Tanth leans against one of her arches to watch, and Timrat settles crosslegged on the floor, and unrolls the paper to show a hand-drawn map of the area. Two edges of the paper are marked with arcs of large circles, the areas behind them being less detailed.

"I figure we should probably talk about the general situation, and then about how we can work out a fair deal for commissioned magic items," Perkre explains, addressing his remark to her ceiling. "But first I should probably check to see whether you had any urgent questions to ask, now that the weasel's out of the bag."

"Hello! Uh. ... Do you want some chairs, I can't promise they'll be comfortable, it'd be shuffling around materials instead of making them, but. They will exist. Otherwise, yes, please tell me all about this fabled outside."

"Chairs would be lovely, thank you," Perkre agrees.

He looks down at the map, and gathers his thoughts.

"So I guess the thing to know is that most places are under the control of dungeons. They can't directly affect the surface, but unless you can fly that doesn't do much good when they can pull the ground out from under you," he continues.

"This area where we are, isn't. That's because some of the founders of our village two hundred years or so ago managed to kill the dungeon that was here that had been keeping them captive. Since then, Tensmouth has remained free. But not without great costs."

He points to the two great arcs on the map.

"These two dungeons -- the sea-mouth and the goblin caves -- have been slowly extending into the territory since the old dungeon died. It's not fast, but it is persistent. Every year we lose a little more ground. And that's without counting the raiders -- both dungeon sponsored, and from other free towns that are just a touch more desperate."

"Without a supply of magic items, there's little chance that we'd be able to hold our own, and the raiders would come and drag us back to the goblin caves. And without a source of humans to empower you, you'd find yourself easy pickings in another century or so when the goblin caves' territory reaches this far."

He clasps his hands.

"So that's the situation, pretty much. I'd summarize, but Rokat would take me over her knee for using language like that."

Chairs: exist.

"... Oh," she says, stunned and horrified. "Holy shit, okay. I didn't realize things were that bad but, that. That does follow from all powerful dungeon thing, doesn't it. Raiders to drag you back to a dungeon as fuel. Eugh. Right, moratorium on making weapons is hereby lifted, what do you need."

Perkre blinks. Tanth relaxes a fraction of a degree. Rokat smiles at her.

"That was a lot easier than I was expecting," he admits. "That was going to be the main thing we were going to ask for. That and a promise from you not to keep captives, in exchange for ... whatever it is you want to trade for."

"So, thank you, really. That's pretty much the best we could ask for."

He leans back in his chair.

"I think the big things would be ... warning systems, shields, ways to see in the dark, magic arrows, magic crossbows, swords, ways to track people who get taken, ways to suppress fires, ways to start fires, good armor ..."

He trails off in thought.

"Those water purifiers are a good start," Rokat chimes in. "But some things to make carrying water easier would be nice. And maybe you could dig us a better well. Also food rings, for the lean times, and anything you can think up to help with harvests, for the good times. My father had a magic sickle that bundled the wheat for you, but it broke when I was a lass."

"Yeah, absolutely. I actually already made Kose a spare ring of sustenance, if you need it now. Everything else... yes. If things are as you say, you'll have it. Better than you're thinking, I think, because I," and she sounds incredibly smug as she says this, "can do so much better than magic crossbows."

She casually dumps all of the magical items she'd been keeping as future reward in a little tidy pile on the floor. Including five of the six secret communication pendants.

"I do want to verify this before I do actually make weapons that could presumably be used to kill me, but for now you can just have these," she says. "Could you bring me materials? In fact, just use me as your garbage dump, anything you don't want, please feed directly to your friendly village dungeon, most of what I've been spending is making stuff, when actually it's much cheaper to refine it."

Rokat laughs.

"You are too good to be believed," she remarks. "There are stories ..."

Perkre nods. "That makes sense," he agrees. "Actually, if it's the making things that's costly for you, and not the making them magic, I could bring in a lot of already forged things for you to enchant."

"So you want our refuse," Rokat continues. "What else? And what kind of proof do you want to see? We can't exactly take you to the borders."

"Just bringing me things to enchant would be great! I might also refine them to be stronger, depending on if you've got a steel forge or not.

"... And I was just going to request permission to make a magic item and literally go check myself. It's just that I suspect doing that without checking with you first would be, you know. Alarming."

"Ooh. How would that work, then?" Rokat asks, leaning forward. "I've not heard of magic like that."

"Also, Timrat, pick those gifts up. Don't just leave them on the floor like that," she chides. Timrat hurries to obey, scooping the magic items into a carrying pouch.

"Along the same sort of line as the communication pendants. A multi-part interconnected magical tool with different parts doing different things. One to fly," drone style, "one to send visuals to me, probably some for protections, since it sounds dangerous? And then remotely piloted via the same logic of the pendants. It can be set up to respond to things I do, after all. But that might take a while to set up, so. Probably first should be shielding and magical item renewal? And night vision and alarms, and, ways to track people that get taken, was it? I'm going to need to make a list..."

"Ah, if you can make some paper I can take notes?" Timrat offers, wiggling his charcoal stick.

Perkre has a look of barely-restrained enthusiasm at the thought of getting to break down a multi-component complex magic item.

"Tanth, would you run back out and let people know it's going well? And that they should bring any run-down magic items, and also anything they want to get rid of. We can make two separate piles."

"You're sure you'll be okay?" Tanth asks.

"Yes, I'm sure we'll be fine," Rokat assures him.

"Oh, I've just been taking notes in my walls. But thank you, that's very sweet. Let's see, directional kinetic barrier? Things coming in all directions except the allowed one get slowed...? Hmm. Defining the parameters large scale would be tricky, I'll need to think about it. Seeing in the dark would just be infrared, and I guess this is important enough to use the sub-standard glass for..."

She starts putting together a pair of glasses to see in the dark. With the pyrex and - what does she have extra of that's good for holding magic? - electrum. Amplify infrared light and other faintly visible light to give a black and white image...

Without much delay: here are a pair of night vision... glasses. Tink, onto the floor where she'd dumped the rest of her goodies.

Timrat reaches to pick these ones up too.

"Are those night-seeing glasses?" Rokat guesses. "That was ... fast. Kose made it sound like new items usually take a lot longer than that."

"They do! Usually magic items take, like, at least half a day to get the dungeon to put together a good version. Making them work is easy, but making them work robustly and be usable usually takes a few iterations. But Aestrix just ... pops out magic items that work perfectly first try! Somehow."

She leans back against the wall.

"Honestly, it's very impressive," she continues. "But it is a bit unnerving."

"Oh. Uh. I'd say sorry but I'm... kind of not. Heh. To be fair, I do make iterations, I just don't bother to show anyone until they're any good.

"Anyway, night vision glasses are really straightforward, and I already had the materials on hand from the magic seeing glasses. These won't hold up as well under stress, by the way, electrum is not a very strong alloy, and I haven't sat down to figure out the perfect alloy combination to hold this type of magic. This is just what I had on hand right now without needing to blow resources making things."

Kose waves a hand at the ceiling in a 'see?' gesture.

Perkre takes the glasses from Timrat, and turns them over in his hand.

"Electrum, you say? I don't know it by that name. What's it an alloy of?"

He delicately scratches one nail along the frames to see how the hold up.