[4520] Vainglory - Chapters 1 & 2

Vainglory is an industrial fantasy story I've been working on that... is a bit of a mess. The elevator pitch would be more of an airplane pitch, but TL;DR - it's a space opera set in a secondary fantasy world tech'd to the early 1900s with flying battleships and a lot of political talks. Oh, and there's a not!Communist revolution brewing in the imperial capital, a violent secret police plotline, and an order of science wizards at war with an order of child soldier-prophets.

This is not a final polish, but I'm pretty deep into this version of the story and figured I'd post my first chapters here to ask some basic questions:

1. Does the intro work as hook?

2. Is the Klara part a bit jarring here? She's a main POV, but I worry the conference might interrupt the "action" a bit. However, I also think it's important and... sort of fits there. I'm split. Curious to hear what r/DR thinks.

3. How is the pacing in general? Are you lost, bogged down, etc?

4. Character likeability?

5. Too much wordcount on the "atmosphere," or too little? There's a world I'm pretty attached to here, years in the making (I've been obsessed with this industrial fantasy concept, sue me), and I worry I'm losing touch with reality. Does it "feel" weighty and right, am I flooding you with too much info, withholding more than I should?

Here's the submission.

And for the mods, my crits:

[4243] I'm Nathan, Dammit + [1349] City of Paper + [1921] Finding Grace - Chapter One + [3836] Harvest Blessing Sections 1 and 2 = 11,349.

Let me know if there's any trouble, I know it's a big section I'm posting! I would've broken this into two, but I think these chapters support each other a lot and I wanted to know if the Klara thing worked—something that can only be answered with both, I think.