"I hope that works out but I don't know what to expect."

"It's going to be a seriously difficult challenge BUT I already know how to do it if I had all the tools and machines I had in City Frostbound! The miners all used power armor and carried two hundred pound drill arms and I literally helped make them! It's just, you know, requires some very high end machining capabilities and a lot of good chrome steel and a mile or so of insulated wire and a few hundred vacuum tubes and a few other things that will be hard to get."

"Is this among the things you can teach anybody to make?"

"...Ehhhh..." Handwobble. "The control systems are pretty Sparky. Maybe."

"Anyway, do you want to invite this lady along with us?"

"Probably yes, just on 'better safe than sorry' principle."

Fiducia Papinia can be ready to leave a couple hours after dawn, on the understanding that they will not charge instantly to the swamp once they arrive in Chillbriar and will instead be staying the night there so she doesn't need swampy spells tomorrow.

Yeah, overnight in Chillbriar, then swamp hunting. She mentions her Sparking state, eliding the details and just saying it's not something to worry TOO much about if she starts ranting.

Oh, do Belmarniss, or Fiducia Papinia as the apparently least-killy member of the party, want to borrow her single-shot pistol? Should hit harder than a crossbow bolt and it's a bit of a cone, too, so somewhat easier to aim. It's essentially disposable but using it is definitely preferable to dying.

"I'd be happy to carry it."

Here's how to aim and fire, it's a lot like a tiny crossbow- Here's how to arm it, just click that lever into place (she clicks it right back out)- Shall they meet up at the temple tomorrow, what time?

"I intend to pack tonight, so I can be ready an hour and a half after dawn."

Sure, that works.

"...Once we're more used to Taldor I probably want to rent a forge or some other workspace, keep building, I can feel the urge growing slowly," she mentions to Belmarniss, once everything is arranged and coins changed. "In the meantime, quiet, out of the way inn. Not a cheap place but not the fanciest either... If this town even has more than like two inns."

"Even if it has more than like two inns they might not all rent to me."

Well, they'll find out, won't they? She is quickly getting tired of being the face. It's kind of exhausting, but this must be the mirror of what Belmarniss had to do in the caves, while she could just - Spark out, after the first few days.

...Anyway, she will not hesitate to namedrop Chillbriar and its wisp problem, that they'll be leaving to go fix tomorrow, with Fiducia Papinia and the blessing of the Baron's brother.

The first place they try is in fact booked solid or "booked solid" but the second will take them.

She seems kind of antsy as she is cleaning and checking her equipment while they get ready for the night.

None of this is quite what she expected. Also, they're maybe going to die in two days. But 200 gold per wisp is more steel, more acid, more glassware. Maybe a water wheel, when they figure out where to try out industry...

They're pretty committed right now.

She sketches a lot, when she needs to calm down. Today: A grand view of City Frostbound's blast furnaces, tall and arched and with monumental smoke-stacks, complete with the elevated railway and neat lines of steam pipes and a minetrain hauling ore carts in.

60 tons a day of iron ore. 30 tons a day of coal, and the result: About 40 tons of steel, 42 on a good day. 7200 pounds of material every single hour. Two pounds per second. She imagines someone chucking rocks, constantly, forever, and watching them pile up.

"...I'm anxious. I'm not sure if there's anything useful to do about that."

"Is there something you usually do?"

"Build things... Listen to the scouts telling wild stories. Read adventure novels."

"I sold off my novels before we left but I remember some plots pretty well, if you'd like me to tell one."

"I don't want to put you out though."

"Does it look like I have exciting evening plans? I can summarize you Ilvaria and Arcavato."

"Yeah, point. Better than sitting here cleaning things for the third time in a row silently."

So Belmarniss summarizes Ilvaria and Arcavato.

"It's interestingly different from Heterodyne Boys stories... They're already epic level in all their stories, and it's usually a mystery or negotiation or stealth mission or something they have to solve to advance the plot, not 'kill the thing'."

"There's stealthier and mystery-er books out there, this just happens to be one I read recently."