"Concrete's - liquid stone that sets like baked clay, made of cement mixed with gravel to stretch out the cement? And sometimes steel rods, I don't know why. Asphalt only melts on a fire, I think? They pour it over gravel to make the roads? Maybe? And I mean, yeah, lots of vehicles. With electric motors. Maybe bikes. Bicycles are - pretty 'artisan', like cans apparently are here." She hunts for a video of one of her friends riding a roaring dirtbike on a hill course. "Like that, but you use your feet to move it. I don't know the details of how any of this works." Sigh. "Blood Red Roads sound concerning, though white granite sounds like good stuff."

"We do have something we call cement, I mean, not here but most cities use it in buildings that are going to have more than one floor. I'm not sure we have whatever asphalt is.

Blood Red Roads just have a stupid name, lots of stuff does because it was funded by the Butchers Bank out of the League, who made their money originally in sausages and mercenaries.

It's just a set of roads, people round here don't like it because it tempts people to not use the Trods, but to be honest the Trods are not especially convenient for moving bulk goods even if they're good for people because they're magically refreshing and good for draining the Vallorn.

If it's purely mechanical, a League artisan can probably make a bicycle. I mean, a Urizen could too but it'd be ridiculously over-engineered, and the Winterfolk would probably try to give it armour. I have no idea how you make lightning or static zaps, which is what 'electric' is here, into a motor."

"I could try to explain from my science classes but honestly it'd give me a headache. So. These Druj, orc hordes, right? Chaotic evil slavers?"

"I mean, you could call them that, I guess?

The Druj do slaves but in the way that basically everyone is the slave of someone; the Jotun are more of your traditional horde, the Druj prefer ambushes and traps; and the Grendel are the ones more known for being slavers, they actually operate an economy and it's mostly based on slavery of various kinds - from 'technically a slave but teaches kids or does accounting or casts rituals and doesn't have it too bad' right down to 'consigned to die in the salt mines' - but it's possible to not be a slave in their lands without being the one right on top."

"Finding it pretty hard to believe that slavery can be justifiable? Ever? Unless it's a voluntary kink thing or like, a grievous mistranslation."

"Oh, no, nobody here is happy with any of the various kinds of slavery - we might have only stopped doing it less than a hundred years ago, but we did stop and now we're in an international arrangement to attempt to get everyone else to stop too.

I was just saying that 'slavers' wasn't really the main characteristic of the Druj. We might be grudgingly at peace with the Thule and Grendel, who are much more centrally slavers, but that's mostly a ceasefire for practicality than because we approve of anything they do."

"...Ugh. I'm going to have to get political at people, aren't I. Sooner or later, I mean. I don't think anyone here is going to have the same idea of human rights or anything."

"Unfortunately. Even going and getting stuck into a war front is political because you didn't do it on the other one. Everything ends up in politics," that last phrase with the same intonation as 'everything ends in tears'.

"The Empire is, like, generally approximately on the more-human-rights - and orc rights - side of history compared to basically everyone else, except maybe the Commonwealth - actually I suspect you'd get on very well with them, their main failing is that military service is required for citizenship, otherwise they're very in favour of people doing what they want and working for the greater good and all that."

"Commonwealth, huh? Anyway human rights should rightly be called personal rights, it's just we haven't got nonhumans except Ants and they don't... Talk to us? Act like individuals very much that we can tell?"

"They might just be like the Vallorn - it's definitely a Thing, but it doesn't really have volition in the same way people do. There's an entire song about how it has no trade interests from a time when someone commissioned a normal spy report on it as if it was a normal enemy faction..."

Allegra hums a little tune.

"Anyway, I used to ship trade goods to the Commonwealth. They're also signatories to the Anti-Slavery Pact and probably more enthusiastic about it than us, although I think they have fewer wars going on so they have a bit more space to think about anything else. They use a different language though - I used to speak a bit but I'm a bit rusty now."

"Actually - that reminds me - how do you happen to speak Imperial? Sprechen Sie Gemeinsamesprache?"

"It's called English, and you sound kinda old fashioned? I have to guess on some of the words. But English has been fairly set in stone for the last couple hundred years, it kind of became the world language over time - most everyone's first or second language, because the British and Americans had their fingers in everything for a while - and now it doesn't drift as much? Or something?" Shrug. "And that is goddamned German. I think. Translator says... Yep, German."

"There's something weird about Imperial - everyone on the continent speaks it, although of course the Faraden would say that we're speaking Faraden and so on. I had a theory once that Terunael must have done something to embed it, as it was Ancient Terun too. Other continents, people generally speak much more of a mix; the Commonwealth is the other place with a single language, but they've done that through enforcement rather than it just being what everyone around them naturally happens to speak.

Asavean languages are the other big ones - but I'm not great at languages and never really got far with them - I can just about do, j'm'apelle Allegra, or I think the saying 'que sera, sera' is in one of the others?

I mean, if they're all familiar, it might just be the Steinr thing - people have fallen from the stars before, they might have brought the languages with them."

"All familiar which is super weird and I'm kind of creeped out by. Not that its not, um, convenient?"

"Yeah, I'm blaming Steinr incidents for that then, coupled with the whole continental enchantment that has stuck the language to this continent. If people with advanced technology drop out of the sky every few hundred years it seems likely their languages would catch on.

So, have we got a plan for what's next, other than another good night's sleep?"

"I was thinking of kinda doing nothing for a couple of days actually, except finishing the pumpjack. And then I'll probably have picked where to go next. I could maybe use some spare clothes, flight suits aren't really meant to be worn for a week straight even if it happens anyways."

"We probably don't have much up to your standards, but tell Brynna and you'll wake up with all the slightly improvised linen robes, shifts, braies, wraps and woollen socks you might want, mostly they'll be various people's spares. If you're after trousers we'll have to order in."

"Huh, hmm. At that point I might be better trying to get the fabber to make something. Ooh, you guys don't have nylon, it's a kind of plastic that makes nice cloth."

"We have no kinds of plastic, so yes, we don't have nylon either - cloth is mostly kind of a problem, the Marches produce quite a lot, Dawn do very well, the Brass Coast make silk and the League imports from overseas, most nations have a bit of domestic production but Navarr basically tend to make do with second hand and try to keep it in good condition because it's expensive and none of our land is really good for flax or sheep. You might have noticed everyone likes wearing a lot of leather, that's mostly deerskin because there are always too many deer."

"Yeah, I remember reading that cloth was really hard until they made big factories for it. Thanks for all the info, I think I'll go try to poke the fabber into making nylon, then head to sleep - assuming the same bed is still open."

"Yes, you'll be welcome in Brynna's house until she finds another stray and asks if she can move you on."

"Okay. Thank you for all the explaining, have a good one."

Lenora takes it easy for the next couple of days. The fabber can't run 24/7, its battery lasts hours at most and then she has to reintegrate it, but it can make plenty of pipe sections and something like three to five plastic items for everyone. Tableware, rain ponchos, soft sporty nylon T-shirts and pants or just bolts of the stuff. She finishes putting in the spigot pump, just pull up and down on the handle and hey presto water. She takes lot of naps, as even with the magic medicine her body apparently needs time to recover. Tries to do her daily physicals, and runs around with the teens some, not minding rough play much. She reads about electricity and stuff a bit haltingly. Watches old movies in private. It's sort of like a weekend.

Everyone is glad to have her around; after the egregore has words with a few people, the requests turn much more into the bolts of cloth / trade goods end of things than novelty cups and bowls.

With Davyd on hand to patch people up, nothing gets too out of hand, but there is some bleeding and a few broken bones - briars apparently play very hard when trying to impress the mysterious newcomer. Everyone is pretty cheerful and nobody stays hurt or has to send for a better physick, though. 

With the next trade wagon, there are a few people to see her - two artisans and a 'broker', whatever one of them is.

Cerys brings them round to see her.

"Greetings again - this is Brys and Cerna Fleetspear, Brys is an artisan with a broad range but mostly specialised in armours, and Cerna is an artisan and also an architect. And this is Gyna Tallystep, she's a Broker who often works with them."

None of these people are showing the signs of green veins or bark; Brys has very pale, unhealthy looking skin and when he smiles in greeting you can see pointed teeth, Cerna has unusually pointed ears and a small set of antlers that appear to grow straight out of her head, and Gyna has metallic markings on her face in square labyrinthine patterns and tiny horns peeking out under her hair.

They do all have a tattoo of a thorny branch and one or two other tattoos.

Cerna stands forwards and offers to shake hands. "Very good to meet you, I'm sure you wouldn't believe some of the rumours - is that cloth you're wearing one of the 'fab' products?"

Night touched? And maybe autumn? Not like she knows the difference.

"Lenora Wilson. Architecture's neat. Yep, this is a mixed blend that just gets called Synthin. The 'fabber' can make all sorts of things that are polymers - that being a chemical structure made up of chains of repeated tiny blocks. Unfortunately it is not a fabber that can make more fabbers, it's supposed to be cheap and rugged, in case you find yourself crashed somewhere and need to make basic survival goods. And of course, as has become my refrain, I am not an engineer or an artisan. I just have the benefit of coming from a world with a bunch of built-up tech. Is a broker what it sounds like, sellin' stuff so nobody else has to bother with that basically?"

"Yes, that's me," replies Gyna. "I've tagged along just in case you want to get some idea of prices for trade goods, I can buy some things on the spot or arrange to introduce you to people who'd be able to take in larger orders if you're interested, or just give you a better idea of how our economy works."

"I was intending to see if what you have is anything like a runeforge, or could be duplicated or at least some of the ideas used elsewhere," offers Brys, "but I think that might be... A long term project."

"We're very happy to try to explain what we know," Cerna chimes in. "I think most of it is... probably kind of sideways to what you're doing, if you're essentially building things from very small but entirely mundane constituents? Building is a bit more like that, but we still tend to cheat with white granite and weirwood when we're doing anything particularly impressive."

"Very small but entirely mundane constituents are what we're all about. Mostly. Valkyrie Cores are not really mundane in the same way - though everyone's sure they'll figure out what's up with them eventually - and they're new and weird. I guess a lot of your materials are inherently magic in some way. White Granite is entirely unlike granite that happens to be white, yeah?"