When was the last time Opalyn had a long hot bath with a book followed by a massage in a room overlooking an opulent garden?

Opalyn begins to suspect that this is all a weird stress dream and that the truck didn't hit her at all and that she's going to wake up back on Earth and still have to nope, can't think about old life, this is still really not a good time for a breakdown.

"All right. So I'll see you again in a few days?"

"No promises, but probably.  And it may wait on your ranking just like some other things.  It's not worth the risks for me to exchange rumors with anyone about you, until you've proven a definite rank."

"I wouldn't actually softball it, I think, if I were in your socks.  Dukes don't get the same offers as Grands."

Suits her. Trying to titrate her power when she has absolutely no idea how anything works was going to be very difficult, and it was going to be even worse weaving a coherent deception about that when she has no idea what correlates with what.

"Noted, and thank you again for all of the advice."

He'll write a number of things into her entrance paperwork, then, including some writing at an angle suggesting it's not going into standard lines on the form, with the absorbed expression of somebody who does not care to be interrupted about his paperwork.

When he's done with that, he'll hand the marked-up entrance paperwork to one of the guards, and then immediately start filling out other paperwork, still not looking particularly interruptible.

Trāho has carefully selected summaries to write while they're still in his memory, and some paperwork about possible wrongful accusations that is definitely going to take a delicately worded interoffice memo clipped on.  Not that anyone will read the memo until it's way too late to do anything differently, but the memo still has to look right.

The Party-Hat Guards escort Opalyn out of her interview cell...

...down some hallways that bear distinct non-Euclidean overtones, to her magical senses...

...and into a prisoner transport.

Off to the luxury-hotel-prison for a bath and some books! This seems fine.

Are there any other prisoners on the transport?

There are!  Fourteen of them!  Their appearance ranges from Opalyn's age to late thirties, nobody who looks as old as the bureaucrats she saw.  Some are dressed in nice clothes, other in stark prison clothing no two styles of which are alike.  They tend to come one or three to a guard, rather than being escorted by three guards as Opalyn is.

Half of them are openly sobbing, or red-faced with gritted teeth.  The other half look stoic.  Oh, and one of them is fidgeting with a blushing expression, possibly because her prison clothes seem to have ended up torn in a somewhat revealing way.

Does Opalyn have any indication about whether they're all going to lewd dramatic or if this is generic prison transport, and some of these people are boring?

No more than what her eyes already see!

Opalyn kind of wants to offer a shawl or something to the one with the torn dress, but she doesn't have any spare clothing to offer. Second best would be a kind look, but the woman is looking down and away and Opalyn can't make eye contact.

Opalyn also wants to ask a bunch of questions. She's always wanted to turn to a fellow prisoner and growl, "So. What are you in for?" but it seems like they're all having a much worse day than she is, which is kind of funny considering. Now is maybe not the time to be jovial and friendly.

Instead she... can she look out the windows? Are there any windows?

More like the whole thing is a floating platform, but sure, she can see out from here.  They're still above Capital.

The prisoner transport bops another lightline, though a much smaller one than the last, and VOOPS a shorter and less impressive distance over to the landing platform of a prison-castle much larger than the last one they were at.  Half of the people on the transport, the stoic ones, are unloaded here.

Okay! That must be boring prison and those must be boring people!

That leaves the ones who are crying and/or gritting their teeth and the woman with the torn dress. Opalyn now suspects that they're "dramatic" and "lewd" respectively, and that she's the only one who's going to lewd dramatic. Is her prediction correct?

Nope!  The next stop has both Opalyn and 'lewd' being escorted out!

Not all masochists would be visibly fidgeting and blushing on a prison transport, you know.

Huh, how about that! The woman with the torn dress is clearly lewd, but it's not yet clear to Opalyn how to tell who's dramatic and who's not. Possibly that woman was a clear-cut case of "simply lewd," and Trāho suggested that very few people would go for both lewd and dramatic.

Apparently it's the lewd-dramatic prison's lucky day as they're getting two new inmates on the same transport!

The ominous Party-Hat Guards--three for Opalyn, and one for the other woman--will again escort them down ominous hallways and into an ominous magical prison holding office, where they join four other inmates already there.  Three women, one man.

The Party-Hat Guard assigned to the other woman transfers her chains over to the Party-Hat Guard already holding the chains for the three women and one man.  Opalyn's three stay with her.

The man is looking at her like he is possibly considering speaking but does not, actually, dare.

Seems like the rest of them are probably not Duchess/Grand Duchess level material if there's only one guard for the five of them. Are all the rest of them sending off sexual vibes like the woman from the transport? Does it seem like an orgy could break out at any moment? What's the energy in the room?

Opalyn is slightly concerned that she's misfiled herself, and isn't sure if it's about being much more powerful than everyone else, or just not fitting neatly into Eldrida's 3.5 buckets.

The guy is looking at her like he might have something to say but is, you know, scared of this terrifying person in a way where he would not have totally unconflicted feelings if she were to speak to him in a scathing tone and hand out some sort of punishment for his insolence in looking at her?  Or possibly Opalyn is just imagining that part.

Two of the women look more subdued.  The third is sidling nervously toward the blushing fourth who just got added to the group, possibly to offer comfort, possibly to offer something else.

Opalyn assumes the guy is just longing to be dominated but she doesn't want to do that for him because dominating people is exhausting. This guy looks like a bottomless pit; Opalyn's going to conserve her energy. Of course he'll probably interpret her unwillingness to be haughty at him as haughtiness, but there's nothing she can do about that.

Opalyn observes the sidling one and the blushing one with some interest but tries not to be obvious about it.

There's possibly some sort of nonverbal negotiation taking place there, but if so, it's gated on a cultural gap that is transparent neither to Opalyn Miller nor Opalin-Milyer.  Orphan didn't have very much subtle lesbian negotiation between educated sorcerers going on in her life.

The two nonverbal negotiators have not advanced to the point of actual hugs being exchanged, by the time a door slams open and a new bureaucrat storms into the room.

"All right you melodramatic sluts, listen up."

"This is your very quick orientation lecture.  I will not be repeating it except at a cost in pain."

"I don't care what you heard about how the Farm operates elsewhere.  My section operates efficiently, sensibly, and cooperatively."

"First.  You will not destroy the facilities or damage other inmates unless you have sufficient Farm credit to pay for it.  I'm not telling you to exercise self-control until it turns into a habit, I'm telling you to viscerally fear the consequences of transgressing your place in my facility."

"Second.  You will all be among the most productive inmates of this Facility, to my own credit as a senior bureaucrat.  You will form enjoyable high-tension relationships; ones that can and will fail catastrophically, to your own loss and horror, if your lightline output falters and key privileges of yours are taken away.  Many people form highly fraught, drama-laden relationships without even trying.  There can be no excuse if your own relationships end up any less tense than that."

"Third.  Maintaining a high level of drama and sexual tension is everyone's job.  It is everyone's job to see that no relationship issues are allowed to come to a head unless someone is in the middle of charging a lightline.  It is everyone's job to break up and abort any interpersonal interactions that seem to be approaching an important resolution at the wrong time.  If someone is visibly upset, hug them!  If someone looks calm, give them nothing and act like they don't exist!  Attempts to sabotage your competitors in your section--whether by giving them sensible advice, pointing out better solutions to their problems, or resolving what seem to you like obvious miscommunications--also interfere with this Facility's productivity, and will not be looked upon kindly."

The intersection of "sorcery makes lightlines go" and "emotion makes sorcery go" and "this set of prisoners has emotions about relationships and sex" sure does have some straightforward implications that Opalyn had nonetheless not fully predicted!

Opalyn feels oddly peaceful about this new situation. For one thing, she still hopes it will be temporary. For another, she knows a lot about how relationships work. This is territory she has mapped pretty carefully. The same knowledge that she'd normally use for good, she can use to generate power instead!

It's like if you go to medical school and use the information you've learned not to be a surgeon, but to be an assassin.