"Still not in especially large quantities, but we are improving at efficiency there. And, of course, there is no particular downside to simply growing more of them, aside from the fact that it is somewhat disgusting." 

Dara seems pretty unbothered by the grossness and is happy to take on slop-pouring duties. 

Microbes microbes microbes. (Ventilation problems. The microbes are gassy.)

Dara, it turns out, has a surprising talent for sketching out engineering solutions to problems, and designs a ventilation setup that even Leareth is impressed with. 

Dara is a very useful person!

She's trying very hard to be useful, it seems like their work is the most important thing happening anywhere right now! 

Savil needed longer to wrap up in Haven, but she Gates over a couple of days later with Sandra, and also with the copy they had made of Dara's travel diary. 

"Morning! How are you two doing?"

"Not bad! How's everything going up here with your work?" 

"I'm very pleased with it! There's lots more slog through the ick of science to go, of course."

"Vanyel definitely had lots to say about the ick part! He's kind of squeamish though." 

"He is, but it's legitimately very gross."

...After seeing the vats, Savil is fully in agreement with Belrun on that claim. 

She has a much easier time mastering the mage-sight side of it than Vanyel did, possibly because of her decades of additional experience. 

Sandra is mostly interested in helping design the ventilation and transport and such. 

"Should we go through the diary?" Dara asks Belrun once the new arrivals have been shown around and are settled in on helpful work. 

"Yes, let's." Which random Ifteli did Dara consider hot, inquiring minds want to know things that aren't but might be near that.

Some highlights of Dara's diary: 

First town: had an innkeeper who was clearly cheating on his wife with the barmaids and tried to hit on her, Not Cool, he was fat and not attractive at all. He did buy some spices off her though so she was polite to him. Also she met an attractive man who said he was training for the Games this year, melee division, it was a family tradition, his father had risen quite high before retiring. 

"Games?"

"Games..." Dara frowns, obviously thinking hard. "Gods, he must've told me about it, he really liked the sound of his own voice. It was...some sort of contest, there was a big annual thing but he was competing locally - he did say his father never made it to the finals but scored well enough to be quite famous, he led a division..." 

"Contest of what?"

"Oh, the actual competition was fighting, he told me all about his melee combat training." 

"Huh. Sounds dangerous."

"Apparently people die! Mostly just at national level. I remember thinking it seemed like an even more bloodyminded pastime than cockfighting, but I don't think he's the only one who talked about it, I got the sense it was popular for people to lay wagers on who would win this year at a given level." 

"I guess now and then somebody dies trying to swim across a lake or something too. Still." She turns a page.

Further highlights of Dara's travel diary: 

She met a catperson! Well, a giant cat, looked sort of like a mountain cougar, but he talked in Mindspeech and he was sitting in a tavern with all the other people in the tavern, having his friend throw his dice for him because he didn't have hands. No one else seemed to think this was weird at all.