"Aren't you contradicting yourself? If it takes only five minutes to get across town, why does it matter if you live close to work?" These trams sound interesting.

"These people keep having to fight off demons. There was another big war - they call it a crusade - that ended only last year. It's not very safe, but I don't see how more uniform housing would help when the Storm King comes calling."

"...It all makes sense to me but I don't want to think about this any more right now. And our defense against things like the Storm King - who's supposed to be long dead, by the way - is being secret. So I should maybe stop talking about it entirely."

Oh right, secrecy.

How about dinner? This place has actual hot food, not trail rations! Fresh bread and fish! Soft cheeses! Numerian brandy! The house honeyed goose recipe! Gingerbread houses!

(Not real ones, Viatrix clarifies, just house-shaped gingerbread.)

It's delicious!! The honey goose in particular! The gingerbread too, it's a CAKE! And cheese! It's all Weird, but very good! She takes a small sip of brandy before deciding it's much like potato vodka and declining any more with a bit of a scowl. Do they have coffee, or croissants? Those featured in one of her books...

They do have coffee!! It's often requested by adventurers from the Inner Sea region. Does she want it black or with cream (cow or goat), honey, cider, cinnamon (imported and costing even more than the coffee), or a long list of other spices... and a red umbrella, on the house!

(Otho turns up his noses; they may import coffee this far north, but they can't brew it right. All the extras are just there to hide the fact it tastes wrong, as anyone who has visited both Absalom and Sothis will tell you.)

They have sweet pastries. They're not croissant-shaped, but they make up for it with gusto and lots of sweet cream and sweet fruit and raisins and sweet dough and all-around sweetness. (The working adventurer doesn't need to worry about burning off calories.)

She's never had coffee before!

...Well! That's bracing!

The sweet pastries are very good. She's curious what kind of oven the inn uses and if she could make it BETTER. Or possibly make some other sort of device- A pump to bring up water? Lights? What would ordinary people around here buy, device-wise?

They're... not sure what devices exist that they don't have already? ("Don't look at me," Otho says, "I went to Absalom for the magic, not for gears.")

This city already has water pumps! It's famous for it! (Otho doubts that little frontier cities can be famous for things.) They're hundreds of feet tall and they bring up river water into big reservoirs up by the cliffside. And then the water flows down into the rest of the city through pipes and aqueducts, so they don't need any more pumps, it's all downhill from there.

The inn has little lamps enchanted with Continual Flames, which don't smell or smoke like real oil lamps, but only rich people can afford these. If she could make them cheap enough, or brighter so you wouldn't need as many, there'd be a market for that. How can a device make light if it's not magical or burning something?

What other devices are there? Crossbows? Looms? Distilleries? Musical instruments? 

By the same light as forge-fire, stuck in glass! They can definitely be brighter! She doesn't know how much things cost around here yet! Or how magic works. Hurrah, INFRASTRUCTURE! How do they work, how are they powered, do they filter the water? Better weapons than crossbows. Looms, yes, distilleries yes! Musical instruments, probably! Clocks! Message devices! Alarms! Prosthetic limbs! And STEAM ENGINES, to provide motive force to just about anything- A wagon, a pump, a bellows, a platform so people don't have to walk up stairs, a giant arm like her armor to move crates and things with...

They're not going to tell her how the water-pumps work, that's one of the city's most guarded secrets! (That means they don't know.)

The water is tested and if anything's wrong the priests purify it. Filtering only helps to keep out sand and fishes and such, it doesn't help if the water is poisoned or tainted.

Self-driving wagons would be useful. If they cost less than mules and horses, and broke down less often than horses break a leg, and if they could be repaired when that does happen, as easily as buying a new horse. They kind of doubt this is possible, mobile mechanisms are not that reliable, unless they're magical like golems. Maybe she means golems? 

Prosthetic limbs? How would that work? Maybe a machine could make your leg move, but how would you tell the machine when to move it?

Machines to replace... walking up stairs? Why? What's wrong with stairs? 

All the rest sounds nice, if it's better or cheaper than existing stuff, which has the benefit of existing, and also not making any steam, that sounds dangerous.

Also: BETTER CROSSBOWS!! Better weapons than crossbows! (One patron volunteers that longbows are better than crossbows and is shouted down.)

This room is full of adventurers and retired adventurers (including the innkeeper and bartender both) and regular soldiers and other people who run either towards or away from demons for a living (Black Spears not excluded). They are extremely in favor of better weapons!! She should drop all her other ideas like replacing limbs and stairs, and make them some better weapons, right now! Someone shouts for a prosthetic weapon and this is taken up enthusiastically by the crowd.

There is maybe an implicit assumption here that she will finish dinner first, and possibly even wait until morning, but if she can't take some good-natured egging on, she shouldn't have offered them BETTER CROSSBOWS.

"You can totally get diseases and lots of poisons out with good enough water filtering. And if stairs aren't a problem you can build a dozen houses on one plot. I can test fire my STEAM GUN outside in a bit if someone has a tough enough target! I need to know how much things cost around here too, before I set a price! It'll be a lot of iron and brass and copper and several other things! I'll probably have to make everything from scratch! Someone let me see the crossbows you use NOW, making that even better might be easier!"

Crossbows are produced! Their main shortcoming is the time and strength it takes to reload them; you have to put them down, brace with your foot, and frantically spin a winch or windlass while the enemy closes in. There are lighter models that let you quickly push on a lever, but they're not powerful enough to penetrate armor or hit anything far away. 

If they could reload crossbows very quickly, they would be able to launch several volleys before closing with the enemy, or when defending fortifications.

Or if they could make them hit harder (without taking even longer to reload), they'd be able to hurt even the strong demons that usually shrug off regular bolts. When they build them that strong, they become too heavy to carry into battle, or even to aim quickly. They have those on the wall.

Crossbows can be enchanted to hit more reliably and do more damage (someone shows her a mildly enchanted one), but it's too expensive to make them even twice as strong as they are normally.

Someone volunteers to be the TARGET for the STEAM GUN and is immediately shouted down. They have a pile of firewood in the back that she can shoot at, if it doesn't risk setting it on fire or blowing it up or summoning a vengeful tree-spirit. For more risky stuff, and longer-range practice, they need to go out of the city (the nearest gate is much closer than the one they used to come in).

"It's getting dark out," someone objects.

    "Demons have darkvision and so should you."

"I won't serve you drinks outside the city wall," the barman warns.

    "Oh. Well, the back yard is still good, right? To the logpile!!"

Huh! Well, there's some things you can do with SPRINGS and GEARS, but it might be easier to skip straight to other methods of FLINGING THINGS. There are a lot of ways to accomplish that task, really! No tree spirits, no fire. There may be some blowing-up, but it's fundamentally like hitting it really hard, not like Fireball. To the log pile! 

The steam gun is attached to her armor and looks like it weighs about a hundred pounds. There's a shiny brass cone on the front. She clambers into the armor, with its meaty metal fists, and walks it over towards the wood pile.

...She is still grounded enough to check what the wood pile has for a backstop. And what's shrapnel-able around here.

There's a tall wooden fence around the backyard. In the opposite direction, there's the inn wall, built from stone for the first floor. It's hard to say whether it would backstop something that went through that whole woodpile, but it should stand up to one or two logs miraculously flying free of the heap.

(The bystanders aren't... really... expecting her to gun to be much more powerful than a big crossbow. A logpile is a perfectly valid target for crossbows!)

Most of the spectators are sharpnelable! An unlucky bolt-sized splinter flying straight back at them could really ruin someone's night. In recognition of this, they'll mostly hide behind corners and the stable beams when she fires the first shot.

Uh-huh. It seems like a prudent idea to clamber back out, and adjust a valve and remove half the steel balls from the little cartridge.

"Behold the strength of high pressure steam! This is at half power!" She announces, then points and- Ksssshhh. Wood pile takes 6d6 bludgeoning damage.

Thhunkkkkk.

The shots go though at least four logs before stopping, leaving a gaping mess of splinters and wood-dust. The whole pile sags inwards. A few logs roll off. Smaller pieces fly everywhere, but mostly back at Waltana, who is protected by her armor.

The crowd is very impressed!

"That's no crossbow!"

    "That's more like a sling. A heavy sling, with lots of bullets."

"Did you see the hole it made? I bet it'd go right through a man - er, demon. Cultist! I meant cultist, ha ha..."

    "It's not piercing, though, less good against armor."

"With power like that, who needs piercing tips?"

    "If it was piercing it'd go through a demon and right into the next one, whoosh!"

"Don't get carried away, it's even slower to reload than a crossbow! You saw she had to get out the armor to do it, no way that's happening in a fight."

"I'd make you pay for the mess," the innkeeper says cheerfully, "but the whole pile of logs costs less than your dinner. Just don't kill my patrons!" This last is accompanied by a mock glare at Waltana. "They're my only source of income and friendship in these dark times."

"Well, good thing I have people wanting to buy weapons, aye? Even if it'd be nice to make something peaceful instead. If you have any petty repairs I can do to make up for it, I find that relaxing, to a degree, and there's very little chance I accidentally turn anything into a weapon."

And turning to the crowd, "This is a jumbo version, armor mounted! Hand-held, it would fire one, not six- Though a similar level of power! Magazine loaded for rapid shooting! That's the might of STEAM! Explosive force, contained and released in just the right way! And I assure you I can fire it in rapid succession if I'm not moderating it down for safety- Only when it's drained completely, is a long reload needed."

They... don't really have mechanisms for her to repair. Not at the inn, at least. 

Blowing up the logpile is fine!  This inn caters to adventurers, it's run by a retired adventurer, this is Moonday. And they can still burn the chunks of wood, they're just a bit inconvenient to gather up.

A ranged weapon that fires rapidly (like an expert archer) but doesn't require lifelong training (like a crossbow)! With jumbo versions for the belted adventurer! Defense emplacements! The crowd is enraptured (except for a couple of expert archers). 

How many times can it shoot? Where does the steam come from, is it just like boiling water? Can they take a really big cauldron and make a really big fire and just keep shooting?

Could they be maintained and fixed by people other than her? By regular blacksmiths? Could they be replicated? ...do they come in prosthetic versions? (The last question comes from the innkeeper, who is missing his left arm below the elbow, and currently has a rather crude prosthetic hand that is nevertheless quite adept at holding a mug.)

Speaking of archers, Viatrix needs to go find the temple of Abadar to get the resurrection insurance paid out, and then she needs to find a powerful cleric and pay them to prepare Raise Dead twice tomorrow. Does Waltana want to come with or stay and tinker? 

The steam comes from boiling water, see how she sticks some of the shattered pieces of firewood into this bit on the back, the flames are well-contained, transferring ALMOST ALL of the energy directly into the water tank! See how she adds a bit more water to account for what's being lost to shooting! With a big enough boiler and furnace and people feeding it fuel and water constantly, they could totally just keep firing. A competent smith who's not a total idiot ought to be able to maintain them well enough, in her opinion! If they buy her a few hundred pounds of steel and some brass and maybe bits of other things and a place to work she can totally make more- Rapid firing, hand held, defensively emplaced, built into an arm, you name it!

-Uh. She will totally go with Viatrix to the people who sell fucking resurrection insurance, though! That sounds like an incredibly important institution that she wants to get in on!!!

Kimroth the innkeeper seconds the addition of a "place to work" to the shopping list; chopping wood is harmless fun but a forge in his back yard would be pushing it.

Steel and brass (and coal and charcoal, if she wants a hotter flame) can be bought! They're not even very expensive. If stocks start low out it might take a while to arrange bigger shipments and then they might become expensive, but a few hundred pounds is fine. She should choose a workplace and they'll figure out how to get her the raw materials she needs. (This crowd is adventury enough to pool together some gold to loan a stranger who promised them a NOVEL WEAPON. You only live once!)

Most smiths set up shop near Southgate: the rents are cheaper and the market is right next door. Though if she wants the very best, Joran Vhane is the man to beat: with over a hundred years' experience, he's practically a local legend. He  usually works on hard projects, though, like seriously magic plate. If she can impress him, maybe he'll make her an AXIOMATIC BOILER.

"Abadar's church sells resurrection insurance! And a lot of other stuff, but that's one of the staples."

"You can't buy your own yet, because you don't have money - if we really had to head into danger tomorrow, we could loan you enough, but the insurance would be very expensive, because we'd be heading into danger. That's the other problem - it costs more for people who take more risks, and you're an unknown right now, unless you promise to sit in a safe room for the next year." She wrinkles her nose. "We buy for everyone on the team, and share the cost. Then whoever died pays for the Restoration themselves - uh, that's a second spell that makes you as strong as you were before, without it you get weaker every time you're raised. That way people aren't too reckless."

"Uninsured Raise Dead costs... anywhere from five to eight thousand gold, I think? The insurance also makes it so the price is the same everywhere, you can buy it in any temple of Abadar and then get the raise somewhere else, like we're doing now."