The sosei-shita living in the Rim have, over the last century and change, gained a great deal of experience. They know what a pterosaur is, for one. They've also learned the local people's language (if one can call it that). Thanks to their help of their Conduit ally, they also know what a speaker is, as well the character of its voice and how one might identify it as distinct from natural sounds.

In all that time, they have not previously seen a pterosaur, carrying a speaker, blaring warnings about oncoming...earthquakes and tsunamis, is their best guess. They're not entirely certain what to do about it.

About a day later, their ally and his closest companion return from their excursion to World Thirteen and the meeting with the other Conduit. After the cursory waiting time for their ally's world-auras to calm down (and for the handful of disturbing frog-like monstrosities that appeared alongside them to be slain by the fort's garrison), they enter into the fort, their ally distributing out his customary gift of color-flame(relatively small since he'd visited quite recently to drop off his car and make the two bicycles that he and Sunaipaa were riding at the moment). During the gift-giving, they give him the news since his last appearance, and he immediately suspects the involvement of another Conduit, and likely one well-attuned to the Rim (at least compared to himself). Information from his Stone Library confirms the likelihood of this, given the absence of giving such non-geographical names to places or areas in the baseline natives. Information from the same source indicates that information being provided is likely accurate as well.

This, in turn, demands attention. A team is put together, naturally including their ally, and among the vehicles currently housed in the fort's garage, a recently refitted ATV is chosen as the most appropriate vehicle. The team is dispatched westward, while those remaining at the fort begin preparing for an earthquake (something which, having experienced many times in the past several decades, they are fortunately well-prepared for).

This is likely furthest journey into the west any of them have been on, since they're bound for this alleged 'Word-Seeing Land', which none of them have seen any evidence of previously. This team is the most skilled wilderness survival experts and experienced explorers, and with their ally in the group as well, access to additional supplies of orichalcum, color-flame, edible food, and potable water is never far away. It takes them time, and occasionally searching for and finding additional speaker-equipped pterosaurs to make sure they're still headed in the right direction and haven't passed the territory by, but they're all but certain to find the Word-Seeing Land eventually.

What do they find, as they come upon its outermost border?

Locals in more modern clothing than they might expect, monitoring grazing animals. There's a barn visible in the distance. It's flying a flag that shows some kind of eight-pointed yellow figure on a black-and-white background.

The animals startle at the sound of the ATV, and after a moment the locals do too. They start herding the animals towards the barn.

The clothing settles it, at least as far as Fib is concerned. You just don't get modern clothes on the Rim like that without importing something, whether it's the clothes themselves or the tools to make them.

If the farmers don't seem hostile, Fib will slow his roll a bit, letting the ATV quiet down a bit, and try to approach one, at least close enough for one his current squad (probably Autumn, since she's had the most experience talking with the Rim elves) to cover the remaining distance on foot in a reasonable time.

There's one elf waiting nervously who doesn't appear armed. The rest are heading to the barn. One of them seems to be using a mobile phone.

Well, they're here to make contact with whatever sort of government the conduit here's set up anyway, so that's a good sign.

Autumn (who has a small, impish figure, dressed in camouflage pattern clothes and heavy boots, distinctly bronze complexioned face, silky black hair all tied up in a long pony-tail, and two properly formed but short horns projecting from her forehead) does indeed elect to make contact, hopping out of the ATV before it's come to a complete stop and jogging up to the lone farmer-elf remaining outdoors, calling out a greeting in the local language once she's within earshot.

"Greetings. Why do you come here? I have words to speak to elves who come here but you are not an elf."

"I am not an elf!" Autumn agrees. "I and my friends are here to talk with you and other people from Word-Seeing Land. We have not found other elves who do things like you do them before and want to learn about you."

"We know these things because Consul Ceanothus teaches elves." She looks a bit frustrated. "I speak like this but it is not good for this kind of talking. What do you speak? We see words, do you see words?"

"We see words. I speak these words, and other words:"

"English,"

"to Nishugo."

"English! We speak English. The other farmers should be calling emergency services but I can answer your questions in the meantime."

"English works! It's our Conduit friend's first language, even. I suppose our first question is just, what is your Conduit like? And your government, if you have one?"

"Consul Ceanothus is a wise and powerful leader. It is by her teachings and protection that we enjoy the riches you see here. Literate Elfland is a parliamentary monarchy, which means that Consul Ceanothus asks us to pick wise elves to govern and tells us to listen to them."

"That's...good!" Autumn replies, attempting to keep her cheerful disposition up. She had thought, for a moment, that these elves might be more like the humans she'd met, but no, they're definitely still elves, just elves who are able to farm and learn other languages, and presumably at least read and maybe also write. "In that case, it might be best for us to wait for your emergency responders to arrive, and speak with them more, and maybe find representatives of your Consul and parliament to speak to as well. I'll return to my team's vehicle now and tell them what you've told me."

And she indeed does that, and there's a consensus among them that waiting and talking to some higher ups, and maybe even this 'Ceanothus', presumably these elves' Conduit leader if they can get her attention, seems like the right move.

“The Consul and Parliament will likely be very interested. I think everyone will be more comfortable if you don’t approach the barn right now but I can probably go get our telephone, if you’d like.”

"No rush!" Autumn replies as she heads back to the ATV.

She'll wait where she is so that Emergency Services can meet up with her and so that nobody gets tempted to bother her daughters or the flock.

Eventually some raptor riders show up. They have weapons accessible but aren't currently wielding them. She waves them over.

If nobody from the ATV approaches them, they're going to approach it very slowly.

The ATV has a couple of bows, and Sniper has their long gun as always, but like with the raptor riders none of these are being wielded. They will let the riders approach, since it seems like the course of action least likely to result in potential misunderstandings.

Once they're within earshot, Autumn will call out another greeting, this time in English just to get things started with a convenient language.

"Hello and welcome to Literate Elfland. If the foundation of Literate Elfland is impeding your usual travel routes we can assist you. We appreciate your decision to avoid conflict thus far. We would like to ask you questions but you are not obligated to answer them."

"We're not impeded at all. We actually traveled quite far to find you, since we encountered one of the earthquake-warning pterosaurs and were interested in meeting whoever sent them out. Feel free to ask your questions, if there are any we aren't comfortable answering, we will simply not answer those ones in specific."

"Are you from Earth?"

"He is," Autumn gestures to Fib, aglow with spectral colors as he generally is. "The rest of us are from another world. Yomi, if you know if it."

"No, just here and Earth and the Library Hub. What's Yomi like? Earth and the Hub are very slow, is Yomi slow as well?"

Autumn nods. "About as slow as all the other worlds we've encountered. The Rim is the only one that's not slow, at least that we've found. Yomi is...bad. Very bad. Our friend helped us escape it, and helps us keep in contact with other worlds, and lets us access his Stone Library and its Mirror Network, so we help out when we can."

"Well, I hopefully speak for everyone here when I say I'm glad you're not in a very bad place anymore."

Someone else's telephone rings and she answers it.

"They claim to be interworld travelers."

"Earth, a library like ours, and another world called 'Yomi' which is also slow. One of them glows, the Consul doesn't glow."

"They speak English."

"Yes, they've been perfectly cooperative."

"They noticed the earthquake warnings."

"Do you want to just talk to them? I can put you on speaker."

"If we don't get the telephone back the department will need a replacement."

The rider on the telephone turns to them. "Leadership wants to talk to you and they're lending you this telephone."

Autumn will reach out (and exit the ATV if necessary, before returning to it) to receive the phone. "Hello! This is Autumn, former kagemono of Yomi, and present sosei-shita and expert explorer of the Revival Base here in the Rim, a long way to the east of here."

"Hello, Autumn. I'm Verena. I'm the head of the Introductions department and I'd like to formally welcome you to Literate Elfland. If you'd like to visit us in the capitol you're welcome to do so and we can provide housing. If you'd like to speak with Consul Ceanothus I expect that she is also interested. We are also willing to exchange maps with you."

"We're doing well for ourselves out at Revival Base, for the most part, and it would be...unwise to make our Conduit friend pass through any densely inhabited areas more often than is necessary. Talking with Consul Ceanothus and exchanging maps both seem good, though!"

"This telephone actually has a map function, anyone on the response team should be able to show you how to use it. Will you be available in three minutes or do you need to depart sooner than that?"

Minutes? Oh, like, Earth minutes, not Rim minutes. "Three minutes should be fine, our people back at Revival Base aren't expecting us back for at least a couple local days, and if things take longer than that we can contact via our own phones."

"We call the local day-night cycle a pass. I'll schedule the meeting. This may be premature, but would your party be interested in an exchange of library-mirrors with us?"

Autumn briefly holds the phone away from her head and confers with Fib before answering, "We're alright with that!"

"That's excellent. We have an internet now and thus can spare a mirror, I'll have someone send one over."

"Thank you. Fib, our Conduit friend, seems excited to expand the reach of his network. It's been a big part of how we've been able to skill-up and gain as much from Earthside trade, so I think I can understand his feeling. Anyway, anything else you'd like to ask us in the mean time? Maybe we can trade questions."

"Have you solved immortality?"

The four of them discuss the answer to this question as well. "Fib has as special bondfire in his Stone Library, which we've all bound ourselves to and which preserves us as long as its stores of color-flame are maintained, which Fib endeavors to do. We're not sure if that's the kind of solution you mean?"

"Something like that would be of use, as it's very rare for elves to live much past 50 weeks. The Consul has a personal solution but she hasn't figured out how to share it with elves yet and expects doing so to potentially take years."

"Ah, hm. Being bound to the bondworks does prevent aging, but it also requires physically visiting the bondworks, in Fib's Stone Library, which in turn requires each individual to jump there with him. Fib's jumps are also particularly dangerous, due to how they cause his world-auras to flare significantly for a short time afterwards, which can have deleterious effects on the mental states of himself and those physically near him, as well as cause the appearance of hostile wildlife and planar phenomena. We have teams, like this one right now, who are trained and accustomed to handle these sorts of things, but even if you go with us there's still a chance that you might be killed or suffer serious mental harm before you can bind yourself to the bondworks."

"We get new immigrants frequently and have much lower infant mortality than we used to. If Fib wanted to auction off travel slots to the elderly I'm sure he'd have takers, but even aside from the travel risks, I'm not sure anything requiring a single person's active intervention would resolve the issue at a state level."

"It is not a scalable solution," Autumn agrees.

"It certainly means that if you're interested in any goods or services we can offer you'll have something to exchange. I'm also happy to answer your questions now, of course, you've answered some of ours."

"True," Autumn replies, before Fib asks her something, and she in turn asks it to whoever is on the other side of the phone, "With regards to less risky trade-goods, would you have any interest in orichalcum or desert glass? They are metal Fib is capable of conjuring in significant quantity and which is suitable for construction purposes, and a highly versatile material which can he form from sand taken from a particular world, which is suitable for purposes similar to many different kinds of rubber or plastic."

"We have local metal and plastics production, though we may be interested in these goods nonetheless. Do you know what the conductivity properties of orichalcum are? If it's possible to conjure integrated circuits with it we'd be quite interested."

Once again Autumn confers with the others before answering. "Fib is only able to conjure orichalcum as large blocks, at the moment, and has to personally shape them into other forms, which would likely not be an efficient method of producing integrated circuits, even leaving aside the fact that, while we haven't confirmed it as such, Fib believes that orichalcum is likely to have an extremely high electrical resistance."

"Would Fib be interested in elves doing remote work in his name on Earth so as to fund Earth imports? We could discuss exact profit divisions if so."

"We actually already have a significant network of sosei-shita and allied humans on various Earths already, but expanding that probably wouldn't be bad? I suppose you already have your own Earth imports sorted, then. Fib has already made contact with another Conduit relatively recently, so we could potentially act as couriers between your Conduit and the other?"

"Oh, that's interesting. Both the multiplicity of Earths and that you've been acting on them. We've made a lot of tradeoffs towards subtlety due to some concern about Quellers, has that not been an issue for you?"

"Quellers?" Autumn asks, looking with some confusion to the others, who can only shrug in response.

"I believe they're a violent anti-Conduit organization."

"Ah," Autumn says simply, Fib's fiery colors flickering with hues of fear and doubt. "Do you have more information about them that you're willing to share?"

"We do, I personally don't. Would you like to hold while I review our records?"

"Yes, this seems important, and possibly urgent, if we've been drawing the attention of a dangerous enemy without realizing it."

One of the others, Blue (a sosei-shit with a deep blue complexion, with a bulky masculine build, whose head is crowned with knobs and a single proper horn at the center of his forehead) brings up his own phone, calling back to Revival Base to inform of them what the away team is about to learn.

Minuet in G major plays, then abruptly halts.

"Thank you for holding. The records we have are outdated to an unknown extent, such that we're not confident the organization still exists. They do suggest that the Quellers have some means of interfering with immortality. They're also said to practice cannibalism, worship a mysterious figure known as the Shogun, and have weapons that cut pathways between worlds. We haven't verified any of this, of course."

A shiver of disconcert passes through Autumn, Blue, and Sniper at the mention of 'the Shogun', in such a context. Off the phone, Fib will ask them what's wrong, and Sniper will explain that, while none of them have very strong recollections of any specific parts of their 'life' in Yomi before Fib revived them, stories of the Shogun, a sort of bogeyman that the oni-nushi would use to terrorize kagemono under their command when they weren't satisfied with simple physical abuse, were common enough to leave a lasting impression. Whether they speak of the same being, and whether that being might be or have been real, is another matter, but being so suddenly reminded of the concept was nonetheless somewhat disturbing.

After that aside, Autumn returns to the phone. "That's understandable, doing so sounds like it could be rather dangerous. We'll do our best to be cautious of them, and given everything else, Fib will likely take this under advisement and try to avoid spending too much time on any Earths, at least until more information comes to light and more focused safe-guards against the danger can be developed."

Fib seems like he's about to render a complaint about her speaking for him, but his fiery light dims fractionally and he seems to think better of it.

"Turning back to matters of trade, aside from food, shelter, and obfuscated Earth imports, are there any particular trade-goods or services you or your people are offering in particular?"

"If you're capable of accessing the Consul's immortality facilities, usage is likely available for sale. In terms of less significant products which you nonetheless may not have access to at your own base, we can offer tamed animals not found on Earth, textile goods, armor, various forms of entertainment, and so on. I'm not actually sure what you're in the market for. We produce a lot of our goods on-site, we just don't have the degree of local electronics production we'd prefer."

"Fair enough, that makes sense give the worlds your Conduit has access to. It might be beneficial for us to do a crop and livestock exchange at some point? But we'll need to arrange that later, since we didn't bring any proper trade goods with us this time."

They can speculate about trade for a while. It becomes eminently clear that Literate Elfland has historically exported a very low volume of goods, and while there is plenty of manufacturing it's almost entirely targeting internal demand.

Eventually, Verena pauses. "The Consul is available now."

"Excellent!" Autumn replies, quickly glancing around the away team before continuing, "I believe we're all ready."

Then their call can be transferred.

"Hello Sosei-shita Autumn, this is Consul Ceanothus speaking."

"Hello Consul Ceanothus! I assume you're the Conduit associated with these people? If so, I imagine you might be interested sharing information about others worlds? Or just trading information in general?"

"Yes, I am the Conduit." (She's not going to mention Mona to people she doesn't trust.)

"I'm interested in information, but I'm not sure if I can offer a fair trade. The Rim presents a lot of urgent issues and that's where my focus has been."

"Fair enough! I guess information for tangible goods seems more likely, especially if, as the previous speaker mentioned as a possibility, access to an additional form of immortality is on the table, particularly given the new threat to our friend that we've just learned about today."

"I would love to distribute immortality."

"Wonderful! That seems like perhaps a good thing to get started on. Will we need to go somewhere for that, or is it something you can do at range?"

“I’ll need a genetic sample to use in my facilities, so you could send that from where you are, but it would be convenient to have you near me in case of sample quality issues.”

The away team briefly speaks amongst themselves, and then to the local raptor riders, to confirm that nobody present has any genetic testing equipment on hand. "It seems we will need to meet you regardless. Do you know where we are at the moment, and have directions for how we can navigate to you? Or should we wait to be escorted?"

"You're at a peripheral village in the Hall–Héroult administrative district. My secretary can give you driving directions either all the way to the fortress or to a train station, if you expect you can drive safely, or we can arrange transit if not." She pauses. "Elves are very nice people and our legal code is accordingly somewhat sparse. We don't currently have penalties on the books for many forms of reckless driving. However, I will be very displeased if you crash into my citizens."

"Reasonable!" Fib says, loud enough that Ceanothus can hear him (and maybe a bit louder than is strictly necessary).

"Yes, we certainly don't intend to drive unsafely around any civilians," Autumn agrees. "I'm also not sure how well our ATV would keep if we just left it out there, so I expect driving directions would be for the best."

"I'm glad we're on the same page here. I'm going to redirect the mirror transit that was heading to your current location to meet you around halfway. I can transfer your call if you'd like to get driving directions as soon as possible."

"That sounds good!"

And presumably the call will be transferred, directions will be given, and the away team will head off, though they'll likely try to go around settlements rather than through them since even without Fib's world-auras amplifying emotions and intensifying irritation, the sound of an ATV driving through town, even at a fairly slow speed is kind of unpleasant.

They can navigate a remarkably eclectic mix of well-behaved vehicles.

They get a mirror at a scheduled stop.

Eventually they'll reach a parking garage near the center of a large city. The true center of the city is, for some reason, occupied by a mostly unmaintained park with golden spires breaking out through the trees.

It's been so long since Fib's been in a city-city, since it's kind of risky to have him around lots of people at once. The elves don't seem quite as badly affected as normal humans though, and the away team hasn't been hanging around socializing or taking in the view, but it's still nice to be amidst buildings and structures without necessarily feeling like he's about to bring them down around him, like on Earth or the new world, or like he needs to constantly be aware of not overstaying his welcome, like in Rorch. He savors it, without letting it make him dawdle.

He parks the ATV in the garage, with Blue and Autumn staying to keep watch while Sniper follows him as he makes the rest of the journey on foot.

The elves watch his party nervously, him especially so. One directs Fib's party to some outdoor tables and chairs near the park. From here, they can see a poorly maintained path leading into the park. At the one table is … another elf.

An automated delivery robot rolls down the path towards them.

"This should be the sampling kit."

Neat! They really are doing well for themselves out here.

He's a little sad (evidently so, in a slight bluing of his colors) at not getting to meet Ceanothus in person, but he consciously corrects this with a squeeze of his reservoir, injecting a burst of golden hope into his biochroma (an action which has become rote for him over the last few years), bringing him back into balance.

He and Sniper will try and figure out how the sample kit works (is it the blood kind, the saliva kind, etc.). If they can't manage it, hopefully there'll be someone to help.

It's just a kit for doing cheek swabs, and they can get assistance. (The turnaround time is short, so Cean feels it's better to risk the first round of sampling not producing viable samples than to make people deal with potentially unnecessary procedures.)

Fib's dealt with cheek swabs back before he Awoke, so this should be manageable without help. If there's multiple swabs, the two of them consider whether having Sniper give a sample might be good as well, but even if the option is there they decide against for now. Neither of them are entirely that sosei-shita even have DNA in the first place. They haven't had the opportunity to check, and it'd be best to test that with some prior awareness rather than jumping on Ceanothus with no warning.

Once that sample-taking is done, they'll package it up and send it back with the delivery drone and get back to waiting.

There's kits for the entire party. Someone must have done a head count at some point.

Fair enough, but also Blue and Autumn are still back at the ATV anyway, and he's the only one they've talked about bargaining over an additional immortality for, so it's still just Fib's sample for now. If this works out and it seems like they have enough to offer to get all four of them set up (and the sosei-shita can benefit from this at all, since having them able to benefit from his Bondworks once he gave them some colorflame already seemed like a remarkable coincidence) then they can talk with Ceanothus about hashing out a bigger deal.

He can put his kit back in the robot when he's done and it will head off to the fortress.

The mirror he was handed earlier chimes like a small gong.

Ooh, he managed to forget that they do that ever since he started using them mostly as the backbone for the sosei-shita's internet. That's a nice sound.

He'll go ahead and take the mirror out of the pocket he slipped it into and see what's up.

The mirror ripples before showing an unfamiliar face.

“Your sample took. I have a clone growing for you, but it’s not going to be ready right away.”

Fib nods. "Fair enough. Any idea how long it takes? Also, there were four sample kits. Should I ask if Sniper, Autumn, and Blue want to see if it works for them as well? And, what kind of debt are we in for, whether it's just me or the four of us?"

“I can flush the tanks if I want to, there’s no debt. If we come to a deal I could imagine you being glad we started on this early. I sent kits for your party for similar reasons.”

It's a little concerning that even after a deal is struck, these back-ups could get dropped at any time with no warning, if Ceanothus feels like it. They'll need to keep looking for more alternatives.

"Fair enough. Would you be willing to send the drone back with the other kits then? And I or Sniper will need to head back to the ATV to get the kits to Autumn and Blue."

"Yes, absolutely. One moment, please."

Fib can go back to seeing his own face for a moment while Cean sends the robot back.

"The kits are on their way. Thank you for holding."

"Thank you!" he replies, "Anyway, I suppose while the drone makes it way back out here and the sosei-shita takes their samples, we should discuss what we can offer you for this, and what of it that you'd like."

"The things I think of Literate Elfland as needing aside from immortality or lesser forms of life extension are industrial equipment and expertise. Given that other conduits still live, we may also be interested in defense agreements. If you have the capacity to liberate the elves that would also be of interest, though it's a more complicated issue. In practice I suspect you can do strange things I wouldn't think of, though."

"In terms of what I can offer personally as a Conduit:

"I'm pretty fast with jumps, at least compared to the one other Conduit I've met, and I can jump without needing to be right at the bridge. I can jump with a bike or a car or other stuff of similar size, and if I'm leading a group of vehicle I can bring up to four others with me too. That's how I've been doing the interdimensional commerce stuff so far. My jumps are a bit, uh...wild, though, so I generally try and make sure there's nobody around, and nothing important and fragile nearby either, since sometimes wild animals will pop up when I come through, usually either from here or Mu.

"I've got my Stone Library, which I've made mostly into an internet hub, though it's also where my preferred immortality is based, and some of the sosei-shita live there instead of at Revival Base since it's a touch safer, and they offer to help keep my server racks clean, keep the software updated, that sort of thing.

"Other than that, I've got orichalcum and desert glass, and I can survive in space without a suit, which was stressful to find out. Also I'm connected to a bunch of world, thirteen now that I've connected to a new one just recently."

Sniper gestures, and takes the mirror next. "As for Revival Base," they begin. They go on to explain the numerous details they're comfortable sharing as one of Revival Base's informal leaders, such as their relatively strength of engineering knowledge thanks to having studied many pirated engineering textbooks, manufacturing specifications, etc., as well as having dis- and re-assembled around a dozen different vehicles currently stored in the base's garage, as well as intimate familiarity with what sort of mechanical parts can be safely fabricated from either orichalcum or desert glass, and which need to be sourced elsewhere. They'll also go over Rim-local resource extraction projects, including the current state of their agriculture and animal husbandry, as well as extant trade partnerships with sosei-shita communities on a handful of different Earths, the Pink Desert, the Æther (who are also additionally allied with a local faction of ishim and ængelim), Crucible, and Rorch.

This is embarrassing but she needs to say it.

"I’d be very interested in basic landscaping around the fortress, as well as a better delivery system. I haven't figured out how to get the fortress defenses to accept elf citizens and my time is scarce."

On a state level she's interested in various agricultural goods that she couldn't have reasonably bought for a home garden. She would also recommend that Fib simply sell orichalcum and glass on the local market as he desires.

Finally, she would appreciate having a teleporter contact available in the event that the sky lands get stuck again, but it's not currently urgent.

Huh. The nature preserve situation around her base isn't intentional then, maybe?

"I'll spread the word that you're looking for that sort of work," Sniper replies. They don't have any actively growing plots of non-Rim native crops, and don't have special access to any particularly obscure varietals from the Earth, but they do have access to a fairly wide swathe of Earths, some of which might have crops that are locally common but are rare on most other Earths, and Fib could additionally be tasked with searching for viable crops in other other worlds.

"The frustrating thing is that unless people are okay with just having great big blocks of orichalcum, I kind of need to make it myself, since it's a major pain in the ass to work for anyone else. Desert glass is a bit more reasonable, but its mechanical properties won't change unless I'm there to change them, since I'd need to make different stocks of different kinds of glass, which might be confusing since they're all going to look pretty much identical otherwise."

Fib also unfortunately might not be great as teleporter contact? He's figured out, over the last subjective decade-and-change, that if he absolutely needs to move as fast as possible, he can blip back and forth between whatever world he's in and his Bevin, very fast, teleporting 5-ish miles every time. This, however, causes severe world-aura contamination in his Bevin, and to a lesser degree whatever world he's teleport-hopping across, so it's best avoided, and he'd only be willing to using it if it's Ceanothus's last resort for keeping her people fed and warm during a long-night.

"It's fine if you're uninterested in selling orichalcum or glass goods, I just don't have any real comparative advantage in assessing our need for them and I wanted to make that clear. We're not actually in dire need of metal, independent elves don't mine and in the next months I want to learn to sing new mineral deposits into existence. I will keep the issues with your teleportation in mind."

"Fair enough. I'll let the ones living in my Bevin know and hopefully they can set up some kind of safe-room to run to if it comes to that. Regardless, it's looking like I might not have a lot to trade on my own, materially at least. I don't know if you find much value in info on other worlds I've been to? Or access to them, I guess, but you mentioned you're short on time so that might not mean much."

"I'm very interested."

"Nice!"

And he will subsequently describe what he's seen of all the worlds he's visiting, including a handful of Earths, the infinite expanse of invulnerable marble covered in weird statues, Basically Hell (this is where kagemono come from, before he revives them into sosei-shita), an endless pink desert (this is where he gets the sand for desert glass from), the Aether (which has vaguely heaven vibes but is actually kind of wartorn between a bunch of factions of angels arguing about what to do now that their God is dead), Crucible (a city where it's perpetually night-time and perpetually raining and there's monsters and zombies and other horror-y bullshit, and with magical campfires that make you immortal at the expense of your will to live), Mu (a big ocean with cities underwater, populated by Basically Mind-Flayers and Basically Aboleths, and with psychic colors in the sky), an endless void of space with living psychic asteroids (this is where he found out he can survive in space), Rorch (another ocean with cities, but this time they're at the surface, and they're populated by reasonably polite robots and stone golems), another desert but this one has white, red, and black sand and has weird metal plants and animals instead of normal kinds, and he also recently connected to a thirteenth world that seems like might be some kind of massive college campus (which is also the world where he encountered the other Conduit).

He'll also mention that his whole crazy rainbow fire thing is because his Azoth, his Color, and his Breath (or, well, the Breath he has from Basically Hell, he has a different Breath from the pink desert which is unrelated) are weirdly mixed together, which also relats to how he's able to revive sosei-shita, and which in his very first year he was able to sort of infuse into the furnace room in his Bevin, which is what made it into the Bondworks, which in turn is what lets the revival be permanent and makes the sosei-shita immortal to approximately the same degree as himself.

"That's … problematic. I'm going to check your claims about Yomi against my own records. If you're telling the truth, we really should offer humanitarian aid and you shouldn't worry about compensation for using the tanks."

"Yomi--"/"Yomi--" Fib and Sniper both begin simultaneously, before Fib inclines his head and Sniper continues, "Yomi is indeed in need of humanitarian aid, and we've done our best up to this point to free as many kagemono as we can. However, it's likely that if a large force is mobilized to this effort that the oninushi will notice something other than simple poaching is going on and form some kind of coalition or other coordinated action to stop us. Oni are normally loath to interact with one another except in some form of violence or competition, but there have been rumors of a Daimyo, or maybe even multiple, arising among them in recent years, which bodes ill for any projects which rely on them remaining disorganized indefinitely."

"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.