External oxygenation and reproductive capacity are actually things that would been surprisingly relevant in the past, but not so much her concern these days, yeah.

Are there problems with things like bioincompatibility, biochemistry imbalances or chronic strain injuries from poorly designed extra limbs, or is it mostly difficulty getting custom body parts to mechanically hook up right? Also, is there any research into making muscles and bones generally stronger, and innovations downstream of that? Rebecca has a special ability which makes her supernaturally strong and tough beyond what would be afforded by the physical makeup of her body, and she's wondering if there might be interesting applications of that—assuming it doesn't stop her from being fleshcrafted at all. Or if they could somehow fleshcraft someone else into having the properties of her body, using hers as a template.

Compatibility is mostly not an issue except in cases like the spinneret one they were talking about earlier, and in that kind of case you don't end up with incompatible tissues, you just end up with ones that don't work like you were intending. Chemical imbalances can be an issue but mostly just in cases where it's obvious you might run into that, if you go messing around with how much acid a creature's stomach produces or what their adrenal gland is doing they're obviously likely to have a bad time as a result. Chronic strain problems are pretty common with structural or otherwise heavy mods that aren't designed well enough, but they're also easy to reverse with fleshcrafting, so if she picks up the skill she won't need to worry about that for herself. Improving the function of muscles and bones is the kind of thing that's very tricky and has a risk of causing problems in the long term; there has been some work done on it but they don't know much about it personally, it's not the kind of thing you can learn from a book. Being extra strong and tough will definitely open up options for her; they'd have to have a look to see if it's done in a way they can copy.

They should definitely do that later. It would be very useful to everyone if they could copy it. She'd expect it to be impossible, since it's a parahuman effect, but parts of her body severed from her before continued to have the same unnatural durability, and physical crafting can induce some ordinarily impossible properties, so it's worth a try.

But after they've figured out whether fleshcrafting works safely on otherworldly life first. Probably the fleshcrafter can inspect her structure without doing any actual fleshcrafting, and it wouldn't hurt her even if actually fleshcrafting her might, but they don't have to chance it yet. She should have ways to remove regrowable parts of her for them to sample if it comes to it.

She thinks she has a better picture of fleshcrafting now. How long does it usually take for a Crafter to become competent at fleshcrafting? Say an average adult getting to the point of being able to... create an extra thumb like this fleshcrafter has, not necessarily well, but basically functioning and with the skill foundation to continually experiment to improve on it on their own?

Well, it'd depend on how much time they put into it and what kind of aptitude they had. Someone of about average skill who only knew the basic stuff that everyone picks up but really wanted to give themselves an extra thumb in particular and didn't want anyone else doing it for them might be able to get to the point of making a solid try at it in a few months, maybe four or so? And they wouldn't expect them to get it right the first time but a couple more months of refinement might get them to the point they're at, if they were persistent about it.

(A few months. That's not full generic competency, but a few months is nothing. And that's without taking into account any acceleration from her powers.)

Does the fleshcrafter have any books to recommend? Either pre-reading or books to get started, once she's got her normal crafting foundations down.

They like Bluejay Music's stuff, including the beginner fleshcrafting book, and if she doesn't click with those the beginners' book by Sweet Raspberry Brambles is also good, though both of them assume the reader already knows the most basic basics. She'll probably also want Fox Hybrid's Dictionary of Fleshcrafting Techniques for reference.

Bluejay Music, Sweet Raspberry Brambles, Fox Hybrid's Dictionary of Fleshcrafting Techniques.

Is it okay if Rebecca comes back to ask more questions once she gets started or if she gets stuck? And of course if she gets confirmation that it's safe to fleshcraft her, so they can take a look and see if her biology is duplicable. She saw the fleshcrafter's opening hours, but are there times they're usually less busy and more amenable to interruption?

Mornings are a little better, but if it's just a brief visit like this one anytime is fine, and sending the crows over with letters works well too.

The crows, she forgot the crows.

(She's also remembering she actually needs to learn how to read. Hopefully the droid DFEW plan works out.)

Well, then, she thanks the fleshcrafter for entertaining her and hopes that she'll be back soon with good news.

They'll look forward to it.

So, back home to get started on the books, or does Rebecca want to go back to the hangout and talk to more of the locals?

Her instinct is to go home to get started on the books, but—

She's got time. She should be social. She thinks she'll head back and talk to people a bit more. And while they're walking, the teenager was just talking about board games and she's curious what kinds of board games they have here; is there anything that uses crafting in interesting ways? Back home the pinnacle of board game innovation is mostly dice towers and erasable pen.

There's one he likes that uses spinning tops for randomization, you set your top going in a tray that's crafted to trace its path and then use different aspects of that path to determine what you can do in the game. There are also ones where you use crafting to change your pieces as the game goes on, and there's one he's not sure how to play where the pieces pick up visually-identical marbles with different traits and certain spots on the board react to those and do different things.

She has to check out the last one, or check out its rulebook, at least. And the spinning top idea is fascinating; she'd never have thought of anything like that. Is there a place to sign up for hobby groups and things like that?

People put signs up on the bulletin board when they're planning events people can go to, and usually you can just show up when the sign says; he thinks there's a board game group every once in a while in the evening but he's not sure which days.

She'll check them out. Does Daisy attend any events regularly?

There's a visual arts gathering that she and Dusk have gone to a couple times that was pretty nice, and there's a book club Nine likes to go to even though he has trouble participating.

Let's see, what do the signs say... there's a hiking expedition up the mountain in a few weeks... some kind of sport club... the visual art gathering... a parenting group... someone's trying to start a fishing group... this one's interesting, it's someone with one of the local kinds of computers who has a few slots available for new remote users, from the description it's an asynchronous chat room type thing.

They have computers?

Daisy said they were low-tech but that's relative to where Daisy's from, so of course it doesn't mean the same thing to Rebecca—how do they work and how prevalent are they—she doesn't need to find out right now. How does she sign up? What does "new remote users" mean; do you have the UI at home with you and the inputs and outputs ansible over to wherever the computer is? She can imagine how a chat that might work without any computing, an extension of the library system, but apparently this crosses over to be described as a "computer". She is incredibly curious.

There's directions to the Crafter's territory to pick up the equipment but it says to send a crow at least a day before so they know to expect a visitor; it sounds like 'remote user' means someone with a set of equipment for accessing the computer remotely. It doesn't say anything about what the interface is like, just that you can use it to share messages with other users. From what Daisy's been told the computers they have here are very rudimentary; they recognized what she was talking about when she explained about having a machine do math and using that to do more complicated things, which satisfies the definition of a computer as far as she's concerned, but they don't have electricity, really, or microprocessors, and she expects their computers are actually fully mechanical, like the rest of their machinery. She's pretty sure the library is a computer like that, too, just a very big one.

Does Daisy suppose it'd be a bit antisocial to ask for the remote access equipment before she even knows the language? She'll probably pick it up quickly, but still. How many slots are left? She should learn enough to write the letter herself, at least. If she can't install it with droid DFEW.

"Hmmm..." The sign doesn't say how many slots there are, but intuitively she thinks it'd be fine, Crafters are pretty generous and don't tend to worry about things being scarce. She can get Rebecca started on learning the language today - if Rebecca can come up with a dictionary or other book in her preferred language, Daisy can pick it up that way in less than half an hour and then annotate a Crafter dictionary-set with translations for her, if she'd find that useful.

That would be wonderful.

She'll mingle a bit more but her heart isn't in it. Though she doesn't let that show. If Daisy wants to head back first she can go, but Rebecca will be along in just fifteen minutes, probably.

Daisy will go and see what Nine is up to and relay some messages from him to the Crafters whose conversation he's listening in on, and be ready to walk back when Rebecca wants to leave.

Once she's done chatting up half the people here, she loops back to Daisy and Nine to see what they're talking about.