Yeah. Ugggggh. It's possible we could find a few trustworthy ones, swear them to secrecy, teach them, and pretend we had more ability-to-run-around-doing-magic and it was us doing it all.

Might work unless anybody would notice them doing it.

Not necessarily!

Practicing doesn't involve explosions?

It does not! Not unless one is practicing explosions.

I can start nosing around for people if you tell me what they need.

So the three kinds of magic are Sympathy, Effort, and Conquest. Having a personality resistant to becoming more diplomatic/agreeable, stubborn, or bossy is important to being able to do a lot of magic without warping your brain.

Otet's really resistant to the first one.

What does it mean to have a personality resistant to it?

It...can vary. Uh, basically it--means having a personality not as compatible with that change? I'm sorry, this is kind of hard to explain, it's very much a background thing in my home culture.

Well, I gotta know what to look for.

Yeah. Problem is even if you're familiar with the phenomenon it can be hard to predict, especially from the outside. Maybe look for people who wouldn't mind shifting a little in one direction or another.

There's probably a lot of reds who feel like they could stand to be less submissive and agreeable.

Then I would recommend Conquest and to a lesser extent Effort. It's not directly opposed to Sympathy or anything, but...

A lot of us do a thing where we act really differently at home and around clean people, I'm not sure how that affects it.

I don't know.

I guess we can see.

I guess.

Somehow when the Orvarans asked if I wanted reds for experiments I doubt this is what they meant.

If they didn't want you to use your experimental subjects for nationbuilding and magic-tutoring experiments they should have been more specific! "Here are some reds. Please use only for horrifying medical procedures."

I mean, I think it was decontamination experiments? Which do not necessarily need to be horrifying. But yes, I imagine they wouldn't have cared if it was.

Nobody would've given a shit!

I know.

We care.

It's nice. Katin picture. She's got her mouth around the edge of a chair arm and looks like she will presently comment on its piquance.

Oh gosh.

She can say "pah" now!

That's wonderful! Congratulate her from me.