"Yeah, there's airship lines and trading companies and so on. There are maps of the known world, some two hundred forty six thousand tiles in total. I'm young as vela go so I haven't seen much of it."

"Oh, I'd thought there were arbitrarily many tiles in all directions."

"No, there's nothing where a vela hasn't put tiles. The edges are always expanding. I kept telling myself that if I got too fed up with my neighbor vela I'd fly to the edge and start a new continent."

"So... who made the first tile?"

"Now that's a question alright. The oldest known vela don't answer it."

"...that would drive me up the walls."

"See that's one thing I don't get about this place. Most religions. Anyway... Recorded history goes back twenty-four thousand years. They've been there at least since then. There was apparently a massive cataclysm around that time, suns falling and whole continents collapsing, so it's possible they're quite a lot older and nobody knows just how much older."

"And what exactly do you mean by antisocial, in their case?"

"Catobpleas has a temper tantrum every time someone wakes him up from his decade-long naps. His temper tantrums involve volcanoes. None of the others are that bad, but they all have very strong preferences and react forcefully if these are intruded on."

"Hmm... and there's no way to, like, catch them while they're awake or not otherwise exercising their strong preferences?"

"Yeah, but if you do that they just refuse to answer questions. It's traditional for new vela to meet them all at some point before they're a century in, actually, but I've only met Barnacles. That's translated, by the way."

"...right. And they refuse and don't explain why, I presume. That would definitely drive me up the walls."

...Glam is not pleased by the implications of what she's just said. They don't let it show, anyway. "Yeah, I was planning on doing that. Maybe go big enough early enough that I'll be a fixture. But anyway, do vela get more powerful over time?"

"I'm not actually sure. Either we get more powerful or more knowledgeable and efficient. Either way, it's slow. That reminds me, vela mostly don't try to kill or permanently ruin each other, unless one of them crosses the line. I was surprised capes have the same kind of thing, but at least I'm used to it."

"Well, not all capes don't. The Slaughterhouse Nine care not a bit."

"And in return I will try my damnedest to kill them if they show up near me. I suspect I might be immune to a couple of them. Most capes, most villains even, don't approach Slaughterhouse Nine levels of deserving to suffer."

"Mmhm, yeah. Thank Scion they don't have Gray Boy anymore. Well, thank Glaistig Uaine, really."

"Don't think it is. But let's maybe change the subject," they say, not insensate to her reaction.

"Maybe we should spar. Someone's bound to have a picture of us talking by now, and the media will just be confused if the rogue and villain have a friendly chat. That won't do either of us any good."

"Yeah, fair enough. Maybe I'm trying to recruit you and vice-versa and it doesn't go well."

"That could work. If I lose I'm saying it's only because I was afraid of causing too much property damage or seriously hurting you. Which would be the truth on both counts, really."