"I think Sheppard knows more about servicing our guns and how our ammunition is made but yes. It sounds like if there's any hope of safely getting home it'll need either their cooperation or maybe that of the Elves and you said they might just kill us."

"Well, there's trying to trap some Skaven warlock-engineers, but I think I mentioned how their devices tend to take out dozens of people nearby if they misfire. And corrupt the area with Chaos even when they work."

"I did say safely."

"Indeed. But at least they're not stodgy."

"That may be, but I'll take stodgy over hostile any day."

"Wise man. But yes, likely it would be the dwarfs. They're very resistant to magic and so worry less about hidden Chaos taint; if it's subtle enough to hide, it's usually far too subtle to affect them."

"I suppose that makes sense. I still haven't quite wrapped my head around the idea though."

"Should I give you the very short busy man's summary of how magic flows and pools, or will you just wait for the book?"

"I'm curious even if Rodney would prefer to wait. It sounds like important information for living here."

"Sure. So, magic flows. We call them the Winds because they're more like that than anything else. There are eight winds, each of which is attracted to a different thing - Chamon to metal, weight, and logical thought, Ghur to wild animals and sometimes savagery, Aqshy to fire, heat, and strong active emotions. They all come out of the Realm of Chaos at very high altitude, flowing through the upper atmosphere, but a few hundred miles north of here there's a long ridge, and as the ridge drops, so do they, like a waterfall - though Azyr, which likes the sky among other things, mostly stays up. It is dangerous to use more than one Wind, in your life, because magic used sticks to your soul - you have fainter souls than most people, I think, which probably is metaphysically interesting - and if more than one Wind mix, they turn to Dhar. Dhar does not flow. It pools, and it seeps into everything. It can empower any kind of magic, so it's very seductive, but it seeps into your soul even moreso. And Dhar is the essence of Chaos; it resists being controlled or told what to do. Every type of magic changes the soul, and through it the mind and body, but Dhar can do a great deal more, is much more likely to rip breaches into the Realm of Chaos and cause something entirely unexpected to happen, and generally cause problems for you and everyone nearby. Chaos-sworn sorcerers and beastmen bray-shamans aren't immune, but it's not nearly as bad for them."

"Which is a nice tidy model with four glaring outliers. Divine magic, generally understood to be filtered through the gods and use their own intelligence to protect us, but that's more or less fine. Necromancy, which is a form of Dhar mixed with Shyish, the wind of death, and behaves much like Dhar but not quite. And the Ice Witches. The Ice Witches use two types of magic, the Father's Lore of Storms and the Mother's Lore of Frost, both of which, by means which have certainly never been explained to me, turn the Winds into something else. I understand them to be in some way crystalized or filtered using the connection to the Ancient Widow, but it's quite secret. The main practical impact is that where a bad miscast for a Wind-Wizard might rip a hole into Za, the same thing for an Ice Witch will more often freeze the whole area, and a catastrophic one can freeze a whole battalion to ice instantly, the witch included. And Runesmithing, which traps the Winds and works entirely differently than any other form of enchantment."