He's a little spooked and about ready to go home. Or perhaps to an OTC-official store to poke around, and then home.

There's a store. Along with the standard catalog he was shown there are many more standard services; by teleported catalog-order there are the contents of a very expansive general store. Food is cheap, lifespan is cheap, most household goods are cheap. It's exotics and services that are expensive. 

And after that he can go home!

The Colorful Clerk makes a report. The Indurate Veteran wants to disbelieve it, but he seems... Quite convinced.

The Tacketies start buying Hours at a hundred times market rate. The 'gold rush' on Lustrum kicks into overdrive. They bring in industrial mining equipment, only some of which catastrophically fails when it first cracks a geode of time. They step up the intel-gathering on the Windward Company into high gear with fancy high-tech spy gear. They build public housing and clinics and a factory on Lustrum. They distribute internal propaganda about how the rank and file and even most of the lower management of the Stovepipes are just poor buggers trapped and deceived into working for a slave-driving company.

They vanish Stovepipe informers into cushy jail cells for the duration. They refit dozens of scout engines with magical armor, engines, and disabling weapons. They train some Marines with Dimension Door artifacts, carapace armor, and stun weapons. They work on the structure of the Reach Parliament. She issues a generous bounty for Windward prisoners, with nothing at all paid for corpses. She gets Sweet Jane's Counting House under new management. They outrageously bribe lots and lots of people, and set up teleport networks throughout the Reach.

The Windward Company can tell something big is coming. They're preparing for the same war that happened last time, though, not one where the Tacketies have an overwhelming intel, tech, and manpower advantage.

Does December Morning-Glory want to send them some volunteer doctors, or war correspondents? They'll be useful for making everyone feel watched and thus on their best behavior.

Director Sunaira of Anti-Slavery Services hands Department Manager Morning-Glory a very large check. Morning-Glory inserts Agents into Albion, the OTC's best. The Agents contact the New Street line and the workworld rebels, and organize. Like strands of a net being gathered into a hand, readying for the right moment to be pulled taut.

The Agents also bring news of the Storm that Speaks, the Clockwork Sun, Perdurance, Worlebury-Juxta-Mare. One of them has a close encounter with a giant sea urchin and its staring central eye. A whole new crop of problems appears on Morning-Glory's desk. They have moved too quickly on this world, perhaps. But the die is cast. 

Morning-Glory arranges for the more rugged arm of the Healing Corps to provide medical services during the war. War correspondents can also be found. But this is the Tacketies' war, not theirs; they stop short of supplying outright mercenaries.

They publish a slightly overwrought Declaration of Independence. She cries a little bit, then gets back to work.

It's over in three days, even if the last holdouts don't stop shooting for another two weeks. There is one death on the Tackety side. There are about a dozen, on the Stovepipes'. Two of the deaths are incidents where particularly infamous officials 'reached for a gun' while helpless. The Indurate Veteran buys lie-detecting magic and has a big public trial and puts the murderers away fair and proper, then works on making lie-detecting magic the foundation of the new courts.

They're ready to receive some Workworlds.

Meanwhile, Her Eternal Majesty is well aware of the benefits of making deals. Her best agents contact a few of the OTC's agents and give credible indications that the Empress of Albion would like to discuss what a reformed Albion ought to look like. They plan to officially recognize the Reach Assembly's independence, certainly. The Workworlds have already been de-accelerated and are receiving significant shipments of food and medical care and amenities now! She is a reasonable Empress, willing to make compromises when she must, you see.

Morning-Glory personally resurrects the single Tackety casualty. She does nothing for the Stovepipe dead. She brings in legal activists from an OTC charity: they argue against the death penalty.

Webs of silver magefire wrap the workworlds, and the workworlds teleport to the Reach. Anti-Slavery agents immediately get to work ecoforming them, and share their tools with any of the former slaves willing to learn. Basic infrastructure (by OTC standards) is up in three days regardless of volunteers.

Those of the New Street Line who wish to be extracted to the Reach are. All of them are quietly recommended for job positions in Anti-Slavery, some quite senior. They are each given a limited immortality good for as many lives as they had a hand in saving from the workworlds.

Having stolen Albion's slave workforce, OTC Agents gift the Crown the automative tools to replace them, on the expectation that this will be a mutually beneficial trade. OTC staff will aid with installation and education. During the transition period all the goods expected from the workworlds will be teleported in to the recieving facilities free of charge. (They will be provided from OTC stocks.) 

The OTC has only two demands: the right to establish shops in Albion, and the free movement of people between Albion and the Reach. These satisfied, nothing more need change.

The Indurate Veteran steps into the background and lets the Assembly argue things out, for the most part. She quietly nudges the discussion to generous, moralistic viewpoints. Lots of policies are undecided. They're uncertain on the death penalty; With life extension there's no other way to ensure someone truly heinous will never ever be a problem again.

The workworlders have trouble adjusting. Most of them are too worn down to do much. The rebel organizations recover fastest and would be delighted to pick up valuable new tools and help everyone. Those individuals who made their work gaining peoples' freedom in the New Street Line are mostly delighted to continue doing so with more tools in other worlds.

...Albion wants to know just how free 'free movement' is. They will happily let anyone leave if they wish but want to be able to keep people (and contraband) out. Also, to ban some products, psychic paper, dire cocoa, and pan-galactic gargle blasters most particularly. Panacea is fine, if anyone ignores the warnings that's their problem. They're also giving up most of their censorship as impractical, and no longer particularly useful. And they want the same rate selling Hours as the Tacketies are getting.

One of the OTC's agents unfortunately happens to learn a dire secret from the notes of one of the more... Eccentric... People smuggled to safety by the New Street Line. That the sentient stars of this world are murdering each other. That the Judgements can be killed, and have been, and continue to be. This is something that that beings low on the Great Chain are not allowed to know. Blue fire pursues them from then on, as the Logoi assigned to enforce this edict fulfills its duty.

Morning-Glory has no opinion on how to sort out the problems. (They'll learn, or not.)

The recovery workers can provide time; everyone on the former workworlds is given a monthly stipend for OTC goods. There are parks now on the former workworlds, and more and better housing as factories are demolished to make space. Simple heating enchantments take the place of the insulating smog, and the newly-clear starlight is muted by grand shells of green and blue stained-glass. The rebel organizations are allowed a free reign to recreate the worlds under the watchful guidance of OTC handlers.

Those among the New Street Line who do not wish to continue their work elsewhere are free to settle anywhere in the Reach, including on the rebuilding workworlds. They can't speak for Albion; they've allowed it to continue refusing entry. As well as accepting its bans of various items. And the same rate the Reach gets on Hours. The OTC is not, however, going to sell their full inventory to Albion. 

OTC "groceries" open in Albion, selling food, Ka, Skylimes, Sinflower, and Takkarash Minting Kits. 

The luckless OTC agent steps out of the universe entirely and retreats to a secure facility. If the blue fire continues, then more drastic measures will be taken. 

Each workworld is merely the size of a small city, the largest - Brabazon - holding almost 100,000 souls. The populace slowly recovers. Some want to leave the High Wilderness entirely. Those who remain are proud of surviving adversity and intend to join the Reach Assembly, but of course the politics there is going to take a while to settle. Opinion of the OTC is sky high. Some people try praying to the goddess Aura mentioned in the well-publicized 'visit to another world', some people decide that Aura is the Christian God.

Albion is letting most people back in. They also seem to have a surprising amount of Hours, continuing to use them for their own purposes and selling some of the extra to OTC. If the government can't buy more freely than the people can, they'll keep almost all of their own time and maybe send acquisitions agents to the Reach sometimes. They don't seem to be worried about running out of time, despite how sure the Tacketies were that this would be an issue for them. Probably they have a renewable source. Somehow.

The groceries are popular! Farmers are angry at the drastic revenue losses and in a few cases violent about it!

...The blue flame recognizes this as an unprecedented circumstance. It cannot fulfill the law at the core of its being. And yet the law must be fulfilled. It is alien; It is not stupid. It lurks and watches silently, learning more about the strangeness in this part of the High Wilderness. It must destroy those who know of the Courtesy. But it must not reveal the Courtesy. It sees no way to trace the one who fled, but it must continue suppressing knowledge. There does not seem to be a good solution here. But there is one better than doing nothing. It identifies an appropriate person and materializes a blazing sigil of meaning in front of them.

Fractal layers of information encoded into the word of Correspondence burn in heated Azure glow as the Fire That Follows issues {A COMPLAINT.} (One of their agents learned something that those low on the Great Chain of Being {which is this concept} are not allowed to know. It will attempt to rectify this however it can. The one who learned it must forget what they have learned or be killed. Its own existence is a secret of a lesser caliber but revealing itself is the least bad option.)

Those who wish to leave the High Wilderness can go to the central OTC immigration office for immediate transfer to a Half-Tamed world where settlement is ongoing, or they can queue for an exchange partner on a Trade world. Wait times for the latter are measured from months to single-digit years. It's fastest if you don't care which Trade world you go to. 

The OTC is willing to sell the farmers the tools they need to compete, Crown permitting, and has very good security. Hopefully between the two unpleasantness can be kept to a minimum.

Morning-Glory is quite surprised by the blue flame's complaint, and quickly works to rectify it. After reading the luckless agent's selfstream, she decides that the stars murdering each other is firmly Not Her Problem and easily rediscoverable besides. She summarily extracts the relevant knowledge from the records, her agent's selfstream, and her own.

Aura responds lightly to prayers, distributing toys, books, plushies, blankets and trinkets. Most of Her interactions take seconds - merely the impression of a smile or a laugh or a hug and a suddenly appearing object. Once She spends a whole minute building a library, and another time She repairs and restores a broken locomotive for a captain who dearly loved it. Most significant asks get a terse business card in handwritten script: "No time." "Bad idea." "Not my skillset." Usually these come with a consolation prize. Rarely the cards have addresses or answers on the reverse side. People praying to Her as the Christian God or anything related get a firm "I'm not Christian" on their business card's reverse. It becomes known after a while that She occasionally converses with people in the library She built, which probably makes it a temple of some kind. She's very busy dealing with bad situations elsewhere in the multiverse, but She takes time away from it now and then to respond to easy prayers and relax by chatting.

Farmers don't tend to have many savings. The Crown generously pays for it.

The Fire That Follows is satisfied by this.

All this takes time. Months have passed by now, as Albion and the Reach start moving forward in a new era. There's academics frothing at the mouth with all there is to learn. There's bohemians opening pleasure houses and orchestrating orgiastic parties in the streets. Villainy and the Establishment struggle to adapt to the new normal. There is miscellaneous weirdness befalling the locals and OTC's agents, sometimes - it's still a dangerous place to operate even if most of the biggest threats have been identified. There's engineers doing crazy things with robots, computers, and magic. Titania undertakes a collection of Chron and Takkarash to have the entire bloody flower duplicated somewhere else, sans-Chorister Bees.

Of the two remaining accessible 'local areas', the Blue Kingdom continues forbidding OTC's entry, though they can get some intel about it. And Eleutheria is still a bit of a black hole, but a scout team has had a couple of months to work on that.