The first thing you did in your last day in Soissons was visit the priest Breed.
"Oh for- here again? Why?!" Yvette complains when she realizes you're beelining to the temple.
"He was nice and helpful and I'm a little worried I might have done wrong by him," you explain in a hurry.
"Did wrong-? What?" Yvette says, having no idea what you were referring to.
When you arrive, you find a tall and thin creature with six gangly legs and two arms dragging along the ground (Distinguished by ending in clear hands) plus a quad of translucent wings placed equilaterally on the top of the body is looming over the priest, saying, "... compensated for your time if you agree."
The priest looks your way briefly. "Oh, it's you again. Bit surprised to see you, one moment while I handle this." Then he focuses on the other Breed and asks in a mildly curious tone, "Is this dangerous?"
"Unless you were made with failsafes to keep secrets, no." Is this one of Efflu-zame's Breeds? It reminds you of a mosquito. Stretched out and huge, but still.
"Ah. Hmmm. I think my creator would have done so if he knew how, but as far as I know that was not in his means. Then I suppose my only question is if compensation is the usual coin, or if perhaps I could get a bit of help expanding the place."
"One moment." Then the other Breed's antennae glow green -which are abbreviated enough you didn't notice them at all until they began glowing- for about five seconds. Once finished, it says, "Just coin. Unless you have other unique modifications. Then better pay can be discussed."
"Ah, darn. I don't believe I have anything like that. I suppose I could pay a builder leftover..." After a moment of quiet, he says, "I think I can agree to these terms so long as we get a schedule that doesn't interfere with my sermons."
"Easy. Will be back with formal contract later." And then the gangly Breed lurches awkwardly past you, before taking off in a bumbling sort of way: you have a moment where you think it will crash into a building on the way up, but it veers abruptly out of the way just before impact.
Then the priest turns to you. "Changed your mind?" he remarks in idle curiosity.
You shake your head. "No, um, what just happened is my fault-"
The priest makes a sound you interpret as delight. "Oh my, really? I've been trying to petition Premièreombre Efflu-zame for years to study me, and I never even made it on the waiting list. However did you manage that? No offense intended, but you hadn't struck me as someone with friends in high places."
You blink a few times in confusion. "So... you wanted this outcome?" You'd had a bit of a bad dream the night before; something about this priest being surgically opened up, and then dying, and it being your fault. The reality is taking you a bit to adjust to.
The priest chortles. "It's one of the few good points to being a leftover: the Council will pay you to see if they can preserve any interesting tidbits about yourself. But seriously, what did you do?" he asks curiously.
"Ummm..." you're not sure how to present this. "I met the entire Council yesterday? Which is apparently a bad sign? But they weren't particularly awful to me, and things... ended up with me getting to make a few requests? And I hoped they'd be able to provide something like your voice... thing. And they tentatively agreed."
"Ah." Click. "Moments like these do make one wonder, don't they? Thank you very much, young lady." Click. "Though since you're here anyway, my first sermon is in an hour, so-"
"Ah," you interrupt. "Now that I know my actions haven't caused you trouble-"
"Far from it!"
"-I'd rather move on to other things. Today is my last day in Soissons."
The priest Breed stares in silence for a moment. "Doesn't hurt to try. Here's hoping the Great Plan favors you with this little deal of yours! Have a good day; I really must start my own preparations."
"Thank you. Have a nice day... night?... yourself."
And then you parted ways.
("Seriously, 'wronged him'? What?")
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The rest of your day was focused on speaking to the non-Integrated humans of Soissons. You'd wondered what life was like living in a city that never saw the sun for folks not benefiting from the Integration, and had questions regarding the cultural end of things, with far-off concerns about what might happen if Caras was very successful himself someday.
You got mixed responses.
First was the consideration of the voice stuff. In your time here so far, you'd had this impression that non-Integrated humans got used to the voice thing and stopped being bothered by it, but your attempts to flag down people for questions, while they generally succeeded in at least brief conversation, people pretty consistently winced when you spoke. They often terminated the conversation after making a probing question or two: you didn't understand what was happening until Yvette pointed out that usually an Integrated Indvidual flagging down a non-Integrated human was some kind of official business, not a social call. Basically, as soon as a lot of people figured out you weren't going to drag them in for a crime or something and were just asking questions as an individual, they bailed.
Even when an individual humored you, it was clear they did not terribly much enjoy it. Mothers would pull their children closer to them or even behind them, lone adults said they had somewhere to be after not very long, etc. A few unattended children seemed less hostile, but they were unsubtle about complaining that your voice was unpleasant to listen.
This all made you fervently hope that Efflu-zame's research bore fruit quickly: this was quite a bit more of an obstacle than you'd expected.
When you could get past those hurdles, you got a variety of responses on other topics. Some people indicated they'd lived out in 'the countryside' until recently and were very glad to be in Soissons, where the hardest labor was largely handled by Breeds instead of humans. Others complained about how few skills could support one in Soissons: multiple people had left a farm and were worried they'd have to go back, finding the other skills they'd developed back home were largely usurped by Breeds. Still others commented they'd hoped to 'Be Somebody' in Soissons and were frustrated at how roles like mayor were defunct, handled by the Council.
The most satisfied non-Integrated folks you found seemed, to your surprise, to usually be people who ran messages or handled deliveries to and from Soissons, with a little-used house or 'apartment' (??) they stayed in between trips. Cattle drivers bringing in meat for the Council, horse-riders whose job was to deliver proclamations to any number of places beyond Soissons, merchants who might keep a home in Soissons but only spent a few weeks to months there in between running their route, and sundry other jobs that involved moving objects or information in or out of the city, where Breeds couldn't do the job without sunproofing of some kind.
It was also rarer than you'd expected for people to aspire to be Integrated. No one said anything directly hostile (Presumably because Yvette was looming in the background at all times, very obviously Integrated and increasingly cranky as the day wore on), but you had this impression that it wasn't really viewed as an honor so much as a way to cut ties. One very angry young woman you'd kind of accidentally talked to right after she'd had a very public screaming match with her mother (She'd noticed you staring, angrily demanded, "What are you looking at?" and you'd blurted out, "An angry young woman I'd like to hear more about." She'd been confused by that, but gone along, albeit warily initially) had said that she was going to submit an application to Sussuron's Integrated as soon as she was 17 years old (Apparently, girls younger than that were automatically rejected by the Council), and if that failed she'd go to Zyzixion's Integrated, and so on until either somebody took her or her only options were Flittertrust or running away from the city entirely, at which point she'd run away.
That was the most direct example, but by the end of the day you had the distinct suspicion most of the young women you'd talked to who had plans to become Integrated were considering it precisely because they would legally be considered part of that Premièreombre's family rather than their birth family and there was zero chance of a human family winning if they tried to bring their child back by force. And your impression was that just asking for them back wasn't a realistic option.
In all this, you were surprised to learn that Integration wasn't necessarily permanent.
"You can... stop being Integrated??" you said to Yvette, really confused.
"Me? No. Way too far down that road." You quietly noted that down as another not-perfectly-great aspect to extending the Integration Yvette had not previously mentioned. "You? Should be. You've got the bare minimum as far as I can tell. You could just starve it out, honestly. It'd be a terrible experience and maybe kill you, but only maybe. And your Baron-"
"Husband," you reminded her primly.
"-whatever- he can send an order to have it come out cleanly. Still not fun, small chance of death, but possible. Some Lords do it as a standard thing: Integrate someone with the bare minimum for a year or so, then shuffle them out. I think there's a Lord who's made an especially safe variant that self-terminates after six months? I know he was trying, anyway."
Interesting. Very interesting. "I don't suppose you remember this Lord's name?"
"Count Wheel of Teeth? I think? Something about a wheel and spikes, anyway. Weird guy, almost as weird as Sussuron."
That gave you slight pause, but you made a point of noting this down anyway. "Thank you for clarifying, Yvette."
"Anytime." Pause. "Are you going to a pool soon?" She wasn't quite pleading, but after a few days with her you could tell she was fishing for you to stop doing things she found annoying.
"Why not."
"Finally!"
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The next morning, Tamzen had brought in a first-draft copy of the contract, explained that it was expected you'd send back your own amendments or suggestions, and Yvette had taken you outside to Ixtriss and you'd been on your way back home.
The contract itself seemed... a nuisance to read, but essentially fine? It boiled down to a more precise formulation of what was agreed in the Council chamber: Caras would produce and ship out Cores for 'sniffing out' Burner Worms, at specific numbers the Council would be obligated to provide the fireproofing Core, then the flight Core, then either the voice-switch Core if possible or money if that wasn't ready yet. Also a lot of very technical stuff outlining the ban on neighbors making pushes into Caras' territory, outlining what would definitively constitute Caras having discharged his duty fighting Commoners and Burner Worms, and sundry other stuff that you... didn't notice any important bits to? Hopefully Virmire would catch anything you might have missed: you were familiar with contracts in a general sense, but this was your first time seeing one. You were a bit worried some technical term or another carried implications non-obvious to you.
The trip back home itself was uneventful, though a day slower: Ixtriss had hissed out, "Storm Beasts," and veered way around a very dark cloud formation that even from a distance very obviously was outputting a torrential downpour and crackling with lightning, and you thought you could maybe even see the strange lumbering forms of Storm Beasts loping along under the clouds.
That had gotten you curious, so when you were all resting the next day, you'd asked Yvette, "Are Storm Beasts a problem in Soissons?"
Yvette had startled at that. "They hit the boonies? What? Why?"
You'd pursed your lips. You were pretty sure by now that Yvette was being very rude with this 'the boonies' rubbish, after your last day talking to folks in Soissons: only folks clearly derisive of the farms they'd fled had used the word. "I don't know. Please just answer the question."
Yvette had shrugged awkwardly there. "Sort of? Way I hear it, a couple centuries ago they were really bad news for Soisson, but Premièreombre Efflu-zame figured out some trick. Now they veer around the city itself. Still bad news for the outlying areas, but they always were, so... still better."
Hmmm. A bit annoying you didn't learn this before the Council meeting. Maybe whatever 'trick' this is could've been your third request. Though maybe they'd have refused to part with it.
"Thank you," you'd said and rolled over to sleep.
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At last, almost three weeks since you were back home and something like a month-and-a-half since you'd last spent serious time in the castle, Ixtriss dropped you off.
"Ah, hello again Sabrina. I hope things went well?" Caras asked while you ran over and gave him a hug. "I'm hoping that's a yes."
("Why is the human doing that?" Ixtriss asked with contempt behind you.
"She's... hugging him. It's an affection thing."
"Why is she 'hugging' him?"
"I have no idea.")
Mmmm. Still warm and comfy.
... okay, enough of that. (For now) "It's kind of a long story and I'd rather talk about it over dinner if possible, but I think Virmire should look over this contract to make sure I haven't missed anything?"
"Con-? You came back with a contract?" Caras was obviously pretty hopelessly lost.
"Yeah... prior reports to the Council had not clearly communicated to them that the Burner Worm threat is something different from just Commoner soldiers. I ended up clarifying the point. Now they want you to deliver the ability to sniff out Burner Worms."
"They thought- oh my. I may have been seriously misunderstanding the Council's attitude... but they want me to cut into my resources more?" Caras sounds a bit aghast, though less surprised than you might have expected.
"There's compensation- can we do dinner? I'm starving. We can talk over food."
"Alright, I suppose I can put off my rounds for an hour, it's not like I've seen any Shellmen in weeks anyway..." Oh?
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Over dinner, you do your best to compact your adventures in Soissons into a digestible form, without leaving out too much detail, while Caras himself shares a fair amount of what's been going on while you were gone.
The fort the bandits were sent to take ages ago was a surprising success: they took it, and... still hold it. And are now using it as a base for further banditry, with bandits across Caras' territory flocking to it as word gets out that the bandit fort exists and that Caras is no longer ignoring banditry in his territory. Oops.
Konrad and Felix didn't stick around the castle: Konrad especially viewed himself as a warrior, and the two of them were escorted to Terre de Moutons by Virmire to be introduced to the populace and hopefully be of use there: as far as Caras is aware, the two of them are doing fine. (Given Caras and Virmire's struggles with human social things, you worry it's maybe not going so great in reality, but they at least were not greeted with open hostility)
Tanja and Svenja are still in the castle, basically because nobody has been sure what to do with them. Tanja actually shows up partway into the meal and seats herself at a spot and a Worker sets down food for her without prompting: she seems to be adapting pretty smoothly, even to the point of clearly relying on touch to navigate more than anything else. (She's even carrying about a branch to use as a blind man might use a cane) What Caras relays of Svenja's behavior sounds a bit more dire: you worry she's only hanging on out of concern for her sister. The fact that Tanja showed up for the meal without Svenja is suggestive.
Ada and Teo have been kept in the castle, and Virmire has done his best to make notes about foods Ada rejects, speculation about whether she favored particular foods, and observations about how her physical status has progressed. He's still not got a safe cure, but is working under the assumption that some of the rejected foods are probably problematic for a Burner Worm, while preferred foods probably include things to not be cooked alive: given Ada's condition remains decent, there pretty much has to be something in there that helps minimize symptoms. Virmire's leading theory is that salty foods help keep the symptoms under control. Ada did also at one point eat a Scuttler (She started out refusing to eat, but wasn't actually disciplined enough to starve herself more than a few days), but promptly vomited it right back up: the castle has had to ship in more outside foods, like salted pork.
Ada apparently started out very defiant and committed to giving nothing of use, but as of the last couple of days seems to be suffering cabin fever: she's still not sharing information of her own volition, but has been wheedling Virmire to let her go outside, saying she'll accept an escort so long as she can get an hour in open air. Caras and Virmire clearly think she's just trying to escape, but you're not so sure and suggest that letting her get some fresh air might make her more cooperative. (Caras shrugs and accedes to your comparative expertise on humans even though this doesn't sound sensible to him)
Teo has been the reverse: initially he wasn't trying particularly hard to be uncooperative, but as time has gone on he's become angrier and more prone to attempting violence, demanding he be sent home, injuring himself by trying to bash his room's door open, and just generally behaving like a chained animal that increasingly doesn't care if it loses skin so long as the chain comes off. In spite of his initial willingness to actually talk with Virmire, Caras describes him as 'pretty useless': he seems to know very little about Burner Worms, with much of what he knows being what Caras and Virmire already know. You're a little surprised: you'd think the boyfriend of a would-be priestess of a Burner Worm religion would have picked up a bit more, just incidentally.
Caras also explains that with the Commoners not constantly attacking, he's been making the rounds of the villages, picking up bandits and other troublemakers and making extra-sure nobody is infected with Burner Worms. It's pretty clear he doesn't like doing this stuff, and you have a suspicion he fumbled some of these interactions, but he took it up spontaneously while you were gone about five days after you left. (Which is how long it took him to decide the Commoners were probably genuinely not making ready to attack somewhere nearby, rather than just him missing a new hiding spot)
It also comes up that Tanja has been... really chatty. As in, following Virmire and rambling about her life in Neustadt for several hours a day. Virmire actually started a new notebook for trying to assemble something coherent out of this in terms of what Neustadt is like, though he's been frustrated by how a child's perspective is often vague. Apparently she's only been quiet when eating or sleeping, basically.
As for your own adventures...
"You met the Council? The whole Council? I've only ever met their seconds!"
"Apparently they were very, very unhappy with you."
"That's concerning."
"Were. Not are. I think. My impression was that they were much more understanding once they understood the Burner Worm threat properly."
"Hence them wanting Cores out of me." He sighs here. Then he perks up and asks, "You mentioned compensation, though? Meat to cover the costs, I'm guessing?"
"Um... I got them to agree to trading a few Cores to us."
Caras stares at you for a moment. "Cores. From the Council. How-? No, never mind, just let me know what they are."
"Well, the first one is fireproofing from Premièreombre Zyzixion." You're still very pleased with that.
"Wha- she agreed to that? I petitioned for it a decade ago and... oh. The misunderstanding. Yes, a lot of things make more sense now..."
"Second was something for flying Breeds. I... don't know what they'll give specifically. They were pretty hostile to sharing that one for some reason?"
Caras absently remarks, "Flight is a terribly useful thing, and my own attempts to develop it were miserable failures. Constructions that seemed sound in testing would prove useless when wind was about... I haven't heard of many Lords that have succeeded."
That doesn't feel like it really explains the Council's reluctance, and you're a little discouraged Caras isn't more excited by it.
Slightly nervous, you say, "The third request was- the thing is, I met a Breed in Soissons who could alter his voice to strip out the bits that bother humans to hear. I asked them to-"
"Wait, what was that you just said? What's this about voices?"
Oh. So he didn't know. That explains why he didn't forewarn you. Whew, you'd worried something worse was why. Though this makes you even more nervous about how he handled village visits while you were gone. "Gendarme speech is... it feels colored to me now?"
"'Now'?" Caras says, once again completely lost.
"Yes. Before the Integration, you and Virmire sounded... very unpleasant, and hard to understand. After the Integration, that went away, and now I... hear color in your voices. That's, um, not normal for humans."
"Wait. Wait. So if I do... this!" He pauses. "That's... not apparent to non-Integrated humans?"
"No."
"How do humans pick each other out in a crowd???"
You pause there, blinking at that. You'd honestly never given the matter thought. You get a good look at someone you know, you recognize them. Maybe sometimes you get it wrong because two people look alike. It's only Sophie and Simone where you've had to work at telling people apart. "I... don't know how to answer that?"
"Ugh. This goes well past 'visit your vassals, Sire'. How am I supposed to guess things like this?..."
"Um. Anyway, I requested a Core to... be able to turn that off. I was hoping to make myself more personable to non-Integrated humans. Maybe allow Breed designs to handle such without grating on people. It would help a lot to not have the very act of speaking causing offense. Though they might not deliver such at all: they need to study the Breed to try to replicate this."
"Hm. Well, if they don't, I will certainly investigate this myself once the other Cores have been implemented. It shouldn't be that hard to isolate and strip out the secondary layers... the mechanics already allow some amount of changing them on the fly. Hmm..."
Oh, that's promising!
"... difficult to test, mind..."
You blink at that twice in confusion. "Why would it be difficult? Just make a Breed to do it."
"What-? Oh. You wouldn't know. Ah... are you familiar with 'souls'?" Caras asks with trepidation.
Uh... "Yyyyes? People have souls, they go to an afterlife when they die based on their deeds in life. I... confess I can't imagine the relevance?"
"Okay, that makes this simpler. If you've talked with the right religious sorts, they will insist most Gendarmerie don't have souls. I've no interest in the question myself, but there is a specific argument underlying this statement: most Breeds can be recycled efficiently if their body can be recovered. I get back something like 97% of what makes up a testing bed when it has to self-render. Except, once a Breed passes some threshold for volition, reclamation efficiency drops precipitously. If Virmire did something so awful I felt the need to render him, I'd get back about 25% of what I put into building him, based on prior experience with his predecessors. I don't know why this is so, but it is, and that's where the soul argument hinges itself: a priest would say I and Virmire have souls, but the Workers don't. Though I had a priest argue the Heart can't possibly have a soul even though reclamation efficiency is even worse for a Heart..."
O...kay? You suppose this explains one thing. "This is why you've only got Virmire, and no other like him, I take it?"
Caras nods. "It's the main reason. Prototyping those models is ghastly expensive, and having multiple copies of a given such design was something my progenitor warned me in no uncertain terms would end terribly. Truth be told, the bride plan wouldn't have happened if I could so readily make another like Virmire with minimal risk!"
Interesting. You'd not given the matter much thought overall, but you had wondered a bit why poor overworked Virmire was alone in his duties.
From there you resumed explaining the general shape of the agreement, including the bit about Caras' neighbors being banned from infringing on his territory for the foreseeable future, and shared bits from your adventures in Soissons, like the nomadic nature of Scaled Folk. ("Oh. Here I thought the North Sea Scaled Folk were just oathbreakers.")
It was a nice dinner.
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While you were eating, Virmire had retrieved the notes, gone over the contract, made a copy and added amendments/suggestions to this copy, and waited for Caras to come confirm he was okay with this. He was, so the modified contract was passed over to Yvette, and off Ixtriss and Yvette went to deliver it to Soissons.
You'd gotten more sleep after that.
Then, the next evening (Your sleep schedule is in shambles again...), you'd felt ready to take on the world!
Specifically...
[]Check up on Ada, Teo, Svenja, and Tanja. You're in the castle anyway, you suspect Caras and Virmire fumbled aspects of interacting with them, and you want to make sure this is handled properly.
[]Go check up on the border road, with the traps and so on. Caras didn't talk about it at all!
[]Go visit a village, see how things are going.
-[]Abandonne. It's been a while since you've seen your family, and also Abandonne is apparently underperforming on its sheep tax?
-[]Ville Luminous. You remember a Virmire suspected they were underreporting their size. You should look into that.
-[]Terre de Moutons. To check on Felix and Konrad, for one, but also to see if you can learn anything of use about why these sheep are so vigorous. Maybe export them or something.
-[]Lac de Glace. You'd like to ask more questions about the Szumowiny issue. (You'll ask Caras some questions on the way out)
-[]One of the small towns whose name you don't know. You'd like to dig more into the issue of their own tax contributions.
-[]One of the disputed towns on the Ice Lake shore. Do they have opinions on this border dispute? Maybe you can talk them into picking Caras...
-[]Estvallee. It's occurred to you that you don't have any idea what happened to the place once its inhabitants were killed? You're wondering if maybe new tenants have moved in without Caras realizing it.
[]Prep an armed escort and check out the accidental Bandit Fort. See if you can undo that damage.
[]Stay home and talk to Caras more! You spent so long apart...
-[]Talk more properly about extending the Integration. You want to do it cautiously, of course, but that's all the more reason to get it figured out early.
-[]Talk about tax stuff. Can Caras accept meat that would make humans sick? What kind of meat is best for the Heart? Could he tax more efficiently, possibly without angering his vassals?
-[]Write-in. (A specific topic)
[]Stay home and talk to Virmire. You barely even saw him last night, and he's the guy handling reports and so on anyway.
-[]Write-in. (A specific topic)
[]Write-in. (I'm probably forgetting things I ought to be including as options, honestly)
(This is a 'just one thing' vote, for reference)
