what in the longdark spitting-pit is that

...Erin wishes to be able to troport, to know how to troport, and to be good at troporting, in that order of priority if they can't all fit into one Favor.

One of her dots disappears. She knows what to do, this time, and her jacket is now bright blue while her shirt is grey. "Tricky. I don't think my wish made me good at troporting, just... Able to do it."

inourhead

"Most people aren't good at it. I'm really, really good at it. I'm planning to be a pro, moving souls around and stuff."

"Hm. What else besides color and tiredness is relatively easy to troport? And are you guys planning to stay here? I'll have to get you signed up for public support, if so."

inourhead

"Size isn't so hard," says Lightning.

"It's not divided up like that, mostly. Colors are always easy, swaps are easier than transfers, anything with souls is the hardest, it's easier to swap between more similar things - that's why mice and not frogs most of the time and why I had to drowse the frog for Lightning - anyway it hadn't actually occurred to me that we could just not go home, but I guess we could stay, couldn't we?"

"We have families," Lightning objects.

"They'll live."

"I want to see mine again!"

Holly sighs. "And Lightning takes Book wherever he goes so we're going home, I guess, but maybe not right away, it's interesting here."

"Well, I think we may begin to bother some people if we keep talking right here. We should go give you a tour of the city. Lightning, do you want to try for wishes first?"

inourhead

"Just poke the water," Holly advises Lightning. "We can come back and have Book try later."

Lightning looks dubiously at the water, but touches it.

He gets five Favors. "That's... Way below average. Unfortunate, but there's no helping it."

inourhead

"The water god doesn't like you," teases Holly.

Lightning sighs. "If we're done having technical troportation conversations maybe Crystal can come out."

"Are we done having technical troportation conversations?" Holly asks Erin.

"For now yes, I'll have more questions later. It's a new magic system, I can't not have questions."

She leads them out the front of the temple, giving what is very likely a standard spiel about the city's history and culture. Gardens and stonework features heavily, and there are vehicles moving themselves around here and there.

inourhead

"What are those moving things?"

"They're..." She searches for a good word in her language, finds none, and decides to just use a loanword. "Buses. They are machines used to go from place to place, they burn fuel and somehow turn the heat that produces into motion. I don't know the details. There are also trains, which are like longer buses that move on rails, and cars, which are like buses but owned by individuals instead of the city."

inourhead

"Huh," says Crystal. "That sounds useful."

"They are useful! Something like two hundred years ago, some enterprising soul wished for a good way to move things from one factory to another, and then he know how to build a steam train, an early kind of train named that way because steam is what made it move. Buses and cars came later. It's apparently a bit of a problem getting enough fuel for them all, but they're more than useful enough for that to be worth the effort."

inourhead

"What kind of fuel do they need?"

"In theory anything that burns will do, but most things will break if you try to use, like, wood. Most things use a liquid called gasoline, I think they mine for it? Oh, there's also a sort of liquified oil-alcohol mixture made from starchy crops that's not very popular because it's cheaper to have someone wish to refill all the mined-out gasoline."

inourhead

"You might be good enough at troportation to do liquid quantities, now that you can."

"I'll definitely try it later, but right now I'm going to get you four on welfare. I'm unsure if they'll treat you as two people or four... Physically, you have the needs of two people, plus you need some mice. Well, exceptions can be made, I'm sure."

inourhead

"We're not going to be here that long and we have troportable nonperishables, but non-troported food would be nice," sighs Crystal.

She goes back to explaining things about the city and society found here.

After a few minutes, "We can ride the bus to the government offices from here, or we could just keep walking if you want. Can you troport solids? Say, sizes of two different kinds of metal?"

inourhead

"Not walking would also be nice," says Crystal.

"We can do sizes," confirms Lightning.

"The bus will be here in..." She checks a watch, which has not been explained yet, "About eight minutes. I'll be right back, gotta go get something."

She's back with a large iron candlestick. "I'll be using it for an experiment later, the other thing is at my house."

inourhead

"What's the other thing?" asks Crystal.

"A gold necklace."

The bus arrives. Erin shows the driver something, and then shows everyone where to sit.

inourhead

"Troporting sizes mostly only works between things that are at least sort of the same shape," says Crystal. "I mean, Holly thinks she could do a necklace and a candlestick but I probably couldn't."