"Seren," replies Cerna. "It's really the only sizable city the Navarr have. Steadings and wayhouses are nice and all, but Seren is pretty much where we build anything fancy. It started out as a huge archaeological dig for the Terun ruins exposed when the Vallorn was defeated here, and we still incorporate bits of that which were still solid enough to use for building things."

"Artisanry is physical science, at least to me," insists Brys, "but maybe we mean different things by that? There's all sorts of wild theories about the basic materials of artisanry and the Realms - and they sure do seem to be available there, and interesting to various Eternals - but in practice, we dig them out of the ground or make them from plants and animals, and then we build them into well made physical objects to have effects. Try to put a fancy orichalcum inlay into a shoddy suit of metal armour, and it won't do what you want it to."

"I'd expect to see something like the spigot in the League rather than Navarr," Gyna notes, "but the principles are not unknown, no. Navarr settlements tend to think of themselves as impermanent even when they don't actually move around a lot in practice, so everything tends to be the minimum that works for the job."

"Yeah, physical science but different physics. Huh. Do you recognize any of this?" She displays an interactive periodic table of elements on the tablet.

Brys and Cerna peer avidly at the tablet; Gyna affects a little more distance and appears more interested in the device itself than its current content.

"Some of those names," Brys replies. "Actually quite a lot of them, although, like, some really obscure stuff on here. Probably better to call out what I don't know - Lithium, Beryllium, Scandium, anything lower in that bit; don't know anything up to Iron in the main section, no wait, manganese is that weird stuff that the League put into window glass to brighten it up? Then just the top line until we get to copper-silver-gold. Not sure what Cadmium or the weird ones in the bottom line are. Okay I only know a few of this section until we get out of the metals, Tin and Lead we use; I think I heard a theory about 'silicon' once, something to do with sand? Arsenic, of course, although Purify will sort you right out. Boron - that sounds like something to do with borax? Then carbon, nitrogen, oxygen we know, sulfur of course, chlorine, nasty stuff that. I vaguely remember someone from the Brass Coast trying to excitedly tell me about Helium once but I wasn't really paying attention, I'm afraid."

"What are the numbers?" asks Cerna.

"Man, I am not the kind of person to explain chemistry. It's like... The atomic number, the number of protons that make up a single atom of that particular substance? And the atomic weight, the average weight of atoms of that element. You can like predict the exact amount of stuff you need to do stuff with, with it. Elements are the kinds of things that are atoms. As opposed to arrangements of atoms, like water, water's aitch two oh. Like say, one pound of water. 1.008 times two, 15.999... Divided by... You'll get about 11.2% hydrogen by weight and the rest would be oxygen if you electrolyze water. Pure water, anyway. I actually need a bunch of these, relatively small quantities but I do need them, to make hyperweave. Molybdenum, Hafnium, Francium, Manganese, Niobium, Bismuth. Silver, but you know silver unlike the rest."

"Those... sure are some words," replies Brys, dubiously. "Electrolyze... I know lyse, that's using various ways of breaking things down, like dissolving them in beggar's lye; electro sounds like some of the bizarre things I've heard of from Commonwealth traders, apparently you can make a really impressive light show and a weird smell that they think is what happens when you break down the air?"

"Sounds like ozone. Most of my stuff is electric. Ridiculously advanced in comparison, but. Uh... Historical chemistry, lemme see... You probably won't be using pure elements, purifing things is hard and you dont really need it most of the time, I think... Lye is Sodium Hydroxide, Enn-Ay-Oh-Aitch... So I bet you can make lye from salt with a process that produces Chlorine, because table salt is Sodium and Chlorine... Wait, that's electrolysis too. Hmm. I could try to start from scratch but like, I'm not at a hundred percent and also that sounds hard. And I'm not sure I want to just hand over a textbook or something and hope y'all can make sense of it without thinking about it more."

"Well, when you do, look me up in Seren if you've got a moment - I don't think you'll find many people quite as well travelled and with quite as many pieces of the puzzle," replies Brys.

"Brass Coast would love to make Beggar's Lye from salt," Gyna adds, "they've got plenty of coastline but not much in the way of forests."

"I can sure answer a few more specific questions even if I'm not a danged Chemistry teacher. You like the tablet? Unfortunately it's one of the most complicated and irreproducible things."

"That's a pity, the Civil Service would love it," replies Gyna.

"So, outstanding puzzles in things that aren't even slightly magical materials? Water desalination - you can do it with an enormous evaporation still but no use for practical purposes, even better if it fits aboard a ship. Basically everything to do with food preservation - state of the art is to dry it or pack it in salt, both of which increase your water requirement on board ship. Improvements to steel production, I suppose, although the League and Wintermark do okay, and the real bottleneck is mithril. Improvements to mining - state of the art there is lightweight mithril pickaxes, lightstone mining lamps and weirwood supports, every now and again someone comes up with some kind of mechanical drill affair but getting enough power to it reliably down into a mine is nontrivial - can't really hook up a water wheel, donkey treadmills are pretty hard on the donkey. Anything for land transport that beats an ox cart - I'm not convinced you can do much for shipping, mostly the limits there are weirwood and widespread expertise rather than designs." Brys takes a breath and waits a moment to see if Lenora thinks this is too many questions.

"Hmm. I don't think you all are stupid, or not seeing the obvious easy methods. These things are complicated and hard, yeah. Distilling fresh water takes a lot of energy, even the membrane style ones need super high pressure pumps to get anywhere, distilling water is just hard. Mining in particular is fucking dangerous, robots only now, spend metal to save meat. They use explosives sometimes, break up the rock so you can just scoop it up. Electricity will power drills. Is there a good supply of coal? Enough that you could burn a lot in giant water boilers?"

"Most things that aren't steel production - and a few other processes that need the really high temperatures - use charcoal. The League actually import high quality coal from Sarcophan, which is probably actually mined by Grendel with horrible slave labour. There are coal deposits in Varushka but they've been struggling for mine labour, uh, ever since we stopped being horrible slavers ourselves." explains Brys.

"Basically, people much prefer to be charcoal makers than coal miners, so you just can't get much coal in a free society where there are magical materials to mine as well," explains Gyna.

"I'd expect there's a load in Urizen as well, plenty of mountains and very old jungle, but ushabti tend to be too fragile for mining operations and Virtues forbid the Urizen get their own hands dirty," contributes Cerna.

"Kharaman actually supplies some coal too," Gyna adds, "that's the Brass Coast mountain range, they're probability not very efficient but they do like any kind of high quality goods."

"You guys seem a lot more solarpunk than steampunk anyway. You can get electricity with windmills and photovoltaic panels too but coal is widely regarded as the cheapest and most reliable low-tech way. We do it with nuclear fusion which is, uh, the same thing the sun does. We build miniature suns. Even more no way I can do that than the computer, there."

"I mean, Tian did bring her people the sun," mentions Cerna.

"And it might not just be a metaphor for fire, there was that whole thing with the northmost Terun city up in Otkadov having its own sun," Gyna contributes.

"I suspect," says Brys somewhat reluctantly, "what you'd want is to make electricity from the volcano forge, or get the help of Estavus - that's an Eternal, the Forgemistress - to sort you out a power source from her realm. Maybe just do something with the Warm Ashes, I've always thought there must be some good use for a fairly low heat source which just doesn't stop being warm."

"We have windmills," adds Cerna, "I mean we don't here, but the Marchers have loads and the Brass Coast are pretty fond of them too, and Urizen have some spectacularly weird spiral-y metal ones, and the League actually has quite a few for all they like to pretend they don't have farmland and the food just mysteriously appears."

"You could make electricity from something that's eternally lukewarm! All you need is a temperature differential, in principle. It might not be very much. A volcano would certainly do it, that's called geothermal power."

"Don't have a pouch of warm ashes on me, but if you do get to Anvil you shouldn't have trouble finding some - the Autumn realm gives them out like candy, mostly in trade for forest materials, not much grows there apparently," says Brys.

"Crystal fire, the Night vis, does the same kind of thing, but I'd generally think Autumn would be a better resonance for anything mechanised," contributes Gyna.

"There's only one volcano forge that I know about in the Empire and I'm not sure the owner would consider repurposing it," says Cerna. "It was a gift from Estavus - I guess she might make another one if you impress her."

"I'm probably going to stay away from Eternals for a while."

"Very sensible," replies Gyna approvingly. "They're less powerful than they think they are, but they can still ruin your day."

"Warm ashes and crystal fire come from Eternals originally, but there should be plenty on the market at Anvil, or I'm sure Gyna could source you some of you stuck around," adds Cerna. 

"Not a priority, more like something to suggest to crafter guys to uplift y'all. Come to think of it," BEEP! "Oh, suits are done. Do you have explosives, explosive powder?" She opens a panel on the fridge-sized fabricator and pulls out the two Hyperweave suits. A neutral civvie grey with faint hexagonal pattern rather than the brown and emblem-decorated version she has.

"Oh yes, the Brass Coast love their fireworks," says Gyna. "The best ones have a bit of Tempest Jade in, which does interesting colours."

"And the dramaturgists love their flash powder," adds Cerna. "I visit Tassato fairly frequently and they are very keen on those little ones you can just chuck at the ground and make a loud bang, or flash paper that burns spectacularly but mostly doesn't set anything else off."

"None of it works for industrial or military purposes though," Brys notes, somewhat more grumpily. "We've tried it for blowing up fortifications and for mining and for siege weapon, the best you can do is a thrown weapon that makes a startling noise and light show on impact that you can put a bunch of in a catapult if you want to annoy the defenders. Usually you'd expect a loud noise to come with enough push to do something useful, at least shake up some rocks a bunch, but it just... doesn't." Brys seems to be somewhat personally offended by this fact.

"Anyway, I'll want to get going with these soon - although maybe we should have a spot of lunch first?" says Gyna.

There are a number of curious onlookers who are very happy to offer options for lunch, although it is mostly Some Kind Of Stew again.

She is really unsure if she wants to explain modern explosives to these people. Some wandering around double checking is necessary first.

She thanks them for their time and has stew. Afterwards, she'll fly some Briars around! It might be uncomfortable but she's recovered enough to do it, now.

There is a great deal of demand for being flown around! From people of all ages, from tiny cute toddlers to a grey haired gentleman who starts off just watching but then allows that he might have a go if she's willing.

Not toddlers or little kids, the flight involves gripping them with her impeller field - which kind of feels like a very very firm hug from every direction at once. They can still breathe, and talk, but she asks them not to move too much. She takes them on gentle curvy routes above the village, up high enough to get a really good overview of the area. What's around, just forest and forest?

Aerial view of South East Miaren: mostly forest.

The forest ends a few miles to the west and starts to be somewhat irregular fields with hedgerows and the occasional copse, with a few indistinct clusters that are probably settlements and one obvious stone tower.

South of the tower the terrain gets hilly, and in the distance there is an oddly regular jumble that could be a reasonably sized town.

To the east, the stream starts to become a river visible between the trees, and eventually joins up with a really big nnw/sse river, at a place area where some sweeping ruined stonework pierces the tree cover.

Her passenger is mostly going "Whoa!" delightedly, and at some point tries to stick out her arms in imitation of a bird.

She can loosen up the field around her arms a bit. Swoop around nicely, give these people something of the joy of flight. Who's next? (This is fun!)

She'll have to get real high up to do longrange navigation, looks like.

Looks like someone the first passenger knows - they laugh and bid him good luck as he gets picked up.

This one's a bit quieter than the first passenger - until Lenora gets a bit of altitude going - at which point he starts panicking...