does not anymore work

[campanas]

Here, in a place where she is quite an unexpected sight, is:

an eight year old girl with brown-flecked white wings, looking dismayed and lost.

with Prime (Aestrix)

with Edie and Emily (Maggie)

with Gloria (Maggie)

with Gren (Rockeye)

Comments

[witchwatcher]

[Are there books around somewhere that will help our understanding of the theory? You wished for languages, I imagine enchanting skill is similar, but I don't want to make a foolish or hasty mistake.]

[mind_game]

[Rose has an enchanting library, but it hasn't been abridged for low-security-clearance consumption, and you each get a pentagon of basic enchanting which will probably take you farther than any ten books anyway, enchanters tend not to write for beginners.]

[witchwatcher]

[Fair enough. Thanks. By the way, Lytee still wants to take a little multiverse-tour, but she's going through me since you lot didn't seem to like her much.]

Geoffrey is already organizing shipments of Janegems. Ninety to Gallia, eighty to Suomus, fifty to Fuso, sixty to Egypt, and so on.

[Jane, we'll put up signs or pamphlets near your cameras describing everything relevant about torching and the brainphone. How it works, the emergency contact if they get stuck, and so on. Can you hear through these? Anyone who wants them can say they've read and understood everything on the sign, so you don't get anyone who wanders in by mistake and doesn't actually want to be torchable.]

[mind_game]

[I can see and hear through them, and I can brainphone anybody who has more questions, and my attention is more divisible than these cameras could possibly overtax. Does Lytee want to be actively toured or just dropped in strange worlds?]

[witchwatcher]

[The latter. Preferably places that speak English. She'll follow all your safety, secrecy, and security precautions.]

[mind_game]

[Sure. Tell her to grab a gem when she wants to go and I'll put her on Pattern's Jupiter. It's multilingual, but there's a decent number of English speakers and I can translate.]

[witchwatcher]

[Will do.]

Geoffrey asks, [Am I already torchable?]

[mind_game]

[No, d'you want to be?]

[witchwatcher]

[Yes.]

[mind_game]

[There you go.]

[witchwatcher]

[We'll talk to you about what the Neuroi can do to apologize in a day or two. Mining, transport, energy, and science will be the general categories. It'd help if they could produce drones that don't look much like their combat units.]

Lytee picks up a Janegem. [I'm ready to go whenever you're ready to put me.]

[mind_game]

[Cool. There is a low but real risk that something dreadful will happen to me and you will be stranded for an indefinite period of time wherever you are then while time de-syncs between worlds and the peal fixes me. If you want to minimize the risk of being stranded for long periods of subjective time, I can keep you in worlds that have natives who can open doors to Milliways reliably without my help; this will not prevent large amounts of time from passing here while you are gone, though.]

[witchwatcher]

[Have you forgotten that I can teleport?]

[mind_game]

[If you have some sort of distance limit which interacts with a form of distance we don't know how to measure, you might have trouble getting from some peal worlds back here; and time de-syncing has no trouble making a hundred years pass in this world while you notice that I'm not answering you and scramble to return.]

[witchwatcher]

[I've made arrangements for the possibility that I'll disappear for a long time. May as well keep me to worlds you think are safest if you're that concerned, though.]

[mind_game]

[Okay. Change of itinerary, first stop: Atlantis.]

Lytee lands in the Games Memorial Site.

[witchwatcher]

Lytee starts exploring. She seems to be having fun, and successfully minimizes giving people the impression of being the clueless tourist she actually is.

Time passes. The United Defense Force rushes to make torchability available as widely as possible. After another week or so, the UDF officially disbands, becoming the Global Reconstruction Group and giving over most of its powers to the national governments that originally ceded them.

The newly formed GRG eventually presents a long list of things the Neuroi could do that would serve as an acceptable apology. There's a lot on that list.

[mind_game]

Jane relays the list.

[witchwatcher]

The Neuroi have no issues teaching them science, or providing large-scale mining, transport, and energy, or even promising to do those things for 100 years before the deal expires, but some parts of that list are simply impossible. Negotiations are resolved fairly quickly, though, when the GRG gets their response.

And that world moves forward in peace, for the most part.