmative nod at "containment field" and again at "self defense".

"-Oh, you understand me." That's not that far fetched as Sparkwork goes. "Yes, killed a dretch. How do I cooperate with your security protocols?"

(Of course they have security protocols. City Frostbound has security drills all the time, especially the gate guards, and these guys are some sort of equivalent.)

She frowns. "Right, one way. Uh. I don't wanna freeze or starve. I have the Spark*. I have received training in moderating its influence, though my ability to do so degrades under high stress. I'm willing to give up all tools and weapons given the danger an average Spark with tools and weapons represents. I presume you have regulations against a number of things but I do not... Know them. I promise to obey security-related instructions as best I understand them. Maybe I should - learn words for the most essential commands? Stop, yes, no, danger, warning..."

*Probably comes across as some kind of sorcery.

They seem to find this speech extremely reassuring. The guy who was doing other gestures-and-mutterings says stuff to the other guys. They motion her to follow them to the fortress.

And they're not taking her weapon (yet?) Odd.

(Call upon the barest embers of that audacious madness, thermal energy insufficiency of all things is not allowed to defeat me-)

She can stand and walk another couple hundred meters at least. There is enough left for that.

It is warmer inside. Not a lot warmer - they seem, on inspection, to have to make do with body heat and very miserly fires; everyone keeps their coats on indoors - but it's insulated, at least.

She looks beat. They direct her to a barracks-y room - it has blankets in it, and a sleeping person - and gesture encouragingly at a bed there.

-If they're sure?? "You don't want to use the remainder of the translation effect? Or check me for contraband? Or anything?"

She feels like she's getting away with something. But will, in fact, attempt to Become Warm and promptly fall asleep, probably.

The translation effect guy cups his ear when she says that, but if she doesn't actually have anything to say, she can sleep.

She feels surprisingly beat for what wasn't really all that long out in the freezing cold. Five or ten kloms hiking, and a brief period of higher exertion and calling the Spark.

It was the MURDERING a flesh and blood monster that did it, probably. It clearly had THOUGHTS. Which makes her a MURDERER.

She does something vaguely resembling sleep for about four hours, and then checks to make sure everything she laid down with is still there, the saw, the odd bits and bobs that always accumulate in worksuit pockets, the... Claw. And then looks around, feeling a bit lost as to What Now.

Her stuff is all still there. A different configuration of random people are sleeping in the room now. She could exit the room.

There aren't any CLOCKS or a SCHEDULE on the wall how is she supposed to know what to do

That bastard MONSTER probably destroyed all her hard work on the multitool arm

No. Stop. What are some useful thoughts?

She needs to find a source of steam or convert the saw to hand-power. Okay, that's something, there are a few ways to go about it, but-

-Probably not immediately relevant as those will require ~resources~ and she is not in City Frostbound anymore, not to mention her stack of heat stamp money would be useless here anyway.

Yeah, she will take her saw and exit the room and retrace steps entranceward, ready to stop if it seems called for by anyone.

Somebody spots her and waves her over and tries to beckon her thisaway further inside the fortress!

Oh, okay, here come the security procedures. She will nod and follow with, not exactly eagerness but at least purpose.

Through the mess hall - if she stares at the food she can have a food first.

Eh. She's more staring at the inefficient fires with vague annoyance and thoughts of improvements.

Also. A lot of anxiety about not knowing the rules or language.

Up a bunch of stairs, then, and into an office.

A man behind a desk extends his hand to her.

She hesitates, but: Handshake?

"Share Language."

This guy super reminds her of the Captain in a bad mood.

Processing.....

"Interesting. Thank you. What now?"

"Perhaps you would care to explain more about where you are from and how you came to be at the Worldwound."

Okay, she can do a report. Report cadence on.

"I am Waltana Hampson, from City Frostbound. A deliberately isolated community whose exact location is meant to be secret. I was having an ordinary day when in what I am guessing was either a bizarre accident or some sort of assassination attempt, a Huge snake with a mirror for a face appeared in the workshop I was using and began thrashing around. I confronted it- Unwisely, my - sorcery? - can drive me to unwise actions for all that I have done mental disciplines to control it. When the mirror touched me, I found myself inside the... Worldwound, inside the containment field. I walked towards the field edge and fought a - I think they said dretch- Along the way. And then here. I'm a bit surprised the soldiers allowed me to keep my saw?" It's hanging on the boiler suit belt now.

"It is not customary to deprive people of their weapons at the Worldwound unless they have done something very seriously concerning, being as there are demons around and they do not always consent to appear only at predictable moments. Being an unwise sorcerer who had a teleport accident and fought a dretch and did not attack human defenders of the border does not make you very seriously concerning."

"Hmm. I would like to know the rules. Also it is not currently functional as a weapon, by the way. Also would you like your fires to be more efficient? Blast or forced induction style stoves and furnaces burn most fuels more completely and lose less heat to exhaust, compared to unimproved fires. If you have visible smoke you're wasting energy. It's- I make things. That's what the Spark* is all about, it stood out."

*Used as a loanword

"...more efficient fires would be enormously useful, we are forever rationing fuel." He pulls out a packet of paper, apparently handwritten, and pushes it across the desk to her. "The Worldwound treaty, under which you qualify as an 'independent adventurer' and we are the forces of the state signatory Cheliax."

"So I should read this and return it? I - can't imagine there's much prospect of going home-"

"If your home's location is secret there is not much chance you will happen across a teleporter who has enough familiarity with the place to chance it. Maybe if you are an exceptional artist. You should read it and return it; there are regular classes and refreshers on its contents for recruits if any points are confusing and you may sign up for those; if you are interested in contributing your sorcerous - crafting? - to this fort then we can discuss what it will take to make that worthwhile as an expenditure of language spells on top of normal supply. Are you quick with languages?"

"Right, of course."

Teleporters! Apparently exist! That's probably WHY it's secret!!

"No, I don't think that's going to work."

Push back the despair, it is Report Time.

"I've never tested whether I am quick with languages. What's the alternative to staying here?"

"You can travel with a series of patrols around the border till you reach a wardstone outpost which is also a city, Kenabres in Mendev, and there travel further or adopt a civilian life or sign on with a different Worldwound defense operation."

"Okay... Right. I'll - My current plan absent corrections is to convert my saw for hand power over steam, produce a proposal for efficient stoves or heaters, read this treaty, attempt to convert the language effect into long term understanding. I don't necessarily object to having - duties while being here and therefore consuming supplies - I don't know if people are being paid for that matter - but would like the chance to read the treaty first to understand things, if you would like to expect them. I'm good at repairing objects."

"Enlisted soldiers are paid. Independent adventurers are entitled to food and shelter so long as they are assisting in holding the border but in the general case they are here either out of a desire to see that border held or a desire to personally grow in power, and are not moved by the wages a soldier commands. If you're crafting things and you have the materials you need with you, we can buy those products from you and sell you a coat; if you need a loan of a coat and materials, we will have to work out something bespoke, I haven't hosted a teleport-accident adventurer who arrived without cold weather gear and their own crafting supplies before."

Sparks get sparkier if they fight a lot, she's pretty sure? It sounds right, at least?

"I... Do not really have materials except what's in the weapon. Would that I had stuffed my pockets while the monster was destroying months of work. Is there any trash?"

"...what kind of trash?"

"Well, whatever's cheap or free, I'm not expecting billets of Krupp steel straight from the forge hall. Ruined armor, copper coins, wood scraps, rags. I could probably get anywhere with bones and rocks but it would be deeply suboptimal. There's some sort of use for almost anything, I've heard semi-reliable tales of Sparks animating shoes with cobblers' tools to bite intruders and, yeah, that feels possible-"

She visibly interrupts herself. "...Plans for more than a day feel silly at this point. I have to come to terms with my current situation and read the treaty and so on."

"There are probably some unMendable rags and scraps in the midden but they are not at all sorted. Copper coins are... usable as currency... and therefore not trash. If you can use dead demon parts you can have them as they come in; there are beef bones, though trashed ones have already been used in stew broth; disturbing buried soldiers can lead to haunting problems and is therefore against protocol."

Seems like a waste compared to wake services, then processing them into fertilizer for use in a hothouse, but well, they don't have the hothouse. She built the current version.

"...Well, digging through trash is slightly better than sitting there doing nothing. I think I should leave you to your work now." He seems important. "Present you with a heater proposal later perhaps."

"Share Language will last twenty-four hours and ideally I will know before the shift change tonight whether I should prepare another for the next day or whether you have other plans."

"I want to stay here for at least a day, will update you if it changes. Is there a schedule written anywhere? Information on the monsters being contained here? Or a person I should ask. I think those are my last questions."

"Scheduling information is on the wall of the mess hall, including for classes on demonology, and you may attend those unless the instructor finds you a nuisance and dismisses you."

Nod. Her thoughts are drifting towards tinkering on her saw...

"Nothing else right now unless you have questions for me."

"You may continue to sleep in the same room as before for the time being and you may have two bowls of stew and one of porridge per day, with an extra one of either acceptable if you take a patrol round trip. What do we call you?"

"Walta, Waltana, or Miss Hampson, I suppose."

...She stands and feels a vague urge to do the city salute, a fist bump to the left shoulder, but does not.

"Dismissed, Hampson."

...Stew, how about some of that.

It has beef and rice and salt and tiny flecks of something that might be cabbage.

It compares favorably to cookhouse rations by containing more protein!

Schedule check next. The background of people here also feels familiar-ish, somehow.

There are patrol schedules, going out every twenty minutes, around the clock, filled in with various names in various handwriting. There are classes posted too - treaty review, Common Taldane practice, archery drill, topology circle, stellar navigation, demonology, snow shelter construction, basic patrol skills.

All of these sound useful and some of them even sound interesting!! Topology isn't a segment of math she's been very into before, so she might not be able to usefully contribute, though. Also it seems odd next to all the practical concerns.

When's the soonest one? -She doesn't know the current time. She asks someone how they are telling time here.

"It's up over there, the entryway wizard increments it every time a Prestidigitation runs down."

-Nod.

"Manual clocks, what has the world come to..."

So, when's the next session for any of those? If it's not soon, probably... Read the treaty.

She could actually get in on a Taldane class but she speaks Taldane quite well right now, which is also why she can read the treaty.

It's probably still worth it! Thinking about the language in trying to learn it terms- Well, there's some amount of time pressure on making the heater designs-

She'll skip that, then, and lock in on heater designs, writing them out in her own notebook, because working is very engrossing and distracting from how she's in a STRANGE FORT with STRANGERS (who, admittedly, seem very reassuringly orderly), far from home, with no expectation of a hot shower or seeing her mom.

Anything happen for the hour or so she'll be writing in the mess hall in her tiny notebook with a tiny pencil?

People do look over her shoulder, otherwise no.

...Hmm but what if... That could... If she took that part out...

The spark flows sluggishly for some of it, making her a bit more energetic and animated as she plans. Lots of math and some diagrams are on the 4 pages she uses up.

And then at the end, neatly tallied, three designs for efficient-heat-production: One that will just take some rocks or bricks and time and effort putting them in the right shape, one marked as needing ~3lbs scrap iron that will include a self-starting turbine and mostly work faster by forcing air through (theoretically could be used to do other useful work) but is around the same amount of efficient, one that is marked as using a fairly critical component of her power saw and also rope and a few other things that apparently will be much more efficient due to some mechanism involving evaporation and condensation - producing double to six times the amount of heat per unit of wood input, depending on the outside temperature of this other component where it's stealing heat from, which must be placed outside or on a roof somewhere with a clear line to where the heat will come out-

...Back towards the boss's office?

It's right where she left it. There's a guy stationed outside the door asking her business.

"I have design proposals for improved-efficiency heaters. We discussed earlier and I said I'd write them up to see if they're worth fort resources, as I understood it."

"- yes, let's have a look."

Here is a hand sized piece of paper!

"So, the cheapest is this one which really just needs some time and effort to chip rocks into shape and maybe a bit of mortar or something, the wood goes in here, air goes down here, and then air coming out of here will be stronger and hotter than a normal fire and there will be much less smoke. The hottest part is this, which can be a cooking surface. Easily twice as much heat per unit wood burned compared to an open fire.

This one is closely related to the cheapest one, but I'd need about three or five pounds of scrap metal to beat into shape. Basically, it's a little better because of forcing more air through faster, reaching higher temperatures in the inner chamber. But it's hard to say just how much better without trying it.

This one I don't expect you'll want but, well, Spark, it's what I call a heat pump and would be around three times as much heat per unit wood burned as even the optimistic estimates of the second type, since it's moving heat from outside to inside, but it would require, well, a bunch more stuff, the list here is approximate and adaptations are possible, but representative of the kinds of materials I might need. It also requires the heat engine from my power saw, which is, uh, maybe not."

"I think we have that much scrap metal available in the form of broken arrowheads or bent horseshoes. What's the time expenditure on any of these?"

"Ehhh... I'm not very used to using literal rocks as materials... The spark helps but... Eight to twelve hours work," number one, "Ten to fourteen," number two, "And the heat pump would take like six hours if I had everything in my workshop and only keeps going up the less good the materials are until it's impossible. Call it forty plus hours of work. Maybe less once the Spark is active, those are conservative estimates."

"Would you need to kick the smith out of his smithy?"

"Oh, I could help in a smithy! - For a couple hours yes, for type two."

"We have only the one smith posted here at the moment so you could perhaps work while he's sleeping, if your sort of sorcerer can tolerate the schedule adjustment."

"That's fine once I get used to it yes."

"That would put your hours at..." Paper shuffling. "2200 hours up to 0600."

It's really rather relieving to have a Specific Schedule set! Even if she might... Leave.

Yeah, she might.

Didn't she want to leave? See the world?

She doesn't have to do it right now. She might want, like, a coat. And a functioning weapon. And to have read the treaty.

"If I work to make improved heaters at whichever of the first two designs you pick, will this work feature in your consideration for whether I can get a coat or other things for personal use, should I decide to leave towards, uh, Kenabres?"

"If your heater works sufficient to reduce the amount of fuel we go through for cooking and heating by the factor you describe I would value that at approximately..." He does some figuring. "A coat, a pair of boots, and about a thousand dollars, though I only have that in paper Chelish money and if you choose to leave you will need to exchange it for coinage."

"Oh, nice. I don't need boots, I think, my work boots appear to be holding up acceptably to the cold. It's just the work outfit that isn't. How many 'dollars' is an enlisted soldier paid per day? I'd really rather be paid in materials, but I imagine the logistics of getting them out here is... Dubious."

He can show her the pay schedule for various ranks. A thousand dollars is apparently a lot. "I can requisition things, but turnaround is slow. We have some things but were not expecting your sorcerer varietal."

That's... A lot of money, actually. She tries to compare it to heatstamps and ends up concluding that it's about two months of her pay back in Frostbound? Is sparkwork just that valuable??? Maybe no Sparks are around here? They haven't been really... Recognizing it. It'd explain the general lack of technology, except for the esoteric mental effects...

Or maybe she was being cheated and exploited at home, the captain is suspicious and they put so many restrictions on her work-

Down, Spark.

"-I haven't read the treaty yet, I made these designs first. I think I'll - 1000 to 0600 hours you said - does that leave me with just four hours of sleep or am I misunderstanding? I'm trying to see if I should try to go back to sleep immediately or not."

"1000 to 0600 is a period of eight hours. The blacksmith is not in his shop during all other hours, but it is to be reserved for his use during those hours unless you come to an arrangement directly with him. The rest of your time you can develop more plans like these, attend classes, sleep, eat, play cards, sign up for patrols if you fancy them."

"Oh, an evening to morning distinction. - Oh, it may be difficult to relocate once complete, being large and unwieldy, I should know where to build it. And whether you want type one or type two, I have been assuming type two since we are discussing use of the smithy."

"I can have someone show you to the kitchen, and, yes, I meant type two."

"I think that's all again for now? Thank you - it's releiving to have a project."

"The project existed through no doing of mine." He leans out into the hall to tell the nearest internal patrol guy to direct her to the kitchen and the smithy and to alert the night cooks that she's to have access to build a new stove.

Well, first she'll take a look around to see the space and say hi to the people who'll probably be using it, no reason to be rude and you usually want to talk to the people who will use your tools, it's just common sense- Figure out where exactly it should go in a room that presumably already has space laid out and accounted for. No rush to decide, she won't be able to start properly until at least the next night anyway.

The kitchen is in fact pretty cramped but they have a big staging area for butchering entire cows in and she could put an oven in a corner of that space if it's not too giant and still leave them room to butcher an entire cow.

Well, it's going to end up fairly big actually, it kind of has to, to be efficient? The main box will be about five by three by five feet. Maybe the long straight flume part can go vertical instead of horizontal (which would have made a nice warm bench), up and run along the ceiling, here?

They can rip out some of the counter here and put it where the current stove is, if it's got to be that large. It's also not impossible to cut up a solid frozen cow in the freezer, they acknowledge, resentfully.

"So, I don't want to disrupt things unnecessarily - it'll reduce the amount of wood used for heating and that's why the boss wants it, but I can make it taller more than wider, I can try to not mess with what you've already got as much as possible, I can try to make your job easier in the process, that's why I'm asking instead of just going right ahead. Pretty sure I can fit it... Here, without chopping off any counter. But then the hot surface for cooking would be here, right at my shoulder height, which is kinda high to try and actually cook on-"

Cooks glower at her. One eventually ventures, "Yeah, that's too tall."

Nod, nod. "If I can knock a vent hole in a wall about - here - it can go right where the current stove is... Or maybe I could double the flow back on itself, shrink it that way- What makes a stove nice to cook on?"

"Haven't you ever cooked nothing?

"That wall goes to the punishment room."

"No, I think it's the stables, that side."

"Not in a long time, actually, where I'm from there's a giant canteen. Everyone gets rations, three times a day. That way they control the portions and do it 'efficiently'. Okay, how about- A little chimney going up from here and then to the left? And the hole to put wood in and sweep out ash would go right here. No holes in any walls."

Nobody actively glares at her about this.

"Okay, I'll assume that's how it'll go. And try to set things up so it'll only take uh... Maybe an hour to put all together when it's ready-ready."

"Understood," says the head cook.

"...Good bye for now then."

This place must be getting to them, that would explain it. It's not exactly a cushy assignment, is it? And not everyone's pleasant at the best of times in Frostbound either. It sits unquietly but it's not actually... Her problem? If the cooks are grumpy?

Something about it still isn't sitting right.

This whole place is wrong, wrong, unfamiliar and primitive.

...Whatever.

Now. What's this treaty about? She remembers the mention of 'cheliax' and her being an 'independent adventurer'...

The treaty has a lot of stuff that doesn't apply to her, and in her own case as long as she doesn't violate the treaty first she is protected from signatories doing assorted bad things to her and entitled to help in exchange for her own help at least up to a point, and has to not interfere with operations or attack fellow treaty-applicable people.

Okay.

She still doesn't want to think about home or what to do next so she very industriously summarizes down the relevant parts in pencil in her notebook. And then checks the time- Tries to practice the language? That's the next time bounded task. She'll mutter things in Germanian and then in Taldane over and over... And actually feels out the alphabet and transcribes it and starts making a phrasebook with small writing, sharpening her pencil with the pocket multitool that did manage to make the trip with her. Until 1000 hours, when the smithy is designated as free, then she'll head over there.

It's a smithy. Looks like it does mostly arrowheads and horseshoes and some melee weapon maintenance and production.

She can work with this... A fun night of locating her authorized scrap metal and pounding it into better shape for the fancy stove!! And also doing some of the incidental repairs. And cleaning up properly, of course, she's not a barbarian. With absolutely minimal use of forge heat, since fuel is so critical. Only once near the end of the night.

(She also ends up reconfiguring the saw to hand-crank power during this. And somehow the dretch claw ends up in there as a sort of butt-spike. There's clearly something Sparky about this. Any ominous chuckling and low-voiced Sparky ranting will proooobably be sufficiently contained by the walls. It's pretty easy to not let it get out of hand working without anything really exciting or especially urgently, too.)

And then, a food please, (it's a lot less good on a repeat, maybe it was just novel the first time compared to cookhouse potato mash), and then sleep.

-Oh, right, she should return the copy of the treaty. She'll do that.

The next day she checks the time against any of the workshops she wanted to visit, especially demonology, and wants to know if she can go outside for appropriate crafting rocks without violating some sort of security rule?

The food is actually porridge if she asks for one first thing in the morning, which means it is watery soft rice with barely identifiable dried fruit in it. She can get into a demonology session (Topic: Incubi & Succubi) right before day-shift lunch. She can go out for rocks or fresh frigid air or whatever as long as she notifies the security wizard on duty, does not bring a cleric with her, and holds still for a Detect Fiendish on the way back.

Mind control is scary!! She would like to acquire LEAD for a HELMET!! (If appropriately plated in steel it shouldn't be toxic!) ...For now, rocks will do. Security protocols are 200% understandable.

She will chip and chisel literal random rocks from outside into the right shape (lots of precise curves) somewhere out of the way, making far more progress at this activity than her metal knife really ought to allow. She stays up until just after lunchtime despite growing fatigue, to force herself onto the new schedule. The Share Language runs out during her sleep, but with consultation of her phrasebook she can at least request stew and continue preparing the new stove some more.

Blithely ignoring any pretense or attempts at social interaction and just Doing Work is surprisingly comfortable. Every moment is a step closer to accomplishing a thing. Everyone has a job and mostly ignores each other. It's weirdly nostalgic.

(The things she misses are electric lights and the bathhouse that runs off residual heat from the smelting fumes back home. Those were both legitimately very nice. Also, her mom, and the few assistants on the rotation who were genuinely more friends than minders.)

Someone finds her that evening and tells her that if she wants the Share Language re-upped she needs to report to the commander's office.

Oh, sure, she'll report to the commander's office. Slightly nervously.

Hand.

And apologize, "I did not consider whether you were going to apply the effect again, that was a mistake. I understand there is some opportunity cost."

"Do you not have clerics where you come from?"

"No, I don't think so? It's possible they are considered secret, or otherwise obscure somehow. The Captain and I were the only people with recognizable magic that I know of; We both have the Spark. -Oh, about half progress on an improved stove, by the way."

"Good to know. Clerics and wizards prepare spells in advance and clerics in particular must do so at dawn. Share Language takes a second-circle slot. It should, if you try, permit you to learn the language for real more rapidly, but if you do or don't need it on any particular day I should be notified ahead so I'm not guessing."

"I'm optimistic about accelerated language learning after the results of one day of study. But, understood. It likely will be not very necessary once I have the stove installed... I keep having additional ideas for fort improvements - city Frostbound had many advanced machines performing various functions - but few are as straightforward and short term from my perspective as the stove so I had thought to finish that and let it demonstrate the value of sparkwork before proposing anything more ambitious."

"Prudent. Anything else I need to know?"

Pause to Actually Think About It.

"Other than that I will be unfamiliar with most types of demons if a battle occurs and to plan accordingly until I have the chance to attend more demonology sessions, not that immediately leaps to mind. Also unfamiliar with clerics, for that matter, and possibly unknown unknowns."

"We do not have a class on Basic Things That Exist. If you find it impairing I recommend finding a wizard on one of the cleaning shifts and asking them questions; wizards can generally hold a conversation while Prestidigitating and enjoy talking about what they know."

"Okay. Last question, are there other uh - non-sensitive things - that worldwound forts tend to particularly need in case they inspire ideas?"

"Cold iron arrowheads - and other weapons, but those tend to be brought in rather than produced on site - and we go through a great many Endure Elements spells particularly in the winter."

"Arrow-

Do you know if they work against demons if only a small portion of the arrowhead is cold iron? The cutting edge, say? Or should I ask a wizard?"

Electroplating! It solves problems!

"...I am not aware of that having ever been tried but I might not be; asking a wizard seems appropriate."

"Okay I think that is all - I expect to benefit greatly from another share language tomorrow and have no firm expectation of if it will be necessary after that-"

She stands and makes to leave, seeming excited.

"Then I'll see you tomorrow. Good night."

She grabs one of the rocks that still needs a precise curve carved into it and looks for a cleaning wizard.

There's usually one posted to manage dishes and one in the entry hall for incoming patrols and whoever else wants cleaning up and one in the stables.

...Horses creep her out. She'll try the dishes one first and suggest that she helpfully stack and hand dishes in return for answering some out-of-context questions?

"Yeah, sure, I like to do them ten at a time. What's on your mind?"

"Well, the specific question I came here with was about cold iron arrowheads and how much cold iron is necessary thereto, but I think actually all the books I've read are lies - or I'm from a different planet - or something fucky. You don't have any - see, I'm not even finding a Taldane word for it - lightning machines? And we didn't have clerics or wizards. Or a worldwound. We do have monsters though. And, like, the concept of laws and treaties." Stacking stacking.

"They don't have clerics in Rahadoum. And they say old Sarkoris didn't have wizards. I don't see how you'd get along without either unless there were a hell of a lot of whatever you are though."

"I heard about one in a thousand, depending on where you live? I think the more important factor is that stuff we make, mostly other people can use just fine? ...Anyway, has anyone tried making only the cutting edge of arrowheads cold iron, does it ruin whatever special penetrative capability they have?"

"I think you can't forge them that way at the temperature that lets it be cold iron. I don't see why it wouldn't work - if you get a strong hit with a cold iron arrow, the shaft goes in after it."

"When I've proven I'm not just saying words I have an idea about that. It's heat that ruins it? I wonder if it's some property of the crystalline structure..."

"Yeah, too much heat. You have to get it a little hot to work up at all but if you overdo it you just have normal iron. Holy weapons work on demons too but they're mostly useful for the kind of archer who can put thirty arrows in a demon every moment and you want to be able to hand him the cheap shit and have it work because they don't like it if anybody who's not a paladin or something pick them up."

"They don't seem to be immune, I managed to kill a dretch with a weapon that is not, to my knowledge, either cold iron or holy- I suppose dretches are not necessarily the apex of the phylum, and more damage is better- Anyway there is a slightly exotic metalworking technique known as 'electroplating'," said in Germanian, "That doesn't involve high heat and seems worth trying, but it'd require a lot of presumably expensive equipment to attempt..."

"What kind of equipment, do you just mean you need like a lot of spellsilver to make the thing that can do it?"

"Eh, I'd probably have to make most of the tools myself. Copper, steel, rubber, acids, glass, some nickel and zinc, silver, chromium- My type of sorcerer throws specialties or at least styles and mine is largely metal-ish."

...She considers the word 'spellsilver' and attempts to identify it based on memories of Iolantha Heterodyne's Magnificent Metallic Matrix.

Does the Matrix include the category "lanthanides"?

"So alchemist shit."

It does! So the rare rare metals. Curiosity resolved.

"'Electroplating' at least is alchemy, yes. I know my alchemy but it was never a specialty. Oh, uh- What thing is going to bite me on the ass for not knowing it the worst, do you think? I've only seen the one demonology class and it was about succubi and incubi, I'm not going to attack anyone or mess with things, but... Unknown unknowns."

"Uh, foreigners never wanna get into it about religion, so don't. Aaaand you need a coat but if your thing you're doing in the kitchen works probably you can get paid partly in a coat."

Hey Common Taldane, what's a religion?

The practices surrounding prayer and worship of whatever god or subpantheon is favored in a given community.

Oh, so not relevant to her seeing as she is not a cleric or aiming to be one. These ""gods"" are pretty clearly just powerful superbeings anyway, like the Queen of England.

"Gotcha. And yeah, I'm asking for a coat as part of it. Now a scout suit, they'll keep your toes warm in a blizzard, I want to make one of those, but like, they run on heavy oil and also that'd take more glass, steel, and rubber, and some naphtha, and- Okay, no rambling, sorry. I ramble."

"All the fun people do."

Tacit permission received?

"Scout suits are multipurpose! They are armor, warmth, light, electro power for running devices! They also burn oil at a rate that may be prohibitive given that firewood is a major constraint. I made major improvements to the facility that makes them, that and the potato house are probably my two favorite creations. Everything requires energy input of some kind- Burning things is some of the easiest energy to work with, though pure muscle power hauling on a crank is technically even simpler, it's far less convenient. I've been having thoughts about using large mirrors to concentrate heat from sunlight. Or perhaps trying to draw out wherever magic comes from."

"What's a potato house? - could we be putting the horses to work, when they're not needed on patrol?"

"The potato house used electro stimulation and dense fertilizer - complicated, alchemy - to make potatoes grow at an extremely rapid pace. One eighth of the plants were harvested each day and by the eighth day they're ready again. But it takes a lot of complicated alchemy and upkeep, and lots of energy leached off our smelter... The horses probably have to eat more if they're doing more work, right? I'm pretty sure that's how horses work, there is no free lunch."

"Yeah, but only to a point. They have to eat even if they're not doing anything at all."

"Maybe you should, then. I could whip up some lights off a horse moving with just copper, zinc, and some glass, as a first thought."

"You'll wind up dipping into the wand materials, till the requisitions come in."

"I might go to, uh, Kenabres, once I have a coat. Resource scarcity is not very fun."

"Ah, fair enough, Worldwound's not a popular posting. Maybe you'll be very lucky and something big'll attack, enough that we call in a strike team, and they can bring you home with them."

"Someone's got to do it but the people I consider to have authority over me are... Not here. Maybe it's where I should be, getting stronger. Maybe not."

"It's the right place for that. There's sort of an awkward valley around third and fourth circle where you're not strike team quality yet but you're too tough for routine ops to get you much of anywhere, but for getting past first and second, here's where, way better than grubbing around in a three-man party hunting dire bugs and zombie outbreaks."

"White bears and the bandit dregs of Polar Lord civil wars for us."

Stacking stacking. Hmm noise.

"Is circle a relevant metric because of topology somehow? It seemed odd that there was a math group among all the more practical ones. Obvious answer, math is practical actually."

"Oh, yeah, us wizards need it. Sorcerers use it but don't need to understand it, they can just pull perfectly formed spell structures out of their asses."

"Sparks can pull animated biting boots out of their asses, but proper learning helps. A lot. Think I could sit in on topology circle without being useless?"

"I mean, you can sit in and not say anything, then you'll be useless but at least not worse than that."

"I'll imagine my voice is annoying and weaselly and calculate threshold of interruption accordingly."

"We all got it in school, see, and you might've gone to some alchemy-sorcery school but you didn't go to wizard prep."

"And interdisciplinary studies is not the prescribed topic. I've some calculus?" Shrug.

"Ooh, that could be fun, write us a calculus presentation and bring it in after you've been through a couple times and know how it goes. It's not essential for spells so it's niche."

"Sure. Where does one requisition paper and pencils if one is not a wizard? I suppose I shall talk to the commander about more of my stove pay being exchanged for supplies."

"If you want quick notes you can erase you get a slate and chalk, if you want to write on paper you get a pen. Storeroom sergeant'll know how much credit you're allowed to draw down unless somebody fucked up."

"Pen, nyeh... Oh well, guess I'll have to learn how to use one without blobbing it everywhere." Put-upon sigh. "I'll need a backpack, too... And a backup weapon or two..."

"Yeah, we oughta have spares of most things. You know how to use a real bow or just a crossbow? Mace or spear?"

"I know how to use a pistol. Crossbow should be fine-ish? I think you'd want to account for wind and drop much more. Mace probably better than a sword - sparks get rage strength. I wouldn't call myself trained so much as instinctual in 'power saw', even."

"I never heard of a pistol. We've got the cheap not-cold-iron-tipped bolts for practicing with if you're not sure you know the ends from each other."

"'s an alchemical crossbow, more or less." Shrug. "Yeah, I'll probably wanna do that."

"Ooh, alchemical crossbow - like does it do acid damage or something - wouldn't help much with demons, they're so anti-energetic that you can really see why dretches are caught napping often as not -"

"Oh, it's really just a carefully contained explosion driving the bolt instead of spring power in tension arms. Now I'm thinking about a bomb launcher, you could put all sorts of interesting payloads in that with two or three pounds to work with instead of a few ounces of an arrow. Acid, lightning, incendiaries, smoke or tangle goo, fragmentation, or an electrical discharge- Ahem."

"Demons are outright immune to electricity. Like if you hit them with enough fire or acid, eventually they'll take notice, but electricity nothing doing. Tangling them up could be really good though..."

"What the fuck, how does that even work? Demon skin must have absurdly insulative properties."

"It's not the skin, if you make a coat out of demon skin it doesn't give you that unless you do additional magic, it's just a magical property demons've got. Most outsiders have some complement of shit like that. Like devils are immune to fire, but just partly resist acid and cold."

"...Would it be terribly cruel if I tried to study one while it was still alive? Every property has a cause. Or possibly I could get anywhere with recently alive- Hold on, the spark is waking up about this-"

Deep breath.

"Calm."

"What a funny kinda sorcerer, how does that work - is it like those guys who get high on anger and it makes them strong enough to put an axe through a vrock only it makes you sorcerous - anyway the treaty doesn't give a shit about cruelty to demons, you probably have to do it all outside but if you wanna vivisect a dretch and can stand the smell more power to you."

"Sparks get - intense. Not just anger, but yes, anger always does it. No, I'm pretty sure that's a 'cruel and unusual experiment on an intelligent being'. Which I am expressly forbidden from." It's easier to remember not to do things while Sparking if it's a RULE! "Are there any demons that aren't... Smart?"

"Nnnn I mean there's fiendish animals but those aren't demon demons. A lot of demons are dumb as shit but if you're throwing around the phrase 'intelligent being' probably you're going to count a bunch of kinda dumb shit like dretches and slips and whatnot. The kind of thing with enough thoughts to detect."

"I probably will, if your instincts say so. Such are the laws of home, which I still consider myself bound to. Where practical."

...Yeah, no forgetting that the horror stories of all sorts of absurd cruelty that dominate Europa and the great steppes and the rest of the world. This place probably has some too and she's just not seen it yet, because it's a tight-run military location.

"Your Law your business. You likely to learn anything from a dead one?"

"Likely enough to be worth trying, sure."

"Cool, sounds fun. Also means you can use one that doesn't smell as bad as a dretch."