That night, the pub was packed. Everyone wanted to come out and meet the newest townie. Wigliff introduced Branwen around to the more colourful locals. There was Tristrem of course, with the stylized airship house, Fokkusu (who didn't look a bit Japanese) and Wolfie, who sometimes looked a bit wolflike, especially when she grinned. A tall, thin intense-looking guy leaned against the wall sipping a beer. Wigliff said that his name was Zaralith, but that he was a little spooky and it was best to leave him alone. A bearded lumberjack who called himself Grizz hung out with them most of the night, telling goofy stories about things that had happened around town since he had been brought over.

Everyone wanted to know about Rain.

Before Wigliff and Branwen had gone back to the pub (Branwen had to "buy" the beer of course, Wigliff was a Pong Wizard) the Cube had cautioned them not to freely share the information they had about its creation abilities. The two of them had to admit it made sense, as people pretty much are endless wish-generators, and much of what they would want could destroy the planet Topia rather than enhance it.

Branwen outright lied about how she acquired Rain: she said she found him. She was fairly vague about where, claiming to be unsure of the direction she had come. Branwen said she had wandered around fairly aimlessly, exploring, after leaving the Topian village. Already the townsfolk were sketching plans out for ploughs, carriages, carts, saddles... If one horse could be found, more could be found, and horses would make the every day work and travel around the village so much quicker.

"You'd better make a small herd of them, a good distance from here," Branwen told the Cube.

"Already done," the Cube replied smugly. "It's a good three days' hike in a nice little valley. I made a couple males and some females and a few young ones."

"Are they all purple?" Branwen asked, amused.

"No way!" the Cube responded. "There's a blue one, and a red one and I think I made some green ones..."

"You know, on Earth, horses basically come in black, brown, grey and white, and combos of those colours," Branwen told the Cube.

"Boooooooooooring...." the Cube replied.

It turned out that Grizz was the inventor of the Pong game, and was happily trying to show Branwen sketches of the circuitry involved in its design.

"Why is it so big, Grizz?" Branwen asked him.

"That's one of the limitations of redstone," the bearded man replied. "You need a good solid line of the powdered redstone to carry the natural current. It's never going to be able to be miniaturized. The redstone powers itself, you see... the torches that work like LEDs are actually more like batteries. They're also made of redstone, just in a different format... more chunks than powder."

"Doesn't the powder blow away in the wind?" Branwen asked, trying to picture how laying out a circuit would work.

"Ordinarily, yes, but we built conduits, out of tree bark actually, to hold the powder, then buried it. Redstone has the ability to arc its power to itself if it's close enough. So those torches don't actually have to touch the conduit, they just need to be close enough to accept the charge," Grizz explained

"So you built huge electrical cables out of tree bark and powdered rock," Branwen said, trying to picture it.

Grizz grinned. "Not that huge. Only about as thick as your wrist, but yeah, pretty big when you're used to plastic-coated copper wire!"

"What else can it do?" Branwen asked the two men sitting with her. Fokkusu and Wolfie were up dancing together to some music. A few of the townsfolk had pulled out handmade instruments and were playing. One had a flute-like pipe, one had a pair of drums in different tones, and one was playing some sort of strange stringed instrument that reminded Branwen a bit of a ukelele in sound and pitch.

"We can use redstone to light our houses, but you need to build the walls to contain the conduit," Wigliff told her.

"Has anyone tried making motors? Engines?" Branwen asked.

"A couple people have been tinkering with that sort of thing," Grizz replied. "But for the most part, we're computer geeks here. The one guy who was good with moving parts, building machines... he... left," he finished haltingly.

"He didn't leave," Wigliff said. "We kicked him the hell out." He snorted and then drank a long draught of beer. "Some of his ideas were great. Others... well, we didn't want him building weapons, and certainly not to attack the Topians."

"Why would anyone want to do that?" Branwen asked, shocked.

"He figured it would be easier to take their supplies than make and gather our own," Wigliff shrugged. "We decided we didn't need his kind around here, so we ran him out of town."

"Yeah," Grizz agreed. "Last thing we need is guys like Paril in Morrowind."