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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The other belul comes up to him.

"I overheard you say you're getting price quotes for magic. Are you interested in void magic, too?"

"Yes. I - uh - void magic is not legal in other states. You do not much - learn?"

"Yeah, we're going to be researching what we can do now. If you have an idea for an application let me know and I might be able to try it for you."

"Make void of only some elements? Make void inside strong box, float on air forever? Make void of light, make things dark? Make place where is always void? ...No always void. Dangerous."

"That last one sounds like a really good way to get everyone killed. Second thing I've tried already, a ring to show you the result?"

"We know it works. We do it in experiment... Five ring to show my friend the result and let him touch it for one minute."

"Your friend can touch the container, not the void, for one minute for that much."

He fetches Rogers the mechanical engineer who was sitting on a crate reading, and explains the deal.

They both come back over. Kenneth has five loose rings.

The void mage shows them to a tent where a collection of metal boxes is laid out in order of size. None of them are anywhere near large enough to float. All of them are unexpectedly light for their size, by more the larger they are.

Rogers measures their inertia and weight. Quickly. And then does some math, and gives a nod to Kenneth.

"Yes, those do have vaccum in them. There is a difference in weight and inertia. If you do it big enough, it will float. We can work on something like that later. Exciting! We can also pay if you learn to void everything except element one in an area."

He hands over five rings.

"I'll try to figure that out. When you have work for me come find me. I'm called Atharet."

"Definitely!"

He attempts to find a knowledge mage next. Rogers is harping on about finding iron deposits.

A man who is not a knowledge mage offers to help them find one for a ring.

His rings are numbered and he's getting practice talking. What kind of mage is he?

Heat, but he's not very interested in miscellaneous mage work, he's here to study the plants.

Fair enough.

Asking everyone if they're a knowledge mage is rude when he's refused to pay a ring to know. But he knows the symbol for knowledge mages, is anyone wearing it?

Not at first.

Then someone walks out of one of the tents and makes a beeline for the Milliways door, wearing quite a lot of rings and a necklace with the symbol for knowledge magic.

Aha!

"Hello I would like to hire you-"

"Then follow me."

Valanda steps into Milliways and instantly back out. He lets the door shut behind him. Dareni stops walking.

"...Never mind. Let's go someplace where I won't be tempted to murder him. What work did you have for me?"

"-Oh, Milliways..." He looks hesitant for a moment, then shakes himself a bit and says, "Ground... Knowledge. Amount of elements in spots in depths on map."

"Which elements, which spots, which depths?"

"Iron." Iron is easy to mine and refine into steel, with automata anyway, and the existence of sun mages makes it really not worth it to mine any other metal - though they might end up quarrying or digging clay or salt.

He pulls out a map. "Iron here, here, here. Find... Size and edge of many-iron-here?"

"How much are you offering for that?"

He shrugs. "How much you want?"

(His friend says, in English, that it'll probably only take her an hour tops if they just want the general outline of the ore veins, so don't get scammed.)