"Broceliande is one of the Navarr territories - although it has so much Vallorn in that it's not fully under Imperial dominion - that's an actual magical terminology thing, it affects whether you can cast rituals on it from the Imperial Regio in Anvil.

It's over between Highguard and Dawn to the east.

If you're interested in fighting the Vallorn then I'd ask Carys where you'd be most useful - he's more up to date than me. He'll probably try to get you to join Navarr or swear an oath or something but he should back off and give you actually useful advice if you stand your ground."

"I mostly want to see a Vallorn getting up to things? And probably jump in to fight right away if it's as nasty as all that, but... Verify, you know?"

"Easiest place for that would be Hercynia, it's a bit north of here, another Navarr territory. That's the smallest Vallorn - you'd want to get to Deer's Folly by Bont Goch to get a good look.

If you're planning to go unescorted I'd advise staying out of bowshot - Navarr near a Vallorn have been known to shoot first and ask questions later, and Hercynia in particular has trouble with Varushkan wagon raiders who decide it'd be a great adventure to go retrieve artefacts from the Vallorn, then just rile it up or end up as husks - and there's some kind of Vallorn cult going round that call themselves the Heirs of Terunael and are trying to get it to spread with the help of the Green Mother, one of the Eternals, you definitely don't want to be mistaken for them.

On that note, also, don't start a fight out there - finishing one that's in progress to rescue people, fine, shooting husks will almost always be considered forgivable at least, but the Vallorn responds in force to attacks and you may just make the situation worse without local guidance on which bits are weak enough to drive back."

"People are jumpy in a warzone, yes. I do take things seriously sometimes. Also, not going to head out for a couple of days, I think. Artifacts?"

"Probably not actual artifacts - that's also a technical term, artisan enchanted item that is made with illium, that's star metal from falling stars, very rare and expensive. But historical stuff, bits of ancient Terun cities, that always sells well. And sometimes there are objects of power lying around, not just artefacts but old powerful boons from Eternals, forgotten potions, stuff like that."

"Okay, huh. Think I'm running out of questions about the Empire. Is illium magically special or just rare?" It might be iridium or something.

"It doesn't show up to Detect Magic on its own, but it's required for a lot of more powerful or durable magic - the best potions have a little of it in, permenant artefacts, permenant rituals need much more of it.

What counts as magic - that's a big question. For instance, the Druj thing that makes an aura of despair, that's probably spiritual rather than magical, technically - human souls can just cause spontaneous auras sometimes, a plant extract called liao makes it much easier, and I think they get the effect by torturing a lot of people in a specific way, but nobody knows exactly."

"Yeesh. I was just thinking about, you know, heavy industrial things I could reinvent. If it was just metal, maybe I could find more of it." She shrugs.

"I think it is just metal, the orcs trade for it, the Freeborn scoop it up in nets from the sea, if you get a major meteor strike you can just mine it from that. I've never owned a piece myself, but there will be a load going round Anvil and someone will be willing to show you some.

Industrial things - obviously anything that can produce armour, weapons or fortifications more easily, help supply an army, make better roads... Something that could do what the Heliopticon does, that's light based messaging throughout the mountains of Urizen, but without the special crystals that are super hard to replace and ideally without having to stick it on a mountain, that would be really useful and not specifically military.

Or easier mining in general? We mine and quarry lots of different things and that seems like better tools might really help."

"You really should have gotten an engineer. They'd have a proper fab integrated and everything. I know there's big vehicles that move dirt around, trucks and stuff. I don't know how mining works. They make roads with... Hot tar, I think, when concrete isn't available in the area and they don't want to ship it in? There's canned food? Ooh, is that a semaphore, you'd love radios. I'm sure I have a textbook on radios in here somewhere. For sig-int class if nothing else."

"Oh, yes, if you have any transport things you can provide to other people that are better than 'ox-drawn wagon' or 'human runner' then that would also be incredibly useful.

We did once have horses, but we screwed up that too and they went extinct, so there's basically nothing worth riding left on the continent, and none of our wheeled things move under their own power.

I have no idea what concrete is when it's a material rather than the opposite of theoretical, we use tar on ships but not roads but I think white granite is probably better - that's what they're making the Blood Red Roads out of, it's a light building material that's incredibly durable, wouldn't tar re-melt in the sun and get awful, maybe it'd work up in Varushka?

I know canning as a flashy League way of doing what everyone else does with jars, waxed cloth and tight cords, but the artisanry involved is too expensive for it to be more than a curiosity.

It's not quite semaphore, if by that you mean the flags thing, we do that for ship to ship communications but heliopticon code is much more complicated."

"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?"