"He can stay to translate if it's about healing logistics and I will save the spell for the Magisters."

Nod.

"I have a general idea of your abilities from the transcript from the desk and rumors abound the city, but perhaps a summary would help frame the discussion?"

Sure, he can go over it again.

Meirryl, as his nameplate says, strokes his chin.

"The most basic solution we can provide is a storeyed channeling chamber, as you suggested. The Guild has three casting chambers of geometry suitable to contain your full sphere of effect, and the viewing decks could be modified to take advantage of verticality. In the long term, a dedicated construction project could be justified, if you are willing to provide a commitment for the investment.

"However, there are other opportunities which come to mind. Has the use of metamagic on your channeling effect been studied?"

"I'm accustomed to the concept of metamagic as a thing people learn to do to their spells, and channels aren't spells, but yours may be different."

"Metamagic spells are most easily used to enhance one's own casting, but experienced [Mages] are able to buff other [Mages]' spells, especially with practice together. And most metamagic only works on spells, but some spells such as [Extend Duration] and [Long Range] have been successfully modified to work on sufficiently spell-like Skills.

"But I did, actually, mean to refer more to the general application of buffs; I said 'metamagic' out of habit. For example—the way you describe 'channeling', is the effect an emanation of a type of physical energy?"

"It's positive energy, yes. I could do it more times a day with greater Splendor."

...Dross isn't sure that translated. He's hearing "Splendor" as charisma, compellingness...?

"...splendor is one of the facets of mental ability, along with wisdom and cunning. Cleric abilities mostly work by reference to Wisdom but channeling in particular is Splendor. I can cast spells that improve those except for Cunning, and the three physical ones, but only for such short periods of time that they don't affect my channel count."

...Dross forwards the information to Meirryl.

"You can increase wisdom? How incredibly strange. Charm, at least, has precedent. How far is your Splendor-enhancing spell from affecting your channel count? Enough an [Extend Duration] could stretch it? A good [Mage] can achieve a doubling of the ordinary duration."

"Doubling won't do it. It lasts only five minutes when I cast it and it would need to last for more than 24 hours. But yes, all the enhancement spells are second-circle and I have three slots for spells like that per day."

"'Slots' are an unfamiliar concept to me?"

"Spellcasters on Golarion have a limited number of opportunities to cast spells each day. For clerics they refresh at dawn, and I choose then which spells I will prepare for the day and can't change my mind later. Each spell has a power level, called its 'circle', and they go from zero to nine but I can only cast up to third circle. For spells I can freely choose as opposed to ones that can only be selected off a very short list, I have four zeroth-circle slots, four first-circle slots, three second-circle, and one third-circle."

Meirryl looks something between offended and dismayed at Blai's description.

"That is quite different from [Mages] here. Our magic is also organized from Tiers 0 to 9, but [Mages] do not need to select their spells in the morning—or is that only [Clerics]? Casting is limited by our mana, principally, which is fungible between spells of all tiers, although higher tiers of course cost more... and casting only 12 spells a day is profoundly limiting for a [Mage] with Tier 3 spells. A battle [Mage] will cast dozens of spells in a single battle before exhaustion, and with mana potions sustain multiple times that number before succumbing to poisoning."

"It's clerics and wizards. Sorcerers have a limited number of spells that they know, instead of being able to ask for anything their - instead of the complete space of possible spells, like clerics, or whatever they've managed to acquire and write down in their spellbook, like wizards. There are magic items that can recover expended spells, and some people get more spells than others owing to being Wiser or more Cunning or Splendid separately from being a higher circle, but what you're describing sounds almost more like orisons - zeroth-circle spells can be caught and reused, I can just only hold onto four at a time so I have to know which ones I want to cast that day."

That is an extremely upsetting way for wizards to be!!!!

"Our [Mages] do not have their mental abilities directly coupled to the strength or stamina of their spellcasting, either, other than the ordinary way in which being more clever enables one to learn more advanced spells and perfect their technique.

"I wouldn't describe anything we do as 'catch and reuse', for that matter. There are advanced techniques to recover the mana or reuse the scaffold of a cast spell, but for the most part, [Mages] simply cast them again—that is, mold one's mana to create the spellform and activate it."

"It sounds like they are something like very high capacity sorcerers, then. I can demonstrate catching an orison if you would like."

"That would be interesting." Meirryl nods. "I am unsure I understand the comparison to [Sorcerers]?" He is trying very hard not to be offended. "[Mages] learn spells through study, while [Sorcerers] are unlearned and rely heavily on Skills to manifest spells through instinct and willpower. Are yours different?"

"Sorcerers vary a lot, but you're right, that's a way in which your mages are more like wizards."

"Anyhow. Studying your magic would be quite fascinating, but perhaps it is not the best use of our time here. We were discussing your channeling as an emanation of positive energy. It makes it more likely that Skills and spells such as [Amplification] and [Magnification], which operate purely on physical media and thereby sidestep the spell-Skill distinction, will function to enhance your abilities. If preliminary experiments prove this correct, an option may be to commission a chamber with permanent runes of [Amplification]."

"That sounds potentially worthwhile, yes. Is this the best city for it or would it make more sense in an especially large and central one?"

"The Walled Cities have larger populations, but—well, I am of course biased, living here. I will say that the Walled Cities have an irritating tendency for political games, whereas Liscor's relative isolation from southern geopolitics and status as a military lynchpin for Drake interests in Izril make it unusually stable. One of the reasons I moved here from Manus."

"Understood."

"In the immediate term, perhaps you wish to rent one of our sites for channeling and employ some of our [Mages] to test enhancement spells when you do them?"

"Would your sites be better, cheaper, or both, compared to the training ground I rented for today? - also, I know how the enhancement spells work for my own purposes very well. I am sure someone else here can get interesting value ouf of them, but I don't believe it make sense to structure it as me employing researchers."