"Yep!" Then she turns to Vetareh. "Not-a-princess! Congratulations, you've been officially given a position of honour in Taimi's krewe, you will henceforth be in charge of sample collection. You have full discretion over your choice of staff. I'd recommend hiring a bodyguard, and I hear the Commander just went out of a job and he's pretty good at hitting things."

Vetareh goes from confused, to amused, to trying not to crack up.

"Thank you, Taimi. I will work to live up to your standards so your krewe can be worthy of your name." She turns to James, smirking. "My! Out of a job, hm? Well I just so happen to be a member of Taimi's krewe, and have full discretion for hiring staff. I could use a person that is good at hitting things, I hear you're an expert. Want to be my bodyguard?"

"Hmm, I don't know, will I be able to hit lots of things?"

"You will. And I'll even pay you!" Pause. "With my charming company."

"With terms like these, how can I refuse?"

"You cannot," she says, sagely. Then she turns back to Taimi before she goes and says something gooey and romantic again.

"Genius head researcher Taimi, I would like to learn the standard preservation signet, so that no asura anywhere can look at me or you askance, and we can show them all what fools they were to doubt us with our combined brilliance," she says, absolutely deadpan.

"Finally an apprentice who properly appreciates my genius! Commander, you should learn from her. Come here, I'll show you the state of the art, although if I'd known Orrian humans were as good at this as you are I'd have been much more interested in that place before." She turns around and starts limping towards one of her terminals, then pauses, turns back around to look at James, and says, "You can amuse yourself with something while the grownups have grownup talk, Commander."

"I'm sure I can find something to occupy my time."

Vetareh beams at the praise, then gives James a fond little wave, and trails after Taimi dutifully.

"Thank you! Not all Orrians were huge magic nerds, though. We really specialized more in being the dogmatically religious and pious branch of humanity. But the powerful magical beings formerly known as gods helped teach magic, so the two sort of dovetailed?"

"Oh, right! Did you actually meet any gods? Wait, no, they'd already left, hadn't they?" She reaches the terminal and types some things into a keyboard with an unfamiliar alphabet. "Wait, formerly known as gods? I thought humans still thought they were gods."

"In my time they were no longer walking about in the world. They had not left however, and did resurrections and blessings and the like. You could go to their shrines and talk to an avatar, to receive blessings or even talk about magical theory or theology or something, if they weren't very busy and they liked you. I've done that. I once had a several hour long philosophical discussion with Lyssa's avatar about the mechanics of mesmers' magic. It was nice."

Then she shrugs.

"But the gods have since left. So I am an atheist, because if they abandon their followers, then they are not worthy of my worship. Maybe Grenth if he's still taking care of the Underworld, or Lyssa if she went rogue and is secretly hiding among us in the world, helping where she can. But I am not particularly charitable towards the others, who don't have those excuses. If other people want to worship them, then, uh, okay. But I don't."

"Huh. Okay. Aha, here it is." And there's a holographic screen with notes and instructions on the standard preservation signet. "I could probably print this to you, if you wanna take it with you. It does the same things yours does but some of this stuff is slightly different so it might be more useful to just tweak yours to add the changes? I'm sure those stuffy councillors wouldn't accept your new signet before they tested that it was thoroughly the same as ours but I checked and it is so I don't care about them."

Vetareh smiles fondly.

"I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't convert over to the standard signet instead of holding out with my old one. I'd pushed for it in Orr, and was always very frustrated that it was so hard to get everyone to commit. I could tweak my signet to give you the data you need promptly, and also study and learn the new standard and swap when I've got it? That way I'm not held up relearning a thing I already have, but am not a hypocrite. If it were lesser I'd do it as fast as possible, but if you say it's not, then I believe you."

"It's really, really not," the girl says, bobbing her head up and down in a nod. "I'll print this out for you."

"Thanks!" she says, beaming. "Any changes you'd like me to make in sample collection going forward? I promise I won't be offended if I can improve, I am several hundred years behind the theoretical curve."

She reiterates that Vetareh is still miles ahead of James but she does have an opinion or two that she had previously considered pipe dreams.

Vetareh is not offended! She nods along and asks questions and even takes very brief notes. Yep, those are things she can do!

"You really should keep her, Commander," Taimi says when they're done. "Or if you don't, I will, she's mine now, bwahahahaha!"

This is hilarious, and Vetareh giggles accordingly.

"At least she thinks you have good taste," she says, to James. "And I have a new career as a minion! I'm branching out."

"I'm sure you will be a splendid minion."

"Here, here, take this," Taimi says, handing Vetareh a bunch of pieces of paper. "And go be lovebirds elsewhere, I'm really busy and I hear you two have a world to save!"

"Thank you, Taimi. We will stop distracting you from your important work now. Fire Islands, then?"

"Fire Islands indeed! Lead the way, boss."

"That's the spirit!"

Vetareh snorts, then leads him out of Taimi's lab, and to the asuran portal's control panel to input the Fire Islands portal.

Then: hooray, Fire Islands! Time to figure out what those earthquakes were about. They were probably related to Primordus.