"Some gods' acolyte powers bear a passing resemblance to spells, but aside from those and the blessings - and gods ourselves, if you count us - no, we don't."

"Wow. How you explain it to children is spells are like Skills, but [Mages] learn how to cast them instead of getting them by leveling, but that's not really right. Magic is—a part of the world, which [Mages] learn to manipulate, and turn into effects? A spell is magic which [Mages] form on the fly and 'cast', for example to shoot a fireball or freeze water. You can put magic into scrolls, which lets the spell be cast at a later time, possibly by a different person. You can put magic into objects, which is 'enchantment', creating a persistent effect, like a rod that's always cold.

"There's also naturally-occuring magic and magic phenomena, like undead from natural death magic, or slimes which are animated by magic, or animals with innate magic like Coruscdeer. Do you have those where you're from?"

Elsewhere, he brings senator Jealwind up to speed on his mystery, insofar as it's possible to.

"Not at all, except again, gods. We are a naturally occurring phenomenon and occasionally one of us will get creative with their avatars but that's as close as it gets."

The senator echoes the suggestion that Chaldion is a good person to bring the question to, especially, he notes, as hostile mind-affecting Skills could be a matter of city security! He's somewhat unnerved by the report. However, it's not easy to get something on the [Grand Strategist]'s desk, even for him, so they should report it to city intelligence, which with a Head Speaker's name on it will probably get to Chaldion sooner.

"That's so strange. It has to be something about the nature of our worlds, then... I wonder if you can do magic? Not all species can do it, but it's not dependent on levels. I don't know if it'd depend on your avatar, but Gnolls can't."

He's willing to talk to city intelligence; he can bring his avatar over if it'll help.

"I'd like to try it - I should probably know more first, though, and I might need to go meet up with the senator again in a minute. But my avatar's species shouldn't matter at all, it only looks like a Gnoll."

"What specifically would you like to know? So one reason I thought it might be a spell is that whereas Skills in the vast majority of cases expire on the owner's death, a spell can be anchored to persist in perpetuity, like the enchantments on the walls of the Walled Cities. And from your reading I'm guessing you think it's been around for a long time?"

The senator's actually going to go back to his office and write up a proper report before going to intelligence, and will consult Kiraavi to get down an overview of the effect.

"My main concern is whether using magic would tie me to this world, in any sense - I'm a god who depends on attention for my survival and there's an effect that makes you unable to pay attention to or remember a particular thing about gods, I expect you can see how that's alarming. Right now if I need to leave entirely I can, there's nothing holding me here, but I don't want to do anything that might jeopardize that. It's why I'm not offering blessings yet, it's a weak connection but they do connect me to the people I've blessed."

The effect doesn't seem to be self-protecting, surprisingly, so he can describe the effect in some detail for the senator. He'll be up front, if it comes up, that he has no reason to think that the effect is new at all or dangerous to most people, but it could be very dangerous to him.

Any worldwide information-censoring effect is worth investigation, even if not alarm!

"Would the same concern hold if you transported a piece of, say, magicore, to your home, and tried doing magic there? I'm assuming here the issue is no ambient mana where you're from; thats what the magicore's for. Or, actually, getting a human from your world to try first; we know humans can do it. It's very hard to learn to cast even a Tier 0 spell from just a book, but the beginner exercises will tell you if you're doing something."

Oh, certainly! He just doesn't want to cause unnecessary panic.

"I'd want to know more about spells and magicore before I did anything like that. If the effect gets loose in my world it's not just my life or even my species that I'm risking, most of the humans depend on us in one way or another, too."

"...Right. If your world's never had to deal with undead before and they start happening, that would be pretty bad.

"If you want to know more about the nature of magic, you'll need someone who knows more than me. Don't know who, though—all I'm thinking of is Grimalkin, but..." She grimaces. "Fissival's a long road away."

"I don't generally consider that a bad thing. Inconvenient in this case, though, I'll grant you. Are there regular caravans? It won't cost me much to send a vial and a letter if there are."

"Oh, yes. I keep thinking of you as someone who can be in only one place at a time. I don't know about caravans, but the mail to Fissival takes five to seven weeks, one way. If you hire a Courier you might get something there in two or three weeks, but that's ridiculously expensive.

"Well, the sooner I start the sooner I'll be there - I don't know that it's worth a courier when I don't have income here yet, presumably you'd rather I not create very many coins."

"I'm not certain about it, but perhaps better to err on the side of safety. If you simply sell silver as a metal it wouldn't be hard to make enough for a Courier, though."

"I can do that, if you can introduce me to a buyer."

"Any jeweler's or metalshop will buy a big block from you... you may be overestimating what I mean by 'ridiculously expensive'. It's only one gold or so, if you want to mail a small vial. The Courier will be taking it as part of a batch delivery of priority mail."

"Oh, that does sound different. What other things cost about a gold, just to give me an idea?"

"A good-quality book costs about a gold? A loaf of bread is a few copper, it's two hundred copper to the gold, so... fifty loaves of bread? An average quality healing potion?"

"We don't have healing potions at home."

Also, are there any jeweler's or metalshops within a mile of his various holdings?

"...Oh, I don't know if those are magic but you'd think so, yeah."

There are jewelers, but not anything that unambiguously looks like a metalshop.

"How do those work?"

He'll check out the nearest jeweler's to the gate he has a claim by - do they have any signage up about buying metal, or anything?

Some of them say they buy used jewelry.

"They're made of Eir gel, distilled from it somehow, I think, which has accelerant properties, so when you use it it accelerates your healing. It can be applied topically or by ingestion. It doesn't help infections, though, just makes them worse, and it's the same as if you let it heal naturally, just faster, so if you've broken a bone you need to be absolutely sure you've set it correctly or it's going to heal wrong and that's a whole headache."

He can work with that.

"So if I want to swap out one of my blessings for improved healing, it sounds like I should tilt it toward infections, got it. I'll have to think about that, though, it's a hassle - remember how I said blessings tie me to people? As long as anyone alive has a particular blessing from me I can't change it to a different one. I'm not especially in the habit of blessing children but I'd still expect it to take sixty or seventy years to change one out. - let's head to the jeweler's, I don't think there's anything else I need here and I'd like to get the Courier going."

They can go jeweler-wards! The closest one that buys stuff is only a short walk away.

"That sounds terribly inconvenient. And it would be as if you're working with one blessing less, for the duration you're trying to cycle it out. I'm not sure infections are the highest priority thing going around, though, a lot more people die to monsters or accidents than diseases. If there's one thing it would be very exciting if you could do, it's making people level faster."

"I might be able to do that once I know more about how it works."

And at the jeweler's he can inquire about what he'd get for a jewelry set he takes from his pocket, necklace and bracelet and earrings in silver with sapphires and tiny pearls, with a design inspired by local fashion and a few of the more interesting offerings he's gotten over the years.