"Parallel worlds are weird even when they are allowed to lean on exact copies of people, I'm not sure it's that much more far-fetched for it to happen without. And pre-Revelation few books were written on summoning to choose from."

Nod. "...anyway I then said to Imliss that if you come in evil I want those ones very very far from the multiverse project."

"I'm not sure how you could tell, since you can't go by 'has or has not killed a few million people' or anything."

"You could go by how many he saved."

"Oh, that hardly seems fair, what if we find me when I'm twelve."

"You're right, I have no idea how to distinguish evil twelve-year-old yous from good twelve-year-old yous. Perhaps this should give me reservations about giving twelve year old yous a sector of the multiverse to govern but they'd be so good at it -"

"I was precocious like that."

"Anyway, 'the mysterious force that also makes sure daeva and mutant and formerly-Arda Earths all have two world wars on the same dates' is probably a better explanation than any kind of alt."

"Yep. Gotta have your world wars or can you even really call it an Earth?"

"Wonder what it is about the late 20th century that derails 'em from each other."

"It might not always be that, we're probably not getting a totally random sample."

"Probably not, yeah. Getting anywhere with the nature of magic -"

"At that point you have to ask what random means. The alts thing is probably a confounding factor on multiple levels."

"Magic is very weird but without interdimensional shenanigans is almost always limited to a single digit number of 'systems' of it per world, many things that can generically detect magic have peculiar levels of agreement on what does and does not constitute magic and for example mutants like New Edie are by most accountings Bar knows of not, this has some implications for how we can expect technically-not-magic to interact with magic..."

"Huh. - Valar technically magic? What about the Elves we've been calling magic Elves -"

"Bar doesn't know whether all possible things are technically magic, especially if none of them have ever visited, but I suspect Valar are technically magic and that so are magic Elves."

"It would surprise me if they weren't, but on the other hand it would surprise me on the same level as the mutants not being magic surprises me, and that happened."

"Does the distinction match 'demons can make it', where relevant -"

"This is one of the interactions, yes, prediction is imperfect but I'd imagine it'd work that way based on what I've got so far."

"Have you tried conjuring for mutants? That seems...potentially dangerous."

"I mean, they wouldn't be people - and also, conjuring for them wouldn't do it, he could probably make Nechar too since he isn't himself inherently magic -"

"Yeah, they wouldn't be people and that might interact with their powers somehow, but it does mean any early-enough embryo to get around the minds thing could be a mutant if desired."

"What's the latest you can conjure a fetus and still have it develop into a normal mind later on?"

"In humans, about six weeks along but it's only invariably safe before five."

"That should probably be safe, then. I, um, talked to Lodestar, and the two of them both manifested as four-month-old fetuses.

And Edie nearly killed the parent who was carrying her by projecting incoherent fetus thoughts at them too hard, which is why I was concerned it might be a problem--if a telepathic basement-dweller could project--nothingness--at someone hard enough to damage them..."