"I can give you a list of recommendations, how about?"

Clotilda looks at Sofia, who nods. And writes down the list of recommendations.

"Do you wish to schedule an appointment for a more thorough overview of differing advances in various fields? This is mostly intended as a preliminary - to get an idea of where the other stands."

"Absolutely. I and some of my crew are interested in the area."

"We can establish some basic divergences now, and let you meet with appropriate experts next time, how about."

"Sounds good."

Adam and the two other engineers present can offer what they know, which turn out to be a lot. There had been advancements on the field of optics and metallurgy that they have been personally involved in, and they know a lot about engineering in general.

There's some things they're good at - they have ridiculous progress in advanced math, theoretical physics, and the like, but it's like they skipped ahead of all the intervening practical steps. (The man explains that ley travel requires advanced math, as do some magics, and most of their physics studies have been based on those, so they were essentially coming at it from another direction).

Metallurgy is of interest, and he's sure optics can be applied usefully, too. Their engineering is mostly building-related, some ship-related, or highly specific to a certain magic type, so general engineering information is valuable.

Indeed, information is very important. They eventually run out of surface-level differences, though not before realizing that the Shifters' world had a couple of agricultural advancements. They are going to ask the rest of the crew in case there is more obscure things that could be useful.

He'll let them go, then, after establishing another meeting time.

That's easily set up.

They will also follow up on the various magical/fertility/painkilling suggestions.

Fertility and painkilling are both easiest to access at the more healing-focused temples. There's at least one per neighborhood, often more as immigrants establish their own holy sites, dedicated to different gods, with different base magics. The local healing magic is decent, and local temples are less likely to be busy - one of the immigrant temples offers immensely powerful healing magic, but good luck getting a soon appointment for anything short of a life-threatening emergency.

While some crew members are looking for temporary jobs and other ways to occupy their time, a lot have the free time to approach these places. If they accept submissions, they will get a letter detailing their situation. They reach to everyone they can, even the super busy places, they are not exactly patient, but they can wait.

The letter explains what they want, which boils down to:

Painkilling

Shape restoration

Ways to share Stephanos' shift-dancer ability.

Ways to share shifting with others.

Meanwhile, somewhere private.

"I didn't want to bring this up. But have you reconsidered?"

"No, Stephanos. I have not. I am glad with three. And I think you should be glad with however many you have around."

"Six. Still six, Adam here, but the other five... they are alive and I can feel them. They're in an entirely new direction."

"I didn't refer to their number because I was afraid it was less than previously thought."

And that's the end of that conversation.

Painkilling's easier - unless there's something very off-base about their species, it's straightforward. Direct interaction with their magic system would generally require either reality affecting magic or metamagic, though there might be other avenues. For instance, if their inherited shapes have a genetic or biological component - or if their species passes on information through genes at all - a gene-shaper might be able to help (there is exactly one in the city, from one of the smaller native temples - he's interested in the fact that acquired magical traits can be passed on to offspring. Most species don't work like that). Inherited magic is hard to pass on to others is the general consensus, but in the gene-shaper's opinion, not impossible. 

Painkilling is indeed very straightforward.

Rebinding powers is very, very powerful. And the new power is not necessarily what you want. It's a game of dice where each roll is torturous to throw.

But with enough tries...

...this place does not have that much of a need for magical translation.

Sofia rebinds that power and with painkilling magic she manages to rebind it multiples times.

And eventually she gets painkilling magic of her own. This is wonderful news. The crews' mages can rebind their powers on a daily basis if needed to (though, in practice it will be way less than that, the process still requires concentration and time).

Stephanos is the one to interface with the gene-shaper.

They are actually new to the concept of genes, and they are not sure how it and shapes interact. They are more than willing to figure that out.

The gene-shaper is name Cohuatomahua. He tells them to call him Cohuatl, pronounced more or less like co-watt. He's primarily a biologist and naturalist, with a secondary specialization in medicine, and so he does rotations through the temple, especially since he's often called upon to assist with diseases of descent.

"Hello," he says, brightly, when they arrive for the appointment. The temple is dedicated to some serpentine deity, and his office is decorated with snakes. "You would be the pool-shifters, yes? I heard you had magic with a slightly odd method of descent?"

"Greetings, it's a pleasure to meet you. And indeed. Shapes are inherited such that a child will have all the shapes their parents have in common, plus one of the shapes they don't have in common, picked from either parent at random as far anyone knows. You can also acquire shapes from pools, and they have the same rules of inheritability thereafter."

Adam also came along for this first visit, since he is still the head of the crew and all.

"Shapes can also be sacrificed to another shape, giving that shape a power. But sacrificed shapes stop being heritable. Also, shapes can die individually and again stop being heritable."

"Yes, that. Having shapes means you can take more heavy hits. And shapes reset to a specific age when you shift into them. Which you can't do if you lost all but one. It's causing a real 'cat chicken seed puzzle' of needs among our crew. Also, some people have a special ability called shift-dance which often rule-breaking effects. Mine is that all my kids are shift-dancers and given how interworld travel sounds like a rule-breaking effect it would be nice to find a way to share my gift with others in a way that won't make my wife deeply irritated with me."