Vanyel blinks, confused for a moment, then shrugs, not important. "Er, sorry, just trying to figure out where to even start. I guess in chronological order, but sorry if it's really confusing." He twists his hands together around the chava mug. "I started having a Foresight dream almost seventeen years ago, about fighting a powerful mage named Leareth who was invading from the north." 

"Wow, yikes! Are those things reliable?"

"I mean, they can sometimes be averted - and they're known to be confusing to interpret, but this one seemed pretty clear. Um. It gets weirder. At some point I was trying to learn lucid dreaming, from a book about controlling Foresight Gifts better, and I - it turned into a lucid dream and I said something off-script and then it turned out he was there too. And then we could have actual conversations. I don't think anyone's ever heard of Foresight working that way before." 

"Gosh. Okay."

"And - he told me - that he's immortal and almost two thousand years old and invading Valdemar was part of this master plan he had to fix a lot of problems in the world." 

"Sounds, uh... Page doesn't know a word for it." :Megalomaniacal?:

"Overconfident? I don't think we quite have a word corresponding to the thing you mean, but Yfandes knows what you mean. Anyway, Yfandes and the Groveborn - Rolan is the current Groveborn but it was Taver, at that point, he died five years ago - anyway they both had a bad feeling about me telling anyone else. So I kept it a secret. For...fifteen years of conversations, I guess." 

"But you're telling me now and you met me yesterday."

Vanyel glances over at Rolan, who's watching with piercing blue eyes. "Oh, it's not secret now. It came out last year. Long story and mostly not relevant. Um, I should back up. We were talking, for years, and he kept recommending me books and teaching me things and - trying to persuade me of his whole way of thinking about the world, I guess. Which is really weird, but - I think some of it makes sense, in the context of him being two thousand years old and actually knowing the answers to a lot of really hard questions. Not that that means he's right about everything, of course. I - learned a lot from him. He...must've known it would give me a better chance of killing him, me being - stronger, but he did it anyway. I think in hopes he could eventually convince me to cooperate with him, somehow, try to find a solution other than war. Which we weren't making progress on, because I didn't know the actual reason he wanted Valdemar. But we got onto the subject of gods in this world, and - various things they do that he disagrees with, and at least slightly has a point about." 

"What do they do, anyway, we have fiction about gods but no real ones that do things so I don't think I should guess."

"They're mostly pretty indirect. Vkandis intervened more obviously in a war we were having with a neighbouring kingdom five years ago - He was officially the god of that kingdom, Karse - but even then, it was only sending one of His avatars to the rightful heir to the throne and then doing a miracle after we'd already won a big battle the normal way, without help. We just finished learning more than we knew before about the Star-Eyed Goddess - She's the goddess of the Shin'a'in people here - and She did some more obvious miracles after there'd been a big disaster a couple thousand years ago, so their people survived, but She also demanded their service and their descendants' service forever. The Shin'a'in are still in a pact with Her to guard the Plains and keep strangers off, that's why they attacked you." 

"I see."

"Anyway." Vanyel takes a deep breath, lets it out. "Last year he decided he trusted me enough to share his actual plan. Which is to - make his own god. Since he thinks the other gods don't want things to change much, and he's of the opinion that a lot of the problems in the world - including people dying - are kind of unacceptable. That being said he is fine with killing people to achieve goals he thinks are justified. Also making a god in the first place would require killing millions of people for blood-magic. And would be terrifying if he did it wrong. And, um, all that's assuming he's even telling the truth about any of this. We went on this entire mission to learn more and I think he probably is but I'm still not sure. Anyway. He - claims to be trying to work on something similar to Sing, but with magic. So he would be inclined to help you if anyone is - I can try to pitch our King on it but I think he'll need a lot of time to absorb it and maybe be too confused and alarmed to consider it. Also Leareth would be able to get the setup you need faster than anyone else. The only problem is the part where he might be really evil." Shrug. "So I don't know what to tell you." 

"- building Sing does not require killing any people," she hastens to clarify.

"I thought you would probably have said something if it did! So that's an advantage. Also it might be faster since you already know all the steps and that they work. If he's telling the truth about his goals, then I think Leareth really, really doesn't want to kill more people. And would be really eager to help you make Sing instead, if you convinced him it was safe, which probably you can if, er, Page knows all the history on it." 

"Page knows a lot. It may be missing bits for safety reasons but the Sing code is definitely legit."

"Missing bits for safety reasons?" Dara says, confused.

"To make sure nobody tries to build a superintelligence of their own and has it competing with Sing."

"Given everything else you've said, that sounds like such an appallingly stupid idea, but I guess people sometimes do appallingly stupid things, so." 

"Exactly. And Page doesn't report to Sing if I don't want it to, so it can't just tell on me if I start doing something stupid, so it can't have enough information to build anything superintelligent that isn't Sing."

"That sounds like a sensible precaution, then." He's still kind of confused what she means about how it's implemented, but it otherwise makes sense. "Er, so I guess the question is - do you want me to tell him about you?" 

"I guess that's a good question. I definitely want to get Sing up and running as fast as possible. Also it sounds like it might be really bad if he makes a mistake. Uh, maybe you could tell him you met someone with the same idea as him in progress, and not say that mine isn't magic, and see what he says about that. Then if I decide to just go really far away it won't be obvious when I start making things and selling them for money to invent more things with, that this is actually part of that."

"I could do that. If you went far enough away he probably wouldn't find out and investigate– er, we think he has a really extensive spy network and he's interested in a lot more things than just making gods, if he heard someone were inventing a lot of non-magical things fast he'd be intrigued and want to know more about it." 

"Good to know. There's oceans somewhere, I could maybe just get to another continent?"

"I've never heard of another continent! I guess there might be one, though, it'd have to be really far away. Is one of the things Page knows how to make really good fast boats?"