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Owner Pose
Lilian Rook     After these several months, it's almost a little surreal to finally see people in this place.

    The currently still nameless (despite the fact that it must once have had a name in recent memory) village, nestled in a small bowl between rocky sea cliffs, on the shore of some unknown part of the Japanese archipelago, had looked as if its inhabitants may have simply been in hiding, ready to come back at a moment's notice, when it was first found, but the sad finality of its twice-abandonment was always palpable in the air.

    A sleepy little rural village of heavily traditional construction, picturesquely enshrouded in a thick forest up its inland slope, bamboo groves up the steep cliffs to its flanks, accessible only through a switchback dirt path up one side and a slightly gentler packed earth road to the other, everything from its old-fashioned roadside shrines and jizo to its oddly out of place torii gate to its itty bitty dock and foamy whitewater rocks away from shore feels like a little picture out of a Japanese storybook.

    There were few modern touches when Elites first arrived here, and reclaimed it from the sealed Antegent, its original inhabitants being extreme 'country folk' by all accounts, who'd simply left at some point and never returned, only a tiny handful of surviving heirs ever identified in Yamato. It'd barely been updated by the ill-fated brigade from the Oda clan that'd attempted to desert and settle, only to be gradually wiped out with no one to see to their burial rites. Now, after the unexpectedly arduous road of making it safe to stay at, a busy influx of men and women, some carrying or walking along children, trickles at a snail's pace through the small, new-model artificial Warpgate, bankrolled by Lilian.

    Saeko-of-Ten-Tails has upheld her side of a 'deal' with incredible alacrity, taking almost no time at all to scrape together 450 souls the ASIS believes it can spare; or rather, that she claims she had negotiated from the only other figure who has equal standing (and material interest) to her on Mt. Fuji, the Great Tengu Sojobo. Any cursory questioning tells the story that 375 or so (rounding nicely) are 'tribute' people from the last few years, making up over half of the combined number of unwanted people sent up the mountain in the past three. The remaining 75-ish are semi-veteran tradesmen, as promised, though in direly small number. They're people who came from honest families with backgrounds in farming, quarrying, building, metalworking, tailoring, fishing, and even some with higher education in modern medicine and electronic devices, simply unable to find a gainful existence anywhere, and bereft of anyone to support them, or else having left on their own to spare a family member.

    Of that number, only 10 have any experience in 'the occult', and even that is an extremely high percentage for their common origin, having been taken on as apprentices or servants to specific higher ranking ayakashi whom Saeko claims 'owe her a few favours~' with an audible heart. 50 have formal training as militia, at the very least, though they'd been unwanted in their home's standing armies. Saeko has promised another batch in six months time.

    Currently, the village has ample space to house this small number of people, in family homesteads that are rather rustic, but perfectly fine in this mild climate, the sky-high fog that surrounds the oasis of green earth modulating the weather as much as the sea. The amenities of a mayoral townhouse, city hall, shinto shrine (recently restored), paddy fields in a crescent around one end (overgrown), and a rinky dink dock with a few small boats (that are simply dangerous to try setting out to sea), are as they were.
Lilian Rook     Lilian's careful purchases and slow movement of goods over time with maximum paperwork-fu have added a small pile of new things. Currently, the only electrical power comes from hydrogen stills out in the sea water on one small bit of coast, running buried cables up to small generators in a central yard, solar panels on individual houses, and small wind turbines assembled on the cliffs themselves. Despite the variety, it really isn't all that much power, and huge amounts of it are needed to dump into the Warpgate each time it's used. A qubit radio tower was set up for a previous daring operation out into the mist, which also guzzles electricity, but makes transmissions in and out of the village actually possible, despite the spatial folding that plagues much of the country. Finally, a sparse, barely plausible defense of early warning monitoring stations dot the forest and cliffs and end-paths, with a tiny handful of the latest automatic weapons sat still packed and unpowered.

    The amenities people will need to be actually using now are the electric lights, indoor heating, and a variety of appliances, including farming vehicles including a microtractor and hw,microcombine, a couple of communal 3d printers for parts and repair, light amounts of digging equipment like a CEB press, well drill, and backhoe, and a circuit mill, crucible, and bioplastic extruder assigned to one little workshop. There is nowhere near the fuel and power for all of these, nor are the people themselves familiar with all of them. Some parts of these can be replaced with hard traditional labour, or augmented with classical craftsmanship, but it's a fact that this village would be shit out of luck without a device, someone who can use it, power, and raw materials, if something electronic crapped out otherwise.

    There is a surplus of brand new shiny hand tools from the lost brigade; titanium shovels, polymer rope, picks and stakes, axes and shears; and hand-made tools from before them, including fishing rods, nets, hammers and nails, and that ilk, though they are poorly maintained and not all in good condition. The wards have been fully reconsecrated and reinforced and are in peak condition. There are only a tiny handful of ghosts left, their business largely having been settled, comprising the unburied who died last.

    The last two major features are a pagoda and townhouse in which a mysterious and ostensibly well-connected (and incredibly naive imouto) ally of Tamamo's, going by the pseudonym 'Sakura', lives with her immediate guardians and servants, which enshrines six Muramasa blades under heavy seal and guard to professionally suppress the swords and their combined aura. The titular feature is the 'Dragon's Garden'; a cave deep in the side of a sea cliff, through many dangerous and inconvenient tunnels, which houses a great chamber of nacre walls filled with an enormous pool of completely impossible sea life on a bed of coral; a powerful leyline point and a rich source of magic components, as well as having restorative properties, and a narrow tunnel that leads extremely deep underwater.
Lilian Rook     At the moment, this village has a PRODUCTION of nothing at all, never mind anything useful; it is entirely up to careful decision if it should be put to a task beyond providing for itself, and then, in what way. Its MAGIC RESOURCES are abundant but utterly untapped, and are the biggest advantage of the location. Its DEFENSIBILITY is also incredibly low, basically exclusively at the mercy of being so out of the way and having Elites on call, which Lilian is especially concerned about, as even this many people is sure to eventually attract Antegent even by blind happenstance, and moreso as it grows.

    The element of its OBSCURITY is a careful factor to consider as well; besides just the Antegent, it's critically important that the clans not know about this place either. The more power is running through this place, the more heavily its magic is used, the more transmissions, the more patrols outside, et cetera, the less the quaint and hazy rural magic that is older than the hills will hide this place by nature. The dire lack of skilled MANPOWER is a pressing concern, and Saeko will be expecting many of the crafsmen and apprentices back by the next batch, thus there isn't time for them to teach a lot of people complicated skills.

    Of course it should go without saying that the entire purpose is that this place not rely on the mercy of a steady flow out outside RESOURCES and be able to support itself, because, frankly, without the Warpgate, nobody is actually sure they'd be able to find it again. And likewise, the general APPROVAL of the new townspeople, and the wave soon to follow after, is actually a serious concern; if they really do end up going back to last millennium in order to prioritize all the limited quantities to matters of security and production, there's really nothing at all to stop them from doing something drastic; these are twice-unwanted people with no connections and nothing to lose, after all, and the Mt. Fuji faction would be fine with taking them right back.

    Finally, there are RELATIONS with the ASIS faction and Divine Child faction. This shouldn't be too difficult to manage, but it does restrict how many drastic choices can really be made. The ASIS faction is pretty adamant that they won't like setting up a colony that's just like yet another human urban center, expecting something that has 'the spirit of Japan' in it, in the sense of mindfulness for the old world that allowed them to exist. The Divine Child faction is mostly concerned with the security of Sakura and the Muramasa blades above all else. Sakura herself is happy to have new people to see, but anything that might be a bad influence or bring danger or scrutiny, or compromise the swords, is an absolute no.
Arthur Lowell >Arthur: Put your vast building expertise to use

    Arthur only has a neutered copy of Sburb, and the only thing it's good for is making very tall houses, which isn't useful here.

>Arthur: Okay, can you craft a bunch of stuff with the alchemiter?

    Yeah, obviously, but it'll last a couple years at most, they need planning for sustainability. Crafting a better warpgate with space powers won't matter if nobody knows how to keep it running! Still: Cranking out a way more refined warpgate that should function for several years more on almost no power should be something he can do with his big alchemiter setup that he's put somewhere near the 3D printers. He can make aesthetic and thematic changes to certain technology, infusing it with the essence of certain cultural artifacts by combining, say, the hydrogen stills and the iroris that were already in the village to craft esoterically-stylized machinery.

    But that's not what will keep this place running, is it?

>Arthur: Find a trump card

    This deck is looking a little dry. But there's still a few left to draw. He needs to visit the Dragon's Garden, or find those who can help him figure it out. That means visiting the pool and its mystic inhabitants again, or perhaps more productively, mashing the A button on random migrants until he finds one who is interested in the Garden and likely to know what's up. Those who had tutelage under ASIS's mythical entities are the best starting point. Any willing to join him in the secret magic cave, and what might they have to say about it?
Kale Hearthward KALE'S PROPOSAL

"Make it a magical factory town."

"So - we have a surplus of untrained labor. We have a surplus of raw magic. Let's do a little prep work on the two of those and starts making thematic magical items."

"Make use of our elite and trained man-hours to set up the procedures, configure the machinery, figure out the spell templates - it'll hopefully be a one-time advancement, unless we have to reconfigure the production lines at some point."

He starts sketching on a whiteboard he's brought with him.

"We use Lilian's funds to set up a bulk import of raw materials - say, cotton, thread, metal ingots, something simple that we can get wholesale. Then we do a bit of training to get people using foot-powered sewing machines, or industrial presses - something like that. Set up a mass production line, rely on the machines to 'know', not the people, at least at first."

"We'll have to spend a bit more on top of that for the templates for the things we're making - but we get the designers to incorporate 'old world' elements, right? Give this place's output some local flavor. That'll hopefully provide some points with the ASIS faction - that this place is exporting things that have the 'old world' spirit."

"Then - enchanting the stuff is gonna be another pain point, unless we can just like, mass-infuse the thread with magic before its fed into the sewing machines, but we've got a source of raw magic literally at our feet here. And then we ship the final products back out through the warpgate..."

"And the rest is just marketing," says Kale, stepping back having finished sketching out his production workflow and gantt chart. "'This magical gear was made and enchanted in a mysterious remote town out in the wilderness' - the adventurer crowd and rich wannabe swordsmen will just eat it right up, trust me."
Hellwarming Trio Utsuho: "There they come."
Rin: "They look like ants from up here, huh?"
Utsuho: "But they're probably tougher than ants."
Rin: "A little."

Townbuilding is one of those things that sounds complex in theory, but it's also something that the two youkai from the outside actually have a bit of experience in! Granted, their experience is more along the lines of being adjacent to townbuilding while building up their own weird shack, but they've picked up on at least the most basic of needs for a town to survive on its own.

Thriving is another matter entirely, but the concern about keeping the town's visibility down is certainly something they'll have to keep in mind in that context. With mostly unwanted people and not much in the way of production, though, that's probably going to be a little easier compared to what they already have planned.

Namely, they (mostly Utsuho) are going to be taking a look at the ELECTRICAL POWER GENERATION of this place. They'll need someone to run the numbers for them first in terms of how much power would actually be used versus how much could be generated on average, but once that's settled, they (again, mostly Utsuho) get to work streamlining it all: Coming up with a rotating schedule to make effective use of solar power during the day and still maintaining a little more than enough for the nights and during cloudy periods to make sure that things can still run smoothly with as little effort as possible. With any luck, that might help with actually compensating for the massive amounts of energy used by the Warpgate and the defenses/warning systems.

Of course, that only goes so far as long as things maintain their current levels, and there's also the probably concern that even this might not be enough to power everything. The duo (once again, Utsuho) offer their expertise in actually trying to teach some of the more willing villagers that actually plan to stay here, largely through Utsuho just knowing how to manage power levels effectively while Rin helps dumb it down even further to a level even she can understand (sort of).
Ishirou Initial ideas at trying to solve some issues with several stones are not only shot down but shot down and backed over repeatedly.  Ishirou, pretty annoyed at the situation breaks off from the group and is mostly quiet.  Instead, he looks at the power grid issues, trying to solve for constant electricity and a warp gate.  

Improving the batteries might be a solution, but likely is only going to be a bandaid over the actual problem of simply not enough throughput.  Ishirou attempts to search for other options they could use.  Using advanced sensors, magical sensors, and basically, anything he can he looks for potential new sources of energy they could use.  

The land had an abundance of magical energy, but not a lot of ways to use it.  The idea of something from home comes to mind...perhaps with miniaturization and limits on power draw..?  No that'd likely offend local spirits.  

Was there a local way to solve this issue..?
Tamamo     After careful inspection, Tamamo concludes that her earlier efforts with the wards do appear to be functioning perfectly well. She passes by the roadside shrines along the way, and takes a moment to ask the road guardian if there's anything more to be remembered from those who'd left, now that it's been some time since the shrines were restored. If there is, however, she'll come back to hear it later. There's still quite a lot to do today.

    Tamamo doesn't even know what a hydrogen still is, though she can work out the meaning of some of the other items, like the CEB press, with greater ease. Since they have plenty of housing, at the moment, there's no need to build more homes, with compressed earth bricks or otherwise, but perhaps some other building will shortly be necessary. There is already a shrine, which fulfills the need for a place around which the village may center their spiritual efforts, even without a specific kami enshrined. While it would usually be much better for there to be one, she has her own reasons for not wanting to be held within it. Would it be better if she were to find some artifact for it, or... maybe if she had her own bunrei...

    No, no, that's a terrible plan. She needs all three of her tails where they are. She'll think about how to dispose of a fourth tail only when that becomes necessary. Even if she had one, it's highly unlikely 'that' Tamamo would want to sit in a shrine, either.

    As her highest priority of the moment, Tamamo greets people. She first goes to meet with Sakura, just briefly, to hear how she's taking to the sudden influx (so much more quickly than might have been expected, thanks to Saeko), and to gently warn her to not be too distracting around them. While wholly hypocritical in this department, herself, this constitutes Tamamo's immediate effort toward keeping the preciously naive imouto-type from bad influences, something she chiefly leaves up to Sakura's guards. She'd probably listen to them even without a fox's priming, but it probably doesn't hurt, for now.

    Next, Tamamo goes to meet with those lucky ten who have some amount of experience as former servants of ASIS. Even if they are to be returned 'eventually,' they should know that they'll be working with Tamamo-no-mae, for now. Framing this as an acquisition of her own priests would be so easy, but she somehow avoids it, focusing on questions of what they already know, exploring what they might easily learn, and explaining to them the critical duties they will need accomplish, while here. Though they are all fine 'for now,' it's convenient to focus their attention on things to do, rather than mere acquisition of knowledge. These include the maintenance of the wards, the means by which they might also speak to the local spirits, the tending of the shrine, and further, the dispensing of blessings, the excision of curses, the manipulation of great and freely available quantities of prana (as the Dragon's Garden makes available), and the teaching of apprentices of those skills they possess.

    
Tamamo     Tamamo makes time to listen to Kale's proposal, after having confirmed that Ishirou, Rin and Utsuho are handling the power problems, for now. She has a curious, interested, and possibly uncomprehending face, throughout. Only afterward does she say, "The creation of items of local significance had been on my mind, though we have little that can be easily offered. Certainly, we have many who lack training, but there is a misstep in the first place. You would not be aware of this land's sense of that which is the old world, but a 'factory town' it cannot be, and those of the ayakashi would know, if it was, despite any attempt at deception. I have made known to their leader my wish to do other than the surviving fortress-cities have managed."

    It's a rather gentle shooting of the whole plan, at least by tone. "I do wonder what we might do in regards to sewing, and I know little of modern machinery, myself. We have not many adventurers, I think, the Antegent being the sort of threat fought more by small armies than by individuals. Though we might provide some benefit to them, as well, they are the same armies as we should avoid making too curious as to this place, as they are employed by the ruling clans. It is a rather difficult matter."
Kale Hearthward Kale frowns a bit at the plan being shot down.

"Okay - can we do something like it scaled down, at least? We need *some* industry, *some* exports..."

"... Unless Lilian is willing to bankroll the village indefinitely, which - actually even if she is, then we still need something productive for people to do here..."

"... Lemme rework the gantt chart," he says, going back over to his whiteboard. "Not an entire factory town, but - give me a budget, some of the workers, and some time, and I can get at least something set up?"
Lilian Rook     Arthur's replacement of the Warpgate makes Lilian a teeny bit miffed, after all the trouble she'd gone through before, but alchemizing it out of the existing one is more or less fair game. Doing so alleviates a significant part of the power concerns in terms of RESOURCES; the gate itself never really drained much just being active, but if the grid is running at capacity, it'd require disabling too much just to fire it up normally. The alchemiter requires some discussion. Mainly, it's so absurdly distinctive that there's no way it can be used for anything outward-presenting without immediately annihilating any and all shot at OBSCURITY. However, as long as alchemized items are kept to purely internal use, the stylistic pandering to the old guard (Sakura confirms, gleefully), will win significant RELATIONS points while costing them absolutely nothing.

    Kale requires a little more of a sitdown. Mainly to go over the premise of: 'Why is this idea about maximizing turning a profit off these people in the first place?' and then 'There's no way you can hide a trade venture like that for long. Someone's going to want to know where all this bespoke gear is coming from.' Also that bulk imports are something that Lilian could fairly trivially afford indefinitely for a village of this size, but funneling it all into the aether would pretty quickly erode OBSCURITY to solve the RESOURCE problem. However, the thread of magical items is something that strikes the people involved as reasonably compelling. Namely, the Dragon's Garden is far more flush in MAGICAL RESOURCES than modern ones, and not only will that win RELATIONS points, but ease the RESOURCE burden. They are, however, critically short of MANPOWER that could even hope to help enchant anything any time soon. The level of 'foot-powered sewing machines' is put on the whiteboard as a compromise option in terms of tools and technology.

    Utsuho finds that the power grid can be optimized quite a bit (Lilian is reasonably well-researched on satellite colony standards and procedure, but she is not an engineer), further alleviating some RESOURCE issues, but there is definitely not enough of it. Hydrogen cells are fine, but they take up a lot of space in such a small area, and aren't terribly efficient. Wind and solar are what one would expect. Lilian indicates she can't exactly just buy a nuclear reactor or something without someone wondering what the fuck she's up to. All the individual parts, if they could be itemized and assembled somehow, would still be a hit to OBSCURITY, but would make huge gains in the power department, admittedly.

    As would being able to tap the leylines, as Ishirou finds. The village is sitting on a steady wellspring of natural power, bubbling up constantly from some deep oceanic place like a geothermal vent. Lilian does not have the expertise to turn that into something that'll keep the lights and heat on (save in the sense of 'if everyone were a mage and she installed a lot of laborious permanent arrays for them to use'). Doing so would significantly diminish MAGICAL RESOURCES in proportion to how much draw he dares, however, as a significant portion of the natural energy is necessary to feed the garden and charge its restorative properties. Biofuels seem like a plausible option, but pretty wasteful with such little land.
Lilian Rook     Sakura is sunnily elated to hang out with Tamamo as always. She promises to be a very good girl. However, the discussion is actually quite fortuitous, because this has never come up before. While rounding up the scant ten occultists and talking to Sakura and her minders about the related issues, Tamamo is subtly let in on a very important fact in such an offhanded manner that it feels accidental. Sakura appears to know a highly considerable amount of all the types of magic Tamamo is talking about. There are also several veteran Enlightened in her permanent retinue, though they have far less interest in refugees than she.

    The meeting with the ten, with Arthur involved as well, has some good and some bad. None of them have been trained up the hard way to intrinsically cultivate the human ability to use mystical arts; all of them have youkai or minor kami as patrons that have gifted them the ability to sense and utilize the requisite energies and patterns to skip laborious training investments, and so they're unable to teach it down to the Unenlightened. However, they are aware, at least, of a number of complicated things that can be done by well-trained and educated Unenlightened using inherently magic components and rituals on things and places that are already spiritually empowered, for tasks like the maintenance of wards and shrines and blessings once laid. Making up for a lack of true Enlightened in this way is a considerable MANPOWER and light MAGICAL RESOURCE tax, needing elaborate rituals, specific items, exacting configurations, and regular upkeep, but is ultimately very doable while sitting on such a hotspot. It is, in fact, probably what the members of ASIS benefit the most from, in terms of getting large numbers of random human 'leftovers', because most of the 450 are already educated in the bare basics and can be quickly trained.

    The road guardian does, indeed, have new memories. But that's for later. Arthur's extra special trip to the pool, after that meeting, with two pairs of expert eyes in tow, confirms some things. They believe it to be a spring that is incidentally fed by the domain of a mythological sea divinity mainly famous in old legends for visitors to his undersea palace coming back with wondrous tales and gifts of wisdom, health and long life, but often meeting with unavoidable tragic ends. Though the existence of actual gods is still disputed in this world, the magic here is not. The water itself is an extremely powerful restorative and inherently consecrated for use in 'anything', as well as a natural anagathic. The flora are essentially all useful for all sorts of ritual components, reagents, and auspicious items, in everything from medicine to onmyodo to even dakiniten.

    The creatures have gained varying levels of intelligence from absorbing the energies and living many many years, but aren't particularly knowledgeable, excepting a sea turtle he sees for the first time here, which claims (in the way of communicating with turtles) that the deep tunnel is an oceanic passage to this world's Otherside. Arthur's experts claim, religiously, that ancient sea turtles are messengers of Ryujin, the sea dragon kami, and seeing one here means that there may be spirits with interest in this place. Outside of the great wealth of MAGICAL RESOURCES available from this spot, if properly interacted with, it may be possible to source MANPOWER from friendly sea-aspected spirits and creatures within turtle-travel of this spot.
Lilian Rook     Lilian, taking her turn to do stuff instead of patiently waiting for everyone else to do everything, is currently very concerned with DEFENSIBILITY, with Caelton on her mind, and the mystery of what happened here (twice) before still weighing on her. Automatic weapons are actually mildly RESOURCE and MANPOWER hungry to run and maintain, but probably strictly necessary to some degree, placed outside the village paths, to dissuade random Antegent gribblies. Beast-class Antegent are in no way any match for the calibre of Elites here, but one or two could still kill large numbers of people if they slipped in, and there are tons of them out there. Furthermore, though there are trained militiamen in small numbers, they aren't properly equipped.

    At the risk of lowering the location's OBSCURITY by a little, she dedicates some effort to tapping MAGICAL RESOURCES to work through all kinds of complicated runes outside the wards themselves, and in the no-man's-land fuzzybetween forest, doing what ancient druids and dickass fairies did and layering them with her talents for magical concealment and obfuscation as well as curses and killzones to at least lay a net with a high probability of repelling wandering trash by averages.
Hellwarming Trio Although Utsuho isn't quite so well-read on the actual high-tech side of things, she and Rin do what they can with helping these people understand the practical use of what they have access to. They'll leave it to the villagers here to figure out what they want to prioritize using their energy reserves for, but they do strongly suggest utilizing it for things that can't be replicated through other less attention-grabbing means.

Lighting? Candles and lanterns should do the trick. Digging and farming? Humans need exercise, anyway. 3D printing and plastic production? That's not something they're familiar with at all (and might stick around to watch sometime).

Still, the possibility of trading potential OBSCURITY for big power gains is too much for them to pass up on. Using what they've learned from the youkai at home and of human society, the duo recommend something involving actual finesse for once. Instead of just throwing caution to the wind and suggesting the biggest flashiest power-generation parts they can find, they recommend ramping up on the usage of solar panels and windmills disguised as decorative lanterns and weathervanes and the like.

They'll probably have to conscript Ishirou or Arthur to get the actual parts made. Utsuho might know about power management, but neither she nor Rin know a thing about actual parts production! It might still look weird to just have so many of these things everywhere, but they're banking on it being enough to tide these people's needs over until they naturally develop something better with the lessons Utsuho can try to imprint upon them.

The other suggestion the youkai have is to get some people digging to look for underground sources of energy. Namely, lava and geysers. Utsuho's intimately familiar with tapping both of those things for power, so she's particularly well-equipped to explain that nonsense to those that'll actually listen.
Ishirou Ishirou considers options, and with the warp gate's power draw being nullified...

His searching into trying to up the efficiency was already jumped on.  So there isn't much he can do there.  His readout on the magical footprint leads him to believe that setting up a turbine would do more harm than good, a major depletion of the magic, for power.  Tamamo thinks that it's a resource to be used so, that could be set up.

Biofuel is an option, but it'd be inefficient.  Though when Utsuho mentions increasing the solars, Ishirou is reminded of something.  They could instead use special solar roofing everywhere instead of the normal roofing with solar panels on it.  

Ishirou instead dedicates this time to try to obscure the power solutions they have so that more obscurity could be used later.  
Kale Hearthward Kale looks blank for a moment at the 'maximizing profit' line, as if Lilian just said something strange and he's needing a moment to process it. "It's not about maximizing profit, it's about opportunity costs, and..."

He trails off, an odd look on his face - a cross between bewilderment and wondering if he just grasped something hidden and secret. "Nevermind. Keep your radio on, I want to ask you some stuff later."

"For now - fine, let me set up a shop - a *workshop* here, not a store, but it's gonna look like one. I'm gonna assume we're running on a socialist distribution policy as well as a command economy, and I want to vertically integrate distribution..."

He twirls the dry-erase marker around in his fingers, and starts redrawing his gantt chart. It's all about the gantt chart. "I'm assuming we're importing most consumer goods - clothing, books, tools, luxuries - but even with your bankroll we want to reduce how *much* we're importing. So - a tailoring shop, because stuff's gonna have to be refitted, and wear and tear will necessitate repairs..."

"... I know enough to train people on the sewing machines to do refits and repairs, too. Long as they're willing to learn."
Tamamo     Tamamo has to ask Lilian as to what some eight or so of the words Kale just used mean. She seems rather uncertain of this, but being only partially able to understand what Kale is talking about, decides that it would be fine to leave to Lilian's judgment whether the revised plan should still have some fundamental mistake. If it's a workshop, that's fine. They'll need some number of workshops, or people won't be able to make the things they need.
Kale Hearthward PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Kale Hearthward says, "I have a question for you, about priorities here, when you have a moment."
PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "What is it?"
PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Kale Hearthward says, "What's the order of priorities - proving this colony can survive out here, these peoples' well-being and happiness, and Tamamo being happy with her pet project?"

This is Kale's worry - that this is more about Lilian enabling Tamamo, than Lilian being as concerned *as* Tamamo is for what they're doing here. The two desires are related, but... not entirely un-mutually exclusive.

PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "It's mainly Tamamo's desire, not mine. Reclaiming the Earth has its own self-evident merit, as does creating somewhere for people to go instead of being callously gotten rid of. I can't speak for her in terms of what else she hopes to gain from it, but having a base of operations in Japan would be big for us either way, given that we've chosen to make enemies of every single clan at once."
PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "Turning a profit is the furthest thing from my mind."
PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Kale Hearthward says, "I didn't think you were, trust me. I'm thinking more in terms of opportunity costs and self-sufficiency. And what happens if you die."
PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "If that impossible thing were to happen then I'd be dead and thus couldn't care less about what happens."
PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "We want to cut costs and source our own things from the start, rather than try to turn this place into a factory that can buy back its own necessities."
PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Kale Hearthward says, "Your pending disaster-level existential crisis aside, I'm not sure we *can* get to a level of pure self-sufficiency here within a reasonable timeframe like you're describing, but I'll work on it."
PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "It's not necessary to be completely self-sufficient. Just good enough to not look like we're feeding a town."
PHONE: Phoning Lilian Rook, Kale Hearthward says, "... ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Okay. *That's* more doable. I'll work on it."
PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "Even if literally nothing else, if any clan knows about there being six Muramasas here, it'll be hell and high water."

So there's that. Kale's still not certain about where Lilian's motivations mainly lie, though, and he's a bit worried about what she'll pick if it comes down to one-or-the-other.

<J-IC-Scene> Kale Hearthward says, "The workshop's going to be entirely internal, yeah. I've had some of my misconceptions corrected."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook offhandedly, probably related to a talk with Kale just now, "I've bought Tamamo more expensive things than a town. We're talking about 'cutting emissions' for the most part."

... Well, that just makes him more worried.
Arthur Lowell >Arthur: Consort with the cave turtle

    Arthur has a long, long history with trying to extract plot information from herptiles. That is to say, it's most of what he was doing for about three years, ages and ages ago. But hey! It's like riding a bicycle. He consults and consorts and chats with both old pool pals and new occult chums. After floating back up from the surface, he decides to try to put a plan in motion.

>Arthur: Can you use this to subtly make this place sustainable?

    In his experience, the Antegent have a really tough time getting through to the Otherside, unless they're intentionally brought through. If this can bridge things Otherside-wise when properly interacted with, Arthur needs to analyze exactly what kinds of interactions are best to do here, and more importantly, if it's just manpower and magical energy he can work with, or if there's more of a trump card he can work with here.

    The island is surrounded by folded space. It contains, *within* it, a space where the barrier between planes goes thin. And there was a highly compressed pocket dimension here long ago, sealed by a magic sword. This implies a curvature to Arthur, some form of unusual geometry specific to this geographic region.

    Knowing the Otherside, the old blade, and the exterior folded space now, he sets himself at the surface of the pool and meditates a little, trying to mix his own excessive energy with the magic that comes from the pool, and fuel a high-energy analysis of local geometries with the intent to establish infrastructure and sustainable living. The unusual curvatures here might allow Arthur to construct, say, a lot of pocket-dimension space sustained and stabilized by one of the swords like they had before. Something that mixes the nature of the land, the abilities of the blades, and which is neutral enough to not strain relationships, while staying under the radar, like the dimensional warp did here long ago. Is there room, enough space for this? Something to leverage the months of knowledge he's built up here?
Lilian Rook     Doubling down on renewable power is eminently doable. Even just buying lots of high-grade solar panels isn't enough to raise any kind of meaningful suspicion, or so Lilian says. Even in the most cynical scenario, it'd be assumed some green energy tax credit thing. It's not much extra to work with, but enough to run a couple of machines without shutting down everything else for now, RESOURCE-wise, with no hit to OBSCURITY. The grid isn't very hard to keep on the DL now; simply doing some insulation work on workshops and a little aftermarket tinkering on the small farm machines rather cancels out the small impact so far.

    To most of Kale's assumptions, Lilian is actually in full 'yes mode'. That is the idea. However, she also personally believes that this is a small enough unit and the people share enough common ground that they can largely be left to a certain degree of communal autonomy (she utterly refuses to dignify the other A-word) in resource distribution. As long as they're doing everything Tamamo wants, and respecting the Sakura corner, at least.

    Actually teaching people practical tailoring skills is a significant and direly needed boost to MANPOWER. Right now, this village needs all of the basic skills it can get, especially if a low-footprint, low-technology approach is the current direction.
Tamamo     Along the way of seeing what else is happening, Tamamo checks in on Ishirou, near the power system. "I am unsure just how the mana turbines of your world do function, but something of similar principle could function here, is that not so? If it were something that could be turned on and off, could it not cover the seasonal deficiency of reliance upon light and wind? That would not be too much draw from the waters below, I think, so long as we do not rely upon it entirely, as Indus did. As I said, I am not the expert on this matter, but perhaps thinks on it."

    Moving along, she resists the urges both to chat with sea turtles and with Jizo statues. Arthur is handling one, and she would like to have the other while not distracted by other things. Or... no, maybe that would be something to handle now, just in case. She can handle more than one thing at a time, still.

    With that thought in mind, Tamamo goes to fetch Lilian, 'if she has some time,' and walk arm-in-arm with her to cheerfully see Sakura. There, with as many minders as will be necessary, she suggests a short stroll over to the boundary of the town. There's no one working over in that direction at the moment to get in the way of a walk, nor to be distracted by them, and what could be safer than going with both of them, together?

    Along the way, Tamamo keeps up a level of what's only slightly too serene to call 'chatter,' commenting on the weather, the seasons, the hopeful flowering of trees, the beautiful cherries to which they'll look forward, and only by roundabout means talking about the local geomancy. She does, then, get to talking about the useful rituals those not 'enlightened' could perform, specifically with a mind toward things that would be more helpful than costly to them, and does Sakura know much about that sort of magic? Tamamo's own blessings may have a great deal of power, but that power comes at costs that would be too steep for most humans to pay, unless she's to pay it on their behalf.

    At the end of that chat, they reach the roadside shrine, and she can ask the border-watcher to recount its story for this small audience.
Kale Hearthward Kale sets up his TAILORING WORKSHOP in a convenient place. If there's not already an existing building he donates his TOKENIZED OUTPOST for it, which *pomfs* into place at an empty lot.

Either way, he gets his own sewing machine out (*pomf*) and starts lessons - and once some more sewing machines arrive he starts going from 'training and instructions' to 'tutorial projects'.

(As for where the foot-powered sewing machines come from - he drops a hot tip to Lilian that there's a certain world that's going through its industrial revolution equivalent and has a lot of pre-electricity tech available to offload for cheap. LEVEL TWO GRIFT PARADIGM: 'I KNOW A GUY' ACTIVATED)

He tries to cram as much of a practical sewing and tailoring education in as possible. To emphasize the community aspect, he sets aside some of the imported clothing as it's coming in, finds another individual in the village who that particular piece *doesn't* fit, and then assigns the trainee to take measurements and refit it for them - letting them keep it at the end.
Ishirou Tamamo catches Ishirou as he's mathing out some of the power draw issues.  Specifically, seeing how much passive generation can be used before ideally relying on the turbine set up.  

"I could provide a summary, but the idea is that they generate energy from mana.  I wanted to be sure of the actual need for the generator before I put forward a materials bill," There is a pause, "Well, honestly, I'd prefer to avoid it altogether, but.." he shrugs, "Not likely to happen."

"Though I think I have a power number in mind, and yeah.  The idea would be to use storage batteries to better supplement our renewables, and use the turbine when the batteries hit a threshold.  With a system set up for the process to be automatic, with someone in the village to be taught on the maintenance...it'd take some of the natural magic down, but it'd also be extremely sustainable."

"If the town got larger, I could justify usage of biofuel as a potential next step.  That'd really depend on how large this place would get, what industry we'd want to push, and other factors." If anything, Ishirou knows how to overthink most problems.  

Though with this talk, Ishirou gets a list of parts he needs and space he would need to set this up.  
Hellwarming Trio With the power situation more or less figured out for now without harming this place's ability to blend in (or getting so advanced that the youkai can't recognize what they're looking at), the day is saved! Except it's not. Not yet, anyway, although it sounds like things are getting closer to where they need to go. Arthur does some weird stuff with space and dimensions that the two are keen on watching (without understanding), and Kale's lessons are also a thing these two are going to have to watch in order to get a better grasp of how to fix their own stuff (while also making sure their faces are known to the villagers).

Tamamo brings up some points about being able to toggle the mana turbines, getting a thoughtful noise from Utsuho in turn. "That'd help to make sure all this stuff doesn't blow up if there's too much power, yeah. And if it's not used like crazy, then it should last a good while. Just gotta make sure the humans don't get too... Human-y about it."

Ishirou brings up some points about teaching the villagers how to maintain this stuff, and that also has the pair paying attention, largely because they're not actually familiar with the maintenance of this kind of tech. "Biofuel still sounds... Complicated. I /guess/ it wouldn't be as noticeable as using lava or geysers, though, and they don't gotta find it." Utsuho finally admits. From the sounds of it, though...

She really likes the lava/geyser digging idea more. She's stubborn like that.
Lilian Rook     Arthur's concept is, frankly, wild. As in, probably good that he didn't really tell anyone before Just Doing It wild. There is absolutely no way the guardians will unsheath a Muramasa for him under any circumstances, but he knows the exact geometric center of where it'd been used before and where the folded space it had pinned coiled into itself had stretched spacetime loose. Directly over the wellspring of energy too, as he recalls.

    This is not terribly useful landspace, being somewhat out to shore, but with some effort, he can exploit that unusual ripple in space where the sealing had been possible before, it's possible to create a substantial bubble of suspace on the water, over the 'funnel' created by the passage underground. Mainly, this is suddenly a lot more useful space to harvest and process hydrogen for fuel, as well as a potential place to put boats and sea farms, meaning that this is a huge benefit to all kinds of RESOURCE issues if people can be sufficiently trained (power management has already been handled by Utsuho, so mostly to do with the rest) and can throw together a better dock and some real boats (albeit there is ample wood and bamboo to use). Lilian scolds him a little for doing this at first, but quickly sees the incredible use inherent in it, and resolves instead of mark its boundaries so that the edges of subspace are visible around the area from the outside instead.

    Sakura follows along with Tamamo eagerly. Oddly enough, once they realize she's going to be going with Lilian too, her guardians leave her alone. She is a totally unguarded conversational partner, her gentle flinch and laughter apparent even in the tasteful mention of cherry blossoms, with an unprompted apology. Questioning her on matters of magic, Sakura cheerily expresses an intimate familiarity with the leylines and 'heavenly veins' of Mount Fuji, and helpfully informs her that the convoluted secret sanctum stuff from before, with its special interior weather and varying blessings and wards, was mostly her doing, and not that off her guardians.

    The topics she seems to chat the most on are, specifically, weather, harvest, health, boundaries, travel, communication with object and land spirits, the dead, and seals. Given the rather sorry state of the farmland here, as well as the fact that expert doctors and surgeons simply can't be trained in six months, and they'll ahve to rely on folk medicine and magic, as well as apparently cooperate with and appease sea spirits, this is an extremely fruitful avenue of discussion. Sakura, in of herself, is more magical MANPOWER than the other ten combined. She seems receptive when Lilian (in mild bewilderment) floats the idea of working with her to set up the permanent arrays and himorogi that will sustain Tamamo's choices of magical aspects, while the ten gather up students and pass on the correct ways to handle them.

    The road spirit has something interesting to say. The people that left this town did so with all their portable belongings in an orderly fashion, speaking of warnings and a destination in Tokyo. Specifically, it seems they were encouraged to evacuate a safe haven that was ultimately untouched. However, as it is known now that the radio had not worked properly in a long time, and had been compromised by Antegent, this begins to paint a rather chilling picture of the probable reality of why they happily left, and probably met their doom.
Lilian Rook     Sadly, digging for geothermal hotspots is a dead end for the Duo. This close to the coast, and with the seawater exchange underground that is responsible in part for the Dragon's Garden, the geology is just mutually incompatible. However, what they do discover is hitherto untapped ironsand from an underwater vein. Though it's heavily mixed up in (as these types of veins are) agnetite, quartz, feldspar, and some other minerals, this is actually a benefit; it's a ready source of steel, aluminium, titanium, and pure silicates that would otherwise have been missed, hitting the last major pillar of raw RESOURCE concerns; though it will be very power intensive to properly refine, the Japanese have been working with ironsand for many centuries using traditional methods, which is readily available to learn here.

    Kale's tailoring lessons go off without a hitch. People actually want to know what other skills the group has, and especially like his little group assembly style. An important topic is brought up to him on the subject of rope and associated work especially, as everything from the docks to supply yard to mystic installations is going to need a lot of it very shortly. The metal industrial equipment is at least Edo period, and so with some stylization from the others, will probably fly under the radar as far as RELATIONS are concerned, as will his pageantry and costuming.

    Ishirou has good news on the subject of magical energy, in that the magic here is constantly bubbling up out of the Otherwise whether he does anything or not. A turbine in this case would finally act like an actual, literal turbine, 'spun' by the currents of magic that don't care about what he's doing either way, rather than sucking the non-renewable life out of the earth to make one. With some power concerns taken care of, and metallic resources discovered, now people are turning to him in earnest for his expertise with electronics, to ideally cover MANPOWER training needs, so that people can work with these finnicky machines, and especially repair them later, or diagnose digital faults that might shut down perfectly good equipment.
Ishirou Ishirou actually gets a better map of the area, "Huh..." he says, finally, as the flow of the magical energy in the area is shown to him.  "Well, if we do this.." he says and does his best to describe the flow of the area, and how the turbine would work.  "Because of that, it'd let the turbine run very well, and with the efficiencies, in the grid, we made, even on a high to medium setting every once in a while it'd never hurt the land."

He splits his work a bit.  

The Turbine will need dedicated time.  He also uses this time to teach people who are interested in how it works, how to maintain it, and how to manipulate the controls.  Both to adjust it and to adjust the program he'd leave behind.  Leaving the turbine for automatic would be safer, but there would be times you'd want to control it manually.

He also helps the Duo once they strike minerals.  He does his best to scan out what minerals are where because they'd be important for just about everything involved here.  Ishirou will spend time here helping train people with the more modern things.  
Kale Hearthward > What other skills

"... Give me an hour," says Kale. "An hour - and someplace reasonably flat and with good acoustics."

He doesn't bother drawing up a proposal for this one. There's a chance somebody would say no, and he can't have that.

---

"The THEATER," he declaims, to whatever audience he's managed to grab. "The grandest of traditions! The great cultural thread, connecting generations, cultures, and countries!"

Kale struts upon the stage, gesticulating with each pronouncement. "The evolution of the oral tradition - from campfire to cart show to theater! Upon this stage, you can witness the world itself pass through - history replayed for you in living breathing form, flights of fantasy tickling the edges of your imagination, far away places and farther away dreams brought forth close up!"

Once upon a time, this was Kale's real passion. This was 'sell everything you own and learn half a dozen new skills to fill in the roles you can't afford people for' territory for him. He had to get good at tailoring becuase he couldn't afford costumes that weren't thirdhand.

"Lend me but your ears and your hours, and I shall teach you how not to entertain - yea, not to entertain, but to *entrance* your fellow man, to whisk him away to worlds beyond imagining with naught but a word, a step, a gesture..."

He continues on, on this makeshift stage in his makeshift costume in this makeshift village - putting on a quickly improvised speech and an even more quickly improvised show, attempting a bit from one of the old world legends he managed to extract from Lilian.

"And that," he says, concluding his show, and taking a sweeping bow. "May not put food upon your table, or clothing upon your neighbor, or strength upon these walls, but I've seen it do something yet greater - enkindle a fire in someone's soul, or a spark in someone's mind, and at the right moment in the right place - that, to me, is the real magic we can teach you here."

"... And I'll be holding lessons on how to do *that* in the evenings, once the tailoring lessons have finished."
Tamamo     Well, well, isn't that interesting. But it wouldn't do to make a big deal of it. Of course, it could just be trust in Lilian's protective abilities. She's quite capable, strong, and quick in both thought and reflex. It could be a desire to see Sakura make some appropriate friends. It could be any number of things, apart from what Tamamo's certain of.

    "Of course, your help would be welcome in many things." She isn't going to mention anything about that little apology, but smile to let it be known she heard it. Maybe there's a little note of teasing, just the slightest emphasis of Sakura-chan, but she can surely be forgiven that sort of thing. It's a perk of social station (and a goddess possesses such, bunrei or not) to still sound natural while becoming a little familiar. She hasn't had so many opportunities to practice such, either, but she's probably not getting carried away. Probably.

    But there's still a lot to do, and she shouldn't be mixing her fun with what is, for other people still quite serious. "I would not wish to tax you too greatly, all the same. Should you find time, perhaps, you may provide assistance to some, in regards to matters of health and harvest. These would be the most important to most people, after their concern of safety, the firmness of the boundaries of their world, no? And of these, we have already made sure, to the extent that magic is the practical solution. And, oh, perhaps you will accompany me a little longer, as it occurs to me that I have not seen to the paddies, myself, and this is a matter within my own expertise, such as I possess."

    Later, they can get to the himorogi, the designated sacred spaces, keeping pure the permanent arrays for those rituals that the non-magical can still work to keep running. For now, Tamamo extends their walk to an inspection of the farmland, and takes her time -- accepting any suggestion floated her way from Sakura or Lilian -- extending her blessings to the soil. It might not look very useful, at the moment. In fact, it might not even be possible to productively lay her blessings, if the fields must first be cleared and cleaned, but today hasn't been especially taxing on her, yet, and she has a bit of spare energy to put toward encouraging the fields of grain that are part of her divine motif.
Arthur Lowell >Arthur: Get that space compressed!

    Arthur's going to have a hell of a time doing it. Utsuho's plan for power management is still in need of his manufacturing, and infusing a system of manufactured power systems with the durability needed to simply sustain a space like that is going to be a wild thing. Still, when he does finally explain himself to Lilian, it's something along the lines of: "I mean, homies love their HIDDEN REALMS and shit, right? Plus, MAD STEALTH up in this motherfucker!" He is determined to seem a bit braindead about this, but in a way, he did his best to think it through. "Gotta USE WHAT WE GOT. If we can't use the DRAGON OTHERSIDE, might as well, kinda work OUR OWN OTHERSIDE up in this." He knows it probably could have been *way* bigger with one of those blades... but no dice!

    Inside the subspace, he leaves a custom-built sword stand, marked with a variety of gravity-based autonomous protective and power systems meant to last for several thousand years. He also leaves some obtuse information lying around. In ten thousand years, when some weird shit goes down, some hero kid can go on a quest to grab the sword, or the sword fragments, or something, and place it there, and expand the subspace fold with all the bonus features. That's the compromise!

>==>

    For now, he admires the resource situation. Magical energy, obfuscation, relations, and resources; he feels like he's accomplished a good chunk of work, and pushing harder might have diminishing returns. For now, he's going to work on the alchemiter, manufacturing and combining materials to fit the new power needs, or to adjust internal materials with new aesthetic.
Lilian Rook     With the mana turbine in place to meet any exigent power demands in future, that concern is now definitively solved. Lilian cannot make sense out of why Arthur set up this bizarre little extra honestly, but she leaves it alone. Ishirou's and Kale's tutelage is absorbed readily and saves some experts a lot of time, but oddly, the seemingly frivolous inclusion of a theatre has a huge impact. These are clearly people starved of their home culture (and entertainment on top), and there is a lot of theatre material to draw on that is, specifically pleasing to both the shinto sorts and, historically, to various youkai and spirits. Even the goddess of the sun was once bamboozled by a special performance, after all. Sakura's and Tamamo's tandem efforts on the paddy fields are very preliminary, but Sakura suggests taking it even further and into the forests and groves, to ensure a great surplus of ample wood and bamboo, both for the inevitable boat and dock work ahead, and also to ensure an inexhaustible supply of burnables, as well as all kinds of useful herbs and berries and wildflowers, and materials for rope and textiles. Lilian, still concerned for defense, is glad for the additional power, the metal deposits, and Ishirou's mechanical training, and is able to install the autodefenses, and order some more to meet capacity.

    Ultimately, the result that pans out in the coming weeks is a settlement that, for now, has more than ample RESOURCES, or at least, is soon to have them, in all respects except livestock. The machinery to process the difficult ones is easy to power, and the somewhat outdoorsy lifestyle of traditional hand labour for woodcutting, farming (partially), fishing, and such, saves ample costs. It also has especially fantastic RELATIONS, in preserving its rural, anachronistic air, spreading traditions and ceremonies, culture and occultism, down to so many people, and having even what amounts to an ayakashi chill lounge at this point, while also greatly pleasing the Divine Child faction representatives.

    MANPOWER is still a bit of a struggle. The skillsets of helping Elites are fairly narrow and patchwork for regarding people who aren't naturally magical, and the dearth of magical talent will be felt for a while, but it'll be enough to get by for a while and slowly work on. DEFENSIBILITY has been almost solely Lilian's concern, but given the infrastructure supporting it, it's fairly reasonable by now; the extensive job done by Tamamo and Arthur before in warding and reconsectrating the boundaries of it certainly helps immensely, and it's a sight better than any standard satellite colony thrown out into the wilds with passable kit due to the expert stationary magic in use.

    The OBSCURITY of the village has been compromised very little Antegent won't easily find it, and there's no especial influx or outflow of suspicious resources; mainly the signatures of the bits of magic outside, the faint traces of the power grid, and in a very specialist hypothetical case, the tug of spatial distortion, are all things someone would have to actually physically be in the area to notice, and even then they're stealthed through magic and spirital cooperation with manners of roads and boundaries.
Lilian Rook     As special thanks, it seems, Sakura has apparently using her passion for surreal little sanctums to spruce up the mayoral townhouse into something of a fancy Japanese mini-mansion, larger on the inside, including an extra big and always-sunny courtyard. She won't say where she gets various furnishings, decorations, and plants, (nor a cheeky traditional shrine to Amaterasu (and, oddly, a very fancy old-world Japanese water clock with four sides)), though she leaves most of the space up to later discretion of use. In slightly childish fashion, it has a view of the Divine Child group's pagoda and vice versa, elevated up near the forests. An ideal stayover place for esteemed company, intent clear.

    She leaves with the whole rigamarole involved in giving Lilian a wrapped gift, for some reason.