"The place to look up is called the Poppy Gardens, in Hell, I assume there are equivalents in Fairyland and Heaven but don't know for sure."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. Do you want to just, like, keep murdering people till you have a fairy who'll transport you anywhere you care to go and your own demon to supply you, or do you still want ships from me?"

"We would prefer the second but can arrange the first if need be."

"I can make 'em. You're gonna go pick fights with dark precursors?"

"We intend to take a stand, but not to venture out of the system hunting them."

"That's legit. Where do you want me to put your ships?"

He can point out various metal-head-controlled open spaces.

Cam puts in the ships. They have daeva, warships aren't going to make much difference.

"Thank you. Your experience is still of tremendous value."

"My experience at what?"

"The safe use of daeva powers. And other things to do with the daeva realms, as well."

"Ah. Happy to help. Do you need anything else right now?"

"Not urgently."

"Cool. Uh, see you around, I guess."

Are the lurkers ready for a city yet?

Only a small fraction of prospective residents are actually available at the moment but they have enough people to get things up and running.

Cool! He will iterate on little model cities put together based on their criteria in his computer aided design program of choice and when they like one he can find a site and it can appear.

Then they can get it up and running and be slowly joined by others as more lurkers escape Haven City or venture out of hiding places in the wasteland. Eventually they even get a couple of moncaw immigrants.

Delightful.

He adds electrical infrastructure as space is cleared in Haven City and supplies interim material support to prop up industries lurkers (and other forced labor) are fleeing from.

Since construction costs are basically zero, the city government buys up most of the slums to have Cam remake with electric power, taller buildings, better storm drains, and more even pavement. Maybe he could fill some of the biggest ditches in with soil and then someone else can go find seeds to sow in them.

Slavery wanes. The Ministry of Extreme Labor pivots radically in its mission statement and less radically in its day-to-day business until it's a temp agency with a lobbying arm that's trying to sell the city on a minimum wage and a forty-hour workweek. Some of the farmers whose lurkers are suddenly obsolete turn them out with nothing but the fur on their backs.

Sig, one of the people who wrote a while ago and wants Cam to find things out for him, writes again.

Cam checks his mail at inconsistent times but does do it every day! What has Sig written?

He still wants to find someone. Now he also wants to learn summoning and get an explanation of what's going on with the metal heads. He has information he thinks Cam might find worth trading for those things, not much that Cam couldn't conjure for but plausibly things he wouldn't think to.

All right, things have slowed down enough that Cam can find him a meeting time.

Sig, it turns out, is the guy who was talking with Damas five years ago. Since then he's gotten a prosthetic eye, which is clearly made of metal and glass. He shows up to the meeting wearing armor. Part of it seems to have been made from part of a metal head skull.

"Hey there, cherry. Some of what I have for you is the kind of information where, once I tell you what it is, you'll have it. I'm thinking you find who I'm looking for, I tell you something I think you'll think is worth it, then we keep trading off. Sound good?"

"Why are you looking for this person?"