And right after they had defended his caravan, too. What a mercenary move. Maybe Cole has some spells that will help them escape undetected.

It's mostly Brenda's psion who covers their getaway. Now they are in the woods.

Psions: obscure but useful. The druid probably really enjoys being in the woods; Margaret's character is keeping an eye out for wandering monsters.

Before they find any (or vice versa), the session draws to a close.

"Well, that was a wild ride!" Margaret remarks to Brenda on their way out, grinning. "Your character really got to shine today, sneaking us past those guards."

"Utility builds, gotta love 'em," says Brenda.

"I don't think I've heard that term before. Is that a character build that's good at lots of non-combat stuff?"

"Yeah, exactly."

"Cool. And yeah, it's good we've got some of that in the party. If you were going to be a DnD adventurer in real life, what class would you be?"

"In real life? Gosh, I don't know. Probably just anything that can cast Invisibility, you know?"

"So you can go out of the Avalon? Yeah, amen to that."

"You have a medallion, you don't know what I'm even talking about."

"No, I don't. I just wish you could anyway."

". . . More people should be working on reinventing medallions."

"Magic just gets people killed."

"Human scientists deal with lots of dangerous stuff and hardly ever get killed. I bet if enough people worked on magic together in controlled conditions, and took careful notes and pooled everything they learned, they could make it a lot safer."

"You can take more precautions with science stuff. You can't wear a hazmat suit for magic, or put it in a cage, not if you want it to do things."

"It's got to be possible, though, there are people who sell enchanted objects for a living. Hey, there's an idea, maybe it'd be possible to make a spell or an amulet or something that protected someone from magic side effects. Then if you got that right you could be safer going forward."

She mentally adds "basic enchanting" to her to-do list as the next project after "basic healing". Basic enchanting should be easier than more complicated healing stuff, and she might well need a biology degree before she can get anywhere on de-aging.

"I think if that were possible there'd be some left over. We still have medallions even though we can't make them anymore," says Brenda.

"It could be that it's possible but nobody's done it yet, there aren't enough runecasters to have done everything it's possible to do."

"Maybe."

"I've been reading a couple of runecasting books. There's a lot of potential and a lot of risks."

"Don't get yourself killed, okay?"

"Of course not--then the party would be down a tank. . . . Seriously, though, I promise not to die."

"Oh good." Brenda pats her shoulder.

"Anyway, see you!" And Margaret goes home and sleeps. The next day she finally gets an incantation draft that seems worth iterating on; it translates to "Heal this worm's injury, restore it to perfect health as though it was never harmed." She works on wording for that a bit, then reads some of the book of primary sources from the war.