"That is the most academic description of 'as the merchantman said to the barmaid' I've ever heard, I love it."

"Okay but why a merchantman and a barmaid?"

"You know, I'm not sure. Possibly because where there are barmaids and merchants together the merchants are probably drunk and therefore more likely to make sexual remarks." (He's trying to remember if he explained the word "drunk" yet. He probably did, he gets drunk often enough.)

Apparently not. "Drunk?"

"Ooh, you're about to get an explanation from a world-class expert!"

Snrk. "There's a process you can do to some plants, where if you drink the result it makes you temporarily happy, and friendly, and more willing to say or do stuff you might otherwise choose not to, and also have problems walking straight. And if you drink too much of it you fall asleep and wake up with a sore head."

"Oh, that.

Anyway we don't have kinds of people, just - humans if I am a human."

"Huh. Pinehedge is about half humans and a quarter each elves and dwarves. No dwarves on this expedition, but there are some working in the Archives--that's the organization that sent us here."

"What are they like?"

"Shorter, fewer differences between men and women--both have beards, for instance--they get sick less often than elves or humans but can't run as far."

"What are elves like?"

"Like this." She points at herself. "We're in between humans and dwarves in height, have pointy ears," (she moves her hair back to indicate them) " and we don't need as much sleep as the other two kinds but we get sick the most often. And our sight and hearing is a bit sharper but our senses of smell are worse."

"Huh." She points her own ears experimentally, pokes at them.

Elf ears on a human face and body is pretty amusing. She looks at the artifact again; they've found that a little wooden piece on top is detachable and are messing with that now.

Cayra keeps the pointy ears for now; they amuse her. She supervises the artifact tinkering.

The little wooden piece turns out to be separately chargeable! 

"Hey, Cayra, would you mind holding this and letting it drink your mana for a bit? It won't hurt you, and you can't do anything with your mana anyway since you aren't a caster." 

"Hm. If I find a way to stop it working can you tell so I know it worked?"

"Yeah, I'll be able to tell whether mana is flowing out of you or not. We can stop it just by focusing on wanting it to stop, try that first."

"Okay." She picks up the artifact, lets it do its thing to start to see if that feels like anything.

"Okay, looks like you can prevent it, I'm not seeing anything happening."

"I was trying to let it."

"That's odd. Maybe only casters can charge artifacts after all? It didn't feel like I was casting anything, though. When we get back to Pinehedge we should have a bunch of noncasters try it, you could easily be a weird case for a number of reasons."

"That makes sense."

"Anyway, we're trying to figure out what rules this thing is following. So far we've got that it accelerates the same amount regardless of where the blade starts or what's under there, so we think the vertical parts are applying the same force every time. And the force is on this wooden frame, not on the blade."

"If the force is not on the blade why does the blade move?"