"To treat others ethically is to act out of concern for their happiness and suffering." ~ Sam Harris

**I'm not opposed to that, but I'm also not quite sure what you mean.** I responded, a bit hesitantly. **What do you see as your immediate concerns?**

Orentha passed on my question, and then the three of them began brainstorming their next steps. Glynesha's concerns focused on the practical issues of their day-to-day life – working out rosters for hunting, fishing, and gathering. Determining the availability of fuel for cooking fires, starting a list of basic living needs that had been forgotten or lost in the move, that sort of thing. I'd taken care of their essential needs for shelter and water, but food, warmth, and similar "comforts" still needed to be addressed. I weighed in where I felt I could contribute. I didn't want to take on responsibility for feeding them directly; it wasn't going to be mana efficient, but more to the point, neither they nor I wanted them to develop a dependence on my daily support. That said, I wasn't going to let anyone starve outright in the depths of winter, so the fish in their village and the elk in my surface domain needed to be a sort of reserve resource. The fruit and nuts were fair game, but they couldn't rely on them fruiting out of season.

Orentha's concerns were related, but more focused on the mental and social wellbeing of the clan. Her most pressing concern was watching over the children who had lost parents and the adults who'd lost their partners. At the same time, she and Kragosh would be the ones looking out for signs of discontent with the dungeon or people who'd been traumatized to the point that a violent reaction to sudden changes was likely. They'd essentially been living in a war zone for months, and now they were effectively refugees, living on the sufferance of a dungeon and a dragon – a precarious position to be sure. As a shaman, and effectively priestess for the tribe, it was her job to oversee the less tangible aspects of wellbeing. She had a few herbs she wanted my assistance in growing with calming effects, but otherwise felt that the best thing I could do for the more traumatized avians would be to leave them be, while providing them with work to do in the form of crafts and training as a means of self-distraction.

Kragosh, as the war chief, felt his concerns centered on defense of their new home, and wanted to spend time both scouting threats in the vicinity (aside from the already noted dragon and dungeon) and maintaining a consistent lookout in the event that their move hadn't successfully broken contact with the opposing force that had forced them from their mountain aerie. He had a few ideas for defensive alterations to the village that he wanted to run past me – mostly involving making the village less noticeable from above and below. That wouldn't be too hard, as it mostly involved the creation of outcroppings that partially concealed the entrance to their new home.

**Alright, well, that seems like it's been a productive meeting. If you three want to come up with a list of things I can help with, feel free. I'll stop by most mornings to work with you, at least in the immediate future.**

Glynesha offered her own closing comments, a bit tiredly and apparently not looking forward to the settling in process. "That sounds good, Vay. Hopefully, we won't need to lean on you quite so hard after a few days. We'll start everybody working and training in order to establish some routines and to keep people from fixating on the bad stuff. That said, thank you again for all your help. You've been a literal godsend to our people, and I'll make sure that isn't forgotten."

On that note, I headed off to see what immediate concerns Hakdrilda had. I didn't really have a formal routine, but it did seem like I was settling into a pattern. I'd have to keep an eye on that, so that it didn't make me fall into a rut and lose track of my longer-term goals. I knew how that could happen from my former existence.

As it turned out, Hakdrilda hadn't actually been expecting me to have time for her today, and when she felt my attention turned towards her, actually started a bit. "Is something wrong, Vay? I thought you weren't going to have time to work with me today?"

**RED**

"Nothing's wrong, but you had some time to spare, huh?"

**GREEN**

"Well, I appreciate you checking in, and I'm sure we could run a few experiments, if you're interested. I've got lots of data still to work through, though, so if you have other demands on your time, I won't keep you. Do you want to work on more experiments now?"

**YELLOW** **RED**

"Hmm. Maybe, leaning no?"

**GREEN**

"Okay, then. I'll keep working on what I've got already. If you get some time in the night, do you think you could find me another book or two to train my translator tool on? Maybe something with more conversational speech? Textbooks are all well and good, but they tend to have a fairly narrow focus."

**GREEN**

"Much appreciated. Do you think you'd have time to work with me tomorrow? Or at least to check in? The mana lights don't make for the best conversation I've ever had, but I don't want to lose all my social abilities and become a pure hermit."

Well, if she was going to put it that way, how could I say no? Hopefully, I'd be able to sort out my communication needs in the near future. I'd have to go back through my various quests and see what was likely to offer that up first. I'd prefer to strengthen my telepathy or gain a speech ability, but an improved writing ability might be more plausible in the short term.

**GREEN**

I left her shortly thereafter, as I pondered what books to offer her. It seemed likely that at least one or two fantasy novels might be helpful, as they would offer vocabulary relevant here that she was never going to get from a Chemistry textbook. But would the representation of dwarves be offensive to her? Maybe a Pratchett and some Tolkien to give a more balanced perspective and a broad range of vocabulary with some conscious attention to the stereotypes? In any event, I'd likely need to leave her with a disclaimer in the logbook.

And so I found myself with some free time to myself by the mid-afternoon – earlier than my usual pattern. As I'd promised, I set a portion of my awareness to transcribing two books – in the end, settling on Guards, Guards! and The Fellowship of the Ring. I expected that would take all night, but if she enjoyed either, it gave me some easy follow-up offerings.

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With the majority of my attention, I shifted my focus back to the gnomish city. I intended to continue the exploration of the commercial buildings and hopefully complete the quest dealing with non-residential structures. I wasn't sure quite what I'd do after that, but suspected I'd need to leave most of the city unexplored for a while in order to further pursue the location of the mana gathering arrays.

Before I got stuck in on the commercial buildings, I returned my focus to the cathedral and its focal altars. I realized that, in the varied distractions of absorbing the cathedral, I hadn't actually tried to use those altars to make contact with the relevant deities. I wasn't really sure how that might work, especially as I'd never been particularly religious, but it seemed like I'd be making an error to not at least try to see whether one of these altars belonged to my patron deity. Or whether those deities even still existed and wanted to interact with their long-abandoned altars.

In the end, I thought that perhaps making a relevant offering and accompanying it with a sincere prayer, or rather a sincere effort to speak with those deities. I wasn't sure what sort of offering to make, though. I thought that perhaps my best approach was to provide something that only a dungeon could offer. I started with the altar to Morweeth, spawning in a minor air elemental and ceding control/possession of it to the deity as I proffered up telepathic contact with a sense of, if not worship, at least sincere respect.

The elemental rose up off the altar, moving visibly as a large dust devil that circled apparently at random around the central space, presumably investigating its surroundings. I didn't establish any formal contact with the gnomish goddess, but there was a brief sense of divine attention and interest before the space returned to its prior state – albeit with an uncontrolled elemental moving about. The attention hadn't seemed familiar, but contact had been brief – whether because the goddess couldn't spare the energy or lacked interest, I was unsure.

I didn't really have a comparable creature to offer to Klilkivest, so I had to sort through my more material blueprints for an appropriate offering. The closest I could come to something representative of engineering was some of the work I'd put in with Hakdrilda on her test chamber. I decided to create a small version of the sample chamber we'd been using in our creation/absorption experiments atop the altar. The divine attention was a bit more pointed this time around – generally interested, if dismissive of my engineering skills, and I got the sense that I wasn't quite receiving his message – like there was static on the line, but not really. If forced to put it into words, it would likely translate to something like *Interesting! Not mine. Too bad!*

I got the sense that a dungeon had never made an offering to him before, and that this altar, in particular, hadn't seen use in a long time – even by divine standards. Again, he might pay attention to me if I kept up an effort, but he wasn't my patron and wasn't going to interfere directly. He did take the offering, though, and I watched it disappear in a cloud of sparkling mana – leaving me unsure whether it had been taken off whole into some divine space or simply consumed in some fashion.

Well, it had certainly been worth a shot, even if the results were mostly negative.

Making a conscious effort to turn my focus from the cathedral, I went back to explorations of the commercial buildings around the plaza, this time working the final arcade defining the plaza. This side of the plaza, rather than incorporating a large number of small shops, comprised just two, much larger spaces – apparently representing large mercantile companies, as opposed to the smaller independent craftspeople and vendors across the way.

Again, not much really remained on the ground floor but large arrays of empty shelves in the main area, with empty storage space and administrative offices in the back. I suspected they had associated warehouse space somewhere, but it wasn't in these commercial spaces. I managed a blueprint for a rather larger, more ornate built-in safe (empty yet again), but not much else.

I pushed my attention upwards into the floors above the mercantile space, finding that this side comprised the remains of an apparent hotel, judging by the classic pattern of an ornate mosaic floor (in a black and white geometric pattern of glass tiles) facing a large, stone reception desk with identically structured rooms flanking the lobby and in the two floors above. The rooms only had windows facing out over the plaza, with the long-dead mana lights in discretely patterned fixtures and bathroom spaces that, aside from scale, would have been immediately recognizable in my old world. Beds were still present, if long decayed, as were runic coldboxes and mana kettles. There were even still artworks present, if no longer hanging on the walls. Sadly, they mostly weren't still recognizable, and the few that were, unfortunately, represented hotel-grade art – leaning towards stylized cityscapes and drab abstract works. I picked up blueprints for basic metal and glass picture frames, at any rate.

The hotel may not have yielded much of interest, but it was enough to trigger the completion of the quest I'd been hoping to finish. I wasn't really sure if it would, given that hotels are at least nominally residential – depending on your definition.

Quest Completed: Assimilate 5 non-residential structures; Reward: Airship Flight Core Blueprint, Storm Myconid

Quest Reissued: Assimilate 1 archaeological phase of 1 structure from a previously unidentified culture.; Reward: Tier 3 Creature Blueprint; Magic item Blueprint

I was generally quite pleased with my rewards this time around. It wasn't going to improve my ability to communicate with people, but the airship flight core was pretty cool. I needed to spend some time working with my runic magic skill, and this might help with that too. Unfortunately, using it as loot wasn't going to be particularly practical for a while yet, though, as I'd need to save a good chunk of my mana pool in order to produce even a small one. Currently, I could probably swing a core appropriate for a two-man airship, if I used most of my daily mana storage, but only if those two men were both gnomes. That may have been appropriate, but it still kind of stung. That said, I could tell it would scale up pretty readily, and I was getting the sense that they would be quite coveted. Ironically, most people would need to have one already in order to come here and gain one from me.

Still, give me another level or so, and I'd bet that I could crank out a reasonably sized core for the kind of airships that had been delivering people at least once a week, if I chose to (and didn't have other significant demands on my mana). For the moment, at least, I thought I'd make creating one an experiment to attempt, if only so I could try to examine the runes involved. On a more basic level, I could tell that the produced core would make for distinctively appealing loot and would manifest as a softly glowing blue orb constrained by a halo of orbiting golden, metallic strands inscribed with intricate, tiny runes in the gnomish style. That left me wondering exactly how rare these cores were. Did other dungeons provide them as loot? Or were they readily produced by higher-level craftspeople? I'd have to inquire of Hakdrilda, I supposed; she'd likely have at least some sense of how they were obtained.

The Myconid wasn't quite as cool from most viewpoints, but as a Tier 3 creature, there was a lot of potential there, and I hadn't really ever considered the possibility of a fungus with air affinity – or in this case, air and electrical affinities. Like the Lesser Cave Myconids I'd found in town, this wasn't a particularly impressive looking creature at first glance. I knew that it would grow from a mycelium mat into a mid-sized, yellowish mushroom before sprouting limbs, including rather batlike wings, and a face, and taking flight. The powered flight was coupled with some electrical striking capabilities, albeit good only for a couple of damaging strikes, and a dusting of spores that would generate both paralytic and hallucinatory effects in susceptible individuals. I imagined I could have some fun with those under the right circumstances.

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