"That sounds like it would be right up their street - sails and windmill blades have a lot to do with each other especially in lightweight versions, and the current obsession is for all metal ships that don't catch fire - burning shipyards has become a bit of a fashion, the Grendel did it to us and then we did it to them, so even though it's maybe not the most practical way to build a small fast blockade runner - the Grendel basically own the Bay at this point, so those are in demand - it's popular as a a dream.

Would you like a hastily scribed letter of recommendation out of my notebook, which you should also be able to show people for directions along with a bit of change - I can break one of your Thrones down to crowns and rings, you'll have a better time of it if you can hand over a few rings for this and that - or we can walk into town and get a proper scrivener to do a fancy one?"

"A note seems most expedient. What's a Grendel?"

Yasmina pulls a hardback notebook and a wooden pencil out of her satchel. "What do you prefer me to introduce you as, both names which you'll have to remind me of, also your affiliation, 'the stranger I met on the road who is now carrying this letter', anything else you'd prefer I include?" 

She starts writing the salutation and initial plesaentries as she keeps speaking - it seems like she's had some considerable practice at writing while standing around holding a conversation, although her handwriting is childish and sprawling.

"A Grendel is someone from one of the neighbouring countries who have habitually been at war with at least the Brass Coast for time immemorial, although sometimes like now there's a ceasefire. Mostly orcs, at least in positions of power; basically entirely about accumulating wealth and power, they consider Audacity to be a virtue, they like to take slaves, they're the best seafarers around and don't let a Corsair hear that or you'll have a potentially bloody argument."

"See, I'm not blind to the power of logistics. Giving y'all and not the Grendels water purifiers is a pretty major advantage, and maybe I should just go after things that are more clearly to my sensibilities bad news, like the Valorn."

This pronouncement causes Yasmina to briefly fail at writing, leaving an awkward line on the the page, swear under her breath, and look around fearfully for a second in case they are being overheard.

"...the caravan is mostly out of earshot.

Admitting that you might be at all sympathetic to the Grendel.. will probably produce violent outbursts from... almost anyone in this nation."

She collects herself a little - like she's slipping into some kind of habit of communication she uses with specific strangers.

"I happen to understand you simply don't have enough reliable information, but not many people will. I understand it's deeply unpleasant to be circumspect but we have just lost quite a lot of people and territory to them and almost nobody will be inclined to be charitable about it."

"Legit. Like someone suggesting we just try and talk to the fucking Ants. And yet.

I'll go watch the sea for a while and if they're truly that bad I'll find out in a day or two tops."

"Yes. Make sure to catch the slave ships they're sending from Feroz to the salt mines.

Did you want this awful scrappy note just in case, or would you rather come back here in a couple of days and I'll have a much nicer letter?" 

"Few hours, more like. Yasmina Ezmara Erigo is who I should ask for upon return, yes? Ooh, wait, would the Grendels have anything exotic to attack people with? Anything that doesn't involve flinging heavy objects or physically touching me that could be a threat? Mostly I'm considering magic."

"Probably best to ask for the Brazen Parador caravan and then ask for me, but I'm suitably impressed you got all the name segments first time - there are technically syntactic markers between them, Yasmina i Ezmara i Erigo, but running them together sounds more like you're foreign which isn't a bad thing for your prospects of not putting your foot in it."

Doing name explanations appears to let her recover a bit more from the concern over even-handedness towards the Grendel, although she is much more all business rather than friendly curiosity still. 

"They beat awareness and attention to detail in you really hard at flight school, I'd never have remembered it first time two years ago. Brazen Parador. Since caution is the enemy of friendliness here, have you got any questions before I go out and scan for a slave ship?"

"Worried I'll never see you again - would regret not sitting you down and listening to, as much about your world as you're willing to tell me - but I shouldn't get in your way, it won't help anything but my curiosity and.. people repeatedly remind me that wisdom is about actionable things and curiosity is not a virtue."

The first bit is still all business, but by the end she says this last bit with a wry smile. 

"I'll be back soon, I sw- We use 'I swear' far more casually than I think some places might actually, it gets used as a casual sign of seriousness but not, like, an oath, and interpreted that way depending on the context unless you like go 'I so solemnly swear upon the laws and ideals of the United Nations of Earth...' Ummm. Anyway, yeah, I will be back soon in all likelihood."

She half-reflexively salutes before stepping back and letting her impeller field blow dust and static across the road, taking off into the sky, manifesting more of her flight gear, and making for the ocean - or is it an inland sea? But ahh, water. Mostly a flat, level surface upon which her Surface Search RADAR will surely find any boats quite easily.

There's a fair amount of naval traffic, most of which powered by fabric sails; some smaller boats near shore are rowed, some of the fabric-sailed ships out to sea have ranks of oars as well.

This is a relatively placid large bay which constitutes most of the Imperial coastline, but it does have an outlet to ocean proper, between the Brass Coast coastline and the 'Broken Shore' landmass that juts out and cuts the bay off to the east.

There are four main kinds of shipping:

There's a myriad small boats very near the shore, especially around the Brass Coast but all along the Bay in patches, probably mostly engaged in fishing;

There are slightly larger shore-hugging vessels that seem to be primarily engaged in transport over relatively short distances;

There are a range of medium-sized to large vessels heading out or returning down the ocean passage, which also seem to be laden with cargo and not heavily armed; wide range of designs, some of these are quite elegant, although not necessarily looking all that safe to cross an entire ocean on;

And there are the most impressive ships in the sea, generally sporting yellow livery and excessive quantities of gilding, generally with both sails and large banks of oars. Crude ballistae are mounted on some of them.

There are at least some people out on deck of every vessel, some of which look like they have a rather greyscale (right through from chalk white to pitch black) skintone and a somewhat different body structure, but it's harder to distinguish differences amongst them or what they're doing from on high.

Any combat going on? If not she'll cruise around a bit then hide in a cloud bank above one of the fanciest ships, which are probably warships.

...She feels abruptly lonely without traffic control and various chatter in her ear. She keeps reaching for the right bands and there being nothing but atmospheric noise on them.

Focus. Grey people are probably Grendels. Slaves? Any of those? Piracy or anything like that?

There's no active conflict in the area between the Brass Coast coastline and the Broken Shore.

Lurking above the fancy ship, she gets a little more detail.

The greyish people - the orcs - are generally more heavily built than the local humans, or indeed anyone who doesn't dedicate their entire lives to working out, although there is considerable variation. They have brown and yellow mottling in places too, and are generally bald or have hair only down the midline of their heads. Everyone who looks like they are in charge, self-assured, generally confident, and rather gaudily dressed in finery that emphasises purple, gold and wasted extra fabric, on the vessel is an orc.

There are also both humans and orcs who don't fit this pattern. Nobody is actively in chains or being beaten on the deck of the ship, but it does look like these vessels have considerable belowdecks space, and the humans (and less fortunate looking orcs) that are on deck have their heads down, doing their assigned tasks, generally with cowed and fearful body language. Occasionally one of the gaudily dressed orcs will give one of them an order and they will immediately change what they are doing, presumably to please them. Sometimes those orders are to come belowdecks with the orc and this seems to make them particularly apprehensive, but not inclined to disobedience.

The gaudily dressed orcs are generally also armed, most often with a curved sword at the belt, some with a slung crossbow, but no active piracy appears to be in progress. Ballistae and very large slingshots, for flinging things at other ships - although not in a very sophisticated fashion, not even anything like a cannon, never mind a gun - are present, and there are a few racks of polearms lashed to walls.

She zooms away and runs down the coast of the bay, looking for orky settlements. Slaves work in fields, right, that'll be plainly obvious unlike the suggestive but not conclusive stuff on this ship.

(She doesn't even consider some sort of heroic assault. She's an air unit and there's too many unknowns.)

On the Brass Coast side of the bay, there aren't all that many orcs and it doesn't appear to be the season or the terrain for intensive farm work. There are some human labourers out in the fields - which are mostly vineyards, orange groves, and the like, there seems to be distinctly less staple crop growing than you would expect to support a medieval civilisation - but while they look kind of overheated and resentful they aren't being slave-driven.

As Lenora gets a bit further down the coast, more orcs are in evidence here and there, although mostly still not out in the fields which are still populated by the occasional fairly specialist looking human, who might seem a bit more angry and resentful than earlier, perhaps, but not exactly 'cowed and in chains'.

There are a couple of fairly obvious commotions going on though - this urban dockside is extremely busy loading a couple of large ships, including the loading of chained human prisoners and what looks a lot like random knick-knacks from a variety of places rather than standardised cargo; this tailback of caravans is being held up by a impromptu checkpoint staffed by armed and armoured orcs on one of the major roadways.

Roman slaves walked around without chains, she read once. They knew that if they left, it would be starvation or sword.

......She might have to reveal herself and see how they react or something. She doesn't want to. Why? Because she's been primed to expect bad things and is scared? ...Maybe. She really should get both sides of the story though.

She watches the prisoner loading for a bit, thinking and growing steadily more uneasy.

One of the prisoners suddenly puts up a doomed, futile fight, refusing to move forwards and attempting to kick and punch any orc that comes near.

Orcs with swords calmly slaughter the entire chain group, around half a dozen humans who were mostly not involved in the altercation other than having the misfortune to be chained with the first one, and start waving the next group forwards.

HOLY SHIT!

When the violence starts she pushes her impeller and thrusters outward to drive her into a steep dive without really thinking. 

Fuck. FUCK!

A streak of white arcs down from the clouds above, down and then leveling to come towards the docks.

Ahhhhhhhhh. There are - lots of prisoners down there. Could she guard some? Get them away? Maybe? But they'll totally kill the rest won't they. FUCK.

She can't just leave them here. Maybe she should wait until the ship is fully loaded and then attack the crew-

-She's in an exposed positon, low and close. She'd be dead if those were Ants with missiles. Thrusters off, impeller take her quietly back up. She's still at, what, 6000 feet? And several miles out? Maybe they didn't notice. 

There doesn't seem to be any wide-spread reaction to her doomed charge. People are by and large just not looking up into the sky, there is quite a considerable population of seagulls, not many people saw her and registered something out of the ordinary.

There is, however, a lookout with a basic telescope over there, who has handed it off to a second orc and appears to be accreting some kind of argument of other, even more fancily dressed orcs, while pointing at the sky.

Her impeller can cover... Maybe five meters radius if she thins it out. Arrows and swords, not railgun rounds. Though it would really fuck with people inside of it. She could. Kill. The slaving murderers. With her railgun and the eight all-purpose Spike missiles stored somewhere in corespace.

Could she though? Can she mentally convert a man, if a grey skinned one, into the grey and silver targets she blows up with the simulators?

She doesn't have a commanding officer. No support units. No Army chopper to call in infantry guys she can support or anything like that, and nobody to tell her 'cleared to engage'.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

The Valkyrie Core has a lot of processing power and sort of learns to use it in ways you want. For her, that's awareness. She skims the cloudbank again and watches the ground, the reactions, tagging commanders and trying to see if the situation is going to blow up as she agonizes between a charge and inaction.

The argument goes on for a few minutes, but it becomes clear the lookout is losing momentum. Eventually someone who appears, from demeanour, to be in charge of the lot of them shows up to the meeting, scatters everyone back to what they were doing before, casually slaps the sentry in the face hard enough to make them stagger back but not to noticeably impair their further actions, and sends them back to their post.

The command structure is a bit complicated - it seems like there is likely more than one operational unit in the area, likely at least one each attached to the two large ships and at least three competing interests on the ground - but they seem to have kindly marked themselves out in order of importance by how much gold, gemstones, and similar are worked into their clothing and strewn around them in jewellery.

Some of the less gaudily decorated orcs are eventually instructed to take away the bodies.

She............

Lurks, stewing in indecision and anxiety and looking for a good opportunity to rescue the prisoners. It'll probably be when they're on the ship and away from help. She can come at them from the direction of the sun, then. The prisoners won't exactly be any more vulnerable later. She can loiter up here for a while.

Eventually the first ship is fully laden - it must be quite cramped belowdecks with the number that were loaded onto it, and there are little piles of excess cargo poorly secured all along the deck. It starts to manoever out of the port with the aid of the large banks of oars that protrude from its lower regions. There is a lookout in the crow's nest but nobody looks especially alert and ready; the visible crew are all orcs and mostly involved in either hauling on ropes, supervising people hauling on ropes, looking nervously at poorly secured cargo, or generally being in high spirits and congratulating each other.

As they get out to sea, the urgent rope-hauling mostly dies down a bit and more of the crew start trying to find places to lean on things or sit down which are out of sight of the supervisors, who seem more concerned with having cheerful conversations with each other than looking out for laziness, although they occasionally happen to an unfortunate crew member and generally order them below decks, usually not following them.