Alright.
Preparations
You begin the exhausting process of securing the Clear Skies for Chaniir and Hye. You start out by turning one of the cells into a genuine cleanroom, sealing it from the rest of the ship and brutally annihilating every biological element you possibly can. It takes hours, but it is done, and Chaniir is moved there and scrubbed. The cost from teleporting things around is troublesome, but it works better than most other things, and you can get food from Hye as long as you're willing to pay computing cycles on the small load teleports.
Then you set to clearing the teleporter room. Again, a tiring and rather dull process, which is unfortunately interrupted by Gladyn suddenly barfing all over everything.
It seems lunch didn't agree with her.
Gladyn hurries to the medbay for some self-medication. She does not have a nice evening.
A Small Step
With things more or less handled with the cleanrooms, and Gladyn being capable of crawling away from her barf bags, carrying with her some files on safe food preparation which she distributes to everyone, Hye is brought up. Agatha is made to help her put on the EVA suit you scrubbed in the teleporter room so she knows how it works, and the pair find it reasonably easy to deal with each other. Certainly, Hye seems positively disposed towards the knight.
At this point, you give Hye a tour, Gladyn eats some more medication to perk up, and the first round of inoculation is finished.
Planning
Hye is shown the highlights of your capabilities, including your map of the planet as a globe, and is duly impressed. In a state of perpetual amazement and faint incredulity might be more accurate, actually.
[you may list things you explicitly tell Hye, as well as things you
don't, as you prefer]
Then, at last, Hye begins to tell you about her home.
Overview
The planet itself is called Cere. Interestingly enough, everyone calls it that, or at least a close variant. Seems that's one of the few things that survived from back before the place regressed, albeit that was likely pre-Belka. Hye certainly isn't aware of any Belkan elements on Cere, though it's a planet, she might just not live near them.
Cere is currently dominated by three polities, which are showing signs of what you believe are clear nationstate development. The three are known as the Silver Empire, the Great Northern Federation and the United Republic of Free City States. All of them have incorporated several smaller nations, and are quite diverse, although clear delineations along cultural lines have cropped up between the three.
Then there is the People of the Plains. The steppe nomads. All three polities border the steppes, and all three polities have their borders towards the nomads dotted with forts, more of them than even on their mutual borders. For as long as Hye can remember, war has been held in check between the major powers by fear of being overwhelmed by the nomads in the aftermath.
Hye unfortunately doesn't know much about the Silver Empire or the Federation. She's from the Free City of Anjeong, which unfortunately is not quite as free as it would like to be, as it exists in the sphere of the Republic, which is exerting significant pressure on the remaining minor states to be absorbed. Most of them have already been pressured into military alliances and trade deals. The Republic is fairly decentralized though, as mostly each city rules itself and the area surrounding it, but recently the capital has been gaining in power, especially as better communications has been established, and new ships that move much faster, with far more people have been built. The Republic leadership is elected from among the landed elite, and rules for set terms.
Hye knows that the Silver Empire is ruled by an Emperor, or maybe an Empress, and is renowned for its masterful mages. The Federation is the premier naval power, and the nomads scare everyone. The Republic is mostly just
large, primarily in terms of population.
The Map
Hye draws you a map, based on your satellite imagery and you pointing out what seems like cities, for her to use as reference points.
The red is Federation territory, the blue is Republic, the whitish is Silver Empire, the small green splotch is where the nomads have essentially their "capital", which is also the Great Market, and where the majority of farmers in nomad territory are clustered, though there are villages everywhere. The lines that extend from each are essentially their "sphere of influence" as best Hye can describe them. The two circles in the Republic sphere are the two main sphered entities Hye knows of. They're primarily city states that have refused to be absorbed into the Republic. The coastal circle contains Anjeong, and is thus Hye's home.
The yellow area belongs to a culture of mage-priests who have been at peace with the Silver Empire for ages. Hye doesn't know much more about them. The purple area is home to the Great Island Tribes, which aren't really tribes much these days, but are a group of slightly isolationist cities bound together by common culture and fealty to a fairly weak central authority. Their naval power and importance to ocean trade makes them fairly powerful though.
You may ask additional questions
