"Agreed, which is why I authorized so much land for Beenu's farm plot. Oh right."

She hands Hessia the slate and rockstick-stylus from earlier. "Can you try to get anything about the crop growth flowchart down on that?"

Hrmm... So if she puts down... This and that... It goes like that.

Yep, she's pretty sure that's right. The important thing is to get the vigas-specific signature right anyway.

"So... Now I have to explain what all the shorthand means don't I? Hmn..."

Yes, yes she does. Sable nods. And tilts her head.

"So this one is... Ugh."

You know what let's just add labels.

"There. So. What this meaning does, is- Always power the three triggers here." She taps the left. "If the plant is dead, kill everything in the boundary of the meaning. Like dustlife, so it doesn't start rotting." Middle. "Recognize vigas's life signature, and only activate the other two parts if we're looking at vigas and not some random other life on top of it. This is so you don't empower every insect that lands on it." Right side. "This is what actually... Does the empowering. It makes it grow, also makes it not die, also keeps the meaning sustained and restarts the whole thing. It's actually pretty simple, the hard part was learning to hold it all in your head at once and recognize what magic feeling like corresponds to.. This."

Okay, this actually makes sense. This is just more magical programming. Does her implanted deadspeaking skill contain a sense of what "empowering vigas" and "killing everything" feel like, magically?

"Is there a limit on how often Envigor can safely run, for the sake of the plant's health?"

Some of the available magic actions match up close enough in impression that it seems likely.

"Yeah, that's why homeostasis is in there. You can apparently get a lot fancier about it, to really optimize it, but this one is easy and works acceptably well. It's not even touching the genetics. That's an entirely separate field of study. Just kind of magically- 'Hey, go fast'."

"Interesting. The mental library that got crammed into my brain contains mental actions that seem to match up to the components of this chart, so it should be reasonably implementable. Is it reasonably similar for growing other crops, or trees?"

"Vines, maybe. You gotta get more complicated for trees and bushes. Different meanings on different parts of the plant- Make the leaves overproduce sugar for the rest of it, for example. I would be experimenting. I can show you how to put down meanings later? You seem to know how to do healing though."

"Healing felt like a primitive mental action, so it was fairly easy. Select injured person in mental landscape, apply healing, repeat. Okay, this makes sense. I just need to get us some trees to start experimenting with, and we can mess around until we get something workable. I assume that and custom trees are both a matter of feeling out the anatomy and biology of the plant until we have a sense of what needs to change to do what we want?"

"Well, we're in the right place to experiment. Frontier, hoy! I bet we'll end up killing some trees. But something... Omelets, eggs... Someone might have books for sale in Covehold, if we end up producing something worth selling. We stopped there for a bit before continuing along the coast by foot and boat."

"Bonus reason to get boats built quickly, and to get production up to speed as well. Maybe smooth limestone? Maybe we'll find some ore? What sorts of things are harder to come by in a city like Covehold?"

"Uh... Food was real expensive there. Which was having some. Not great effects. And is why we only stayed for three days. Also salt, paper, glass, and metal. Wood was cheap. Tools and things weren't that expensive compared to, just, raw material, most of the cost of a shirt was the cloth and not the shirtness. I think good stone bricks would do well, boats are good for moving heavy stuff."

"Okay. Get our food production high enough we can consider exports, stone bricks when we finish construction here, and work on finding salt, sand, and ore. We can probably figure something out for cloth, too. Lots of good opportunities. Just a moment while I note all those down into my to-do list."

She focuses on the list, and adds several entries.

"Mmkay."

"Oh! What's paper usually made of here? I know bits and pieces of a process using wood pulp, and I know the existence of a process using hemp, but I don't know if hemp is even available here."

"I don't know? I mostly learned deadspeaking. And not all that much of that."

"That's fine. Not your fault. We'll just reinvent anything we need to, and buy what books we can."

"Okay so, I would really appreciate it if I could mostly rest today. Maybe poke a tree later. Or heal someone if they manage to get hurt, but doing that so much is why I'm out of it in the first place."

A gentle smile crosses her face. "Absolutely. Go rest. If anyone gives you trouble about it, make 'em my problem. And don't give me any of that 'Lady Binder' crap. Let me know if you think of anything interesting or important, but otherwise just put yourself back together.."

"Yeah. Can't laze around too long though. Here's to hoping we're all rich in a year."

She grunts and stands, leaving the tablet with a flowchart in it with Sable.

Sable copies the flowchart into her growing set of notes files, then smooths out the tablet. Time to get on with the day.

Soon enough, it's lunchtime. Nico has created and distributed Very Firmly Temporary workspaces, the vigas-field-to-be has traced out, and someone has been assigned to maintaining the distillery.

Sable is asking Mr. Cooper about how many houses they're going to need, and whether he knows someone who would be good at exploring and mapping the demesne. 

Lots of people want their own houses, but Mr. Cooper has taken the liberty of combining families a lot for a 'preliminary' list. Short term: 18 small houses and 34 large houses, with an average of 4 and 7 people per house, respectively. Longer term... Well, more. There's already been an argument about who gets a house first and where, so Mr. Cooper went around and talked to Mr. Whisp (that is, Nico), and a few others and planted the idea that common infrastructure like a permanent hospital, bathing area, laundry area, and kitchen and dining hall ought to come first. The current cave situation is not actually any worse than the ship over here was, after all...

But still. It's about lunch time and getting hot out. He thinks a daily lunch meeting with a speech where people can hear the plans and discuss concerns is a good idea.

After getting tired of setting up horotracted closets to give everyone breathing room, Nico has been working a mathematically precise model map table off to the side. Dark stone for what's currently there, white stone for future plans. And also adjusted the vigas field markings slightly to be actually rectangular and line up at 60 degrees on a grid.

"Oh that's lovely, Nico. And thank you for fine-tuning the precise dimensions of the field."

Is road planning coming together, here? Does anyone have suggestions about a good location for a plot for experimental gardening where she and Hessia could try to develop new plants they'll need? Can someone see about making sure anyone who's up for hard but crucial work and isn't doing anything else helps with breaking the new ground for the vigas field? And is anyone particularly good at exploring and mapping, so they can have accurate maps of their land? Also, how about suggestions for a compost heap location near the farm?

And honestly Mr. Cooper's lunch meeting idea is pretty solid.

"I am blatantly cheating by having already studied horotraction in detail, knowing that binders can do all four types of magic." Wink. "I don't know how wide roads ought to be though, honestly speaking."