Distilling Dreams
Thirtieth Day of the Fifth Month 294 AC
After deciding that it would be best not to reduce the safety measures in alchemical factories, you are glad indeed to hear from Dany that her latest foray into the Dreamlands was a far less ambiguous success. Distilling the thin mist of dreams proved to be as easy as applying the techniques the Orphne fey have been using for time out of mind with only slight variation. The stuff of dreams, the stuff of souls, and their shadows bright are akin. Indeed, the greater concern with the technique is that setting up an infrastructure for such 'ether collectors' is, in your sister's own words, 'like digging channels for molten gold through the middle of Fleabottom'.
"We are going to have to worry about more than incidental predation once we the flow is set to full," your sister explains as she helps herself to a cup of tea and a handful of loose nuts and raisins of the sort that are becoming more common in the sitting rooms and solars of the city.
Understated, but a way to show how far the reach of the host goes, one tradition that is neither Essosi, nor Westerosi, but something distinct from either.
The same might one day be said for your plans for the Imperial 'God', you suppose, though long is yet the path to see that day come forth. "You say the shadow fey basically have all the knowledge needed to make these collectors. How wide spread it is outside those who are sworn to the Imperium and how easily would they be to turn to sabotage."
"Not very to the first. You have to be a skilled weaver of shadows to need the skill, and there was never really any need to scale the process up to make just enormous cables in place of fine weaving," Dany replies, glancing at the papers in front of her just to be sure of some particular. "They estimate that there might be as few as a score of shade spinners not of their court and as many as three dozen, but there is no way to track where that may have been written down and by whom, and given that they are the same enchanters who we know can lay down enchantments even gods cannot lightly see through..."
"Assume it has been spread to our foes somehow," you nod. "So what is the sabotage potential?"
"Not as bad as it could be all things considered," she replies. "With current collector plans, a shadow weaver would have to possess unfettered access to one of them for a full cycle of the sun and stars, so twenty four hours to be able to start a chain reaction taking them down. We have plans for firebreaks, too, for lack of a better word."
"Wouldn't it be better to call them dams?" you ask glancing over the preliminary Dreamlands infrastructure plans.
"No," she shakes her head firmly. "You see, these works by making a null area where no distilled essence can cross, and the more you try to shove essence at it the harder the repulsion will get. It would stop a chain reaction
dead."
"But...?" You might not be an expert in this particular project, but you understand the Dreamlands well enough to know that making a persistent disruption is unlikely to come without consequence.
"It creates no rest areas in the mirrored parts of the world, places where the body can rest, but the mind and the soul can find no comfort. Given the sizes we are talking about, we are probably going to have to forbid settlement in the places where we need the greater firebreaks, we might even have to move a village or two."
"That is..." you consider all that you had heard carefully as you put the papers aside. "Not bad at all. I was not expecting this to be done this soon. When can we start building collectors?"
"I could start building them tomorrow, but there is all one of me. We are going to need a lot more citizens trained in lucid dreaming from our side, and probably to enlist some of the more reasonable locals as well. This is not going to be easy," Dany admits, polishing off her tea.
"If it were easy someone would have done it already," you note, a smile pulling at the corner of your lips. As grim as the cause may be, you cannot help but feel pride and anticipation at so grand a task.
OOC: And done, the rituals all got made of course, but I do not think those need to be mentioned IC. Not yet edited.
