HONK.

Suddenly and inexplicably, Sable is no longer on Earth.

Instead she is in a cave. The floor is uneven and damp, the stone is whitish and full of stalactites and stalagmites. Limestone. It's an irregularly shaped chamber maybe 20 feet across, and there's one way out- a passage that twists to the right. The only lighting is dim pale blue light coming from a large glass sphere, two or three feet across. A man with a stained worn tunic sort of thing in pale green, shaggy hair and a slightly unkempt beard, deep bags under his eyes, is touching the crystal with both hands. He turns a bit to look at her, but his hands don't move, stuck fast to the crystal.

There's a bone-deep humming, that warbles unpleasantly when his attention wanders. He looks back at the crystal. The humming returns to tune. He looks towards Sable again and blinks.

"What the colors..." This is in an unfamiliar language that she, nonetheless, knows. And then, in accented and rusty English, "Is that jeans?"

What.

What.

"Did I just get fucking isekaied? And what kind of curse is 'what the colors'?"

"What- Eesay? You're from Earth? Like me? Fuck!" Unpleasant warble. Focus on the sphere. It calms. "Colors! I can't lose focus on this."

"Yes, Earth." She switches into the new language, best to build good habits now. "Need help with this thing?"

"What the fuck. I thought I was only the one. Uh... Yes. Making a core. But I never actually learned how. I learned magic... When I was hit by a truck, and got here. I never went to school for it. So I don't understand what I did wrong but it's obviously wrong. It's going to kill me if I don't fix it and I have no idea what happens if you try interfering."

She feels around in her head. Does she have any suspicious instincts about "making cores" and whether she can help?

She knows how to reach out and claim or shape two kinds of magic. And the glowy core looks awfully claimable.

She also knows how to use them on herself. She could... Do math?? Or heal herself?? And probably other things, but those suggest themselves as the most obvious possibilities.

(You're welcome.)

She frowns thoughtfully. "I've got suspiciously convenient instincts that say I can claim the glowy core. Gonna try unless you think it's a terrible idea."

If he doesn't interrupt her, then... reeeaaach out? Grab it and try to claim it?

"If you're okay risking it-"

Oh wow. This core is incomplete. There's five - exchanges? Surfaces? Three look okay, but her two are just kind of constantly unravelling and regenerating. The math one feels like it's stuck in a panic attack or an endless loop and the healing one feels like it's falling asleep and waking back up constantly.

They just need to be stable, maybe, and there's the other three right there to look at what 'stable' looks like...

"Oh shit, that's why it's flailing so hard. There are five sections to it, and three of 'em are fine, but the two that match my Suspiciously Convenient Skills are failing to generate properly. Fixing 'em."

She grabs hold of the core, especially the two flailing interfaces, and gently but firmly twists them into approximately "like the stable three but for the correct skill". No, this core is not allowed to fail. It's going to stabilize, because she says so.

"That feels weird..."

But it seems to be working?

Something rushes out of her. Its absence makes her feel cold and stupid and slow. But then everything stabilizes and she feels fine again.

And then she can feel SO MUCH MORE. It's an overstimulus. There are a bunch of things out there, people-shaped blobs with bodies she could reach out and touch and thoughts she could grab in her mental fingers- And dead matter, and trees, and microbe scum on the cave walls, and mice, and twisty anomalies slowly dissolving somewhere far away.

And the core. Three out of five of the surfaces are hers, but she's sharing one with the stranger, and the other two are out of reach.

It's hard to make sense of.

She staggers a bit. "Holy shit that's so much there's so much of everything but I think it worked."

She doesn't poke the people-blobs that sounds like a way to break someone how about the dead matter? Or maybe a tree? What's a tree feel like to her new senses?

It's alive and it's doing so many complicated things. She could totally make it produce fruit early, or grow faster. It might hurt the tree but it's obvious, a complicated flowcharty pattern that she could apply over part or all of it, practically a speed slider for fruit.

"Oof, that's- A lot. A lot. I think we need to talk. But thank you. You probably just saved a bunch of lives... Even if this isn't how it's supposed to work."

She smiles confusedly at him for a moment, then manages to focus on only one place at a time. "Okay, stepping away from all the shinies. Um. Saved lives? Woo? That sounds pretty great, guess I'm a good girl who saves people now?"

She shakes her head a bit.

"Context would be great. Context would be really great."

"Girl?"

Maybe he's just confused. Or...

"Oh, right. They dont have deadspeaking on Earth. That'll do it. Uhh... This world kind of sucks. There's magic poison everywhere that's not covered by the aura of a core. That's the colors. And there's magic hurricanes wandering around. Dragons. We were... Colonists, I guess? Looking for a good place to settle. But a dragon passed over us a few days ago and wrecked all our supplies and killed a few people. And the other mage who's still alive is unconscious from exhaustion from healing people so if I died trying to make a core they'd all be utterly fucked, no way back to another demesne without dying to the colors first."

She boggles, then gapes. "Deadspeaking? Wait, that's what the convenient healingish skill I got is called? It can do transition? Holy shit. Help me make sense of these skills that got crammed into my head well enough to feminize my body and I will do anything you ask. I mean, I probably would help out with anything just to keep you and the other colonists alive, but figuring out how this works is basically my single biggest wishlist item."

Holy shit. Holy shit.

He rubs his hands all over his face.

"Sorry, very sorry, but can that happen - later? I'm very tired and I think... We need to figure out how to explain you existing and then... Go out there and get things organized. Because... The dungeon binder is king inside their demesne. Or queen. By right of biggest stick. And... There are still injured people. And they'll panic if I just don't come out. We need water... I can try to explain things but I don't know deadspeaking. Theres whispering, mentalism, horotraction, and deadspeaking. Most people have just one. Actually most people have none, and almost everyone else just has one."

"Later is fine. Eventually is fine. Just not never. Let's get to work. Are dungeons ever bound by two people? Is any of what needs done right now a deadspeaking or... mentalism? probably mentalism thing?"

Do her shiny new instincts say any of those people-blobs are injured? Or anything about how to change her body?

YEP. There are a bunch of injuries. Burns, mostly. Simple Healing is something her implanted knowledge considers nearly a primitive action. Reach out, touch, define an area, apply Healing, supply energy, activate Healing, deactivate Healing. And then remove the Healing definition from the person. She could totally do it right now. She could... Change some of her own internal processes? Like with the tree? Her instincts seem to think it's very possible to sculpt living flesh and bone and muscle, also dead ones, but also to be super careful that the underlying biology supports everything for living ones.

"I have never heard of a dual dungeon binding. I can pull water from the river with whispering... And deadspeaking is good for healing. The other deadspeaker is unconscious. She might be a better teacher... If you don't want to hide your strangeness. I want to... What do we say to explain you suddenly being here? Were you following us? Was I sneaking you along? Serendipitous encounter, you were also lost?"

"Lost makes the most sense, on the simple basis of being extremely true. I have no idea where anything except our dungeon core is, and the people and stuff in range of it. I don't mind people knowing I'm different. Maybe I came from someplace weird that didn't have a deadspeaker, or didn't allow using it to change people like this, and that's why I left? Also, I can probably buy a bunch of goodwill by everyone's first memory of me being healing them all, since it seems to be a primitive action according to my new instincts."

"I'm too tired for this. Okay, we tell them you were lost too, and we're both dungeon binders, and refuse to explain further? And you heal people- You might have to physically touch them- And I sort out water and smooth floors to sleep on. And maybe toilets. And- Then we can talk more."

"We just smile and refuse to explain and be conspicuously helpful and everyone will just have to cope." Does it feel like she has to touch people? Or does it feel like touching them would help? She starts heading out in the direction of people.

Nope. They are in her demesne. She can be touching them from anywhere, magically speaking.

Nico hands her his spare tunic and starts sealing up the core room behind them, with his bag in it, after picking up an odd sort of staff. The stone flows like gooey syrup.

A sea of expectant faces lit by three lonely torches await them, outside.

"The Core is established!"

And... What after that. "I'm going to get water for everyone. My fellow binder will be healing people. Most urgent first."

And turn and make for the daylight visible through the cave system.

The People, all three hundred or so of them, break out in murmered conversations and shuffle in every direction at once. Someone cheers. Someone yells 'heal my wife first!'.

"Hi! Call me Sable. I'm actually a girl, body's wrong, gonna fix that after I fix y'all. Health of the populace is more urgent. I don't need to touch people, but gather 'round anyway, if you can."

Okay, who's most injured? How about they cut that out right now? And then the next? And the next? Until either she runs out of power or people to heal? She'll just keep walking the camp and healing people until one of those happens.

She is not going to run out of power, basically ever. Her only real limit is attention and throughput. Someone, apparently a doctor, starts sticking to her and directing people around shortly into this. They want to go carefully, cleaning burns as best they can.

An hour into it, they're doing it with clean water straight from a stone sink Nico just made. The other deadspeaker, Hessia, doesn't wake up when healed, but does breathe easier and seem less pale.

...And there are five bodies, shown to her just in case. She could animate them, but not return them to life.

She gives the doctor a grateful smile at the help.

She frowns sadly. "I can't bring them back. I can animate the bodies, but it wouldn't be them, so there's no point."

...Yeah.

Someone mentions the option, but nobody wants their loved ones turned into a set of engine legs unless it's the only option. They'll prepare things for a cremation later.

It's dinner time. Someone offers her a plate. Baked potatoes and jerky. Yum?

There have been some quiet arguments, but nothing important enough to distract from healing.

Nico has hung magic lights all around the cave now.

"I think the most urgent things are done. I assigned someone to count supplies- The man who was supposed to become binder is dead, but his chosen deputy is still alive and sort of took charge of things. I don't like him though. More a bureaucrat than a leader. Mr. Cooper, there."

A finger pointing him out.

"We should talk in the core room. And possibly sleep there. I've already heard a rumor that we're married, though."

Dinner! Yum! She thanks whoever gives it to her.

And when Nico comes, she nods in greeting. "Yeah, we should talk. Married though?"

She giggles softly.

"I don't know you nearly well enough. Also I'm mostly only into women. That can maybe ever stretch, but it's not likely."

"Rumors are like that. We can just deny it. Co-binders. What a fucking day."

She nods and giggles as they walk to the core room. "If it comes up where I can hear it, maybe I'll just say something like 'he's nice but no, I prefer women', and then hopefully I have the alternative problem of girls I don't know well enough to date yet flirting with me."

She shakes her head. "I don't mind taking on the social stuff. I don't know enough about what all a new colony needs, but I'm willing to listen to people who do know. You seem like you know more of the important colony stuff, so I'm gonna be listening to you a lot, but I get the sense that social is not your favorite thing."

"A much better problem to have, really. And... No. Decisively no."

"Well, you're free to make social stuff my problem if you don't mind my picking your brain to keep our New Colony To-Do List full. Call me Sable."

"Nico."

He opens the stone barrier to the core room again, and doesn't close it behind himself.

"So... Earth. America? Did the stupid Vietnam thing finally end?"

"Did. Then a couple dust-ups in the Persian Gulf, then there was a terrorist attack on American soil that killed three-kay, then that was used to justify a terrible war, and more stupid shit followed. Eventually an absolute moron of a demagogue got elected president, and there was a Coronavirus that was a borderline plague, and that's where we were when I got hit with the Truck."

By the end of this she's scowling, but she shakes her head and blows out a slow breath, calming back down.

"...I guess none of that really matters here and now. The politicians were idiots then, and they're idiots now. Do you need... A hug."

He sounds like he would honestly rather not give one.

"Also, yeah, I can be more in charge of... Practical realities. Food, water, shelter. I need to figure out how the murder hallways work... They're full of monsters that people can kill for meat and skin and such, but why do they have to be monsters, and not, say, terminally ill cows? I don't know. And, I don't actually know the people here all that well? What they're going to expect of their new 'ruler' and how much fuss there will be about honoring whatever the charter says... Bleh. I didn't want to become a binder, but here we are. And the perks are nice. Speaking of perks. Magic lesson? Or at least an attempt at one."

She smiles lopsidedly. "I'll be okay. I'll save getting a hug for someone who wants to give one. A motherly sort, or maybe a girl that flirts with me. In the meanwhile, hmm. Just riffing off narrative tropes and the fact that you called it a dungeon core, maybe it's a monster-source system that got repurposed, and it's really just optimized for monsters the whole way through?"

She shrugs.

"As for a magic lesson, hell yes. Maybe I should get used to local swears. Colors yes?"

She shakes her head bemusedly at herself.

"Colors is really used more like 'shit'. Fucking yes would be better. Or... No, 'colors yes' works. Okay, so- All four magic disciplines share a few things. Claims, and bindings. You claim some of the thing- Wisps, life, thoughts, or space. And then you create a binding, or a meaning, or an idea, or a vista. The binding- And I'm going to use the word whisperers use for it, though technically each is different- The binding controls what, exactly, you want the components of magic to do. Bindings can be activated or deactivated- Or set conditionally, say, only turn on this 'create heat' binding on waterwisps, so it'll only use imbuement when there's water to be boiled. Bindings have to be imbued. If they run out of magic, they vanish. When I was moving stone around, what I did was- Claim some of the stonewisps, then create a binding that says 'move this way', simultaneously imbue and activate it, and adjust the binding as the stone moved in order to build what I wanted. In today's case, a pipe and evaporator and pump and sink and stuff. Then when the stone was in the right shape, I deactivated the binding and it became ordinary rock again, nice and solid. Following so far?"

She tilts her head, then nods. "That makes sense. So with deadspeaking it's a claim on some dead matter or life in my demesne, or that I'm touching?"

"Yep! When you were healing, you probably did it all as a - single learned motion. Like I did when I first got here. I was, like, ten, and played around with water and breezes without actually knowing what I was doing? Ended up being shuffled off to an orphanage school- But that's for another time. It helps to be aware of each separate step, and how you can adjust it for nuances and stuff. I don't know that much about deadspeaking, but one of the common things is sculpting dead wood- For building houses, boats, sometimes furniture and suchlike, though typically carpenters do most of that and you'd melt it all together- I'm going to bug anyone with masonry experience to make building faster. And when I think about it for long enough and follow my feelings, I can sort of work out how to do advanced tricks that line up with something I want. Magic can be real dangerous though, you can hurt yourself by being careless. Steam explosions and the like are warned against for whisperers."

She nods. "I get a distinct sense that I need to brush up my knowledge of biology and anatomy very thoroughly before trying anything particularly clever. I can probably manage some little things like never needing to shave again, or changing my hair color, all on instinct. Maybe redistribute fat. But I need to make sure I understand the underlying systems if I'm going to change big things properly."

"Yeah. Fat redistribution should be safe. Surface cosmetic stuff generally, moles and the like. Hair growth or un-growth. I remember talking about work with deadspeakers and all of those came across as simple interventions. Things that were difficult were... Full biological parts changing, and height, and complicated internal diseases like, uhhhhh, word, diabetes. Sweetblood disease, here. I can't really help with the doctor stuff. I was- Well, kind of a kid, but I was going to work with these new things called 'computers'- Anyway, Hessia's a decent doctor."

She nods. "Computers got bigger than you'd expect. You'd have done well if you went into working with those. I'll probably try a few things when we're done talking, then."

"And best of luck to you, too. Hmm... Do we need to agree on a code of laws? Not literally right now, obviously."

"Thanks." And then she nods. "We probably should. General stuff to keep people from making trouble for us or each other."

"Ugh. I don't even know where to start. Except 'murder is bad' and 'stealing is bad'."

She shakes her head. "Yeah, that's a good start, but we'll need more. Why didn't I study comparative legal systems and governments more?"

"You could never have guessed that it'd be relevant... I think Riz Montague will still have a copy of the charter? Or Mr. Cooper. Unless it got blown up by the dragon like most everything else."

"I mean, it was an interest that I meant to get around to eventually. I just thought I'd have more time. Oh well. Yeah, should try to meet everyone at some point, get a copy of the charter for reference. It'll be easier to come up with something if we have something to refer to. Do we have paper and pencil? Can you turn a chunk of wall into a chalkboard and make a few pieces of chalk? We should make a way to keep track of our to-do list. And don't hesitate to put things for me on the list, I'm counting on you to tell me any Important Colony Things you need me to do."

He - fusses with a piece of stone pulled from the wall for a bit. A literal stone tablet. Hands it over along with a stick of rock for a stylus.

"It's ugly and a little heavy but it'll work for now. The front surface is liquid. I can solidify it again when it's done. With bones, I could make something lighter. So, to-dos... Read the Blue Sail Company colony charter. Get someone to tally up remaining supplies. Get someone to start planting crops- Deadspeaking can accelerate them. Get someone to explore and map the demesne. Figure out how many rooms or houses I need to make. Make a second sink, and maybe baths or something... Laundry area... See if any of the boats are fixable... Dig a nice deep tunnel to hold experiments on how monsters are supposed to work in? And find out who has good experience killing them."

She sets to writing things down as he lists them.

"I can probably help with nurturing any crops. Does your side of the magic handle water purification, or do I need to come up with a plant that does it? I think I can speed-compost if we've got some organic waste, to make better soil for farming? Do we need defenses around the demesne in case critters come in from outside, should I get on making some for that?"

"I set up a crude distillation chamber - thing. Super temporary, definitely need something more permanent later. Find someone to maintain it and remind me to teach them how to, which mostly just means occasionally scooping out gunk. It's actually a little dangerous- If someone manages to fall in while the binding is active it'll cook them, but I set it up so it turns off if the lid comes up. The farmers and craftsmen will know how to use magic for their disciplines- More than we do, in many cases. Oh, wastewater treatment. I dug some latrines, that's extremely temporary... Defenses are going to be militia with horns and spears. If they need more spears, you can do the hafts and I can do the heads. I bet a dozen types of craftsmen will be wanting tools but we can let them come to us about it."

She nods, adds a note about finding someone to maintain the distillation and introduce them to Nico for instruction. "I'll track someone down about that. Also should find someone who knows anything about the biology of wastewater treatment. We'll probably need an economy at some point, but for now we can just focus on finding people to do whatever's necessary. Spear hafts should be easy. Hmm. Tool and weapon hafts will generally be a narrow range of thicknesses, so I could maybe just plant and tweak some trees into growing very straight in standard widths?"

She adds a note about that too.

"Oh, yes, I operated a water jet cutter at an operation that had a whole orchard of straight-narrow-branch trees. That'd be helpful. I don't know about maintaining them, something with fertilizer probably. And... Mentalism. From what I hear it's very good at memory, at math, at reminders- Sort of like a computer, really? You can probably use that to your advantage. I use horotracting to mine all the time, even though I pretended to be just a whisperer until today. It's excellent at measuring exact distances and angles, horotracting, good for construction."

"Very cool. I'll have to experiment with that some. Maybe I can use my programming skills to tie some magic into a computer for us. At the very least a detailed note system in the magic for us."

"I feel like experiments can wait until we have the basics sorted out..."

"Reasonable. Just something to tinker with in spare time, really."

"Sure. Okay, to-do list... It's getting late but sooner started sooner finished. Uh... I think I'll go smooth out more of the cave floor, then call it a night, personally. It's warm and safe in here. The to-do list will still be there tomorrow."

"I'll talk to people about gathering stuff and about starting on crops, see about getting everyone to list off their skills sometime tomorrow so we know what we have to work with. Where are people sleeping? Where can I acquire a bedroll?"

"Anywhere inside the cave. Or if someone has an intact tent I have no objection to them going out. As for bedrolls- Ask for spares and I'm sure you'll get one, even if it's someone currying favor with the new co-binder? I have my own."

And little interest in someone transparently cooing at him in exchange for nice things.

She smiles. "People trying to curry favor are useful in limited ways, and also learning who the sycophants are tells me who can't be an actual friend. I'll do that then. Talk to you in the morning."

"Here's hoping we can tolerate each other. Two Earthlings... Decent chance."

Siiigh.

Staff: Picked up. He stands. "Let's get to it."

She nods and heads off. First order of business, find a quiet area to feel out what changes are trivial enough that she can't fuck them up. Removing all hair below her eyelashes? Changing her hair to her favorite shade of dark orchid violet and growing it out into a chin-length bob of lovely curls? Redistributing a bit of fat to give her some semblance of hips, a slightly feminized face? 

Probably hormone and gland work is out of reach for the moment, and probably breasts are too unless she wants to stick to just making them out of fat rather than the proper set of glands and breast tissue and such.

Yes. Not trivial but pretty easy.

Nnnn... Color feels tricky but safe to try, as grown hair is dead matter. Hyperspeed growth feels dubious, compared to "just" 10x or so, about an inch per week.

Yes, but she'd benefit from going slow- A couple of hours at it- And a mirror.

She doesn't know what magic patterns correspond to different sets of hormones and glands and so on. The body is pretty interconnected.

Then she'll get rid of all the excess hair and fiddle with recoloring what she's keeping a bit, at least as far as she can over the next few minutes.

This particular mind bendy flowchart will make her hair violet and a little iridescent- Structural coloration, not a dye.

Gorgeous. It's a start. Out she goes to talk to humans. Who looks reasonably organized and like they could get people to do stuff out there?

Mr. Cooper has apparently decided to count supplies himself. He has an abacus and is drawing tallies on a wall in ash. Some of the people he's demanding counts from aren't happy about it.

Someone has set up a washing area by passing around crude jugs held under Nico's crude sink. Clothes are being rinsed, scrubbed with what little soap there is, sent outside to dry. People are mostly rinsing off in a corner and muttering about the cold.

The doctor who helped her earlier has set up a curtained area with everyone who is still badly off even after a surge of healing, and people are spoon feeding them soup.

Someone is yelling, outside.

First order of business, who's yelling and why? She walks over toward them to see what's going on.

The yelling is from three people, over a ruined boat! At first it was about who the scrap belongs to. Now it's about the stupid decisions that got us into this mess and how it's YOUR fault.

Well, here comes one of the co-binders, visibly unnatural in hair-color, looking simultaneously like and unlike how she looked when she was healing everyone. 

"Okay you three. I want each of you to look me in the eye and tell me why you think having a petty tantrum about apportioning blame contributes more to our survival than simply making a note of what happened and then getting to work."

Well... You see... It doesn't.

...But it was my boat.

But we need wood for building with!

But- Wait a second, why are there two Dungeon Binders anyway? (And which one of them is ultimately in charge?)

"The boat got destroyed when the dragon passed over, right? Is it remotely sane to blame a passing dragon on anyone but the dragon? And given that the boat is already destroyed, is there any point in getting possessive over the wreckage? I'll work on growing more trees as soon as I can, but that wood will help bridge the gap for all our survival in the interim."

She conspicuously does not answer the questions about why there are two Binders or which of them is in charge.

"Also, technically it was the company's boat."

"...Fine. What should I be doing instead, Great Binder? Since there's no boats to pilot." There's sarcasm in that tone, but also respect

"Do you know anything about boat design, enough to note down some things I'll want to know when growing lumber for a new boat later? Or can you gather things for fishing or trapping the river? Are there any reeds around here that are good for making fishing nets from? Are you enough of a navigator to try to make a map? Don't get stuck in what you did yesterday. Our plans are all shot and we're scrambling to make new ones, so just find something that needs doing, especially if it's something you're particularly suited for, and do it."

She shakes her head. "I'm no Great Binder," she says the title with similar sarcasm to the pilot, "nor do I want any accolades. I'm just the woman who has this job, and I'm working with Nico to keep all of us alive. All I ask is that you do the same: work together so we all live through the week."

Grumble mumble he's no boat-builder but okay, reeds, yes there's a bunch. You have to do this and that and a bunch of other things- They'll need a retting tank made from stone at some point- There are enough knives still around to start cutting at least-

She claps him on the shoulder with a smile. "Good man. Figure out the dimensions you need for the tank, bring 'em to me or Nico in the morning when he's rested and has the attention to make one. Anything else y'all need me to sort out?"

The other two are pretty sure that deadspeakers can merge wood scraps together and might have some of that for her to do later. Nothing right now.

Awesome. She'll be glad to when the time comes. Next up, she's off to talk to Mr. Cooper.

"Ah! Binder... Sable! I had been hoping to speak to you! You do not appear on the company rolls."

"You're right! I don't! I happened to wander up from being lost at just the right time to help Nico with the core."

"Ah! I see. This is really quite irregular- The plan was for the binder to be someone who had signed the charter. I don't suppose I could trouble you to do so now?"

"Convenient of that to come up now! I was actually hoping to get a look at the charter, to have an idea what sort of legal and civil structure we're trying to set up here."

"Quite sensible of you. I was able to save all three copies we were carrying- Here, please come out of the way to read it. Wouldn't want important documents being damaged."

She steps off to the side and takes a look. What's in this charter?

Lots of legalese. The salient points:

The Blue Sail company was formed to create a new home on the new continent for the approximately 1500 people who pooled their money into it.

The advance party (the current group) was to explore the new continent looking for a good place to set up, found or join a Demesne and secure permission from its binder for further settlement, and send word of its location back across the ocean to Whitecrest Demesne, along with details reports on conditions and what supplies and training should be purchased. The remaining 1100 people would then make for the new demesne in two waves, one per summer.

Controlling shareholders in the company are Donovan Montague (dead), Athus Cooper, and five others who are not present. There is no clear line of succession.

The charter specifically exists to facilitate finding a good home for the people involved, and is specifically not meant to lay out the code of laws for any new demesne(s). The Blue Sail company intends to officially dissolve once colonization is complete.

There's a common-sense code of conduct, penalties ranging from fines (measured in 'beads') to expulsion from the company.

There's some official seals and declarations from Whitecrest Demesne essentially giving the company "permission" to create new cores, having paid all applicable taxes and fees and so on.

There's a few statements about ensuring tolerable conditions and a set of standards defining 'tolerable conditions' dealing with housing space, food and water, civil liberties, etc.

She hums as she reads it. "Reasonable enough. Nico and I intend to work out laws soon. Give me a pen and I'll sign to this, and then both Binders will be signatories. I particularly like the parts about standards of living and a code of conduct, and the part about how it dissolves once the colony's properly established. Not really a fan of Whitecrest giving us 'permission' to do all the work and create new cores and a new demesne in the wilderness, but it's to be expected. We'll want to reference those living standards from time to time, too, to make sure we're building things to code."

"I appreciate it heartily. I do have the authority to add new signatories for 'significant contributions', so... Yes. And yes, as far as Whitecrest goes, the way I understood it it's essentially their way to tax the flood of riverine traffic causing overcrowding issues for them and make bank on the new world rush."

She nods. "Makes sense. I'm certainly glad to do what I can to keep us all alive, and I'm glad to sign to the document keeping us in some semblance of order while we build this colony."

He starts writing out a form authorizing an additional signatory. Freehand, on some spare paper, with a battered ink pen.

He leans close and whispers. "...Should I be concerned about the... Double binder situation? I don't know much about magic, but I know Mr. Whisp was in there for... At least a full day. Refusing to let people in, and eventually he stopped responding to calls... We were starting to make plans for a desperate sprint to Covehold, assuming he'd failed... Except that the iridescence went away about six hours into it."

She shakes her head. "Nothing to be concerned about. Things perhaps went a bit... oddly, but everything should be fine from here."

"It's hard to take that at face value... But I suppose there's no real choice."

He has finished writing out a paper saying Sable (blank spot) is being allowed into the company because she is Binder of a demesne hosting their settlers and intends to follow the charter in good faith and etc etc etc. (He writes very fast).

"I'm quite glad I don't need to spend down my beads keeping the papers safe from the colors anymore... Everything is a thousand times easier now. I'm sure it'll be fine now."

She fills her last name in as "Weller", and signs after reading carefully. "And there we go."

"Very good, very good. I'd ask for several things with your binderly magic, but I'm sure everyone else would too- Perhaps I should take a tally of peoples' top desires? There's a lot of work to do. Many hands, but only three sets that are magic, hmm? And Hessia is still asleep. Not so many wizards want to risk their necks in the colors. Sensible, seeing as how half the wizards who came with us have died..."

"I'd love to speak with her as soon as she's available. As for the rest, all I can do is to take in the requests and triage them as best I can. I do have a few requests for you as well, if you have a moment to look into things."

"Please do elaborate."

"I arrived here with basically nothing but the clothes on my back and the magic I bear. I would greatly appreciate borrowing a spare bedroll for the night, if one is going unused. Also, my magical education was a bit spotty, so any textbooks or reference materials people have on any magical subject would be appreciated, just to fill gaps. I don't have high confidence in that last request being fulfillable, though."

"Well. We do have the late Donovan and Ms. Klimas's things. But I've packaged up Ms. Klimas's belongings and will also inter her ashes- For return to Covehold and eventually to Whitecrest, in accordance with her will. She did her best, standing at the cave entrance and contracting it so the dragon's lightning did not kill us all, so I am inclined to respect it unless there's something directly and urgently relevant to survival. And you would have to talk to Donovan's widow for the other. A bedroll, that I can probably do."

"I don't want to trouble a grieving widow. I'll make do with talking to Hessia when she wakes. The bedroll will be more than enough. Oh, also, I'd like to get a sense of who everyone is and what their skills are at some point. I'm going to try to be the social half of demesne leadership, because I enjoy talking to people far more than Nico does. Meeting people and getting a sense of them will make that easier. Also, we need to get on crops as soon as possible, so I'd like to hear from any farmers in the colony about where they're planning to plant and what I can do as a deadspeaking binder to help them along. Introductions would be appreciated toward that end. I expect they know what they need better than I do."

He writes shorthand for these things on the wall. 'census', 'crops/farmers'.

"We do have a list of everyone with listed professions, but I don't necessarily know anything less obvious than a farmer knowing how to farm. If he also knows how to make rope... I don't have that. I'll... Pause my supply tally and go gather the farmers next, that is quite a point. I think someone already went out hunting..."

"It's not urgent on a scale of hours. I just want to help them however I can. These things can happen tomorrow, if need be."

"I think I would have an easier time organizing things if one of our Binders declared me an authority- However temporarily."

She hums thoughtfully. "We will need an organizer, someone to help with talking to people and getting them moving, and someone to help with organizing resources and logistics. I don't want to make any permanent decisions without discussing the advantages and disadvantages with Nico, but getting organized fast has important advantages. Mmm. Temporary Organizer, pending an actual discussion about needed roles and who's best suited for them between me and Nico, and if anyone gives you trouble about getting things moving, I'll handle it. But this is with the understanding that if you overstep, you're on latrines duty. So if anyone throws a tantrum about one of your decisions, you'd best be able to convince me it was a good one, or at least the best you could reasonably make with the info you had. That fair?"

He makes a face. Then sighs. "Yes, I understand. You hardly know anyone here, least of all me. I'd hesitate to declare a lord straight off, too. Could you give me an example of a reasonable decision and an unreasonable one?"

"Let's use the one I just handled earlier today. Three colonists are having a fight about a destroyed boat, first about who owns the wreckage, then about whose fault the damage is. One, the pilot, claims ownership. The other two are trying to get the wood for construction. What do you do?"

"Tell them to cut it out and put the debris somewhere safe for now, the binder will make a decision on this later. Write that down. Come to you or Mr. Whisp about it later."

"Decent enough. Makes it my problem, doesn't do anything irrevocable. How I handled it was three-fold. I pointed out that fighting about apportioning blame contributed less than nothing to all of us surviving, then pointed out that the wreckage wasn't doing any good in its current state and could be repurposed, and finally pointed out all the things the pilot could be doing that would contribute to our survival, both short- and long-term, and told him to pick one. He went with cutting reeds to eventually make rope and nets. I'll grow us some lumber for another boat later, but we need that wood for other things now."

"Yes, people are fashioning poles and the like. Hrmm. ...It's late and we're all strained. Sleep will come soon and tomorrow is a new day."

"Just so. I'd also like to find someone to help maintain Nico's water distillery, free more of his time up, but that's a tomorrow task as well. For now, I'll be meditating on some magic things near the entrance if anyone want to talk, or if you track down a bedroll."

"I'll get on that now."

Walking towards the cave entrance she spots Nico, smoothing out the floor by rolling stalagmites into big stone spheres. Some older kids -eight to twelve or so- are playing on a few he lined up in a little depression at the edge of the cave.

Awww, cute. She finds a quiet spot where she's reachable but out of the way and pokes at the mentalism side of things. What are the primitive actions of this shiny new magical skill, and can she store data or procedures in the core?

The Core is... Weird. There's a bunch of ways she could interact with it but to her magic senses it's a bright-hot ball of energy, unclaimable, but a source of infinite imbuement.

The primitive actions of mentalism are remembering, math, and deciding. Also, telekinesis. She could, for example, make a rock that hovers after it's touched five times. Or a door that only opens if you tap the right pattern. Or a todo list in her head. Or a tray that floats if someone is touching it. She could also make an Excel spreadsheet if she's willing to recharge every cell manually and give up on advanced formulae like vlookup for now.

Oh wow. She basically has magical programming. Nico said as much but it's cool to just feel it. Does it provide any straightforward way to share data storage between her and Nico without needing a physical object to bind the data to? Does it come with loop primatives, or just if/elseif/else? 

Her magic instincts seem pretty sure that data storage requires a mentalism-binding (what Nico called an idea), and those need to be anchored to something physical. A loop is not a primitive but it's pretty obvious how to put it together with ifs and counting.

Yeah, building up the rest of the language from ifs and variables is doable. Does referencing a stored procedure in another idea seem doable? Or at least stored procedures in one large idea?

Yes, you can make ideas ... not arbitrarily complicated, but pretty complicated before running into issues. And combine that with telekinesis flipping switches and activating or deactivating things and you can get pretty creative.

Progress. What about power transfer, can she power it centrally and have power distributed to subsystems?

Oh, you need wire for that. Gold works best, but anything electrically conductive can carry imbuement.

Yeah, she's definitely making a computer when she's got spare time. How about a to-do list in her head for now, she'll get more elaborate later.

She can put formatted text into an idea and anchor it to her fingernail or wherever else, easy peasy.

Then in goes the to-do list, and then up she gets to see how everyone's doing. Anyone looking for her but being shy about it?

Most people seem to be winding down for sleep. Mr. Cooper has found a bedroll going spare and its former owner- A youngish woman with a spear and short green hair, wearing leather armor- Makes sure to follow along, apologizing for how ratty and old it is. But it kept her warm on patrol faithfully for years and years, so it ought to be solid.

"Thank you very kindly. I don't need much, just something soft and warm through the night. This will do nicely. What's your name?"

"Rama, milady."

She smiles softly and shakes her head. "Good to meet you, Rama. I'm Sable. All this 'milady' stuff will make it a pain to make actual friends, though. Do most binders demand things like that?"

She visibly relaxes, and smiles. "Well, it's a poor idea not to at first, isn't it? And most of us have never so much as seen a binder in person. Old demesnes are big and crowded."

She giggles and shakes her head. "I'm just an ordinary — if somewhat weird — girl with a job that comes with a lot of responsibility. Just trying to do right by people and help make a home for all of us, y'know? I can understand the precaution, though. Better to be too deferential than to piss off someone who can turn you inside out."

She frowns. (Mr. Cooper turns to head back to his tallying.)

"Well, we're going to be deferential, I think. It's just how it's done. I was sure hoping it'd be Donovan but if hopes were ropes, I'd be able to make a fishing net."

She frowns sadly. "I wish I could've met him. From what little I've heard, it sounds like people respected him."

"Well... That's kind of life. I'm gonna end up in the pyre some day too, either by some dragonborn abomination or the march of time, so I try to enjoy life while it lasts. Speaking of which, I hope you two arrange some hot baths with your infinite binder magic at some point."

"Oh goodness yes. That's absolutely essential, sooner or later. We've gotta have our hot baths. Most of that will be on Nico as our whisperer, making the baths and the hot water, but now you've got me brainstorming some kind of soap plant that smells really nice. Maybe even see if I can manage to add a relaxation effect, for after a long day of work."

Soap plants and hot baths go into the to-do list.

"There's gonna be tons of challenges... And houses for everyone, and everything else... Honestly, you kind of expect the binders to be lazy and get other people to do most of the work? But whatever other people can do to make your jobs easier, we oughta. It's just efficient."

"I mean, division of labor is good, and people should focus on their comparative advantage, but if I'm not putting in a full day of magic work then I should find something useful to do with my time."

"Well, dungeon binders' comparative advantage is magic, is what I'm saying. 'Comparative'- Sound like I'm back in finishing school*, heh."

*Not a literal translation, but the closest available cultural referent.

"You're not wrong, but I can easily imagine a binder getting lazy about making improvements for their people and instead just resting on their laurels. It's a pattern that's repeated itself in countless societies, and one I really don't want to ever fall into."

Rama yawns, then blushes.

"Okay, my new bedroll is calling me. Don't die please- Nobody wants to worry about the colors getting in."

Sable yawns as well. The things are contagious. "Sleep well, and don't worry. I don't plan to die for a long time. Thanks for the talk."

And then off she goes to find someplace quiet inside the burgeoning dungeon to set up her bedroll.

Candidate places include the damp but empty washing area, the improvised sickbay, the core room, and a little crevice everyone else seems to have passed up for being tiny. Much of the rest of the space has been subdivided with a whole lot of furs and blankets hanging from poles- It turns out, hopeful gossip spreading around goes, most of what was really lost to the dragon was just the heaviest and least valuable things. The actual boats, all the timber and cement and dishware and so on. The strategy thought up by Zeris the smith, of burying anything they couldn't carry to safety in the mud, paid off. Mostly kinda ish.

She's in a nestley-bundley mood, so little crevice it is. She tucks herself in and smiles softly. It's good to hear that they didn't lose as much as they could've. It's really good. She looks over her to-do list, adds a few more things like getting Nico to make a mirror at some point, or figuring out toothpaste and toothbrushes, and starts winding down.

...wait a second. Can she just sterilize all the unhelpful mouth bacteria through force of will?

There sure is some dustlife in her mouth. She can claim it. Killing it... Maybe? She could turn off all its - everything. Her magic instincts are a little confused about what this would cause.

That... sounds like she can't tell harmful bacteria from beneficial bacterial from anything else. Maybe even her cells? That sounds troublesome. She... is going to just swish some water in her mouth to wash it out and then go to sleep, and ask Nico if this world has toothbrushes in the morning.

G'night, demesne.

The sound of running water, cooking, and increasingly loud conversation awakens her.

She stretches, dusts herself off, and rolls up the bedroll. Time to go find Nico and get some work done. She cheerfully greets anyone she passes on the way. "Good morning!"

The mood is much brighter this morning and several people accost her wanting workplaces! This one is a carpenter. This one is a cooper. This one is a smith! This one wants to know where they should be laying out all the cut reeds to rett. This one is a butcher- It's not really very fun or sanitary to butcher beasts outside, you know? And the hunters who went out yesterday totally caught one. That's what breakfast is made of!

Nico is not visible, but there's a new exit to the main cave chamber.

She solicits and notes down what people need in their workspaces. How big should the area be, do you need ventilation, do you have important material constraints, what are the dimensions of a retting tank? And all of this goes into her mental notepad on her way to find Nico, who is likely in that new room.

New hallway, actually, gradually sloping down. He's at the end, excavating more.

"Ah, there you are. So, I had an idea. How about I actually use horotracting today? I can turn closets into dining halls... So long as I remember to keep them imbued. Or someone has wire. I don't want to make too many temporary solutions but it'd be better than 'cave floor for everyone'."

She smiles when she finds Nico. "Ooh. That would mesh well with a request people had. We have a bunch of requests for workspaces: carpenter, cooper, smith, butcher, et cetera. Could dig out some closets and then stretch them into workrooms. Oh. and speaking of secondary skills, I've got a bound to-do list now. Also, I would do an awful lot of favors for a mirror eventually, but it's not urgent."

"So, question is- What the place is gonna look like in a year, right? We'll want to get out ahead of it. Neat streets. Convenient amenities. No loud industries next to where people sleep. And I want to build as much as I can out of stone, fused all the way down the the bedrock. Smooth limestone's pretty. We'll have a white town, if we can find copper ore- Green roofs, like a Mediterranean holiday resort. We're only like ten, fifteen miles up from this bay- They wanted to keep going and not be near other people founding demesnes. The geography does not correspond, by the way. This place isn't earth with magic. I lost track of where I was going with that. I can make big rooms today. They'd be explicitly temporary. What I really want to do is get this hall long enough, make a nice sheer pit, and try figuring out how monsters work- The fifth component of the core. I think they might be made of iridescence? Or - something like that. They devour imbuement and bindings if they touch them, and get stronger, just like the colors do."

"Ooh, smooth limestone is pretty, especially with copper. Do you want to plan things mostly underground or aboveground? And can you make another one of those temporarily goopy slates to draw some village planning on? Stone construction fused all the way down should be really stable, as long as we're not in am earthquake zone."

She drums her fingers on her thigh. "Oh, I authorized Cooper as a 'temporary organizer' until you and I talk about actual roles and people to fill them, with an explicit note that if he does something sufficiently annoying with it I'm busting him down to latrine duty. We need an official cabinet or chain of command or something, people who are officially in charge of different things so we can tap all their expertise and also not have to make every immediate nuts-and-bolts decision. Have some ideas for possible roles depending on what vague shape you want the colony to take: monarchy with cabinet, militaristic, republic-ish, or something else."

"My ideal life... Is one where I wander from town to town, honestly, and it's not like I can never leave here, but- Ugh. I do not want to settle arguments about who owes who what. The usual arrangement and the one people will expect is- Appointing a few 'lords and ladies', like we're all jousting and holding feasts. They get to know the binder, carry out instructions on their behalf, assemble reports, the whole lot. The lords are understood to be operating on behalf of the dungeon binder in a pretty flexible way. I say, 'lord Farkas, what do we need most today?' and he'd say 'I asked people about that earlier, we could really use better ventilation in the dining hall, oh and there's a problem with the seeling and furshing, a kid fell in and now some of the parents are saying to keep kids away from the river'. That make sense? We'd want to both approve probationary lords..."

"So lord of this and lady of that, especially if they're talented at managing something or other? Great. Do noble titles typically come with an area of responsibility, like lord of agriculture or something like that?"

"No idea. Not like I rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous back home. It doesn't sound wrong? Oh, and 'lord' isn't hereditary. It's a hired and fired post. Lords can be and are replaced."

"Well, that's gonna be my instinct unless I hear a reason it's a bad idea. To my understanding it makes things work better. Sort of like ministers in a monarch's cabinet. And I definitely like that they can be fired. I can and will fire a bitch if they fuck things up for our populace."

"This is making me remember my mom and dad talking about the violence inherent in the system... Okay, whatever, enough of that. You know, Zeris was reasonable but she'll probably be too busy smithing to be a Lady. Anyway, what's on the to-do list today and can I do any of it?"

"Workspaces for important labors like carpentry, smithing, cooper, butchery, and retting reeds for making ropes or nets. I've got social crap to manage, including getting to know people well enough to determine whether they deserve noble titles and ministry posts, and finding you a distiller technician. Also, I'm going to try to make mentalism store visual data instead of text so I can start sketching out a town layout. I'm quite confident I can make a computer once I have wire, by the way. Probably we want to find ores as soon as we can, but that'll be more your jam than mine. I'll try to learn more about trees so I can make some soon. Mirror for me and hot baths for the general public if you get bored and want to cheer people up. Anything you want me working on especially, today?"

"I could probably find ore by feeling out how the wisps are laid out? I... Do not know how to make a mirror.  You need glass and silver, I think? Or- Refraction- Hmm. I'll think about it. You should ask Zeris if she can smelt glass as well as metals. I feel like I should get over myself and also be social, and draft and talk to people about example town layouts. I could mold stone for it- Speaking of which," Here's another softened-stone tablet. "Big thing I want from you? We're going to want boats. For crossing the river, for furshing, for going to the bay and making salt to preserve food with, for reassuring people. I know deadspeakers can make boats by fusing wood together, that you need a nice heavy keel, and that's about all I know."

"I will prioritize finding someone to talk boat shapes at me — I can picture some tolerable shapes in my head, but I'd rather do better than that — and figuring enough about trees to mass-produce wood. Sounds like a plan. Oh! Another thing. If you can manage to make sticks of slightly powdery calcite, that'll be chalk, and any comparatively smooth dark surface can be drawn on with it. But these tablets are great. So thank you."

"Whisperers can't really make new kinds of things, just move around what exists. I can replace coal for a forge but have no idea how to actually get metal out of rocks, for example. But yeah, enough talking. Time to work."

She nods, waves, and heads off. First person to find, Mr. Cooper, to check in on all the things she left for him to work on last night.

Mr. Cooper has acquired:

A list of skilled professions, a charcoal-shorthand sketched list of workshop and tool requirements for two smiths and apprentice, four carpenters, a mushroom farmer, a beekeeper, a charcoaller, a butcher, a soap and candle maker, a roper, half a dozen weavers, and a mason.

Also, retting tank requirements, and two other people waiting to talk to her- A broad-shouldered man who looks kind of absent, and a teen girl with brightly ginger hair (and... Fox ears? Wait, that's a headband.)

Mr. Cooper has done well and acquired very helpful things and people. She is pleased, and thanks him. Also, she makes a new text file — Possible Nobles — and marks him down under the headings "Lord Quartermaster" and "Lord Bookkeeper", as possibilities. 

Those various workshop, tool, and tank requirements, how much of them are stonework and how much of them are woodwork? Or really whispering versus deadspeaking?

And would these two people like to introduce themselves and give a two-sentence explanation each so she can figure out whether one of them pressingly needs to be talked to first?

Tables, chairs, and workspace dimensions are the important things. The mushroom farmers will need compost. They mostly have their own tools, but have already listed nice to haves like power saws or a proper forge.

"Name's Beenu and I'm a vigas farmer, ma'am. I want to know where's we're allowed to get planting. It'll be a be a few weeks before you'n the fox girl can speed 'em all up, so I want to get to plowing today."

"Oi! I have a name. Hessia Winters. I'm a Deadspeaker, Lady Binder."

The "ma'am"-ing and "Lady Binder"-ing continues. And these are both important conversations.

"Ms. Winters, I'm going to very much enjoy talking to you, I expect, and it will probably be a long conversation and not quite as urgent, so I'm going to talk with Beenu here first, if you don't mind. Best get the farming started quickly, y'know. Thank you for your patience."

Then she turns to Beenu. "Mr. Beenu, what are the ideal conditions for farming vigas?"

"Silty soil's best. Got to be pretty dry to start with, good drainage, we'll need watering but it gets too wet real easily, Vigas. Gentle slope is fine, but too steep's not. Needs all the sun it can get. Most importantly we'll need some kind of low fence or wall to keep chokers out. Either that or constant guard day and night plus lots of traps for the little pests. So a big block of field we can all farm together would be nice..."

He glances doubtfully over to a different part of the cave.

"You seem sensible, so let's just say lots of folk have got it in their heads that they're gonna own land and get rich off farming or renting it. Self-sustaining like. That is a hazy dream that will vanish under noonday sun. A lot of these people, all they'll get is fat chokers and badly built huts. Then they'll come beggin' for help when winter comes, having cost valuable seed crop to boot. It would be bad on multiple levels."

"Those people sound like morons who want to take advantage of others. Ugh. Being in this business isn't for getting rich, it's for creating safety, community, and contentment. You take a group of people, find decent land, and try to make everyone involved moderately better-off than they started."

She sighs and shakes her head. "Growth cycle? Yields? About how much land does it take to make how many people's worth of meals? Going to try to budget enough land for farming to feed the whole village with a little bit spare to lay in for hard years, and then do more than enough of everything else that we can keep a lot set aside."

"That depends on a lot of factors. Under ideal conditions in a dungeon farm with a lot of setup and magic labor, a few hundred square yards* can grow half a raten's** worth of vigas flour per year. Rolling harvest every two weeks. For three hundred people, with no certainty for how much forage, meat, or other food we can get... I'm gonna guess only modest deadspeakin' assistance so we manage two, maybe three harvests before winter, and then double that guess to be safe... Maybe two and a half demiholds***? That's for the three hundred we have now with some comfort."

*'yustri', but it seems to be pretty close?

**This is at least several tons

***This translates to about 0.3 square miles

She nods thoughtfully, then gestures at the area south of the core, roughly where the ridge starts to curve away from the river. "What's the best spot for growing vigas in that general area? And how many people do you need assisting you to work two and a half demiholds? I'm thinking closer to the ridge than the river if possible, so you can use the ridge as a bit of a natural wall for one of your four sides, limit the fencing I need to grow you."

"I'd have to walk it more to say. Probably not so close to the river. As for how many people, I can't say much but 'as many as possible'. Breaking new ground and harvest are the two most labor intensive parts of farming. Oh, and before you try it- You can't whisper soil, it ruins the ground for planting."

"Good to know. Well, something has to be the first thing other than the core cave to get a firm location, so you find me the best two and a half demiholds for growing vigas within a taum of the core, preferring closer over farther, and preferring near the ridge. I'll double-check that it's in range of the core, and then we'll get to fencing it and getting people assigned to help you. Probably I'm giving you everyone who isn't otherwise spoken for, but don't quote me on that until I have a better handle on where we need to put people. Come find me when you've got a better idea of where you want to be."

"I think I can tell where the colors start ma'am- Though I suppose closer is better even if it's all within the demesne. I'll get right on that. I'll be having a couple of friends help me pace it out and mark the corners and everything. Good day, then!"

She laughs and nods. "Good point. Have a good day, Beenu."

He nods and smiles and walks past her to a trio who were waiting and watching the conversation.

Staaaaaaaare.

And then she turns to Hessia. "It is an absolute delight to meet you, Ms. Winters. Mind going for a walk with me, leave Mr. Cooper to his organizing for the moment?"

"Uh... Sure. Yes. I apologize. I'm - not fully recovered."

She leads the way into the cave, to the core room, where there will be no eavesdroppers.

"I have many more-important things to do than stand on ceremony. You owe me no apologies. I'm just glad I could get you healed up last night."

"That's the core. That-" She glares, but in a reflexive and puzzled way instead of a genuinely angry one. "I'm not- What?"

She rubs her hands over her face. "Okay, I'm trying to wake up more for this. Morning. 'Good' would be a stretch. So. Mysterious new deadspeaker, yes hi. Yes, I'm very young. No, I don't have family who came with because dad's not worth a rainbow's ass and mom has no more ambition than being a laundry woman. I went to public magic school in a small hold called Mayyom. It barely taught me any magic worth knowing. I can do the standard healing meaning, and the standard crop growth meaning, and meld wood, and that is it. Oh, and how to make a core, obviously."

"Mysterious is right. My name is Sable Weller, and I am going to have to learn a lot from you. I brought you to the core room because this is something I do not want to tell anyone I don't have to, but you will inevitably figure out if we work together long enough.

"I am not from this world. I know none of what I'm supposed to, and lots of things I'm not. I happened to appear in this room at crucial moment during core-creation when things were threatening to go badly wrong through no fault of Nico's, and managed to somehow dual-bind the core and stabilize the mentalism and deadspeaking facets of the core by virtue of having inexplicable skill with both jammed into my brain as part of my arrival. And I'm telling you all this because I want to have more than just Nico that I can let my guard down around, and you're going to figure it out anyway unless I'm a truly masterful liar."

She facepalms and sighs.

"That sounds completely fake? Making a core is supposed to be so easy you can do it by accident. They tell you it's high treason and then teach you how in school. So you know what not to do. And it is easy."

"Then explain the fact that there are two binders, and the fact that I'm simultaneously the deadspeaker that healed you last night and the mentalist in the room with you right now."

She levitates a nearby pebble off the ground and into her now-outstretched hand without breaking eye contact with Hessia.

"Maybe you did it wrong." She is looking at the core with some amount of fear now. "You- Fundamentally, you just take some iridescence and a lot of imbuement of the type you can control and- Let the iridescence eat it, then claim and bind the resulting amalgam to stop. At least, That's what I was taught."

She huffs, reaches into her jeans pocket, pulls out her wallet, and tosses it to Hessia. It contains several pieces of currency, credit/debit cards, and ID covered in a language completely unrelated to any language spoken by anyone on this world. The wallet itself is a synthetic material printed with an elaborate floral design, completely smooth to the touch, and more precisely printed than could be possible without modern technology or magic that Sable doesn't know about.

She investigates the things carefully and - does a magic thing to the wallet, which Sable can feel through the core.

"This is organic but... Weird. Huh. I could reshape it, but I won't. I honestly have no idea how to process this? Except that maybe you don't know more magic than I do?"

The magic thing ends.

"I don't know if anything was weirdly done with the core. I don't know why we have two binders when that's unheard of. I don't know why I mysteriously have both deadspeaking and mentalism. I don't know why I ended up in this world. I just don't know enough. Maybe you don't believe me. Maybe I botched this explanation in my stress about being in an entirely new world for less than a day, and suddenly becoming one of two people ultimately responsible for three hundred people. Maybe I got my hopes up too high about getting to be friends with the other deadspeaker. I don't fucking know."

She leans against the wall, sighing hard. "What I do know is that there are a bunch of 'it should be fucking obvious' things about magic, this world, and deadspeaking that you know and I don't, and I would like to know those things."

"I will... Answer questions? It's easier than, like, trying to do magic right now."

"Top questions: how does crop growth work, what are the stupidly obvious things everyone should know about magic and deadspeaking that an inexplicable outworlder would not know, how does melding wood work, what can you share about how tweaking plants works, and do you have an anatomy textbook or anything like it?"

She huffs a bit, clearly frustrated (though not really with Hessia, more at the overall situation), and colors a shock-white streak into her bangs over her left eye, just to mess around and vent her frustration.

"...'Kay."

She sits too, leaning against a stalactite.

"Uh... One at a time I guess? There's a very particular meaning that makes crops grow at hyper-speed without actually requiring nearly as much water or fertilizer as they'd need growing naturally, and also without killing themselves through overheat. It's actually subtly different depending on the crop. Cereals, bushes, whatever. Meanings have- There are flowcharts. It's hard to put into words, but you set mental conditions on what the different aspects of a meaning do and when they'll activate, there's a notation for it. What you do is you have copper wires buried under the dirt, contacting each and every plant in a whole huge tray, and then deadspeakers walk along, claiming through the wire and imbuing the meanings, then activating them. Sometimes they have a massive bound tool for it instead. It consumes a lot of imbuement... Dungeon cores give you infinite imbuement to spend, most deadspeakers have to breathe and focus to claim life energy. Or suck on a bead in their mouth, or use beads to power a bound tool."

"Huh, interesting. Do you have copies of the flowcharts? Or could you write them down from memory? One thing I've noticed is that everything in the demesne counts as touch-range."

"I do not have copies. Iridescence destroyed all my notes on the ocean voyage. I was warned that'd happen, but..." Shrug. "I can probably write them from memory and then fumble an explanation? And yeah, that's part of why dungeon binders are scary."

"Being scary is a decent consolation prize for unexpectedly becoming responsible for three hundred people. Being able to start giving myself a feminine body — I need to learn a bunch of anatomy to finish the job there — makes it actually net-positive. So will the satisfaction of keeping everyone alive if I don't fuck it up. Remind me to give you a slate to sketch out what you remember later."

"Oh, I know, I can't make these real without probably fucking myself up real bad!" She reaches up to tap the headband, and the ears wiggle a bit. "And the books at the school weren't helpful for it! I did do a little anatomy but... Like, then they started talking about student loans and service contracts..."

Sable groans. "Of all the things this world could have in common with mine, it's student debt? Awful. New wishlist item, we're going to figure out how to make education free in this demesne, even the higher levels, come hell or high water."

She frowns a bit more. "That really doesn't work in this language. Come colors or crushing storms? Come irridescence or invasion? Ugh, that'll take some work."

She shakes her head. "That's a distraction. Sorry. I may have a workaround for the anatomy thing, I think, but it runs pretty heavily on abusing binder senses. And it's slow. It will take a great deal of study and note-taking in my spare time. I'll share the notes with you if I get the chance to do it, though, and gladly help with the ears. Giving one's body the shape one's soul demands is something I believe deeply in."

"I don't know about 'soul'. I just think foxes are neat. If you have amazing powers over the life around you, why not do things that are neat?"

"I mean, you're not wrong. Foxes are neat, by the way, I quite agree. Wouldn't say no to ears and tail myself, once we get it figured out all the way. Probably do the fur in my violet, though. I have a theme and I'm sticking to it."

"I think growing vigas is probably more important in the short term though."

"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."

"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."

"You're absolutely right. As I said earlier, everyone who can be spared needs to help with getting the vigas field started. And yeah, sorting out a lumber supply is absolutely my priority as soon as I'm finished eating. Has anyone examined what sorts of trees we've got here?"

If they have, nobody speaks up right now about it.

...But they've been trying little bits of things along the trip here, actually, and only found a couple that were obviously poison on the skin-touch test, but also only found a couple that seemed... Actually usefully edible. The militia scouts probably remember those?

Sable nods, finishes her meal, and stands. Probably she needs to find some militia scouts and get oriented about local trees.

...Wasn't Rama attached to the militia or something? Yeah, she thinks she was.

What's Rama up to, and is she interruptible?

Rama is eating in a corner with a bunch of other militia-coded people. (You can kind of tell by their posture and alertness and also a certain raggedy-but-tough style of clothing). They're discussing something called a 'bait tower'.

"...Binder Sable?"

"Hello, Rama. It's good to see you. Could I have a moment after you eat to introduce me to a militia scout or three likely to have a decent sense of the local trees and what they're usable for, if you can spare the time?"

"Trees? Like which ones are good for firewood and forage? I think any of us can answer that."

She looks around. There are nods.

"I wouldn't know about carpentry, except a lot of the buildings in Covehold were made of Eker- That's the thin, white-trunked ones. Easy to fell and turn into boards, or so I heard. We also wanted to ask about getting some Whispering done. Chiba here was in a failed demesne before, well, long story but they left before a dragon took them all, and... Tell her, Chiba."

Chiba looks slightly attacked. "Uh... Lady Binder, we, uh, in Garon Demesne they noticed that a lot of the beasts living around here are not used to people and are actually really dumb. They had an earthen tower raised by Whispering with ladders, and the militia would stand on that tower and shout and holler and throw pieces of rot and meat, and beasts would come right up to it and try to knock 'em off or climb. Then they raised a flag and the Binder ran out and killed whatever showed up. It was easy meat for weeks, until the stupid beasts all got eaten."

Sable tilts her head and gets a bit thoughtful at that idea for a moment.

And then she smiles, wide and sharp.

"I like that plan. Easy meat will stretch the food supply while we're getting the farm off the ground, and improve morale as well. I'll fill Nico in, we'll see how soon we can get that tower built. Any specs for the design?"

"Eight or ten paces high. I would really rather it not fall over with me on it? And stairs or climbing handholds would be nice. Or a loophole at the top for a rope, but, like, there's not THAT much rope around."

"Eight or ten paces high, and the obvious things a sane designer who didn't want her militia to suffer would put in. Got it." She grins and laughs. "I appreciate the specificity, though; you never know when something that should be obvious mysteriously won't be. I'll get on that presently, thanks for the lovely idea."

"I can tell you all about trees too," Chiba shrugs. "Gonna do deadspeaking things, right? There's at least one bluehair tree in the demesne."

"That is exactly the plan. Going to get familiar with the local trees, plant some experimental saplings, and generally see what sorts of enhancements and accelerations agree with them. How 'bout we find Nico, tell him about your idea, and you tell me about interesting trees on the way there and after?"

Sure. They can do that.

"Okay, I can make a bait tower. I'll sink the ground around it a little to get the stone instead of hauling it there, though. This is probably a half day project even if I don't do the detail work. But food's pretty important."