"I still need to go make sure selling weapons isn't illegal..."

She spends a little bit of time sketching and doing general maintenance on the suit, though the coffee seems to have mostly worn off. Lots of cleaning, tightening, polishing, oiling, and the like that will make her suffer later if she neglects it. She also takes several of the most important/removable/valuable pieces out of her armor and with her to her room, in a fit of mild paranoia. And also sets it up to whistle loudly if disturbed too much. The rest of it can sit in a shed or under an awning or in a stable stall, whichever is most convenient.

"Illegal? Why would it be illegal? That man at the gates said the city government might want to buy some! That sounds like the opposite of illegal to me."

"...but, obviously, you should check if you're not sure." Viatrix has known her share of people nervous about the (lower-case) law, and there is absolutely a time and a place to encourage them to stop fearing it and to forge boldly ahead, but in this case she thinks checking should actually be safe and relatively simple, and hopefully serve to reassure Waltana. This place is run by Iomedans, it can't be too bad.

Kimroth the innkeeper offers to let Waltana lock her armor in a cell in his cellar. Free of charge, he's not using it for anything right now.

This turns out to be a literal prison-style cell with iron bars, tucked in among the shelves and barrels of provisions. Why a respectable inn has a barred cell in its cellar is anybody's guess.

She will gratefully accept, and then perk up as a thought strikes. "Locks and alarms! I need to make some for myself, honestly... Tomorrow."

Pleasant dreams!

Elsewhere, some of the bar's patrons are enthusiastically sharing what they just saw and heard... with some embellishments, like any good story.

"She sits inside a big metal golem that hits things for her!"

    "She called it armor, but I dunno, man. Plate armor is what, a tenth of an inch thick? Probably less. This thing, it's the whole inch and then some! You and your sword could hack at it all day and not get through!"

"And she has a bow arm! Point and click, click, click, pffpffpffpff - blew up a whole pile of logs, just like that! Not with fire, mind, she just tore them apart!"

    "Says she'll make us all some of those! Just get her to a forge and, poof! Army killers, I kid you not! Feed her cold iron and they'll kill demons too!"

"Well of course you can buy some too... I'll sell them to you myself, once she gives me my share!"

    "Put a really big one on a wall and she says it'll kill a dragon!"

"...present company excepted, of course."

    "No, crossbows, not bows. Anyone can use them! Point and shoot! A company of green recruits would go through regular adventurers like a hot knife through butter!"

"Hell, can you imagine Mendev giving them to conscripts? I sure wouldn't want to be in the demons' shoes!"

    "Nah, no-one's stupid enough to give dangerous weapons to conscripts. It'd be like cultists giving them to demons, just asking to be shot in the back, hahaha!"

"Hahaha! Oh, that's a good one."

    "Hahaha... ha... eh, right. So you said you'd sell me some? I hope the markup won't be too outrageous... ha, ha..."

She's tired and overwhelmed, but she has bad dreams. 

This city is a nightmare, ugly and brutish. She thinks she can trust Viatrix and everyone else, but what if what if what if. And Viatrix seems to think poorly of her home...

...Aimless, what if she missteps? Breaks things, wastes things, hurts people. She wants money, and tools, and parts, and is worried about what's to come.

-Vrocks screaming, scratching and prying at her nice safe canopy, claws inching through a crack-

She can't sleep. She gives it up at a point that might be termed early morning instead of late night. And goes down to where her armor is and furiously modifies things, cursing her lack of tools and lack of foresight and lack of actual good ideas to deal with this.

She'll make a WEAPON. Springloaded. Usually she has to resist this urge. But this time she wants one she can carry around. More and more of her armor is going to disappear, caniballized, because she can't just ORDER PARTS from precision shop no.3. But there's nothing for it.

She's still down there come sunrise.

One of the Spears sticks their head into the cellar. "Breakfast's on! ...aren't you going to get a forge for that stuff?"

She looks up from a crossbow-like construction.

"I really should, I'm going to run out of parts at this rate, just another way I'm stupid really."

"You're not stupid, you build stuff! ...don't sit there all alone, come to breakfast, it'll make you feel better." He's not sure how to cheer her up but that's not about to stop him.

"Is that really me, or my Spark? But fine."

She goes breakfastwards. She brings the crossbowthing.

The locals who said they'd be back are here! The crossbowthing gets cheers and grins.

After eating, Viatrix and the other Spears are going back to Abadar's to have one of their friends Raised and Restored, and then Viatrix can come with Waltana to look at forges, if Waltana wants her there.

Coffee makes her feel much better. And so does having a weapon.

She shows off the mechanism- It can fire thrice before the big spring needs rewinding- And then she's going to the city hall, actually. Maybe they can look at forges together after both errands are done.

A spring is disappointingly normal for a crossbow. Not at all like STEAM, what happened to all of the STEAM?

...also, they don't want to spend half the day following her around, they want to show her forges. They already thought of a couple that might do! Is she going to leave them hanging? That's really disappointing after yesterday's euphoria. They can't make her do stuff but, like, don't get guys excited if you're not sure you're going to deliver!!

A couple of them say they'll be around for dinner. She might find them during the day in such and such places, but they make no promises about that. Pointedly.

It still shoots three times! She's low on parts she doesn't have to steal from important armor pieces! And steam is relatively expensive and heavy.

Also, not that she doesn't trust random non-black spears adventurers, but she doesn't exactly trust anyone non-black spears at the moment. Also she didn't sleep well, grumble.

...She can check out the forges and figure out costs this morning, sure, but city hall is definitely happening at some point before actual weapons get made.

Great, that's more like it! 

(Steam is heavy? They thought it was lighter than air! ...nevermind, it's probably wizard talk.)

They're not asking her to particularly trust them! They'll help her find places and materials (or she can find her own), and they'll loan her some money, they're the ones trusting her not to explode a forge and skip town in the night.

Viatrix observes to herself that Waltana has only known the Black Spears for two days and has no great reason to trust them much more than she would strangers. She's not sure what to do with that observation, though.

Breakfast duly eaten, they set out again towards Abadar's temple.

(Well, they fought vrocks together, see, and then they didn't imprison or rape or kill her in the middle of the night or anything, like she was told is done to strangers by unscrupulous bandits out in the wild. She's already taken the emotional plunge of trusting them not to be evil.)

Aaaaaanyway, what are these forges like? What's the price of copper/iron/steel/cold iron/nickel/chromium/manganese/tools/chemical glassware...

First they'll visit Abadar's. The whole team should be there when one of their own is Raised, it's tradition. Don't worry, it won't take long!

Banker Rathimus is waiting for them! He takes them to a little room in the back, with a bed and a sink. Viatrix opens her rucksack, rummages inside, and pulls out a body wrapped in a cloak, rather like a conjurer pulling a rabbit from his hat ("don't worry, we got the worst of the blood off before Reposing"). 

Rathimus takes a sparkling little gem from his pocket (Viatrix gives a professional nod), grasps his Golden Curves pendant, and starts chanting. Everyone else looks expectant.

After about a minute of this, Rathimus unceremoniously pokes the dead man, and he coughs and sits up; his wounds start bleeding again for a moment and then rapidly close. Everyone else cheers.

"How's it been? Meet any nice azata girls? Guess not, if you're back here -"

  "Man, you missed an epic battle, I jumped on a vrock's back and rode it down, I was so cool -"

"He's having you on, he twisted his ankle and limped the rest of the day -"

The miraculously returned coughs, and asks for some water, and a Restoration or two would be nice right about now?

Viatrix takes out a small pouch, sticks her finger inside, and flicks another at his forehead; he looks immensely cheered up. "Get another one next week!", she admonishes.

"Come on, let's have a morning on the town!"

    "I really want a bath first."

"Man, ever since you died you're no fun..."

...Now they can go look at forges. (Otho says he'll check out the local library, and departs.)

There are two forges the use of which can be loaned out for a very reasonable sum, for part of the day and all of the night! They have fire hot enough to work iron or steel or mithral (but not melt it; there are dedicated crucibles for that); some metals require more specialized equipment to work.

Material costs: copper is very cheap. Tin, iron, bronze and brass are still fairly cheap. Steel can cost twenty to sixty times more than iron, depending on its quality. Cold iron is thousands of times more expensive than regular iron. (They keep ordering more, which drives up the price. Some idiot cultist heated their stock last year; luckily that doesn't do anything.)

The translation spell can't handle the other metals she mentioned, are they any of these samples? One is hard like steel but much lighter; another is harder than any other metal but very heavy.

The forges come with a standard set of metalworking tools: several sizes and kinds of hammers, tongs and pliers. Does she need something in particular?

There's an alchemist's shop, he doesn't make his own glassware but maybe if she can explain what precisely she needs he can find something to match?

Resurrectionnnnn. She will unfortunately have to wait before something like this is reasonable for her to get. At least a few days, possibly more depending on how well she can work in these conditions.

...No. No those metals are not what she's looking for, the metals she mentioned are all weird alchemical metals that are mostly useless on their own can be alloyed into steel for better steels. Has the alchemist heard of any of these weird metals? Also she wants some acid and a small amount of a few other things. There's a bunch MORE like that she wishes she had access to with equally weird names, as well, and will have to wrack her brain to try and remember what the ores look like, later. She won't be ordering glassware yet, too expensive for now and she might end up making it to her own needs, anyway.

Here- Just look at the difference between THEIR steel, and THIS steel from her armor, hers is stiffer, shinier, and actually slightly LIGHTER! Look- This is Krupp steel, face-hardened! She invites any and all adventurers to try to break through the 0.6in rear leg plate, since she already cut up the other one for material the other day. (Plus it pretty much won't corrode, that's the chromium (plus a fluoride coating)!)

She is DEFINITELY going to need HER OWN space eventually, it will need EXTENSIVE customization. And to spend about a month building the tools she'll need to get anything serious done. But she'll be able to make a nice batch of steam guns... Maybe with a lot more brass and regular-iron parts than steel parts, you really only NEED steel for the tank and the valves, given the price that steel is going for? Money is strange. Cold iron is expensive enough that she's only going to get small amounts of it and use it as penetrator tips on regular iron projectiles. She's going to need to make a REAL steel furnace later, grumblemumble...

She picks the forge with larger storage and non-forge workspace available, and arranges to come back that afternoon, and will likely switch to working nights as soon as she catches up on sleep at all. Making these weapons is going to take longer than she thought, maybe even multiple days.

The alchemist has heard of a lot of things but she'll have to describe them, the translation spell isn't helping here! Her steel is incredible but that doesn't help them figure out what went into it.

Acid is easy, everyone knows how to make acid, here's a flask. Industrial amounts available on request, 10 gp per 16 fluid ounces. If she just wants to etch something she should use conjured acid, it's a cantrip that many people can cast at-will, the acid disappears after a few seconds but the etching remains so this is actually more convenient than normal acid where you have to mess with exact amounts.

-She really needs to learn magic, it seems like there's a LOT, but no, she uses it to make rubber which is this stuff! Good for seals. They'll definitely have to talk later about her weird metals, but for now she will do math about how much money she needs in total and how much she owes various people, and then head towards City Hall.

City Hall is in the uppermost, oldest, part of town. They climb the hill, passing three sets of inner walls.

Old Kenabres is built around a cathedral bearing Iomedae's Radiant Sword, facing an open square surrounded by trees. It's probably bigger than any other structure in the city, although it's hard to judge since it's also on the mountain's summit.

On its other side stands the town hall. It keeps records, laws, copies of contracts and deeds and proclamations; the meeting-chambers of the city's magistrates, for any business that Lord Hulrun Shappok does not choose to preside over in person, being unimportant to the defense of the city within and without; the office of the city notary and his clerks; and a small library.

One of the clerks can help her find her way around, as long as he has no other customers pressing business to attend to. What is she looking for? Most visitors ask to read a document, or to copy one, or of course to notarize something or enter it in the records.

"I am from a place with very different laws and thought it would behoove me to, uh, figure that out? Also I'm going to make and sell weapons to some adventurers, a guy, uh, a Prelate I think - no, they said the Prelate would send someone so the Prelate is like the Captain, right? Anyway, he said to come tell the government when they're ready. They're not yet, though."

...he's not sure what she wants from him, then. What laws or possibly-illegal-things is she worried about? No-one just reads all the laws there are, there are too many, but most of them apply to something narrow like guild charters or nobles' estates or heraldry or churches and people are expected to know what kinds of things concern them and check the laws for that.

If she's from somewhere he's heard of like Lastwall or Cheliax or Osirion, he might have a good idea of which laws are most importantly different from what she's used to. 

If she's asking for an overview of... all the laws that regular people (or adventurers) are likely to encounter... he can try to give one but this is not legal advice he can't promise he'll happen to mention everything she might care about. 

(The Prelate is Lord Hulrun Shappok. He rules the city in the name of Queen Galfrey of Mendev; his word is law but only because he carries out the city and country's laws and is himself Lawful. He separately also heads the Mendevian inquisition.)

"...Maybe treat me like a small child that knows that hurting people is bad and stealing is bad, but not much else?"

...that sounds way out of his remit! He knows law, not Good! Does she even know what things do or don't hurt people?? Also, little children take years to teach!