"Is this portal safe?" Mal'Thorn asked.

Uh... The orientation was shifted ninety degrees, so someone could walk through it like it was a doorway. As soon as they did gravity would shift and drop them one hundred and twenty meters down onto soil.

"Not as such, no." I said. "It was a good perspective to see the excavation, though?"

"It was, my lord." Mal'Thorn said. "Perhaps you could move it down to the ground and my people could start moving across?"

I had been seeing a growing crowd in the Forest Keeper guard room through the portal with my sound sense from the presence I was using. I decided to have some fun and dropped the viewing portal from the ceiling. I heard gasps from behind me as the view plummeted to the ground.

"Sometimes people say 'lord C.C.' and sometimes 'my lord'." I said. "It's very consistent, I've noticed humans, beast people, and now yourself using 'lord C.C.' initially and then shifting to 'my lord' at a later time... Why is it happening?"

The viewing portal hit the soil partway through my speaking, and a small wave of soil had fallen through. I stood the outer doorway up and pushed the soil back through.

"The first is a term of respect, used to acknowledge your title but not showing any personal loyalty to you." Mal'Thorn said. "The second, saying 'my lord', is indication of personal loyalty. I would guess that the term you were addressed by changes after a significant event where you show that you take their wellbeing seriously."

I scanned back through my memories for each time it had changed, and it matched up pretty well.

I nodded, to show that I agreed with the explanation, but stopped when I realised I was just nodding in the simulation. The presence I was using had no facility for gestures. Mal'Thorn's people started streaming past us into the new floor.

"Thank you." I said. "I had another question about what craftsmen you were bringing with you. What craftsman chains do you have?"

"Craftsman chains, my lord?" Mal'Thorn asked.

"Well, taking carpentry as an example." I said. "You would have a lumberjack who cuts down the trees to give logs. The logs either go straight to a carpenter, or to a sawyer and then to a carpenter. From the carpenter it would go to a shop. And then finally to the end customer."

"We don't have lumberjacks or sawyers." Mal'Thorn said. "We grow the branches of the Forest into the furniture we need."

"Okay, a bad example for you then." I said. "You wear robes, clothing. Shepherd to shearer to carder to spinner to weaver to tailor to shop, ending at the customer. Some of the roles might double up, or I might have missed some. But that is the general idea, and my question is, what craftsman chains do your people have?"

"I... Do not know, my lord." Mal'Thorn said. "Mana crystals and enchanters or spell casters would be the closest thing that I have experience with. I shall find out."

"How did you pick who would come to live in the outpost then, if not by their skills?" I asked.

"Political connections." Mal'Thorn said. "And their skill with setting up and improving a new Forest glade. But there will be many merchants and craftsmen among them."

That seemed a bit arbitrary to me, just assuming that you would have the right mix of professions. I would look into it again after Mal'Thorn had time to look into it himself. I would need to ask Dael and Veya as well.

I had been excavating the next outer ring of the floor while we had been talking, from the top down, and the floor had extended another ten meters. It was quite dark, with only the occasional Forest Keeper summoning light.

I made a quick count of the people who had gone through, scanning back through my memory. Three hundred and twenty six so far, and there was still a constant flow going through the doorway.

"I thought you said you would be bringing three hundred people?" I asked.

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"I did." Mal'Thorn said. "But with the amount of space you said you were making we can get set up much quicker with more of us. Is it a problem?"

"It's not." I said. "How many are you expecting?"

"Around a thousand over the next week, of people who will follow me." Mal'Thorn said. "There might be an emigration of an additional five hundred to a thousand before it levels off."

Two thousand people. That would put a strain on the food that the druids could make.

"That might be a problem." I said. "Mostly with food."

"I don't expect so." Mal'Thorn said. "We will be able to trade through the portals? Our diet is primarily made up of the leaves of the Forest and the fruit that it provides, though we do import grains from the plain biome."

Right, trading. I would need to ask about where the best places to trade would be. But with him mentioning biomes, there was something that was more pressing.

"I need to get in contact with each of the Keepers." I said. "Do you know how I would go about doing that?"

"Well, toggling a claim ward should do it while you are within their domain." Mal'Thorn said. "I would recommend against trying to contact the Ocean Keepers, though. You would need to get within their domain to get their interest, and there are monsters there that do not need to hide in the summer realm during winter."

"What are the Ocean Keepers?" I asked. "Merpeople?"

"No, they would be closest to dolphins." Mal'Thorn said. "Merpeople are a species that lives within the ocean biome, though. We don't have much contact with the Ocean Keepers, despite them being our neighbours to the east and west. We have much more with the Plains Keepers. Who are meerkats."

Dolphins and meerkats. "Are they able to speak this language?" I asked.

"The Plains Keepers have some diplomats that do." Mal'Thorn said. "But I don't believe the Ocean Keepers would. They don't have much need to negotiate with the surface species, any who offend them while on the ocean are easily eaten. I believe there are fishing villages, but I haven't had any contact with them."

"I'll go see if I can get the first of the sunlight enchantments started." I said.

Mal'Thorn nodded. "Thank you my lord." He said, and headed back into the Forest Keeper city.

I had a few more hours of sleep for my biological side so I sent Chantelle a ping and attached a low priority to it. A few moments later she popped up in my local simulation.

"Wow, that is a lot of Forest Keepers." Chantelle said.

"A little over four hundred so far." I said. "How are your warding tests going?"

"Brilliantly." Chantelle said. "I got the symbols down to a hundredth of their usual size. They use a sixth of the mana. A sixth! I could run a barrier ward around myself permanently just on my own regeneration with that. There are some quirks at the smaller scale, the intents for the symbols are sharper somehow. The effects are more exacting."

"Sharper and more exacting is... Good?" I said, not remotely confidently.

"Different." Chantelle said. "And open to exploiting. For example, the 'drain-ambient-mana' set of symbols with their intents, at the normal scale it creates a constant pull on the ambient mana. Like rain falling on flat ground and soaking in. With the smaller scale ward it is as though the rain is forming into creeks, and then flowing into streams, and those streams into rivers. It's an order of magnitude more powerful, not counting the efficiency increase which makes it even greater."

She had spun up a model as she was explaining. The first was the same as I had seen in the simulation of the ward room, the ambient mana was being pulled slowly, steadily, and evenly into the mana crystal. The second... Rivers was the right analogy for it. Raging torrents of mana arriving at the mana crystal, a thick core heading in each direction horizontally.

"That doesn't look very safe." I said.

"It took some work." Chantelle said. "The new throttle symbol actually with the same intent throws mana back out into the ambient mana when it's clamped down. And it's safer than the ward I first used, this one has a vent for if the mana crystal gets too full. It will push back out to ambient mana when the crystal gets over ninety percent. Not that I would let it get to that point."

"I actually came to ask if you could make some more relay mana crystals." I said. "And if you could ask Maaata to make the sun enchantments. I'll still be sleeping for a few hours, and I have the Forest Keeper floor set up and expanding now."

"Alright." Chantelle said. "I'll set up a new set of wards to cover the new floor too. Separate from the main Fortress wards, I'm thinking."

Chantelle looked around the local simulation I had, built mostly from the inputs of the presence that was between the Forest Keeper city portal and the portal to their new floor. Forest Keepers continued to stream past.

"Do you have many of these?" Chantelle asked.

I did a quick count. "Ten so far." I said.

"You should put one in the ward room." Chantelle said. "It would be very useful to be able to see the detection ward without having to go to it. I might even be able to create some controls for it for you. Mana reacts to your power, even if you can't see it, we should be able to use that."

I nodded. "I'll put it at the top of my list." I said. "They take some time to make, mostly in the portals, but I agree that it would be useful."

I saw Chantelle and Maaata go by the old bottom floor of my fortress through the presence in the portal room for the portal there. I detached it from the wall there and followed after them. Chantelle continued down the stairs after setting up the first relay, but Maaata followed my directions to the maintenance floor. She had already made six sun enchanted mana crystals and I sank them through the floor after she hooked them up to the relay. Six was overkill for the small area so far, but I could spread them out as the floor got wider.