The bustle of well over two hundred men and women, Aes'r, Valin, and Jormun, only the Ogran and Svartalfin being excluded from the hodgepodge, make for a lot of noise. Housekeeping tasks such as cooking, cleaning, firewood processing, stitching clothes, repairing wagons, it all added up and Ulric found himself a little stunned by how gradually it had snuck up on him that he was used to the myriad goings on of civilization around him.

Was he more tolerant of the racket because he was in charge of it? Technically, this was now his racket. That had been the case, effectively, for weeks now, ever since he'd told the Port Edunshire Elves to shape up or he'd kill them himself. Not his finest moment, but he'd been a little emotionally raw from recent events.

His steady strides took him around an improvised tannery, where beast hides were being processed for use. The nasty smell coming from those hastily dug pits was apalling, but necessary. Ammonia was a useful, if noxious compound in the preservation of animal hides. A whole industry was coming together from the hunting efforts to feed the small colony.

Scraped fats from the hides were being rendered down in big kettles to produce lard for candles and soap. Some rather pleasing smells originating from a stall run by a Celestin alchemist who'd had his legs removed by his torturers and who now pounded herbs, flowers, and fruits into floral pastes, cooking down the oils to produce scenting additives for the soaps. These and other bottles occupied hastily assembled shelves, stocked by the efforts of the half dozen Orlethrem novices that the master craftsman had adopted.

They were moving on, all of them, Ulric noted gladly. The past wasn't gone, but it was, firmly, in the past.

A hammer rang piercingly as a Legranel smith pounded recycled slave chains into shoes for the draft animals, nails, brackets, fittings, and the other minutia of life. Charcoal kilns had sprung up like a little mud dome village, cooking scraggly highlands deadwood into fuel for the smith's improvised furnace. It was more than a little impressive to Ulric how quickly these people had managed to snatch normalcy from the chaos of their lives.

Letting his gray eyed gaze settle on the former Kistalfer rebels, the motley assortment of Prespangers who had decided that the time to shed their allegiance to Masters who ruled from afar had come, only to have their former countrymen turn swords upon them, Ulric wondered if these would prove so resilient. Currently, the Freemen still had the shell-shocked look of those who couldn't quite come to terms with what they saw. Elves were rare this far into Prespang, and the otherworldly grace and beauty of even abused Aes'r was startling for the uninitiated.

Ulric dearly hoped no conflicts arose between the newcomers and the old. He didn't want to have to kill anyone because they thought to bring vendettas of the past to the future he had planned. If Lord he had to be, he was going to make damned sure that everybody understood that treating someone as lesser because of the shape of their ears, the fur on their bodies, or the relative brevity of their lives was unacceptable. Old Earth had learned her lessons the hard way and Ulric was damned if he allowed those lessons to go unheeded where he had say about it.

Something would be learned, godsdamnit!

That was part of the reason why he was strolling through the improvised encampment, looking for the young Mage who had rebelled against his former comrades in defense of the Prespanger freemen. All for love of a Leor woman who was a slave and who he had freed. It was a sweet story, and even a cynical man like Ulric wasn't too jaded to appreciate that they deserved a chance to make things work.

Nobody spoke to him as he searched, his liberated Elves used to the meandering inspections that their Lord liked to make through camp, the slightly poleaxed expression on his face a source for private mirth in their little Rings, in private. It was the right of the lowest to laugh at the weight of responsibility upon the highest. Ulric's quest was completed when he found a new lumber camp at the farthest outskirt of the camp.

There, with a team of the most fit Orlethrem and a group of Prespang youths and women hearty enough for the work, under the gentle guidance of the red-haired Germane Mage and his clinging mate, they labored to thin trees for the needs of the camp. Well he said clinging, but, in reality, the catkin girl was likely all that kept the mage on his feet, he had taken a thrashing at the hands of his captors.

Ulric watched a moment as the whiskerless "boy" a grown man of at least twenty-five, used his power to evidently draw the sap of a tree down to its roots, killing it, and then holding it with the branches of its neighbors while the woodcutters chopped the tree down. Then the mage released the trunk, allowing it to fall towards the camp, instead of hanging dangerously in the nearby tree branches, and a team of draw knife wielding children went at the trunk like little termites, peeling bark from the dry timber. Quite the trick, that. While practiced hands debarked the tree, tiny hatchets limbed the lesser branches, stacking them for use in the charcoal kilns or for making wattles or, if they were straight enough, for use by the bowyers, fletchers, and smiths for spears.

It was an encouraging sight.

Many of the Aes'r did not speak the Valin tongue, though Ulric was guessing that most of them did at least a little by this point. None of the Prespangers spoke the Aes'r language. They did this somewhat complex task through gesture and pidgin, managing to communicate effectively enough to keep the operation rolling smoothly, all under the leadership of the young Mage and his partner, who had been granted defacto leadership status by the Freemen. The Elves took such things in stride because they didn't care who called the shots amongst the Otherkin so long as everybody gave their Lord his way.

Not that Ulric was aware of such disposition from the Aes'r, who carefully hid their regard behind precise and intentional mockery.

Heartened by the demonstration of communal labor to shared purpose, Ulric interrupted after the most recent log had been dropped to the ground. Only one tree in five were being harvested, the weakest and least healthy among a stand, as proper forestry practices for sustainability demanded. He was gladdened by the almost instinctual habits for cooperative use of Varda's riches. If only his homeland had learned to be as such, before catastrophe forced the adoption of this consideration upon them.

"Greetings, Adept Brodin. How do the Twins find you this day?"

The traditional how do you do amongst the Elves was Ulric's default.

Wiping the sweat from his face, both from the heat of a late spring afternoon and the effort of exerting his core's strength, the young mage managed a smile before his slightly winded retort of, "They find me better than they did yesterday, Lord Einar." followed by a short laugh from both he and his partner.

"What brings your honor to our humble labors? You have need of my gifts?" The mage asked, suddenly bowing and taking on a more formal tone.

Ulric wasn't so used to that sort of behavior, it felt unnatural. Even the Duties of Irielhos, who were polite and subservient as a matter of their profession, still gave him the sense of it was they who were truly in charge, not he. He decided he'd pretend he was a project manager, like back in the Before. They were all working for the sake of a successfully shipped product, but he held the final say in the research and development. It made him a little more comfortable to frame things that way. At least he was familiar with that environment, all this Lord of this and that stuff was about two thousand years gone before his birth and nobody talked like that anymore.

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Waving a hand lightly in denial, Ulric frowned.

"No, no, nothing like that. Just, you know, seeing how all your folk are settling in and making sure that our two groups are playing nice." He told the couple.

They passed a look between them.

"It is true that there has not been love lost between the kingdoms of Orlethrem and the city states of Prespang," Admitted the Leor woman somewhat bashfully.

"But!" She cried quickly, her ears perking up along with the long tail that sprang to attention from her excitement, "That is a thing of Prosper and we shed her grudges just as we deny her Magister's edicts. We will be free people, not beholden to the will of the Merchant Lords, and these curious Elves of your Lordship have been nothing shy of welcoming."

"Really?" Ulric asked, a bit surprised.

Granted, most of the Aes'r who were in his care were of the more egalitarian clans of Orlethrem, the ones that had far more dealings with Otherkin through river trade and shared borders, especially compared to the insular Deep Woods Elves. But he'd expected some degree of grudge holding from them over their treatment at the hands of their captors. Apparently, they distinguished between these Prespangers and Prosper's agents directe.

"Oh, yes," Mage Brodin agreed eagerly, "Once you and your Iriel'en consort, er, 'retired', our lot were at something of a loss as to how to come to terms with the loss of our settlement. My dearest Chrissa and I somehow came to the center of deciding how to adjust and what best we might do but we were, honestly, lost for how to get so many wounded and now deprived to order. It was the Orlethrem who began seeing to our getting shelter, medical care, and campfires going. They were a bit abrupt about it. One of the rather more blunt suggested that any who could not accept their new lot could be found a cliff from which they might jump."

The mage frowned a little and whispered under his breath, "I really don't think she was joking, no matter what Chrissa says."

That was a bit of an unanticipated gesture of charity from the Orlethrem, he had to admit. Nice job pain in the ass Elf dudes and dudettes!

Ulric noted that the pair stuck together like glue, the Catkin woman refusing to let her recently captive beau out of arm's reach. The young mage didn't seem to mind and the arm slung over the girl's shoulders familiarly indicated that he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Ulric was still uncertain why the garrison troops hadn't executed him but it likely boiled down to wanting to make an example of him and the rest of the rebels by delivering their punishment in sight of the other citizens. That was how it was done in the histories, at least. Lucky for the youngster that the old play book was being used. Someone less politically motivated would have ordered the villagers slaughtered just to have done with the situation.

"Yeah, that just kind of be how they do." Ulric said wryly, before feeling like he needed to explain further.

"They had a rough patch just a couple weeks ago, they were being tortured to death in one of Prosper's bane camps, you know? You'll have to forgive them their little jokes."

It was one thing to know how the Bane was made, and not all that many did to begin with, given that it was more a horror tale whispered amongst dark stories of cold, creeping evils. It was quite another to see the result of those efforts laid out before you. That it would be sanctioned by the heads of state for the empire that was Prespang made it all the more vile.

The pair dimmed the radiance of their illicit love affair just a moment in deference to the travails of the Aes'r that had helped them so recently. Not for long, of course, and the pair were beaming at one another again and Ulric was starting to regret seeking them out.

"Anyhow," Ulric soldiered on, "What I need to know is, what are the plans for your people now?" He asked, before hopefully dispelling the hateful jest Taipan was laying upon him earlier about their being tied to himself.

"Whatever service you would deem meet to hold a place in your lands, Lord Einar. You have proven to be a man who holds up the downtrodden and throws himself into the teeth of the oppressor, a true [Lord] of the land. Your ancient glade cannot help but be a worthy place for those of us here who seek freedom to gather." Answered the Mage earnestly.

Now just a damned minute, Ulric objected mentally, trying to be stoic about the whole thing, wasn't the point of their little hoopla to be free of lords?

He dragged a hand down over his face, hoping the pair would vanish and he'd wake up to three weeks ago, before he'd seen any refugee Elves or would be rebel Prespang civvies.

No dice, the two were still there before him, their lopsided smiles bearing down on him hopefully, weighing him down under the responsibility of taking care of their needs. He didn't have enough food in the glade to feed himself, how in all the hells was he going to provide for over two hundred godsdamned people?

Sighing heavily, Ulric hoped nobody could tell when he sort of wanted to weep.

"Have you eaten something that sits ill, Lord?" Adept Brodin asked.

"My Lord is weary from his recent trials, may we help, somehow?" Echoed Chrissa, leaning into her ginger mage in her enthusiasm, nudging him as if to spur him to action.

"Tell you guys what, we'll talk things over later, you look awfully busy here and I was just snooping around a little." Ulric fibbed slightly.

He'd been hoping they'd tell him they planned to rebuild their settlement, preferably a couple thousand kilometers somewhere the hell else. Next time he saw a bunch of people getting tortured or massacred or whatever, he was sailing right the fuck on by. People on this continent were like cats, you feed them once and they just hang around forever.

The pair waved him goodbye, offering a few not so subtle suggestions about sleeping rather than "busying himself in his marital chambers". Nice of them.

One thing to be said about his recent shag-a-thon with Taipan was that the 'ol girl had been up to it. That meant her bones were well on the mend and she was another week out from being ready to fight, at most. Maybe not at full steam, but any of his Shadow in the game was better odds by far for him than not.

Ulric grumped his way around camp, helped a few Elves by hauling some water in the heavy iron kettles, used a few [Skyshields] on some sled skids to help them move processed lumber, excavated clay from a nearby creek bed, sand, and whatever else needed a hand laid to. Dark was falling by the time he was shood off by the ungrateful basta-, ehem, recuperating Orlethrem.

By the time he got back to the teepee he and Taipan shared he was actually sort of tired. Maybe he had been running himself pretty ragged recently. Certainly, [Surge] was a motherfucker on the meat and repeatedly drawing deeply on his mana had prevented him from sustaining his [Core Saturation] state for very long. What he needed was a proper week of not much happening. No battles. No emergencies. No monsters. Just a solid, seventy-two hours minimum of some light manual labor, his stretching and balance routines, and combat drills. That, and some nights of solid sleep, would put him to rights.

Fat damned chance, Ulric told himself. Kistalfer awaited not a full day's march away.

He wasn't sure what awaited him there, but he needed their boats if he was to move this scraggly lot of people anywhere without losing them to Prosper's patrols or the beasts. Now, he only needed twice as many, for shit's sake.

It might end up being fine, even at the massive expense. The ships would come in handy, sooner or later.

Ever since leaving the glade all that time ago Ulric had been angling to try to enact a plan towards using the resources of the glade and the vast wilderness that was the [Plateau of Ancients] as a way to generate sustainable income, alongside whatever knowledge he possessed from the Before that didn't involve manufacturing explosives and weapons of war.

The bows didn't count, that was more a tool for hunting food and defense. Compared to the things humanity had cooked up and which swam through Ulric Einar's mind, bows and arrows didn't even rate as weapons. Things like guided rockets, directed microwave emitters that broiled mansized living targets within moments, and a few nasty substances that made white phosphorus look like something you'd use as stocking stuffers. Even post collapse, the knowledge to make these things wasn't gone and Ulric had always been curious as to the depths of depravity man was willing to go to, especially when the targets for his ire was his brother man.

No, Ulric wanted to make watches. He wanted to make solar arrays. Lightbulbs. Mana batteries to power water circulation systems for cultivation. Instrumentation to help treat injuries and the rare, if potent, diseases that Varda had to offer. Exotic uses for the [Arcanite Diamonds] that might allow small catalysts for very localized, convenient magics to become ubiquitous. In addition to that, Ulric wanted to cook. To share the cuisine of a thousand dead cultures with this world. Varda held a vast panopoly of spices, oils, meats, and vegetables and he would enjoy bringing these things together through the chemistry of the kitchen. Maybe, after a while, he'd get Uldin to teach him proper smithing and he'd try to revolutionize metallurgy.

Whatever he got himself into, it would require shipping to obtain materials and to distribute finished trade goods. The boats weren't a bad investment.

It wasn't often that the Twice Born man allowed himself to dwell on the future. He was mostly convinced that doing so would jinx him, somehow. It was a tiny bit of irrational pessimism that he had trouble dismissing entirely. Being continually dragged into this fight or that emergency mostly prevented violating his contracts with the irony gods, being that they precluded frequent thoughts of the future.

Moving on from the afternoon spent aiding the various works around the forest camp, one that held a surprising amount of sophistication for compared to the length of time they'd been there, like mushrooms growing in a fairy ring in the woods, Ulric set out to find his wife.

That didn't take long, she was sitting comfortably by the fireplace roasting some kind of squat, short-limbed, beaver looking thing. The animal's pelt, skinned out next to the fire pit, was dense and slicked back from water, an eye blurring grey-brown-green that would have vanished into the forest floor, or a creek bed, or almost anywhere, really. It almost hurt to focus on the thick fur of the creature. The buck teeth jutting from the front of its vaguely rodent face were metallic, looking less like teeth than wood chisels. It lacked the paddle tail of a beaver, having a wide vertical tail fin more akin to a shark.

Ulric wasn't necessarily surprised to see his partner in crime eating some strange creature, it certainly wasn't the first time she'd brought something odd home to the cook pot, more he was curious as to how she'd found the time. As usual, the best thing to do when you're confused is to ask.