Man, sorcererboats? Did she just make up a word, or did Amkera miss a reference in one of the books.

Well, if she were the real Weiss, she would know for certain which one it was; but she would also know that the people pretending to be her wouldn't necessarily know. But it's pretty clear what a sorcererboat is from context. So if she were Weiss, she would probably not want to pretend not to know what a sorcererboat is, because that would imply that she was pretending to be pretending to be Weiss poorly.

So she should totally behave as though sorcererboats are a normal thing and not something an overzealous Weiss-pretender made up to sound cool. Also, she should probably update in the direction of making up more cool-sounding magic things, to fit in with the crowd — which is a valid update to make because if she were the real Weiss, the real Weiss would think the same thing (except she's probably use real cool-sounding magic things, but nobody else would be able to tell which ones are real or not, so it doesn't make a practical difference).

Light gods! She's having so much fun already.

"Oh man! Are you going to the Card Reality tournament too?"

Her accent on the SCOL words is noticeable.

"I was going to check it out as well! Tirra has board games, obviously, but it doesn't really have big card games like that. Just Sorcerers' Wager or Geels."

"Sure. I'm going in completely blind for the Card Reality thing. I've been reading about the kinds of games, there's a lot you can do. I like the idea of engine*-building games pretty generally? Industrial revolution!" ('engine' and 'industrial revolution', said in SCOL with a Notal accent). 

"Though, Tirra doesn't have lots of stuff that's just kind of everywhere here. Just... Tools, knowledge. The Steelmaking Otherworlder was the best at his thing out of all of 'em and he wasn't that great. It turns out making everything by hand is hard, who knew. Wizardry and witchcraft helps buuuut-" Shrug. "Only ever so much."

...She should show them Homestead. If only to fuck with peoples' heads at how it was "put together in a few days". She doesn't actually want to reveal herself with magic, but anything short of that should be fair game, right?

"For sure. It's actually pretty interesting—"

Shit would Weiss actually know details about the history of the industrial revolution at this point. Uh. Be vague!

"—how much difference a few little changes in circumstance make over time. Now that our worlds have met, do you think there will be as much difference between them in a few years?"

"A few years? Yeah. You can't build a city like this in three, five years from nothing. Even with trade. Fifty years? Who knows. Cursed ground is still kind of a big deal, you know?"

"Well, sure. But there are so many more people here. If only a small fraction of people on Tirra can become wizards, but that same fraction here can become wizards — before you even get into the number of farmers — that's a lot more people to help push back the cursed ground, isn't it?"

Is that overly magic-centric? Probably not; the real Weiss hasn't had long to get used to the impact of having excess industrial capacity.

"Mmh..."

She shakes her head. She doesn't know what the Light Gods are up to. But only priestesses can really get rid of cursed energy, not wizards. Killing the gribblies mostly just scatters it around to reform in a year or three. Which makes it safer for priestesses to purify, at least. There are probably spells for it, but like, that was one time a wizard helped them take out a Cryptid...

"May Galasa guide us to victory, I guess."

Amkera nods.

"Absolutely," she agrees. "Do you see the game shop? I think it's supposed to be somewhere on this block. Hold on, I got one of the Emergency Services people to get me a map ..."

She digs around in a pocket for a paper map of the city with a few different locations circled.

Don't mind her she's just dwelling on THE PEOPLE SHE FAILED TO SAVE.

"...Is that it?" She points at a likely decorative sign.

She looks up at it and compares it with her map.

"I think so? I'm still having a little trouble telling some of the SCOL characters apart," she admits. That's normal, right? Weiss has been busy with magic and inter-world contact and stuff, and even if she's probably started picking up a little SCOL just from immersion she probably hasn't gotten to the point of being confident about the difference between "ke", "ge", "ne", and "|e" across fonts.

She shrugs.

"Well, worst case we'll see more of the city, right?"

"Gods, I can't tell any of it apart at all, really." She huffs and lashes her tail, then starts bouncing on her feet as she walks. "I hope there's Notal translations of the game."

There were not any Notal translations an hour ago!

þereminia cannot really afford to reprint and translate everything that their visitors might conceivably want to see. But Weiss expressed an interest in this particular tournament before being sent off to meet with her lookalikes, so it will just happen that a Notal translation has been created, and is getting delivered in a few minutes.

"Right? Even if not, we can probably get someone to translate, though."

She pushes open the door to the shop, revealing a long, slightly trapezoidal room filled with tables and squashy chairs. Board and card games line the walls, but apart from the small checkout kiosk by the door, it looks less like a shop and more like a library.

The person behind the kiosk looks up from chatting with another customer, spots the ears, and addresses them in passable Notal.

"Hello — I am Zerish. You look for what?"

"Hi! I'm Weiss, and this is one of the locals pretending to be me. We were both interested in the Card Reality tournament?" she explains.

"Ahh, board games that aren't chess! I wonder if people here would like Homestead... Some friends and I have been working on it for a while..."

The shopkeep raises an eyebrow.

"It is like what kind of game?" they ask.

"You're trying to build a village by putting people on jobs? Oh, don't mind me, we're here for Card Reality. Maybe later."

... they are like 0.43 sure that she is fucking with them. You don't just drop a teaser like that and then completely fail to elaborate.

But that is totally in line with the description of Kitsune, so they should have expected as much, really. They're both just doing a job.

"Okay — We are doing a series of 4 person starting games. The people with the most points, they go into a ..."

The shopkeep searches for the Notal word 'bracket', fails to come up with it, and gestures at a double-elimination tournament bracket drawn on the whiteboard a bit down the wall, waiting for names to be filled in.

"... and then the winner of the games is the winner of the whole thing. The starting games, everything is reset between them. The final games, you can carry effects from the games all the way, so you need to be careful. Can I, uh, ... I write down two 'Weiss', it will be confusing. What should I write for you?"

"I can be just 'kitsune'."

She immediately stomps down the urge to say the same thing, because that's almost certainly not what the real Weiss would do. Is coming up with another equally bland game name the right thing, here? Or should she just graciously accept being given the name Weiss uncontested?

"Put me down as 'the winner'," she tells the clerk.

There's a reason that all major þereminian languages have a quotation-marking distinction. The clerk sighs, and puts both of their names down in Notal on their registry.

"Okay. I think you haven't played Card Reality before? We have some Notal cards coming before the games start, but for now maybe you want to talk to Artema, who speaks well and knows the game?"

They point across the room to a broad woman with close-cropped hair, who is sitting at one of the tables and talking with some other players.

"Good idea to not start with 'literally no idea how this game works', yes." She giggles a bit.

They can go over and politely wave?

Artema looks up and waves back.

"Good morning! Can I help you with something?" she asks. Her accent is poor but her grammar is good.

"We're new to Card Reality and were hoping you could give us an overview before the tournament," she replies.

"Oh, sure, I'd be happy to. Please, take a seat. I'm Artema."

She waves them toward some open chairs.