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An idyllic scene:
The beautiful woodlands stretch off into the distance in all directions, a small muddy cart-track meandering off towards the rest of civilisation.
A selection of... mostly-human individuals, sitting or crouching by a sparkling stream flanked with a profusion of bluebells, panning the water for something - not gold, something more precious than gold, something more magic...
All of them have some slightly non-human features - prominent green veins, or patches of bark, or vines and flowers growing amongst the hair, or thorns jutting awkwardly through the skin. All of them have at least one prominent tattoo, a variation on the theme of a twining thorned branch; some have many more.
A few children running here and there, not tattooed, fetching and carrying and dancing and playing. Some are a little green-veined, some with scabs of bark from inevitable childhood accidents.
In general, a peaceful and Prosperous place, if a little light on infrastructure and facilities; some wooden structures cling to the forest's edge above the brook, haphazard shelters built with love and energy and not very much in the way of skill and patience.
"Yes, I suspect Allegra's not going to want that many extra people, they're probably going to have to bring their own encampment as it is."
He waits a few more moments in case the conversation is not over, intending to head back up to the road where Allegra and Ytha are standing; Allegra is clearly watching the situation unfold, Ytha is awkwardly poking at her handcart of supplies in a poor attempt to make it look like she isn't trying to eavesdrop.
Deskyl gives him an acknowledging nod and scoops DZ up to bring her over to where she's going to build the electrical generator.
Ytha heads over to them with the cart full of wire when it's clear they're done with the egregore. There are a few coils of slightly different diameters, most of which are bare copper but one of which has a wax coating.
She picks out one of the bare coils after a moment of deliberation, and passes the waxed one over to DZ for approval; on getting it, she retrieves the other supplies from the tent and gets building. It only takes her a few minutes to have a simple frame holding the bare coiled wire in place around a rod with a turnhandle on one end and the magnet strapped to the middle. Strip the wax from the ends of the other wire, crimp one end to the coil, press the other end carefully into a port in DZ's side, and all that's left to do is make sure she has a reasonable safety perimeter before she starts cranking.
Once she starts even vaguely gesturing for a safety perimeter, Ytha and a few curious onlookers that have gathered retreat swiftly in good order to about 20', which appears to be their Standard Trained Safety Perimeter; they'll need specific instructions if Deskyl wants them to do anything else.
Yeah that's fine, it shouldn't spark that far without enough warning for her to stop it.
Time to crank, then! It seems to take much more effort than one would intuitively expect, especially to get up to the pace she wants, but she gets there, and then keeps going, and going - it seems like this is going to take a while.
Most of the onlookers get bored and drift off, but Ytha is sharply focused on the success or failure of this project, although she does start pacing and bobbing up and down and generally giving off physical impatience cues, although apparently just to reduce her own internal frustration rather than as an attempt to communicate.
"Eh?" replies Ytha, confused at why she's being hailed. "Is it good? I think they got the specs right, but that's why I got a range..."
Progress is slow, steady, and... odd. Someone less attuned to the world would probably not have noticed, or blamed some kind of mechanical imperfection, but there is something interfering with the process of generating electricity. It's almost like there is some kind of dampening field, but it is a dampening field with opinions - it specifically isn't interfering in anything small-scale, or anything within DZ's circuitry - and it is allowing DZ to be 'fed', but is almost lying in wait to disrupt anything that looks like it might be larger scale generation of electrical energy, and likely a few other processes that are harder to identify because they are not currently being attempted.
...oh that's sneaky.
Well, the nice thing about being a Sith is that physics are negotiable; sometimes metaphorically, and she does reach out to steady the generator's processes that way - it might still fail, she's not forcing the issue that way, but if it does it'll fail gently rather than explosively - but sometimes they're negotiable rather literally, too. Hey, could you not? This is important.
The damping field does not admit that it is something that can be negotiated with, but absolutely agrees with Deskyl that 'provide essential maintenance to an extant sapient being' is entirely reasonable, and it is not going to get in the way of this specific thing.
It's not, actually, less important in cases where the people who're starving for lack of resources aren't immediately present; broadly solving that problem is pretty much the whole point of electricity. Maybe the local physics has that handled better than the one back home does at this tech level? It is very noticeably smarter and friendlier.
The damping field is stubbornly non-sapient, and furthermore asserts there is no curtain and if there was, Deskyl certainly should not be attempting to look behind it if she were attempting to secure its cooperation. There have been a lot of extremely clever rules lawyers and most of them are now a pair of smoking boots and it would be a pity if that was to occur again here.
Sure, sure, she'll let it be. It shouldn't be surprised if she ends up twisting its metaphorical nonsapient arm later, though, if that's how it prefers to play this.
She cranks on, running through some meditation exercises to pass the time.
It absolutely doesn't have its eye on her, because it's not an entity capable of wilful action and it doesn't have any eyes. But. Metaphorically speaking.
DZ hasn't done anything wrong, though, so it's perfectly happy - or would be, if it had emotions, etc - to let this one slide. For now.
Cranketty cranketty crank, if batteries are off the table and she's going to have to do this by hand indefinitely she really needs to put together a better handle, cranketty cranketty crank.
Everything is perfectly normal, nothing disturbs her hand-cranking, it does seem like it might be possible to generate batteries as long as they're firmly conceived of as 'snacks for DZ' rather than 'generic portable power sources'. Time passes.
Eventually DZ reports that her battery is nearly full, and Deskyl's cranking slows and then stops. DZ runs through some calibration procedures to recover from her shutdown - they look a bit like stretches - while Deskyl extends her senses to check what Cerys seems to be up to.
Cerys is talking to Allegra; they appear to be haggling over details, Allegra has been writing down fairly cryptic, highly abbreviated notes about the logistics of taking in additional people.
Yeah, better to get that sorted out sooner rather than later. She signs her thanks to Ytha as soon as DZ is in a state to translate it and heads that way.
Ytha startles a little, says "You're welcome!" chirpily, and trails after her, possibly hoping to ask questions when she isn't immediately busy.