It feels fake and wrong but she will invite the most promising third plus a few of the more compliant ones to come back, and get to work trying to re-create industrial organization principles mostly from scratch. They can use her first workshop, now outgrown, and parts of her new one, and she pays out in bronze and iron quite generously compared to other low-skill work. It's not like she has a shortage of metal, and if it goes to their heads... Well, better to learn that now than later. They can try to make wheelbarrows, and stamped steel hand tools, and thin rolled homogenous armor sheets, and try to make her ideas for a spinning machine reality. Teaching and managing - mostly thinking desperately back to the lessons she was taught on the subject rather than any real instinct or skill - cuts sharply into her tinkering time, but it ought to be well worth it in the long run.

They will get... some useful work done. Some of them seem to pick up the skills for the new tasks relatively fast; a lot fewer seem to be transferring lessons from one thing to another.

She does get some clever girls who are both excited and informed about spinning and automating it. None of their ideas today are workable but they seem like they're going in a helpful direction.

But if they keep this up another couple fists it will start having some people who basically understand what they're doing.

She expected it to take longer, honestly.

She picks out a fist of the best and ceremoniously titles them Technicians, Junior. A small feast for everyone!

And then tomorrow, training Jenica and whoever else she chooses on the well-digger and concrete liner molding, with the aim of getting a team capable of hauling it around and digging wells with it.

It's not many but it's helpful (and probably encouraging).

Progress on understanding the digger is slightly faster than the last set of things - guess they are transferring some lessons. Soon they will dig some wells!

Around that time, Kohl sends a brief message:

Engineer Waltana,

I hope your improvements for the people of Vendrien's Well are progressing smoothly. While I was in the Bastard Tier, I found an unusual cave system I might want you to examine. It reminded me of a conversation we had when meeting, about anonymity. Have you made any progress with a device for traveling quickly? Unfortunately, there are no Spires in the area for me to wake, so I can't provide a shortcut. It's not urgent, but may be important.

Separately, Barik's request was denied; Tunon declared the armor to be the will of Kyros and forbids all subjects of Kyros from assisting in its removal. Barik is uninterested in working around the letter of the verdict, but I'm hopeful that he'll agree that altering its shape is not removal.

Speak to you soon,

Fatebinder Kohl

Making Tallboy faster, and when that didn't really work beyond a certain point, making a ground vehicle, has actually been most of her 'recreational' Sparking when she wasn't trying to put together a sort of Technician corps.

Fatebinder Kohl

Some progress on faster travel, including a large sort of wagon that has thick plates chained together instead of wheels, called treads, which should be able to move cross country at a good pace. Reliable sources of power continue to be difficult; Coal in the necessary quantities would be too expensive, the sigil of fire still eludes me, and while I can channel Lightning when I am worked up and built a device to capture and store this energy, it still needs frequent recharging.

I can likely make my way quickly enough. It will just remain more annoying than I would have preferred.

My other work is I suppose the foundation for the school in Stalwart you proposed. I've hired some young open-minded folk in the crossing and begun teaching them my technology. Results are both better and worse than I expected, but they may soon be fit to travel and dig wells where they go, and learning to maintain the other sorts of things I can build will make any tractors easier to make use of. Two by name of Nasim and Mures Jenica I have designated as leaders of sorts. I'd like to talk to you before actually doing things in Stalwart proper.

I trust in your wisdom to identify important places. I'll make it a priority to arrange for a visit. If it will also serve as a decent test and spectacle of my vehicle and perhaps to survey new sites for cities all the better.

As to Barik, I would say that this is his decision and I ought not gainsay it. I'll leave that matter to you and assist if requested.

Waltana

Waltana,

I'm glad to hear training assistants is going well. Do you need literacy and sums taught for your students? Those, at least, we know how to teach - I checked with a friend in the Court and she confirmed there were a number of schools for those here in the Bastard City, which have shrunk and left some tutors at loose ends after the merchant families were humbled. I could easily spread rumor that there will be use for them to the south.

I worry about Barik. He adheres closely to his duty over his own happiness or even contentment. And being set apart from his phalanx puts nails through his soul. As a purely personal, impractical, matter, I want him as free of that damn armor as he can be convinced to allow. Any ideas for persuading him to take partial steps, I'd be grateful for.

For the other things, don't rush; we can discuss them in person.

Kohl

She talks with some of the Sages in the tower about what makes a good spot for a city beyond water, food, and some sort of productive industry. She keeps poking the aspiring spinners' attempts once or twice a day; She doesn't really know cloth work beyond the fairly despised experience of sewing but she knows machines and can help with that part, so they're getting closer to something workable.

She takes her experimental lorry, her symbol boldly emblazoned upon it, on a trip out to some of the villages around Vendrien's Well, taking along a technician and a guard. (It doesn't actually fit into the Spires, unless completely taken apart first.) Introduces herself and offers to dig a well in each village, and mentioning the possibility of mills and spinning machines and more. She thinks they'll agree to let her dig wells after identifying good spots- In the meantime she offers the digger as a core sampling machine if any Forge-Bound want to check their senses against the actual rock drilled up from twenty, thirty feet down.

Fatebinder Kohl,

Someone to teach literacy and sums without taking up more of my time would be useful. I have had to focus on practical, workshop skills and already run into the issue of people having trouble even reading yardsticks.

If he would permit me to work on the armor to make it more formidable, to attach a weapon or a ward against lightning or some other useful device, that would help him better serve Graven Ashe?

May the next time we meet be productive and soon.

Waltana

Reinventing the spinning wheel she can probably reconstruct from memory and get a prototype within a week. If she wants to keep improving it and go for something like the spinning jenny, that will take significantly longer.

The villagers are enthusiastic about the wells idea, but most of them want to have a 'town meeting' about where to put the wells. Also they want better spinning tools so much.

The Forge-Bound borrow the lorry and take several cores in places near the Mountain Spire that gave Meroujan interesting impressions. They make a bronze harness for two of the most interesting cores, so that they can hold together, and move them somewhere they can reuse them later for training.

And soon Kohl and company will be back.

He has a middle-aged couple in tow who formerly ran a school for nobles and merchants, who are interested in working with the 'new Archons' school (or possibly the Spire library if that doesn't work out).

Kohl comes by and looks at the technicians in training quietly for a while before announcing himself. It looks... busy.

It looks like a factory. Wide floors, worktables and steel tools everywhere, materials and items in progress neatly packed and stored, sounds of tools echoing. And would be consuming a fairly prodigious amount of coal at this point if the Sigils of fire and lightning weren't available. Everything is clean, not quite scrupulously so but definitely surprisingly so, and there are a bunch of barriers and warning signs around the larger pieces of equipment. There are lanes for small pushcarts marked out on the floor, and overhead gantries holding neat bundles of tubes and wires, plus a heavy hoist. Technicians and technicians-to-be wearing work clothes are at a few of the stations, and Waltana makes the rounds among them every few minutes, taking frequent breaks from her (somewhat more chaotic) section.

"Kohl! Welcome back! Oh, I have to show you the lorry, I swear I'll never walk anywhere again if I can help it. Outside of a town, I mean."

"If it's doing as well as this school is, I certainly want to see it!"

"Would you like to meet some of our brightest first?"

Either way, she will start walking to the other end, showing off 'hall one', which is dominated by a heavy press for making wheelbarrow bodies and structural members, plus a set of large vats that get a complaint- "I'm still the only one who can make rubber, it's just impossible to describe the right timing in a sensible way", and then the room where the spinning wheel prototype is stored, and possible improvements are being worked on, and then the well-digger (currently disassembled as some of her technicians are working on cleaning and maintenance for it). Out the far door, her boxy treaded vehicle is visible, complete with the huge cabin and a bulbous metal dome in the back. 

"You have to cast Lightning on that dome every few minutes to keep it going, but it can outpace a horse at the gallop on a road! And still much better than marching through rough terrain. It can cross reasonable amounts of rocks, and mud, and even shallow water."

"Gladly. I can introduce Lizuca and Birol later - they're the teachers I mentioned."

She introduces Nasim and Jenica and also Suro, who is 'a bit odd' but has some sort of a knack for understanding chemicals, the kind of person who might be called the village idiot in particularly intolerant places. But he's diligent and not actually stupid. She's worked with people like that before. And also a few other promising heads.

"I think all technicians will need to be literate and numerate. Having written instructions one can follow, and reports and checklists one can fill out, is important to scaling up industry to the truly large."

"I'm glad the Engineer has found good people for the work," he says to the three of them.

"I can imagine. Especially once you need multiple sites and can't rely on people with good memories being called over to remind people."

"It'll be a long road, but a worthy one... Knowledge is a multiplier. You can do ten times the work, or a thousand, with the right tools and know-how. Which is why I need people who can learn. I'm proud of what you all have learned so far. But as I understand it, the nation of Stalwart may be a good place to establish another technician school, or an extension to this one, or at least to recruit from..." She nods at Kohl. "Or in great need of tools to recover from the Edict, at the very least. Everyone's seen the lorry- I'd like to think about ones like it designed to pull plows or other machinery, for farming."

"Sound strategy," he says approvingly, and continues, slightly didactically, "The Tiers use hoes, not plows. But I'm sure they can transition, especially to your technological version rather than oxen. And I think the Blade Grave would need the extra force anyway for the re-furrowing."

"I might be more absent for a time, the Fatebinder seems to have a job for me, so we'll be planning on how to stay in contact... Unfortunately, radiotelegraphs are another specialized skill that takes special training to operate, and also require literacy to make best use..."

"And there's no Spire for me to shorten the way. Birds and couriers will have to do for a few years yet."

"I wouldn't count on years. I have some ideas regarding amplitude modulation- Ahem. But yes, part of this meeting is to plan what you lot are going to do in my absence. I know I can't exactly teach you from a hundred miles away."

"Not that that's unwise, but we should discuss what I would be pulling you away for. Privately," he says with an apologetic nod toward the other three, "Fatebinder business."

She suddenly stops, sheepish.

Nods firmly. "Right. I'll be back later."

"Best we go up the Mountain Spire," he says. He really doesn't want to be overheard.

Right. Right, this was supposed to be a quick greet and rambling on for an hour to your boss is bad.

She will follow and try not to feel TOO much like a scolded child. Even breaths.