There is a twist in the air, a tearing sound, and the air and ground ripple oddly, as if vibrating wildly. A glimpse of a hole in the sky, showing black sky and barren desert.

And then a loud crash.

The resulting crater is surrounded by a rippling blue field of energy, flickering in overlapping curved patterns centered on a woman in a sort of body hugging flight suit in the middle of the crater, with a futuristic full-face helmet and various metal panels forming an incomplete suit of armor(?)

There is some quantity of running and screaming, but in general it is quite purposeful running and screaming. Children are whisked swiftly out of harm's way; crystals are dropped into pouches; the group of people who sprint up to Allegra's door are yelling at least moderately coherently, if still somewhat all at once.

A few of the more martially-inclined make a perimeter, in case something exciting comes out of the crater; several chirurgeons pounce on those who were too close, while another seems to be trying to decide whether to just grab through the energy barrier or if he can make a diagnosis at a distance; and one young lady starts casting something on the barrier immediately.

As the crowd of bystanders starts to get more curious than cautious, Allegra makes her way down from her hut and calls out, "Any idea if that thing's dangerous, Carys?" at the magic user.

Repeatedly drawing her magical pattern in the air, hovering her hand right over but not actually _touching_ the magic barrier - these people are trained quite well in caution, although it doesn't necessarily seem to be their instinct and the chirurgeon who wants to get in there and inspect the woman in more detail is positively vibrating with the effort of holding back...

"Not a magic item," reports Carys, "not an enchantment, divination recommends - ugh, Hand of the Maker or Shadowed Glass of Sung."

"Hand's probably interesting but won't tell us what it does unless we're really lucky," replies Allegra. "I don't think we have enough Night in the village. Davyd, how urgent is it to get in there?"

The chirurgeon who was hopping from foot to foot shakes his head. "Too much weird armour, can't tell from here."

Before Allegra can ask for volunteers, one of the fighty types who is standing around the circle takes their spear, turns it round, and starts to poke the field gently and experimentally with the wooden butt.

"You," Allegra points to one of the bystanders, "fetch everyone with a scrap of Winter, they should start casting Words of Ending as soon as possible, I know it's not a magic item but that's our best shot, our visitor might not have much time." Her chosen runner dutifully runs off back into the village.

The barrier deforms like soft gelatin, it feels like pushing the spear handle into water for a moment, before it changes and snaps into something hard and forceful that pushes it away.

The woman in there twitches and groans. "Urgh. Academy, come in academy, something's wrong, I'm injured."

Allegra's attention turns to the woman's voice and she strides forwards to the energy field.

"Can you hear us? If you're injured, Davyd here can help you, but we can't get in the field at the moment. Or I can, if you prefer, although I'm not as in practice as I was. You've landed in Foundhome, in Miaren - the Academy is quite a way off from here, I'm afraid."

Several other people are clearly itching to speak, but don't talk over her for now.

Oh. Emergency responders. Right. It's sort of hard to think in this much pain but you're supposed to power down for emergency responders.

"Roger, no 'peller. Desyncing."

The blue fields retract to the woman and vanish. Shortly after that the weird armor folds away into nowhere in slightly impossible ways, too.

Davyd is on the case immediately; he drops down to a crouch beside her, unrolls a pouch of a very large number of different kinds of moss, appraises her wounds briefly and starts doing... _approximately_ perfectly reasonable first aid, if all of your bandages and antiseptics and so forth were varieties of moss?

Lacking any very specific bleeding or similar to treat, he swabs her over with several kinds of moss, asks her if this hurts a couple of times. It does, but then he applies a different variety of moss and it doesn't quite so much.

Allegra mostly tries to keep the crowd back, with a lot of, "Give her some space," and "Looks like she'll be okay," and "We can do questions when we can move her safely and she's had some rest, if she wants it."

The fighty types look like they are not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved; a couple of them stay on guard, but a spontaneous sparring circle also breaks out.

"Okay," says Davyd at length, looking up at Allegra. "She's not going to die right now. We should be _very_ careful moving her, but can probably get a soft stretcher under if we need to. As for the next couple of weeks - I'm going to run out of Vervain and we need a better physick."

"Right," replies Allegra. "Are you okay down there, mystery visitor, at least unless it starts to threaten rain or anything? We'll get some blankets and send for a better physick."

Davyd attempts to feed her a concoction with bruised leaves in, which smells strongly of... green. "This should make you feel like you can get up, but I don't advise it until we get the expert in to look at you."

"This is all pretty strange. You guys don't look like Perth E-M and there's no radio traffic. But I can sit tight, whatever that is helped with the pain."

"Yes. I think you might have come quite a distance - I don't recognise all the place names you're using. I'm Allegra Foundhome, and this is approximately my village; we're in Goldentrees, in Miaren. Do you recognise any of the following words or places," and she pronounces the following slowly and carefully, "Canterspire, Casinean Empire, Commonwealth, Gemeinsamesprach, Vard, Steinr, schlacta, boyar, volhov?"

A young lad taps her on the shoulder and asks if he should start heading out to the nearest town for a physick; she nods and he runs off towards the track out of town.

"You could have sent a Winged Messenger," opines someone else in the crowd, who have mostly started chattering amongst themselves. Allegra ignores the commentary.

"I recognize a few words but like-

I think I fucked up big time with w- a dangerous technique, and that's gotten me very lost."

"That sounds quite likely. Don't worry - you're probably in the safest place in the Empire. Nothing you need to do but lie back and try to get better."

A couple of the crowd throw skeptical looks at Allegra at this pronouncement, but in general the onlookers seem to be either dispersing or trying to get a closer look at the armour without irritating Allegra.

Allegra doesn't necessarily look like someone from 'the safest place' - the stylised thorny-branches tattoo around her left eye is fairly discreet and matched by similar designs on many of the other people, but the rather larger three lines cascading from a point on her right cheek and the neat, deliberately inflicted burn scar over what looks like a blackened wound on her left cheekbone are a bit more intimidating.

"If you do want to know some things, I'm happy to stand around here and answer questions for a bit; or I can tell everyone to stop pestering you and leave you with a couple of guards and someone to check in on your health."

A few people have turned up with blankets and are using offering blankets as an excuse to get a bit closer and stare curiously. The blankets are all rough woollen affairs, generally haphazardly patched.

She's outside, there's no way this is the safest place. That would be in an arcology far from the frontline. Also, yeah, the low tech and scars. Some people keep scars for style?

She sits up and slowly gets to her feet. "Well. Sorry to show up and be trouble... Med unit's already screaming at me."

"Uhm," Davyd can't help but comment, but looks helplessly at Allegra.

"If you'd like somewhere more comfortable to wait for the physick, we can provide a variety of charming huts with varying amounts of soft furnishings." There is a minor clamour behind her as people attempt to wave and invite the exciting stranger to their house. "True Vervain's great at getting you moving but I've disobeyed enough medic's orders in my life to know it's not the best move, unless you have somewhere you urgently need to be and you actually think you can get there?"

"Oh, yeah, well, the least I can do is get to the infirmary or wherever under my own power. I'm still linked, just not expressing the frame, but I've gotta cut that out in a safe bed a-sap."

The crater's pretty shallow. She scales it with a little flickering of blue to help with her weight. The flight suit is thick and heavy grey cloth, relatively unadorned except for a shoulder patch with a stylized laurel wreathed globe crossed with a sword and the letters UNEDC, an unknown rank badge, and a nametag: Lenora Wilson.

Allegra picks one of the eager volunteers from the crowd, who she knows has a bit of chirurgy, a nice bed, and a spare bed so they're not left sleeping on the floor.

"Brynna, I can see you're trying very hard to volunteer, can you take our visitor and get her settled? I'm afraid I only have one bed and I quite like it."

Brynna is an older lady who is extremely happy to be chosen for this honour and offers an arm in case the casualty would like a nice lean. "Come this way, dearie, I promise you the best bed in the village."

'The best bed in the village' is a few hundred meters away up a slightly twisty path, inside a moss-roofed single-story wooden house which does appear to have been put together with a little more attention to detail than the other ramshackle shelters.

Yeah, this place is very much not an arcology. It doesn't look like they even have electricity. There's certainly no wifi.

"Thank you. Do you have trouble with the Antagonists? Or living out here with no modern technology?"

Allegra follows Brynna as she guides Lenora home, as there are still questions to be answered, but lets the older woman take the lead for now.

"Oh, no, there's no trouble here. Nobody's dumb enough to mess with Allegra and her briars. And you won't get any Vallorn out here, I know we're a Navarr territory but this is Miaren - you might not know, I guess, if you're from foreign parts, but we killed the one here a while back now." Brynna is clearly very proud of this accomplishment, although probably not on a personal level. "As for technology, well, the League like their cities and the Urizen like their spires, but we have all the best bits here," she claims. "No shortage of lightstones and the mana site and trinket forges keep us in whatever we want from Seren - I think you'll like the bed, there's a real silk coverlet!"

There are indeed glowing crystals hanging everywhere inside Brynna's house, as is clearly evident as soon as she opens the door and ushers Lenora inside, pointing out an actually quite sturdy looking (and soft and springy) wooden-framed bed with the promised silk coverlet in a lovely forest green, then holding the door open and smiling at Allegra in case she wants to come in too.

Also in evidence are a couple of spears leaning casually against the wall, a door to a second room which is probably the only other room in the house, and a glazed ceramic bedpan peeking out from under the bed.

"...Yeah, I'm very very lost. See, I'm in training to fight a race of aliens invading the planet, under the United Nations Earth Defense Command. I don't know how I ended up here given that, uh, as far as I knew parallel universes aren't supposed to actually be real things. This place is definitely surprisingly nice for not having the stuff we use to make places nice. Like electricity. And fabbers. I should probably think about this more tomorrow, I can really tell I'm going to conk right out as soon as I unlink. Thanks again, by the way."

She will lay down on the bed still in her flight suit, under the cover, and ask, "Any quick urgent questions before I unlink?"

"We could be a different planet," offers Allegra. "The Steinr came from the stars, after all."

"But don't worry about that now, dear," Brynna insists. "Have a nice rest and all the questions will be there when you wake up."

Allegra nods, and then starts absent-mindedly searching through a satchel bag that she's wearing - making sure her potions are on hand in case 'conk right out' includes 'starts dying again'.

She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath and desyncs.

She goes immediately still and relaxed, breathing slowly.

There's a small motion under the covers as something that wasn't there a moment ago now is. It's not obvious but neither is it really hidden. A bulge in the flight suit just under her chest as a hard metal ball has suddenly appeared there.

Allegra startles - that is not an expected thing - but Brynna doesn't seem to be startled and indeed the thing doesn't seem to move again, so it's probably not an imminent threat?

She does take a quiet step forwards and start tracing constellations in the air and whispering their names, though. Is _this_ a magic item? That's the only thing she expects to make sense to... to do that?

The small metal sphere does appear to be a magic item. It... Connects with a person, with unclear criteria for connecting, and gives them a manipulatable energy field, and then also connects with/absorbs other things, and helps the person use the other things? That is what a basic detection can tell, at least.

Oh _wow_ they've got something to work around _attunement limits_ by connecting other things to the first thing.

Hopefully they survive long enough to explain how it works.

Allegra smiles enigmatically at Brynna, then leaves the new household to it, practically skipping down the path.

Eventually, the physick from First Voice Glade will show up, and knock on the door, and be quietly let in by Brynna.

She's still unconscious. Less like she's exhausted and asleep, and more like something is keeping her that way.

There's lots and lots of subtle internal damage that has had time to start cascading now. Her kidneys and liver are going to be working overtime. This may or may not be detectable by the locals.

The physick mixes a little of her own blood with some herbs and burns them near the patient, increasingly perturbed at the lack of response. Subtle patterns briefly form in the smoke and disperse.

"Ooookay," she says at length. "So, there's the good news and the bad news."

"The good news?"

"She's extremely healthy, apart from the obvious, and probably not going to die of this, assuming total rest and good care. Definitely not if someone's on standby with Vervain, maybe Roseweald and Bladeroot in case her internals start poisoning her."

"And the bad news?"

"I've never seen damage quite so... extensive. You know that one with writing on the organs? It's like that's happened to every single tiny part of her body, except instead of writing, it's tiny shards of glass? I don't really know how long it's going to take to resolve itself." The physick tries to remember to look concerned instead of fascinated. "Well, it's entirely physical - if you can get a dose of the White Stone, that will fix it right up. Short of that, it might be worth casting Hearthfire Circle if you can - it won't fix everything but it'll relieve the stress on her system until it builds up again." The physick looks thoughtful for a moment. "Because it's just... damage, everywhere... I suspect you might be able to speed it up by... I mean, I wouldn't necessarily recommend..."

"Spit it out," Allegra encourages her.

"Well, you could take off everything that isn't essential and use Blood of the Hydra to regrow it. The damaged bits wouldn't then continually leak into the major organs and they could focus on repairing themselves. But it's not like this is the only option, and that's generally when I'd recommend it - there's always a risk with doing something that drastic, and we don't have to take that risk, because she's safe here."

"I'll let her know when she wakes up," Allegra tells her. "She... is going to wake up, right?"

"Now that's another thing," replies the physick. "She absolutely should have woken up during the moxibustion. Something's keeping her under - but to be honest that's probably the best thing for her, right now. If she hasn't woken up for two days, you'll need to fetch me again because we'll need to do something to get water into her, but until then - someone should turn her over every couple of hours if she isn't shifting position, that's about it."

Allegra thanks the physick for her time (Brynna asks if she'd like a sit down and a nice cup of tea, but the physick is determined to head home before the light fades); sets up a rota of enthusiastic volunteers to watch the interesting stranger for signs that she needs another herb applied; and heads off about her business, for now.

And writes a brief letter to some of her old contacts in Urizen, requesting a visit from someone who can better analyse a magic item and someone with Secrets of Skillful Artiface, just in case; and sends it off with a runner to the wayhouse to be given to a striding.

She wakes up after about 18 hours feeling terrible, and links with her core.

...Her Emu is confused about the treatments they gave her and says she needs a HOSPITAL and should definitely not be expressing anything strenuous for... Two weeks. It's focusing on her head, and will be able to move on to the rest of the body in a day or two. There's some danger of toxic shock, apparently, because of mass cell death, but the Emu thinks the prognosis is decent even without additional support. Wave Force really does not screw around, huh?

She will delicately use her impeller field to get out of bed and use the restroom and drink a lot of water and get something to eat, thanking the kind old lady who helps her with this profusely.

There is a younger volunteer watching her as well at the point she gets up, who asks her a couple of general questions about how awful she feels and goes to fetch some "Drakes' Tea" which will apparently make her feel better.

Brynna offers to help her use the chamberpot with the un-self-conscious efficiency of someone who has done this before. The alternative is apparently walking just out of the village to use the main facilities, which she doesn't think Lenora looks in shape to do; she'll also offer to go into the next room if Lenora thinks she can manage herself and would rather that.

There's a big jug of water that someone has apparently "cast Purify on" on-hand, which Brynna will pour into a sturdy brown ceramic cup for her, apple juice is available if she'd like, and a range of trail-mix style dried meat, dried fruit and nuts is available on a platter for immediate consumption or Brynna can go see if someone's got a stew on, it's likely someone has. If she's not up to eating any of that, they can also do oatmeal, added fruit optional.

The volunteer brings tea, which has the same very-green smell as the medicine she was given previously, but slightly more diffuse. The tea does seem to generally help - it feels like if she'd just been beaten up a bit, it would have made this entirely better, with a little rest. After a few minutes he asks how she feels now - apparently there are more herbs available if that didn't do the trick.

Brynna asks if she'd like her to let Allegra know she's awake, and whether she wants to ask anything, answer questions from other people or whether she'd rather just be left to get some more rest.

She can handle herself with the... No plumbing. And will eat indiscriminately. And drink the tea and try to figure out what exactly the Emu is complaining about not understanding about it, and tell it to expect more of that to happen later. She's not exactly a techie, though? And they lock these things down pretty hard so you can't make yourself high or accidentally kill yourself. Oh well.

"What exactly is this medicine doing?" She will ask, and also mention, "My monitor says I'm going to be facing a risk of toxic shock due to cell death, I don't think you guys have dialysis here though..."

"This is just Drake's Tea, if you had got a bad case of sword poisoning it'd fix you right up, but it won't do anything complicated. I've got some bladeroot and roseweald ready - I'm not sure what dialysis is, so probably not? Do you know if it's more a blood thing or more of a digestive system or breathing thing - roseweald is better for the first, bladeroot for the second. I can just try both, but you might get a mild fever and feel a bit nauseous. I think Allegra's got some magic options she'd like to discuss if you're up for it - we're kind of cautious about casting on people who don't consent when it's not an emergency."

"Oh, definitely a blood thing. Dialysis is the cleaning of the blood... Ish. The Emu I've got in me, that's helping with all the repair, is pretty good at keeping things running, it just can't do everything at once. It's also boosting my immune system to nip dozens of infections in the bud before they can become a problem. I'd probably be dead without it, which is probably why they made me integrate it before trying the thing that landed me here, huh?"

"As far as I know an emu is a big flightless bird, but I'm guessing in your case it's some kind of magic item you're bonded to, or a potion you took a while ago? That definitely sounds like a roseweald problem." He hands her a little pot of red paste from his bag. "Doesn't taste too bad straight up, just stick it on your finger and rub it into your gums. You can have another dose in about four hours if you still need one; if it's urgent we can do it sooner, but if you take too much you will definitely give yourself a fever."

"Oh, the ee-em-you. It's an acronym, but people just say Emu because duh. I can try a roseweald and see what it thinks."

"Still means nothing to me," the volunteer informs her cheerfully. "If you want someone who knows more than a bit of first aid you'll need let me fetch them. Can you apply the roseweald yourself or would you be okay with me doing it?"

"I'm pretty shaky honestly, probably for the best if you do- If you don't mind."

"No problem, open wide for me?" He dips his finger in the pot and smears something that tastes kind of like spicy rose petals on her gums. "Thanks, all done," and he wipes off his fingers on the bit of cloth from his bag that has distinctly seen better days. That was probably not the most hygienic thing that has ever happened.

...Well, probably it's fine somehow. And also linked people are really hard to get sick.

"I could try to explain things a bit but I also feel like falling right back asleep, kind of."

"I'm very curious about where you might be from and what's up with all your shiny gear, but Allegra would skin me if she thought I was keeping you up unnecessarily, so you'd probably better have a nap. The Steading isn't going anywhere, we'll still be here when you're better rested."

"Oh hell, if anything fell off me and it's sort of - long maybe don't touch it? Weapons. Wait..." She stares off into the distance for a moment. "Never mind, all that's accounted for." She yawns. "I'll be a better conversationalist later, Emu says the rose thing is helping already."

"Good to hear it. Let me know if you need anything else." The volunteer settles back down next to the bed, spreads a bit of leather over his lap, takes out a bit of wood and a knife; it appears that 'whittling something' is what he's doing to pass the time (and he's polite enough not to get wood chippings all over Brynna's nice house).

The cycle of sleep and waking continues. She feels considerably less terrible next time she wakes up, in the middle of the night.

A young lady with bark ridges down the backs of her hands is darning a pair of thick woollen tights next to the bed; she notices Lenora waking and smiles in her general direction. "Feeling any better? Anything I can get for you?"

She peers at the bark ridges, trying to determine if they're tattoos. "Good... Night? Oh wow, the rose stuff and vervain - or whatever it is, I wasn't up to memorizing things - is pretty amazing. My medical chip thinks I'll definitely recover without any more now, but also more wouldn't be amiss. I think I'm up to stretching my legs a bit. You're supposed to do that in recovery if you can anyway, I think."

Nope, they seem to be bark growing out of her skin, like it's some kind of weird scab.

In fact, if she's thinking about it now, quite a few of the people she's seen have had something like that - bark scabs in odd places, prominent green veins...

"Yup, it's been dark for a while out there, not that it's easy to tell. I think you had some True Vervain on the spot in the crater, then a spot of Tom Drake's Tea when we had some on for the fighting practice, then some Roseweald off Davyn. If you're doing okay, I'd probably want to talk to a physick or at least get Allegra to recite what the one down from First Glade said before giving you anything else, right now. Happy to help you out of bed for a wander, though - how's your night vision?"

"Okay, huh. The vines and bark... We both have weird stuff to the other going on. I've got a sensor set integrated so I'll be fine going to the outhouse at least. No need to wake anyone up for that now."

"You really do have all the best toys." The woman seemed somewhat suspicious and defensive when Lenora mentioned the vines and bark, but doesn't seem to want to make anything of it if she doesn't. "Need a hand or shall I just get out of your way and get the door?"

And they can proceed over to the outhouses, which are actually relatively clean and pleasant long-drop composting toilets in cute individual wooden sheds, with seats of polished and waxed wood. The village is much quieter at night, but there are bobbing lightstones being carried here and there by a couple of people still out and about.

The low tech continues. She absentmindedly tries to check social media thrice. "I don't know if mentioning that is offensive or anything. I'm not from around here, yanno. Shutting up."

"If you're not going to be funny about it, it's fine to ask; it's just we mostly came here to get away from all that, you know. Or maybe you don't know? That's, quite refreshing actually."

"I think I can guess. Some people really really don't like it and it's a big messy thing. And it might not even be something one chooses."

"Yeah, you've about got it. You see, humans come in, I don't know what you want to call them, I think the proper word is 'lineages' but I like to think of them as, flavours? Do you know the realms of magic? Spring, summer, autumn, winter, day, night; we can be, like, 'touched' by any of these, and when it's Spring it happens like this," she waves her hand absently, "and we're called Briars. Amongst a lot of other, less kind things. People round here and hereabouts tend to get a bit superstitious about it, because the Vallorn's Spring magic, and uncontrolled plants in fields and stuff."

"I don't know the realms of magic. I'm from a different planet and possibly universe. We do have all natural racism and sexism though."

And then she can have a relatively normal sleep until morning. It's the third day after her crashing and she's awake and aware.

Brynna is knitting something, which she puts away neatly when she notices Lenora's awake. "Good morning, dearie. Would you like a spot of breakfast? We've got everything we had yesterday and there's some oatmeal ready to go, and several kinds of honey."

"Oatmeal sounds very good actually! Thank you. I hope there's something I can do to pay y'all back."

"Oh, I am very sure that you will find some way to be useful once you've recovered." Brynna bustles into the other room to ladle a bowl of hot oatmeal porridge from the pot on the iron stove. She hands it and a wooden spoon over. "Honey, dried fruit, little bits of bacon?" she offers. "And if you're determined to start paying back, I can go and see if Allegra's awake, I'm sure she is absolutely full of questions."

"I can answer some questions, sure. I have plenty of my own. I'd be trying to go home, but- It's not like I understand what I did to get here."

"Well, if anyone round here can understand it, it'll be Allegra."

Brynna leaves Lenora to her breakfast and shortly returns with Allegra in tow.

"Hi, again," says Allegra, leaning a staff with silver vines and autumnal leaves growing up it against the wall with the spears. "Brynna tells me that you're a bit more with it this morning?" 

"Hi! Yeah, should I just infodump at you a bit?"

"That sounds great, dump away," replies Allegra, and she gets out a small notebook bound in what looks like quite nice patterned silk and a somewhat chewed looking wood and graphite pencil, and takes a seat in the chairs the volunteers have been using so she can rest the notebook on her satchel bag. 

"The planet I'm from has things like electricity and fabricators that can make most material objects autonomously. There's billions of us. Life would be pretty great except for how an alien species has created - some sort of dimensional portal in various places on the planet, and huge numbers of aliens come out and try to kill all of us. We call them Antagonists, or Ants. I'm a Valkyrie Core user - the cores were invented by studying the aliens in the early days of the war and still aren't especially well understood, but some people have the potential to bind with one. Cores, once you've trained yourself to competence and integrated some technology, are amazingly useful things. What we mostly use them for is not being exterminated. I'm a first year at UNEDC Valkyrie Academy South Pacific. So, not exactly the best candidate here? I was trying to learn a technique called 'wave force', which is a notably advanced technique of impeller field manipulation that can pierce or bypass the enemy's impeller fields. -Impeller fields are weird, they're these curving clouds of energy that can overlap each other and each be controlled independently. By default they're a diffuse sphere but you can make them hollow or shift them to one side or poke them out like a lance. They're the final layer of defense for Valkyrie Core users, if your impeller integrity is low attacks can get through to your actual body. Anyway, Wave Force, invented by one of the greatest fighters in the world to defeat high-power enemy targets, is something to do with the dimensional portals they use but usually people who try it just - fail to do anything? Falling into a rift to somewhere else had never happened before. I was in the general combat wing program, lots of aerial tactics and combat simulator time and stuff like that."

Allegra dutifully scribbles a bunch of notes.

"Well - welcome to what happens hundreds of years later, after you summon enough of those things that they eat your entire civilisation and you have to start pretty much from scratch.

I'm exaggerating a bit here. But you might have heard people talking about the Vallorn? That's basically our Ants. Except they're kind of more malevolent terrain than individual creatures, although they control individual creatures too, and they don't die for good when you just set them on fire or something.

You've landed in Miaren, the one place where we managed to close one of them up - somehow. History has helpfully forgotten how.

Oh, and unfortunately they're not our only problem - the Empire is pretty much surrounded by people who want to kill us and take our stuff for various reasons. We're about as far from that as you can get here, although I still don't advise wandering off too far as we've still got, y'know, wolves and the occasional bandit.

There are places with a bit more in the way of harnessed lightning and automata - actually I originally came from one of them, place called Urizen, up in the mountains where there's enough ambient magic for ushabti.

If anyone can figure out how to get you home, it'll be the Urizeni - but right now they're kind of busy fighting an existential war with the dreadful fucking torturer orcs that border that area - the Druj - and the opportunistic pirate ones who came and decided to camp out on the magically cursed plateau. Which is now awake, good job everyone.

So. Uh. I actually came and founded this Steading to get away from the world's problems and make something good while I can, but it looks like you have dropped in my lap and that's probably important. If I'm not just actually still stuck in Winter Hell and just hallucinating the whole thing."

"Sorry. That was a bit of an infodump too. Did you follow any of that?" 

"Yeesh. I don't think I can just, uh, start shooting bad guys without some due diligence. I signed a code, took an oath. I also don't wanna mess with this haven of peace, if that's what you have here. This 'magic' seems pretty pervasive and important. We think of it like, we don't have magic, it's all just the laws of physics we don't quite understand yet. But I've never heard of winter being more than a weather pattern. Malevolent terrain features do sound like something I should take a look at in case I can make heads or tails of it. Carefully."

"Yes, carefully and probably not right away - the nearest is a bit of a step from here anyway. Flying is probably safest - it does have flying creatures, but generally we don't, so it won't be expecting anyone in the air having a look.

The flying creatures are generally giant insects and I don't _think_ they can get very high - but they ought to collapse on themselves and not be able to breathe, never mind lift off.

If the Urizen hear that you can fly - well, half of them will immediately try to take whatever lets you do that apart to see how it works, and the other half will try to persuade you to scout for them. There's a lot of twisty mountain passes and scouting is especially difficult when getting captured means either gratuitous torture or being sold as a slave into the salt mines. We have some magic for it, but it tends to show generalities over a wide area rather than anything tactically useful.

I don't believe the orcs have anything that can fly at all, but they are actually people, and I understand you should absolutely not take my word for how terrible they are - fortunately you don't have to, because it should be pretty obvious from the air.

...can you take passengers, when you do that? Or replicate any of the technology?"

"I am super not engineering track. Even if I technically have plans for things saved. As for flying, hell yeah. Valkyries rule the skies without enemy air superiority or anti-air. Urizen sounds like a place I should check out too. Any passengers would have one heck of an uncomfortable ride, it's not very practical. Maybe i could just like... Pick up a train car and fly it a short distance? Not trivially."

"I suspect we don't have the relevant infrastructure anyway, although I'm sure the Artisans Guild would love to stare at those plans if we could get them on paper.

I've sent a letter to some old friends in Urizen but even if you have to travel at my pace I'm fairly sure we could outrun it, if you're recovered enough to move. I'd normally take a boat these days, it's been a while since I've done a stupid sprint down the Trods.

I could send you even faster with an actual runner or some vague directions, but I'm kind of worried about what you might fall into without someone along who's at least been to Anvil - that's where we do all our Empire wide politics, four times a year, I've totally lost track of when the next one is."

"Intel~ Saves~ Lives~" She singsongs. "Plus, while I'm awake I do still need more rest, I think? What kind of things does 'magic' do besides nice healing?"

"So. Lots of things. But relevantly: making people stronger and better at things, generally very temporarily; making armies stronger and better at things, few months; raising magic fortifications; getting a general idea of what's going on, on an entire territory level.

Plus, like, cursing people, cursing territories, finding out about stuff that's right in front of you, a whole load of ways to bond people and things into groups, making the crops grow, sending messages.

I'm sure I've missed some kind of huge important category I'm going to feel very embarrassed about. I guess there's all the magic drugs and making you feel things in places that isn't all that useful. Night does a lot of random weird stuff, the one to learn how to make something someone else knows how to make is Night, and Winter has the one we were thinking of using on your shield to break magic items.

There's basically a whole academic study of what magic can and can't do, but if you model it as 'can make something a bit better for a while, or learn about something you can touch or are in control of' that's probably a good start.

Herbs like the ones we used on you are kind of technically not magic, although blatantly they're just a different kind of magic, and have a much more limited range of effects - at least the way we use them, it's what the torturer orcs specialise in - but not the same set of limitations.

I can get you, like, a pile of small books if you want details, or you can ask me specific things."

"What are curses like? Is there, like, mind control, because I don't think my ECM covers mind control."

"Depends how you define mind control - it's one of the theoretical limits of magic that it can't do that, but there are auras that make you _feel_ things, and curses can be even more detailed.

Most curses are, like, your skin starts falling off or you feel constantly cold and hungry, but there's also the one that makes it intolerable to do what you're told - that's a terrible nuisance because it wins against most things that suppress other curses - and they're probably one of the most popular things to get very specific on, like one gentleman was cursed to hear awful things every time he saw a potato.

You could probably dodge most curses though - to put a curse on a person you have to get close enough to touch them, then pronounce it - and if you don't stick it on someone, it rebounds onto you.

Auras... Hmm, I don't actually know how high up a consecration goes, or the Druj miasma - that sounds like something interesting to find out - but you can just leave the area and they stop.

If you like, I can stick a personal aura on you that you can use to shake off anything else - but you're stuck with the effects of that aura. I normally give out the Strength of Pride - that just makes you really keen to keep your word, which is one of the more harmless side effects.

Oh, uh, I should possibly be being a bit less irreverent about it - the virtue auras aren't quite magic, more like religion, and some people would take it badly if I suggested any of the true virtue auras were _harmful_. Being able to do this technically makes me a priest. In fact I think Brynna is going to tell me off about this whole introduction, and you should probably get any spiritual instruction you might want from her rather than me..."

Brynna gives Allegra the kind of tolerant smile that suggests she's totally correct in her assessment but that Brynna doesn't intend to start a fight in front of the guest.

"I'll pass." And look for ways to verify later. "Hmm. What else..."

"What else you need to be oriented on depends on what you want to do? I can happily go on at length about basically any aspect of our world for a while yet, but you might want to see some evidence or ask me for some paper or tell me to go away and let you think?

The immediate vicinity of the village is pretty safe, down to the creek and back; the whole area out for over ten miles in any direction is unlikely to be dangerous beyond wild animals, although you might want someone with you to warn off any eager sentries with a bow, if you want to stretch your legs. Or wings. Or whatever you fly with."

"With the impeller field and jet thrusters. Yeah it's pretty hard to orient. I don't need paper, though. Some mindless heavy lifting might be good if you have any."

"That is something we're pretty well supplied with, but the firewood crew might be interested. Brynna?"

"Alfwyn always sleeps late, I can introduce you and he can take you into the forest to catch up with the others. Or you can stand by the spring-head and see if you can make someone's day who doesn't feel like carrying water right now? And there might be a wagon through later, they won't mind a hand loading and unloading."

"Ooh, some tech I might actually know! There's, like- It's an emergency refugee camp package, technically, but anyway, what's the spring-head? Maybe I can improve it."

"Uh, it's where the fresh water that feeds the creek comes out of the ground. Unfortunately whilst I'd love to improve it, I'm a bit wary of tampering with the magical properties of the resulting stream. If you're desperate to improve the water situation, how's your well digging? I can show you where is safely downstream of the mana site, and you can improve that to your heart's content."

"Yeah yeah yeah, I've got like, a survival kit in wherever all the core's stuff goes, it has a hyper specific fabber that only does a couple of things but was easier to integrate, I was thinking like- Some pipe and a spigot pump or maybe a little waterwheel made out of plastic that lifts water up for ya. They do make us take some math and science, and the core helps a lot with that kinda thing too, I'm just not going to be making computers or replacement Jay-Threes or Spikes or any other fancy munitions soon."

"Some other places could use that a lot more than us - you'd be a hit over in Ossium, they're trying to reclaim usable land from a horrible poisonous swamp - but it sounds good and I can show you where you can work without disturbing anything important."

At the conclusion of breakfast, or sooner if she wants to bring her bowl, Allegra will show her down to a patch of woods just outside the village and downstream of where she landed, where the bluebells stop growing in quite such profusion.

"Basically, if it isn't covered in bluebells, you're out of the magic area and shouldn't be causing any problems. Feel free to drop any trees that are in your way, we do not have a tree shortage. Are you happy to draw a crowd or should I warn people off?"

She will walk with breakfast in hand.

"Oh, I like being helpful. Can hardly stand sitting still sometimes and you all gave me those magic herbs. I might want one when I leave - not that its not nice here - just in case, you know? Anyway I don't mind but I might be moving heavy things around, they could fall on someone I guess? If I get a pump working, think I could like, bury a pipe that leads uphill for a water tap? I could just leave it exposed but it's a lot easier to break then."

"It's easier to prepare the herbs for immediate use and that takes some skill - we have a couple of people who can do that so we don't keep many of the potions around, they're more expensive. I'd rather not run down our stocks but we can stop on the way somewhere, or I can order some more in if you're sticking around a while. Mostly everyone here either knows how to be responsible for themselves, or will be keeping an eye out for those who aren't, I don't expect anyone to get right in your way unless you invite them over.

Feel free to make a mess anywhere that isn't covered in bluebells, the stream where the banks are covered in bluebells, or like actually someone's house or something. Oh, probably don't dig up the main road either, but I figure you can tell where the cart track is."

"It's not urgent to get those. I'd just like a quick way to get back on my feet if I have to. Anyway. I'll get to work now."

Getting to work appears to involve staring off into space for a while, then shearing off a few tree branches with waves of force and feeding them to a large metal box that simply appears much like that odd armor vanished, then appearing that strange helmet and peering around while the metal box makes a fairly loud noise. While also looking around for a good, convenient spot to put a well-of-sorts.

As advertised, she starts to attract onlookers, although nowhere near as many as her original appearance - no more than a dozen people of all ages, mostly not getting too close, a couple of young adults bold enough to ask what she's up to and if she'd like any help. 

"Hey, what'd be the best spot for a well sort of thing up in the village? Fetching water ain't something anyone should have to do the hard way. It'll be super easy to use, promise."

"How big is it? There isn't much open space actually up in the Steading, people keep putting up houses when there is, but there's walkways everywhere..."

"There's the patch where Llwyn tried to make a herb garden and it didn't really happen? If it's not so big that the rosemary won't grow round it..."

"Yeah this place doesn't seem all that into urban design. Really just a couple of feet, a place to stand on either side and enough room to walk up to it."

"Can we even get it up there? There's a lot in the way, it's not a straight line in."

"Did you see her take down those trees? But yeah, I don't know. It could go over by the path to the corpse glade, it's not as central but it'll be nearer than here and we won't maybe make someone's house fall down."

"Yeah, sorry, we're not that great on planning in general. Briar brain and all that. What, it's totally true, just because everything they say isn't doesn't mean some things just are."

All of the local participants in this conversation have the characteristic vine veins or bark patches - in fact all of the locals other than Allegra seem to have this to some extent, possibly excepting some of the children.

"I just need to run a pipe. I can dig if digging's called for too. 'Peller's very handy. It doesn't have to be super central. If it's a lot closer to peoples' houses than the river that's probably still fine, right?"

"Yeah, let's take it over by the corpse glade, it'd need to be a super fancy pipe to get round all the houses and we should probably ask Llwyn before uprooting his garden anyway."

Some people drift away, others join in the gawking. They point out the little path that goes out the village the other way from the main cart track, away from the stream.

"So, are you joining the Steading, or what?" asks a younger woman, eventually. "Have you seen the egregore yet? I'm sure one of them will be by once the word gets round."

She scopes out the consensus-decided-upon site and starts figuring pipe lengths. Having a computer in your head is pretty handy for that.

"I mean, probably not, but I've gotta pay back the hospitality and fancy magic meds. An egregore sounds. Kinda worrying?"

"Nah, Liaven is great. Okay, can be kind of scary, mind, some of the hosts like seeing what you react like, but they all just want to help you find the right place for you."

"I hear Anvil has fancy standpipes, is that what we're building? I guess they don't have buildings to work round though, 'cept the Forge and the Senate."

"Any idea where you might be off to? Allegra would know best, she's been everywhere, but I was with a Striding for a bit, I know a few places."

"Standpipes? Maybe. I mean- The fancier stuff tends to need more time and more maintenance, I'm trying to give y'all something that'll last even if it's ungodly primitive by my standards. Good old dependable bioplas, not too many moving parts. Most of the places Allegra mentioned went in one ear and out the other. Gonna look at one of those starfall things, very carefully. At some point. Gonna just explore and see what there is to see. What is Liaven anyway?"

"Liaven's our egregore."

"What starfall things?" 

"You don't have egregores?" 

"Of course they don't, they're just an Empire thing. Faraden and that don't have them either."

"So, right, an egregore's what makes us... Us. A nation. We all swear them our oaths on citizenship, and they keep us together and make sure that we don't forget who we are, don't end up one bland Empire without anything we started with."

"It's a bit different with us Navarr because we swear to fight the Vallorn. We were here first, you see, before the Empire was even thought of - Terunael was the last big Empire round this way, and then..."

"Then we fucked up and summoned the Vallorn, trying to fight off the orcs, and now here we are. Part of the Empire."

"But yeah, there are ten nations, although you ain't an orc so the Imperial Orcs won't have you. You might belong in one of the others, though we'd love to have you - and you probably have better things to do than hang around here and pick up mana crystals and make trinkets."

"I think the Urizen were around the same time as Terunael too? And maybe the Ushkans?" 

"When did the Vard and Steinr show up, I can never remember? They fell from the sky too, just like you."

"We don't have those. The UN is... Global empire, I guess. There's literally not any nation that hasn't joined it or been destroyed by Ants. And they have all of the emergency powers right now. Well, it's not great, but it's the only thing winning us the war right now, so. Yeah. And the Vallorn, yeah, that came down from the sky. Those starfall things. Uh... Sounds like I need to know more about what those actually are. And I didn't fall all the way from the sky, just like a few thousand feet. Was tryna learn Wave Force, screwed up and did a portal instead, I guess? I don't think doing it again is a good idea."

She's keeping walking as they go. The big metal box by the creekside is visible again, having spat out several white plastic pipe sections from its side that are now piled up next to it. And is slowly extruding another one.

"Allegra was actually in the vision where we found out what happened, more than we used to know, but we all know the basics. The Vallorn are ritual magic that went wrong - or possibly just too well. It summoned the raw power of Spring, which ate our cities and kills anyone that gets too close - the air is poison, every kind of life is strengthened and trying to kill you..."

"And that can include you too, if you're not careful! It's worse for us, the magic really likes a Briar, it turns us into dreadful husks that can restore life to the other Vallorn creatures. And you're trapped in there, your soul doesn't go on, you're just stuck doing the Vallorn's bidding until someone puts you down for good."

"One of the big reasons for the Empire is - has anyone told you about the Trods? They're magic roads, the original Navarr and Thorn died making them, they draw the magic away from the Vallorn when the Navarr walk them - that's what Stridings do."

"But when the Vallorn tries to spread we have to fight it back the normal way, with fire and killing all its creatures, and when it's weakened enough we can take bits back, too. And there's always rumours of other things, of the heart stones that the original rituals used, if we could get deep inside we could do something to them and stop it."

She could make a lot of fire. Like, a lot. The first thing you integrate is a fusion reactor.

Unfortunately, this would very definitely kill her.

"Man, I don't get this place at all. Which is to be expected I guess."

"Yeah, sorry, I guess this is a lot."

"Why don't you tell us some things about where you come from?"

"I don't think even Urizen has things that make stuff like that. What is that even made of?"

"It's bioplas! Okay, so a long while ago we started getting clever about making machines do the hard work for us. First it was mechanical hammers and stuff, and then eventually mechanical brains. Computers. If you tell a computer what math to do in itty bitty nitty detail, it'll do it. Really really fast. So we started using computers that controlled machines to make things, so we didn't even have to anymore. Just design new things. I grew up in the 'states - well, long story, but we became refugees and moved across the ocean. Hang on, can I..." She appears a slim metal object the size of a book page and taps at it. Then turns it around.

"Here's an aerial view of part of Perth Arcology."

"The Urizen have ushabti, but..."

"Ooooh..."

Lenora now has about ten people who are not big on personal space trying to crowd around her book to get a good look.

"Looks like... Holberg, but like ten on top of each other..."

"Like the Spring realm's hit a border with Autumn..."

She grins and doesn't mind the crowding and swipes through more pictures. Different high-up views, lots of busy streets and buildings, the maglev trains running along elevated tracks, dog-size drones running along aquaponic rice paddies, a giant mural wall with six different people painting on it, the titanic faux-sky concrete barrier walls, a close-up look at the faux sky panels. And then a view of the entire massive structure from outside, a metal and concrete mountain bristling with towers and airfields and other infrastructure, with expanding rings of defensive positions around it.

"A lot of it isn't even open like that, there's so much - factory halls, emergency shelters, maintenance areas, just so much - crammed under it all. Under the raised parts. The Ants attack major population centers pretty regularly so it needs to be extremely heavily defended, of course. And here's the Academy grounds-"

Pictures of a stately university complex, red-brick facade and a grassy park area, students in uniforms, some of them carrying technological items with them or doing various strange things. Mostly young women. Almost entirely young women, in fact.

The audience is absolutely transfixed and mostly watches in hushed wonderment.

"Is this, like, a portal?" one of them eventually asks. "Like the Sentinel Gate, but too small to go through?"

"It's a computer. More like a book that changes what's on its single page."

"Like - one of those flick books that looks like things are moving, but very fast?"

"They had a thing like that in Tassato, but they'd put it together as a wheel so you spin it and you can see the picture move - they said it was showing how horses run but I don't think anyone actually knows that, it was probably just made up."

"You take a picture of what something looks like, and then you do it a lot really really fast, and then you flickbook it and you can see what something looked like in motion." Turn, tap tap tap tap tap.

"Aha!" Here's a looping clip of Lenora flying a slalom course, chase-cam style right after a different black-haired girl who is flying with a blue halo and jets of fire coming from her legs. It's very very fast, with fast electronica music overlaid. After the final turn the clip ends with a high-speed aerial high-five, the asian girl's face a wild grin as they pass each other.

The enraptured crowd can't help but dance a bit, and the dancing leads to jostling, and one of them maybe makes to grab at the screen to get a better angle, and another shoves her back, and now there is... A very polite brawl?

Everyone seems to be taking care to not impact the stranger or her device while rolling on the ground trying to pin each other in time with the music; some people are just casually leaning around the fight to keep watching the video.

She yoinks the tablet and jumps away at this point yeah.

...Goes to check on the fabber and lets them sort it out.

There are some disappointed recriminations at each other as she leaves, but nobody chases her; some of them go back towards the village, and after a few minutes Allegra walks back out and calls over to her:

"Sorry about that - I hear there was a bit of an incident - everything okay over here?"

A new crowd would probably have started to form already, but there is a lot of excited yelling - sounding happy rather than angry or scared - over by the main road.

She's doing something at the edge of the river, keeping water away from the bank briefly with a flickering blue field. Installing a pipe of some sort.

"I showed them some stuff from home and they got hyped. They're like a bunch of twelve year olds. It's not a big deal. I'm not much more mature sometimes, hahah."

"Glad you're okay. Nobody's hurt - as you say, they just got over-excited.

Talking of over-excited, I suspect all that whooping means Liaven has come down with the wagon.

One of the people who came to get me said they'd told you about egregores - anything else you want to know before whichever one it is inevitably comes over?"

"I mean. I'm super not a diplomat either, maybe let 'em know. Hell, now I'm thinking about being lost again. Oh well."

"Sure, I'll go check which one it is and tell them to go easy on you - or would you rather they didn't distract you at all? I'm sure other people will be in a hurry but I am not and I'm happy to make sure you get all the time you need."

"I can be distracted from this, I want another day or two to fully recover anyway, Emu still doesn't like what it sees. It's not even - go easy on me, it's I have absolutely no interaction with your government or whatever and I'm trying not to think about what the UNEDC would say about this situation. Probably something like 'use your initiative as a cadet of this storied military tradition and act in full accordance with the universal code of military justice, your standing orders as a UNEDC member, blah blah blah blah BLAH."

Shrug. "I'm just a first year out of my depth. So whatever."

"I mean, we do _have_ a government, but nobody is obliged to do what it tells them other than about, like, not killing people, and for most purposes in this Steading the government is me.

If you go elsewhere there might be more complications, but Navarr - uh, that's the nation we're in, I don't know how much you've managed to take in - is very big on only taking orders from people you feel like taking orders from.

I'll go tell Liaven to be nice."

A few minutes later, Allegra comes back with a very heavily tattooed man in tow. He's dressed in some quite practical looking leather armour with a green half cape and you can see a significant quantity of daggers about his person in various states of hidden-ness, and moves with easy confidence.

Allegra stays at the top of the path and lets him approach on his own.

"I can't say I'm sure how to greet someone who's fallen from the sky and immediately started an infrastructure project," he says as he gets into comfortable speaking range - although he sounds like he can project his voice quite well over distance. "Cerys Liaven. I'm told you know the significance of that, but I came here to answer your questions, so you might as well ask any you have."

She has reached a stopping point and sealed it off for now. This bit's done, it's only all the rest of the pipe that's still needed.

Something about him puts her a bit on edge.

"Hey, if you think this is an infrastructure project you should visit Cairo or Delhi some time. If the Ants don't destroy them in the meanwhile. I'm not sure I have good questions? I guess are you more like a priest or a hand of Liaven and all Liaven knows the same stuff?"

"I would absolutely love to visit Cairo or Delhi some time. If there's any way we can get there, I'm all ears.

I'm not going to kid you though - the Steinr never made it home. You might well be stuck here for good. They brought us steel, and it looks like you've been busy too?"

He looks a bit like he's bitten something sour when you suggest he might be a priest.

"Liaven is not a god. I have access to the memories of all who've hosted Liaven. I'm still my own person and Liaven is too - just a bit of a... distributed one."

"Yeah, I don't even have full telemetry of what the hell I did to send myself here. Oh huh. Well, there's gods and then there's gods, you know, Allah's not the same kind of thing as Poseidon even if they're both probably made up. I've read stories about that sort of thing too, hopefully I get it. Is it, like, voluntary?"

"Absolutely - I can tell Liaven to fuck off any time I like - I enjoy getting to do this.

And, yes, about these parts we're very certain that so-called 'gods' are all made up. Not that there aren't powerful things out there - I don't know if you've heard of the Eternals - but none of them deserve your worship, even if they might like it.

You get a bit of leeway for being a foreigner, as long as you aren't actively trying to sell anyone on your religion, but we do take ours quite seriously.

The human spirit is supreme and we control our own destiny, and we're a bit picky about which Virtues are useful - that's probably all you need to not put your foot in it, and anyone will be able to help you straighten out any confusion without it being a problem - the first time."

He's trying to be genial but isn't disguising the implied threat here very hard. 

"Ugh, where are my manners, Allegra told me to be nice.

Do you have any idea what you're planning to do next, other than improve random Steadings?"

"I'm agnostic, man. It shouldn't be the- The one thing you care about. 'I can't do this because of my religion' sure, 'you can't do this because of my religion', fuck that, that about sums it up. I need to get used to this place, there are so many moving parts I don't understand and it's going to keep being like that for a while probably. I think I've forgotten what Virtues are except like auras of emotion maybe."

"So, quick primer on the virtues."

He seems to be counting them off on his fingers, but also this has the air of a speech he's given a lot. 

"Courage - including to face unwelcome truths as much as a battle. Ambition - don't let anyone stop you. Loyalty - know who and what you value and stick by them. Pride -know who you are, don't let anyone do you down. Prosperity - work hard, play hard, don't let resources stay idle - it looks like you have plenty of this already! Vigilance - don't let threats go unchallenged. And Wisdom - find things out and act on them, stay curious.

I guess you've had a lot to take in, yes? Normally when we find someone from a far away land or with a unique opportunity, we'd round them up and send them to the nearest civil service hub, who can send you on to Anvil or the Castle of Thorns - that's a big fancy castle in Dawn, where the civil service are based, it's a nice place to hang around to the next festival if you're into soft beds and all that.

You seem to be settled here okay, though - I'm quite happy for you to make your way on your own time, or if you want, I can start helping you to settle in our nation."

She thinks for a bit and takes a deep breath.

"I wanna be clear here, I'm a citizen of the UN. They fought the Ants, they evacuated America as much as they could when it fell, saved all of my friends and family from certain death. The UN has its flaws, but its founding mission, peace, friendly relations between nations, better living conditions, and human rights, is sound. I joined their military. That's where my Loyalty is. Maybe it becomes irrelevant if I can't contact them, but there's still a - a set of ideals, there. I'm not really looking for a new home, even if I could probably use one. I do kind of want hot showers and coffee and the internet, though. Maybe I can get two out of three later."

Cerys seems more impressed than taken aback by this.

"Understood.

I have no idea what an 'Internet' is, I'm afraid, but hot showers and coffee are definitely available in Seren - that's our major city, a couple of days easy travel or we could be there tonight in a hurry."

"Internet'd take a while to explain properly, I included it as a joke. Now the internet would be infrastructure. Social and political too, not just a physical thing. Internet's nothing without users. Think of it like a library that's everywhere and anyone can put things in."

"One of the Eternals is such a library - but it's not so keen on people taking things back out. Phaleron, the Eternal Library - of Day. I'm sure Allegra can fill you in if you're interested in that, I'm not a Vate myself, and I would caution you not to involve yourself with Eternals or their Heralds without good advice from one."

"You have way more magic stuff. I wonder if our would would be even more confusing to suddenly be in. Oh and, everything I hear here is going into a box labelled 'remember this is one narrow source that might be mistaken or lying'. Also building a water pump is one thing, it's constructive, I wouldn't shoot things for this village right now."

"Vigilant of you." Cerys mostly sounds approving, if a little frustrated. "I don't wish to interrupt your useful work; I can be around for a day or two, should you find more questions or decide you wish escort to Seren or the nearest civil service outpost."

"A message sent off there to expect me wouldn't be amiss, I think? Those take a while without the internet, right? Or instructions on where to go and what to do, even if I'd rather fly myself places after another day or two to get back to optimal."

She's going to be so far behind on simulator time. Not important right now.

"Oh, you can fly?" This does appear to have successfully surprised Cerys. "That would be extremely useful, if you could be convinced of the righteousness of our cause; but I don't expect to do so just by talking to you out here in Miaren, where it's safe.

The sign of the Civil Service is the horse, usually on a purple background - it should be fairly easy to get directions in any major settlement. Seren is mostly east of here, slightly south, you should be able to follow the track to where it connects to the Trod, which is well travelled and any Striding will point you in the right direction - as long as they are pointing you down a Trod rather than inviting you back into the trees, you are unlikely to come to harm, if you can escape as you say."

"All noted. Hehehe, yep. Valkyrie Cores, named after flying warrior-women from legend. Because the most practical thing to with one was to become a flying warrior, and mostly only women can sync with them for unclear reasons."

She flexes her impeller and a wave of shimmery blue lobs her a good twenty feet in the air. She lands with a similar shimmer, arms wide.

Cerys takes an instinctive leap back into a fighting stance and has drawn two daggers before becoming certain he is not in fact in danger and putting them away again.

"Very impressive," he admits. "I suggest you might want to warn unaccustomed people before doing that in front of them, unless alarming them is the point - quite a few of our people have combat reflexes and may not react pleasantly to surprises, and can throw a spear or shoot an arrow a surprising distance."

"Oh, the 'peller'd stop that. It stops fu-reaking railgun rounds. Good point, though. I'm a bit twitchy too. Sorry."

"No harm done," replies Cerys, having successfully calmed down quickly. "Is there anything else you need from me? May I watch you work? I'm quite curious about how all this works and if there's something that you'd be willing and able to teach others - both the material and the method of manufacture are new to me, and after all, the last people to fall from the sky brought us metallurgy, so there is excellent precedent."

"Well I am, as I have already said to someone else, not an engineer. This is a specialized fabber from a survival kit. It makes polymers. Pretty much only that. But that can be food or all sorts of useful plastics. I don't know how it works in detail but I could probably poke around the documentation. So I'm making pipes, and I'm going to bury them with little check valves to reduce the pressure drop, and I'm going to run them up to a spigot pump up by the village. You can just push up and down on the pump arm and it creates a vacuum that water rushes up to fill, so you get water without walking down to the river. I don't know if those are a thing elsewhere, but one of those seems the most, eh maintainable and least likely to just randomly break one day and nobody understands how to fix it."

"I have no idea what a polymer, or a plastic, is, so that does sound like an entirely new material. I'm also not an artisan, but some of Liaven have been; if you're going to be working here for a couple of days, I could send for some actual artisans from Seren, if you're happy with them examining what you have. Everything else sounds like something I have at least heard of, although I'm not sure myself how any of them work in detail."

"It's hard to say how long this'll take, but I don't think there's a shortage of stuff to do. I can linger for a few days and wait for some artisans, sure."

Cerys nods. "I'll be back shortly, finding a messenger shouldn't take long." He heads back up to the village, nods to Allegra in passing, and disappears in search of a volunteer to run to Seren for him.

Allegra heads back down towards Lenora. "So. Do I need to chase him off, or are you good for now?"

"I'm good. I'll be hanging out here for at least a few more days if you'll have me. Apparently some sort of artisans are gonna want to drop by, and it is a homey sort of place."

"Thank you - I've worked hard to keep it that way. Let me know if you need anything, and ideally before you wander off somewhere so I don't think we've misplaced you."

Allegra hangs around watching for a bit, and is joined again by Cerys, but they try not to get in the way - or in each other's way, it's clear that they are not in fact very fond of each other.

Others will start to drift back once the wagon excitement is over, sometimes wanting to chat to Cerys - mostly about saying hi to distant family members, but also about how the war is going in various places.

As the day wears on, some people will start showing up with flat bread wrapped around various foodstuffs, or bowls of fruit and nuts, sometimes sharing it round, and will offer Lenora some lunch.

How about this, any briars hanging around who might get in trouble can help with the hammering pipe sections into each other and feeding more deadwood and a bit of dirt and water to the fabber, it'll save her some concentrating-on-two-things-at-once as she carefully (and not quite as neatly as she'd hoped) cuts and lifts sections of dirt for the pipes to go in. She buries them fairly shallow, and only after consulting a civil engineering textbook in her head for a while. Her, have any idea what she's doing? Couldn't be. It must be the supercomputer in her head that they spend 6 class hours a week on learning to run detailed simulations of anything and everything on.

(She's getting tired faster than usual. Well, she did kind of go through massive trauma?)

Oh cool, lunchtime. She'll nom whatever, pretty much, and seem vaguely sad about it but try not to show it too much. (She misses her friends.) During lunch she can let them poke her tablet some more, and challenge someone to arm-wrestling. No impeller, to make it fair.

Allegra wanders off after lunch about her other business; Cerys is still around somewhere, but is mostly distracted by other people getting their fix of news from elsewhere.

She attracts about half a dozen eager unskilled workers who enthusiastically ferry things and hammer things, although if it's possible to mess up the alignment on the pipes they absolutely do so.

There are a couple of makeshift picnic tables overlooking a nice bit of the stream, which she is shown to when she mentions arm wrestling. They are a little bit on the wobbly side but that doesn't stop the surge of curious volunteers, headed up by the strapping briar lad who brought her over to the table.

His right arm is almost entirely coated in rough bark, with some rather vicious looking thorns growing out of it - he offers her choice of arm, waving it with a grin.

They're circular, so the pipes can be hammered in whichever way! Bark arm, sure why not?

She's not any stronger than an ordinary 16-17 year old on a light training regime with what the 22nd century considers basic healthcare and optimization. So, not actually all that strong without an impeller helping out.

"If you're sure," he grins, and proceeds to get dangerously close to losing because he is being somewhat careful not to stab her arm - it's clear he's going to make it back and beat her unless she puts something more than peak sixteen year old girl strength into it, though... 

Nope. No impeller. That was the deal. She grits her teeth and strains and loses and laughs.

"That was muscle only though!"

"Your glowy blue force thing does arm wrestling too?"

As she lost her first bout, interest dies down a bit, but there are still a couple of others who want to have a go.

"It does force. Lemme show you."

This time she is much much stronger. 

She asks around what kinds of plastic things would be useful. Tarps? Bags? Bowls? She's tired but the fabber can keep going as long as they feed it biomass.

The first few people want fancy plastic drinking cups; a few people ask about washing up bowls; a couple of people ask how easy they are to clean and whether they will stand being on a fire; one guy wants to know if it can do cloaks or a tent if it can do tarps; then someone brings her a mana pan - like a gold panning pan but with runes painted on - and asks if it can do one of these with the runes already there.

"It's Pallas for wealth in the middle, Cavul for purity round the base that you swirl the rocks round to get them clean, and Naeve for hunger that pulls the impure bits off round the rim so they can be washed out," she explains, as if that's meant to actually mean something.

Plastic should be pretty easy to clean but will not really stand going over a fire. It can do raincoats and tents and stuff. It comes in many colors. She fusses around and produces something shaped the same way as the pan but has no idea if it will work.

The pan requester goes to try it out, but comes back with it in a couple of hours. "I think it'll work if I trace over the runes again," she says, "what kind of dye does this take? I could do it with oil paint but that will rub off, it might set the intention in the shapes though. We've got charcoal and grass dyes in the Steading, anything else we'll have to order in."

It's probably getting on for dinner time; most of the audience are drifting off, and Allegra is heading this way again.

She will look that up! Acrylic paint is best, apparently.

"Hello again Allegra. I had a question. Or like, a request for more exposition, I guess. You mentioned some places, Urizen, Druj, earlier? I guess I want a sentence or two on all the neighbors, is my requestion."

"Do you want to head back up into the Steading for dinner? I can happily give you the rundown of the Empire and surrounds, but you might want a seat and something to eat while I'm at it; there's ten nations of the Empire, about that many directly bordering polities, and half a dozen important world powers further out."

"I would love some dinner. Maybe even with plastic cups that seem weird to me because they're common where I'm from. Happy to give out some stuff, by the way, but just so you know plastic doesn't degrade. If you throw it away it'll be around for a while, can become a problem for nature but mostly not unless you halfway build cities out of it."

"If it doesn't degrade, these are all going to be cherished heirlooms until the market is entirely flooded with them - we're pretty good at reusing everything around here. Does it break at all? Can it be patched or... Reforged?"

One of the slightly larger houses has an open door and a small crowd - when they see Allegra and her mysterious sky stranger, bowls of stew are expedited for them. Allegra brings Lenora back to her house to eat: "It's a bit quieter and there's plenty of table, you'll still be sleeping at Brynna's if that's OK."

Allegra's house is all one room, bed over in the far corner, workbenches, shelves and chests of drawers all around the walls, and a table and chairs in the middle with a jug of water and some wooden cups; every surface except the middle table is covered in a layer of papers, pamphlets, spent mana crystals, wood shavings.

"So, summary of the world." She looks around briefly and fetches a map. "This is the Empire in the middle here - ten nations.

We're in Navarr, not actually marked on this one because we're kind of scattered about - Navarr used to be the previous great power Terunael, but screwed up a Spring ritual, created the Vallorn, and now we're all sworn to destroy it, which is looking like a thousand year undertaking.

Nearest neighbours are the Marches, they mostly do farming, very attached to their land and willing to fight for it, tend to be suspicious of outsiders. To the north is Wintermark, bit more into hospitality, drinking, making your own legend, and fighting; they herd mammoths. Then there's the scrap of land that Wintermark gave the Imperial Orcs - orcs were enslaved in the Empire in living memory, but they were freed by Emperor Ahraz and now they're a nation, and somehow on our side, don't know how he managed that one.

Keep going and you get to Varushka, which is basically full of things that go bump in the night - don't leave the road, don't get caught out after dark. South of that is Dawn, they like castles and elaborate feasts and shouting 'Glory!' while charging the enemy, and competing amongst themselves - Dawnish nobility isn't hereditary, you get it by passing a test like 'go kill me a gryphon'.

South of them is Highguard, who also like castles but prefer brooding dourly in them and being extremely serious about religion. Anvil is in the part of Highguard called Casinea, and the First Empress was Highborn, so sometimes the Empire is called the Casinean Empire by people who want to distinguish Empires.

Then Urizen is down even further south, in the mountains - there's something about the mountains that make magic easier, plus there are a load of old buildings made by something larger than human that are just abandoned, they're called Spires and the Urizen live in them and do much more everyday magic than everyone else, like having animate servant constructs called ushabti. I was born there.

Who have I missed? Oh, the Brass Coast, south of the Marches - they are avid traders and culturally extremely honest, expect to pay for everything but it'll be a fair price. They also have the best magic outside Urizen, but they tend to use it for parties and food.

And the League aren't on this map either, because they're scattered too - but they are city states, basically anywhere there's a really big city the League took over, they like trading favours and keeping track of complex webs of debt between people.

I'm going to actually eat some stew and let you think of questions before I go on to everyone who isn't the Empire."

Okay that all sounds very... Planet of Hats? Presumably because it's a quick gloss, you focus on the highlights.

She thinks and eats for a bit, putting down notes invisibly.

"It depends on the plastic if it can be patched or melted down or whatever. A few specific chemicals will mess it up and it can get brittle eventually. The stuff I've been giving you all just melts, though it can also burn. Dawn sounds fun, and so does the Brass coast. You use, like, gold for currency around here? Which place would be most straightforwardly being menaced by things that aren't people? Varushka?"

"We actually have an Imperial currency, minted in Tassato, that's one of the League cities - look, I've got a few coins here."

She reaches into a pocket of her bag and brings out a few ring and crown pieces. (the coins in the middle of https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire-wiki/File:Coins.jpg)

"They're all just base metals, even the thrones - that's the next one up - that look kind of gold. Sometimes someone does try to make imitations, but they normally get caught out before they can do much.

It's backed by the civil service accepting it for taxes, but it's also just generally what people are used to - even foreign nations generally take Imperial coin because it's been reasonably stable for hundreds of years.

As for where is good for uncomplicated violence - hmm. I don't know if we have an open Vallorn front at the moment - certainly there will be steadings in Broceliande who would be very glad with a hand keeping giant bugs and poisonous plants at bay, you might also end up fighting husks though - they are kind of people, but the people bit is busy watching in horror as the Vallorn puppets their body and they don't speak or act intelligent or anything, and it's a mercy to kill them - then they can go round the Labyrinth rather than being stuck forever.

Varushkan monsters are often a lot more like people than that, and even the ones that aren't are generally tied up in complicated bargains - you could patrol and save people from wolves, and by wolves I don't mean literal wolves but more kind of mindless undead, but other than that it would be complicated and I'd want to consult a local expert first.

If you think you can reliably stay out of bow range and respond to a terrible feeling of hopelessness and despair by getting back out of the area into safety, I'd suggest an aerial tour of the Druj areas - they definitely are people but it will be pretty quickly obvious to you that they are terrible people that at least need their prisoners rescuing from them."

"Man, if I had a metal fabber I could make as many of those as I had gold for." Wait, that's not a helpful observation. "Varushka does sound like frikking mythological Transylvania actually, I'd better avoid it. Killing zombies is probably fine if they're obviously zombie-ish, probably. Broceliande wasn't one of the provinces, is it outside the Empire? Oh, I'll visit the Druj some time I'm sure, but I'm pretty skeeved out by magic damage until I know what it's like and maybe how to defend against it, honestly. I mean, I could fly away but if you keep rolling dice eventually you'll roll snake eyes."

"Broceliande is one of the Navarr territories - although it has so much Vallorn in that it's not fully under Imperial dominion - that's an actual magical terminology thing, it affects whether you can cast rituals on it from the Imperial Regio in Anvil.

It's over between Highguard and Dawn to the east.

If you're interested in fighting the Vallorn then I'd ask Carys where you'd be most useful - he's more up to date than me. He'll probably try to get you to join Navarr or swear an oath or something but he should back off and give you actually useful advice if you stand your ground."

"I mostly want to see a Vallorn getting up to things? And probably jump in to fight right away if it's as nasty as all that, but... Verify, you know?"

"Easiest place for that would be Hercynia, it's a bit north of here, another Navarr territory. That's the smallest Vallorn - you'd want to get to Deer's Folly by Bont Goch to get a good look.

If you're planning to go unescorted I'd advise staying out of bowshot - Navarr near a Vallorn have been known to shoot first and ask questions later, and Hercynia in particular has trouble with Varushkan wagon raiders who decide it'd be a great adventure to go retrieve artefacts from the Vallorn, then just rile it up or end up as husks - and there's some kind of Vallorn cult going round that call themselves the Heirs of Terunael and are trying to get it to spread with the help of the Green Mother, one of the Eternals, you definitely don't want to be mistaken for them.

On that note, also, don't start a fight out there - finishing one that's in progress to rescue people, fine, shooting husks will almost always be considered forgivable at least, but the Vallorn responds in force to attacks and you may just make the situation worse without local guidance on which bits are weak enough to drive back."

"People are jumpy in a warzone, yes. I do take things seriously sometimes. Also, not going to head out for a couple of days, I think. Artifacts?"

"Probably not actual artifacts - that's also a technical term, artisan enchanted item that is made with illium, that's star metal from falling stars, very rare and expensive. But historical stuff, bits of ancient Terun cities, that always sells well. And sometimes there are objects of power lying around, not just artefacts but old powerful boons from Eternals, forgotten potions, stuff like that."

"Okay, huh. Think I'm running out of questions about the Empire. Is illium magically special or just rare?" It might be iridium or something.

"It doesn't show up to Detect Magic on its own, but it's required for a lot of more powerful or durable magic - the best potions have a little of it in, permenant artefacts, permenant rituals need much more of it.

What counts as magic - that's a big question. For instance, the Druj thing that makes an aura of despair, that's probably spiritual rather than magical, technically - human souls can just cause spontaneous auras sometimes, a plant extract called liao makes it much easier, and I think they get the effect by torturing a lot of people in a specific way, but nobody knows exactly."

"Yeesh. I was just thinking about, you know, heavy industrial things I could reinvent. If it was just metal, maybe I could find more of it." She shrugs.

"I think it is just metal, the orcs trade for it, the Freeborn scoop it up in nets from the sea, if you get a major meteor strike you can just mine it from that. I've never owned a piece myself, but there will be a load going round Anvil and someone will be willing to show you some.

Industrial things - obviously anything that can produce armour, weapons or fortifications more easily, help supply an army, make better roads... Something that could do what the Heliopticon does, that's light based messaging throughout the mountains of Urizen, but without the special crystals that are super hard to replace and ideally without having to stick it on a mountain, that would be really useful and not specifically military.

Or easier mining in general? We mine and quarry lots of different things and that seems like better tools might really help."

"You really should have gotten an engineer. They'd have a proper fab integrated and everything. I know there's big vehicles that move dirt around, trucks and stuff. I don't know how mining works. They make roads with... Hot tar, I think, when concrete isn't available in the area and they don't want to ship it in? There's canned food? Ooh, is that a semaphore, you'd love radios. I'm sure I have a textbook on radios in here somewhere. For sig-int class if nothing else."

"Oh, yes, if you have any transport things you can provide to other people that are better than 'ox-drawn wagon' or 'human runner' then that would also be incredibly useful.

We did once have horses, but we screwed up that too and they went extinct, so there's basically nothing worth riding left on the continent, and none of our wheeled things move under their own power.

I have no idea what concrete is when it's a material rather than the opposite of theoretical, we use tar on ships but not roads but I think white granite is probably better - that's what they're making the Blood Red Roads out of, it's a light building material that's incredibly durable, wouldn't tar re-melt in the sun and get awful, maybe it'd work up in Varushka?

I know canning as a flashy League way of doing what everyone else does with jars, waxed cloth and tight cords, but the artisanry involved is too expensive for it to be more than a curiosity.

It's not quite semaphore, if by that you mean the flags thing, we do that for ship to ship communications but heliopticon code is much more complicated."

"Concrete's - liquid stone that sets like baked clay, made of cement mixed with gravel to stretch out the cement? And sometimes steel rods, I don't know why. Asphalt only melts on a fire, I think? They pour it over gravel to make the roads? Maybe? And I mean, yeah, lots of vehicles. With electric motors. Maybe bikes. Bicycles are - pretty 'artisan', like cans apparently are here." She hunts for a video of one of her friends riding a roaring dirtbike on a hill course. "Like that, but you use your feet to move it. I don't know the details of how any of this works." Sigh. "Blood Red Roads sound concerning, though white granite sounds like good stuff."

"We do have something we call cement, I mean, not here but most cities use it in buildings that are going to have more than one floor. I'm not sure we have whatever asphalt is.

Blood Red Roads just have a stupid name, lots of stuff does because it was funded by the Butchers Bank out of the League, who made their money originally in sausages and mercenaries.

It's just a set of roads, people round here don't like it because it tempts people to not use the Trods, but to be honest the Trods are not especially convenient for moving bulk goods even if they're good for people because they're magically refreshing and good for draining the Vallorn.

If it's purely mechanical, a League artisan can probably make a bicycle. I mean, a Urizen could too but it'd be ridiculously over-engineered, and the Winterfolk would probably try to give it armour. I have no idea how you make lightning or static zaps, which is what 'electric' is here, into a motor."

"I could try to explain from my science classes but honestly it'd give me a headache. So. These Druj, orc hordes, right? Chaotic evil slavers?"

"I mean, you could call them that, I guess?

The Druj do slaves but in the way that basically everyone is the slave of someone; the Jotun are more of your traditional horde, the Druj prefer ambushes and traps; and the Grendel are the ones more known for being slavers, they actually operate an economy and it's mostly based on slavery of various kinds - from 'technically a slave but teaches kids or does accounting or casts rituals and doesn't have it too bad' right down to 'consigned to die in the salt mines' - but it's possible to not be a slave in their lands without being the one right on top."

"Finding it pretty hard to believe that slavery can be justifiable? Ever? Unless it's a voluntary kink thing or like, a grievous mistranslation."

"Oh, no, nobody here is happy with any of the various kinds of slavery - we might have only stopped doing it less than a hundred years ago, but we did stop and now we're in an international arrangement to attempt to get everyone else to stop too.

I was just saying that 'slavers' wasn't really the main characteristic of the Druj. We might be grudgingly at peace with the Thule and Grendel, who are much more centrally slavers, but that's mostly a ceasefire for practicality than because we approve of anything they do."

"...Ugh. I'm going to have to get political at people, aren't I. Sooner or later, I mean. I don't think anyone here is going to have the same idea of human rights or anything."

"Unfortunately. Even going and getting stuck into a war front is political because you didn't do it on the other one. Everything ends up in politics," that last phrase with the same intonation as 'everything ends in tears'.

"The Empire is, like, generally approximately on the more-human-rights - and orc rights - side of history compared to basically everyone else, except maybe the Commonwealth - actually I suspect you'd get on very well with them, their main failing is that military service is required for citizenship, otherwise they're very in favour of people doing what they want and working for the greater good and all that."

"Commonwealth, huh? Anyway human rights should rightly be called personal rights, it's just we haven't got nonhumans except Ants and they don't... Talk to us? Act like individuals very much that we can tell?"

"They might just be like the Vallorn - it's definitely a Thing, but it doesn't really have volition in the same way people do. There's an entire song about how it has no trade interests from a time when someone commissioned a normal spy report on it as if it was a normal enemy faction..."

Allegra hums a little tune.

"Anyway, I used to ship trade goods to the Commonwealth. They're also signatories to the Anti-Slavery Pact and probably more enthusiastic about it than us, although I think they have fewer wars going on so they have a bit more space to think about anything else. They use a different language though - I used to speak a bit but I'm a bit rusty now."

"Actually - that reminds me - how do you happen to speak Imperial? Sprechen Sie Gemeinsamesprache?"

"It's called English, and you sound kinda old fashioned? I have to guess on some of the words. But English has been fairly set in stone for the last couple hundred years, it kind of became the world language over time - most everyone's first or second language, because the British and Americans had their fingers in everything for a while - and now it doesn't drift as much? Or something?" Shrug. "And that is goddamned German. I think. Translator says... Yep, German."

"There's something weird about Imperial - everyone on the continent speaks it, although of course the Faraden would say that we're speaking Faraden and so on. I had a theory once that Terunael must have done something to embed it, as it was Ancient Terun too. Other continents, people generally speak much more of a mix; the Commonwealth is the other place with a single language, but they've done that through enforcement rather than it just being what everyone around them naturally happens to speak.

Asavean languages are the other big ones - but I'm not great at languages and never really got far with them - I can just about do, j'm'apelle Allegra, or I think the saying 'que sera, sera' is in one of the others?

I mean, if they're all familiar, it might just be the Steinr thing - people have fallen from the stars before, they might have brought the languages with them."

"All familiar which is super weird and I'm kind of creeped out by. Not that its not, um, convenient?"

"Yeah, I'm blaming Steinr incidents for that then, coupled with the whole continental enchantment that has stuck the language to this continent. If people with advanced technology drop out of the sky every few hundred years it seems likely their languages would catch on.

So, have we got a plan for what's next, other than another good night's sleep?"

"I was thinking of kinda doing nothing for a couple of days actually, except finishing the pumpjack. And then I'll probably have picked where to go next. I could maybe use some spare clothes, flight suits aren't really meant to be worn for a week straight even if it happens anyways."

"We probably don't have much up to your standards, but tell Brynna and you'll wake up with all the slightly improvised linen robes, shifts, braies, wraps and woollen socks you might want, mostly they'll be various people's spares. If you're after trousers we'll have to order in."

"Huh, hmm. At that point I might be better trying to get the fabber to make something. Ooh, you guys don't have nylon, it's a kind of plastic that makes nice cloth."

"We have no kinds of plastic, so yes, we don't have nylon either - cloth is mostly kind of a problem, the Marches produce quite a lot, Dawn do very well, the Brass Coast make silk and the League imports from overseas, most nations have a bit of domestic production but Navarr basically tend to make do with second hand and try to keep it in good condition because it's expensive and none of our land is really good for flax or sheep. You might have noticed everyone likes wearing a lot of leather, that's mostly deerskin because there are always too many deer."

"Yeah, I remember reading that cloth was really hard until they made big factories for it. Thanks for all the info, I think I'll go try to poke the fabber into making nylon, then head to sleep - assuming the same bed is still open."

"Yes, you'll be welcome in Brynna's house until she finds another stray and asks if she can move you on."

"Okay. Thank you for all the explaining, have a good one."

Lenora takes it easy for the next couple of days. The fabber can't run 24/7, its battery lasts hours at most and then she has to reintegrate it, but it can make plenty of pipe sections and something like three to five plastic items for everyone. Tableware, rain ponchos, soft sporty nylon T-shirts and pants or just bolts of the stuff. She finishes putting in the spigot pump, just pull up and down on the handle and hey presto water. She takes lot of naps, as even with the magic medicine her body apparently needs time to recover. Tries to do her daily physicals, and runs around with the teens some, not minding rough play much. She reads about electricity and stuff a bit haltingly. Watches old movies in private. It's sort of like a weekend.

Everyone is glad to have her around; after the egregore has words with a few people, the requests turn much more into the bolts of cloth / trade goods end of things than novelty cups and bowls.

With Davyd on hand to patch people up, nothing gets too out of hand, but there is some bleeding and a few broken bones - briars apparently play very hard when trying to impress the mysterious newcomer. Everyone is pretty cheerful and nobody stays hurt or has to send for a better physick, though. 

With the next trade wagon, there are a few people to see her - two artisans and a 'broker', whatever one of them is.

Cerys brings them round to see her.

"Greetings again - this is Brys and Cerna Fleetspear, Brys is an artisan with a broad range but mostly specialised in armours, and Cerna is an artisan and also an architect. And this is Gyna Tallystep, she's a Broker who often works with them."

None of these people are showing the signs of green veins or bark; Brys has very pale, unhealthy looking skin and when he smiles in greeting you can see pointed teeth, Cerna has unusually pointed ears and a small set of antlers that appear to grow straight out of her head, and Gyna has metallic markings on her face in square labyrinthine patterns and tiny horns peeking out under her hair.

They do all have a tattoo of a thorny branch and one or two other tattoos.

Cerna stands forwards and offers to shake hands. "Very good to meet you, I'm sure you wouldn't believe some of the rumours - is that cloth you're wearing one of the 'fab' products?"

Night touched? And maybe autumn? Not like she knows the difference.

"Lenora Wilson. Architecture's neat. Yep, this is a mixed blend that just gets called Synthin. The 'fabber' can make all sorts of things that are polymers - that being a chemical structure made up of chains of repeated tiny blocks. Unfortunately it is not a fabber that can make more fabbers, it's supposed to be cheap and rugged, in case you find yourself crashed somewhere and need to make basic survival goods. And of course, as has become my refrain, I am not an engineer or an artisan. I just have the benefit of coming from a world with a bunch of built-up tech. Is a broker what it sounds like, sellin' stuff so nobody else has to bother with that basically?"

"Yes, that's me," replies Gyna. "I've tagged along just in case you want to get some idea of prices for trade goods, I can buy some things on the spot or arrange to introduce you to people who'd be able to take in larger orders if you're interested, or just give you a better idea of how our economy works."

"I was intending to see if what you have is anything like a runeforge, or could be duplicated or at least some of the ideas used elsewhere," offers Brys, "but I think that might be... A long term project."

"We're very happy to try to explain what we know," Cerna chimes in. "I think most of it is... probably kind of sideways to what you're doing, if you're essentially building things from very small but entirely mundane constituents? Building is a bit more like that, but we still tend to cheat with white granite and weirwood when we're doing anything particularly impressive."

"Very small but entirely mundane constituents are what we're all about. Mostly. Valkyrie Cores are not really mundane in the same way - though everyone's sure they'll figure out what's up with them eventually - and they're new and weird. I guess a lot of your materials are inherently magic in some way. White Granite is entirely unlike granite that happens to be white, yeah?"

"Yes, it's more kind of - you have marble? Imagine marble was a more durable building material than anything else and also quite lightweight," replies Cerna.

"Our major materials are oricalchum, weltsilver, green iron, beggar's lye, iridescent gloaming, tempest jade, and dragonbone - which, uh, probably isn't actually the bones of dragons, it just looks kind of bone like and occurs in the ground.

Then there's the big three, mithril, which is a bit like steel if it was very light and worked a lot more easily without sacrificing toughness, white granite, and weirwood, which is a variety of wood that is considerably more flexible and durable than any other," explains Brys. "And illium, but that's very much just got magical properties - it make magic stick better - rather than useful physical ones."

"And of course the normal economy runs on lots of normal things like ordinary wood, charcoal, steel, linen, wool, silk, bricks, clay, cement, stone..." Gyna adds. "Not to even get into things like dyes, paints, food and drink and all that."

"Man, Specs would have loved this place. She'd want to play around with new materials, build guns that use mithril and see if weltsilver can be a semiconductor and stuff. I have no clue in comparison." Sigh. "But hey, I do need money. I can fab up a lot of Synthin or maybe even this stuff called hyperweave that makes decent armor, light as it is. Flight suit - my uniform, more or less, not what I'm wearing now - is hyperweave."

"Just the materials for the best set of light armour we can make go for at least two thrones. How easy is Hyperweave to work? Or can your machine make ready-made suits without much loss of efficiency? Can you provide Brys with a sample for testing now, so we can see how it stacks up against the Ivory Aketon?" Gyna is especially animated at the prospect of an actual trade.

"Nobody makes clothes by hand unless it's their personal hobby, honestly, most can be printed unitary and some are sewn by micromanipulators and stuff. I don't know the usual measurements though. And hyperweave tends to come pre-printed only, it's a composite."

She fusses with the giant loud metal box for a bit, and in about two minutes it produces a foot square section of layered 'cloth'. Soft and comfortable on the inside with many sandwiched layers of different fibers and colors visible on the edge. Surprisingly thick if not unworkably so, like leather, a slightly shimmery grey on the outside and soft white on the inside. "The big deal about hyperweave is that it's almost fireproof, proof to chemical attacks, stab and shrapnel resistant. And it scatters lasers - light weapons - which makes it look shiny even if you don't have those." She flexes the fiber so they can see the shimmering of the microcrystals.

Brys takes the square, sits on the ground and unrolls a small leather tool roll that was on his belt, and starts prodding the armour with various sharp things, hitting it with small hammers etc. He seems pretty impressed with the results.

"Hmm, sizing is a problem then, one of the great advantages of artisan armour is that the enchantment survives alterations very well and makes the armour magically flexible within a range," explains Gyna. "I'm only carrying twenty thrones on me right now; I reckon suits of this will easily sell at ten thrones to the right people, if you'll provide me with four pieces for five each I'll take the risk of buying some arbitrary sized and see where I can offload them - maybe base them on Cerys Liaven, he's fairly typical for the target market?

If you're likely to stick around I can send you some more buyers at probably a rather higher price; if you take this machine to Anvil I suspect you can make money until the Senate comes begging you to invest some in the Bourse before you crash the economy."

"It'll totally stop working if anyone tries to steal it, by and by. Doesn't the price depend on how tough it is compared to what you've got? I admit I'm curious on that front too."

"This is clearly better than anything in its weight category," Brys concludes, after not very much testing at all. "And that's before you get to the special effects, I'd probably call it Dragonslayer's Vestments or something if it was my invention?"

"Oh, how does stealing prevention work? Is there some kind of attunement process - I'd been assuming it attuned as armour but of course that's nonsense, it's an entirely different thing to an artisan item, you can probably even layer it... Hmm, I expect you can cast in it too. Yes, you're going to absolutely ruin the magic item economy, I suppose it doesn't expire after a year either?

I'd feel bad taking more than two off you for what I've got on hand, unless you want to consign me some and I'll do my best to find you for your cut later - if you've left here I can't guarantee timing on that, though." Gyna is speaking increasingly quickly and looks like she isn't sure whether to be gleeful or terrified.

"Hyperweave doesn't expire and also isn't theft-proof, I was talking about the fabber, sorry. Fabber has a battery - stored energy - and it'll quickly run out if I don't take it in again. Also I can just tell it to break. Radio waves, yanno. And I definitely didn't invent hyperweave, it's the product of decades of cutting-edge metamaterial engineering, so I think the name should stick since it's not one of those stupid names like ablative armor compound C-17. I don't have a great sense for how the local economy works but I'm probably fine with getting a less than optimal deal for money now? What kinds of things will twenty crown buy me?"

"Thrones," corrects Gyna, in a rather fixed and strained voice; it's like she's suffering some kind of intense internal conflict.

"Twenty rings to the crown eight crowns to the throne, no it doesn't make sense, historical reasons." She is now slightly distantly reeling things off, as if this is a lecture she's delivered a lot or at least practiced.

"Rings are mostly for basic consumables, a few rings should get you bed and board anyway that isn't the very fanciest places. Durable goods like an ox cart or a potion will be maybe worth a couple of crowns. Thrones are serious money, a couple of thrones buys you materials to improve a farm or mine or similar, the entire Senate budget is only about two thousand thrones a season and most people never even see a throne coin."

"You are very lucky that you have Allegra here and she will be checking up on your Broker and has powerful friends who will be upset if you get cheated," Cerna notes. Gyna shoots her a look, but it's more long-suffering than venemous.

"Hyperweave is a material name," complains Brys, "like leather or oricalchum or mithril - is the garment design just called the same thing? It normally wouldn't be here because you can make different things out of the same stuff - and it'd probably have different names in different nations to appeal to that nation's potential buyers."

"So a throne is still, like, house money. That's fine probably, I'll make half a dozen. I need to find some rare materials to do much more of that anyway. Hyperweave is the material, call the clothes whatever you want I guess. We'd call them flight suits or infantry underarmor. Way I see it, if you treat me fair you're obviously the one I come to next time and if you don't it'll end up being one of your competitors."

"As we're being honest," says Gyna, "I'm not actually convinced there's going to be a next time - you look to me like a big player, although you maybe don't realise how big yet, and you'll be off to Anvil and find someone who's working internationally to make your next set of trades."

"Rare materials, if they're not the usual sort, probably also an Anvil problem," Brys contributes, "sounds like the kind of thing that will either... coincidentally be available there or you'll need to get an Appraisal through the Senate to get the Civil Service to go look for some."

Brys sounds a bit like he disapproves of Anvil on some kind of principle. 

"I-

Have unprecedented sets of power and technology here, right. I haven't really made the update from 'one of a thousand in one academy, not even a particularly special one, in the bottom quartile of the class on technical skills and the top quartile on piloting skills, nobody special'. I should probably do that." Sigh. "Fine, maybe I never see you again. What does that mean for us here and now."

"I still have twenty thrones right here, which will be useful starting capital on whatever you want to do. You provide me with as many suits of that excellent light armour as you feel like for that, at least two for the full twenty; if I make ridiculously huge returns on them, I will send you a further cut at that time. I'm happy to haggle that arrangement if you like, but what you actually keep doing is offering me more than I ask for, so you probably just want to take it," replies Gyna promptly.

"Yeah on second thought, hyperweave is relatively non-renewable for me. Hold on..." She peers off into the middle distance for a bit. "Ooh, there's standard designs with internal buttons and things so you can adjust the fit a bit. I'm making two." The fabricator starts warming up with a rumbling noise somewhere between a washing machine and a microwave. "Where are y'all from exactly again? I also wanted to talk artisan-ing, but it sounds like that's magic more than physical science? The spigot over there's not a new technique, just new materials?"

"Seren," replies Cerna. "It's really the only sizable city the Navarr have. Steadings and wayhouses are nice and all, but Seren is pretty much where we build anything fancy. It started out as a huge archaeological dig for the Terun ruins exposed when the Vallorn was defeated here, and we still incorporate bits of that which were still solid enough to use for building things."

"Artisanry is physical science, at least to me," insists Brys, "but maybe we mean different things by that? There's all sorts of wild theories about the basic materials of artisanry and the Realms - and they sure do seem to be available there, and interesting to various Eternals - but in practice, we dig them out of the ground or make them from plants and animals, and then we build them into well made physical objects to have effects. Try to put a fancy orichalcum inlay into a shoddy suit of metal armour, and it won't do what you want it to."

"I'd expect to see something like the spigot in the League rather than Navarr," Gyna notes, "but the principles are not unknown, no. Navarr settlements tend to think of themselves as impermanent even when they don't actually move around a lot in practice, so everything tends to be the minimum that works for the job."

"Yeah, physical science but different physics. Huh. Do you recognize any of this?" She displays an interactive periodic table of elements on the tablet.

Brys and Cerna peer avidly at the tablet; Gyna affects a little more distance and appears more interested in the device itself than its current content.

"Some of those names," Brys replies. "Actually quite a lot of them, although, like, some really obscure stuff on here. Probably better to call out what I don't know - Lithium, Beryllium, Scandium, anything lower in that bit; don't know anything up to Iron in the main section, no wait, manganese is that weird stuff that the League put into window glass to brighten it up? Then just the top line until we get to copper-silver-gold. Not sure what Cadmium or the weird ones in the bottom line are. Okay I only know a few of this section until we get out of the metals, Tin and Lead we use; I think I heard a theory about 'silicon' once, something to do with sand? Arsenic, of course, although Purify will sort you right out. Boron - that sounds like something to do with borax? Then carbon, nitrogen, oxygen we know, sulfur of course, chlorine, nasty stuff that. I vaguely remember someone from the Brass Coast trying to excitedly tell me about Helium once but I wasn't really paying attention, I'm afraid."

"What are the numbers?" asks Cerna.

"Man, I am not the kind of person to explain chemistry. It's like... The atomic number, the number of protons that make up a single atom of that particular substance? And the atomic weight, the average weight of atoms of that element. You can like predict the exact amount of stuff you need to do stuff with, with it. Elements are the kinds of things that are atoms. As opposed to arrangements of atoms, like water, water's aitch two oh. Like say, one pound of water. 1.008 times two, 15.999... Divided by... You'll get about 11.2% hydrogen by weight and the rest would be oxygen if you electrolyze water. Pure water, anyway. I actually need a bunch of these, relatively small quantities but I do need them, to make hyperweave. Molybdenum, Hafnium, Francium, Manganese, Niobium, Bismuth. Silver, but you know silver unlike the rest."

"Those... sure are some words," replies Brys, dubiously. "Electrolyze... I know lyse, that's using various ways of breaking things down, like dissolving them in beggar's lye; electro sounds like some of the bizarre things I've heard of from Commonwealth traders, apparently you can make a really impressive light show and a weird smell that they think is what happens when you break down the air?"

"Sounds like ozone. Most of my stuff is electric. Ridiculously advanced in comparison, but. Uh... Historical chemistry, lemme see... You probably won't be using pure elements, purifing things is hard and you dont really need it most of the time, I think... Lye is Sodium Hydroxide, Enn-Ay-Oh-Aitch... So I bet you can make lye from salt with a process that produces Chlorine, because table salt is Sodium and Chlorine... Wait, that's electrolysis too. Hmm. I could try to start from scratch but like, I'm not at a hundred percent and also that sounds hard. And I'm not sure I want to just hand over a textbook or something and hope y'all can make sense of it without thinking about it more."

"Well, when you do, look me up in Seren if you've got a moment - I don't think you'll find many people quite as well travelled and with quite as many pieces of the puzzle," replies Brys.

"Brass Coast would love to make Beggar's Lye from salt," Gyna adds, "they've got plenty of coastline but not much in the way of forests."

"I can sure answer a few more specific questions even if I'm not a danged Chemistry teacher. You like the tablet? Unfortunately it's one of the most complicated and irreproducible things."

"That's a pity, the Civil Service would love it," replies Gyna.

"So, outstanding puzzles in things that aren't even slightly magical materials? Water desalination - you can do it with an enormous evaporation still but no use for practical purposes, even better if it fits aboard a ship. Basically everything to do with food preservation - state of the art is to dry it or pack it in salt, both of which increase your water requirement on board ship. Improvements to steel production, I suppose, although the League and Wintermark do okay, and the real bottleneck is mithril. Improvements to mining - state of the art there is lightweight mithril pickaxes, lightstone mining lamps and weirwood supports, every now and again someone comes up with some kind of mechanical drill affair but getting enough power to it reliably down into a mine is nontrivial - can't really hook up a water wheel, donkey treadmills are pretty hard on the donkey. Anything for land transport that beats an ox cart - I'm not convinced you can do much for shipping, mostly the limits there are weirwood and widespread expertise rather than designs." Brys takes a breath and waits a moment to see if Lenora thinks this is too many questions.

"Hmm. I don't think you all are stupid, or not seeing the obvious easy methods. These things are complicated and hard, yeah. Distilling fresh water takes a lot of energy, even the membrane style ones need super high pressure pumps to get anywhere, distilling water is just hard. Mining in particular is fucking dangerous, robots only now, spend metal to save meat. They use explosives sometimes, break up the rock so you can just scoop it up. Electricity will power drills. Is there a good supply of coal? Enough that you could burn a lot in giant water boilers?"

"Most things that aren't steel production - and a few other processes that need the really high temperatures - use charcoal. The League actually import high quality coal from Sarcophan, which is probably actually mined by Grendel with horrible slave labour. There are coal deposits in Varushka but they've been struggling for mine labour, uh, ever since we stopped being horrible slavers ourselves." explains Brys.

"Basically, people much prefer to be charcoal makers than coal miners, so you just can't get much coal in a free society where there are magical materials to mine as well," explains Gyna.

"I'd expect there's a load in Urizen as well, plenty of mountains and very old jungle, but ushabti tend to be too fragile for mining operations and Virtues forbid the Urizen get their own hands dirty," contributes Cerna.

"Kharaman actually supplies some coal too," Gyna adds, "that's the Brass Coast mountain range, they're probability not very efficient but they do like any kind of high quality goods."

"You guys seem a lot more solarpunk than steampunk anyway. You can get electricity with windmills and photovoltaic panels too but coal is widely regarded as the cheapest and most reliable low-tech way. We do it with nuclear fusion which is, uh, the same thing the sun does. We build miniature suns. Even more no way I can do that than the computer, there."

"I mean, Tian did bring her people the sun," mentions Cerna.

"And it might not just be a metaphor for fire, there was that whole thing with the northmost Terun city up in Otkadov having its own sun," Gyna contributes.

"I suspect," says Brys somewhat reluctantly, "what you'd want is to make electricity from the volcano forge, or get the help of Estavus - that's an Eternal, the Forgemistress - to sort you out a power source from her realm. Maybe just do something with the Warm Ashes, I've always thought there must be some good use for a fairly low heat source which just doesn't stop being warm."

"We have windmills," adds Cerna, "I mean we don't here, but the Marchers have loads and the Brass Coast are pretty fond of them too, and Urizen have some spectacularly weird spiral-y metal ones, and the League actually has quite a few for all they like to pretend they don't have farmland and the food just mysteriously appears."

"You could make electricity from something that's eternally lukewarm! All you need is a temperature differential, in principle. It might not be very much. A volcano would certainly do it, that's called geothermal power."

"Don't have a pouch of warm ashes on me, but if you do get to Anvil you shouldn't have trouble finding some - the Autumn realm gives them out like candy, mostly in trade for forest materials, not much grows there apparently," says Brys.

"Crystal fire, the Night vis, does the same kind of thing, but I'd generally think Autumn would be a better resonance for anything mechanised," contributes Gyna.

"There's only one volcano forge that I know about in the Empire and I'm not sure the owner would consider repurposing it," says Cerna. "It was a gift from Estavus - I guess she might make another one if you impress her."

"I'm probably going to stay away from Eternals for a while."

"Very sensible," replies Gyna approvingly. "They're less powerful than they think they are, but they can still ruin your day."

"Warm ashes and crystal fire come from Eternals originally, but there should be plenty on the market at Anvil, or I'm sure Gyna could source you some of you stuck around," adds Cerna. 

"Not a priority, more like something to suggest to crafter guys to uplift y'all. Come to think of it," BEEP! "Oh, suits are done. Do you have explosives, explosive powder?" She opens a panel on the fridge-sized fabricator and pulls out the two Hyperweave suits. A neutral civvie grey with faint hexagonal pattern rather than the brown and emblem-decorated version she has.

"Oh yes, the Brass Coast love their fireworks," says Gyna. "The best ones have a bit of Tempest Jade in, which does interesting colours."

"And the dramaturgists love their flash powder," adds Cerna. "I visit Tassato fairly frequently and they are very keen on those little ones you can just chuck at the ground and make a loud bang, or flash paper that burns spectacularly but mostly doesn't set anything else off."

"None of it works for industrial or military purposes though," Brys notes, somewhat more grumpily. "We've tried it for blowing up fortifications and for mining and for siege weapon, the best you can do is a thrown weapon that makes a startling noise and light show on impact that you can put a bunch of in a catapult if you want to annoy the defenders. Usually you'd expect a loud noise to come with enough push to do something useful, at least shake up some rocks a bunch, but it just... doesn't." Brys seems to be somewhat personally offended by this fact.

"Anyway, I'll want to get going with these soon - although maybe we should have a spot of lunch first?" says Gyna.

There are a number of curious onlookers who are very happy to offer options for lunch, although it is mostly Some Kind Of Stew again.

She is really unsure if she wants to explain modern explosives to these people. Some wandering around double checking is necessary first.

She thanks them for their time and has stew. Afterwards, she'll fly some Briars around! It might be uncomfortable but she's recovered enough to do it, now.

There is a great deal of demand for being flown around! From people of all ages, from tiny cute toddlers to a grey haired gentleman who starts off just watching but then allows that he might have a go if she's willing.

Not toddlers or little kids, the flight involves gripping them with her impeller field - which kind of feels like a very very firm hug from every direction at once. They can still breathe, and talk, but she asks them not to move too much. She takes them on gentle curvy routes above the village, up high enough to get a really good overview of the area. What's around, just forest and forest?

Aerial view of South East Miaren: mostly forest.

The forest ends a few miles to the west and starts to be somewhat irregular fields with hedgerows and the occasional copse, with a few indistinct clusters that are probably settlements and one obvious stone tower.

South of the tower the terrain gets hilly, and in the distance there is an oddly regular jumble that could be a reasonably sized town.

To the east, the stream starts to become a river visible between the trees, and eventually joins up with a really big nnw/sse river, at a place area where some sweeping ruined stonework pierces the tree cover.

Her passenger is mostly going "Whoa!" delightedly, and at some point tries to stick out her arms in imitation of a bird.

She can loosen up the field around her arms a bit. Swoop around nicely, give these people something of the joy of flight. Who's next? (This is fun!)

She'll have to get real high up to do longrange navigation, looks like.

Looks like someone the first passenger knows - they laugh and bid him good luck as he gets picked up.

This one's a bit quieter than the first passenger - until Lenora gets a bit of altitude going - at which point he starts panicking...

She tries loosening up so they can move more, so they'll calm down, but that just makes it worse and they wrench free of her field when she tries to turn.

They fall

And fall

And fall, wind whipping past them and the forest coming up quickly,

Until they're caught in that pressure from all sides again as she dives past, and rapidly pulls up, slowing the fall to a gentle descent into the trees.

"Hey hey, hey, sorry, are you okay there? You're on solid ground again, we're done."

He stops screaming by the time they land, and seems to mostly be incredibly embarrassed; he's moving a bit stiffly but if he has any actual injuries he's trying very hard to hide them.

"I know you said not to move too much, it was totally my fault, actions have consequences," he mutters when he's caught his breath. "Uh, how far from the Steading are we? I kind of had my eyes closed a little bit."

"It's that way, 1200 meters. Uh... Bit less than a mile, I think. Sorry." Navigation to landmarks is a primitive action, with the Core linked.

"No worries, that's just a nice evening stroll, that's fine."

He starts off in that direction, probably expecting her to follow or to fly back, but not really wanting to prolong the conversation with the scary flying lady he has just abjectly embarrassed himself in front of. 

Fuck. 

She's getting too comfy here, even without showers and coffee.

She just nearly killed someone. By accident.

"Time to go." She mutters, and looks at her photograph of the map she was shown. Brass Coast, was it?

Well, the fabber is integrated right now. Recharging off her reactor. She can just... Go. She shoots up barely disturbing the leaves.

Climb, climb, climb. Shed those earthly worries. Here there's nothing but air and the purity of thrust and lift.

35,000 feet, and she turns on a bearing that is her best guess from altitude.

It's probably that area over there? The hills get a bit more ochre-tinted, there's a lot of coastline, it pretty much matches up.

Old style map making isn't perfect, right.

It probably is.

She could go low and slow and sneak onto the road and walk in from far away. She doesn't really feel like it.

She flutter-stalls straight down from altitude maybe a mile out of one of those neat cliff cities. One with what looks like boat activity. She's still just person sized and you might miss her but there's enough eyes in a city and on a road that it's unlikely.

The people of the Brass Coast are not shy or easily frightened; someone pointing up into the sky and saying "What's that?" is swiftly joined by a small crowd, some of which with simple hand-held telescopes, pointing and exclaiming, but most of them are not on the road and are lost to sight shortly as Lenora descends.

The road is well-travelled and currently heading towards her is a caravan made up of several brightly painted and be-curtained wooden ox-drawn wagons, many of whose inhabitants have hopped off and are gawking unashamedly at her.

An older man and a woman in her 30s have hopped out of the lead wagon and have a brief glare at each other before the man heads back to corral the other caravan members and try to get them back on the caravan, while the woman approaches her.

She's wearing a somewhat impractical looking leather breast and back plate, with emphasis on the 'breast', and flowing heavily embroidered robes with strongly contrasting gloves, and a head-dress of coins. She doesn't appear to have any differences from baseline human immediately apparent; the older man has pointed ears.

"Hi there," she says. "I'm Yasmina i Ezmara i Erigo of the Brazen Parador; currently on the road since the trouble down in Feroz. Can we be of assistance? I'm sure our dhomiro would like me to charge you for the conversation, but given the popularity I suspect you're about to have, if anything you should be charging me."

"You charge for ordinary conversation around here? Serious advice, sure, but think of the transaction costs to ordinary negotiation or something like that. Consider me very, very foreign."

"Usually only a token amount, to ensure there isn't any lasting social obligation felt; it can sometimes be unclear even between us who owes it on the road, although you did somewhat land right in front of our caravan and disrupt our journey.

I insisted on being the one to speak with you because I have some experience of negotiations outside our nation, though, and have no intention of insisting on any payment to pass between us if you'd rather not.

Would you like to come in and have a seat and a drink? We can continue to talk out here if you prefer, but we should probably stand to the side and let the more impatient members of my family get on to their destination if that is the case."

"Oh, go on right past me if you like." She walks to the side of the road. "I'm not some dragon squatting on the road to demand tolls. And unless you can make change for a Throne I can't pay you a token amount, currently."

"Theoretically I could, but I suspect you meant that rhetorically," replies Yasmina, stepping aside with Lenora and watching the man who is presumably her dhomiro attempt to herd curious onlookers back into the wagons, with limited success - especially with the children, who gleefully hop back out as soon as they can to continue blatantly eavesdropping.

"I must admit I'm blazingly curious about your mode of transportation, and what you intend to achieve here, if you came with any intentions at all and are willing to divulge some or all of them?"

"I can't replicate most of it beyond myself, fair warning. Explore, figure out the Empire, maybe decide to help people. That sums my intentions up."

"Fair warning in return: I've lived most of my life in the Empire, was born here, was one of its generals for a few seasons, and consider myself quite good at investigation, and even I haven't figured it out. But I'd be very happy to answer what questions I can, in return for a chance to learn more about your capabilities, what might make you decide to help people, and perhaps what happens next - and, in part, just because I like to have a chance to talk about what I have learned in my life."

"Ooh. A general. I might have some tactical questions. Don't want to get overconfident. Is that armor magic? It doesn't seem great as armor, shaped like that. I'm mostly trying to see whether the politics of the empire can fit into the way my homeland works, and I'm happy to defend the innocent. It's just that I can't be confident that the Druj, for example, are the baddies without seeing it first hand."

"This particular set isn't magic any longer - it had artisanry on it once, but it outlived its enchantment and I haven't really needed to get it replaced, since I don't actually do much fighting any more - it's mostly for show, it's what people expect of me. Anything that's over three millimetres of hardened leather will turn the most common of lethal enemy attacks into a less immediate danger, though.

The Druj are pretty much the only group of our enemies that everyone can absolutely agree are the baddies, including all of our other enemies, or at least those who have a mind to make that determination with; their entire society is built around fear and torture. If you can freely scoot around like you did just then, it shouldn't be too hard to get an eyeful of the fences of impaled prisoners they like to leave wherever they think someone might be upset about them - although do be careful of the Druj miasma, I don't know how you are against supernatural auras of hopelessness and despair, they're not much fun - it generally doesn't stop people leaving the area if they're not otherwise prevented, though.

Everyone else is at least somewhat ambiguous - even the Thule, whose hobbies include necromantically enslaving anyone they can get away with, are currently not on the kill on sight list because we've made an alliance of convenience with them against everyone else who's trying to kill us. I suppose the Vallorn is not so much 'ambiguous' as 'more dangerous when provoked' - but that also means it's a bad idea to poke it without knowing what you're doing.

If you really want to defend the innocent - I suspect the best use of extreme mobility is rescuing Druj prisoners, and providing an early warning system to border settlements. If you've got anything else up your sleeve and you tell me about it, my recommendations might change. Do get anointed before you go Druj hunting though, or at least pick up a Banner of the Bold or something if you're morally opposed to anointing for some reason.

Sorry, I am absolutely prattling on, which is a terrible habit that I have whenever I see an opportunity. Do you have anything more specific you'd like to know?"

"How much is that Banner? Know anyone who can make extremely precise small metal objects? I have a railgun that propels five millimeter needles at two point three miles per second. But I only have so many rounds."

"Couple of crowns if you're in a hurry, you could get it for less if you shop around, I don't think we have any in stock but if you keep following this road in the direction we were headed you'll get to a town in about a mile or so which will have them for sale in the market.

Extremely precise small metal objects... you'll find jewellers in every town in the Coast, needle-makers in most large-ish villagers, but Siroc will house the very best.

Or if you're talking clockwork kind of precise, which it sounds like you might be, then while you might find a few craftspeople who can do it in Siroc, you're really looking at Holberg - which is right over the other side of the Empire, one of the cities of the League, right on the doorstep of the Druj. There might be some in Sarvos, another Leaguish city that's much closer - but like those you'll find in the Coast, they'll be more into decorative work than batch production.

You might be in luck and a needle-maker will do the job for you though - that is something we do in batches and in quite considerable variety for sewing needles, the Coast gets through a considerable number of embroidery needles!"

By this time the caravan has just about got underway again; Yasmina seems supremely indifferent as to whether she gets back on it or not, entirely focused on Lenora.

She appears one in cupped hands with a little flash of shimmery blue. It's subtly pointed, some kind of steel alloy, with three thin, short fins protruding from the length of cylinder. "The flukes here are important, they're what the rails grab."

"That is a neat trick... I'm no artisan but I've done my share of Timeless Hammer Rhythm, uh, that's an Autumn ritual for crafting a magical item overnight, and that definitely looks like a jeweller could do the shape - it'd have to be a fairly experimental one with a really good forge to get it done in, what is that, an orichalcum and greensteel alloy? Probably not in this town, definitely in Siroc or Sarvos but they'll do each one by hand, they might be able to cast that in Holberg. Or I guess up in Wintermark, but I'm not as familiar with runeforging work and they do tend to work bigger rather than more intricate."

"Tungsten-steel-molybdenum-chromium. I can probably get away with slightly imperfect shape, or a different alloy. It'd take experimenting. And if they could be mass produced that would be great. I might be getting confused but I heard you had electricity down here. There's a lot of promise in that."

"I'm not sure we mean the same thing by the word then - you get static electricity which is good for a kid's trick of sticking things to other things, or setting up to give someone a small shock, and I hear in Siroc there's some kind of grand entertainment where someone makes a whole load of it, makes your hair stick up on end, then makes a huge tamed lightning bolt for show? I mean, I think it'd be dangerous if you got in the way of the tamed lightning bolt, but I don't think they can shoot it at people like an arrow, it takes a lot of setting up."

"Not as a direct weapon, no. You can run machinery with it, do some neat chemistry. Make lye from salt. Make fresh water from the sea. All my stuff is electric. Oh, forgot to introduce myself. Lenora Wilson. Of the United Nations Earth Defense Command, I suppose."

"I've given you my name, but not explained the parts of it - Yasmina is just my given name, Ezmara is my family, Erigo is my tribe - the Brass Coast are of three tribes, Ezmara, Guerra and Riqueza, the three sisters who founded our nation. I am of the Brass Coast, one of the Freeborn, although I lived for a time in the Commonwealth and I learned my magic there in the great university of Volkavaar.

We make lye from wood ash, but fresh water from the sea would be incredibly welcome, especially if you could fit the device to a ship; even if not, Madruga has many islands which have to get fresh water from the sky. If you are willing to make the attempt to build such a thing with our materials, I can introduce you to some innovators on the shipyards of Siroc who would make it their ambition to realise such plans, and consider having been able to facilitate the attempt as payment for the introduction.

Although if you can travel much faster than walking pace, you might want me to send you with a letter, which is not quite as guaranteed as a personal introduction to work, but would be much quicker, unless you can convey multiple people.

And you might have more questions before handing us such an advantage, of course."

"Oh yeah, much faster. I can print pressure membranes, but manufacturing everything locally would be a lot harder. Mostly it's fancier methods of thermal distillation. Probably more efficient than whatever's been tried. But reverse osmosis rigs can be compact, though they still need you to, like, power a pump somehow. Little windmill or something? Probably doable, but I'd have to make critical components of those."

"That sounds like it would be right up their street - sails and windmill blades have a lot to do with each other especially in lightweight versions, and the current obsession is for all metal ships that don't catch fire - burning shipyards has become a bit of a fashion, the Grendel did it to us and then we did it to them, so even though it's maybe not the most practical way to build a small fast blockade runner - the Grendel basically own the Bay at this point, so those are in demand - it's popular as a a dream.

Would you like a hastily scribed letter of recommendation out of my notebook, which you should also be able to show people for directions along with a bit of change - I can break one of your Thrones down to crowns and rings, you'll have a better time of it if you can hand over a few rings for this and that - or we can walk into town and get a proper scrivener to do a fancy one?"

"A note seems most expedient. What's a Grendel?"

Yasmina pulls a hardback notebook and a wooden pencil out of her satchel. "What do you prefer me to introduce you as, both names which you'll have to remind me of, also your affiliation, 'the stranger I met on the road who is now carrying this letter', anything else you'd prefer I include?" 

She starts writing the salutation and initial plesaentries as she keeps speaking - it seems like she's had some considerable practice at writing while standing around holding a conversation, although her handwriting is childish and sprawling.

"A Grendel is someone from one of the neighbouring countries who have habitually been at war with at least the Brass Coast for time immemorial, although sometimes like now there's a ceasefire. Mostly orcs, at least in positions of power; basically entirely about accumulating wealth and power, they consider Audacity to be a virtue, they like to take slaves, they're the best seafarers around and don't let a Corsair hear that or you'll have a potentially bloody argument."

"See, I'm not blind to the power of logistics. Giving y'all and not the Grendels water purifiers is a pretty major advantage, and maybe I should just go after things that are more clearly to my sensibilities bad news, like the Valorn."

This pronouncement causes Yasmina to briefly fail at writing, leaving an awkward line on the the page, swear under her breath, and look around fearfully for a second in case they are being overheard.

"...the caravan is mostly out of earshot.

Admitting that you might be at all sympathetic to the Grendel.. will probably produce violent outbursts from... almost anyone in this nation."

She collects herself a little - like she's slipping into some kind of habit of communication she uses with specific strangers.

"I happen to understand you simply don't have enough reliable information, but not many people will. I understand it's deeply unpleasant to be circumspect but we have just lost quite a lot of people and territory to them and almost nobody will be inclined to be charitable about it."

"Legit. Like someone suggesting we just try and talk to the fucking Ants. And yet.

I'll go watch the sea for a while and if they're truly that bad I'll find out in a day or two tops."

"Yes. Make sure to catch the slave ships they're sending from Feroz to the salt mines.

Did you want this awful scrappy note just in case, or would you rather come back here in a couple of days and I'll have a much nicer letter?" 

"Few hours, more like. Yasmina Ezmara Erigo is who I should ask for upon return, yes? Ooh, wait, would the Grendels have anything exotic to attack people with? Anything that doesn't involve flinging heavy objects or physically touching me that could be a threat? Mostly I'm considering magic."

"Probably best to ask for the Brazen Parador caravan and then ask for me, but I'm suitably impressed you got all the name segments first time - there are technically syntactic markers between them, Yasmina i Ezmara i Erigo, but running them together sounds more like you're foreign which isn't a bad thing for your prospects of not putting your foot in it."

Doing name explanations appears to let her recover a bit more from the concern over even-handedness towards the Grendel, although she is much more all business rather than friendly curiosity still. 

"They beat awareness and attention to detail in you really hard at flight school, I'd never have remembered it first time two years ago. Brazen Parador. Since caution is the enemy of friendliness here, have you got any questions before I go out and scan for a slave ship?"

"Worried I'll never see you again - would regret not sitting you down and listening to, as much about your world as you're willing to tell me - but I shouldn't get in your way, it won't help anything but my curiosity and.. people repeatedly remind me that wisdom is about actionable things and curiosity is not a virtue."

The first bit is still all business, but by the end she says this last bit with a wry smile. 

"I'll be back soon, I sw- We use 'I swear' far more casually than I think some places might actually, it gets used as a casual sign of seriousness but not, like, an oath, and interpreted that way depending on the context unless you like go 'I so solemnly swear upon the laws and ideals of the United Nations of Earth...' Ummm. Anyway, yeah, I will be back soon in all likelihood."

She half-reflexively salutes before stepping back and letting her impeller field blow dust and static across the road, taking off into the sky, manifesting more of her flight gear, and making for the ocean - or is it an inland sea? But ahh, water. Mostly a flat, level surface upon which her Surface Search RADAR will surely find any boats quite easily.

There's a fair amount of naval traffic, most of which powered by fabric sails; some smaller boats near shore are rowed, some of the fabric-sailed ships out to sea have ranks of oars as well.

This is a relatively placid large bay which constitutes most of the Imperial coastline, but it does have an outlet to ocean proper, between the Brass Coast coastline and the 'Broken Shore' landmass that juts out and cuts the bay off to the east.

There are four main kinds of shipping:

There's a myriad small boats very near the shore, especially around the Brass Coast but all along the Bay in patches, probably mostly engaged in fishing;

There are slightly larger shore-hugging vessels that seem to be primarily engaged in transport over relatively short distances;

There are a range of medium-sized to large vessels heading out or returning down the ocean passage, which also seem to be laden with cargo and not heavily armed; wide range of designs, some of these are quite elegant, although not necessarily looking all that safe to cross an entire ocean on;

And there are the most impressive ships in the sea, generally sporting yellow livery and excessive quantities of gilding, generally with both sails and large banks of oars. Crude ballistae are mounted on some of them.

There are at least some people out on deck of every vessel, some of which look like they have a rather greyscale (right through from chalk white to pitch black) skintone and a somewhat different body structure, but it's harder to distinguish differences amongst them or what they're doing from on high.

Any combat going on? If not she'll cruise around a bit then hide in a cloud bank above one of the fanciest ships, which are probably warships.

...She feels abruptly lonely without traffic control and various chatter in her ear. She keeps reaching for the right bands and there being nothing but atmospheric noise on them.

Focus. Grey people are probably Grendels. Slaves? Any of those? Piracy or anything like that?

There's no active conflict in the area between the Brass Coast coastline and the Broken Shore.

Lurking above the fancy ship, she gets a little more detail.

The greyish people - the orcs - are generally more heavily built than the local humans, or indeed anyone who doesn't dedicate their entire lives to working out, although there is considerable variation. They have brown and yellow mottling in places too, and are generally bald or have hair only down the midline of their heads. Everyone who looks like they are in charge, self-assured, generally confident, and rather gaudily dressed in finery that emphasises purple, gold and wasted extra fabric, on the vessel is an orc.

There are also both humans and orcs who don't fit this pattern. Nobody is actively in chains or being beaten on the deck of the ship, but it does look like these vessels have considerable belowdecks space, and the humans (and less fortunate looking orcs) that are on deck have their heads down, doing their assigned tasks, generally with cowed and fearful body language. Occasionally one of the gaudily dressed orcs will give one of them an order and they will immediately change what they are doing, presumably to please them. Sometimes those orders are to come belowdecks with the orc and this seems to make them particularly apprehensive, but not inclined to disobedience.

The gaudily dressed orcs are generally also armed, most often with a curved sword at the belt, some with a slung crossbow, but no active piracy appears to be in progress. Ballistae and very large slingshots, for flinging things at other ships - although not in a very sophisticated fashion, not even anything like a cannon, never mind a gun - are present, and there are a few racks of polearms lashed to walls.

She zooms away and runs down the coast of the bay, looking for orky settlements. Slaves work in fields, right, that'll be plainly obvious unlike the suggestive but not conclusive stuff on this ship.

(She doesn't even consider some sort of heroic assault. She's an air unit and there's too many unknowns.)

On the Brass Coast side of the bay, there aren't all that many orcs and it doesn't appear to be the season or the terrain for intensive farm work. There are some human labourers out in the fields - which are mostly vineyards, orange groves, and the like, there seems to be distinctly less staple crop growing than you would expect to support a medieval civilisation - but while they look kind of overheated and resentful they aren't being slave-driven.

As Lenora gets a bit further down the coast, more orcs are in evidence here and there, although mostly still not out in the fields which are still populated by the occasional fairly specialist looking human, who might seem a bit more angry and resentful than earlier, perhaps, but not exactly 'cowed and in chains'.

There are a couple of fairly obvious commotions going on though - this urban dockside is extremely busy loading a couple of large ships, including the loading of chained human prisoners and what looks a lot like random knick-knacks from a variety of places rather than standardised cargo; this tailback of caravans is being held up by a impromptu checkpoint staffed by armed and armoured orcs on one of the major roadways.

Roman slaves walked around without chains, she read once. They knew that if they left, it would be starvation or sword.

......She might have to reveal herself and see how they react or something. She doesn't want to. Why? Because she's been primed to expect bad things and is scared? ...Maybe. She really should get both sides of the story though.

She watches the prisoner loading for a bit, thinking and growing steadily more uneasy.

One of the prisoners suddenly puts up a doomed, futile fight, refusing to move forwards and attempting to kick and punch any orc that comes near.

Orcs with swords calmly slaughter the entire chain group, around half a dozen humans who were mostly not involved in the altercation other than having the misfortune to be chained with the first one, and start waving the next group forwards.

HOLY SHIT!

When the violence starts she pushes her impeller and thrusters outward to drive her into a steep dive without really thinking. 

Fuck. FUCK!

A streak of white arcs down from the clouds above, down and then leveling to come towards the docks.

Ahhhhhhhhh. There are - lots of prisoners down there. Could she guard some? Get them away? Maybe? But they'll totally kill the rest won't they. FUCK.

She can't just leave them here. Maybe she should wait until the ship is fully loaded and then attack the crew-

-She's in an exposed positon, low and close. She'd be dead if those were Ants with missiles. Thrusters off, impeller take her quietly back up. She's still at, what, 6000 feet? And several miles out? Maybe they didn't notice. 

There doesn't seem to be any wide-spread reaction to her doomed charge. People are by and large just not looking up into the sky, there is quite a considerable population of seagulls, not many people saw her and registered something out of the ordinary.

There is, however, a lookout with a basic telescope over there, who has handed it off to a second orc and appears to be accreting some kind of argument of other, even more fancily dressed orcs, while pointing at the sky.

Her impeller can cover... Maybe five meters radius if she thins it out. Arrows and swords, not railgun rounds. Though it would really fuck with people inside of it. She could. Kill. The slaving murderers. With her railgun and the eight all-purpose Spike missiles stored somewhere in corespace.

Could she though? Can she mentally convert a man, if a grey skinned one, into the grey and silver targets she blows up with the simulators?

She doesn't have a commanding officer. No support units. No Army chopper to call in infantry guys she can support or anything like that, and nobody to tell her 'cleared to engage'.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

The Valkyrie Core has a lot of processing power and sort of learns to use it in ways you want. For her, that's awareness. She skims the cloudbank again and watches the ground, the reactions, tagging commanders and trying to see if the situation is going to blow up as she agonizes between a charge and inaction.

The argument goes on for a few minutes, but it becomes clear the lookout is losing momentum. Eventually someone who appears, from demeanour, to be in charge of the lot of them shows up to the meeting, scatters everyone back to what they were doing before, casually slaps the sentry in the face hard enough to make them stagger back but not to noticeably impair their further actions, and sends them back to their post.

The command structure is a bit complicated - it seems like there is likely more than one operational unit in the area, likely at least one each attached to the two large ships and at least three competing interests on the ground - but they seem to have kindly marked themselves out in order of importance by how much gold, gemstones, and similar are worked into their clothing and strewn around them in jewellery.

Some of the less gaudily decorated orcs are eventually instructed to take away the bodies.

She............

Lurks, stewing in indecision and anxiety and looking for a good opportunity to rescue the prisoners. It'll probably be when they're on the ship and away from help. She can come at them from the direction of the sun, then. The prisoners won't exactly be any more vulnerable later. She can loiter up here for a while.

Eventually the first ship is fully laden - it must be quite cramped belowdecks with the number that were loaded onto it, and there are little piles of excess cargo poorly secured all along the deck. It starts to manoever out of the port with the aid of the large banks of oars that protrude from its lower regions. There is a lookout in the crow's nest but nobody looks especially alert and ready; the visible crew are all orcs and mostly involved in either hauling on ropes, supervising people hauling on ropes, looking nervously at poorly secured cargo, or generally being in high spirits and congratulating each other.

As they get out to sea, the urgent rope-hauling mostly dies down a bit and more of the crew start trying to find places to lean on things or sit down which are out of sight of the supervisors, who seem more concerned with having cheerful conversations with each other than looking out for laziness, although they occasionally happen to an unfortunate crew member and generally order them below decks, usually not following them.

She has to steel herself for this. It's a knot of anxious tension in her chest. Killing and dying soon to become real.

She wishes she had nonlethal weapons. Not much call for those against the alien menace.

Out of the sun in a slow-ish glide. Railgun to single shot mode. She shuts her eyes, takes deep breaths-

-You're saving lives. Taking down dangerous people who won't hesitate to gut you or others. It's necessary. To reduce the total death. To free slaves.

Could she go for shock and awe? Get them to surrender without a fight? Something tells her 'not fucking likely'.

You're not even going to try, though?

Shut up, inner me. People die. You did tactical exercises where tank crews died to save many more. It's worth it.

She settles into a hover a thousand feet away, sun directly behind her, and starts shooting. Center mass, the captain and then anyone wielding weapons. The only sign of it being sharp cracks in the air and then supercavitating wounds.

Immediate panic - although how these orcs panic is a pretty credible effort on the part of everyone on deck to scramble down hatches and otherwise get out of the open as quickly as possible - they're not helping each other but they're not massively getting in each other's way either.

The lookout in the crows nest ducks down and makes herself as small as possible but doesn't try to climb down the mast.

She zips forward and hovers just over the deck. Loudspeaker-

"GRENDELS DROP YOUR WEAPONS. SURRENDER AND YOU WILL LIVE. KILL A SLAVE AND YOU WILL DIE."

She - rips a hole in the deck with her impeller rather than try to go down one of the hatches or stairways. "I CAN DEFEAT YOU ALL. YOU DO NOT NEED TO DIE. DROP YOUR WEAPONS."

Lenora tears a hole in the ship. Terrified people scatter from the light. It smells _awful_ down there - sweat, vomit, blood...

It's no picnic up here too, what with the dead bodies scattered around where they fell.

One of the less well dressed orcs stumbles into the light, as if shoved from the shadows. He does not have any obvious weapons on him, although he has a belt that looks like it probably had a sword on until extremely recently.

"I've been told to... ask the terms of our surrender," he stammers, terrified.

"I'm going to take the slaves to Brass Coast and their freedom. You can come with as prisoners or be put ashore here with some small part of your wealth, a few supplies and weapons I hand over only after you are off the ship."

There is some frantic whispering from the darkness, to the tune of 'Put ashore where?', 'Better than dying', and in lower tones, 'Stall her', as well as, somewhere further back, a furious 'keep that hatch down!' and... something muffled about bodies.

"Put ashore where?" asks the clearly expendable negotiator, starting to try to put a brave face on it.

She'll tear anoyher hole in this shitty slave ship and go down another deck. "YOU'RE NOT SURRENDERING PROPERLY. ALL GRENDELS TO THE TOP NOW. I HAVE NO PATIENCE FOR SLAVERS."

The ship makes a dangerous creaking noise.

The deck below is full of terrified humans. Very full of terrified humans. Some of them are children. They have been doing a lot of crying and comforting each other and trying to stay out of the worst of the ordure while chained together in groups of about half a dozen and with barely enough space for them all to stand, let alone sit or lie down.

A number of orcs start dutifully climbing out of the hole. They appear to have left their swords or whatever weapon they were carrying behind. Some of them appear to have stuffed every available part of their clothing with miscellaneous valuables.

She doesn't care about the fucking gold she cares about the PEOPLE.

She - fuck.

This is horrible. But you can't just stop. She gathers up a few swords and - carefully - shears through a few chains with the plasma-edged monosaber, carefully limited to just a few inches long - and hands the swords to the strongest-looking people she frees. She doesn't know what to say. She wants to cry but hahahahaha NO this is still a combat situation.

"People. Please - help me herd the Grendels and if you know how to sail, come up. I - you're going to be free. If - if anyone needs medical attention, speak up!"

A few of the humans extremely gleefully pick up swords, start scrambling up through the hole, and immediately begin viciously hacking down any orc in reach - whether unarmed, cowering, fleeing...

Another set start scrambling up calling out their qualifications for sailing duty, but wait behind the sword-enabled people, expecting them to clear the deck of surrendered Grendel - the fatal way.

"Please, my daughter, she's not breathing," someone yells.

There is also a splash from further down on a side of the ship Lenora can't see from this angle, as if someone has dropped something approximately body-sized in the water.

And there's a flashing light being pointed at shore from somewhere around the oar deck, which is below the slave deck she has just opened.

And the orc in the crow's nest has got up and daringly started raising a set of brightly coloured flags.

"NO!" Swords get yanked hard out of hands by a shimmery blue field, probably breaking bones. "They're fucking surrendering you dipshits! No more killing!"

God fucking dammit she can't police an entire huge ship all by herself what the fuck was she thinking- "JUST STOP. EVERYBODY JUST FUCKING STOP GOD DAMMIT."

Fuck, there's another deck she has to go clear what the fuck is happening THERE god dammit all- Oar deck, without ripping a hole this time, is there anyone actively killing people?

Lenora tries to get down a hatch non-destructively, but it has been dogged tight. The wood seems to be somewhat sturdier than one might generally expect wood to be.

The freed humans who still have some fight left in them are trying to organise tending their wounded, wrangling the ship out of deep water, and occasionally sneaking off to pick up swords and kill orcs out of the shouty lady's immediate reach. The orcs who came up on deck are mostly trying to desperately hide. Several groups of humans who are still chained are anxiously attempting to get her attention.

There are additional body-sized splashes. Frantic light signalling continues.

This is such a fucking mess. Literally none of this is going right.

She contains the destructive shearing force of the Impeller Field to the hatch itself and any possible locking mechanisms this time, trying not to ruin the ship's structure any more, but they might be killing people down there.

Well... no-one's _actively_ killing anyone.

Some humans and some orcs are chained to oar-benches and some have already injured themselves in their panicked attempts to get out of their shackles as the ship started to make alarming noises and they stopped being closely supervised.

A couple of orcs over there are attempting to shovel a dwindling pile of dead human bodies overboard. One orc is determinedly signalling with sunlight and a mirror out the side of the ship that faces the shore they just left, although whether anyone can see it over the distance involved is not clear; it seems to be a simple repeating distress signal.

Several orcs have dropped to the floor in a weak attempt to hide as the hatch flew open.

Fuck. Fuck. 

Godammit. Godammit. 

She can't handle this anymore. It's just such a fucking mess. She'll just - quickly as she can cut through all the various chains, then do the same on the next deck up, then head topside and try to keep the prisoners from murdering ALL the orcs.

The armed prisoners are not very keen on being seen with weapons and will drop or hide them when she comes into view, but it's quite hard to be everywhere at once even with a huge hole in the middle of two decks.

The remaining Grendel are quite interested in not being seen by anyone, and surprisingly good at it given the general open-plan design of the vessel.

Between these two factors, the rate of orc murder drops dramatically when she concentrates on it; many of the previously armed individuals would like all their limbs intact to try to steer the ship towards Madruga.

From the chatter of the impromptu human sailors, it seems likely that they will run her aground on a tiny rocky island, which will be better than sinking but they're a bit worried there aren't food supplies for an extended stay and are trying to find someone who thinks they can swim for shore.

They clearly don't even see her as an ally! She's an obstacle to work around in this chaotic mess of a battlefield! And it's probably her own damn fault somehow! Her head feels fuzzy and her gut feels like it's full of rocks, but she keeps moving. Everyone's cut free - medical attention consists of pointing her survival-grade  autodoc at them and doing what it says, she doesn't have any true vervain or whatever it was but the 'doc has a 22nd century trauma medicine VI, though not a very big supply of medicine - there's so many injured and dying people, it makes her want to throw up. Fucking fuckity fuck.

Very few people on the vessel are in good shape according to the autodoc. Those who come to her, or are brought to her, mostly have obvious wrenched joints and hand-to-hand combat injuries that they would like dealt with, and a few cases of overwhelmed unconsciousness. When the autodoc looks at them, there are a lot of parasites, lice, viruses, infectious bacterial diseases, and all that good stuff going round. Mostly the autodoc actually prescribes cleaning out wounds, painkillers and antibiotics if available, immobilisation or elevation of body parts.

The more badly injured are mostly those who were involved in murdering orcs, who were mostly injured by her, and aren't very interested in reporting for treatment; they appear to have been stabilised by the expedient of another human tying various bits of varyingly clean cloth to the affected area, which actually seems to have worked unnaturally well...

There are presumably a lot of orcs with sword wounds somewhere, but those who haven't succumbed to them have mostly dragged themselves out of sight.

She is capable of implementing the concept of 'triage'. Sort of. Ticks? Parasites? Not going to kill you in the next hour. Painkillers, yes. Antibiotics, yes. That baby who wasn't breathing-

Don't cry.

-Has anyone managed to appoint themselves New Captain or something?

Not exactly, but there seems to be a group of sailors fairly competently hauling on ropes and things; the ship has gradually made a turn and is struggling back not quite the way it came. There seem to be a few independent squads working on useful things, everyone just pitching in where they think they might be helpful, nobody giving orders: a rigging crew, a group assessing the damage and nailing spare bits of wood to the sides in some kind of hopeful reinforcement strategy, a first aid station, a group that went and rounded up fresh water and food supplies, a few circles of people singing.

And less productive activities, some people attempting to sort and catalog miscellaneous valuables, some people trying to trouser as much as they can, some people trying to shake them down for them.

And, now she's paying greater attention to things not directly in front of her again, still some muffled sounds of violence from the depths of the ship. It sounds like at least some people have decided she was distracted by medical triage and have gone off to start killing each other, in a slightly more subtle fashion this time.

Of course they're still murdering each other.

She is

She is

Going to try to reduce the total number of deaths. That means medical triage until everyone who's likely to die in the next hour has been looked at and then manhandling ALL the remaining Grendels she can find onto the top deck and under her guard with stern warnings not to kill the ones she's already retrieved, looking angry and lost, and then ... looking for a rowboat or something.

The only medical triage cases that are openly coming to Lenora who were in imminent danger were some advanced dehydration cases she's already attended to.

A few of the injured orcs she finds are not quite corpses and stopping the bleeding and similar temporary holding solutions are useful.

A few Grendel try to beg and plead to let them stay hidden, and there are a few bribery attempts either with 'everything I'm carrying' or promises of riches available later, to let them live, or stay hidden, or get a head start once they're on shore. None of them put up any kind of fight.

A couple of the more quick on the uptake Grendel offer her the freedom and safe passage to the Empire of the slaves they have at home, if she will safely escort them back across the border to Feroz or to the Broken Shore.

Now they'd have to do it in public against her orders, everyone seems much less inclined to murder the orcs, although Lenora does find a couple of them get tied to things, apparently after trying to sneak off when she was distracted.

The freed prisoners are mostly much more concerned with operating the vessel, handing out food and water, and arguing about what should happen to the cargo.

It sounds like much of it is various personal belongings looted from Feroz, so some want to try to find the owners, some to divide it up and claim it provisionally on the rightful owner not showing up, and some want to hide the best bits so the magistrates don't just confiscate it all. (And a few are pointing out the logistical difficulties of getting it anywhere useful and that they'll owe some of it to a rescue party.)

There is a small rowboat stowed on the oar deck, although the Grendel who directs her to it warns her that the seas are a bit heavy for it, this far from shore. It looks designed for maybe half a dozen occupants, a dozen if they're very friendly. 

Then the human who has climbed up to the crow's nest as replacement lookout shouts something about a second Grendel vessel approaching to cut them off. And there does appear to be a very similar ship on approach, rather faster than this one is going with noone at the oars. 

The thing is, lifting an entire rowboat is actually easier than lifting a single person because she doesn't have to be as careful. Who wants to go back to that city they just left in a flying rowboat. Quickly, because that other ship needs attention next.

30 of the 36 living orcs in the orc huddle rounded up want to do this. (The other 6 are dressed much more raggedy, have shackle marks from the oar benches and are off to one side trying not to attract anyone's attention.)

That is likely to affect the structural integrity of the rowboat if she let's them all aboard, especially with the armour and the suspiciously jingling sleeves. 

Maybe 20 would be okay if they weren't carrying too much, more would be pushing it. Most of the assembled are very keen to offer bribes such as gold, jewels, property in Feroz or the Broken Shore, unfathomable wealth, introductions to important people, as many slaves as she can lead away, etc.

She'll make two trips with 15 each, with a couple of dire warnings about how people who surrender get to live actually. There's no time for this shit. She's not even considering any of the offers because, A, they don't feel real, and B, there is no time for this shit, and C, she doesn't believe they'll actually hold to it. Not that she says so out loud.

They are overjoyed to get a free ride.

There is a limited amount of consternation at your first approach, but one of the better dressed Grendel stands up near the prow and ensures nobody interferes with the quick deposit of the boat's inhabitants, taking charge of the situation and informing people that there is another rescued boatload coming if they are polite - he seems to be primarily trying to salvage his reputation by taking credit for the live return of the survivors, but it gets the job done.

The remaining orcs are being guarded by sword wielding humans when you get back, but are unharmed - their impromptu guard claim to be protecting them from the others. 

The most important looking Grendel on the second boat asks in a conversational way whether their terrifying chauffeur considers herself to be with the Empire.

"...Was seeing if you're horrible monsters. You are, fucking slavery, but I'm not much impressed by them or myself either right now."

"So you are.. Affiliated with the Empire? A disaffected citizen? Or perhaps... summoned by one?" He seems to be fishing for something specific... 

"Very foreign. Just acting on my own virtues, such as they are. You know, collective punishment and execution without trial is a violation of the Geneva Convention - you're not a signatory, of course, but it was pretty horrifying seeing six men cut down for one acting out, that was the tipping point, really."

"Oh, over from the Commonwealth? I heard they liked their treaties and conventions, for all the Empire likes to take credit for the Liberty Pact."

As the conveyance approaches shore, there is less outright commotion but a lot of curious onlookers this time - including the most important looking Grendel sighted so far, complete with lackeys that attempt to wave Lenora over. 

She shrugs.

"What do you want, ten words or less, I'll have a bit more time if you call off that other ship."

She opens her mouth to begin her prepared speech, then thinks for a couple of seconds, then says, "Take my second in command over to the ship, please?"

A somewhat flustered younger orc with almost as much excessive gold braid and jewelry reluctantly steps forwards and presents herself for boarding.

"We have no means of communication with the other vessel, but I can order them to stand down and avoid additional unpleasantness, if conveyed to their position," the apparent second in command offers.

"Sure. Let's nobody else die today."

She looks and sounds very tired, jittery, and stressed out. Like someone seeing blood for the first time.

If the lieutenant will get into the boat, she'll ferry them over to the other attack boat. Maybe she won't even have to sink it. This was a mistake from start to finish but doing nothing also would have been.

The lieutenant attempts to make polite conversation. She is clearly very disconcerted to be in a flying boat, but is determined not to let this affect her actions.

"I'm sorry that we couldn't be introduced under better circumstances. I'm Keth, second to the governor of Oran port."

"Lenora. I'm not really in the mood to chat. I'm not going to go on some sort of mindless crusade without thinking about it more and considering options if that's what you're worried about."

"Well, if you did want any assistance considering your options, I'm sure my Lord Governor would be extremely interested in negotiating. We do pride ourselves on being open to negotiations and trade with all comers, regardless of any unfortunate circumstances or initial misunderstandings."

"So those were or weren't slaves?"

"Well, yes, we don't kill all our prisoners like some people do, and we do like to get a bit of work out of them if we have to keep them fed and watered."

Keth peers out of the boat to see how close they are getting, and makes herself visible to the intact Grendel vessel in good time; the sailor orcs begin to clear landing space on the deck, with only a modicum of confused gawking.

"Uh-huh." Color her unimpressed.

Whatever. Boat on deck. She hovers over the side, looming and keeping pace with the ship.

Keth steps gracefully out of the boat and has a succinct conversation with the captain:

"My mistress bids you stand down and return to port."

"Is your mistress the Lord Governor of Oran or this summoned creature of Sky magic?"

"The former, but the latter will kill you just as dead if you argue, or insult her, or if she feels like it."

At which point the captain begins to give orders to turn the ship around, and Keth looks up at Lenora as if to say, 'Satisfied?'

Sigh. She wouldn't, but saying so is worse than useless. If they come to the conclusion that she's a vessel of random violence? Fair. Shock and awe is like that. This is Not Going Well.

"I'll be guarding that ship from high above. Do you want to go back to shore, Keth."

Keth weighs up the options of sailing back on the resentful vessel which might do something Lenora dislikes and be destroyed, and a terrifying flying boat ride that probably won't kill her unless she says something particularly stupid. "If you wouldn't mind," she says, stepping back into the rowboat. 

She's quiet and tense on the flight back. The rowboat is at least designed to withstand even pressure along the whole bottom and hopefully will continue to hold up, but she's getting tired of focused shaping the impeller. It's a bit like standing on a balance beam while looking straight ahead.

She'll ignore the slavers trying to say anything to her and head back to the 'rescued' ship and ask about the food and water and navigation situation, sounding very tired.

Keth does not verbally poke the dangerous individual responsible for her not falling out of the sky now that it's clear Lenora doesn't want to talk. She is not very happy about it and her reception back at the shore turns rather sour once Lenora immediately flies off instead of staying for a nice chat.

"Glad you're back," says one of the freed slaves who had been guarding the orcs, as she gets back. From the wary glances from other ex prisoners, this is not a universally held opinion.

The slave orcs have stopped huddling together but are visible on deck pitching in with rope hauling and similar tasks where strength is an advantage, rather than mysteriously absent.

The food and water team report that nobody is going to starve or die of dehydration today, but everyone doing hard physical work will be hungry by the end of the day, and tomorrow is not looking good unless the ship manages to summon help.

The navigation team report that the plan is still to run aground, but probably on the main Madruga coast now as they don't have to outrun the other Grendel vessel any more, which they should manage in an hour or two and everyone can go and forage or wait for traders to converge on them and start picking apart the cargo and anything else that isn't nailed down. 

"This is such a fucking mess. I couldn't do nothing seeing that, but. Such a fucking mess. I can take messages places. Find food and bring if truly necessary, though I'm getting tired.

...You all from Brass Coast originally, or...?"

If she can get inland and let the nearby town know they're coming ashore, that should speed up getting supplies down to the beach, although there's a bit of an argument over whether this is actually a good thing or whether they'd like to have some time to take valuables off the ship before anyone else shows up.

The main difference between the sides in this argument seems to be that some people have extended family in Madruga that they expect to take them in, and some are not sure they have anyone and want to secure some valuables so they have something to trade for food and shelter while they look for work.

Everyone here (except the orc ex slaves) considers themselves Freeborn (which appears to be the demonym for people from the Brass Coast for confusing historical reasons), although a few people were not born in the Brass Coast and married in.

She-

-Probably shouldn't just completely discount the plight of over a hundred refugees and say she doesn't care about the valuables, actually. What if she declared that they're mostly her spoils of war and should be distributed to those in need or at least sort of evenly, would that... Work. At all.

Everyone is relatively happy to go along with this - they didn't really want to fight amongst themselves and nobody wants to gainsay the scary rescuer over a gairlus sensible kind of suggestion.

The side that wanted to keep the valuables together and hand them over to the magistrates suggests that they get to pick out the most identifiable or sentimental looking pieces and can hand them over themselves.

Then the people who don't have families to go to can take the coin, materials, loose gems and so on, which should be easier to sell anyway.

Provided with an agreed on problem, everyone who isn't busy keeping the ship afloat and on course and everyone on it alive and acceptably fed and watered starts enthusiastically sorting through the cargo, levering open crates and redistrubuting their contents, rigging makeshift bags from fishing net and rolls of fabric, and so on.

There are a few disputes that are actually brought to Lenora, mostly along the lines of whether the personal-items side should be allowed to take various especially valuable heirlooms and works of art that would probably sell really well, but mostly her scary presence lets people settle their differences with just the threat of having to refer them to her.

And the shoreline comes into view, small cliffs and coves and beaches, and the sailors aim for a beach.

She finds a piece of deck space to sit on - doesn't demanifest her core but does sort of ... go lower intensity - and does pop-up scans every five, ten minutes. Shoot up to a few thousand feet, slow visual and RADAR sweep in a circle. Just in case.

If people are getting enough to try to restart their lives, say a Throne each ish, important heirlooms and art needn't be broken up Solomon style. Despite all the very mixed results here they're probably going to be okay in the end, it seems like. That's nice.

It's more like four crowns each, without any of the art, and some individual heirloom pieces are likely worth more - but everyone pretty much calms down and agrees that four crowns is plenty to be getting on with if you're not exactly planning the trek to Anvil any time soon, and it's not as if the people taking those pieces are planning to run off with the proceeds.

It is brought up that perhaps a couple of the decorated notebooks in the treasure should be sacrificed to write up contracts for everyone, which clearly state the expected valuation, what has been received, and what should be done in the case of higher value pieces not finding their owners and being sold on instead.

Written contracts seem to be quite a popular concept, and one of the ex prisoners with huge curly ram's horns offers to mix some of her 'cambion' blood with the ink, which apparently makes them even better somehow? 

That seems important and possibly demonic but she's really too tired to investigate properly right now.

She's up and ready to intervene in case anything horrible happens when they run the ship aground, though.

The grounding goes quite well - there's some horrible groaning sounds and the ship kind of sags in the middle in a way that ships are not meant to do, but they manage to run it up on the actual shore rather than hitting a sand bank and some of the less occupied people have been building rope ladders and harnesses to get everyone down safely, even those with broken limbs.

The regular sky visits have attracted a bit of attention to the area, but there are only a few fast runners from various caravans along the road that follows the top of the cliffs in a position to arrive quickly, and they're basically just interested in the story - and maybe whether they can invite anyone back to this or that caravan or nearby establishment for a cold drink in return for the full tale and maybe some of the loose change.

Great. Lovely.

In that case she'll wish everyone well and fly back to the city Yasmina was heading to and ask for the Brazen Parador or possibly just a recommendation for a nice inn.

The city has a nice impressive gate, with a raised portcullis, the arch of which contains:

actual armed (with halberds; random people just seem to also have swords on their belts without that having much to do with their obvious role or status) gate guards, who seem to be primarily interested in large caravans although they are looking a bit nervous about the flying person and one of them has headed through an archway presumably to get a superior's opinion,

a variety of adults hanging around in the shade of the gatehouse, arguing with each other, observing the noticeboards full of colourful advertisements, and looking out for opportunities, a couple of which appear to be having a staring competition over who gets to intercept Lenora,

and quite a few unaccompanied children, several of which periodically calling our advertisements for paradors and shopping establishments, who look avidly in Lenora's direction.

An attempt to address a question to noone in particular sets off a huge clamour where a dozen people attempt to loudly advertise their favoured parador or offer their services as guide simultaneously. 

...ONE RING for the person who brings her to where the Brazen Parador Caravan is! But only if it's snappy!

The adults clearly lose some interest in interacting with Lenora directly, but one of the kids calls "Follow me!" and starts off into the city, looking back anxiously to see if she's coming.

If Lenora is paying attention she will notice one of the adults paying a few of the kids shortly thereafter, who proceed to tail her in what would be a quite stealthy fashion if she was a confused foreigner with no training or augmentation. 

What are they hoping to accomplish with that. She literally loudly announced her destination.

She's in shape and augmented, yes, and has no trouble following the kid. There's nothing on her to pickpocket, either, the coin she flourished seems to have vanished into nowhere.

The kid brings her to a courtyard full of familiar wagons, and holds out her hand expectantly.

"Welcome to the Brazen Parador!" a teenager at the door enthusiastically greets her. "You must be the interesting foreigner Yasmina met on the road, I'm sure she'll be along in a moment, but come, sit, have a glass of syrah while you wait?"

One of the wagons, to which he is gesturing, is clearly set up as a reception room - long bench seats, awnings pinned up to be open to the warm air, and a set of glass tumblers on the central table.

She pays out the ring with a tired nod.

"If that's alcohol, I'm afraid I can't indulge. I wouldn't say no to some fruit juice and snacks - long day, and I can now personally confirm that Grendels are horrible."

"Pleasure doing business!" squeaks the little girl and she scampers back off in the direction of the gate again. 

"One non-alcoholic syrah coming right up." The greeter nods to a younger girl who fetches a jug out of a covered box and pours Lenora a glass of some kind of sparkling amber liquid. It's definitely fruit based, probably mostly apple, but also has a distinct hint of cinnamon.

The greeter goes to resume his position at the entrance, and the girl wanders off deeper into the encampment, returning with a small platter of dried fruits and nuts. 

Shortly thereafter, Yasmina strides over from between a couple of other wagons, looking very happy and relieved. 

It's tasty. "Hey. Promised to come back, and here I am. Fought some slavers, freed some slaves. I guess you want the whole story, probably..." Sigh. "It was mistakes start to finish. And after that I need a good bed, if you know where to go for that."

"Thank you for returning. Uh, did you accidentally implicate the Empire while you were at it? If so, I really need to start running around and panicking about the ceasefire? If not, I'd love the whole story, and - in either case - I'm sure I can find you a spare room in the building we've rented for the moment."

"Oh is that what that was about? Christ, another mistake for the pile. Uh, hold on..." After a moment a flat slab of glass appears and starts speaking. Her tablet can play sound recordings of the conversation.

Yasmina is extremely startled when the flat slab of glass starts speaking! Especially in a voice that clearly belongs to an orc!

She manages to catch herself before she entirely scrambles back out of her seat.

"That... can you do that... I know Lashonar's heralds can do mimicry that well, but... sorry, you're going to have to start it again, I completely missed all of it being surprised."

A few other Freeborn have converged on their position, but Yasmina back to smiling ruefully and looking like everything's okay, and no obvious actual orcs, quickly turns alarm into curiosity; nobody is impolite enough to actually interrupt them or openly stare but a few people have found minor wagon repairs to make in earshot.

She restarts it with a few taps. "Yeah, sorry. I'm - really tired. I did a lot of impeller work during the fight."

She plays the conversation again. Complaining about slavery and the Geneva Convention and saying she's here on her own virtues after the orc hints about Empire, and silence after the orc accuses her of being from some sort of Confederacy. "I shrugged there," she says of the silent spot, after she cuts off the sound of wind. "That's the part that might break ceasefire if any does, I think."

"No, that sounds like you handled it great; either they think you're with the Commonwealth, or are just... weird and inexplicable. It won't necessarily stop them just lying about it, but that's not really their style, they'd rather trick people into actually breaking their agreements - they call it 'Fidelity', it's one of their false virtues.

Does this... artefact... remember everything? That might be even better than a signed contract for some people, they'd pay you a lot of money to be a perfect witness to their high value business deals. Although that's not likely to actually help much, I suppose. Unless you can make more of them?"

"No. Can't make more. I mean, theoretically maybe but - it'd be like... I don't wanna think about this right now."

Ugh ugh ugh. She's feeling a little crowded, honestly.

"...It's different up close." She leans forward and whispers. "I was lucky, in the evacuations? Back home? I saw someone die, but just one, he was an old man in a bed in a, uh, wagon. Age plus hunger plus travel. I was in training. For killing machines, monsters, not people. This..." Slow headshake.

"Oh. Right. Um." Yasmina attempts to lower her voice, but clearly isn't very good at it. "I'm not... really very good at comforting people? But I did have an experience kind of like that, if hearing about it might help?"

"I don't know. It's - you're all so very foreign, my whole culture is different, they did their best to pretend the war doesn't exist, everything's fine, we can all have nice things and be safe, guarded by the valkyries - that's me and my cohort - and the huge armies of machines. Everything is fine. The arcology wall shall never fall. Go have tea and play games and make art. I don't think... I mean, in retrospect they were obviously kind of subtly preparing us for some comrades dying? Playing it up all heroic and noble and... Like, yes. I will die to save a thousand innocents. Without question. It's just never that simple." Shrug. "Rambling. It might help. It might not."

"A lot of the Empire does that, too. Especially in, like, Dawn, but here too in places, and everywhere - well, maybe not Navarr or Highguard, and Urizen is more 'we know things are terrible but art is important and we're going to make it anyway'.

Anyway. I didn't see much war growing up, either. Not in the ship-yards of Siroc, where I helped my dad with ship designs, and not in the Commonwealth, where I studied magic. I was vaguely aware that things were sometimes bad in other places, but they weren't, you know, here.

So I came back to the Empire triumphantly a master of Autumn magic, ready to help my family, and then - well, there was a huge power vacuum. The then-Empress took a whole load of people through the Gate and didn't come back. So suddenly were were on our way to Anvil, to see if there was, an opportunity?

We'd sewn it up so I was going to be Senator, but everything was chaos, and my dhomiro ended up senator because only the heads of families went into the election; so he got me appointed general instead.

Which was, uh, a thing. I'd never held a weapon before. I showed up to the Military Council with a notebook and a robe when everyone else showed up in weapons and armour.

And of course that meant I had to go through the Gate. And try to lead the nation in battle. Which wasn't meant to be a thing for the Generals, we were meant to do the strategic direction, but it turned out everyone expected it.

And I wasn't too bad at it? I think? I arranged a load of healers to come with us and moved them around and... then an orc skirmisher broke through the lines.

My family had equipped me, some armour, a ridiculous wood axe that was clearly for felling trees rather than fighting because I just wanted something for show, but nobody else had more than a wand...

Well. When I came off that battlefield, it was all go for a bit, and then the triage had been sorted out and the debrief location agreed and... I just fainted. Right in the middle of Anvil. Which was all over snow and mud.

And every time I saw a battle wound that summit, I keeled over again.

Not the most auspicious beginnings for a general. But - time, and distance, and things just, continuing - they make it better."

She nods pensively.

"...The healers were a good idea. It's an aphorism but, amateurs discuss tactics, professionals study logistics. Of which healing is a big one. I'm also accumulating more questions about this place and all its magic stuff by the hour, but that... Is what it is."

"I shot, like fifteen people. They weren't about to kill me or anything, or even my friends. It was a surprise attack after I decided I couldn't countenance the slavery. Captain on downwards in order of how big a weapon they had, and - and I was rushing, pushing hard and fast and being loud and demanding because that's what you do according to every tactical class I've had, you aggress and don't stop at all, but all that did was make everything into a massive, horrendous melee. I told them to surrender and they'd live, that's - part of the rules, really, or at least it ought to be, I would have plunked them right back on shore - but they were stalling so I pushed more. Thus, chaos and death and former slaves killing the killers and. And - it doesn't feel very nice. I could probably honestly talk for... A while, like this... I don't want to be okay after that, it'd mean I'm a fucking sociopath, but also I do kind of want to be... Okay, after that. Would they give me a medal back home? For taking out slavers and rescuing the slaves? Maybe. Wouldn't want it.  ...What I mean is, if I did that while in contact and without authorization I'd be court-martialed and stripped of my core, but out of contact it's... Showing initiative. They'll go over everything I did with a fine-toothed comb if I ever go home, but I'll probably come out of it fine as long as I'm not blatantly stupid or evil about things, but that's the thing. I'm not a damned officer! I don't know what I'm doing here, or what they'd want me to do, I have no direction but myself and it's terrifying! Does any of that make sense?"

"Yes. It's kind of like it was for us, after Britta - that's the Empress who went through the Gate with, like, everyone important, and they all got killed - the only people who almost kind of knew what they were doing were the civil service, and they were struggling a lot too. Sometimes there isn't anyone to tell you what to do, and it sucks.

I'm sure there's loads of people around who would love to start telling you what to do, but if I was you I wouldn't trust any of them. Everyone has their own personal agenda. It's kind of why I dropped out of Anvil-level politics, once things were getting more... established again, and people were fighting over the positions, rather than just happy that someone wanted to do the job.

You can ramble as much as you like to me, it's not like I'm in a hurry. We're safe here - well, safer than we've been for a while, anyway - and I imagine the dhomiro's about to have a lot of boring arguments, deciding whether we're settling here or moving on, before anything else happens."

"Yeah, no. As far as taking orders from anyone around here without question, anyway." Siiiiiigh. "People have agendas back home too but I'd trust them more to not be secretly awful. And include things like 'not dying to the alien invaders who won't even talk to us'. I-" Grimace. "Actually, I might have some nice distracting questions that aren't thinking about... All that. Like what a Cambion is and why they're important to contracts, and what the Gate is, and how the Senate works - Anvil is the capital of the Empire?"

"Sure," smiles Yasmina. "A Cambion is a kind of lineaged - humans with extras from one of the Realms of magic. Cambion are Autumn, the magic of Autumn is to do with contracts, and connections, and luck and coincidence - so a contract that's signed in Cambion blood is less likely to be broken, and just generally has better outcomes.

The Sentinel Gate is a big magic stone gateway, it's one of the features that makes up Anvil, though it wasn't from there to start with - the Urizen brought it with when they joined the Empire, some huge performance with oxen and rollers and so on.

It responds to conjunctions in the stars to send people to significant locations - you can detect whether it will open to somewhere, at what time and how many people get to go through, with simple magic, and open it with the same kind of thing.

So if someone appears out of nowhere, they probably came through the Gate and your life is about to get more interesting real quick - usually the people through the gate have, like, maybe half an hour to an hour to get back through before it closes and they have a long walk home.

Anvil is kind of the capital, but most of the time it's just some ruins - it's forbidden to build there, and four times a year people from every nation converge on it and put up a big tent city, and that's where politics gets done.

Every territory has a Senator elected by however that nation likes to elect people - here in the Brass Coast we just cut out the bit in the middle and let people buy the position directly with money - and Senate meets during these gatherings to debate stuff and pass motions, which turn into law and commission big building works and stuff..."

"-I need to investigate the gate. A way to go home would be incredible."

"I've... completely lost track of when the next summit is, but I'm sure someone's got a calendar - they're the solstices and equinoxes. I don't think we were planning to send anyone this coming season, and it's been a while since I was there...

Actually, you might want to go see if you can bother the Imperial Prognosticators. I'm sure they haven't factored you into their calculations, and they're more likely to find you a conjunction if they have. I expect they spend most of the year in the Castle of Thorns, which is all the way over in Dawn, but we've already established you've got some considerable personal transport.

Do you want me to rustle you up an Anvil guide, to meet you there, if you want to fly off to inform the Civil Service of your existence? While I'd love to monopolise you down here helping us build things to fight the Grendel, I should probably let you go to Anvil at least once and hear everyone's pitch. And see if the Gate is feeling cooperative, although that makes it very likely that we would just lose you for good."

"...I wanna think about that tomorrow." Sigh. "The way I got here, from my perspective, is trying an advanced impeller technique they were letting anyone who passed control exercises try and failing in new and exciting ways that popped me out above a Navarr steading- I think is the right words? With massive internal damage from the transit."

"Ouch. They patched you up alright? I'm sure we can rustle up a Physick if you think you've anything hanging around from that. And, uh, do you want me to stop talking at you and find you a room to rest in?"

"I've got something for that integrated, and they helped out too. I probably would've made it through as long as someone fed and watered me, but they had something - so, think a thousand thousand thousand extremely tiny cuts on the inside of someone, the body can heal each individual one but they all bleed slightly and you get too weak and poison yourself - but they did some unpoison magic and after that it was just a couple days' bed rest. Much better than I'd been expecting. I think I should proooobably keep chatting a bit longer? Cool off, space out, bleed off the - everything?"

"Sure, we can do that. Anything in particular you want to cover, or shall I just ramble about Autumn magic or reminisce about Anvil?"

"I guess?

I miss my friends. And teachers and family and- The culture, you know. I miss browsing the internet for funny recordings, like the voice earlier. I miss going to Chinese restaurants and ordering sesame orange chicken and egg drop soup. I miss flying slalom races and playing soccer, and it's kind of creepy whenever I fly there's no communication traffic. Nobody to clear my flight path with, nothing on RADAR. Lonely."

"I have no idea what the 'internet' is, but we absolutely both have a small browsing library and we can send someone out for sesame chicken and egg drop soup, those sound like things I would expect to get at a street vendor in this town somewhere. You might need to describe a bit more what kind of sesame chicken you're after, mostly the kind I'm thinking of would be fried with honey, possibly orange blossom honey from somewhere fancy?"

"Fried with sauces at least, maybe honey would work? Wouldn't be the same probably, anyway. Tell me about Anvil? And Autumn magic? 'Cambion' can imply an inherently evil person, where I'm from- Though the language is extremely weird so I wouldn't lean on that at all."