Keevan looks warily at the devices on hovering platforms, and immediately moves to intercept Myra's attempt to head towards the Trod. Despite their disadvantages, the Thorns move quickly to back him up.

"Sorry, Administrator, but we really can't let you interfere with the Trod without supervision. I'm sure Caryn will clear it all up, once she's had an opportunity to hear your intentions."

"Ah-whoop, excuse me, - huh?  ...Oh - no, yeah, I really should have expected that.  I'd swear up and down it's just a ley tap, pulls energy from flow sources, and it sure won't actually turn on til I tell it to, but you don't have any reason to believe I know what I'm doing.

"Right!  To the supervisor, then!  My apologies; I was looking to get the thing I'm planning to build for y'all ready before we met so I could spin it up as fast as possible, but I shouldn't have gone and tried to do it without a permit, even if I'm very good at what I do.  That way lies madness, kludges, and spaghetti code.  And nobody likes that anywhere near mission-critical infrastructure."

Keevan escorts Myra (and Evantia, who silently tags along) in through the gate; most of the rest of the Thorns continue to stand around guarding the Strange Objects, although the older woman who looked interested - unlike most of the others, she's wearing red and black clothes and metal armour, and does not have tattoos - shuffles in behind them.

He leads the assembled through to where the magic users had started standing around in circle and debating doing something.

"Caryn, this is Administrator Myra Northwind, who was captaining the vessel - she says she can help with medical attention and, I quote, 'magical bullshit'.

Administrator, this is Caryn Splitroot, hopefully you can explain to her what you were attempting to do with the crystal and the runes and so on."

Caryn is not quite as young as Keevan, although probably not out of her twenties. She has an intricate forehead tattoo as well as the ubiquitous thorned branch mark. She's wearing nice leaf green robes and some tasteful green and bronze jewellery.

"Welcome to the Broch! As a Vate, 'magical bullshit' is indeed my speciality."

A lot of those gathered here are also more or less politely attempting to shove their way into easy hearing distance of Myra; there appear to be quite a range of nationalities represented, but those here in this gathering place are clearly united in their interest in 'magical bullshit'.

"Glad to meet you, Caryn.

She turns her voice up just a bit, for the crowd.

"So.  The Trods drain the Vallorn for fuel, keyed on by any who walk them.  I believe I am capable of using outside-context magic and skills to vastly accelerate this process and produce magic that isn't trying to kill you.  It will help if I know more about their workings, but even the worst-case scenario is only that it doesn't work; even if there is a catastrophic interaction of some sort I refuse to let the Vallorn win.

"Unfortunately, I don't trust many people, if I trust any people - including myself - with the theory of magic behind the tools and techniques I use, because of the sheer potential for fuckery inherent therein, but fortunately, once a working example exists, it is indefinitely replicable.  I also have some rather potent non-magical equipment, and a subset of magical devices, that I am happy to share with anyone who sees an evil giant magic thing possessing people and squares up to punch it in the metaphorical face.

"As far as medical attention goes, that's not actually something I in particular can speak to the theory of, but if you model me as a part-time Herald of something or someone not of the realms you're used to, it's probably not wrong.  That said, I've been here for like..."

She checks the time with a projected digital-wristwatch analogue.

"...I think that's - six to eight hours, I forget when precisely I set off this morning and time can get a bit wonky - so a) please do forgive any offense offered, I probably don't know better, and b) I don't know the fiddly details of things yet even if I've probably seen something analogous ever.

"I will now take questions; one at a time, please, if necessary I will start passing around a talking stick.  I know people like me, and y'all are absolutely filled to bursting with questions about what, how, and who the fuck, but it will take longer to answer yours if everyone's trying to talk over eachother."

"First things first - uh, non-theoretical medical intervention, do you have anything for Green Lung? We've a makeshift hospital full of people dying of it a few buildings over, that might not keep until we've had a nice chat.

You have definitely come to the right place for punching the evil giant magic thing, although most of the direct face-punchers are currently out in the middle of it, punching faces. If you can fly that thing over it, you probably have a better way of getting supplies to them than we do; if you can do something about any of the people in the hospital, most of them were out in it recently and can hop aboard and guide you in.

I'm sure everyone here has a lot of theoretical questions, but we can talk about trod acceleration and magical theory once the things that stop people dying get handed out."

There is some quiet grumbling from the assembled, and a couple of people look like they're about to launch into a question or start waving their hands before they get generally glared at and occasionally physically tackled by nearby people. The only person who ends up with their hand up is the old woman in metal armour that followed Myra in.

"Walk and talk then, at least about that; you and you," Caryn and Probably Badass Grandma, "can come with me and the rest of you can pool your questions."

To the hospital right the fuck now it is.

"My apologies, if I'd known this was that time-sensitive I would have gone straight there instead of straight here."

And she moves, a pace that just barely avoids sacrificing her dignity for speed.

She can feel them.

And her drones are already arriving, but her mantle and her own, more direct magic approach the problem from a very different angle - and she would not be worthy of it were she to leave such a pressing problem unaddressed.

"I have protective equipment I can produce at scale; if the Vallorn's poisons are similar to the effect of a rift to Spring, I'm confident in my wards against it and an ounce of prevention is worth so many pounds of cure given the present situation.

"Is anybody going to be particularly pissed off at a sapience-friendly not-exactly-an-Eternal being involved in healing them?  I believe I could make it work even without her assistance once I've seen the problem fixed, and hell, maybe it won't even need me depending on the etiology - I sure hope it won't, but sometimes powerful magic needs more intense and directed fuckery to break it - though I probably can make some tool to solve that, longer-term, if the Vallorn are still a problem in the coming weeks - but I'd rather respect preferences where I can, an' that harm none - and for this I somehow doubt there's going to be even time to secure individual consent."

"The Highborn might; they can have a problem about it when they're alive to have a problem about it. I'm sure I can scare you up a fine collection of Guides for your clemency plea if it comes to that, but I sincerely doubt anyone's going to do more than whinge about it."

There is a longhouse, looks like previously some kind of community hall, filled with makeshift beds; some fairly young children, maybe seven or eight, are on the door solemnly handing out cloth face-masks, and they stand well clear of the door whenever it is opened. The makeshift beds are filled with invalids, many of them coughing; there are only two grim-faced nurses between them, both rather elderly.

The Vallorn has got into the lungs of these people; just a tiny bit, not enough to consume them wholesale, but enough to take root and start growing through a rather important area of the body. There are also tiny bits of Vallorn floating in the air of the building. The cloth face masks are not really doing anything, but the quarantine precautions are reasonably impressive, for the displayed technology level.

"You're doing great given what you have, but it's not enough; I'll get you better gear for any potential future cases.  At least we don't seem to have to - I'm not finishing that sentence, they'll turn out to come back as zombies afterwards if I do."

If Evantia is with her - even if she isn't, actually - her armor is now very definitely deployed in a "BSL 4-TZ Safety Lockdown: (I)nfo".

The drones are already setting up a proper airlock as she leans against the outside of the building, magic and construction drones sealing the cracks and hunting down the signatures of Vallorn micro-particles.

She speaks a few words through the shield that shimmers around her as she walks through it.  "I'm here to treat you.  I can't promise that this will return you to perfect health or be particularly comfortable, but when it is done there will be no more fucking Vallorn in your fucking lungs."

Then, she extends her mantle over the building, and tendrils the color of  n o t h i n g  reach out from her hand, thousands of micro-fine threads coiling, snapping into action as they gather up the airborne Vallorn into a well-crafted one-way force-bubble and then, gently, with the assistance of medical droid imaging and a hopefully comforting mien as she sees to each individual patient, clearing their lungs with said tendrils and mending the micro-tears from roots and their removals with medical magics and her healing aura as the tendrils grasp further Vallorn microparticles on autopilot; she sees to the worst-off patient first.  "This is going to feel really weird unless I send you to sleep, which I can do if you want - just nod or blink twice - but it's going to be okay; my homeland's people do stuff like this all the time and I carry with me expertise, tools and power they'd probably kill or die to have.  Nurses, please go around and ask the other patients if they'd prefer to stay awake or not."

It feels surprisingly like a mother's embrace, despite being a tendril of black nothing in their throat.  It feels like they are all seen and cared for as the aura stretches over the room; no-one will die waiting.

The patients vary in whether they want to be put to sleep; the worst affected generally do, but many of the more robust want to remain aware, some out of curiosity, some suspicion, some bravado.

There are a variety of more conventional injuries amongst them too - mostly blunt force trauma, but also some claw slashes and puncture wounds.

None of them seem particularly inclined to berate Myra for her help, although a couple of the suspicious, wakeful patients do ask, when the tendrils retract, "What was that?"

The conventional injuries seem to be healing from her very presence, since she's drawing this deeply upon her mantle, and a flash-conjured runic placard will give those who ask for it a few minutes' gentle sleep.

"Help, from someone I consider a friend, as well as the results of a vast trove of knowledge, willingly shared.  Perhaps multiple vast troves, really; I tend to accumulate them wherever I go.  Scientia, after all, potentia est, to be more pretentious than I deserve."

That is clearly not a very acceptable answer to many of them - especially those dressed mostly in black and white, from which there are a lot of sceptical harrumphs - but none of them seem particularly inclined to press the matter, having just been healed.

Evantia is sensibly waiting outside, attempting to patiently explain to 'Probably Badass Grandma' that she has no idea of Myra's full capabilities, but she's sure she'll have a moment for her once the immediate emergency is slightly less immediate.

"Okay.  That's taken care of, nobody's too pissed off, I've actually got enough samples -" analyzed by some very intense scanning equipment that was run through the airlock, then very vehemently incinerated, possibly to the point of plasma-fication - "to hopefully generate something to target the Vallorn that caused these injuries directly if not work out a rune for the 'species', and I can confirm," she sweeps the area to make sure, "that there's no more Green Lung in the air around here, so I imagine you have questions?  Don't hassle Evantia, she really hasn't known me long enough to get a handle on my shenanigans.  I have rather a lot of them."

"Second order of business is probably getting supplies to the front line, then..."

"Excuse me, but I thought I heard you say, you could do something for aging?"

"Yeah.  Won't stave it off forever taken just the once, it kind of sucks to do instant, and like any machine, the longer you run it the more likely it does something wonky like get cancer, but it's definitely possible."

"I would like less arthritis, then, if you don't mind. My children are in there, and I couldn't sensibly follow them because I can no longer run. I'll gladly help you hand out gizmos to my superstitious countryfolk, if you can do that for me. And I'm long since past caring about 'kind of sucks'."

"Definitely.  I'll need to run some analysis, need to tailor this to the person, but - I'll have that in a jiffy once this is done; my medtech's good."

One juvenant treatment, coming right up!

"Fixing the arthritis alone would probably be less difficult, honestly, but fuck that.  Better to fix that sort of problem at its source rather than let it promptly recur."

And her mantle supports Bilhah Casca's Doom through the rune-accelerated process of the years melting away, soothing the aches of growth and healing.

"If you're coming with us to the adventurers, you're also getting proper equipment - what're you used to working with?"

Bilhah shudders a bit during the treatment, but seems determined to take it all in her stride.

"Heavy armour, greatsword. I can use a shield these days, but something that can slice through a tree is probably appropriate for where we're going."

She gets a firm and approving, if somewhat sad, nod, when the treatment's done.  Bilhah can probably recognize the signs of someone who's been through a lot of shit watching someone else sign up for more of the shit.

"Gotcha.  Armor, big fucking sword, I'll get you some shield emitters too.  Anything else you'd know what to do with if you had it?"

"I've used a spyglass before? I've never been much good with a bow or crossbow, I'm afraid."

"Magic items?"

"You're taking requests? I've always wanted a Woodsman's Axe, or I suppose a Butterknife in the Leaguer mould as they call the greatsword version, and that would go very nicely with some Templar's Lorica, or Runeplate I think they call it where they like to work with runes? And I've already got a Dragonbone Symbol, but I wouldn't exactly say no to a Circlet of Command." Bilhah clearly thinks she is absolutely pushing it with these requests, but is having the time of her life and wants to see how far it goes.

"Dream big but tell me what the things do rather than what they are, I don't know what the Circlet or the Symbol does but I also don't have y'all's crafting constraints.  And of course I'm magicking the hell out of your sword and armor, it's only tactically sensible!"