The Unshakeable Scout and the Determined Governor

The colony starts to carve a place for itself on the southern continent. Valanda toys with calling it something that'll make people who have morals think of morality but ends up telling the imperial government that his new state is officially named Ira Sani, Ice Beach in Ilan, because an Ilan name will make caralendri more likely to immigrate and caralendri will want human-friendly architecture.

Things move frustratingly slowly. The plumbing gets planned, parts of the plans get tested, they discuss zoning, they discuss zoning some more, there are always more things to figure out and more ways everything could go wrong and not one single slave saved so far. He wants to move to Hyrule and forget it all. Instead he imports frozen fruits from the mainland and has Dareni check for the presence of known poisons in the native wildlife and pretends individual flakes of falling snow are monsters from Ganon that he needs to beat to death with his staff.

Every day he steps out of the illusions on the tents and creates a record of the slow effects of the drugs he bought in Milliways for when he has a new voice and a new face and needs to prove he's not some random person who killed and replaced Valanda. On most of those days he talks to himself. He sends a letter to the imperial government on the same flight Nik takes listing dates, places, turns of phrase to have their knowledge mages look for in his rambling monologues to find the times he spoke letters to them. He tells them how to find the time he talked about why he wants permission to test the effects of setting the age of majority for humans a year younger, to sixteen.

People come, mostly to visit, only rarely to move to the new world. Under Ira Sani state law there's a fee to bring a slave into the state, a tax on all slaves, an additional tax on all slaves over the age of majority for their species. The only result of all these laws is that one adventurous and introverted agerah sells a slave in Norvand before immigrating.

While Nikolas is on the mainland and has been for a while Valanda ends one of his monologues and decides to head inside and finds Milliways. He says hi to Bar and sits down for some nice sulking instead of putting up his sign immediately.

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Sigh. "They do, but they're stupid about it and wrong about parts of it. Big parts of it. You have to be careful with that. If the medicine's expected in the blood, putting it in the liver could mess things up..."

Mahan

"I... think medical structure mages know enough not to do that? Maybe I should learn the stabbing people thing in case it comes in handy." Shiver. "It had better not."

"Pills and injections are the way things are done for us. Short of magic, they're the best way we've found to deliver medicine. It's actually close to painless, some ways of doing it! Entirely possible medical structure mages can skip that, and we'd be glad for it."

Mahan

"Yeah, that sounds... pretty skippable."

Kenneth will quietly study Hari and copy notes and not think about Mahan in that way.

Meanwhile, over by the soon-to-be-town of New Dover, the immigrants have been very industrious. By the time the force mage's second haul of stuff has arrived, they've raised some kind of eight-foot-high metal structure with pipes branching off, leading into the tents neatly arranged nearby.

...And a... Metal... Creature? Whatever it is, it walks slowly (well, it looks slow, but it's so large that each ponderous step moves it twenty or thirty feet...) on four tall, spindly limbs, glowing with heat. It reaches a tree, reaches down, and starts cutting at it near the base with a loud grinding sound. Nobody seems to be piloting or controlling it.

The force mage sets things down and looks for someone who could answer questions.

The woman shouting instructions (in a foreign language) to the people who come and start opening crates might be an option.

"If you speak Hari I have questions about that thing!"

Some of them talk to each other, gesturing at him.

At length, someone else is fetched from a tent and says, "Is problem with moving things?"

"What makes it go?"

He consults a sheaf of notes, probably for help figuring out the words. "...The automaton. Is heat. And steam."

The force mage thinks about that for a while, then sends a ring flying relatively gently at him.

And back he goes to pick up more things.

Well, they're not going to return his ring.

The automaton finishes cutting the tree. It falls. Slowly, the giant thing picks it up and starts dragging it toward the tents.

Kenneth managed to spend a most of a day in Milliways with Mahan, copying out medical texts, in five minutes. And now that he's in Ira Sani, as the person with the best Hari, the temporary overseer asked him to go get price sheets from as many local mages as possible. He's still... Kind of slow and stilted about it, not conversational, but he literally started yesterday, and he can speak and listen at about the level of a five year old if they go slowly enough, and a first or second grader if he has time to peer at vocab lists.

He says hello to the first person he hasn't met yet who he sees!

Ahgari

"What do you want?"

"I want to meet mages and learn their skills and prices." This line at least he has memorized.

Ahgari

"My price depends on what it is you want me to do. I have experience renting homes, planning new neighborhoods and hating people."

A large unfriendly talking tiger is somewhat unnerving. He wants to go hide somewhere. He tries once more, "...Magic skills?"

Ahgari

"I'm a structure mage. If you tell me the chemical structure of something non-toxic to agerah that won't explode if touched and give me the elements to make it I'll make it, but I don't guarantee your safety, I didn't study chemistry. How much I charge to let you risk both our lives depends on how much of whatever it is you want me to make."

"I understand. Thank you."

He turns away.

He forgot to ask about the actual prices. Well, if they need more medicine he'll swallow his fear and come back to that one.

Someone else? Not a big cat, perhaps?

Turns out "not a big cat" narrows it down a lot. There are a couple small fluffy cute people like the force mage. There's a not-quite-human man.

He says hello to and repeats his line about skills and prices to a belul.

"I'm a heat mage. I used to work for a smith and I know a lot about how metal behaves when heated. How much I want for my work depends on what it is you want me to do."