As construction continued in Haven, it continued largely without Tengu and Ora. They weren’t the only ones who spent a lot of time out of Haven, but they were most reliably absent. Ora’s newest friend, Ryoko, had never been involved in the construction and so wasn’t counted as absent.

The next major development in Haven had been coming for a long time, at least since the destruction of Outer Light nearly two years ago. While the timeline is not so simple, the most significant catalyst was yet another book on electricity found by Ora and Tengu and Ryoko.

In particular, this was a book about an old technology called telegraphs. Unlike some of the other communication technology in the books slowly collecting in Haven, telegraphs seemed relatively approachable. Despite the slow growth of the guayule, there was plenty of insulated wire in Haven that was otherwise gathering dust.

The old watchtower was not the only ruin in the wastes. The appeal of it for the hundreds of people freed from Outer Light was that it was the only consistent landmark in the various routes everyone had heard of for getting to Haven.

While escapees from the Lord’s House were not all very common, a lookout nearer to the border between the wastes and the Lord’s House had its strategic benefits as well. Ora and Tengu, and others who had gone out that way to hunt down the slave hunters, had spotted patrols of Lord’s House soldiers occasionally, over the nearly two years since the destruction of Outer Light.

By the time the book on telegraphy had been found, work had already begun on the ruined watchtower. It was intermittent and slow, but it was going. The first step had been to bury the two corpses found inside one of the buildings.

The Sand Crawlers, in between Jules’ complaints, also had some interest in reconstructing the old watchtower, or at least the buildings nearby. Though it wasn’t as well hidden as their main base, it would serve as a good backup when things got out of hand in that part of the desert.

So, as the first telegraph was sent across Haven, the forest of logs holding up the roof had already been replaced with fresh mortar and beams. Only one wall was still open, and new glass had been put into most of the windows.

Construction on the watchtower took longer than any of Haven’s previous constructions. The materials had to be dragged across the wastes, and not so many people went to work on it at a time. But it certainly progressed.

By the time the telegraph wire reached the ruins, both of the smaller buildings had been fully closed in, though they were missing a couple of windows and any furnishings.

The other thing that slowed construction down was the arguing. It was all good-natured, and all to the purpose. There was no consensus on whether to actually rebuild the tower.

On the one hand, rebuilding the tower was what gave it any strategic importance in the first place. While you could get a pretty good view from the top of the ruins, it wasn’t much better than standing on someone’s shoulders on a high dune nearby.

On the other hand, the tower just about bordered on the land claimed by the Lord’s House and everyone had heard some story about the Lord’s House raiding settlements near their borders.

Though no ruins remained of Eregos, it had not been all that far from the ruined watchtower, once outside the land claimed by the Lord’s House. Perhaps Haven had more people than Eregos had had, but it was only protected by distance and the desert.

In the end, rebuilding the tower won out, by degrees.

What remained of the base was closed in to become a storeroom. Then another storey was added on top of that to close in the telegraph station. Then another storey was added on top of that so that lookouts and telegraph operators wouldn’t distract each other. A last level was added on top of that to ensure that if people needed to flee, they would be largely safe from crossbows. And at the top were parapets, for the same reason.

Over time, more defences were added to the top of the tower, including a pair of ballistae, since the people of Haven were quite excited about inventing ballistae.

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As in the Sand Crawler’s base, the hollow between the buildings was turned into a garden to feed the rotating little garrison of lookouts and telegraph operators. A well was sunk beside it for irrigation.

And so started the little town of Lookout.

It was rare for there to be more than fifteen people at Lookout at the same time, and even rarer for any of them to stay for more than a month or two at a time. It was quite a boring place, all told.

But it certainly served its purpose.

The tower hadn’t been finished by the time the first escapee from the Lord’s House arrived, sunburned and fettered. There was food and water and a soft bed waiting for him.

And once the tower was finished, they started sending information back to Haven, for want of something better to do. When they spotted patrols from the Lord’s House, they kept detailed account of it

Some of the more strategically minded people worked out schedules that were at least accurate enough to predict what day a patrol would come past. If the patrol was coming from the east, it would pass in the morning, if it was coming from the west, it would pass in the early afternoon.

A sensible, if cynical, person, who had been against the reconstruction of the tower, pointed out that if the lookouts at Lookout could see the Lord’s House’s patrols, then the patrols could see the watchtower. He was roundly shushed as another telegraph was sent to Haven.

No one needed to point out that, despite the near-instantaneous communication, it would take a day and a half at least for the Sand Crawlers to reach Lookout, and more like three days for anyone to arrive from Haven, if something did happen. That discussion had been had before the first bricks had been laid.

From time to time, slave hunters, raiders, or bandits would come to investigate the tower, figuring it for a ruin like any other such place in the wastes. Most of them were in for an unpleasant surprise, but some of them were more reasonable.

It was about as common for raiders and bandits to decide to settle down a little as it was for escapees from the Lord’s House to make it all the way to Lookout. Sometimes the bandits would stay and return to Haven when there was a shift change, or even join the Sand Crawlers, who were getting close to thirty people by now. More often they left to continue about their business.

Slave catchers didn’t get to leave.

When, finally, the inevitable happened, Haven’s good luck held up.

A man called Beln, who had been a servant in the Lord’s House for nearly twenty years, before he got himself sent to Outer Light by having sex with the wrong person, and getting caught, knew quite a lot about protocol in the Lord’s House.

The majority of freed people from the Lord’s House didn’t know all that much about the place. They knew where some towns and cities were, they of course knew the system of beliefs that was supposed to dictate the running of the Lord’s House. But even the women who had been servants didn’t know all that much, they weren’t supposed to.

Beln had had the good fortune to find himself as a servant adjacent to the military, but not strictly part of it, while the war with Oszrath was ongoing. He hadn’t had to kill anyone, but he knew how it was supposed to work.

In particular, there was a theoretical expectation within the Lord’s House that those they attacked and conquered would see the rightness of their ways. The first indication of this would be woman covering their bodies as much as possible, which was not at all difficult for people living in the desert. The second would be worship of a single, male, deity associated with light in some way.

Beln knew this and, with the help of the rest of Lookout’s current crew, had managed to concoct a belief system based around a King of Light who would rid the world of the feminine corruption of darkness.

So, when a relatively well-dressed man in a very slapdash, but ceremonial-looking, hat came out to greet the patrol from the Lord’s House, the proselytisers in the patrol were duly impressed by how quiet and diligent the women were, how many wives this confident man called Asmon Varalagos claimed to have, and blessings from a King of Light who would safeguard them all from darkness.

And that was really all it took.

The Lord’s House had never claimed this area of the wastes because, to an observer, it seemed deeply hostile and largely useless. It was, of course, a proselytiser’s duty to make sure that there was no one nearby in need of enslaving, or purifying as the case may be. But since there didn’t seem much need, Asmon Varalagos was gifted a copy of the Holy Book and bid good luck in his endeavours.

Beln, who would be called Asmon Varalagos any time he got to full of himself for the rest of his life, struggled only not to laugh. That was why he had gone out to meet them by himself, of course, most of the crew didn’t think they could keep it together.

If that proselytiser followed proper procedure, it would be at least six months until anyone even thought about Lookout again. And, by the rules, two years before another proselytiser would visit to make sure this little town had converted to the obviously superior religion of the Lord’s House.

The crew at Lookout spent the next week making their belief system increasingly absurd and their in-jokes increasingly impenetrable. Many confused people would be accused of the sin of ‘ibildicide’ before the joke even looked like it might start to wear thin.