There are some more steampunk people out here! They've set out tarps full of... Stuff. Those seed boxes, crates of food, piles of clothing, tool racks, what looks like useless junk, stuff.

The priest is wandering around talking to and comforting people.

"Hey, you're the priest, right? There's a possible problem some of your people brought up that we should talk about."

"I am a priest, yes. Though not all of these people belong to my church. Thank you for bringing us all here! What's your concern? I hope I can address it."

"One of the people I rescued from a different world had some terrible things happen before he found Milliways that are still relevant. I've been able to independently corroborate some of his story and see how he acts around people who honestly would not trust him less if he were evil. Someone called for help and he went to help them and it was a trap. A vampire tortured him and then turned him into one of them. There was a magic compulsion that came with it, I have two different corroborating sources for this, that could make him do things, even evil things. He's free of that compulsion now but there's still the bloodlust. I decided it was worth the risk and took him in and I can confirm he's now the second most moral person I've ever met. Some of your people have a very reasonable concern about interacting with him."

"I don't know what to say about that... It seems that whatever they thought about vampires may be wrong. Though, it wasn't something I expected to actually come up. I, personally, believe anyone can be saved by making the difficult choice to act with virtue and reject temptation, even if their nature is of sin. I will make sure to emphasize that in my sermon."

"Thank you. I'm glad we could discuss it in advance, I imagine if anyone had been surprised after moving in that could have gone badly. Please let me know if you need anything, I'll be inside discussing resettlement details with some of the others."

"In England, most churches were exempt from business taxes, as they are not a business - but a charity, an organization whose only income is donations, freely given, and which performs a public service free of charge to all who want it."

"There's no imperial or state tax on all businesses regardless of industry. I'm not sure you'd be taxed as an organization even without a specific exemption but I'm not totally sure what services you provide besides consultation with priests."

"Churches offer spiritual guidance, a sense of community, a sense of stability and a pillar on which to build your faith. Everyone knows that if they are in trouble, if they need a place to sleep or food to eat because of some misfortune, we will house them, we will feed them, we will care for all who come, even the wretched and sinful, as God commands us - 'love thy neighbor as yourself'."

"I admire your mission and I'll be thrilled to have you. It won't be a problem unless the imperial government misunderstands your purpose as selling things and the things you give out are things that would be taxed, which might happen with food depending on the food. It's not likely to come up but if there is a problem and the imperial government fines you for tax evasion depending on how much it costs I can try to cover that myself. I can't promise I can if somehow you ended up owing millions of rings but it's really unlikely the empire will want anything from your organization. I can't think of any Ira Sani state taxes you'd fall afoul of and I can change them if there are."

"Thank you. I must attend to worldly concerns as well as spiritual ones, so thank you for reassuring me on the subject of money. I hope our mission goes well, and the church will be as open to you as anybody else if you wish to visit. I don't believe there's anything else we should discuss right now?"

"It's an honor to be invited to your church!"

Well, time to get back to the people who might but probably won't hate Nikolas. How are they doing now?

They've gone back to amicably planning.

Is Valanda's city going to have roads? Railways?

They think his plumbing is very clever and may well want to copy it.

Perhaps the airport can set aside a space for airship maintenance equipment, if there's no urgent need for that space. Airships might some day be competitive with force mages.

If he's going to be doing a lot of building, he might have reason to threaten to revoke the logging permissions he promised to get a better price on lumber, someone observes.

"I'm planning on roads but not railways, most of our public transit flies instead of using up space on the ground that could be used for other things. Revoking those permissions would be a hassle, I won't. How much space do you want set aside at the airport?"

What about tunnels? London had a marvelously convenient prototype electric train that ran underground. You could go two miles in five minutes and it fit hundreds at once and was very profitable.

Half an acre, built up properly, could support maybe two dozen flights of airships the size of the one he used to fetch them here per day. This doesn't include a place to store them, just a fueling depot and offices for engineers and space for tools and so on. They'd store them and build them and do more detailed work somewhere else.

"If you get a technology-based airline working that would be really good, definitely worth the space. How would you keep the tunnels from collapsing, how would you keep the air fresh, how would you avoid getting in the way of the plumbing?"

The geologist has an architectural bent and Bar has plenty of relevant books. Pumps! Pumps are great, here's how they work! Going deep if the soil allows it, planning, surveying, and keeping meticulous records of everything that is underground.

"How far apart would you want stations to be?"

That really depends on how dense the city is going to be. This is a long term project requiring careful planning and more information on conditions than they have right now, but they're glad he seems to like the idea.

"I can put you in touch with the people you'd be planning with when we're there. Ahgari, anyway, he's the one who's still on the continent right now. I can't give you a definitive yes or no yet but I hope you look into it when you can talk with people there and look at the land you want to build under. Although I don't think there'll be as much demand for it as for intercontinental transit for the near future, everything interesting is on the other continent."

Maybe cities on the other continent will be interested in subway systems...

But, right, something for later. They're going to all go sleep for the night soon. Milliways time shouldn't be too screwy if they're all going to meet up again according to Bar, it's usually convenient, and they can give him a list of their room numbers if for some reason it takes two weeks his perspective for them to wake up.

In that case he'll just do the same and they can come get him if he's the slowest.

Half a dozen frostlanders are eating breakfast drowsily when he comes down the next 'morning'. Katherine the botanist and the mechanical engineer are going over plans for some kind of agricultural machine.

"G'morning, governor," Katherine greets him.

"Good morning! Let me know if there's anything I can help with."

And he gets some Hylian-style breakfast from Bar.

They have a final list of who will be moving into Har and what their old professions are and which children are... Assigned... To which adults. (They look uncomfortable about this, but it is what it is.) In total, 43 adults, 6 teens and preteens, and 14 of the infants and toddlers from the hospital.

Everyone adult has agreed to give a small portion of their land allocation to be owned communally, the roads and church and plumbing/electrical infrastructure and a park and a graveyard and a garbage collection place and some public buildings in their new town will be built on 'common' land owned by the town and administered by the mayor (they want to have an election six months from now), they have a town charter written up detailing all this, does he have any concerns or objections about it?

Do the children get land allocations? And those would go to their new parents, correct?

Some more land per person would maybe be nice. You can't do much better than subsistence farming on 12 acres. Greenhouses help but are expensive compared to all that unused land sitting there. Perhaps they could get a couple 144-acre farm plots? Or maybe people who want more land to farm it for profit can buy it on a mortgage and pay him over 10-20 years or something?