"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."

"Cheating is Technique, my friend. Good question about optimal road widths, though. Is there a standard size for wagons and carts?"

People, steadily assembling for lunch (Today: Beast and Seel meat stew, plus every fruit that's expiring soon), provide opinions. The consensus seems to be that a wagon needs at least three yustri to pass comfortably, more to be comfortable with space for people to walk on either side or for two-way wagons, and that wide main paths are better. Two yustri is enough for people to comfortably pass each other, so might suffice for lesser passages.

Curious onlookers also start talking about where their permanent workplaces and homes ought to be. 

Nico bats away an encroaching hand from the table, then offers a rectangular white rock with the word 'smithy' on it instead. "Zeris, don't- Everyone, no you can't have a house that's a mansion inside, I have to maintain it, that's why the temporary workspaces are temporary-"

She levitates a pebble, puts "I have a very long term idea for imbuement distribution, but it depends on having ridiculous amounts of wire. We can discuss later, though." into it, and then floats it into Nico's hand.

"Let's optimize for everyone getting easily-maintained moderately nice things rather than pushing for the really big magics like lots of space-folded houses, yeah? At least for now? We'll work up to bigger things later. I don't know if we'll reach a point where lots of space-folded houses becomes an efficient use of imbuement maintenance time, though.

"How about some suggestions for where to put an experimental gardening plot and a compost heap?"

Well, obviously it should be far away from where people are living, compost is smelly.

But not too far so that it's inconvenient to empty the latrines and kitchen waste to it. Maybe near crop fields, so where the vigas field is already marked?

She agrees. How about the compost heap goes at the end of a little side path along the vigas field, and then the experimental garden is right across that path from the field, at the corner where that path meets the main road?

That seems fine?

The houses should run parallel to the river or the ridge, not perpendicular, so they have nice views. Maybe the houses can be built into the ridge? A two-level town sounds really pretty!

Honestly that does sound pretty? She wants a chunk in the immediate vicinity of the core cave reserved for binder-focused construction, core defense and research labs and workshops, but building stuff in and on the ridge means that the quarrying they'll be doing anyway for other construction can also be making room for these houses. There's synergy in that.

Nico works on making a cutaway showing the current cave system. This one is more of a top-down view, since he's still working with opaque rock.

He clearly loves this kind of modeling and diorama type work.

"Keep in mind that we're going to want expansion- How does this look?"

Three tiers of housing: On the slope below the ridge, built into the ridge itself, and sitting atop the ridge. Staircases and what looks like a big elevator platform just off the central road link them. Right in front of the current dungeon entrance, a wide street that turns into a roundabout, heading towards the vigas field, down past houses, and towards the river. 

"The cliff houses could be several stories tall, giving everyone more room- Maybe with an elevated walkway, too. This would be far in the future, most of it... Of course, we need a lot more than just houses. A hospital, cisterns and aqueducts, a baths, kitchens and a dining hall, workshops... The dungeon needs to first and foremost be ready to serve as a dragon shelter. So it would probably need copies of all that, too. I don't really like the idea of multiple dungeon entrances..."

Sable smiles warmly at Nico as he tinkers with the model. It's so nice to see her co-binder actually enjoying himself. "That's looking pretty great. Maybe make one particularly wide entrance to the dungeon that can be closed and barred and narrowed in the event of a crisis, and make the dungeon copies of our infrastructure first, that way we're resilient against getting interrupted before everything's built?

"I also vote for having things prepared in case another dragon shows up. Though we're safe for at least a blue month- Probably longer too. They don't follow close to each other."

"It might take a while, but we'll have a town the envy of Lomabuyar Demesne... Jerry's a mason, right?"

"You know, I never knew you were so fast at building, Mister Nico! The pipe for water- You managed that in a single morning! Maybe we should have had stone shelters every time we camped."

"Oh, there's no way I could have managed building that fast before. I am cheating outrageously with my Binderly powers and impressive talent."

"If only it was as easy for non-Binders as it is for us," she agrees.

Did they get someone on top of finding people who could be spared for breaking in the vigas field? Is someone going to trace out the plots of land to match the lovely diorama Nico's making?

Beenu the vigas farmer has rounded up two dozen volunteers, many holding scythes, shovels, and axes. They're milling about nearby.

"I'll trace out the plots myself later. I can multiply distances with Horotracting easy enough."

Sable nods. She makes sure Beenu is apprised of the tweaks Nico made to the vigas plot, then turns to Mr. Cooper. "Do we have an inventory of what seeds we have?"

They do, not accounting for local plants that might be foraged later, or any personal stashes: Vigas (grain), Cloudbloom (fiber), Basra (carroty/beety?), Laketines (sour fruit), Roundroot (potatoes?), Sweetleaf (lettuce/kale/asparagus?), Pink Lady (peach-like fruit, but those trees don't grow to maturity for years and years), and Opel Beans.

"Solid variety, but no spices. We'll probably want to trade for those eventually, especially if we can't forage any." She smiles ruefully. "But little morale boosters like that are not remotely urgent. There's survival work to do first."

Someone she doesn't know the name of yet- Middle-aged man- Says, "I'm worried about our food in the short term. The vigas should be the absolute priority, so more people should go help with that in a minute. I think close to three hundred people is too large for a starter colony- There are lots of seels in the river, and there are beasts to hunt, but both will quickly become difficult if we rely on them for this many hungry stomachs. We need boats, preferably ones with magic drivers, to do both those things further away. We also need any other ideas anyone has for more food sources."