"No, I think their advanced Elf-technology did something other than halt aging. Anyway, it famously was destroyed in the war - thrown into a volcano, sunk into the ocean, and launched into the stars - so can't quite go and find it."

"I don't know about retrieving things from volcanos, but my people know how to find things in the ocean and in space. Damn, I wish I knew how space ships worked. Back home, you could just send out a question about how to do something, and someone with the relevant interest would excitedly tell you all about it. I didn't realise what a handicap being super specialised might be until I got here..."

"It certainly sounds like an extraordinarily interdependent society. Which could be nice in some ways, just - not for me."

"Really? You seem to know everyone and, even when you don't, are confident that you can charm someone new. I'd have thought you'd like having lots of associates."

"Yes, but I can make do without them. If I'm really wanted, if it's not safe for anyone to be near me, I know everything I need to survive, independently. I take pride in that."

"And you'd be happy alone?"

"My happiness is really, really not the point."

"But how will you keep it up? How long do you expect to be able to do something that makes you unhappy-

...Right. Until you're thirty. Shit."

"I also don't experience a loss of motivation when unhappy. If anything it drives me more, it makes me desperate to change things."

"How odd. When sufficiently unhappy, I lack the energy to stand up; much less change the world."

"Huh. Yeah, that's not how I operate. Being happy is nice, but it's not very related to getting things done."

"That is an inconvenient incentive structure, if people try to force you to do things. Are all your people like that? Maybe that's how you manage to have slaves who do skilled labour..."

"The slaves don't do skilled labor. And it's a convenient incentive structure if the world sucks and you want to face it head on rather than not thinking about it because then you'd be too sad to act."

"How do you use slaves for manufacturing goods, then?"

"Most of that's not skilled, you just move pieces around on a line."

"Fair enough." She looks around and the carefully cleaned and decorated room. "So, you plan to manufacture arms in here? Or do you have multiple hideouts?"

"We don't know how to manufacture arms, we're manufacting novels. And testing gunpowder."

"Well, do you plan to learn how to manufacture arms at some point? And, if so, are you going to do it here?"

"Yes,but probably somewhere with more space. Also I don't even know where to start on that. Any ideas?"

"Well, I was mostly thinking that, if something were to explode, you wouldn't want that to happen in a rich person's house.

In terms of where to start on weapons manufacture... I'm not sure. That's the kind of thing you could find out in a book where I'm from, but I'd expect your books to have more censorship of dangerous things. Can your network of acquaintances turn up a gunsmith who's willing to explain their trade?"

"I will try, but am not optimistic. And we'll test the gunpowder in the gardens."

"Ooh, blowing up flowerboxes. How fun."

"Gardening is some kind of Elrosian national sport. I don't know why. I don't even think the Elves did it. Maybe just because it requires so much wealth?"

"Well, when you have millions of people on an island, maybe it's a status signal to waste a lot of land? My people don't garden like that. I assume it's because blood-drinkers are less interested in cultivating plants."

"Yes, probably. Do you not find them beautiful? I tend to be distracted by thinking about the status and the waste, but they are astonishing."