"For my own curiosity, why is so much of it in anarchy? Humans have had societies beyond what could be described as someone's court for most of our history, and even capes can be organized. Are most fairies just extremely averse to cooperation?"

"Some fairies do live in largish groups. Mostly breeding kinds. Most individual fairies are breeders, but most kinds of fairies aren't. But there's nowhere as densely populated as the city I just overflew implied. And we can be self-sufficient pretty easily."

"Are capes harder to organize than other mortals?"

"Definitely. Who can gain powers is an essentially random sample, but powers only activate after some form of trauma. I admit some are perfectly well-adjusted individuals, but they're not exactly selected for that. And then they wind up obviously unique, powerful, and socially expected to bash one another's faces in. The general trend is that parahumans are much more likely than normals to do their own thing and in unpleasantly direct ways."

"But mortals in general are pretty easily coordinated, I gather."

"I suppose. To me it always seemed normal."

"How many people live in this city?"

"About three hundred fifty thousand. Brockton Bay is larger than most cities, but there are fifty or so larger in this country alone."

"You'd need to assemble continentsful of fairies to get that many together."

"For us it was mostly made possible by the industrial and agricultural revolutions. It sounds like Fairyland never had those. But the causes are ancient history now; large cities are just taken for granted."

"Fairies do some agriculture, but not in a particularly revolutionary way."

"I'll dig up some information on how it happened and add it to the list, if you're interested. History in general probably wouldn't even need to be redacted, the owners of any names being safely dead."

"...I have heard that humans re-use names a lot."

"You need to avoid hearing names even if there's no one attached? That sounds more dangerous than before."

"It wouldn't do anything by itself, but if I think of a name in connection with another mortal later and it happens to be right that works just as well as being told about someone's name in particular."

Piggot frowns. "If it's that easy, I may have to reconsider the suggestion about telling you some names. Any criminal who isn't too dangerous to get you close to might not be worth the risk to everyone who happens to share their name."

"If names are reused that often, yeah."

"Few names are unique, and some are common. I'll make sure everything is as redacted as possible."

"Okay. I really don't have any plans to mistreat any vassals I acquire here but I understand the desire for caution."

"You did accrue quite a bit of credibility by warning us in the first place. But people are justifiably terrified of Masters, and if it were to come out that we had potentially put random people under the complete control of a previously unknown hero, public opinion would turn against everyone involved in a heartbeat."

"I'd hesitate to describe the control as 'complete'. Vassals can escape sometimes. But yeah."

"Anything else before I arrange for what we've talked about so far?"

"Can these... machine lights be moved out of the way? I'd prefer to do my own lighting."

"They can be turned off easily like this." She flicks the switch on the nearest one, and it winks out. "If you want them moved physically too, I can send someone."