"Well, yes, it's what I'd have done too if I had the chance, but - having seen the way women are treated in America it seems sad to imagine that women can either - not raise a family or not do anything else. Better than not having the choice, but still sad."

"- I have no idea how to make birth control. I did look into it when we were doing medications but it looked complicated and I gave up. You could probably do, like, surgical interventions made easier by priest healing - maybe once we've gotten through the first week we can ask questions about what Lastwall is like and get a sense of things like this -"

"Copper IUDs are mostly just copper - of course you need to have competent doctors to install them but maybe healing magic can help and even if it can't that's going to be easier than setting up a whole pharmaceutical industry. It's a shame biology is so complicated."

Iomedae could not keep up with all of the biology. She could really only keep up at things that she happened to find utterly delightful or that didn't require very much cleverness. All the biology she knows she already told Lastwall, on day 1: inoculation, and how to identify the bread mold that treats infections and consumption and the plague. (Hopefully even here there is a bread mold for that.) "It's a shame everything is so complicated. …I didn't want to say it in front of the President because I didn't want to sound like a naive child, but I think we're going to win. I think they're underestimating America, and underestimating how the thing - has its own momentum, once it's going."

"Of course they're underestimating America. They've never seen it, so they hear me explain blast furnaces and they think 'Wow, we can make swords and armor much more cheaply' and not 'We can build cars and trucks, we can make buildings out of steel, we can make all our tools out of good steel and use those to make more better tools faster, we can make steel ships and steel boxes and fill them with corn and feed a million people on the other side of the world.' I don't think they'll really understand until it gets going and they can see it for themselves. It's kind of unbelievable."

"Their god ought to be able to see. I don't know what the point is of gods at all, if they can't see things like that."

"Yeah. She told them to resurrect us, I bet She saw it. Don't know why She didn't show them, but she must not have, you could just see it on some of the researchers' faces when I got to lathes, like they were expecting me to tell them how to make table legs."

"The gods work in mysterious ways," says Iomedae, with immense dissatisfaction. "- I was all right with it, with Aroden, because I trusted Him. I suppose it's silly to trust the god I happened to be raised faithful to more than a god who is me."

"That's an Americanism they made up to explain away the fact that Jesus hadn't done anything for a couple hundred years. I think it makes sense to trust Aroden more than the god version of you, you don't know anything about who you grew up to be besides that she started a military dictatorship and became a god, presumably by touching a magic rock that also ascended a mafia don and a drunk."

Iomedae bursts into giggles. It's not that it's funny, exactly, but it's walking some kind of tightrope between hilarity and tragedy and the giggly side is the better one to tip over into. 

Alfirin hugs her. "No starting military dictatorships, and no becoming a god without talking to me first, okay?"

"Wouldn't dream of it, except insofar as I don't control my dreams."

"Not that I don't love your careful pedantry, but I think you're probably allowed to just say 'wouldn't dream of it'."

Iomedae says in Commune to do it, and approves the devoting-the-most-resources of the plans they propose to her, but commands that they adopt the more cautious of their proposed schedules, delaying substantially to buy more secrecy. Partner with Kraggodan as much as possible for the coal mining; do as much work as possible in Vigil, which is hard to infiltrate, and much of the work underground in the fortress itself. 

Should they sell much of this information to the Church of Abadar? Yes. Confidentially and with a negotiated delay on the Church of Abadar's open use of it? Yes. 

Do they need to fear external threats to the girls' safety and to continued custody of them? Unclear.

There is not much for anyone to notice - even an archmage who is paying Cansellarion and Lastwall particularly careful attention - for three months. They do partner with Kraggodan on the coal mining, and they use Teleports to move the fuel for their first blast furnaces, and they don't send anyone out of the fortress with the first guns.

(There are ripples, if you're looking closely. Lastwall's usual suppliers in Absalom have been procuring more boots of teleportation for them, but no new regular teleport routes materialize. The air above Vigil is always smokier in the winter, with the additional need for heating, but this year it's worse than usual, darker and sootier. Some call it an ill omen.)

The Church of Abadar pays them eyepopping sums of money, in secret. They offer most of these eyepopping sums of money to their teenage girls, in secret.

Iomedae is not richer than Bill Gates and intends to be impressed by nothing less. She does smile broadly at them, though, so as to encourage honorable behavior like paying your employees. "Thank you. Is it legal here to pay your government to make policy changes or is that bribery?"

"It's not illegal - it's illegal to pay the people in the government to make policy changes. But paying into the treasury - that's just a treaty, I guess." Not the sort of treaty that comes up very often, and when it does usually not with teenage girls, but these are some unusual teenage girls.

"All right. If you're importantly constrained on money I can try to think about things I want right now but I'll probably want more intelligent things next year so I'd prefer that." Iomedae has now read several history books but still feels like she barely has half a grasp on this new world, and also she has no idea how much diplomatic credit she has with these people. She does have the sense that proposing they become a democracy would be spending rather A LOT of it.

Alfirin wishes they'd paid more attention to history. She's pretty sure there were democracies before industrialization, America was already independent when the steam engine was invented - but she doesn't really know at all how you actually make one. She floats to Iomedae at one point that they could, actually, try to relocate to Andoran which is kind of a democracy and not doing the revolutionary France thing Galt is. She doesn't know much about revolutionary France except that a lot of people got their heads cut off and she's rather attached to hers.

Iomedae considers Andoran the likeliest place they should leave to, if they decide to leave Lastwall, but Cheliax could invade it immediately if they felt threatened by something it was doing and it's in fact probably unwise to be anywhere Cheliax could invade immediately if they felt threatened. She negotiates to own a bunch of the tools they're making; if they have to go to Andoran they won't be starting over entirely. (If Lastwall is duplicitous enough that the agreements of ownership are fake, then likely so are the assurances that they can leave if they choose.)

If Lastwall does not want to reclaim her money from her by agreeing to negotiations on how to run their country, then she'll …what do you even do with money in Golarion. Ask the Abadarans to hold onto it, probably. 

"You could buy spells."

"We could both buy magic items - probably the ones Lastwall has loaned us are the ones most useful for what we're doing, but maybe there's more we'd want. I guess it won't hurt to buy spells, maybe even second-circle ones even though I can't cast them yet. I really do think the thing I'm relatively best at here is being an engineer, though, not a wizard. I haven't been using any of my spells most days except prestidigitation."

"Yes. There's a part of me that wants to be an adventurer and go fight monsters and get stronger and eventually - do half the things that the Goddess did in her holy books - but I'd probably die, and it's not actually where I'm needed, and all the moreso for you. …but if we're being tricked in some way, it's harder to trick a powerful wizard. And harder to kidnap one."

"Ooooh yes, it'll definitely deter kidnappers if they hear I can detect doors. After all, whatever cell they put me in, I'll always be able to find the way out as long as it's not locked... You're right, and I should work on it, it's just - I don't see it mattering, very much, in the next couple of years. Maybe I'll get second circle, maybe even third, but not fifth. And I'll probably need a teacher." Alfirin doesn't get along well with teachers when she's smarter and more knowledgeable than them, (or thinks she is) and always seems to feel ashamed or inadequate when she has to turn to someone who she acknowledges knows more than her.

"Not in the next couple of years, maybe. But - Golarion's not America. I worry it's not a place where you can get things done, if you can't resist spells cast on you and can't defend yourself in an ambush. …maybe instead of fretting about this, I should build you a really excellent gun." And she'll pull Alfirin in for a tight hug and then get back to doing that.

In the spring more ripples are detectable. They've hired more than a thousand people. They inoculate new conscripts against smallpox. The hospital for consumptives on the coast of Lake Encarthan - run by retired paladins - is rumored to have been blessed by the Goddess and to be curing them rather than just delaying the inevitable. On the other hand the smog over Vigil does not clear.