Searching far and wide | Glowfic Constellation

Oh no, of course not to look, anything not in the safe at least, just please don't take any without giving them a chance to make copies.

There's a whole lot of town records, two decades of farmer's almanacs, The Laws of Three Jades Kingdom (abridged), a forestry manual, a book of known merchant organizations and average prices for things like rice and linen, a list of proscribed cults and practices, a bunch of imperial declarations of various types, a moderately bad map, a book on architecture and civil engineering, and a scroll about how to recognize official seals and proofs of authority from the Kingdom, and the proper ettiquite for such officials.

Of course she won't take anything without permission!

This is more variety than she was picturing, which makes her pleased with her choice. She wants to go through all of it, but first: map! What's on the map? Does this look like a China or an Earth?

Looks like a 'neither'!

Three Jades Empire is has a long, thin body at the 'south', bordering 'the Lake of Mist' and 'Untamed Lands'. The village is in 'Untamed Lands'. The north has a more circular territory and borders the State of Qing (New) and the White Lotus Kingdom.

Multiple states. She's not sure why that's so surprising; the Han sphere was fractured at many points in Earth Chinese history.

So this village is doubly on the frontier of civilization, once being past the border of the Three Jades proper, and again with the Three Jades being a border country itself to unsettled land.

She doesn't suppose there's a distance scale somewhere on the map, or that it would be useful even if there was? Is the boy still around and can he tell her how wide the tongue of the Empire is, in terms of days of travel in various modes of transport?

The boy is trying not to be an imposition in any way, shape, or form. But will answer her questions nervously.

A trade caravan or army on the march can travel the length of the Kingdom from the capitol to the southern city of Roaring Rocks in perhaps three months, assuming they marched a hundred li per day and didn't stop very often. Perhaps, then, 8000 li in distance as the army marches, following this road? For a mortal it would take a year to walk all the way from north to south if they could walk every day and had to make camp most nights. A mortal would surely perish doing that, though.

She doesn't know if the li here are the same as the li from Earth, but the army is apparently marching at four times the speed of a "mortal", so—are they all on horses—

There is something up with either the logistics here or the humans here. Maybe the soldier are enhanced or trained in qi techniques, or maybe they have advanced transportation technology, or they have qi users who can bolster their troops.

But assuming the mortal and the trade caravan speeds are correct, the measure of a li is approximately similar to Earth. Then the whole country is a bit smaller than Chile. Not small, though not exactly modern China.

She will peruse the list of proscribed cults and practices next.

Cannibals, demons, Those Suspicious Foreigners, dealing with souls at all, the following addictive drugs, 'resentment farming', and price collusion on staple goods, among other things, are forbidden.

The following practitoner clans and sects are extremely dangerous and should be avoided and if possible reported. Note: The practitioner world is not entirely separated from mortal affairs within Three Jades Kingdom. Our noble Three Jade Sect defends us from the depredations of demonic practitioners and welcomes practitioners who follow righteous paths to the region!

(Blood Tree is on the list of bad sects).

Demons: apparently a thing.

Soul magic: apparently a thing.

Not surprising, but good to know. She will need to ask Wen about how up-and-up the Three Jade Sect is, and how strictly "righteous paths" is defined, whether it's more of a blacklist or whitelist sort of situation and whether Rebecca should be concerned about getting in trouble with her foreign powers.

There's no mention of ascended animals?

She will flick through the pricebook and merchant listings, particularly paying attention if it mentions any of those healing dan or soul restoration pills the old woman mentioned, and anything else in that vein? But also just trying to get a general picture of the relative prices of things. Any surprises?

Healing Dan, in a mortal merchant price book? Hahaha ha. Ha.

No.

There's a few things that sound like medicines listed, but nothing that seems promisingly miraculous. Mundane cures, a few 'fire aligned' or 'yang inducing' powders. Nothing specifically labeled for generic healing.

Prices are denominated in tael of silver or gold, small rectangular coins, and one tael seems to be about 2 grams, like a dime. A nice inn with breakfast and dinner costs around a gold tael a night.

Spiritual Rice (silver grade) is about as expensive as rare spices like cinnamon or frost pepper by weight.

A conversion for 'low grade spirit stones' is listed at 750-1500 tael of gold, approximately.

Various metals seem to be remarkably cheap too? For the supposed medeivalish tech level anyway.

Commodity prices through medieval history were not one of the things Rebecca found relevant to populate the Library of Alexandria with, so she doesn't have an indexed lookup ready, but she does get a vague, low-certainty sense that the metal prices are unusual.

Spirit stones: a thing? She doesn't remember reading about them in fiction, unlike mystical dan. A low-grade spirit stone is a about two kilograms of gold or more, and high grades must be even more. What are they used for? What section are they in, maybe that can give her an idea?

Also: "spiritual" rice?

If there's nothing on healing dan or pills, so they must be rare, not a fungible commodity, extremely expensive, or some combination of the above.

Laws next: common sense, surprisingly progressive, oppressive totalitarian or what? She's also looking for any more hints about the state's relationship with the Three Jade Sect and... other sects, it sounds like, which typically don't have a close relationship with the civilian state? And basically anything about qi, demons, souls, cults and so on.

Spiritual rice and spirit stones are listed next to 'spirit beast meat' and 'qi steel' and 'blood and qi pills' at a very small section at the end labelled 'practitioner goods'.

The laws seem like a mixture of common sense and totalitarian. Relatively short, but lots of death penalty. People can choose exile instead, or hard labor in some cases. No slavery, no debt bondage, no! There are a bunch of laws about merchants and one gets the impression there was a Problem with merchants in the past.

Practitioners have a list of special privileges aimed, depending on your perspective, mostly at keeping them from causing trouble because they're bored and frustrated? They go to the front of lines, and can shake officials right out of their beds to settle disputes or get things stamped, and don't have to bow to anyone but senior practitioners, etc. They still have to pay city entry tariffs, which are fairly steep, unless they're with the Three Jades Sect, of course. And serious crimes still get them into trouble, even Three Jades Sect members. At least ostensibly.

(Spirit beast meat sounds like a fraught topic given her choice of party member. She will sound out Wen about the general category of "practitioner goods" later.)

The merchant drama: is it more around unsavoury business practices like price fixing mentioned, or is it more of—general legislation against the merchant class gaining power and influence? Does it seem like she might get slammed with fines and red tape if she tries undercutting the market? (She's not planning to dump enough volume to move market prices more than locally and briefly.)

The laws around practitioners... bode poorly for the kind of people she's going to have to rub elbows with. The excessively deferential way people here are treating her makes more sense now.

What she needs to do is run a gauntlet of hypothetical scenarios against Wen to feel out the expected window of responses to things she might run into.

Seals, proof of authority and etiquette? She'll memorize it all like everything else; it seems important.

Nothing too surprising in there given the general tone of authority and respect to seniors that's a background assumption around here. There's an odd clashing of a central bureaucracy and something vaguely feudal. Impersonating officials is a serious crime.

Feudalism meshes with the power structure of entire towns' defences being pinned by single individuals—except it sounds like practitioners are concentrated in "sects" which aren't typically tightly integrated with mortal governance? Though Gao Gao's son was the local defender, and while she previously thought he might be a swordsman or other martial hero, her powers of pattern recognition tell her he's likely another qi user.

Maybe it's a bit like universities, where there's a core of permanent faculty, but other members peel off eventually to pursue governance or private enterprise, still nominally members but no longer directly representing or involved in the running of the the institution?

She will finally leaf through the civil engineering and forestry books to get a general picture of the technology level.

Pretty meh. The repeated mentions of miasmatic qi or accumulation of Wood energy might actually be real, though. Given everything.

She is not certain that the concept of qi she as she understood from before was applicable to things like trees, but she's already established that her map is not the territory.

Modern civil engineering is probably not useful to sell to the locals given the industrial base it assumes, but maybe the weirdness about metals moves the cost equilibria enough? It's not particularly important to work out now.

And she did say "finally", but actually she's noticed the imperial declarations again and will read them. What does the Empire declare?

Tax changes! Elevation of people as nobles! A Royal Spirit Testing Initiative! The rescindment of the previous initiative for unstated reasons! Warnings of bandit problems! Royal betrothals and marriage announcements! A grand exhibition and feast in the capital of Lavender Jade City slated for Cloadsoar Year 77,543! A round of army recruitment for possible war against the State of Qing (New)! A year long quarantine against something called Rage Fungus! A declaration that the coasts of the Lake of Mists are now safe-ish for civilian boat travel thanks to the Jade Navy! More tax changes and nobility elevations (Gao Gao's is in there)!

Gao Gao's new nobility? Perhaps not for much longer if they abandon the town. "Rage Fungus" is very evocatively named and hopefully not very accurately, but she suspects she's in no such luck. War and bandits, standard problems.

The Spirit Testing Initiative sounds interesting, so she'll fish a bit.

"Tell me about the Spirit Testing Initiative?" she asks the boy, sounding thoughtful.

"Some two generations ago, I don't recall the exact year ma'am, the Three Jade Sect decided to dispatch their disciples to all corners of the realm in order to look for talents that might otherwise go overlooked. I believe it was abandoned because the number of such talents proved below expectation, as did the quality of said talents, and the program was very expensive."

An intrinsic sort of potential, or the more mundane meaning of talent? What the boy described is more of a good sign than a bad sign, she thinks, for the Three Jade Sect's virtue.

"A worthy project," she says. "Unfortunate that it did not succeed."

She thinks she's done with the books here. It's occurred to her during her time reading that Gao Gao's son might have references relevant to mystical practice, but it's too soon to be asking after a man's dead son's property. Though... does she care what Gao Gao thinks of her? She has enough credit banked, and the reputation of a practitioner she's now seen the extent of, that he probably wouldn't raise a fuss.

She cares enough, she decides. She doesn't need to optimize that hard here, and she'd rather make friends than enemies given the choice.

She will return the materials, thank the boy and ask if she can get some of her gold changed for smaller denominations here. (She has no clue if this is one of the standard functions of an administrative building.)

If it's properly minted Three Jades tael, like the palm size 100-tael bars in her reward, he can do that just fine, if she has raw gold he'll have to go get the Clerk.

Yes, she means the tael in her reward. She'll change one of them into smaller gold, silver and copper, please. A variety of denominations will do, up to him.

The ratio is 20 silver tael to one gold tael. Silver tael only come in small denominations, not large bars.

He gives her about an even number of copper bits (which are 0.1 silver), 1, 2, 5, and 10 silver coins (the copper and silver ones being round rather than rectangular), and 1, 5, and 10 gold tael.

(A bowl of plain rice tends to cost about three copper bits according to the price book.)

She'll tip him a silver for his help. It's probably not expected, but developing a reputation for generosity is better than the reverse, and she has approximately infinite tips to pass out.

Then she will head out and look for:

A store selling local paper and writing utensils?
A store or vendor selling less-perishable foods for travel?
Anything selling, uh, spirit stones or spirit beast meat? She's not holding out hope, but she'll try dowsing for anything with her new qi(?) sense.

She will enter the first one she finds.