"-Oh, you're an egregore aint'cha?" Sigh. "Well, like I told the Navvar one, my Loyalty is to the ideals of the place I came from. That's peace, good relations between nations, improving living conditions, and sapient rights."

"Mmm," replies the egregore. "Does peace always come so heavily armed, where you are from?"

"This is heavily armed? Ehe. Well. There's the small matter of our planet being invaded though dimensional breaches. Anyone compatible with a valkyrie core and therefore qualified to screw with the force that got me here is... Encouraged to make best use of it. Selection effects. I'm a soldier- Not even a soldier, a cadet. Not a diplomat."

"If that isn't even heavily armed, it suggests that you have not, in fact, embraced the malign spiritual presence of Peace - you still fight back against those that would seek to - destroy you? Subjugate you? What is it that you fight for?"

"I mean, it's heavily armed for a civilian, but not for a Core holder. Oh, right. It's a Virtue. Is it? Uh... Yeah, not to that extreme. We weren't really fully at peace even before this. I fight the Antagonists. They come through rifts, breach points, and have a death toll above a billion by now. Some of them are intelligent, which is... Not great, but they don't stop and they don't respond to communication attempts. So I fight to keep what we have left of Earth and take back the rest. And if that means killing alien, hostile, uncommunicative people... I don't like it one bit but they're trying to kill us, so fair's fair."

"It is a false Virtue, yes. It sounds as though you fight for survival, then. But what else do you fight for? Unless you fall under the sway of a mind-altering effect, it seems likely there is little to directly threaten you, hereabouts; but I have reports of a violent assault on a Grendel vessel, so there must be more to it than that?"

"They were murdering people who they treated as slaves. For the 'crime' of an entirely unrelated slave acting out. Such dispassionate... Efficiency." Her lip curls up in disgust.

"So there is something you're passionate about," replies the egregore, approvingly. "Normally we'd object to slavery on grounds of Prosperity - you can't enjoy the fruits of your labour if someone's taking everything above bare survival from you, and similarly collective punishment is abhorrent; but Prosperity is quite fond of efficiency, as long as it's not at the expense of people getting what they're due?"

"...God. I wish you'd gotten an engineer. They'd have built a fission pile and a steel mill and who knows what else by now. I don't mind efficiency I mind regarding human - sentient - life as a resource and not a person."

"Excellent," replies the egregore, sincerely. "It sounds like we will get on very well, then, as that is the fundamental basis of Imperial religion and policy, and also something very dear to our hearts as Freeborn.

I suppose I should not dissuade you from seeing if there is anything to be done about the Vallorn - it is, after all, the greatest spiritual threat to the Empire, so the sutannirs tell me - but I should warn you, it is not susceptible to military might alone, and disturbing it can provoke retaliation over a wide area."

"That makes two out of two places that have warned me to be cautious. I will. How does one actually oppose the Vallorn?"

"The slow way," replies the egregore, "is what the Navarr have been working on for centuries - walking the Trods, weakening it region by region, and then reclaiming those regions, once magically weakened - which would benefit from your talents, were there any open at this time.

And now there appears to be perhaps a faster way - a great library of lore is being assembled in Hercynia, perhaps a Singing Stone recovered from the depths of Broceliande, which together may give us the opportunity to strike. But that is not ready yet, and also invites great peril inside the Empire at a time when there are plenty of great perils that crowd us from the outside."

"Well. Want a desalinator or a bolt of fabric or something for the advice and maybe to send word when that shapes up?"

"I'd love a desalinator, although I must tell you that the advice was given as much to avoid danger to the Empire, for my own ends, as to help you; is there anything else I can do for you to fully earn such a prize?"

"I dunno, a Throne I guess. Or a Crown, I keep mixing those up, I don't have a great sense of money here yet. Or promise to use it in the cause of Not Slavery at whatever remove. Actually now I'm having thoughts about how much I may be causing war to happen even if it's just logistic support. Weapons win fights, logistics wins wars."

"I can definitely pay you a Throne for it, if you're happy to accept; in general a Crown would be for something useful but ordinary, whereas Thrones are for durable construction projects or rare and precious things.

I can also assure you that it's certain to be used in the cause of Not Slavery, as that is essentially the fundamental cause of the Freeborn, and a cause to which the Empire is committed; I can't promise that this won't involve warlike actions, as most of the people who can be simply persuaded not to keep slaves already have been."

"Yeah, that's the rub isn't it. Everyone ends up fighting sooner or later pretty much no matter what." Sigh. "Well, America had the fine tradition of lend-lease arms well before I was born. And it's not like I'm giving you high-yields. Okay. In the spirit of the Brass Coast being so mercantile, a Throne for a desalinator." Her eyes go distant for a moment. "...The standard pattern one just needs salt water poured in, and puts out clean water and concentrated brine in two channels. It takes some energy from being in the sun, like plants, but there's a crank you can drive it with if that's not enough. One hundred to two hundred liters of water per day from sunlight, more if cranked."

"Sounds fantastic. I am very sure that many enthusiastic corsairs will be happy to turn the handle." He reaches into a hidden pocket in his robes and pulls out a small shiny golden coin, which reads 'One Throne - Freedom's Cost' one one side with a stylised throne and 'Imperial Mandate - Prosperity' on the other with a wolf's head.

...Collect Them All, from each Virtue? She curiously investigates the Thrones she got for the hyperweave jackets earlier.

"-Oh, stand clear." Because with an unfolding that is weird to look at, there's a chest-freezer-sized block of metal sitting on the ground now. It starts making a humming/grinding noise. "There. Fifteen minutes for your desalinator. Fabbers are great. Unfortunately I cannot make new ones and can only maintain this one by absorbing it again."

The egregore dutifully stands clear, and is extremely fascinated by the device - as is Marilla, who has carefully been making herself as unobtrusive as possible so nobody tells her to leave and stops her listening to this fascinating conversation - but neither does anything impolite like attempting to touch it.

"Does that - require anything other than, reabsorption? Materials of some description?" he asks. "You don't have to tell me, of course, but I may be able to work on sourcing them, if you are interested in further cooperation."

"It assembles stuff on a tiny scale. Cellular level, smaller than the veins on a leaf. Lots of stuff is carbon- Same as most flesh, plant or animal, and it mainly works with that to make plas and diamondoids, so I fed it a tree in Navarr. Know much chemistry? I could use some beryllium and cobalt and manganese. Helium... Lithium... Aluminum, or rather, bauxite..."

"Beryllium... that sounds like it is something to do with beryl? That's a gemstone we get a fair amount of - you'll find plenty in the gem markets in Siroc, and maybe in smaller settlements if you're fortunate.

Cobalt, if what you're looking for is the same as cobalt blue, is a common dye sand - I'd expect to find some for sale in this very town.

Manganese we can certainly do - I expect to most easily find it in Sarvos, some of the glassworkers of the Coast will use it, but the League also use it as a black pigment.

"Alum would have aluminum in it. It's technically an ore, just hard to refine without electricity. Helium is an unbreathable non-flammable gas, found in pockets underground, but- Oh, nevermind on helium. Apparently I can build fractional distillation columns to get the trace amounts out of the air if I really must. Most of these aren't urgent at all, but there's actually a lot of elements that I could use more of, though nothing super urgent. Maybe I should just take a look at a well-stocked chemist warehouse and see if my Valkyrie Core goes 'ooh, get that one' at any of it?"

"I'm not sure where you'd find a 'chemist warehouse' - an alchemist warehouse, certainly, but for minerals - normally I'd recommend Nestor's Bounty, but it's somewhat of a war zone at the moment - although we did recently liberate it, and I suppose the road being blocked is less of a concern to you?"

"Rather not a concern, no. I think I'm going to check out the Urizen and Druj next though."