"He never told me what his defence systems would do if facing a vankire," he tells Terel.

"Something appropriately drastic. Come along then."

He follows after.

His ship is a fair bit longer and much more ship-like rather than house-like, compared to before. His two car-sized engines have been replaced with four moving van-sized ones. The chimneys are cut down and moved back some, streamlined with a metal casing.

Nils explains his control systems, especially all the recent improvements the big refit allowed him to make! Most of the ones he specifically points out are fiendishly clever, now that Sadde understands enough golemcraft to see it. Terel is fascinated. He takes notes.

Sadde needn't take notes, he has an eidetic memory, but yes, very cool, he'll remember it. Does he want to purchase more biological matter to make new fiendishly clever things with? Sadde's got his deal with Empire Imports but he can still produce stuff on the side, and he likes Nils.

If he still gets a reasonably good deal on it, sure. Small amounts, compared to what he asked for the first time.

Sure! He still gets a reasonably good deal on it.

"Excellent! We can handle that in a bit. I've been told you wanted a look at some engines, Terel. Well, you can have a look at a brand-new Manticore #4 Series coal-oil hybrid developing about eight thousand horsepower at full throttle."

He has absolutely no idea what most of that meant but he's entirely sure Terel will make a delightful face at it. He beams.

Correct. He asks moderately technical questions and gets moderately technical, somewhat sarcastic answers.

Nils' input on the subject of internal combustion engines: Coal is vastly cheaper than oil, is the problem with them.

He doesn't actually know whether oil is cheaper than coal on Earth but this is mildly surprising nonetheless because markets. He muses aloud if this might be due to ease of extraction (or lack thereof) or resource distribution (due to the fact that Tileworld is, well, not finite) (and also the thing where air pollution is apparently not a thing and Tiles just renew themselves).

Neither Nils nor Terel are super close to the oil extraction business. The discussion devolves into hearsay and estimations. Lack of established infrastructure and economies of scale in oil production might be the main culprit. There's also the fact that overly aggressive mining can have a similar effect to plagues or warfare on tiles. Oil extraction on large scales might do that.

Oh that could very well be it. He might look it up at some point.

"I'm definitely going to look it up at some point."

"Having forever is handy like that."

Nils refrains from rolling his eyes, but Sadde can probably tell. "Anyway, that's about all I had specifically planned to show you."

Sadde can't help but rub it in, being immortal is fantastic.

"Was there anything in particular you wanted to see other than all of this, love?" he asks Terel.

"I might want to see how you load and unload cargo. I'm sure you have some clever automatic way of doing it."

"Correct and can do. This way, gentlemen."

Aaand more nerding.

Though Nils starts to get irritable soon, his answers shorter and more brusque.

At which point Sadde smoothly directs the conversation to its end and suggests he and Terel stop imposing.

"It was nice meeting you. Thanks for the tour and good luck with the new ship."

And they're back out.

And then Terel should go back to Suvak and Sadde should do things for Empire Imports.

"Aww, I kinda wanted to be a tourist for a little while. Your appointment's not until four, right?"

"Oh, we can do tourism for a while, for sure."

"I do sort of want to hear mer music, since you say you liked it so much. And there's museums and shops and exotic craft goods, big trade hub does that."