"Sounds like fun! What do you wanna do first?"

"How about- ahem- The Museum of Fates' Works and History of the Middle South-South-Eastern Section of The World? Usually just called 'the Fate Museum'."

"Sounds awesome, let's go!"

There's no admission fee, but the 'suggested donation' displayed on a sign above the information desk is 10 Kava. Terel pays up willingly.

It's a pretty impressive place with appropriately grand architecture. Lots of large statues and informative dioramas. Not quite comparable to large Earth museums, and leaning more towards human Fates in a way that has Terel grumble a bit. One display estimates the proportion of people who really seriously try to become Fates who actually eventually manage it is something like 0.1%.

...over what time period? What counts as seriously trying? How do they even have this data anyway?

They said working on it for more than ten years for seriously trying. "It's a pop science museum display, were they known as well researched and good at context and reliable in your world?"

"Well, I guess not that much."

"The history is good here generally speaking. They like human history a lot more but aren't outright racist about it at least. They have this neat map of how the continent changed over the last 400 years."

"Ooh cool."

The starting shape is roughly like a flipped mainland Europe that's missing Italy, including a potato-shaped island where the United Kingdom might be. The slightly-isolated small 'continent' gets attached, and everything grows around the borders for a few hundred years. Some holes in the middle get filled, leaving rifts in most cases. The big gap near the 'Mediterranean' is steadily filled up. It shows new cities founded and kingdoms rising, too.

Then, from seventy years ago to today, suddenly quite a lot of rifts start disappearing, and then The Reaches rapidly form, extending out somewhat from the rest of the continent. Mountain's work.

Sadde likes her. She's a cool bean.

There's only so much to see in this museum. And he's not enjoying the touristing as much as he thought he was. And this isn't the time or place for kissing and cuddling.

...Back to Suvak for him, have a nice day Sadde, see you tomorrow.

At least a goodbye peck, yes? And then Empire Imports.

Definitely a goodbye peck.

Empire Imports' new contract doesn't actually lay out dates and times, but says that Empire can cancel and renegotiate if Sadde declines to take any of Empire's work for long enough, and also that Sadde is owed a fairly big chunk of money if Empire doesn't produce any work for him. There are no subtle traps that his dabblingly-lawyered eyes can detect. There are still some NDAs.

And should he want a less dabblingly-lawyered pair of eyes to look at the contract?

Feel free to invite one in. If said lawyer signs an NDA not to reveal the contents of the contract (standard practice really).

Yeah. He had that one lawyer last week look into the first one, is she available?

It really would have been better if he had given some notice, but as it happens someone did cancel their appointment at the last minute just now.

Sorry, he could come back later if it's better, but otherwise, here sign this NDA and lookit this contract.

Right...

Everything seems to be in order. There's nothing she feels needs to change. They're playing fair, relatively speaking. Would he like to discuss some finer points of the thing anyway? Any questions at all? 

No questions but discussing the finer details would be interesting.

The very lawyery lawyer can do plenty of that, at the rate he's paying for her time.

Cool! And then he can sign if everything's alright.

Everything seems quite alright, but law is very complicated, remember.

Right right but the expensive lawyer said it's alright so.