"Okay." Cam clasps his hands behind his back and looks around with affected disinterest.

Metella leads him to a food stockpile. At this late hour, no one is even watching it. There are sacks of flour, and stacks of preserved meat, and herbs and spices, and some mildly distressed vegetables.

Cam (tranquilly) adds to everything. His vegetables are less distressed, although he allows them some cosmetic discoloration so they won't stand out.

"Good. That should help hold us out if the darkspawn don't show up this week."

"Great. Anything else? How is the water quality in this vaguely sword-and-sorcery setting? Do you have any amputees lying around, or people with diseases not related to darkspawn, I am a fully qualified medical apsel."

"Vaguely what?"

"There is a genre of fiction that I'm acquainted with in which people have adventures and there is magic of the sort my universe doesn't have and castles and knights and kings and things that have fallen out of fashion in the last six or seven centuries."

"Apartment buildings and cops and democratically elected presidents, respectively, as a massive oversimplification."

"Well, that's not very explanatory."

"Castles are less useful as fortifications when military technology advances and less fun to have as residences when it's no longer useful to have dozens of servants per single high-status family. Knights became obsolete too. And a lot of countries with kings more or less violently overthrew them and switched to a system of voting for representatives to generate their legislation and do their international diplomacy with less crown-wearing and more adherence to pre-designed constitutions of checks on their power."

"That's much more explanatory!"

"Incidentally, I don't have to sleep, if I take enough stimulants. Should I be planning to do so anyway?"

"It might be boring to stay up all night, but then you can conjure arbitrary books, so perhaps not."

"Usually I do my reading on a device that I expect would be terribly conspicuous, but yes. Where should I stay if I'm going to do that? Do you have book recommendations to get me up to speed on the local this-and-that? Do Tranquil read?"

"I can recommend many books. Tranquil do read. No one will think anything of it if you sit out here with a stack of books and a candle. How long a list would you like, and on what topics? History? Geography? Astronomy? Magic? History of the Blight will certainly tell you all about darkspawn..."

"I'll start with that, I guess, and I'll take your recommendations on magic and history."

"Hmm. The Arcane in Principle and Practice, by First Enchanter Lilian around 8:12 Blessed, and for history Ancient Days and Ages Past by Angus Wren - usually found in the two respective volumes - and When We Held the Roads by Ordon Tethras. You really need to go to a dwarven source to even begin to understand dwarven history, and he's a very accessible writer."

"Okay, thanks." Cam conjures up his stack of books. And a lit candle. "Where should I go with this?"

"Here will do. You can keep an eye out for darkspawn." She gestures out past the half-broken crenellations at the forest far below.

Cam nods, and sits, and places his candle, and starts reading.