"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?"

"Yes, it's more kind of - you have marble? Imagine marble was a more durable building material than anything else and also quite lightweight," replies Cerna.

"Our major materials are oricalchum, weltsilver, green iron, beggar's lye, iridescent gloaming, tempest jade, and dragonbone - which, uh, probably isn't actually the bones of dragons, it just looks kind of bone like and occurs in the ground.

Then there's the big three, mithril, which is a bit like steel if it was very light and worked a lot more easily without sacrificing toughness, white granite, and weirwood, which is a variety of wood that is considerably more flexible and durable than any other," explains Brys. "And illium, but that's very much just got magical properties - it make magic stick better - rather than useful physical ones."

"And of course the normal economy runs on lots of normal things like ordinary wood, charcoal, steel, linen, wool, silk, bricks, clay, cement, stone..." Gyna adds. "Not to even get into things like dyes, paints, food and drink and all that."

"Man, Specs would have loved this place. She'd want to play around with new materials, build guns that use mithril and see if weltsilver can be a semiconductor and stuff. I have no clue in comparison." Sigh. "But hey, I do need money. I can fab up a lot of Synthin or maybe even this stuff called hyperweave that makes decent armor, light as it is. Flight suit - my uniform, more or less, not what I'm wearing now - is hyperweave."

"Just the materials for the best set of light armour we can make go for at least two thrones. How easy is Hyperweave to work? Or can your machine make ready-made suits without much loss of efficiency? Can you provide Brys with a sample for testing now, so we can see how it stacks up against the Ivory Aketon?" Gyna is especially animated at the prospect of an actual trade.

"Nobody makes clothes by hand unless it's their personal hobby, honestly, most can be printed unitary and some are sewn by micromanipulators and stuff. I don't know the usual measurements though. And hyperweave tends to come pre-printed only, it's a composite."

She fusses with the giant loud metal box for a bit, and in about two minutes it produces a foot square section of layered 'cloth'. Soft and comfortable on the inside with many sandwiched layers of different fibers and colors visible on the edge. Surprisingly thick if not unworkably so, like leather, a slightly shimmery grey on the outside and soft white on the inside. "The big deal about hyperweave is that it's almost fireproof, proof to chemical attacks, stab and shrapnel resistant. And it scatters lasers - light weapons - which makes it look shiny even if you don't have those." She flexes the fiber so they can see the shimmering of the microcrystals.

Brys takes the square, sits on the ground and unrolls a small leather tool roll that was on his belt, and starts prodding the armour with various sharp things, hitting it with small hammers etc. He seems pretty impressed with the results.

"Hmm, sizing is a problem then, one of the great advantages of artisan armour is that the enchantment survives alterations very well and makes the armour magically flexible within a range," explains Gyna. "I'm only carrying twenty thrones on me right now; I reckon suits of this will easily sell at ten thrones to the right people, if you'll provide me with four pieces for five each I'll take the risk of buying some arbitrary sized and see where I can offload them - maybe base them on Cerys Liaven, he's fairly typical for the target market?

If you're likely to stick around I can send you some more buyers at probably a rather higher price; if you take this machine to Anvil I suspect you can make money until the Senate comes begging you to invest some in the Bourse before you crash the economy."

"It'll totally stop working if anyone tries to steal it, by and by. Doesn't the price depend on how tough it is compared to what you've got? I admit I'm curious on that front too."

"This is clearly better than anything in its weight category," Brys concludes, after not very much testing at all. "And that's before you get to the special effects, I'd probably call it Dragonslayer's Vestments or something if it was my invention?"

"Oh, how does stealing prevention work? Is there some kind of attunement process - I'd been assuming it attuned as armour but of course that's nonsense, it's an entirely different thing to an artisan item, you can probably even layer it... Hmm, I expect you can cast in it too. Yes, you're going to absolutely ruin the magic item economy, I suppose it doesn't expire after a year either?

I'd feel bad taking more than two off you for what I've got on hand, unless you want to consign me some and I'll do my best to find you for your cut later - if you've left here I can't guarantee timing on that, though." Gyna is speaking increasingly quickly and looks like she isn't sure whether to be gleeful or terrified.

"Hyperweave doesn't expire and also isn't theft-proof, I was talking about the fabber, sorry. Fabber has a battery - stored energy - and it'll quickly run out if I don't take it in again. Also I can just tell it to break. Radio waves, yanno. And I definitely didn't invent hyperweave, it's the product of decades of cutting-edge metamaterial engineering, so I think the name should stick since it's not one of those stupid names like ablative armor compound C-17. I don't have a great sense for how the local economy works but I'm probably fine with getting a less than optimal deal for money now? What kinds of things will twenty crown buy me?"

"Thrones," corrects Gyna, in a rather fixed and strained voice; it's like she's suffering some kind of intense internal conflict.

"Twenty rings to the crown eight crowns to the throne, no it doesn't make sense, historical reasons." She is now slightly distantly reeling things off, as if this is a lecture she's delivered a lot or at least practiced.

"Rings are mostly for basic consumables, a few rings should get you bed and board anyway that isn't the very fanciest places. Durable goods like an ox cart or a potion will be maybe worth a couple of crowns. Thrones are serious money, a couple of thrones buys you materials to improve a farm or mine or similar, the entire Senate budget is only about two thousand thrones a season and most people never even see a throne coin."

"You are very lucky that you have Allegra here and she will be checking up on your Broker and has powerful friends who will be upset if you get cheated," Cerna notes. Gyna shoots her a look, but it's more long-suffering than venemous.

"Hyperweave is a material name," complains Brys, "like leather or oricalchum or mithril - is the garment design just called the same thing? It normally wouldn't be here because you can make different things out of the same stuff - and it'd probably have different names in different nations to appeal to that nation's potential buyers."

"So a throne is still, like, house money. That's fine probably, I'll make half a dozen. I need to find some rare materials to do much more of that anyway. Hyperweave is the material, call the clothes whatever you want I guess. We'd call them flight suits or infantry underarmor. Way I see it, if you treat me fair you're obviously the one I come to next time and if you don't it'll end up being one of your competitors."

"As we're being honest," says Gyna, "I'm not actually convinced there's going to be a next time - you look to me like a big player, although you maybe don't realise how big yet, and you'll be off to Anvil and find someone who's working internationally to make your next set of trades."

"Rare materials, if they're not the usual sort, probably also an Anvil problem," Brys contributes, "sounds like the kind of thing that will either... coincidentally be available there or you'll need to get an Appraisal through the Senate to get the Civil Service to go look for some."

Brys sounds a bit like he disapproves of Anvil on some kind of principle. 

"I-

Have unprecedented sets of power and technology here, right. I haven't really made the update from 'one of a thousand in one academy, not even a particularly special one, in the bottom quartile of the class on technical skills and the top quartile on piloting skills, nobody special'. I should probably do that." Sigh. "Fine, maybe I never see you again. What does that mean for us here and now."

"I still have twenty thrones right here, which will be useful starting capital on whatever you want to do. You provide me with as many suits of that excellent light armour as you feel like for that, at least two for the full twenty; if I make ridiculously huge returns on them, I will send you a further cut at that time. I'm happy to haggle that arrangement if you like, but what you actually keep doing is offering me more than I ask for, so you probably just want to take it," replies Gyna promptly.

"Yeah on second thought, hyperweave is relatively non-renewable for me. Hold on..." She peers off into the middle distance for a bit. "Ooh, there's standard designs with internal buttons and things so you can adjust the fit a bit. I'm making two." The fabricator starts warming up with a rumbling noise somewhere between a washing machine and a microwave. "Where are y'all from exactly again? I also wanted to talk artisan-ing, but it sounds like that's magic more than physical science? The spigot over there's not a new technique, just new materials?"