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Cam is out flying. There's a decent cloud of atmosphere around the gold plane, now, millenia of demons making air around themselves for comfort and not sealing it up because why would you bother. There's a small forest, here - the effect is kind of ruined by the lamps it has to grow under, but it's still pretty.
He feels an open summons and lets it grab him -
Cam on Barrayar
from_scratch
thisvorlunatic
"I also happen to know where you can find some nice nowhere," he says. "I own some nice nowhere, for that matter, but it was bombed to bits in my grandda's day and I'll probably have grandchildren by the time the radiation dies down enough for anyone to live there."
from_scratch
"I am indestructible. I am not invulnerable, just indestructible, but radiation poisoning doesn't get a chance to do anything."
thisvorlunatic
"All right then. I'll show you my house and we'll see how you like it. It's very close by, that's another advantage it has over nowhere."
thisvorlunatic
"How much Barrayaran history and politics have you absorbed in two weeks of eavesdropping, by the way...? I'm wondering whether to take the half-hour walk so I can brief you on what to absolutely avoid bringing up about Komarr if you happen to meet my father. And other miscellaneous points of interest. You know the emperor's name, that's a start."
from_scratch
"It's surprisingly hard to figure out common knowledge by listening to what people consider worth mentioning in conversation. Do explain."
thisvorlunatic
"All right... This story starts - I'm going to say this story starts in the year twenty-two-twenty-something. Six? I want to say six but I'm not sure. Anyway. Humanity discovers wormhole jump technology. There's a massive explosion of space colonization in a short span of time. People are throwing together stations at likely-looking jump points and shoveling microbes onto any planet with likely-looking soil. Barrayar was right there in the first wave, with a mixed group of British, Russian, French, and Greek colonists in the first batch. We never got a second batch, because that was when humanity discovered that wormholes can spontaneously collapse. Then we had six hundred years to lose hold of all the complicated technology we no longer had the infrastructure to maintain, rediscover feudalism, and claw our way back up from there. That period is known as the Time of Isolation. We were just figuring out gunpowder again when the wider galaxy rediscovered us, at the end of a five-jump route from Komarr. They were and are our sole gateway to the wormhole nexus at large."
thisvorlunatic
"Oh yes," Miles agrees. "An addendum to that throwaway about reinventing feudalism - we don't quite have an aristocracy. We have the Vor. Originally tax collectors, hence the title Count, rederived as a shortening of 'accountant'; subsequently expanded into a kind of military caste. If you meet someone whose surname starts with Vor and you're tempted to address them by the rest of it minus that syllable, don't; it's a mortal insult and may in some cases actually tempt someone to try to take your head off with a sword, especially if he's over fifty. I can get into that more if you ask, but you might be better off consulting Mother for an outsider's perspective; she's Betan. Anyway. Shortly after the galactics found us again, Komarr took a bribe from the Cetagandan Empire to stand by and let them send an invasion fleet to take over our planet. They did. Occupied us for twenty years. We managed to beat them back, which is nothing short of miraculous when you consider the technological disadvantage we started with; my radioactive inheritance used to be the capital city of Vorkosigan District. And then after we beat them back, being still a bit sore about the twenty years of varyingly brutal occupation and strongly disinclined to let it happen again, we took over Komarr."
He takes a breath.
"My father planned and led the invasion. He intended it to be completely bloodless, and it was, at first - remember those arcologies. Major strategic vulnerability. We just had to show up in sufficient force that they couldn't expect to beat us, scare off the mercenaries they hired, and then offer some pleasant terms to surrender on while looming pointedly in orbit. Father did all that. Unfortunately for everyone, somebody on Father's staff decided that we deserved a little blood. Or something. He ordered two hundred high-ranking Komarrans killed, after Father had given his personal word they'd be spared. It's gone down in history textbooks as the Solstice Massacre, for the dome it took place in. Father was... um... not happy, to say the least. He executed the man responsible, which unfortunately led to some ambiguity about whether or not it had been Father's idea all along, and now our name is a curse to most of Komarr and any galactics who believe the conspiracy theory. The backlash from the Komarrans afterward didn't help anything. Not that I blame them for being upset, but I dearly wish they had decided to be upset with fewer explosives."
He takes a breath.
"My father planned and led the invasion. He intended it to be completely bloodless, and it was, at first - remember those arcologies. Major strategic vulnerability. We just had to show up in sufficient force that they couldn't expect to beat us, scare off the mercenaries they hired, and then offer some pleasant terms to surrender on while looming pointedly in orbit. Father did all that. Unfortunately for everyone, somebody on Father's staff decided that we deserved a little blood. Or something. He ordered two hundred high-ranking Komarrans killed, after Father had given his personal word they'd be spared. It's gone down in history textbooks as the Solstice Massacre, for the dome it took place in. Father was... um... not happy, to say the least. He executed the man responsible, which unfortunately led to some ambiguity about whether or not it had been Father's idea all along, and now our name is a curse to most of Komarr and any galactics who believe the conspiracy theory. The backlash from the Komarrans afterward didn't help anything. Not that I blame them for being upset, but I dearly wish they had decided to be upset with fewer explosives."
thisvorlunatic
"Isn't it just? Anyway. Then some time passed and we got cocky and tried to invade another planet through a newly discovered wormhole connection and got our asses soundly kicked, which is just as well, but we lost Emperor Ezar's only son in the process, which is why the third planet of the Barrayaran Empire is named Sergyar. Empty habitable-ish place we turned up along the route to the failed invasion. And then we had a little bit of a civil war around the time I was born, because Gregor was five when Ezar died and that kind of situation attracts opportunists. But we've been pretty much war-free since then, except for the Komarran revolts I alluded to a minute ago, but they've been over for more than a decade now and we still own the place."
from_scratch
"Habitable-ish. Do I have an exciting career in terraforming ahead of me before I get bored and start whipping up my own planets from scratch?"
from_scratch
"I said, I always wanted to terraform a planet, but nobody at home would let me at Mars. Or let me talk."
from_scratch
"It's customary to summon demons incapable of talking except to agree to or refuse proposed deals. Kind of inconvenient. It's so we don't talk people out of their souls."
from_scratch
"Well, demons have this mythological presence in addition to the actual one, and for a long time only a handful of people knew we were real, so actual information was thin on the ground. We suffered for the comparison and since they don't let us talk we can't really correct 'em. Angels and fairies are nearly as dangerous - well, to the individual summoner, they can't destroy entire planets - and they don't get that kind of treatment."
thisvorlunatic
"Thank you. Very kind. I would object if you did that, and so would a lot of other people. Granted not for very long."