"I'm not eager to mobilize a large force myself. It's more that if you're working on this, I definitely don't want to waste your time getting me live sheep or repaving my driveway."

Sniper nods, and Fib adds, "We've explained the situation to a couple other people before, old partners of mine from before I Awoke, and had to shoot down one of them hoping to just, swoop in and free Yomi with some kind of mass military action."

“I am sure my citizens would go anywhere I asked them to and so I would really rather not. If you change your mind about wanting more people you can speak to Parliament on the subject.”

"We'll let the rest of the leadership back at Revival Base deliberate on that, I guess," Fib replies.

Ceanothus is free to ask this colorful fellow or his slightly less colorful friend any further questions that occur to her, or ask Autumn and Blue once the sample kits come back and Fib and Sniper head back to the garage to hand them out.

Soon enough the sosei-shita's samples are all taken and on their way back to wherever they came from.

She has a lot of questions. She'd like to know if Earthlings or elves are going to any of these afterlife-y places, whether it's fine to be an open conduit in Rorch such that she can openly hire some engineers from there, what asteroids are like as people, what the other conduit is like, and so on.

She also wants to explain more about immortality limits. It only works if they have a mature clone, which will take a week and 15 passes to grow. If Fib dies and uses this immortality method, he'll wake up in the clone, in Ceanothus's fortress, at which point he should get another clone started growing and then leave. For Fib it will work from anywhere. For people without a Rim connection it will only work from Rim.

(The samples for the sosei-shita are also viable. She reports this.)

Fib cheerfully answer any questions that don't involve private personal information. For example:

It does seem like new kagemono are ending up in Yomi somehow, but they might also just, like, generate naturally from the world? At the very least, they don't reproduce and are definitely 'taken out of circulation' over time, but are also not steadily dying out. The same goes for ishim over in the Aether though their lot in life seems a might bit better.

Fib hasn't gotten any issues for being a conduit in Rorch. He hasn't found any others there yet but the Guards know what one is so there's gotta be some. What they have an issue with is the fact that he's permanently on fire, and fire is banned in Rorch. It's kind of fucked, but his biochroma can't catch other things on fire, so they tolerate him as long as he stays within sight of the Guard and doesn't, like...do anything.

The asteroids are kind of fucked, honestly. Most of them are kind of like animals, and those are honestly the nicer ones. The older, bigger, smarter ones are kind of like if you took every trace of humanity out of an Ancient Greek philosopher. They're absolutely willing to do some nasty shit if they think it'll serve as a good argument in some kind of ancient psychic debate they're having with another asteroid. When Fib feels the need to head over to that world, he makes a point of not bringing anyone else and of staying as clear away from big asteroids as he can manage.

The other conduit goes by Groundskeeper, and she's really nice! She makes some fucking great jam, which in Fib's opinion goes very well on a wormfruit sandwich. He met her on the world he just recently connected to, the great big university campus, and mentioned that she hangs out there pretty often. If Ceanothus wants to meet her, she can talk to Fib about tagging along the next time he heads there.

And so on and so forth for presumably many other topics.

Also, excellent! Though, hm. Given that it only works while they're on the Rim, that might be less helpful for Sniper than for people like Autumn and Blue who are here pretty much all the time. Blue's sent everything back home via phone call, though, so depending on how many clones Ceanothus is willing to have hanging around, the people over at Revival Base might put together another party to come visit this place in a few days, so that other people who are going to be here most of the time can come back via clone instead of respawning back in Fib's Stone Library and needing to be picked up the next time he visits.

Ceanothus would love to be introduced to Groundskeeper but she's not sure she's ready to travel with Fib given that it's hazardous, maybe he'd be willing to pass a mirror along? Maybe she can observe his travel issues and make a decision.

Does Rorch have an internet, and can Fib get a connection to it or get her a connection to it if so, because a city in which being openly a Conduit is no big deal seems like a good place to do some shopping and hiring. (If fire is illegal that doesn't bode well for him attempting to hire people on her behalf, but maybe if she thinks his jumps are survivable she can visit.)

The fortress has hundreds of rebirth tanks and she does not have hundreds of non-elf residents. She reserves the right to ask Fib to use a more minimal number later, if she can't get more later and does get more options to use them for her own purposes, but for now they're available. Users don't actually have to come in person if they can keep the samples stable in transit.

Is Ceanothus using Fib's bondworks an option, or not really?

Fib can bring a mirror along next time, yeah! That'll probably be in just a rim-day (or, pass? They'll see if Literate Elfland's terminology sticks back at Revival base) or two, since his tether is very ornery about a whole new world that he's only spent, like, an hour or two in compared to three-ish (non-Rim) months in all his others.

Rorch does have an internet, though it's a lot more ~balkanized than the average Earth's internet, and big chunks of it are fenced off and only permitted access by people who own capital, which the locals call the Manage-Net. Regardless, Fib has a mirror there, in the little sosei-shita community out there, so once the mirror he gave to Ceanothus connects to her network, she should be able to connect with the fragment of the Rorch internet that's been connected to his network.

Fib has to no idea how stable sosei-shita DNA samples are, since he wasn't even totally sure they had DNA until now, but several of the others are a bit more set in-place back at the base, so being able to just bring samples is potentially a big help. They'll see if they can figure something out. Maybe something with the Prison-- no, then Ceanothus wouldn't have any way to get the samples out. They'll workshop it.

Maaaybe? In order to bind yourself to the bondworks, you need to have Azoth (or at least something similar enough to it), so that you can share some of your flame with the works and become sort of entangled. The particular nature of kagemono (and subsequently sosei-shita) means that they're naturally receptive to his biochroma and are able to incorporate it into themselves for a time, and if they then give it to the bondworks, its capable of entangling with them. He doesn't think that exact process would work with a human, but there's a different thing he can do with his biochroma, using it to sort of push or pull on other people's emotions, that he tries very hard to ignore the existence or implications of. Hypothetically, if he used that power in the right way, it might let the person he was using it on bond with the bondworks? He's far from certain it would work, though. Alternative, he could find a bridge to Crucible and she could spend another three years connecting to it and getting Azoth on her own.

Ceanothus is pretty sure that smart corporations are going to prioritize having their advertisements on the public internet, but she'll see.

She's been doing some work on a pterosaur-based cold chain and could investigate using that for DNA samples if it'd help.

She appreciates the information about Crucible but she is not going to spend three years on that anytime soon. Three years is a long time and she needs to focus on the Rim.

Fib thinks he's seen local businesses advertise on the public internet, at least. He's not actually sure if the public internet connects to other Districts, though.There might be some kind of legislation that bans it or the infrastructure just might've never gotten built in the District that he sticks to, he's not sure.

Delivery pterosaurs would probably be very helpful if that's feasible, yeah.

Three elven lifetimes is quite a bit of time to miss, yeah. It's one of the reasons why Fib is glad the sosei-shita are all as ageless as he is, and nearly as hard to kill.

Anyway, unless there's any other relatively urgent business, now that ties have been made, it seems like a good time to head back to Revival Base. Fib's people can talk to Ceanothus's people more once their respective communication networks are interlinked.

Ceanothus agrees. She will wish them safe travels and looks forward to a productive ongoing relationship.

She loses her calm demeanor once she sets down the mirror.

The number two is ridiculous and can't exist.* (Mona's existence is her responsibility and didn't really count.)

There will be other technologically advanced factions around here besides hers, and they're probably not all going to be this friendly. Extraterritorial earthquake warnings may be too risky. The state might be attacked by large well-armed groups, not just the occasional tribe of independent elves with bows and spears.

On a more positive note, they might get non-elf immigrants! Which is, actually, also a hassle, because she expects most people to be less cooperative than the elves. They'll potentially need a proper justice system.

* The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov

Other people are, at least, already discussing her first concern.