"If you needed it for work, maybe I could make something happen. Do you think you'd be more useful if you had one?"

"Possibly."

"What kind of extra use are we talking?" she asks in the manner of someone angling for a bribe.

...are Iomedaeans allowed to pay bribes? In Asmodean Cheliax it was generally a game which it was seemly to win at but more efficient in time (if not money) to lose at, but Iomedaeans seem like they probably don't do it at all and he's not sure if he's right or, if he is, whether it's a client-side or server-side avoidance... "I have some spells that let me inspect things more closely and might be able to come up with a better approach to some of the work if I had a chance to use them in more contexts."

"Oh?"

"Poison, magic, that kind of thing."

She's just going to make an interested face until he says more words.

"Like this: detect magic. - you know they haven't been paying me, right?"

She looks like she expected that to do something visible. She's not wearing any magic items. The green eco they have on hand is a weird alien kind of magic. "They've been paying you in 'able-bodied warrior doesn't get conscripted' or 'suspicious stranger doesn't get killed', whichever they'd've gone with. But yes."

THEN WHAT DOES SHE WANT TO BE BRIBED WITH. He goes and inspects the green eco.

"What kinds of magic do you do, besides the healing and the languages?"

"It depends on what I prepare. Clerics are pretty low on recreationally applicable spells compared to wizards, though."

"Hmm. I know you can make things out of thin air - if you could do eco that way you'd've offered already, I think - but I wouldn't turn down a new pair of boots or a bunch of sterile needles or replacement parts for the broken ventilator."

"I can only do food and water, and even if I could do those other things the same way, they don't last if not consumed."

"Alas, that sucks."

"What exactly is wrong with the ventilator? I do have a repair spell, it just won't make new fuel or anything like that."

She brightens up about that. "We can power it, that's not the problem. Come with me." And she'll take him to see it.

He does have Mending prepared and he can chant about it for ten minutes.

After which she is happy to provide him with a security pass which is in neither her name nor his. "You don't have to show it to anyone, it's automatic, just have it on you when you go through checkpoints."

"Thank you for your help." He puts it in his pocket. He channels, when they've got a roomful for him, and then he goes for a walk. Detect Magic up, recast whenever he loses hold of it.

Near the hospital, it's nice. Not lavishly opulent, but nice. The buildings are neat and well-made, the streets smooth. The city smells less strongly of whatever is horribly wrong with it, and doesn't smell at all of garbage. There are Krimzon Guard patrols ambling along keeping half an eye on things but nothing worth their attention.

At the nearest corner there's a device with an illusion of the baron's symbol floating in the air above it and an illusion of his voice speaking to the citizens (but somehow not anything that belongs to the illusion school of magic). There are slight catches between messages, where one recording ends and another begins, and sometimes the sound quality is slightly different; it doesn't all hang together as one speech given in one take. "Report all wrongdoers. - Obey, and be happy - I am disappointed with this city's lack of commitment and sacrifice. Work harder. Eat less. Drink only when I tell you! Sleep is optional."

There are neat canals with well-maintained railings to keep people out of them and sturdy bridges over them; the walkways to either side are broader than they really strictly have to be, giving a little space for sunlight in the middle of the city.. There are little lampposts on the bridges. Enclosed walkways with glass windows link the second stories of buildings over the canals.

The huge tower, which is the baron's palace, is to the south, not far at all. Even closer, though, to the southeast there's a shimmering greenish barrier stretching across the road. People walk right through it, though not many or often. On the other side is the district he first appeared in, a slum, though right precisely at the barrier it looks to be in slightly better repair and the people slightly healthier.

To the southwest are the farms.

He spirals out through the city. When he sees the farms, he keeps going out into them.

The farms are past translucent green and yellow barriers which don’t impede him at all. There's some kind of blue grain growing in ears bigger than a human, groves of fruit trees, plants that look almost like red broadleaf versions of spruce or fir trees, pens full of something vaguely bovine. A lot of the people at work seem to be the furry purple species known as lurkers. Where there's nothing else there's grass, probably for the livestock; it doesn't look neatly manicured like the little planters closer to the hospital. A group of children are playing a variant of tag. There are paths through the farms - one way lets out at a bazaar, the other at a gate in the city wall. The air is almost fresh here.

He keeps an eye on the (yellow) sun, to know how much time he has.

The amount of farmland here is disturbingly small. The sun is not that high yet. (Actually there's more farmland on the other side of the bazaar, but still not really enough.)