"The copper wire is for my charging station, ma'am; droids don't eat, instead we use a kind of energy called electricity, which gets from place to place by flowing through metal wires. Even being as careful as I can with my energy usage I'll run out in about two days; I'll be fine when the wire comes in and Master Deskyl can make the machine to refill my battery, but in the meantime I won't be available to translate for her - she can read and write but doesn't expect that to be convenient enough for working directly with you. She does have some blueprints drawn up that you should be able to work on without her while I'm unavailable - the first thing she'd like to reinvent is the steam or internal-combustion engine, which are machines that use burning fuel, either wood or refined oil, to haul large amounts of cargo or run other machines, including ones that produce lots of electricity."

"I can definitely hand her lists of questions to clarify things! I suppose we have plenty of wood around here. I'm not sure what electricity's actually good for, I know there are some fun displays in Holberg when they get the lightning to jump around, but it sounds like it's useful for you at least?

Ooh, might it be good for water pumps? We have a lot of flooded mines across the Empire, it's not really a Navarr problem but the premium on materials has certainly reached us!"

Angharad is a bit sad that the 'droid' is going to have to get hungry, but it seems like they have a Plan, and also lots of exciting things to be getting on with.

    "She says a steam or combustion engine would be good for pumping water, yes ma'am."

    "Electrical machines can make light and heat without smoke, and a few related tricks, but she says that the main advantage of electricity is that electrical devices can be made much, much smaller than mechanical ones that do the same things, so that you can make a very complex machine in a reasonable amount of space, and this allows a lot of kinds of work that other wise need to be done by a person to be done by a machine, freeing the person up to do other things; they're also faster at some kinds of work and don't tire."

"Heat without smoke will be hugely popular," Allegra mentions. "Lightstone already takes care of most of our lighting - although if you can mimic daylight, you might be able to feed mana sites more effectively..."

"Sounds amazing. Let's have a look at these blueprints? We probably can't really get started until we're done building the forge, but I can see what the bill of materials looks like and how it matches up with what Allegra and Catrin can source, or if we need to make some substitutions," replies Angharad, eager to get down to business.

    "Yes ma'am; they're back at the tent." Deskyl picks her up again to head that way.

Allegra and Angharad follow them back to the tent.

"I might go and see how everyone's doing with the traders," says Allegra as they get there. "I'll come back before they head off, in case of any last minute orders."

    "Yes ma'am, thank you," DZ relays.

Deskyl pops into the tent to retrieve her work, returning quickly with a smallish stack of papers that she hands to Angharad - drawings of a steam engine and a first-pass attempt at a design for a combustion engine that can be made with the manufacturing tech that they seem to have, with notes about various aspects of the machines and the types of forces their parts need to withstand. The units are unfamiliar, though there are occasional notes explaining roughly what a given value is equivalent to in practical terms, and she has DZ add that she can do more detailed translation once she knows what units they use for weight and temperature.

Angharad expects to have to do format conversion, because Imperial units are a bit hopeless - you've got the ingot, the measure and the bottle, which are all specific volume measurements for magical materials, the wain which is actually three separate units for the 'bourse resources', and then every city and nation tends to do its own thing; she prefers to work in 'grams' which are based on the weight of a cube of water a centimetre across, metre sticks are just a thing and nowadays she can just mark one up by sight.

They don't actually have units for temperature, but she's very excited to derive something! Everything that needs a temperature measurement is currently just something like 'keep going until the thing glows the right amount' or 'don't quite let it boil'. She thinks the Urizen have a light intensity unit but she's never bothered learning it, sorry, candles can be rated in it but it requires carefully calibrated lightstones to get it right.

This is going to be a lot of cast iron, probably. Orichalcum steel could maybe get you something even more robust to pressure, that seems to be important? The fiddly bits could do with a bit of green iron or weltsilver alloy, maybe, but that will bring the robustness to heat and pressure down a bit.

Oh, if they have meters and grams she should learn the centigrade scale for temperature - it's based on the freezing and boiling points of water in human-optimal conditions, and it's part of a system of measurements that includes both meters and grams and also units for measuring energy, which will be useful when they get into electricity. (The energy scales are mostly too esoteric to be worth explaining right now, though Angharad can get an overview of them out of DZ later if she'd like.)

It's convenient that Angharad is familiar with the local materials and can advise on what they'll need; Deskyl is used to working mostly with durasteel, which she doesn't know how to make and suspects is too difficult for the tech level.

Durasteel sounds a bit like orichalcum steel, but probably it's not worth trying orichalcum steel for the first prototype; if it explodes then that's information and the Steading has a physick, so probably nobody will die! They can always add an orichalcum steel layer to the bits that failed once they know what they are.

A bit, yes - she'll be able to tell how similar and in what ways once she has a sample to look at; she's a sensory specialist powers-wise and should be able to just tell. She also has a danger sense that'll help a bit with any dubious machinery; it doesn't give very much warning or warn her about danger to other people, but she can at least personally work on a dangerous machine without much risk.

"So, we've got half a forge and some orichalcum and some iron, if we don't want to wait for someone to play fetch from Seren then I can probably whip up a small sample once we've got the forge built.

It sounds like we don't definitely need anything else except a lot of wood that's not hard to come by round here, and maybe some more iron, and I should check that the crucible is up to it? And maybe get some charcoal burning organised, it'll be more convenient than wood if we can get a good supply.

Anything else we should work on, or should we get back to the forge and let you look at our starter pack and help them with that amazing lifting trick - I don't suppose you can teach people to do that?"

    "That sounds like a good plan to her, ma'am. She doesn't expect to be able to teach anyone here how to use the Force; your physics are slightly different but in our world it's only usable by people with an innate connection to it, which is very rare."

"Righty-o. Let's get to it."

Angharad heads back towards the forge site, and starts poking at the pile of supplies until she finds a smallish box which contains some quite small samples of various magical materials.

"I'd love to know what your sensory whatsits make of these!" she asks, cheerfully. "Do you want me to list what they are, or do you want to look at them first?"

Neither, apparently, from the extended signing in response to the relayed question. She's able to identify the metals without even looking at them, and give vague descriptions of the other materials in the box as well - a brittle stone, a medicinal resin, a caustic poison, a living stone with magical properties, and a wax that interacts with light.

"The stone's Tempest Jade, I'm not sure we'll have much use for that, it's super magic but the material properties are nothing to write home about. Ambergelt either, that's the resin, it's a great wood varnish but I'm not seeing any complicated woodwork here.

Dragonbone might be good for some of, whatever we are piping the steam into or connecting this thing to? And I might line the crucible with it if it's not already, it's great for making alloys actually work and putting up with the kind of temperatures you need for orichalcum. Gloaming's fun - that's the wax - but not much use for this either.

And, ugh, we're going to need more Beggar's Lye. I mean, probably not right away, but if we're going to do much with orichalcum steel. And I want to see what happens when you get that steam chamber extra hot - do you know already?"

    "She says it needs to be able to hold enough pressure for the steam to push that piston well, ma'am, and getting it much hotter than that would be a waste of fuel, but there should be a safety valve built in as well to avoid explosions; she'll need to work out how to make a suitable one."

"Oh, okay." Angharad seems disappointed that More Heat does not make it Go Faster. "Hmm, safety valve. To spring out under the right amount of pressure and back when it's relieved enough? Probably a weltsilver thing - maybe an alloy if the steam gets hot enough to melt it."

    "She was expecting to use a valve with a weighted cover, but weltsilver might be useful, yes ma'am."

"Makes really well calibrated springs, I used it a lot for the cart project. Let's see how the forge is getting on, then."

Angharad starts to pay attention to the construction and dispense 'helpful' advice to the briars who are putting the forge together; it might actually be helpful, but there is a distinct air of resentment from the locals who were already doing the work and haven't really accepted her as one of theirs yet, which Angharad seems completely oblivious to.

Deskyl jumps right in to helping shift bricks, but does pause to sign across the workspace to DZ, who whispers in Angharad's ear "Master Deskyl says you'll be more popular if you take less of a leadership role, ma'am."

Angharad is very confused! She was just making a few helpful suggestions, that's all.

"What do you mean?" she whispers back, except she isn't all that good at whispering, so it comes out as more of a stage whisper.

"I suspect they don't know you well enough to feel comfortable taking instructions from you, ma'am. I can call Master Deskyl over if you'd like to know what exactly she noticed."

"Oh dear. I don't suppose you know how I can speed that up? Or maybe I should go away entirely, but I'm not sure either of you know how to make a forge like this and it's rather difficult to fix if anything goes wrong at this stage!"

"Master Deskyl and I don't, yes ma'am. I expect that working with Master Allegra to instruct them would be better, but she's busy right now - is there part of the forge that's more difficult to do incorrectly or less difficult to fix if it's done incorrectly, that they could focus on for the next few minutes?"